Rai-Kirah - Transformation Part 3

I had no thoughts to spare for Aleksander's scheming. When the hour struck, the hour the Prince had set for his plot to unfold, I was trying not to drop a tray of twenty-one small basins of warmed, scented water between the kitchen and the Prince's table. There were three tables set up in one of the small dining rooms. The Prince's table, set for twenty-one, was elevated above the other two tables on a low dais. It looked like sixty or seventy people would be at the lower tables to witness whatever the Prince had in mind. A cold draft made the candle flames waver, and a servant stoked the great hearth in the corner of the room behind the dais. Whoever sat at the Prince's far left would bake; whoever sat at his far right would freeze.

About fifteen minutes past the striking of the hour, finely dressed, bejeweled Derzhi men and women began crowding into the dining room, jockeying for places at the lower tables. The Baron did not entertain, nor did the master before that, a less than prosperous merchant who could not afford to do so, so it had been on the order of five years since I had been in the midst of so many hostile people at once. It made me uneasy, but I distracted myself by listening for any snippet of conversation that might reveal what had transpired with the House of Mezzrah. Surely there were rumors of the execution or the summoning of the Mezzrahn lords. But I heard nothing beyond curiosity as to who would sit at the high table, what lady did the Prince fancy this month, and when was he ever going to get down to the business of the Dar Heged, the winter joining of northern Derzhi families, the business that had brought Aleksander to Capharna in the first place.

I wondered if Aleksander planned to kill the eighteen n.o.bles. Surely he was not that big a fool, though his own father had done something similar on more than one occasion. Hostages were another favorite Derzhi tactic, but it seemed too obvious. The n.o.bles would not be naive enough to lay down their arms when entering the palace, and if Aleksander threatened them, they would fight. Unless ... I glanced at the elegantly laid head table with its twenty-one seats. The Derzhi had very strict guesting customs, drawn from their origins in the desert. When water was life to all, deprivation of water was seen as a crime unworthy of a true warrior. The bitterest enemies could share a well peaceably on one day, even while planning to slaughter each other on the battlefield the next. Guesting ...

The great double doors behind die dais were thrown open and a line of fur- clad men-all wearing the orange-striped silk head scarf of the House of Mezzrah-began to file in and take places at the head table. They were glowering suspiciously, but seemed to relax at the sight of the table, the other chattering guests, and the feasting dishes being carried in by a parade of female slaves. They didn't know. These powerful, ruthless warriors had no idea that their kinsman's body hung lifeless and freezing in the public square of Capharna, executed less than an hour past by the smiling, red-haired Prince who graciously followed them through the doors, honoring each man with his special attentions. If they drank only water, they would not betray themselves, but the moment they ate Aleksander's meat or drank his wine, they would become his guest- friends, all past disputes, all grievances settled and forgotten ... whether they knew of them or not. They could not take revenge for the hanging without betraying a thousand years of Derzhi tradition, because they would have shared Aleksander's table after the murder was done.

Breathless with astonishment at the Prince's brazen stroke-and the enormity of the risk he had taken-I took my place at the back of the table and helped arrange cus.h.i.+ons and swords and boots and cloaks until the guests were as comfortable as they could be in Prince Aleksander's house. The sourest of all of them was Lord Barach, Vanye's father, his gray braid hanging well below his bare shoulder, who sat in the place farthest from the Prince. From the look of him, he was there only at his House elders' command.

It was time to put aside my distracting speculations lest I be noticed. Derzhi n.o.bles had been known to cut off a slave's fingers or scald his hands in boiling tea if food was dropped or spilled or improperly served. Carefully I filled the crystal wine goblets and doled out the hot flat loaves of herbed bread, then offered the platters of succulent roast lamb and savory brown-crusted pork.

There were fruits to be sliced or peeled, pickled eggs, sugared dates, and tiny salted fish to be laid out for those who wanted them. Nazrheel, the bitter tea, to be poured. More wine. Zeroun's lessons and those of other forgotten teachers repeated themselves continually in my head-the sum of a slave's scholars.h.i.+p.

Always kneel just behind. Never allow your body to touch the guest. Always offer to the Prince first. If he points at it or nods his head-the gesture can be so slight as to be almost undetectable-give the taster, the s.h.i.+vering slave who sits in the shadows behind him, a portion first, then arrange the remainder on the Prince's plate. Do not breathe while serving the Prince, lest your breath offend him at dinner. Never let the guests run out of meat, lest the Prince appear ungenerous. Never let them run out of nazrheel, as this is seen as a bad omen. The gray-haired lord has his knife across his plate. He is in the middle of the ephrail, the purification fast.

No meat, cheese, or eggs-nothing from a beast can cross his lips. No wine or spirits. Only fruit and tea. When the Prince is finished, nothing more must be served to any guest. The hand was.h.i.+ng must be done before....

When would they hear of it? When would they know how they had been tricked? What would they do? When would they understand why one cus.h.i.+on, the seat at the far-left end of the table, remained vacant? Sixty witnesses to their guesting, too many to kill to remedy their mistake. Even Lord Barach had eaten and drunk.

"Is there no mead or brandy to be had in Prince Aleksander's household?"

asked the slender man in dark purple who sat just to the Prince's left. "I prefer a sweeter drink to ward off the night's chill."

"Of course, my lord," I said quietly, then quickly fetched Suzain brandy from the sideboard. It was the sweetest and fieriest available. I knelt behind him and poured a few drops into his goblet. "If it does not please, I can bring mead."

He lifted the gla.s.s. "Ah. Well chosen." As I filled his goblet with the dark amber liquid, he drew his fur-lined cloak about his shoulders. "One would not mistake the Summer Palace of the Derzhi for the Winter Palace. The names are most a.s.suredly switched." The mild voice bore a trace of an accent.

I glanced at his face very quickly. He must be the Khelid. How could I have failed to notice how different he was? White-blond hair cut short and straight about his face. Smooth, pale, white skin, absolutely unlike the ruddy, weathered Derzhi or the reddish-gold color of my own race. A pleasant, narrow face. Ageless. Smiling. As I indulged my idle curiosity, his eyes met my own . .. eyes of ice-blue, eyes as clear as the morning sky in the highest mountains ... eyes that terrified me beyond anything I had seen in sixteen years, beyond nightmares, beyond the most fearful encounters of my youth, for never before had I faced such eyes defenseless. There was no difficulty with keeping my breath from offending. I could not breathe. I bowed my head, breaking off the contact instantly. The brandy was useless. Nothing could ever warm those eyes or what was behind them.

The rote of my lessons kept churning senselessly in my head.

Always lay the meat across the bread. Never look the guests in the eye. Slaves have been killed for looking into a guest's eyes...

... and they were not such eyes as the ones I had just glimpsed. Did he know I had recognized him? Did he know it was possible, that there were those of us in the world who had been trained to see what he carried within him?

However crippled I was, however lost, however removed from the person I had once been and the life I had once lived, I could still recognize a demon.

I set the bottle of brandy within his reach and began to withdraw my hand, but he caught my wrist in short cold fingers with smooth, tight skin and perfectly manicured nails. Surely there were many reasons why a slave's hands would tremble.

"You're the one," he said, soft enough that neither the Prince on his right, nor the Derzhi lord on his left could have heard him. He pulled me closer by twisting my wrist with fingers of steel until my face was just beside his own. I kept my eyes fixed on the table. Then, with his other hand, he traced the lion and the falcon on my cheek, the touch of his cold fingers setting a blaze on my skin that was far more terrible than the smith's glowing iron. "You're the cause of all this. The catalyst..." I felt him try to peel back my skin with his razor eyes. "... the damaged property. This Alek-sander is clever beyond all our imaginings. To bring you here within sight of them .. . Charming.

Dangerous." He was not talking to me, but to himself. Well and good. He could not recognize me; they didn't know our names. I wanted nothing ...

nothing ... to do with him.

Perhaps I should have looked about the room and tried to read the souls to find one who might be worth saving. Perhaps I could have mustered the skill for deeper looking even after so long. If I had cared for a single man or woman in that a.s.sembly, I would have stood up and cried out a warning and welcomed whatever punishment would come. But time had taught me that care for any being carried consequences too painful to be borne- consequences far beyond lashes or starvation-and even in the presence of uttermost terror, I could not face them. Desperately I wanted to be back in my hole in the ground, naked in the dark. Hidden. Asleep. Alone.

"Seyonne!"

The Khelid released my hand, even as I cursed the Prince for speaking my true name in the demon's hearing.

I moved quickly around the Khelid and knelt beside Aleksander, bowing my head as low as I could without putting it in his lap or his plate. "Your Highness."

"I wish you to wash the hands of my table guests."

"My lord ..." I almost choked on the words that tried to tumble out of my mouth. What in the name of the G.o.ds was he doing? The was.h.i.+ng at the close of a meal was usually the job of younger slaves ... attractive women or youths made available for a night for those guests who took a fancy to them. I had not been require'd to do it since I pa.s.sed twenty-five and had enough scars to make me less than pleasing.

"And you will use this for the drying cloth." Into my hands he placed an orange-striped silk scarf. Sierge's.

I was beyond all speech. I bowed my head and said the pfayer of the dying ...

even though I no longer believed in prayer.

The room was noisy with conversation and the clattering of dishes and bottles. I'd hardly noticed it until I walked numbly to the end of the table to take up the jug of hot water with rose petals floating in it. Magicians were drawing rings of fire in the air and producing bouquets of flowers from out of them, as I poured water into the small porcelain bowl beside the first Mezzrahn Lord. Though I could not look up at him, I felt his eyes on me as I held out the bowl. He would be curious. One male slave, clearly past the bloom of youth, to do the was.h.i.+ng. Two greasy thick-fingered hands dipped into the bowl, sloshed about a little, then stopped abruptly. He had noticed the scar on my face. He could not avoid it as I knelt in front of him. His hands began to quiver as he withdrew them from the hot water. I emptied the bowl into a slops jar and pulled out the scarf. A wrenching moan of dismay rumbled from his chest, and I had scarcely touched his outstretched hands with the scarf when he clenched his fists. I steeled myself for a blow, but he did not do it. Could not. For once I blessed Derzhi tradition. I moved to the next man.

Four of them grabbed the scarf, and I had to remain kneeling in front of them with my hand open, waiting until they released it to me again. Three of them came near breaking my fingers. Three of them grabbed my ear and twisted my head to look closer at the mark on my face. The last seven refused to have their hands washed at all. Though considered somewhat barbaric, it was not a full breach of etiquette. None of them killed me. None of them broke the guesting laws. They knew they were guilty. They had forsaken their caution for whatever blandishments the stout Fendular had whispered in their ears.

Perhaps they had convinced themselves that Vanye was indeed ugly and stupid and not worth offending the Emperor's heir or his Khelid emissary.

They could blame no one but themselves.

I left the Khelid and the Prince until last. That was the custom. I could scarcely bring myself to touch the Khelid's small fingers again, but at least I didn't have to look at him. After I cleansed the Prince's hands, Aleksander lifted my chin and smiled at me wickedly as if I had been his accomplice instead of his tool.

"Well done, Seyonne. Are we Derzhi not a polite people?"

"Yes, my lord," I whispered.

"You are dismissed. None of my guests have asked for you."

I touched my head to the floor and withdrew. I could not get out of the palace fast enough, and I barely made it into the cold night air before heaving up the scant contents of my stomach.

Chapter 5.

I could not sleep that night. I tried everything I knew, but never had the cold seemed so bitter or the darkness so filled with dread. Whether open or closed, my eyes could see nothing but the Khelid's ice-blue eyes, and my haven of darkness became a well of madness. I huddled in the corner; I paced the five steps from wall to wall until I was dizzy and could not stand upright...

anything to keep myself from thinking, from remembering, from seeing. I peered at the ceiling until I found the thread of gold that marked the square of the trapdoor, and I hung onto that thread as a drowning child hangs onto his father's hand. I translated the m.u.f.fled steps and voices above my head into human beings who had souls, who had eyes that were not demon's eyes. And when all grew quiet and the thread of gold winked out, I moaned and buried my face in my arms.

Not a week this time, Durgan. Not five days or three. If you have a soul, slave master, don't leave me here too long or you 'II find a raving lunatic when you open the door again.

One might have thought the demon had taken up its residence in me, feeding on anger I could no longer recognize in myself, because I had forbidden it for so long. I told myself it could not know me. It was not a demon's nature to a.s.sociate a bodily form with those it had encountered at other times in other places. Yet such reasoned arguments held no sway when I crouched naked in the dark and tried so desperately to lose myself in sleep.

Well, we can always bear more than we believe possible.

By the second day from the execution feast, I was sleeping again, though not peacefully. I received three rounds of food and water, and thus I believe three days pa.s.sed before Dur-gan dropped his ladder to me again. Though I had regained my composure, I was up the ladder almost before it touched the floor.

The st.u.r.dy slave master examined me curiously as I knelt s.h.i.+vering in the clean straw of the deserted slave house. It was early morning.

"These last days have not been so easy as before, have they? I heard you cry out."

"It's no matter, Master Durgan." A slave barracks was one of the noisiest places in the world to sleep. Most slaves had plenty of fuel with which to feed nightmares; I happened to have more than most. But one could not afford to let slip any hint of madness. Mad slaves were dangerous; they disappeared very quickly, and one didn't ask where.

"Make yourself ready. You're to be in the First Audience Hall today. I'm told a table sits beside the Prince's chair. You're to be seated at the table, prepared for writing work, by the first hour of third watch. You can get paper and ink and whatever else you need from the Third Steward. Any questions?"

I asked where the Third Steward was to be found, then asked what I might be expected to be writing in the large drafty First Audience Hall.

"It's the Dar Heged begins this day. There'll be letters and messages and judgments and proclamations."

"Is it usual for a slave ...?'

Durgan c.o.c.ked his head to one side and ran his gaze over me. "No. Not usual at all. I've heard"-he flicked his eyes to the left side of my face-"that maybe His Highness thinks to have a little reminder of recent events on view when his lords come." Durgan caught himself up and flushed. He'd been thinking out loud rather than answering me. I had just happened to voice the question that was already in his head. "Get on with you and mind your tongue."

"Always," I said, and bowed to him before taking myself to the cistern. On that gray morning I had to crack ice to get to the water for was.h.i.+ng. Others had been there before me, for the surface of the cistern was a miniature mountain range of ice shards: broken, pushed aside, and frozen to each other again, as if some ghostly hand had done it. The dull shaving knife lay in a scattering of frozen hair of every color and texture. I had yet to see those who shared the slave house with me. The men who glided through the palace pa.s.sageways and kitchens in their fenzai and shorn hair might have been players in a traveling company for all I knew. Only three people in the palace were real.

Durgan, for he fed me and spoke to me. Aleksander, who controlled my life.

And the Khelid ... the demon. I shuddered at the memory and put him out of my mind. There was nothing to be done about the demon.

Durgan was sitting on the floor at the far end of the slave house in front of a small brazier, sharpening a long, old-fas.h.i.+oned sword. On my way out the door he glanced up. "I've been told you have a name."

I halted, but said nothing, prepared for another taste of bitter truth.

"Ezzarians don't like their names used." He resumed his sharpening, moving the blade rhythmically across the gray stone. It was a statement, not a question, yet it was left open at the end. He was not finished with what he wanted to say. It was very curious.

"You know something of Ezzarians," I said in the same manner, though I was certain that whatever he knew, it did not approach the truth. Privacy .. .

secrecy . . . was our lifeblood.

"My family is from the south. Karesh."

Karesh was a small town in the rolling southern gra.s.slands of Manganar, perhaps four days' journey from the Ez-zarian border. We had traded in Karesh when I was a boy, and it had seemed a crowded metropolis to a child from a land of small, scattered woodland settlements. "Karesh has the finest ale in the Empire," I said. "And our miller would buy no other wheat."

"Aye." The thick fingers pressed the s.h.i.+ning blade to the stone. The conversation was finished. Much more had been said than words could convey.

I started out the door again, then paused, closed my eyes, and spoke quietly over my shoulder. "Master Durgan, do not cross paths with the Khelid."

From the corner of my eye I saw his head jerk up, and I felt his eyes on my back as I ran across the busy courtyard to the kitchen door, thinking I was the greatest fool ever to draw breath. One kind word changed nothing. Durgan carried a lash.

The winter Dar Heged was held for twenty-three days in the first month of the year. Every Derzhi House in the northern Empire would send representatives to present the Emperor with their tax revenues, to hear what levies of men and horses and food would be needed for spring campaigns, to resolve disputes with other families, and conduct whatever business needed the attention of their sovereign lord. The streets of Capharna were teeming with warrior n.o.bles and their retinues, grim-faced soldiers guarding the tax-levy wagons, excited families reunited with distant kinsmen or children who had married out of their House, street vendors and shopkeepers and innkeepers raking in revenues from the influx of visitors, fights breaking out between parties to land or property disputes. Dar Heged was a time for marriages and betrothals, treaties and alliances, trades, bargains, and negotiations of all kinds.

I did not observe any of the activity in the streets, only the business brought before the Prince. He sat in the lesser of two huge gilded chairs at one end of the smoky Hall, flanked by ten counselors representing the ten oldest Derzhi families. The counselors were only for show. The Emperor, or in this case his son, had the final and only say in any matter. The line of taxpayers and pet.i.tioners stretched across the cavernous room, and the walls were crowded with observers: families, servants, and whomever else had managed to get themselves past the door wardens.

My table was just to the Prince's right, close enough and angled such that I could see and hear both the Prince and the pet.i.tioners who faced him. Just beyond me was another table arranged with scales and balances and an array of gleaming bra.s.s weights. It was manned by the Emperor's chief redyikka, the magistrate of weights and measures. Every village large enough to have a marketplace had a redyikka to keep traders honest with their measures and to ensure proper coinage and fair dealing.

The daily session lasted from early morning until well after the usual dinner hour. My hand cramped from so much writing, and my fingernails turned black from all the ink. Every judgment had to be recorded in a large, leather- bound ledger, and many of them involved additional letters or writs to be sent to other parties not present at the Dar Heged.

The presence of a foreigner and a slave was an affront to the Derzhi, and as they pa.s.sed behind me or waited for me to finish a paper they needed, they made sure I knew it: some whispered curses and some extremely rude and unlikely suggestions for physical abuse. I wondered if Durgan was right that I was on view for a purpose. I could always tell from the quick intake of breath when one pet.i.tioner told another of my role in Lord Vanye's fall and Lord Sierge's execution. When the Prince scowled at the disturbance, the Derzhi stopped for a bit, but would start up again once Alek-sander was distracted.

Despite all that, I enjoyed the days well enough. The giant hearth fires were well stoked, there was a variety of people to watch, and though most of the disputes and pet.i.tions were mundane, occasionally there were matters of interest or consequence to observe. Best of all, when I returned to the slave house on the first night, Durgan had received orders that I was not to be returned to the underground cell. Though Zeroun had soured my reputation thoroughly among the slaves and no one of them dared speak to me, it did my soul good to feel the breathing of other human beings in the room as I slept. It made it easier to put away fears that I could do nothing about. Easier to strengthen my barricades against dreams that came creeping back from where I had banished them.

Aleksander, on the other hand, detested the whole business. From the first moment of the first day he snapped at every comer, even if they were presenting a chest of riches to be transported back to the treasury at Zhagad.

"What crime did I commit to be trapped in this hateful chair?" he fretted on the third morning, just before the doors were opened to the line of opulently attired Derzhi. He tugged and jerked at the heavy red robe attached to his shoulders. "If Father is to have the privileges of being Emperor, then he must take the duties with it. Why do I care that the House of Gorusch has usurped three grainfields from the House of Rhyzka? What interest have I in some Hamraschi girl's marriage portion? She's an ugly wench, and I'd not have her in my bed for triple the dowry. I'd like to tell them to burn the cursed fields and throw the maiden into the fire."

The stewards cringed at the Prince's ranting and groveled appropriately when it was time to open the doors and let the people come. Though he was rude and uncivil, the Prince seemed to maintain somewhat better judgment in public than he did in private. He knew when to use his authority and when to keep himself out of it and induce the warring parties to settle things between themselves. In major disputes he would yield to the suitor who paid the most taxes or brought the most men and horses to his father's armies or had the most beautiful daughter in tow. Not an arguable position, unless you were the one who happened to be wronged or had some insane notion of justice. The Emperor would probably feel that his interests had been properly looked after.

I tried my best to pretend that nothing had changed since the execution feast, but as the days pa.s.sed, I found my eyes skimming the crowds for the demon Khelid and watching in uneasy curiosity as he insinuated himself into palace life. It was not so strange for a rai-kirah to come hunting in Capharna. A Derzhi palace would offer succulent opportunities for a demon, and even if one of them yet lived, no Ezzarian Searcher would dare venture into a Derzhi stronghold. It was surely no more than odd coincidence that a demon happened to come to a place where one who knew what it was-perhaps the last living person who could recognize it-existed powerless to do anything about it. But I could see no overt signs of demon possession in the Khelid. No extraordinary cruelty. No wild madness. Only smooth charm and polite interest in the proceedings. Why? Fifty times I dismissed such musings, but they lingered in my mind like the taste of rancid meat.

Late on the afternoon of the fourth day, the proceedings were disrupted by an unusual excursion into the city.

The Fontezhi Heged was possibly the most powerful Derzhi family in the Empire save the Emperor's own Denis-chkar family. The Fontezhi holdings included a sizable portion of northern Azhakstan, plus millions of hectares in the conquered territories of Senigar and Thryce. Unlike most of the hegeds who owned large palaces in Capharna, but whose land holdings were elsewhere, the Fontezhi claimed about two-thirds of the land on which Capharna stood. Merchants and householders of the city worked diligently to keep rents flowing into the Fontezhi coffers.

The Jurran Heged, on the other hand, was a minor house, not one of the Ten who sat on the Emperor's Council, nor even one of the Twenty who held the bulk of lands and the traditional Derzhi t.i.tles. The Jurrans were closer to being a merchant house than a warrior clan. They needed no sympathy, however. They had a stranglehold on the spice trade and were very rich. But as all their holdings were in gold and spices rather than land and horses, they were dismissed as unimportant.

On that afternoon, when Aleksander was quite obviously bored to insensibility with a succession of minor disputes and tedious speeches, Baron Celdric, the head of the Jurran Heged, came before him with a protest over the Fontezhi decision to burn a crumbling district of Capharna that lay southwest of the river. It was the poorest district of the city, populated by maimed and diseased veterans, elderly people who had no kin to care for them, widows without resources, and all manner of thieves, dead-handlers, lepers, and madmen. The Jurrani spice warehouses were situated right in the heart of the district.

Aleksander yawned through Baron Celdric's presentation, then sent for a representative of the Fontezhi Heged to answer it. The outcome was foreordained. The Jurrans could never prevail against so powerful a heged ...

except that the Fontezhi made a serious mistake. They sent their most junior dennissar, someone's cousin's nephew's son, to appear before the Prince.

"And where is Lord Pytor?" the Prince snapped at the quaking, bewildered eighteen-year-old whose appearance had sent him into a froth. "Does the lord of the Fontezhi believe he is too important to appear at his Prince's summons? Perhaps he expected me to wait upon him."

"N ... no ... Your Highness. Lord Pytor is out riding this afternoon." The downy-cheeked young man did not know when to keep his counsel.

"And have the Fontezhi no messengers, no aides, no horses available to contact him? And perhaps every first-, second-, and third-degree n.o.ble of your house is similarly occupied? I cannot believe that such a quailing fish as yourself could have attained even fourth-degree status.

"Of course not, Your Highness ... I mean, it was just thought... as it was only the Jurrans and it was not the Emp-" The youth almost swallowed his tongue.

"The district is nothing, Your Highness. A filthy, plague-ridden haven for thieves and beggars. Lord Pytor wishes to make it beautiful... worthy of the Derzhi summer capital."

"And how does he plan to make it beautiful by burning it?"

Recouping a bit of his confidence, the junior dennissar puffed out his chest and tugged at his purple satin vest. "He plans to build a shrine to Athos-your own patron, Your Highness."

"But that would take only a small part of such a tract.

What else has he planned? Tell me truly, now, or I'll have it from you less pleasantly."

Less sure now. "Only a residence ... for his son ... a small palace ... that's all."

"Well"-Aleksander jumped up from his chair-"as this is so unimportant a matter as to send a puling child before the Emperor's representative, I had best go look at this disputed land myself. Perhaps I may have some use for it."

The Fontezhi youth gaped and turned pale. It was not a wise thing to lose your heged lord's lands by virtue of your incompetence.