The Pharaoh Contract

Chapter 17

Ruiz Aw looked at the coercer, then at Dolmaero. “Honorable Dolmaero,” he said, pretending astonishment, “you don’t mean to harm the noblewoman?”

“She is an abomination!” Dolmaero stepped toward Ruiz. “Bring her forth! It’s unnatural, an affront to the gods; she should be dead. We all saw her when the demons brought her here.” He looked at the others for confirmation, and their heads nodded like so many puppets. “Her wounds still oozed! Had the gods raised her, she would be perfect. Unnatural, unnatural.” Then, as if to himself, Dolmaero said, “She must complete her part. The elders have decided.” The Guildmaster looked down; regret flickered across his broad face.

Ruiz felt trapped, pulled between two impulses. Common sense dictated that he give up the phoenix. Suppose the paddock was observed? No lowly snake oil man would think to oppose a Guildmaster.

Dolmaero lost patience before Ruiz could make up his mind to pursue the sensible course. “Casmin,” Dolmaero said, turning to the coercer, “bring her out.”

Casmin shuffled forward quickly, grinning, and Ruiz saw that the coercer’s teeth were filed to points and stained red. Ruiz retreated before Casmin’s outstretched arms, backing into the hut.

In the gloom inside, Ruiz turned to glance back toward the woman. She had apparently heard everything. Somehow she had managed to crawl into the farthest corner. She was trying feebly to hide beneath some rubbish there.

Ruiz had no time to admire her determination to live. He had badly underestimated Casmin’s speed. As Ruiz started to turn back, the coercer was on him, dropping the loop of fiber over Ruiz’s head.

Casmin jerked him close, tightening the loop just enough to cut off Ruiz’s wind. “I’ll tell the master you resisted, shithead,” Casmin whispered in his ear, chuckling with delight.

Casmin began to dance him about, so that the scrabble of their feet would be audible to the listeners outside.

“Casmin?” Ruiz heard Dolmaero ask. “What’s going on?”

Before Casmin could respond, Ruiz snapped his head back into Casmin’s nose. Cartilage broke with a wet crunch and Ruiz felt hot blood spray his neck, but though Casmin’s grip loosened slightly, he didn’t let go. Ruiz lashed an elbow back into Casmin’s ribs. The coercer made a small shocked sound as the ribs splintered, and tried to push Ruiz away. Going with the movement, Ruiz bent at the waist and reached between his legs; he grabbed Casmin’s testicles and squeezed, using all his strength. With a high-pitched, breathless screech, Casmin collapsed, unconscious.

“Casmin?” Dolmaero sounded more worried. “Casmin, you are only to bring out the woman, do you hear? Restrain your enthusiasm, Casmin.”

Ruiz burned with adrenaline. He smiled what he thought was a merry little smile. He picked the coercer up by one leg and the scruff of his garment, and tossed him out through the dangling fibers that covered the door, into the sunlight. He stepped lightly after him, to see the guild elders staring in horrified amazement at the prone, twitching body.

“Don’t worry, honorable Dolmaero,” Ruiz said in a pleasant cheerful voice. “Casmin will restrain his enthusiasm.” He dropped Casmin’s strangling cord in the dust. “I suggest you all follow his example.”

No one spoke, so he went back inside.

Her eyes were huge in the dimness of the hut. She huddled in the corner, and for a moment she seemed as afraid of him as she had been of the coercer. “It’s all right,” he said as he went to her. “No one will harm you.” Not for a while, anyway, he thought — but he put the thought away immediately.

He lifted her and carried her back to the cot. She said nothing, though she clung to him more tightly than was necessary.

After a while she slept again, without uttering another word. Ruiz sat beside her and mopped Casmin’s blood from his neck, thinking darkly about his own folly. His only chance of survival, after all, was to remain anonymous until he found an opportunity to escape. The phoenix was a dangerous distraction, had already led him to commit two acts of conspicuous foolishness.

What was wrong with him? For some reason, Nacker’s shapeless face swam up into his mind’s eye.

Abruptly Ruiz felt a great weariness — prompted partially by his exertions and his less than optimal physical condition — but due more, he supposed, to his astounding behavior. That idea led directly to another: Was he growing too complacent for this profession? Or, worse yet, too old? The fact that he had survived so long in such a risky business was, he reminded himself fiercely, no guarantee at all that his life would continue.

It could end right here, in this ratty pen. He lay back to rest awhile. Casmin’s friends might attempt to avenge his humiliation, but Ruiz doubted it. It was difficult for Ruiz to imagine a stolid craftsman like Dolmaero creeping up to slit a throat. Besides, coercers of that stamp usually had no friends outside their own caste — only masters and victims.

He woke when the robocart sounded the tone for the evening meal. The phoenix was sitting on the edge of her cot, watching him, looking much improved.

Her cheeks were pink with well-being rather than fever. She’d fingercombed the worst of the tangles from her hair, so that it flowed smoothly down her back, a river of coppery black. A twisted scrap of blue cloth bound her tunic to her body in a more flattering shape. Ruiz was amazed and horrified that her movements hadn’t awakened him — a lucky thing that no enemies had come upon him.

“At last,” she said.

Ruiz rubbed at his eyes. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“It’s a miracle, isn’t it?”

There was a mocking undertone to her voice, and Ruiz stared at her for a moment. “Yes,” he agreed, “a miracle.”

Her brows drew down. “Don’t humor me, Wuhiya. This isn’t Pharaoh or the Land of Reward either, and I wonder if you’re a snake oil peddler.” Anger showed strongly on her face for a moment, but she controlled it and even attempted a smile. “Can you tell me? Do you know where we are?”

Ruiz got up and went to the door. He temporized. “It’s dinnertime. I’ll go fetch us some food; you’ll need it.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said, standing with remarkable ease, considering her recent condition. She went past him, and out the door.

He caught up to her just outside, where she stood looking across the square at the gray humanoid guard and the robocart, frozen in terrified amazement.

She clutched at his arm. “What is that?”

Ruiz took a deep breath. Sooner or later she would have to start learning about her new life. “They call themselves Pung. They operate this… this…” Ruiz stopped, at a loss for words that seemed kind enough. Then he decided that false kindness wouldn’t help her to survive, so he continued with the truth. “This is a slave pen, Noble Person.”

She looked at him, her eyes wide with shock, then outrage. “No!” she said. “No! Do you know me? Nisa, I am Nisa, daughter of Bhasrahmet, King of Kings.” Her face crumpled and she stumbled back inside the house of the casteless.

Ruiz sighed. He wished her an easy bondage. With her beauty and intelligence, she might find a place with an indulgent owner. It bothered him that he could formulate no better hope for her.

Nisa fell facedown on the filthy cot, heedless of the ancient stains. Her throat was full of panic, but she refused to cry. She pounded at her temples with her fists, as if she could drive this unacceptable reality from her. She seemed to be doomed to a greater Expiation than she’d bargained for, lost in an alien place, surrounded by contemptuous enemies and monsters, her only friend a casteless man whose opacity matched his strangeness. He spoke with the semblance of proper respect, but she was somehow sure he thought himself her superior — an almost incomprehensible idea to a favored daughter of the King. He treated her as she might have treated a sickly pet glistle. And the hideous way he’d disposed of the coercer, as if the destruction of Casmin had been a source of deep joy…. In that brief terrible dance, Wuhiya had seemed not quite human, a soulless beast, like one of her father’s hunting dirgos, set loose on some helpless quarry.

And yet with her he’d been gentle. And in unguarded moments, his eyes sometimes lost that flinty glitter, his mouth softened from its habitual tense line.

She grew less agitated, thinking about her protector. Who was he? More to the point, what was she to him?

The Pharaohans drew back when Ruiz approached the robocart, this time more in fear than in loathing, which was at least mildly satisfying. As he dipped up the pseudo-food, Ruiz felt Dolmaero’s eyes on his back — not in anger, as he might have expected, but in speculation.

Casmin was nowhere to be seen. The Pung guard watched Ruiz incuriously; it seemed no complaint had been made.

When Ruiz brought their dinner back, the phoenix was huddled on her cot, her face to the wall. Her shoulders quivered, but she made no sound. Ruiz put her plate on the floor.

That night Ruiz sat outside, watching the snapfields — sheets of pale green fire fluttering up from the walls. Suddenly he bent forward, rigid with interest. A section of the snapfield on the western perimeter had winked out, leaving a patch of darkness. He counted the seconds; shortly the field popped back on with a shower of off-phase sparks.

Over the following hours it failed several more times, always over the same section of wall.

He allowed himself to hope. It was a fine feeling, and soon he felt calm enough to go in to sleep. He settled on the cot next to the phoenix, who stirred but did not wake. “Pleasant dreams,” he whispered, just as though she were a real person, and not just a character in this dangerous play.

Ruiz woke refreshed from his short night’s sleep. Nisa still lay on her cot, but from the regular rise and fall of her breasts, Ruiz saw that her slumber was healthier.

He took off his tunic and exercised. This time he felt a little stronger, a little quicker, and he pushed his body a little harder. The phoenix woke while he was finishing. Her eyes were large with some complex emotion, but she said nothing.

Ruiz dressed and went out. The soft early morning light slanted across the paddock, throwing long shadows. It was too early for the robocart, so Ruiz walked to the wall nearest the security lock, intent on evaluating the paddock’s security system. As he loped through the cool air, it occurred to him to wonder why it had taken him so long to get started. It occurred to him that his sudden incompetence had much to do with the woman. Ruiz shrugged, dismissed the idea.

The wall itself was a substantial impediment to escape — six or seven meters high, and built of smooth gray meltstone. Ruiz noticed where some small burrowing animal’s digging had exposed the roots of the wall to a distance of half a meter. No deterioration was visible, above or below ground level. Ruiz assumed that the barrier was deep enough to preclude escape by tunneling. He turned his attention to the lock itself.

To his disappointment, he was able to identify the mechanism that controlled the door. It was a Feltmann molylock, unpersuadable with any equipment he was likely to construct using the unpromising material he might find in the paddock.

Ruiz was bent over, absorbed in his examination of the lock, when the door whipped up. Inside the security lock, the Pung guard stiffened and brought up the nerve lash it carried. At the far end of the lock, another alert Pung stood, a widefield stun cone ready.

Ruiz stepped back hastily, smiling a harmless smile. The guard glared at him for a moment, then signaled the robocart forward. Ruiz turned away and walked back toward the huts, his back crawling. But the guard didn’t use the nerve lash. At least, Ruiz thought, the Pung didn’t seem to be a vindictive or sadistic group, as slavers frequently were.

Ruiz carried a breakfast plate inside to Nisa. She was sitting up, face composed. He smiled when he set the plate down next to her, but she looked away. He felt an odd twinge of unhappiness.

Ruiz went back outside to eat his breakfast and settled in a patch of sunshine, where a crumbling mud wall made a comfortable seat.

To his surprise, Dolmaero approached as he was finishing the tasteless meal.

“May I sit?” Dolmaero asked.

Ruiz nodded. “Of course, Honorable Dolmaero. How may I serve?”

Dolmaero settled his broad frame on the wall, and chuckled ruefully. “I don’t think you need be so concerned with the proper form of address between us. You’re evidently not what you appear to be.” Dolmaero shot Ruiz a shrewd glance. “Nor am I what I once was.”

Ruiz made no reply.

Dolmaero peered at him with good-humored intensity. “Casmin will live, it seems, though at present he takes no pleasure in that.”

“Good news,” Ruiz responded, ambiguously.

Dolmaero laughed with genuine amusement. “Well,” he said, “I must apologize for my henchman’s rashness, though I think it’s safe to say he’s even sorrier than I am.”

Ruiz was forced to smile.

“Listen,” Dolmaero said, “I approach you against the advice of the elders, who are convinced you’re a ravening beast. I don’t think so. I think you are someone who knows more of our situation than we do, and I intend to appeal to you for information. Where are we, for example?” Dolmaero gestured at the sky, where Sooksun would rise above the walls. “Where’s the sun of old? At night the stars are unfamiliar; small clots of light litter the sky, like so many tiny moonlets, but there are no moons.”

Ruiz looked at Dolmaero with sudden respect. Here was a primitive with a supple mind. He shook his head and started to reply, but Dolmaero held up his hand. “Wait,” Dolmaero said. “I must tell you, the decision to put down the phoenix was a poor one, prompted by despair. Be assured, no more such decisions will be made. If nothing else is clear, we can be certain that the gods have turned away from us, so I’ll waste no more time hoping for their mercy or kindness. Instead, I ask for yours. Please, tell me what you can.”

Ruiz considered. It could do no harm, he thought, to tell the guildmaster of his experiences following the unloading of the drone. “I know little enough, but I’ll tell it. I was taken at Bidderum. After I woke in the iron coffins, I was taken below the ground, deep below, and put in a dungeon there for some hours. Was this your experience?”

“No, no, we were brought to this enclosure. I myself remember little of the iron coffins, except for a smell of overcooked meat. You remember more?”

“My memories are confusing,” Ruiz said honestly.

Dolmaero’s bright eyes searched Ruiz’s. “What of the dungeons?”

“The lights were magical. I was given no clothing, but it was neither warm nor cold. Little else occurred.”

“And then you were brought here?”

“Yes,” Ruiz replied. “I had the impression that a mistake was made. The only other prisoner that I saw in the dungeons was the conjuror, the one who took the semblance of Bhas in the play.”

Dolmaero’s eyes crackled with interest. “You saw Master Flomel?”

“Is that his name?”

“Yes. What of Master Kroel or Master Molnekh? Did you see them, too?”

“No.”

“Umm.” Dolmaero seemed lost in thought. Then he said, “Some among the elders believed that only the masters were translated to the Land of Reward, while we lesser folk were forced to bide in this land of Expiation. Apparently they’re wrong. I’m not sure this is hopeful information.”

A long silence ensued, during which Ruiz finished his meal.

Dolmaero sighed. “I believe that your story is longer than the one you’ve told, but I don’t blame you for keeping your own counsel. We’ve given you little reason for trust, so I thank you for your news.” He got up, with an effort. He stood looking at Ruiz for a moment with both puzzlement and interest. Finally he said, “Your tattoos are interesting to me, if I may comment on them without incurring your animosity.”

Ruiz nodded slowly.

“Well,” said Dolmaero. “They seem to partake of several traditions, in a manner that I’ve not seen before. Furthermore, and I mean no insult, they seem a trifle pale. An interesting variation.” Then, in an apparent non sequitur, Dolmaero said, “A study of obscure legends is a pastime of mine. You know of the discredited Cult of Saed Corpashun? Bhasrahmet has several times expunged the cult. But a few devotees survive, and claim that men from the far stars occasionally walk Pharaoh.”

Ruiz allowed no emotion to reach his face, other than polite interest. Dolmaero nodded in a friendly manner and walked away. Ruiz was amazed. Here was a canny primitive, indeed. And if Ruiz’s tattoos were losing their brightness already, there was little time left to engineer an escape. He returned to the hut in a sober frame of mind.

Nisa was standing by the door, holding her empty plate. He smiled cordially as he stepped by her. His intention was to sit quietly for a while and consider the possibilities of the situation, to try to rearrange them into a shape that offered a chance of escape.

As he passed, however, she reached out and tugged at his arm. “Wuhiya, will you help me?” she said.

He stopped reluctantly.

“I’d be very grateful if you’d take me to the bathhouse. I’m afraid to go by myself. You know why.” Her eyes were large, her small smile appealing; Ruiz saw that she was holding on to her dignity with difficulty. When he didn’t reply immediately, her lip began to tremble.

Ruiz sighed. “Of course, Noble Person, though I don’t believe anyone would molest you, now.”

Her eyes brightened, and she smiled. “You may call me Nisa,” she said. “I will appoint you a Royal Friend.”

He had to laugh. She took no offense, apparently mistaking his amusement for simple pleasure.

At the bathhouse, two men and an old woman left hastily, rolling their eyes fearfully. Ruiz watched while Nisa dropped her tunic and scrubbed her body with a handful of soapweed, then rinsed away the filth of her illness with dippers of cool water from a crock. He took a surprised delight in the pleasant lift and jounce of her breasts as she lathered her mass of dark hair, in the way the sudsy water ran down her pale flesh, flowing in the hollows, shining on the convexities. For the first time, Ruiz perceived the phoenix as more than a lovely but pitiable object. An urgent desire kindled in him, so that he could not look away from her.

Nisa felt his eyes on her as she washed. After a while she felt his desire, and so she began to shift her body for his benefit, moving in the ways that gracefully emphasized the line of her breasts, the soft sweep of her thighs. At first she was hardly aware that she was being provocative. After all, his status was only a bit higher than a slave’s, and with slaves and peasants one did not provoke, one commanded. Too, with his sudden violence and his alien beauty, she was not even sure if she believed him to be human. He seemed undismayed by this world of demons — was that natural?

She avoided looking at him, pretending that she didn’t feel the touch of his gaze. As she rubbed the soapweed slowly over her body, the coarse tingling touch of the fibers woke a trickle of heat between her legs, and it grew more difficult for her to suppress an occasional shudder of pleasure. She became aware of an aching tension in her breasts.

Still he sat quietly in his shadowed corner. Abruptly, her mind formed the image of Wuhiya at his exercises, his body flowing from one position to the next in a blur of hard beautiful flesh.

Nisa seemed to pay no attention to him, until she was finished and relaxing in the bathhouse’s deep cistern, as was the Pharaohan custom.

He could see nothing of her but one small hand where she held the side of the tank. He tried to quell his desire, to regain a cautious perspective, but his desire refused to cooperate. It painted pretty pictures in his memory, until he could think of nothing but Nisa.

“And you — do you plan to wash?” she asked, in a soft voice.

“Why not?” he answered. He soaped and rinsed in the prescribed Pharaohan manner, and it was very pleasant to rub away the dust and blood and sweat. He felt clean for the first time since he had left the Vigia. He stood on the step at the tank’s edge, looking down at her for a moment. She floated on her back, eyes closed, her hair a cloudy swirl, her breasts like white water flowers. Ruiz sighed, and then slid into the tank.

“How long may we stay?” she asked, without opening her eyes.

They were alone in the bathhouse, and Ruiz speculated that word had spread through the paddock: The undead phoenix and the mad casteless slayer were using the facilities. “As long as you like,” he said.

“Good.” She smiled and arched her back, so that her breasts emerged deliciously from the water.

Ruiz felt a little out of breath.

She allowed her legs to sink and turned to face him. He could almost feel the warmth of her body through the water that separated them. He floated silently, heart thumping.

“Did you see?” she asked in a wondering tone. “The scars… gone.”

“Yes, I saw.”

“Truly, you were right about the doctors here. Though now I’m not so sure that I didn’t dream the scars. The scars… and what went before.”

Ruiz was uncomfortable with that line of thought, but before he could think of a way to divert her, she pushed her shoulder lightly against his. Her skin seemed so exquisitely smooth… it was difficult for Ruiz to hold any other thought in his mind. But he didn’t shift away, and in a moment she pressed more firmly against him. Her face was very close to his; he felt her breath on his cheek, sweet and warm.

“Wuhiya, you were at Bidderum, I remember you at the gate. Did you see my death? No, don’t tell me. It was too ugly. If I didn’t die, I came close enough to satisfy the gods, and now I’m guiltless.”

He felt no curiosity about her crime; all his curiosity was focused on her body. What would it feel like to run his hands over those lovely contours, to touch her inner heat? He had the eerie sensation that she heard his thoughts — they were so close now — but she didn’t draw away.

“It’s odd, but I feel more alive now, in this terrible place, jostled by commoners who’d like to see me dead, than I can ever remember feeling in my father’s palace.” Her voice was slow, musing.

A long moment passed, and then he felt the tips of her breasts touch his chest. “Will you touch me?” she whispered. “Here, where the wounds were.” She took his hand and drew it across her belly. He found that she was as pleasant to touch as he’d imagined.

He wanted her with a fixity that amazed and horrified him. What was wrong with him, that he could so forget his precarious situation? She sensed something of his ambivalence and drew back, eyes wide and hurt.

“What is it? Is it that I am still dead? That I’m rotting and don’t know it yet? Do you fear a taint?” Her voice broke on the last word. “Will the grave infect you?”

He thought she might cry, for the first time, and it came to him that for reasons he could not understand he would find her tears unbearable.

“You’re alive. There’s nothing of death in you, Noble Person.” He touched her taut waist, pulled her close again.

She resisted for only an instant. “Show me this, make me believe it,” she said. “Make me know I’m alive.” She gripped his hips with her strong thighs, and pulled his head down so that he could kiss her breasts.

Afterward, he would remember the slow surge of the water as he moved inside her, and her upturned face, eyes closed, lip caught between small white teeth.

Shining through chinks in the bathhouse walls, the sunlight dappled her with golden glimmers.

But also he would remember that, although she was skillful and eager, there was in her lovemaking an odd detachment, a certain impersonality in the melting looks she gave him, a curious restraint to the soft sounds she made. By all the rules of his existence he should have found that detachment reassuring, but it made his heart ache a little.

Through some remnant sense of propriety, she insisted that she must leave before he did, and he saw no reason not to humor her. As Nisa stepped out into the sun, Ruiz heard her gasp. He went to the shadowed doorway, where he could watch and not be seen by those who stood in the square.

First he saw Corean the slaver, dressed in the same white shipsuit; her uniform, he supposed. Beside her stood the Mocrassar bondwarrior, the cyborg, and the conjuror that Dolmaero had called Master Flomel. Half a dozen Pung guards stood to the side.

Master Flomel caught sight of Nisa, and he jerked to attention, delight spreading over his narrow face.

“Why, it is you, dearest Nisa,” Flomel shouted jovially. “How glad I am that you survive.” There was no doubting his sincerity.

“Secure her,” Corean said, and the two nearest Pung moved with startling speed. They clipped a monoline coffle drop around her throat and led her away, out of Ruiz’s sight.