Natema, Queen Lilah, Kovneva Katrin Rashumin, Queen Fahia, Viridia the Render, oh, yes, and the others, as you know — and do not associate Mayfwy with them — or, come to that, Natema, who was married to my comrade Prince Varden Wanek. When I imagined what they would think of me now I smiled.
I, Dray Prescot, smiled reflectively there in the soft glow from the samphron-oil lamps. This Esme, this Kovneva, smiled back uncertainly.
“Yes, you see, Chaadur? All you must do is obey me in all things. You can give me so much-” Her moist red lips parted hungrily.
Merle came back. The washing had been painful.
“Why do you not speak, Chaadur?” Then Esme put down my silence to what must have been a not uncommon reaction of a slave, a gul, to this soft blaze of luxury and refinement as they would see it. “This is nothing, Chaadur, to what may be yours in the future if you will but obey me!”
So I said, “It seems to me to be nothing now.” I sipped the wine. “And your wine is a dreadful vintage.”
I poured it upon one of the rugs, a brash affair with a Chunkrah and a Fristle that is not worth commenting on.
“You!” She didn’t believe this.
I said, “If you have the key to these girls’ chains I will have it and take the chains off. You are a rast and a cramph for chaining them up.”
She gaped at me.
Merle and the Fristle fifi gazed at me as though I were mad. I own I am a bit of a maniac; but that is me, Dray Prescot. I wondered what to do with these three slave girls once I had taken the degrading nohnam from them, so that they would not have to sit and stand in that disgusting slavish posture of humiliation. Some people really think girls are not part of the human race!
The black girl put out her hands, as far as the chains would allow, and she said, “I give you the Jikai, dom; but I fear, by Xurrhuk of the Curved Sword, you are a dead apim.”
I stood up. “Give me the key, Esme.”
She was a Kovneva. She called out, “Bagor! Here! Kill!”
The sliding door slid aside with a screech. The guard appeared, craggy, bulky, clad in armor, ferociously lusting after letting blood. At his appearance all three slave girls screamed and drew back in such a pitiful way that I knew instantly this Bagor had been mistreating them abominably.
“Kill the rast, Bagor!” screamed Esme.
“You,” said this Bagor. His bulk was mostly muscle, but there was fat there, too, as I had judged by his breathing when he stood by the outer door. “Outside! The Kovneva will not be pleased for your blood to stain her carpets.”
The girls screamed again.
I am not given to talking when action is imminent, but I wanted to give some heart to these three pitiful slave girls, and so I boasted. How my tough warriors of Valka, or my clansmen, or, even, my fighters of Djanduin would have stared at me then. I dared not think what my Krozair brothers would say. So I said, “I do not care about splattering the cramph of a Kovneva’s carpets with your blood, Bagor!”
And I leaped for him, poor onker, and took his thraxter away and cut his legs from under him. He fell asprawl in blood across the tatty carpets. I thunked the hilt down on his head to put him to sleep. The Kovneva Esme could not speak. She sat there on her couch, her legs drawn up, her gown bedraggled with blood that had splashed it. She looked at me with horrified eyes and she tried to speak, but her fingers dug clawlike into her throat so that she could not utter a word. I went over to her and ripped the dress about until I found the key. Then I unlocked the fetters and the manacles and took the collars from their necks. I am not a vengeful man. But I did something then, I, perhaps, should not have done.
When I had finished, there lay Esme, the Kovneva of Apulad, collared and chained in nohnam, degraded in her own bower.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Although Esme appeared paralyzed and unable to cry out, lying there on her blood-spattered carpets with the collar and chains and manacles of nohnam upon her, the previous screaming must soon bring guards. They would not be big, bloated hunks of female-tamers like Bagor. And Bagor was an honorable name in most parts of Kregen.
I picked up the curved dagger he wore in a cheap brass scabbard and held it in my left hand. The thraxter in my right, my old shirt and ragged pair of trousers cut off at the knees, and I was as fully armed and accoutered as I could be, for Bagor carried no shield for this duty of chastising female slaves in chains and of cutting down slaves or guls if they displeased his mistress. What of the laws of Hamal here?
As I did this, Merle snatched up the thin tuffa rod and started hitting Esme. She swung wildly, her body heaving with each blow, her gasps sounding painfully loud. The black girl, Xasha, laughed. I took Merle’s arm.
“Do you wish to remain here, Merle?”
She looked at me with deep shock in her eyes, very pitiful to see. She drew in a deep breath and threw the switch away.
“I cannot remain here, Jikai, and live!”
“That is true,” said Xasha. “And if we do not leave at once the guards will take us all. Then, after the beatings it will be the Jikhorkdun for us all.”
I moved to the door. I heard a soft click from the direction of the couch, and turning to call the girls, I saw the Fristle, Floy, take a long thin dagger from the tray which had slid out from its concealment in the side of the sofa. She lifted the dagger high and the samphron-oil lamps gleamed off the blade and sparkled off the gems set in the hilt.
With a triumphant shriek the Fristle girl buried the dagger in Esme’s throat. Esme choked, coughed, vomited blood, kicked her legs, and then rolled slowly over onto her face. There was nothing anyone could do for her.
Floy, the Fristle girl, stood, her legs apart, her diaphanous scrap of silk quivering with her own excited body-movements. She whispered, to herself, really, unaware for the moment of any other person.
“Hai,” she whispered. “Hai, Jikai!”
Not unmoved, I turned away and with a harsh and intemperate gesture and a few uncouth words bade the girls follow me.
Xasha said, “We would do well to take what jewels and money we can carry, dom. Also, we will need clothes.”
I nodded. “Very well. I will stand by the door.”
Still panting, her bosom in tumult, Floy circled the contorted body of the Kovneva. She spat upon the corpse. She would have stuck the dagger again and again into that hated form; but I held the dagger and the blood dripped, drop by drop, upon the carpet.
We collected jewels, mostly from the dead person of the Kovneva, and the girls threw clothes about themselves, breechclouts of silk, mashcere blouses, and long cloaks of checkered green and crimson and blue. Out of a habit that I would not break if I could I seized up a scarlet length and wound it around my middle. Bagor’s belt held it up, and his scabbard of risslaca scale would be useful if there was climbing to be done.
“This way,” said Merle.
We went out past the sliding screen — which was of ivory not from Chem, but from the northern jungles of Havilfar, as one might notice from the whiter color and coarser texture — and down the passageways up which I had been brought, and down to the outer door. Here Merle paused, her finger to her lips in the dwindling light of the Maiden with the Many Smiles. Soon the Twins, the two second moons of Kregen eternally orbiting each other, would be up and throwing down enough light by which to see comfortably. Merle beckoned and we hurried from the door, which we closed, and down a shadowed arcaded way to the first garden of the pools.
“The stables are beyond the Pagoda of the Green Smile,” she whispered. “Can you ride a saddle-flyer?”
