and head were hidden from view by two carved ivory swing doors. By his side, its point resting on the floor, he held a long rapier. I did not need to be told that a single command from the Princess Natema would bring him in a single bound into the room, that deadly point at my throat or buried in my heart.
“You may incline,” she said.
I did so. She had not called me a rast. A rast, I knew now, was a disgusting six-legged rodent that infested dunghills. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe, apart from my four limbs and my larger size I, in this palace, was no better than a rast in his dunghill. At least, that was his nature.
“You may crouch.”
I did so.
“Look at me.”
I did so. In all truth, that was not a hard command to obey. Slowly, languorously, she rose from the couch. Her white arms, rounded and rosy in the lamplight, reached up and, artfully, lasciviously, she pulled the emerald pins from her hair so that it fell in a glory around her. She moved about the room, lightly, gracefully, scarcely seeming to touch the scented rugs of far Pandahem with those pink feet with their emerald-lacquered toenails that shone so wantonly. The green gown drooped about her shoulders and I caught my breath as those two firm rounds appeared beneath the silk; lower down her arms dropped the gown, lower, sliding with a kind of breathless hiss, so that at last she stood before me clad only in the white tissue vest that ended in a scalloped edge across her thighs. Silver threads glittered through the tissue. Her form glowed within like some sacred flame within the holy precincts of a temple.
She stared down on me, insolently, taunting me, knowing full well the power and the drug of her body. Her red lips pouted at me, and the lamplight caught on them and shot a dazzling star of lust into my eyes.
“Am I not a woman, Dray Prescot?”
“Aye,” I said. “You are a woman.”
“Am I of all women not the most fair?”
She had not touched me-yet.
I considered.
Her face tightened on me. Her breathing came, sharper, with a gasp. She stood before me, head thrown back, hair a shining curtain about her, her whole body instinct with all the weapons of a woman.
“Dray Prescot! I said-am I of all women not the most fair?”
“You are fair,” I said.
She drew in her breath. Her small white hands clenched. She stared down on me and I became closely aware of that grim mailed swordsman half-hidden in the alcove.
Now her contempt flowed over me like sweetened honey.
“You, perhaps, know one who is fairer than I?”
I stared up at her, levelly, eye to eye. “Aye. I did, once. But she, I think, is dead.”
She laughed, cruelly, mockingly, hatefully. “Of what use a dead woman to a live man, Dray Prescot! I pardon your offense-”
She halted herself, and put one hand to her heart, pressing. “I pardon you,” she said, again, wonderingly. Then: “Of all women living, am I not the most fair?”
I acknowledged that. I saw no reason to get myself killed for the sake of a spoiled brat’s pride. My Delia, my Delia of the Blue Mountains-I thought of her then and a pang of agony touched me so that I nearly forgot where I was and groaned aloud. Could Delia be dead? Or could she have been taken by the Savanti back to Aphrasoe? There was no way I could find that out except by finding the City of the Savanti-and that seemed impossible even if I were free.
As though suddenly wearying of this petty taunting, although, heaven knew, she was prideful enough of her beauty, she flung herself wantonly on the chaise longue, her head back, her arms flung casually out, her golden hair cascading down to the rugs from far Pandahem. “Bring me wine,” she said, indolently, pointing with her jeweled foot.
Obediently I arose and filled the crystal goblet with a golden, light wine I did not recognize, from the great amber flask. It did not smell particularly good to me. She did not offer me any to drink; I did not care.
“My father,” she said, as though her mind had turned ninety degrees into the wind, “has a mind I should marry the Prince Pracek, of the House of Ponthieu.” I did not answer. “The Houses of Esztercari and of Ponthieu are at the moment aligned and in control of the Great Assembly. I speak of these matters to you, dolt, so that you may realize I am not just a beautiful woman.” Still I did not reply. She went on, dreamily: “Between us we have fifty seats. With the other Houses, both Noble and Lay, who are aligned with us, we form a powerful enough party to control all that matters. I shall be the most powerful woman in all Zenicce.”
If she expected a reply she received none.
“My father,” she said, sitting up and propping her rounded chin on her fist and regarding me with those luminous cornflower blue eyes. “My father, because he holds the power of the alignment, is the city’s Kodifex, its emperor. You should feel extremely fortunate, Dray Prescot, to be slave in the Noble House of Esztercari.”
I lowered my head.
“I think,” she said, in that dreamy voice, “I will have you hung from a beam and whipped. Discipline is a good item in the agenda for you to learn.”
I said: “May I speak, Princess?”
She lifted her breast in a sudden deep intake of breath. Her eyes glowed molten on me. Then: “Speak, slave!”
“I have not been a slave long. I am growing uncomfortable in this ridiculous position. If you do not allow me to stand up I shall probably fall over.”
She flinched back, her brows drawing down, her lips trembling. I am not sure, even now, even after all these long years, if she truly realized she was being made fun of. Such a thing had never happened to her before-so how could she know? But she knew I had not responded as a slave should. In that disastrous moment for her she lost the semblance of a haughty princess beneath whose jeweled feet all men were a rasts. Her silver vest crinkled with the violence of her breathing. Then she snatched up her green gown and swathed it carelessly about her body and struck with her polished fingernails upon a golden gong hung on cords within arm’s reach of the chaise longue.
At once Nijni and the slave girls and Gloag and his men entered.
“Take the slave back to his room.”
Nijni cringed, making the half-incline.
“Is he to be punished, oh Princess?”
I waited.
“No, no-take him back. I will call for him again.”
Gloag, as it seemed to me, very roughly bundled me out. The three slave girls in their scanty strings of pearls were laughing and giggling and looking at me slyly from the corners of their slanting blue eyes. I wondered what the devil they were finding to chatter about; and then bethought me of my ludicrous clothing. I thought what Rov Kovno, or Loku, or Hap Loder, would make of them, on the backs of voves riding into the red sunset of Antares on the great plains of Segesthes.
Gloag clapped me on the back.
“At least, you still live, Dray Prescot.”
We left that scented powdered corridor where Nijni removed the silken gloves from my hands. The wine had stained my right thumb. He looked up, crowing, chewing his cham-cud.
“One stroke of the rattan!” he said, annoyed it was not more. A slave girl in the drab gray breechclout of all slave menials walked around the corner before us carrying a huge earthenware jar of water. A lamp swung from golden chains beyond her head suddenly aureoled her hair and shone into my eyes. I turned my face away, glowering at Nijni.
I heard a desperate gasp. I heard the jar of water smash into a thousand pieces and the water splash and leap in that hidden corridor of a decadent palace. I looked up, moving my eyes away from the light so I could see.
Clad in the gray breechclout, her head high and face frozen, her eyes filled with tears, Delia of the Blue Mountains looked hard and long at me, Dray Prescot, clad in those foolish and betraying clothes.
Then, with a sob of anger and despair, she rushed from my sight.
