we?’
‘I’m surprised, in a way, that you’ve not moved inwards, towards the capital,’ Thalric said. The servants attending them were all women, he noted, and all of them young. Not one of them was Mynan, either, which was undoubtedly a wise precaution for body slaves. Ulther had obviously ransacked the Empire for servants pleasing to the eye, and there were even a couple of Wasp-kinden amongst them.
‘Who would they get to replace me?’ Ulther took a goblet and watched appreciatively as a Spider-kinden slave poured it full. ‘I know Myna better than any, even better than the pestilential natives themselves. I keep a lid on the pot, you see, boil as it may. They would have risen up a few years back when Maynes did. They were all set, but I knew it in advance. Crucify a handful on the crossed pikes, arrest a few more, and then the families of the ringleaders packed off as slaves to Great Delve. A firm slap early on will stop a tantrum later.’
‘Very creditable,’ agreed Thalric. He helped himself from the tray of sweetmeats proffered to him, glancing up at the slave who served him. She was one of his own kinden, fair-haired and handsome, but she kept her eyes lowered, as slaves should.
‘These two,’ he said, indicating the pair of Wasp slaves. ‘Objectors or Indebted?’
‘Indebted, to the best of my knowledge. There’s a lot of them on the market these days, especially from the capital itself. Terrible, terrible situation.’ Ulther’s sympathy was transparent. ‘Still, I try to give ’em a good home, where I can.’
The young woman remained very still, and Thalric wondered what trauma she was now thinking back to: sold to pay her husband’s debts, or her father’s?
‘I’ll send her to your quarters later, if you want,’ Ulther offered. ‘We might as well make your stay here a memorable one.’
‘I’ll take you up on that,’ Thalric said. He sensed the woman stiffen slightly: a Wasp’s pride against being passed from hand to hand like a chattel. She
Thalric raised a goblet, and he and Ulther touched rims across the face of Captain Oltan.
‘Here’s to “memorable”,’ said Thalric, but he felt sad as he said it.
Ulther settled more comfortably into his padded throne. ‘Speaking of memorable, or so I hope, I have now a little entertainment for you: a new jewel in my collection. I even understand that you yourself escorted her to my city.’
Thalric raised an eyebrow, even as he filed the repeated
In answer, Ulther clapped his hands once more and the serving slaves retreated several steps behind the crescent of chairs. A moment later two men walked in, of local appearance. One was white-haired and bearded, and he cradled a stringed instrument that Thalric did not recognize, something like a stretched lyre. The other was little more than a boy and carried a small drum. They made themselves unobtrusive amongst the pillars and sat waiting. Thalric had already guessed what would come next, for a pair of soldiers then led the Butterfly-kinden dancer into the hall. Aagen’s special delivery. Inwardly, he made another note.
‘Well at least take the chain off her,’ Ulther directed. ‘She’s not a performing felbling.’
One of the soldiers closed the door whilst the other carefully unlatched the chain from the woman’s collar.
Thalric sipped his wine, which was sweeter than his taste preferred, and settled in for a wait. He had never much appreciated dancers or the like. He had caught a glimpse of this one performing before and she was good, but it was not his choice of entertainment.
The woman, named Grief in Chains as he recalled, stepped out until she was within a shaft of sunlight. It fed her skin so that the shifting colours there glowed and burned. From their unseen niche the musicians struck up, a slow picking of the strings at first, the drum a low but complex patter.
Grief in Chains moved, and she took the sunlight with her. It sparkled on her skin and ghosted like mist in the air behind her. And she began to dance.
Thalric maintained his lack of interest until the music changed tempo, the pace quickening bar after bar until she was spinning and leaping across from sunbeam to sunbeam. Then she was in the air, the iridescent shimmer of her Art-wings unfolding about her, and his breath caught despite himself.
She had always been chained before, so the slavers had not seen half of what she could do. With the music soaring and skittering all around them, the plucked notes becoming hard as glass, the drum like a dozen busy feet, she danced and spun, coasting in space and swooping at the pillars’ tops. She seemed to embrace the very air, to mime love to it, and Thalric had never seen the like before. Even he, for the moments of that airborne ballet, even he was touched.
Then she was in bowed obeisance again, and the music had struck its final moment, and Thalric shook off, somewhat irritably, the net that had been on him. Looking at his fellows, though, he saw a wide-eyed rapture, and nowhere more so than on Ulther’s face. What had he paid, and what had he done, to catch this jewel? More, what would he have to do to keep her from his fellows?
A spark of insight came to Thalric then, and it cut him deeply, but it was the answer to a question he had not known to ask.
It was rare for Thalric to be able to mix business with pleasure but, still, he took his pleasure first, moving quick-eningly atop the Wasp-kinden slave-girl, sourly aware that her responses were born of a need to appear willing, and that the pleasure, such as it was, was all his. Even this pleasure was a distant thing to him, a need that he could watch and analyse even as it was being fulfilled. As he reached his peak Thalric was thinking wryly of the flesh-pots of Helleron, whose varied depravity he would now miss, and that this was the first time in some years that he had lain with one of his own kinden.
She went to leave then, sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to him, gathering up her clothes. When he touched her arm, she would not look at him — did not, in fact, until he told her, ‘Stay.’
‘I should be returning. They’ll ask-’
‘It wasn’t a request.’
And that got her attention. When she looked at him there was something left, after all, of the Empire in her face: a pride that had been battered but not quite broken down. She still possessed internal walls that her servitude had not breached.
‘What’s your name, woman?’ he asked, sitting up. He saw her eyes flick from his face to the jagged scar that flowered beneath his right collarbone.
‘Hreya,’ she said quietly. ‘They say you’re with the Rekef.’
‘Let them say what they want.’ As Ulther had started him off on that road, it was only to be expected that rumour here would be rife. ‘How did you come to this, Hreya?’
Her expression suggested that such questions would have been better asked before, but he lived his life to maxims of efficiency, in this as all else. At last she revealed, ‘My father gambled. You know the laws, sir.’
They were harsh laws, carried over by the Empire from the days when there were nothing but three score squabbling hill tribes to call themselves the Wasp people. Women were property — of either father or husband — and as such they were prey for creditors, to be sold into marriage or into slavery. Thalric would never think to speak against imperial law, of course, but it was still a tradition he could have done without. The mothers of the Wasp- kinden deserved better, he thought. They might be women, but they were still of the race. They shared in the Empire’s destiny.
‘How many of you does Ulther keep to hand?’ he asked.
‘Almost thirty, I think, at last count,’ she told him. ‘For the use of himself and his guests.’
‘Any locals?’
‘Not yet, sir. Sir, I’m cold.’
The utter indignity of her having to seek his permission to clothe herself, and the fact that she said the words with a straight back, with the shame sloughing off her, touched him. ‘Dress, by all means. I just want to talk a little. About the governor, if you will?’
As she gathered her gown to her she gave him a hooded look, and he added, ‘None of this will reach
