Shadow of the Warmaster

XI

collecting:

Place. Raz KALAK KAVANY, northeast lobe of the Duzzulkas.

Headprice: 2,500 gelders.

She was tall and thin and bald and she moved with an explosive grace even when loaded with chains and driven about the dance floor by electric lances and glass-pointed longwhips. She danced grimly, knowing she had to please them, refusing to please them by cringing or pleading. Sweat streaked her coppery skin, her yellow slit-pupiled eyes were half-closed, her mouth squared into a snarl. Chunky high-arched feet lifted, leaped, landed without a sound, moving too swiftly for the whip thongs to tangle about them, her limber body flowed and twisted away from the jabbing lance points. The dance went on and on, she sweated more copiously until her skin had a diffuse glow as it reflected the yellow light from the lamps clumped on the walls of the open court, but she showed few other signs of flagging.

The music went ragged and finally broke off. The lances clattered down, the whipmen coiled their whips. She stood in the center of the dance floor, wary and angry, her chest heaving, her arms and legs trembling. She wasn’t a mammal so she hadn’t even vestigial breasts, but she was powerfully female; fear and anger had tagged her sweat with a musky scent that spread like a mist across the court, exciting the men who’d been watching her. The court cleared rapidly and her handler took her away.

A hand came down on her mouth; a beard tickled her face, a whisper her ear. “Listen.” Interlingue. She stopped her instinctive struggle. “Chathat adey Elathay,” the whisper went on, “they sent us for you. You want out?”

She touched the hand. After a hissing, near-silent laugh as soon as her mouth was freed, she pushed up; chains clinked when she held out her arms. Her visitor moved around her; she saw him as a long flickering shadow. An autopick hummed and the cuffs fell away from her wrists.

“Anything you want here?” A low mutter.

“Sss.”

“I take it that means no. Wait there.” Like a walking beam he crossed the room, opened the door a crack and clicked his tongue. A double click answered him. He beckoned to her and slipped outside.

There were two others waiting in the skip. She looked at them, recognized neither but knew from the smell of them they’d been slaves like her. “You’ve had a busy night,” she told the man.

“Might say so. You want to get in? We have a long way to go before dawn.”

She swung up, settled in the space the man and woman made for her. “How much you collecting for us?” She blinked. A short furry type she hadn’t seen before scrambled into the co’s seat up front; it wasn’t talking, so she didn’t comment.

“Works out to about two thousand gelders a head,” the man said, he leaned over the controls; she heard the hum as the skip’s liftfield came on, grunted as the skip kicked out of there.

“How many you plan to snatch?” she said.

“Couple hundred.”

“Not bad.” She laughed, a cat’s purr amplified. “Three tonight. You got a ways to go.”

“So we have.” He turned the skip and sent it racing south over the grass.

“Don’t get caught. Some things I want to do.”

“Bolodo?”

“Ssss.”

He chuckled. “I plan to be old and tired when I die, with plenty of sins to repent.”

She extruded a claw, scratched delicately at the skin behind her ear. “A good plan. I too.”

Place: Raz OSMUR ORTAEL, the westlobe of the Duzzulkas, 300 miles north of Gilisim Gillin.

Headprice: 1700 gelders.

He lifted the stone, eased it into the hollow prepared for it and began pressing the soft gold into place, working quickly but without hurrying, his small hands stronger than they looked. A gooseneck lamp was arched over the pad, giving him the concentrated light he needed; it wobbled as the door slammed open and a short heavy Huvved/Hordar halfbreed rushed over to him. Ukomayile caught the lamp before it tipped over, held it until it stabilized then went back to his work without bothering to look around.

“You’re not near finished. Why are you taking so long? He wants the chain and the wristlets ready for the Imperator’s Birthday.” The Vor Hoshin house steward was one of the Fehraz Vor Hoshin’s bastards, born to fuss at things he couldn’t understand. He poked with a nervous stubby finger at the emeralds set out on a linen cloth, at the soft gold chain, the links engraved and shaped with minor differences making each unique; he got in Ukomayile’s way with a persistence that had something of malice about it.

Ukomayile lowered his hands and waited. The steward noticed that after a while and got shrilly annoyed. “Why aren’t you working? Why are you sitting there? He’ll have you beaten again, you stupid beast.”

Ukomayile laced his fingers together and waited, his face impassive. He did not look at the steward, he said nothing, he simply sat there refusing to acknowledge anything the steward said or did. There was a time when he would have protested such treatment, he was a gifted artisan with an immense reputation and accustomed to being treated with respect and he hadn’t yet learned what it meant to be a slave. Ten years and innumerable beatings later, he no longer voiced his protest, he merely set himself like a rock and waited. He still hadn’t learned slave manners and he never would if he died for it.

After some more spiteful maneuvering, the steward withdrew; he knew Ukomayile wouldn’t explain or excuse himself for not finishing in time, but the Fehraz Vor Hoshin, sourmouthed wrinkled old snake, he’d nose out the steward’s interference and twist his tail for it; Vor Hoshin enjoyed that kind of thing and he’d been doing a lot of it lately. The steward knew he was hovering on the verge of dismissal; that he was the viper’s son meant nothing, there were plenty of that old horn’s get scattered about the Raz. In spite of that he couldn’t stop hectoring the slave; for reasons he didn’t try to explain, he hated Ukomayile with a passion that nearly tipped him into madness.

The sun went down. A maidservant tapped on the door with Ukomayile’s supper on a tray and a jug of mulled wine to warm the stiffness out of his muscles. He laid his tools in a neat row, brushed his hands together, then climbed down off his tool and hobbled to the table; one of those beatings had broken his leg and the boneman who’d set it had botched the job. He ate with the same close attention he gave to his work, finished everything on the tray, drank half a glass of the wine, then went back to the bench.

Gorruya rose, gibbous; she swam up across the window and vanished; Ruya nosed over the horizon. He kept working. The steward might be a malicious fool, but he was right enough about the Fehraz; he’d be mad as a sick viper if the chain wasn’t finished in time to show it off at the Fete. The emeralds were lovely stones, he liked handling them and the setting was a test of his skill to keep the variations subtle enough to be interesting but not vulgar. So he labored on while the night grew darker and older.

The door opened. He didn’t bother turning, he thought it was the steward coming back.

“Ukomayile, listen.”

Ukomayile’s hand jerked, the tool cut a crease in the gold. Interlingue. He turned slowly.

A man stood in the doorway, tall, tired face, mussed black hair, a dark gray shipsuit. How many years since he’d seen a clutch of zippers like that, pockets on pockets on an easy loose-fitting overall. The man wearing the shipsuit wasn’t anyone he knew. He watched in dull wonder as the stranger pulled the door shut. “Tikkan Ekital sent me.” More interlingue, wonderful how fast it came back to him. “They want you back. You want out?”

Ukomayile sat without moving; it was a while before he took in what the man was saying. “Yes,” he said finally. “A moment.” He slipped the loose emeralds into their carrycase, snapped it shut and slid it into a large leather bag. He folded the chain and the wristlets into the linen workcloth and tucked the roll into the bag beside the stones, drew the strings tight and looped them over his wrist. With the same quick neat movements he cleaned out the safe and gathered up his leather case. “All right. We can go. What do you want me to do?”

The man chuckled. “Right. Just follow me, we’re heading for the roof.”