Drakis looked up into the face of Tsi-Timuri, Timuran’s wife and the mother of Tsi-Shebin. He shook at the sight of her.
“Answer me, slave!”
“Yes, Mistress,” Drakis mumbled.
The older elven woman folded her narrow arms across her chest, her long fingernails, filed to sharp points, digging slightly into the flesh of her upper arms. She leaned back slightly, her face all angular plains of displeasure around tight lips and glistening, featureless eyes of black. Her iron-gray hair may have been luxuriously long, but it was tightly constrained into an almost rigid form close to her long head.
“Can you walk?” she asked at last.
“Yes. . no. . I think I can, Mistress.”
“Go on, then. Walk,” she said, nodding down a long, curving hallway.
The elderly elf woman gave him a shove, pushing him down the curve of the hallway. He saw clearly the disdainful curl of her withered lips and her accusing eyes. He tried to navigate the hall, but his legs were still weak and required his full attention to remain under him. The best he could manage was a staggering gait as he moved painfully before the contemptuous elf prodding him forward.
“That was worse than usual,” Timuri said behind him. “You should stay out of his way until Devotions. For now, try to remain as unnoticeable as possible.”
“Thank you, Mistress,” Drakis managed to say. “That is most kind of you.”
“Kindness has nothing to do with it,” Timuri snapped. “I will have order in my House. If that means pandering to my daughter’s sick perversions-or my husband’s for that matter-so be it. Someone has to pay for these indulgences for the sake of this House, and better you than me, slave. . better you than me.”
Tsi-Timuri’s voice trailed off behind him, but Drakis did not mind; the words had only been spoken to fill an empty place and never meant for him at all.
“Now, get out of my sight until Devotions, or I will kill you with my own hands,” Timuri hissed, “no matter how much my daughter considers you her personal pet.”
He realized with a start that he had come to the end of the hall and was staring out from the framework of the Servant’s Portal.
“Go!”
“Yes, Mistress.”
There were four portals that accessed the avatria as it floated above the walled garden, each one connected by a delicate and ornate bridge to four matching towers that rose up from the walls of the subatria below. These towers were of varying heights, the two tallest reserved exclusively for the use of Sha-Timuran’s family and the third for elven guests or officials as well as the elven servants of the avatria . These were each comprised of smooth, vertical shafts and relied on the small pedestal fountains at their bases-small Aether springs linked to the House Well-to levitate or descend according to the blessings of the elven gods whose powers they invoked. The fourth-and lowest-of the towers contained the only physical staircase between the avatria and the subatria.
This was the same staircase, he suddenly recalled, that he had bounded up so hopefully just a few hours before, the same rope-woven bridge that he had crossed gladly into the lower floors of the floating elven home with dreams of a better future bright in his mind.
He placed one foot in front of the other and then frantically gripped the railing of the bridge. The cedar planks that had been roped together to form the suspended bridge had once passed so surely under his feet, but now they felt shifting and treacherous. He swallowed hard, closing his eyes for a few moments, hoping for a momentary respite in the darkness within himself; then he opened them and peered over the side.
The Servant’s Bridge was just over thirty feet above the floor of the garden below, he judged. Surely that was sufficient room to insure his death. All he had to do was vault the flimsy railings of the rope bridge. It would all be so easy and so quick. Mala would never have to know why he had done it.
Mala.
The thought of her gave him pause. She would not know why, indeed-and the not knowing would hurt her, too. So he looked away from the siren call of oblivion and made his way on unsure feet the rest of the way across the bridge.
He would have to find a way to keep his shame from Mala-because he would rather bear the pain of it himself than be the cause of pain to her.
Somehow, he made his way down the long, interminable circles of the spiral stairs until they ended at one side of the House Garden. He turned at once, keeping his watering eyes fixed on the curve of the garden wall, his left hand reaching up to feel its surface as he made his way quickly around its perimeter.
He bumped suddenly into the hulking form of a manticorian gardener-a fat brute he remembered as RuuKag-who snarled at him. Drakis mumbled his apologies and ducked past the lion-man quickly.
He had to get out of the garden. Mala often was assigned to work here, and he could not bear to see her, not yet at any rate. He had to think through this, figure out how it was that his good life and prospects for a better one had suddenly turned to ash in a single day.
No, he realized: not in a single day. Things had been going wrong ever since he had departed for the Battle of the Ninth Throne three weeks before. The terrible losses in the battle-friends and comrades with whom he had shared innumerable campaigns-as well as the loss of their Proxi at the climax of the battle itself and the subsequent loss of the crown. Then there was the bizarre dwarf whose endless prattle had suddenly, terribly come true and turned his blessed life into a cursed one. .
“Hail Drakis!”
Drakis snapped his head toward the sound. The wall of the House Garden had ended abruptly at a long, vaulted hallway curving back around to his left. The walls were covered with the picture-writing of the elves and lined with enormous elven statues of each of the previous masters of the line of Timuran. The figures looked down with disapproval on the two figures coming toward Drakis from its far end: a short, squat figure and a manticore.
Drakis did not immediately recognize the dwarf, for he was shaven after the fashion of slaves. His once long and luxurious beard was gone, as was his mane of hair. His jowly and receding chin gave his face an almost infantile appearance, like a fat human baby who had been too well fed. His extravagant clothing was replaced with the common tunic, and his newly shaved head now bore the tattooed mark of a House slave.
“It is good to see you again, Drakis,” the dwarf said with careful lightness in his voice, his eyes fixed on the human. “I have been worried about you, you know.”
Drakis could only stare at the dwarf.
“Drakis? Are you well?”
Only then did he realize that the manticore was Belag. Drakis took in a long, shuddering breath and looked up into the face of the towering manticore.
The creature’s yellow eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is there something wrong?”
“No, everything is fine,” he lied. “Sha-Timuran was. . was pretty upset about losing the crown, especially to his neighbor. . but everything is fine.”
Belag considered this for a time and then nodded with a grunt. “You are square, then?”
“Yes-I am square,” Drakis replied, but he looked away as he spoke. “What are you doing with the dwarf?”
“Jerakh told me to bring him for shearing and branding.”
“Ah,” Drakis nodded. “I see. So he couldn’t stand him either. Where are you taking him now?”
They both turned to look at Jugar. He had wandered back down the long curve of the great hall, staring up at the wall above him with both of his thick hands clasped tightly behind his back.
“It’s back to the barracks with him until he is impressed this evening at Devotions,” Belag said although his furry brows were knitted in thought. “I don’t like him, Drakis. There’s something unsettling about him.”
