The Pharaoh Contract

Chapter 23

The rooms to which the giantess conducted Nisa were at first glance more Spartan than any dwelling she had ever known.

The giantess pressed one beefy hand to a small rectangle of pulsing light at the side of a metal door. The door jolted aside with a gasping sound.

Darkness lay within, and Nisa was afraid to enter. The giantess shoved her impatiently.

As soon as Nisa crossed the threshold, soft white light flooded the room.

“Oh,” she said, dismayed. Surely Corean hadn’t meant for her to stay in this featureless box. There was nothing at all in the room. The ceiling glowed brightly, banishing shadow. On the far wall, a doorway opened to another, smaller room.

Nisa turned to her escort. The large woman was turning away, blank-faced. “Wait here,” she told Nisa. She stepped out, and the door clashed shut.

Nisa stood in the center of the box, too overcome with strangeness to move. By degrees her amazement left her, and it was as if only that astonishment, like the stuffing in a scarecrow, had been holding her up. She slumped to the hard floor and set her face in her hands. She made no sound, but presently tears began to leak through her fingers.

Finally her eyes ran dry, though her nose continued to drip. She rubbed at her face, and pulled her fingers through the worst of the tangles in her hair.

The open doorway into the next room drew her. She rose and went over to it. It was equally featureless, as she could see by the light spilling from the first room. As she stood peering in, she heard the gasp of the door and whirled.

An exotic creature entered the box with a curious prancing stride. Nisa’s first thought was, How elegant. Her next was, How strange. Her visitor was tall and broad-shouldered, with tumbling ringlets of auburn hair, wearing a knee-length shift of some light, clinging white fabric, patterned with random flecks of warm color. Below the hem, the calves were strong and smooth. The slender feet wore thin sandals, laced with lavender ribbons. Small high breasts thrust against the robe, and rounded hips swayed as the visitor moved. The naked arms were strongly muscled, the hands long and fine, the well-shaped nails striped with delicate bands of color. The chiseled face was mercurial: at one moment as innocent and open as a young child’s, the next suffused with a dark cynical calculation.

It spoke. “A burning paramount pleasure to serve you, noble lady.” The voice gave no clue to the creature’s gender; it was a melodious contralto.

It swept into a low bow, legs straight, curls brushing along the floor. “One rises as far above one’s station as Sooksun at his apex rises above the jungle, to introduce oneself: One is called Ayam.”

Nisa scarcely knew how to respond to such flowery abasement. “Hello, Ayam,” she said lamely.

Ayam bowed again and again, apparently overcome by hysterical joy. “Oh,” Ayam cried in a throbbing voice, “one swoons at the undeserved honor of your greeting, noble lady. One swoons with delight and wonder, both at the generosity of the noble lady, and the wisdom of my great mistress, whose name need not be spoken by such as Ayam—” Ayam seemed willing to go on in that vein for a long time, but Nisa made a gesture of impatience and the stream of hyperbole cut off.

“Why are you here?” Nisa spoke sharply.

Ayam wilted, collapsing into a mound of misery on the hard floor. “Oh, noble lady, Ayam is devastated, that one has failed so terribly to inform the noble lady properly, oh woe, woe—”

“Ayam, please!”

Ayam pulled itself together and wiped at its lovely eyes, though Nisa had seen no actual tears on Ayam’s smooth cheeks. “Yes, of course,” Ayam said in tones of shaky restraint. “Noble lady, Ayam is your helot, here to serve in any small capacity one can, to make you comfortable, to ease your ills, to fetch and carry, to warm your bed, to answer any request—”

“Yes, yes,” Nisa cut off Ayam’s speech. “Well, we won’t be very comfortable here, will we?” She gestured at the barren room.

Ayam’s eyes widened in theatrical shock, but it suddenly came to Nisa that the helot was amused. “Noble lady,” it said. “This is one of the finest of my mistress’ apartments, which you may shape perfectly to your needs. Allow one to show you, though, of course, one is unworthy to instruct the noble lady in the smallest—”

“Never mind that,” Nisa said. “Show me what you mean, Ayam.”

The helot stood, abandoning its pose of abjectness. “From the floor, then,” it said. “What manner of floor covering does my lady prefer?” Ayam stepped to the door, beckoning with one elegant hand. “Come, noble lady, place your hand here.” Ayam gestured to a hand-sized rectangle of metal set into the bland plastic of the wall.

Nisa put her hand cautiously to the plate, to feel a tingling warmth. She started to pull away, but Ayam nodded approvingly and said, “Just so. Now, if you will, think of how you would most like the floor to look, to feel. Would you prefer carpet, or pandawood puncheons, or cool earth? Just think, noble lady.”

Nisa wondered if the helot were mad, but then she considered that many strangenesses had come to seem usual to her since she had taken the path of Expiation. So she closed her eyes, and imagined that the floor was covered in the rich fur of the dust otter. She felt a tickle under her feet, and opened her eyes in astonishment. The hard floor was sprouting a downy coating! As she stared, it thickened into glossy carnelian fur. She noticed that the texture against her toes was not as soft as the real fur; as she thought it, the fur silkened into a perfect counterfeit.

Nisa was charmed and fascinated. She spent the following hours converting her cell into an opulent jewel box, with Ayam’s enthusiastic assistance. The other room was a bathhouse, and Nisa changed it into a luminous grotto, all porcelain and glass.

She caused the wall to sprout a vast canopied bed, heaped with silken coverlets, curtained with the finest gauze. At this point she detected a covert look of appraisal from Ayam. She considered only briefly before wishing a small alcove in the corner for the helot’s bed. Ayam watched impassively, but Nisa thought she’d caught just the tiniest trace of disappointment on that smooth face. That look afforded Nisa a small satisfaction — that she was desired by this elegant creature — but the helot was just too strange, far too strange.

Besides, she had become aware of a confusing and novel distaste whenever she contemplated taking another stranger into her bed. The hard enigmatic face of Wuhiya was in some way connected to the confusion, but she could not imagine how.

Several days passed, first in pleasant diversion, then in increasing boredom. Nisa bathed endlessly, enjoying the extravagance of the never-failing water, the rich soaps and lotions, the unfailing attention of the helot. She slept. She ate her meals from a cupboard in the wall that served her whatever she desired. She wished a vast wardrobe of fine gowns in colors that suited her.

Despite these diversions, she grew more and more restless. No one came, and the company of the self-abasing helot grew tedious. Ayam’s advances grew less subtle, more pressing. After her bath on the third day, the helot offered her a massage, which she accepted. The massage was a highly developed art form on Pharaoh; she lay on a heated softstone slab, eyes closed, smiling with nostalgic anticipation.

She heard the rustling sounds of the helot’s undressing with no alarm — the sweet massage oil would stain Ayam’s beautiful shift.

She felt oil pour across her back in a warm stream. The helot’s strong hands moved across her flesh, stroking, squeezing, pummeling gently. Nisa gave herself to pleasure.

Gradually, however, Ayam’s clever fingers began to stray into more intimate areas.

“What are you up to?” Nisa asked, though it was obvious.

The helot’s muscular thighs gripped her hips and the fingers teased deeper. She half-rolled under the straddling helot and opened her eyes.

Ayam’s nipples were erect and a flush of ardor mottled its breasts. Its erect penis lifted above a small vagina, where moisture glistened.

Nisa shut her eyes. “No. Get off me,” she said, in a voice full of fascination and revulsion.

The helot did so, babbling apologies, to which Nisa did not respond. Thereafter she was more cautious with the helot, and it grew slightly less deferential.

When, a day later, the door to her cell finally opened, the sound startled her. The ugly giantess pushed a wheeled litter inside, and on the litter was the motionless body of Wuhiya.

The giantess shoved the litter, and it glided smoothly up to Nisa. “Here,” the giantess said. “He’ll be your guest for a while. Leave him alone; the limpet will awaken him when the damage is repaired.” The giantess left.

Nisa bent over Wuhiya. She was at first certain he was dead. No, he was alive, but he looked terribly ill, his skin gray, the muscles sagging in unhealthy relaxation. She touched his face, and then pulled her hand away, a little repelled. His flesh was cool, too cool. On his neck was something that looked like a metal spider; on it lights burned amber. From it slender throbbing tentacles writhed out and sank into his neck. Nisa wondered if she had looked this much like a corpse when Wuhiya had first seen her, and the thought triggered a flush of tenderness. Wuhiya had tended her; now she would tend him.

Nisa pushed the litter across the cell, until it rested beside her bed. She instructed the room to grow an extension of the curtains around the litter, so that he would be with her even when she slept.

When she finished, she felt the helot’s eyes on her, appraising. “Ayam,” she said, “you will treat this man as my honored guest, do you understand?”

The helot bowed deeply. “Yes, noble lady. All is clear.”

Nisa frowned. Was the helot mocking her? No, she must be imagining it. She turned all her attention to Wuhiya.

Ruiz woke in fairyland, or so it seemed to him. Pastel silks diffused a soft warm light, sweet fragrances filled the air, and hovering over him was the transformed face of Nisa. The black cinnamon hair of the phoenix was cunningly swirled and plaited with strands of glittering gems; her heart-shaped face was painted with great skill; she wore a simple tunic of some sheer fabric that touched her body lightly. When she saw that he was awake, her face lit with a glow that warmed him in places that had been cold for longer than he could remember.

“Wuhiya,” she said, breathless.

Ruiz’s body trembled in the grip of the antisedative, and he felt the small sucking pains of the limpet’s withdrawal. His throat was full of disuse, and at first he couldn’t make any intelligible sounds.

“Where is this?” He heard a frightening weakness in his voice.

“You’re safe, Wuhiya. This is my apartment. Isn’t it pretty?”

Ruiz was confused. His last memories were of the Moc and its ice gun, the tearing sensation in his mind as the death net threatened to trigger, the precarious sense of reprieve as it stabilized. The translation to this perfumed luxury disoriented him in a way that was only half-pleasurable. The limpet finished its withdrawal and fell away from his neck. He wanted to reach up and rub the spot, but his arm would not respond. Then, slowly, life began to burn back into his muscles. The pain twisted his face, and he saw his distress mirrored in Nisa’s pretty features. “It’s all right,” he croaked. “I’ll be better soon.”

She smiled and wiped away the sheen of pain-induced sweat with a cool cloth. The gesture was a curiously practiced one, and Ruiz understood that Nisa had been caring for him.

Sentimental tears trembled on his eyelashes; he cursed his weakness, but it was all he could do not to sob with relief. He wondered again at Nacker’s manipulations, but now he felt no indignation. Whatever Nacker had done, however the minddiver had meddled, the result was not without merit. Ruiz’s heart was raw, true, but what did he expect? Nacker had somehow cut away the calluses of a hard lonely lifetime.

Then another face floated into his misted vision, a striking androgynous face, alight with malicious curiosity. Ruiz’s vision cleared abruptly and he frowned. Here was an unpleasant manifestation indeed. “What’s this?” he asked.

Nisa patted the creature’s broad shoulder. “This is Ayam, the helot that the Lady Corean gave me when I became her special guest.”

Ruiz closed his eyes. Not only was he locked in a cell with one of Dilvermoon’s treacherous race, but the cell was in Corean’s private apartments. He wondered how matters would next worsen. Then he remembered that Corean now knew for certain that Ruiz was no Pharaohan, and not even a pangalac tourist, innocently scooped up with the phoenix troupe.

Ruiz could look forward to a brainpeel. He hoped his shield persona would hold up.

The following days saw Ruiz’s recovery completed. Nisa was touchingly solicitous, though occasionally her patrician background would surface obnoxiously. Ruiz dealt with these imperious outbursts by ignoring them, and soon Nisa would regain her good humor.

The herman Ayam was a constant source of anxiety for Ruiz. He observed with a surprisingly vivid sense of relief that Nisa had assigned Ayam a bed separate from her own. The herman’s hostility toward Ruiz was apparently not obvious to Nisa. She didn’t seem to be able to grasp the idea that the helot was dangerous.

“But,” she would say, bewildered, “Ayam’s only a slave. What harm could come of that? Ayam is here for our convenience.”

Ruiz could think of no discreet way to point out to Nisa that although they also were only slaves, he had high hopes of being harmful. The cell was certainly monitored. So he would say, patiently, “Nisa, Ayam may be a perfectly gentle being, but it springs from a race that bred itself for treachery. Dilvermooners are in demand for all sorts of nasty jobs — extfam tapeworming, dynastic subversion, pseudopols — you name it, a herman can be found to do it.”

Nisa, puzzled by these unfamiliar crimes, would glance at Ayam, who would shrug and look hurt. And Nisa would shake her glossy head and give Ruiz a reassuring pat, the sort that frightened children receive from indulgent parents.

Eventually he persuaded her to completely enclose Ayam’s cot with a sturdy shell, locked externally. Now at least it was possible to banish the helot from sight. Ayam went cheerfully enough, to Nisa’s relaxed perceptions, but Ruiz caught poisonous glances, whenever the herman was ordered away.

The privacy yielded benefits, as soon as Ruiz was sufficiently recovered to take an interest in lovemaking. Thereafter Nisa was no longer bored. The hours passed pleasantly under the colored silks of Nisa’s bed. Ruiz was as happy as he could be under the circumstances, though he wondered continually what Corean planned.

There was time for Ruiz to learn a little more about Nisa. She seemed to enjoy telling Ruiz about her life as the daughter of the King, though she avoided the subject of her Expiation, and whatever crimes had led to it. Her stories involved parties and Rain Carnivals and midnight swimming in the cisterns, and Ruiz’s eyes occasionally glazed over as she spoke. It saddened him to think that the soft pleasant life she had led as a princess might have cheated her of the toughness she would need to survive as a slave.

But then he would remember the stage, and the path she would walk on it, and he would fall into a silent mood.

She asked him about his own past life, but he laughed and teased and evaded her questions. He did admit to being a tradesman, in a business beyond the stars. When she pressed him, he said that he was a sort of talent scout. He fended off her few questions about life in the far worlds, and, in fact, she showed remarkably little curiosity. He surmised that she found the subject distressing, that she preferred not to think about the universe beyond Pharaoh. He felt no inclination to upset her; let her take comfort where she could.

He told her his real name, since Corean would peel that out of him whenever she got around to it.

“Ruiz Aw. A curious name,” she said, rolling the unfamiliar syllables on her tongue.

Ayam was locked away, and Ruiz and Nisa naked in her bed, when Flomel arrived. The door gasped open at the most indelicate moment possible, and Flomel bustled in, accompanied by the giantess.

“Nisa,” Flomel called. “Where are you?”

He stood puzzled for a moment, his greyhound head questing about the cell. Then he noticed the quiver of the canopied bed. He stepped briskly across the floor and parted the silks with his wand. By that time Ruiz and Nisa had separated somewhat and had pulled a coverlet over themselves. Flomel’s eyes widened, and he gasped, much louder than the door.

“What is this?” Flomel’s lean features were purpling, and he shook with rage.

“Get away from my bed,” Nisa snapped, as outraged as the magician. Ruiz remained silent, gathering himself.

No one moved for a moment, until the giantess said, “Where’s the herman?”

She stepped into the cell with a heavy confident tread, her tiny features drawn together with suspicion. “Where is it?” she asked again. She looked in the bathroom, then she looked in the bed. She took hold of Ruiz’s arm with a massive band and drew him from the bed effortlessly. She pulled him close and spoke again. “Where is it? The Lady will be very unhappy if you’ve damaged her property.”

Her breath was foul, and the dead devotion in her tiny eyes was unnerving. Ruiz pointed with his free arm. “There,” he said. “Ayam has its own little room. Isn’t that nice?”

She gave him a casual shake, rattling his teeth, and released him. He caught up a sheet and wound it around himself. The giantess went to the alcove and unlocked it.

The herman fell into the room, floundering. Ayam had apparently been listening at the door seals. But it recovered its balance and dignity almost immediately. “At last,” Ayam gushed. “Mighty Banessa, you come to the rescue of this poor oppressed servant. One casts oneself at your awesome feet in abject gratitude.”

“Shut up,” the giantess said impassively.

She turned to Flomel. “Proceed,” she ordered.

Flomel drew a deep breath. He seemed to have regained his self-control, though a glitter of strong emotion still showed in his eyes. “Nisa,” he said. “How is it you cheapen yourself by dallying with this casteless one? Please, remember who you are. I appeal to your sense of propriety.”

Nisa was still flushed with anger. She sat up in the bed, pulling the coverlet around her. “You, Master Flomel, should remember who I am! And your own caste. I’m no longer an Expiant, subject to your whim.”

Flomel seemed surprised. “No longer an Expiant? How is this?”

Nisa smiled. “My Expiation is finished. And here I am, resurrected.”

Flomel considered this, long fingers stroking his chin. He studied Nisa with hooded eyes. “Perhaps,” he said, “you’re storing up new sins. Your misadventures with the casteless one are, if I remember correctly, somewhat akin to the sins that gave you into Expiation in the first place.”

“We’re no longer in the lands of my father, Magician. Different rules here, as any fool would know. And you’re wrong to call Ruiz casteless. I don’t know his lineage, but it’s higher than your own. Of that I’m sure.”

Flomel looked as if he might take his wand to Nisa, and Ruiz stepped around the corner of the bed, close enough to the magician to stop him if necessary.

“Enough,” the giantess said. “No more squabbling. Explain what is required. The Lady Corean expects punctuality. We depart for the pen shortly.”

Flomel drew a deep breath. “As you say,” he said. “Nisa, my apologies. I cannot help looking on you as a child of my own flesh, and I sorrow over your mistakes, as your real father would, were he here. But now to business. We begin rehearsals for the new play, today.”

Nisa recoiled, shocked. “The new play?”

“Yes, yes. The new play. The performance that will assure us an influential patron in this new world. Have you not been told?”

“No.”

“Well, as before, you’ll be the central character. A great honor, no?”

Nisa sat back suddenly, her face crumpled. “As before…. No, the Lady Corean would never permit such a thing.”

Flomel smiled. “It’s the Lady Corean who sends me here.”

“No, I can’t.” Nisa looked at Ruiz, appealing to him for help, but he could think of nothing to do or say. Her eyes dulled and she looked away. He felt a terrible sadness, and an anger so intense that he trembled with it. The images of her first death rose in his mind, unbidden. He had to make a violent effort to keep his face impassive.

He was still searching for some word of comfort for Nisa, when the giantess spoke again. “The woman must dress now, unless she wants to go naked to the pens.” She turned to Ruiz. “You also.”

Nisa rose from the bed, and went slowly into the wardrobe.

Ruiz walked beside Nisa. Her face was like stone, and she moved as if already drugged for the performance. Behind them, Flomel marched, swinging his wand and puffing a little with the exertion. The giantess trudged in the lead, and a sour unpleasant odor followed her. Ayam the herman brought up the rear, exclaiming at each new sight, discussing at length its boredom in Nisa’s rooms. The herman’s relentless voice was like needles in Ruiz’s ears, but he suffered in silence.

They reached the Pharaohan pen. Through the observation port, he could see that the stage was already set up, and the guildsmen swarmed over it like maggots over a gaudy corpse. Nisa drew a sharp breath, and then looked into Ruiz’s eyes. “I won’t, not again,” she whispered.

Ruiz was speechless. He gripped her shoulder, squeezed. She put her hand over his for a moment, then turned to Flomel.

“You,” she said bitterly, and drew a gem-encrusted set of sewing scissors from her sleeve. She sank it into Flomel’s belly and ripped up, opening him like a fish for cleaning. He stumbled back, collapsing into Ayam, who fell. Nisa darted away down the passage.

Banessa swung her giant frame around just as Nisa disappeared around the bend of the corridor. A flicker of irritation crossed her immense face, the first expression that Ruiz had seen in that large face. Ayam was hooting, hysterical, trying to push Flomel off its chest. Flomel was busy dying, a glazed look of amazement in his eyes.

The giantess detached a seeker from her harness, and Ruiz’s heart sank. The seeker was a cruel device, capable of following a scent trail for miles, programmed to herd the quarry back to its owner with small doses of an insupportably painful venom.

“Wait,” Ruiz said. “I’ll fetch her back.”

The giantess looked at him with the merest trace of amusement. “Yes,” she said. “You understand the seeker? Yes. This one I tune to you.” Banessa chuckled. “Best hurry.” She unhooked another seeker. “And this one for her, should you lose her.”

The seekers buzzed in her hands, eager to be off. A drop of venom trembled at the end of a stinger.

Ruiz ran.

Nisa’s long legs had carried her a considerable distance before Ruiz saw her, dodging into a side passage. He blessed the luck that had brought him within sight of her before she’d gotten lost in the maze. He increased his pace and turned the corner, to find her waiting for him.

“I thought you’d get away, too,” she said, smiling and holding out her arms.

But when he reached her, she must have seen something in his face, for she paled and jabbed at him with her scissors. He disarmed her easily. “Why?” she said in a broken voice.

“It wouldn’t have worked, Noble Person.”

“Shut up,” she whispered, and struggled to break away from him.

Ruiz was forced to take her wrist in a gentle come-along grip, before he could turn her back the way she had run. She said nothing more, but her eyes were opaque with hatred. Moments later the seekers arrived, snarling, to convoy them back to the paddock.