Songs of the Dancing Gods

“You were amazing,” he told her honestly. “Tiana could not have done any better.”

She beamed. “I was sure about the first one, Master, but not the second. It is very odd, but I had never been able to do that sort of kick before. I think my hair always got in the way or threw me off. This time I did not have to allow for the hair. Perhaps this is not such a tragedy, after all.”

“Well, don’t get too cocky!” he warned. “These guys were dangerous, yes, but they were common thieves. Professionals would have reacted without thinking, and they would not have taken you for granted.”

She spat on the ground near a body. “That sort of man always takes girl slaves for granted, Master.” She ran lightly back and jumped atop her horse, then gathered what reins she could and tied everything off. They looked now like horse-breeders on their way to market.

Joe mounted his own horse and started past the former barricade. “On the road again,” he sang. “Can’t wait to get back on the road again …”

Marge stirred from under her tarp and peered out fuzzily. “Huh, wuzzit?” She looked around and suddenly saw a whole lot more horses around her. “Where’d they come from?”

Joe laughed. “Poor Marge! Go back to sleep! A robbery and a fight can’t wake you up, but my singing does it every time!”

Marge peered blurrily at the horses, then at Mia and Joe, frowned, shrugged, and crawled back under her tarp.

It wasn’t much of a town, but it was clearly seeing better days because of the proximity of military units. There had been a lot of new and obviously slipshod construction along its one main street, probably to serve the military forces who had first passed it by, then returned in the truce and remained nearby.

The stable manager was taken aback at the number of horses. “They’re for sale,” Joe told him. “Cheap.”

The livery man, a stout, middle-aged man, with gray hair and mustache dressed in brown, who looked and smelled as if he’d been born in the stable, looked them over. “Ain’t much,” he commented. “Serviceable, though. You got clear title?”

“The men who owned them won’t be coming to claim them, if that’s what you mean,” Joe answered. “They made a serious mistake of trying to rob me.”

“Well, I’ll be swaggered! I thought that was Stirt’s horse there!”

“Scruffy man, fleas, dirty gray clothes?”

“The very one!”

“If he returns, he’ll be carrying his head under his arm,” Joe told the liveryman. “If he does and still wants his horse, I’ll refund your money.”

The liveryman looked suddenly frightened. “You shouldn’t oughta joke like that, son. Not ’round here. It ain’t all that improbable!”

“Was he a friend of yours?”

“Nope. Real backstabber. Bad from the start. It’s just that he owed me money. Not that I was gonna get it anyway, but…”

“Thirty for the lot and you put up my three for the night,” Joe told him.

“Ain’t possible! I’ll be lucky to resell the lot for twenty-five afore some nosy somebody from the military district comes in and confiscates them as necessary for the defense. Ten plus the board and feed of yours.”

“I’ll sell them on the street for more than that.” They went back and forth in traditional fashion, finally settling on seventeen gold pieces and the livery service. With the still uncounted booty from the thieves’ stash, he was beginning to take a certain liking to Valisandra in spite of its rottenness.

“The military are near here?” he asked the liveryman.

“Couple miles. Lots of train in’ and stuff, lots, of noise and marching and all that other soldier crap.”

“All Valisandran?”

He nodded. “All except some of the officers. I ain’t sure what they are. Might not even be human for all I know. There’s a Valisandran Volsan detachment, too. Big suckers.”

“Volsan—they’re of the centaurs, right?”

“Yep. Wouldn’t want to face any of them in a fight. Kinda all in one cavalry. Drink harder than a thievin’ barman, too. Mostly humans be in tonight, though. Full pack workday; won’t be many. You up here to sign up?”

“I am up here to see if there is anything worth my while to sign up for,” he replied. “Any of the stores open? And how available is the hotel?”

“Most of the stores’ll be open for a while yet, just in case the soldiers come in and want something. Used to have lots of folks here on their way to deal with the dwarf lords in the mountains. Even some tourists, believe it or not. Now, it’s just soldiers. If they hadn’t come back and stuck here, we’d ’a dried up and blowed away. Hotel’s always half or better empty because of it. The guv puts soldiers up.”

Joe nodded and left the stables. Mia joined him. “Let’s get you your whatever it is,” he told her.

“Hafiid, Master.”

“Yeah, hafiid. Best to pick up what we need now.”

The general store wasn’t exactly overflowing with hafiids. “Not much call for ’em down here, at least ’til fall,” the proprietor told him. “Still, got one or two.”

The hafiid turned out to be a loose-fitting, pleated robelike garment of beige-colored wool that was essentially of a single piece, with a neat knitted hole in it and two sleeves. It was essentially a one-size-fits-all kind of thing that came down to her ankles. The loose, robelike sleeves were much too long, but could be trimmed to fit. The other part was a burnoose thing the same color, made out of stretch wool, and had a six-inch flap that hung down the back. Optional was any pair of boots, midcalf or lower, that were some shade of brown or tan. She tried out a few, clearly uncomfortable with any kind of footwear, but settled on a midcalf model that wasn’t that easy to get into or out of but, she said, provided the most support.

“She will also need a neck collar,” the proprietor said. “Another of the new regulations, I’m afraid. The next thing you know, they’ll require them to have leashes. It really has gotten that odd.”

She picked a bronze collar that pretty well matched the bracelets, anklets, and earrings she already had, but with evenly spaced oversized rivets that came to broad points spaced around it. In place of one rivet was a loop through which something, perhaps a chain, could be attached. Maybe the proprietor wasn’t far from the truth. The proprietor fitted it carefully, then put a protective leather patch in between it and the back of her neck and pulled a series of tiny seals. There was a hissing and some smoke rose from the collar, making her flinch, but none got through and he soon removed the patch. The collar was fused, as if welded.

With the complete outfit on, Joe thought she looked like a slightly punk, tan-colored nun.

“Used to be we saw no slaves down here, and the ones we saw were all Marquewood, and there was never any problem,” the storekeeper told him apologetically. “Now, though, you can be declared a slave for spitting on the boardwalk. It hasn’t happened yet, but the rumors are all these new slave regulations are in preparation for making just about all the lower classes slaves. The government denies it, but you can’t trust them these days to tell you much. Even many of the fairy races are being rounded up and forced into work gangs. It’s not like it used to be.”

“I can see that,” Joe responded. He could see Sugasto’s grand social vision clearly and it made him sick. The masses would be enslaved to the state, fed, cheaply clothed, and housed en masse, forced to do all the menial labor at the end of a lash until they dropped. Otherwise, there would be soldiers, a trading class to supply the necessities and maintain trade and commerce, but a rather small one, and, of course, the top one percent who would control everything. It was an ugly picture, but it explained all the harsh slave measures.

Only a small percentage of people could be truly of the slave class anywhere; he knew that. The Rules mandated it, and the ways you reached that status, and what sorts of labor were under it. If Sugasto and his cronies turned their domain into nothing more than a slave state, they wouldn’t really be within the Rules but rather outside of them. Since the masses wouldn’t be true slaves, bound by the Rules of slaves like Mia, they would always be a potential danger. You couldn’t really turn your back on them. Hence, the collars, the chainings, all the rest. The hairless rule was equally obvious; if any of those ersatz slaves had the opportunity, they might escape. Dressed in uniforms or some such or foreign clothing, they might well cause a lot of harm. If you were