The wagon was now travelling along a long, flat road shrouded in the gloom of dusk. Now and then walled enclosures appeared, bringing back memories of the typical Sachakan mansions, with their endless sprawl of curved walls coated in white render.
She also noticed the slaves working in the fields. She felt slightly discomforted whenever she saw them. Too many years in Elyne had taught her an aversion to slavery, yet she could also remember adoring the slaves who had looked after and indulged her as a child.
There were other reasons, Stara knew. Some she had been told, some she had worked out herself. Her mother had run away from her family in order to marry the man she loved, then discovered that he was a different person at home from the one he’d been in Elyne. He needed to be, she had explained to Stara. You have to be tough and cruel to survive Sachakan politics and make slaves obey you. Yet she couldn’t bear to see the effect it had on him. Eventually he had allowed her to return to Elyne. A harder man would have made her stay, she had admitted. Or kept both of their children.
The man who visited them every year had always been the same: loving and generous. Stara had watched him carefully, looking for some hidden monster, but never saw it.
Her brother, Ikaro, had visited Elyne a few times. Younger than Stara by three years, he had always been reserved to the point of being rude. She had admitted to her mother years before that she was jealous of him for being the one who stayed behind, but also felt sorry for him for growing up without his mother. But when she had expressed the latter to him during one visit, he’d sneeringly told her it didn’t matter as much for a man to grow up without women around, as they weren’t as important as men.
She lost a lot of respect for him that day. The expectation that he would feel the same way about her as he did about other women, especially in regard to her value in the trade, soured the anticipation and excitement of finally reaching her destination. But she was determined not to let him spoil her new life.
The fields between the mansions on either side had been shrinking, and now they disappeared entirely, to be replaced by unending walls broken by the occasional broad alleyway. The wagoners’ cheerful whistling had stopped and their expressions were alert and unsmiling. Slaves hurried back and forth along the road, their eyes downcast. The only light now came from the wagoners’ lamps and those carried by slaves, or the glow of hidden light sources on the other sides of the walls. Stara felt both excitement and disappointment as she realised they had entered the city, and it wasn’t anything like she’d expected. Unlike Capia, Elyne’s capital, the buildings didn’t spread themselves around a great harbour in a glittering display. Instead they hid behind walls in an unending, secretive sprawl.
The wagon slowed as they approached a large wooden gate and Stara’s heart skipped a beat as she realised this must be her father’s mansion. The vehicle stopped and the head wagoner called out. No answer came, but there was a clunk, and then the gates began to swing open, revealing a wide paved courtyard lit by several lamps. The walls around her were white, broken only by doors and the ends of dark wooden beams. Stara’s heart was beating fast. As the wagon moved inside her eyes searched the courtyard for her father, but all the people she saw were strangers.
When the vehicle stopped they threw themselves to the ground. Looking around, she realised that all their heads bowed toward her, and all their feet pointed away, so that bodies radiated away from her in all directions.
“Nobody is going to tell you what to do, mistress,” a voice murmured close by. She glanced down to see a wagoner leaning up against the vehicle, his attention apparently elsewhere. “You give the orders now.”
Understanding came in a rush. Nobody was going to tell her where her father was unless she asked. Nobody would even get up. In Elyne a woman was supposed to wait until she was met by her host – or a senior servant at the least – before alighting from a wagon. This was not Elyne. Here she was not a guest, but part of the family that ruled the estate.
“Go back to what you were doing,” she called out.
The slaves slowly rose from the ground and resumed their tasks, but with a deliberate caution. She noticed that one, a man in a red cap, was ordering some of them about. Rising, she climbed down off the wagon with as much dignity as she could manage. She turned to the man in the red cap.
“I wish to see my father, if he is at home.”
He bowed, this time bending at the waist, then gestured to a shirtless slave standing near the doorway.
“Your wish can be fulfilled, mistress. Follow this man and he will take you to Ashaki Sokara.”
As she followed the slave into the interior she breathed deeply. A familiar scent hung in the air, but she could not identify it. The slave’s thin silhouette led her down a narrow corridor coated in the same white render as the exterior. They emerged into a large room. Stara recognised the floor plan. This room was the centre of the house: the “master room’, where her father met, entertained and fed guests. Doorways led from it to other parts of the house. Her mother’s home followed the same design, as did other Sachakan-built houses in Elyne.
She took all this in with one glance, because a man sat on a large wooden chair in the centre of the room. Recognising him, she felt her heart leap with joy.
“Father,” she said.
“Stara.” He smiled and beckoned.
Walking across the room, she was disappointed when he didn’t rise to greet her. She hesitated, unsure what to do next.
“Sit,” he suggested, indicating a smaller chair next to his.
Taking it, she sighed with appropriate and not entirely faked appreciation. “Ah. You’d think after sitting down all day I wouldn’t want to even look at a chair.”
“Travelling is tiring,” he agreed. “How was the journey? Did my men treat you well?”
“Interesting, and yes,” she replied.
“Are you hungry?”
“A little.” In truth, she was ravenous.
He made a small gesture and a gong on the other side of the room chimed. A moment later a slave ran into the room and threw himself on the floor.
“Bring food for mistress Stara.”
The slave leapt to his feet and hurried away. Stara stared at the doorway he had vanished through. His arrival and departing had been so dramatically performed that Stara could not help finding it comical. She had to suppress the urge to laugh.
“You will grow used to the slaves,” her father told her. “Eventually you forget they are there.”
She looked at him and bit her lip.
The conversation turned to her mother. She told him of the latest deals and of new customers, as well as an idea her mother was considering: developing a trade in sail dyeing.
“Sailcloth has always been undyed, but if we can suggest the benefits of dyed cloth to the right people, and the idea becomes popular, we might open up a whole new market.” She grinned. “That was my idea. I was watching some children playing with toy boats, and—”
Annoyingly, slaves chose that moment to enter the room with food. She had hoped for some expression of admiration, or even just an opinion, from her father, but he was completely distracted now. From a box next to his chair he drew two small but deadly-looking knives, one of which he handed to her.
Sighing quietly, she watched as a strange ritual unfolded. The slaves took it in turns to fall to their knees before her father. He selected a few morsels of whatever was presented, picking them up with a stab of his knife then
