more robust. I know how these negotiations task you. I see no sense why the entire Satrapy should endure the risk to your health. Bingtown is my area of expertise. I should be very happy to serve you in this regard. I feel it is my duty.'
'Your duty? I wonder. Not your opportunity, then?'
He had always been slyer than he looked. She tried to appear baffled by his words. 'Magnadon, I have always considered my duty to the Satrapy to be my greatest opportunity in life. Now. As you can see, I have left plenty of room at the bottom where we can write in some limitations. A time limit seems called for, for example.' She shrugged. 'I simply saw this as the swiftest, easiest way to solve this.'
'You would go to Bingtown? Alone? The Companions of the Heart do not leave the grounds of the palace. Not ever.'
Freedom receded. She let nothing show on her face. 'As I said, I sought the swiftest, easiest way to resolve this without taxing your health. I am completely informed on the history of the situation. I imagined you would convey your wishes to me, and that in turn I would pass them on to the Bingtown Traders. By honoring them with a visit from one of your Heart Companions, you convince them of both your sincerity and your regard for them. It would also present me with the opportunity to see firsthand a city that has been at the heart of my studies for several years.' Fabled Bingtown. Frontier city of magic and opportunity. The only settlement that had ever survived the Cursed Shores, let alone prospered there. How she longed to see it for herself. She said nothing of the Rain Wild Traders, and their reputed cities far up the Rain Wild River. They were no more than an elusive legend. To imply there was treasure he did not even suspect would only excite his greed. She tried to refocus her thoughts. 'Before your father died, he promised me that someday I would see that city for myself. This is also an opportunity for you to keep that promise.' As soon as she uttered the words, she knew they were a mistake.
'He said he would let you go to Bingtown? Preposterous! Why would he promise you such a thing?' His eyes narrowed with sudden suspicion. 'Or is that what you demanded in return for your favors? Did my father ever lie with you?'
A year ago, when he had first dared ask her that question, it had shocked her into silence. He had asked it so often since then that the silence was a reflex now. It was the only true power she had over him. He didn't know. He didn't know if his father had had what she refused him, and it gnawed at him.
She recalled the first time she had ever seen Cosgo. He had been fifteen, and she was nineteen. She was very young to be a Heart Companion. It was surprising that such an elderly Satrap would even take a new Companion. When she had been presented to Cosgo as his father's new advisor, the young man had looked from her to his father and back again. His glance had spoken his thoughts plainly. She had blushed, and the Satrap had slapped his son for his insolent gaze. Young Cosgo had taken that to mean that his base suspicions were true.
When his father died, Cosgo had dismissed all his father's Heart Companions. Ignoring all tradition, he had sent them off without the mercy of shelter and sustenance for their declining years. Most had been elderly women. Serilla alone he retained. She would have left then, if she could have. As long as she wore a Satrap's ring, she was bound to the Satrap's side. Cosgo was Satrap now. Her vows demanded that she stay and advise him as long as he desired it. Her advice was all he could require of her. From the beginning, he had made it plain he wished more. For his other Heart Companions, he had chosen women more educated in the flesh than in diplomacy. Not one of them refused him.
Traditionally, the Companions of the Heart were not a harem. They were supposed to be women with no other loyalties than to the Satrapy. They were supposed to be what Serilla was: blunt, out-spoken and ethically uncompromising. They were the Satrap's conscience. They were supposed to be demanding, not comforting. Sometimes Serilla wondered if she were the only Companion who remembered that.
Serilla suspected that if she ever did allow him into her bed, she would lose all power over him. As long as she represented a possession of his father's that he could not claim, he would want her. He would pretend to listen to her, and occasionally actually follow her advice in an attempt to please her. It was the last vestige of power left to her. She hoped she could use it as a lever to gain her freedom.
So now, she regarded him in cool silence. She waited.
'Oh, very well!' he suddenly exclaimed in disgust. 'I will take you to Bingtown, then, if it means so much to you.'
She teetered between elation and dismay. 'You'll let me go, then?' she asked breathlessly.
A tiny frown creased his brow. Then he smiled at her. He had a tiny thin mustache that twitched just like a cat's whiskers. 'No. That is not what I said. I said I'd take you there. You can accompany me, when I go.'
'But you are the Satrap!' she faltered. 'For two generations, no ruling Satrap has left Jamaillia City!'
'It is as you said. This will convince them of my sincerity when we negotiate. Besides. It is on my way to Chalced. I have been invited there numerous times. I had already decided to go. You shall accompany me there, after we have settled the rebellious rabble in Bingtown.' His smile widened. 'There is much you can learn in Chalced. I think it will be good for both of us.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Bingtown Trader's Daughter
SIT STILL.
'It hurts,' Malta protested. She lifted a hand to touch the hair her mother was twining into gleaming coils. Her mother pushed her hand away.
'Most of being a woman hurts,' Keffria told her daughter pragmatically. 'This is what you wanted. Get used to it.' She tugged at the weight of shining black hair in her hand, then deftly tucked a few stray strands into place.
'Please don't fill her head with nonsense like that,' Ronica said irritably. 'The last thing we need is her going about the house feeling martyred simply because she is a female.' Malta's grandmother set down the handful of ribbons she had been sorting and paced a restless turn around the room. 'I don't like this,' she said suddenly.
'What? Getting Malta ready for her first beau?' There was bemused, maternal warmth in Keffria's voice.
Malta frowned to herself. Her mother had initially refused to accept Malta being treated as a woman. Only a few weeks ago, she had said her daughter was much too young to have men courting her. Did she now approve of the idea? Malta shifted her eyes to try to see her mother's face in the looking-glass, but Keffria's head was bent over her hairdressing task.
The chamber was light and airy, perfumed by hyacinths in small glass vases. Sunlight spilled into the room from the tall windows. It was a lovely afternoon in early spring, a day that should have brimmed with promise. Instead, Malta felt weighted with the listlessness of the two older women. There was no lighthearted chatter as they readied her to meet her first suitor. The house seemed stagnated in mourning, as if her grandfather's death last spring had visited a permanent desolation upon them.
On the table before Malta were small pots of paints and creams and perfumes. None of them were new. They were leftovers from her mother's rooms. It rankled Malta that they thought she deserved no better than that. Most were not even from the bazaar. They had been made at home, in the kitchen, rendered down like soup stock from berries, flowers, cream and tallow. Her mother and grandmother were so disappointingly old-fashioned about these things. How could they expect Bingtown society to respect them if they lived as meagerly as paupers?
They spoke over her head as if she were a baby incapable of understanding them.
'No, I've surrendered on that.' Her grandmother sounded more irritable than resigned. 'I don't like that we haven't heard anything from Kyle and the Vivacia. That is what worries me.'
Keffria's voice was carefully neutral when she spoke of her husband and the family ship. 'The spring winds can be fickle. No doubt, he will be home in a handful of days… if he chooses to stop in Bingtown. He may pass us and go directly to Chalced to sell his cargo while it is still in good condition.'
'You mean while the slaves are still alive and marketable,' Ronica observed relentlessly. She had always opposed using the family liveship as a slaver. She claimed to oppose slavery on principle, but that did not prevent her from keeping a slave in the house. Ronica had claimed it would be bad for the ship to be used as a slaver, that a
