Текст книги "The Last Hour of Gann"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Zhuqa turned away from Amber and reached down to Xzem. He didn’t help her up. He plucked the baby out of her arms and held it over her head as she clasped both hands to her snout and shivered. He looked at it while it cried and kicked, then at its mother. “Do you love this child?”

“Please, I beg you! Please!”

“I take it you do. Then here is what I have to say to you. Mark me closely. If mine dies, so does yours. If mine lives out the next year, you and yours will go free.”

She reached up tentatively. Zhuqa held the crying infant higher. Xzem hesitated, then cringed around him and held out her empty hands to Amber.

The baby’s tiny fists twisted in the blanket. She could feel its pulse hammering at her even through the leather. It was still damp from its birthing and beginning to tremble in the draft.

Zhuqa looked back at her and looked for a long time. “Give it over, Eshiqi,” he said. “Unless you can give it suck, give it up.”

She didn’t want to. That was a disturbing thought. It was Zhuqa’s baby, for Christ’s sake! The man who’d spent the whole day raping her, not once or twice, but the whole damned day! The man who’d hacked the arms and legs of the baby’s mother and then thrown her out into the plains! That man’s baby! That man’s spawn!

Its head moved, prodding shakily until it found the valley between her soft breasts and there it rested. After a second or two, its heaving sides began to slow with sleep. It began to make a breathy rr-rr-rring sound on its exhales. Not snoring. Purring, maybe. Almost singing.

Xzem, increasingly nervous, finally reached up and took the baby, hissing frantically at Amber’s split-second resistance. The baby woke at once, let out a surprisingly loud yowl, and clung with considerable strength as Xzem broke its grip one hand and one foot at a time. It did not settle in its new mother’s arms, but struggled on, its head blindly tossing and all four limbs reaching out.

Zhuqa turned to the raider who’d brought her. “Welcome to the next year of your life, Dkorm,” he said, dropping Xzem’s baby into his hands.

The raider’s spines drooped. “Thank you, sir,” he said sourly, eyeing the squirming thing he held.

“Xzem lives with you now. See to it she has a mat and a few cushions to sleep with.” Zhuqa tickled at the crying baby’s chin. “You’ll be sleeping in your cupboard, of course, with this little one. You might want a crate or something to keep it in. It’ll leak.”

The raider closed his eyes, heaved in a short sigh, and did his best to keep the acid out of his voice when he said, “Yes, sir.”

“A comfortable crate. Have you named her, Xzem?” Zhuqa asked.

Xzem shivered and did not answer. Her eyes were glassy and dull at the same time—terrified and already resigned to terror—eyes that had seen the worst outcome play out so many times, she no longer expected to see anything else.

“Apparently not. So. You name it, Dkorm.” Zhuqa straightened up and looked expectant.

The raider stared at him, then down at the baby he was still dangling out at arm’s reach.

“We’ll wait,” said Zhuqa, and folded his arms.

“Sir, I—” The raider squeezed his eyes shut again, briefly flaring out his mouth to show his teeth. Color was starting to come in at his throat. “Rosek.”

Zhuqa echoed this thoughtfully. “Pretty. You must have had a sister. Rosek, it is. Now. Xzem may hold Rosek while she feeds her. Otherwise, Xzem does not touch her and you do not touch Xzem. My child needs all of her attention.”

“Understood, sir.”

Zhuqa glanced at the struggling baby still hanging in the raider’s impersonal grip. His spines flattened and his stare went cold. “Play with the fucking thing, Dkorm. It’s a baby.”

“Yes, sir.” The raider hastily jostled Rosek into the crook of his arm.

“Come, Eshiqi. It is late. Your man is weary.”

They walked together and in silence all the way to his dark room. He held the door for her, shut it behind them. He put her back in the cupboard closest to the wall and joined her in the bed. He didn’t bother to undress.

Quiet. His breath came in faint puffs against her shoulder. They didn’t touch.

He said, softly, “It pleases me to see you so protective of my child.”

“You’re a sick, murdering bastard.”

“During the days, as you learn the proper ways to serve me as a loyal woman, I will allow you time with it.”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“You have said that often enough that I think I can guess what it means, little one. You ought to remember that Zru’itak was a fierce little thing once, too.”

She had no reply to that.

He grunted, then rolled away from her and went back to sleep.

6

Meoraq lost and found the raiders’ trail several times, but before the sun reached its highest point behind the clouds, he came to what had plainly been their camp. The scorched earth of their fire and a few holes where their walls had been told him it had been a lengthy stay. Amber’s wristlet, discarded in the grass, hinted at the reason.

‘But it is just her wristlet,’ he told himself brutally. ‘Not her body. Stop wasting time staring at it. Find her.’

Meoraq searched. They’d taken his sleds, but had carried them, rather than pull them over the ground and leave wounds for another man to follow. Nevertheless, the small band that had taken his camp had met with a larger one here and all those feet marching together left a path even Gann’s wind could not wholly erase. Seeing it gave Meoraq hope (a lie; the savage flare that briefly took him had too much murder in it to be called hope), but every trail runs in two directions: One led into the wooded hills toward the mountains; one, into the open wilds of Gedai.

He tried to pray, to see this camp with Sheul’s eyes, but he could not find his stillness. Amber needed him. Amber had been lost to him all night. For every breath he took seeking peace in this place, she might be screaming hers.

It had to be the mountains, didn’t it? Having passed the winter quite comfortably in a cave, it was all too easy to imagine another, perhaps a network of many caves, enough to house even a pack this size. In the mountains, there was shelter, game, and plenty of distance from any Sheulek who might be traveling through the holy land of the Prophet’s birth. It must be the mountains.

Yet he hesitated. How easy it would be to stand here and think of all the reasons why the wildlands might provide a better den. Who was to say they even had a den? They had walls, they had sleds, they had many men. They might be purely nomadic, making trade at whatever city would take them in, never in one camp longer than one night. Maybe they had burrowed down in the mountains for the winter, but winter was over.

‘If I’d left the first day she asked me,’ Meoraq thought, but the rest of the words would not come, even in the shelter of his own mind. It made no difference now. Nothing mattered but two trails in the grass and which one he meant to follow.

He had no time to meditate. He chose. He set himself on the path that led to the mountains and did not realize his mistake until hours later, when the woods he ran through thinned enough to show him the high wall of the city.

By that time, the sun was low, the winds were strong, and the clouds had thickened with the certainty of rain. He had been running the last hour without any trail at all to follow, only the faith that this was where the trail had been aimed and if there was a den, there would be proof eventually. And so there was, not of their den, but only their trading post.

Exhausted as he was, he found it in him to let out another of those wordless bays of rage, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. A full day’s run weighed on his body—breath was a sword in his side and he was so badly dehydrated that even his scream of a moment ago was only a scrape across his throat—but that biting thing he called hope was still alive in him and he used it to keep running just a little further.

Because if this was their trading post, there was a chance that those who traded with them had some rumor of where they might be found. A pale chance, thin and fragile as a single hair from Amber’s head, but he clung to it.

The wood that surrounded the city had been allowed to grow close, leaving only the most minimal border bared for defensive vantage. There were no roads that Meoraq saw from his hurried approach, and the city itself was in shockingly poor repair. Years of damage by fire, erosion and violence had been sloppily patched if at all. He could actually see places where the roof had cracked wide open, the exposed interiors sealed off and left to sprout. Although the light was failing, there were no braziers burning, no lamps lit at the gate. Neither did he see watchmen on the wall or sentries on patrol outside. No one hailed him. He crossed the open wilds at a run with a naked sword in his hand, aimed at a gate where he could clearly see three men watching him, and not one of them cried challenge.

“Open to Uyane Meoraq!” he called, as soon as he was near enough to be heard. “I am a Sword and the Striding Foot of Sheul. Open and submit to my conquest!”

Spines that had been flared forward in casual greeting quivered and slapped flat. Watchmen shifted, eyeing one another and fingering at their own blades. No one answered him.

None of this should have been unexpected from a city that he knew to be at least occasionally in league with raiders, but in that first moment that he faced it, Meoraq’s temper took him. He took the last few strides at a sprint and bashed the sole of his boot explosively into the gate. “Get this fucking thing open now!” he bellowed.

One of the watchman bolted down the tunnel, escaping the grasping hand of one of his fellows by the barest margin. “Get Myselo!” this man shouted, and spun to grab the third man by the halter. “Get Myselo before that idiot brings back Onahi, now!” As the other watchman ran, he held up his open hands in a deferential salute, trying to smile and bow at the same time. “We’re fetching a key, honored one, just one minute now.”

Meoraq kicked the gate again and paced like a hungry ghet, back and forth, glowering in futility through the doors. Indeed, it could have been within one minute that he heard returning feet in the echoing tunnel, but his temper, if anything, tore further. He began to feel flame at the back of his skull and forced himself to stand still, to take deep breaths, to be the man who could save his Amber.

It was a young man that came to admit him, scarcely out of his ascension, unscarred, wearing no House’s colors and no great name’s standard, just a simple gatekeeper’s uniform. He took a set of keyplates from his belt, but drew the blade from his back with his strong hand and came no closer than two arms’ reach.

“Open at once,” ordered Meoraq. “I am Sheulek. I claim this city. Where am I?”

“Praxas,” said the gatekeeper.

So. Meoraq bent and retrieved the wristlet from his boot, thrusting it between the bars for the gatekeeper to see. “This Praxas?” he demanded.

The gatekeeper studied the trinket and the metalsmith’s mark without reaching for it. “I know the shop. Does that satisfy you?”

“Then Praxas is mine. Submit and open to Uyane Meoraq of Xeqor. Give me your oath!”

“It is Chasa Onahi before you, sir,” the gatekeeper said calmly. “And if you are who you claim to be, you will understand why I will not open without proof.”

Meoraq spat, but raised his fist and turned it so the sign of House Uyane and the mark of Xeqor showed on his wristlet.

“This could be stolen,” Onahi said, although he did draw a book of names from his sleeve and hold it up for comparison.

“I can give my lineage back to the Prophet’s Uyane himself,” Meoraq said. “Send for the steward of Uyane to hear it.”

“There is no Uyane in Praxas.”

If he had been told there was no air in Praxas, he could not have been more astounded. For a moment, even Amber was cut from his mind. “Impossible,” he said.

“All of the great Houses are closed here. Even the governor is of House Rsstha.”

The name was a stranger’s. After ten years in service, fifty-three cities, hundreds of trials…he’d never heard of such a House. “What does that mean?” he asked.

“I do not say there is any meaning to it,” Onahi replied. “I say only that there is no one here to hear you, sir.”

“Then summon your governor and let him send a champion. God will give my proof. I am Uyane Meoraq and I will have this city. Open the fucking gate or I’ll kill you through it.”

Onahi, undisturbed, folded away his script. “If you are Sheulek, sir, my life is yours to take. However, the law of my caste allows me to pray.” His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you will pray with me?”

Meoraq struck the lock-plate with the side of his fist, then folded his arms and said, “Have you any particular prayer in mind?”

“The prayer of Eshiqi.”

Meoraq’s spines twitched, caught midway between amusement and offense. “That’s a woman’s prayer.”

Onahi merely waited.

“Hear me, O Sheul, most loving Father, by whose eternal light we are all raised out of darkness. Breathe into me, for Your breath is life. Lay Your hand over me, for within Your open hands are found all shelter. Look down, O Father, and see me, for I am blessed in Your sight. Lo, You are the master at my husband’s forge and I rejoice. Lo, You are the lamp my husband raises over me and I exalt in Your light. Lo, Yours is the hand that shapes all clay—”

“That will do.” Onahi unlocked the gate and stood aside, saluting. “Praxas is yours, honored one.”

‘Be merciful,’ was the customary way to end this exchange, but the gatekeeper, so meticulous in every other respect, did not say it. And by the look in his steady eye, the omission was deliberate. Another time, this would have been curious. Today, Meoraq had time for only one investigation.

“You will tell me everything you know of the raiders who trade with this city,” he said.

“Raiders?” the other watchman echoed, attempting alarm.

“I am not permitted dealings with them,” Onahi replied calmly. “I would guess that they were here four days ago, because I was then held from my usual shift.”

“No one held you! Honored one, no one held him! They were changing mats in the barracks, is all! Hands were needed!”

“Suspicious work for a man out of his ascension,” said Meoraq.

“There aren’t enough boys!”

“Truth, so far as that goes.” Onahi gestured in a general way at the city enclosing them. “Praxas had scarcely five thousand souls at last census, with perhaps three hundred under the sign of the Blade.”

“That answers why I saw no one on your wall, why I met no sentries on patrol.”

For the first time, Onahi’s mask of cool civility slipped to show the real fury beneath. “My watchmen stand their posts. My sentries make their patrols.”

“And where are they today?”

“Turning sheets,” said Onahi, with only the slimmest trace of a hiss, “on all the new mats in the barracks.”

This was not the man he wanted, Meoraq decided. He was too honest. Meoraq turned away from the gatekeeper and studied the watchman instead. He looked nervous. That was only to be expected under a Sheulek’s hard stare, but what betrayed the man’s anxiety the most were his eyes, in which the pupils had contracted to mere points.

It wasn’t only nerves that did that.

“Show me your hands,” he said.

The watchman blinked rapidly, his flat spines twitching in confusion. Hesitantly, he raised his fist in salute.

Meoraq caught the man’s wrist, pried open his hand and examined the discoloration on the thin scales between his fingers. Fresh burns. And the thicker, misshapen scales where old burns had healed.

“Open your mouth,” ordered Meoraq.

The watchman glanced back down the tunnel, where running boots could finally be heard, but if it was rescue, he knew it wasn’t going to reach him in time. He cracked his mouth open, trying not to breathe.

His teeth were still good, if yellowed. Meoraq worked his hand in and forced the jaws open, waiting until the man’s need for air gave him that first bitter exhale and the stink of phesok.

“So.” Meoraq drew his samr.

“Sir, I don’t know them! I swear I don’t!”

“Not another word!” boomed a voice in the tunnel. “I’m the warden here and if you want to deal with that sniveling son of a slave, you’ll deal with Myselo first!”

“He’s Sheulek,” said Onahi without emotion. “He holds Praxas in his shadow.”

“Piss if he is! Piss if he does!” Myselo came into the light—a great belly of a man bulging out of suspiciously fine clothes for a warden’s modest wages—and pulled a samr of his own. “Sheulek comes through mid-summer and this looks nothing like him!”

“It is Uyane Meoraq of Xeqor before you, a Sword and a true son of Sheul,” said Meoraq coldly. “And it is Uyane Meoraq who will be cutting the head from your neck if you don’t cover your blade.”

And, by God and Gann, even here:

“Uyane of…?” Warden Myselo’s spines flared as far as they were able. “Are you…any kin to…to Rasozul?”

“His son,” said Meoraq, trying not to hiss.

Myselo’s sword lowered. He looked at it in some alarm, as if it had only just now materialized in his hand. His spines flared again. He sheathed quickly and wiped both hands on his broad belly. “Eh…We’re honored to welcome—You honor us, sir. I’ll see you to, eh, to the governor’s House to host you, if it please—”

“Who stood as warden to these gates four days ago?”

Myselo glanced at the watchman, who had pressed himself to the tunnel wall in an attempt to disappear within it, then at Onahi, and finally down at the sword still drawn and ready in Meoraq’s hand. His spines lowered and shoulders fell. “I have the keeping of every gate in this city when its keeper is otherwise occupied, sir.”

“Then you admitted the raiders who brought their phesok to trade.”

“Admitted? No! No, most honored one, no. They weren’t raiders as the word be reckoned. Exiles, I must acknowledge, but does not the Word say, eh…as every man has a need for air…no, wait…does not every man that breathes claim the right to air?”

“Book of Admonitions, verse thirty-five,” Meoraq hissed. “Lo, a man’s need for air is not a promise of breath, for every life may be cut that goes against the law of God.”

Myselo struggled to take that in, then gave up. “It is not in me to see a man suffer!” he declared. “They come to trade, sir. Not phesok, I say, but only good game and hides, which this poor city has sore need of. Rsstha and his slit-licking merchants—”

“Then you admit you grow the phesok yourself?”

“I don’t know what grows in the governor’s fields, sir,” said the warden after a moment’s hard thought. “Nor what comes through the other gates when I’m away. I am just one man.”

“A man who trades with raiders. If you deny that’s what they are just once more, I’ll split your lying mouth,” he said as the warden began to speak. “They came to my camp last night. They took…everything…and I have spent this entire day chasing their trail in the wrong fucking direction. Now I will have lost it. So let me make this easy for you.” Meoraq stepped forward and seized the warden by the folds of his throat, thrusting the point of his sword under Myselo’s chin. “Tell me where they went.”

“Sir, I don’t know—”

“Do you wish to pray?” Meoraq interrupted. “If I can’t have them, I’ll have you, mark me. Tell me where they are or make your last prayer.”

“I don’t know!” the warden bayed. “They come and go! I don’t know them! I don’t—”

Meoraq gave the throat in his grip a calculated cut. It was hardly a mortal wound, but it bled. He was forced to deliver two restrained blows with the hilt of his sword to stop the warden’s struggles, and then had to wait while his senses came back into order. At some point during this process, he was annoyed to discover that the watchman had fled. Onahi remained, and as the warden recovered himself, Meoraq spared the gatekeeper an assessing stare.

Onahi raised his fist, neither hurriedly nor fearfully. “I would tell you if I knew,” he said without waiting for the question. “But I am certain someone here does know. Three days before the barracks ‘changed out their mats,’ trials were held for certain officers with accusations to make against their daughters. They have been awaiting exile in a holding cell beside this gate, but now they are gone.”

Meoraq grunted and pulled the stirring warden in his grip onto his feet. “How do you contact them?”

There were no more denials, no excuses. Clutching his neck as if he were all that held it together, Warden Myselo whispered. “We send…the boy.”

“Who?”

“Just some barracks-bastard. They took him…years ago. They take all the sprats they can find…when they raid…but this one, they brought back.”

“I know him,” said Onahi, already moving.

“He’s the only one who knows…” The warden’s rolling eye caught sight of his blood on the floor and his words broke. “Don’t…Don’t kill me, sir. I am…weak. Allow me the mercy to earn Sheul’s forgiveness, for I sense I can be forgiven, sir, I do.”

Meoraq spat and shoved him away. The warden fell into the wall and let it take him to the floor, babbling thanks and praise.

Ignoring him, Meoraq paced. It could not have been long before Onahi’s return, although it felt endless enough with Warden Myselo moaning in his ears.

The boy that eventually came with Onahi into the light was older than he’d anticipated. He had a man’s height, but was scrawny as a woman—as a girl—with a hunched, loping way of moving. He bowed when he saw Meoraq, raising not one but both fists in salute and peering through them at Myselo on the floor with a curious sort of frown.

“Do you know what I want of you?” Meoraq asked gruffly.

“To find Zhuqa’s camp,” said the boy.

“Zhuqa?”

“Their leader. He lets me pass to carry their messages. Before me, it was another boy.” He looked up at Meoraq. “Are you going to kill me?”

Spoken without fear, only a very mild interest. It was not courage, not even of that foolhardy kind that came so naturally to boys his age.

“Not without cause,” said Meoraq.

“Isn’t it cause enough to have dealings with exiles?” asked the boy reasonably. “Sometimes they give me a few points for the message. Isn’t that trade?”

“Words are not considered commerce by law and I would not judge it unforgivable to accept a gift of coin, no matter the source.” Meoraq gestured impatiently at the gate.

“I’ve taken their drink sometimes too,” said the boy. “When they offer a swallow. That’s against the Word, isn’t it? Strong drink?”

“I don’t care!” Meoraq exploded. “I want what they took from me, Gann damn you! I forgive you all your past! All of it! I don’t care if you rubbed your cock on the Prophet’s burnt bones, take me to their fucking nest!”

“Now?”

“Now!”

“I’ll ready supplies,” said Onahi and left them.

Meoraq opened his mouth to shout after him, but forced himself to close it again. He needed supplies. He needed water, if nothing else. He could not save Amber if he collapsed in the wildlands and ended there.

“It’s only an hour until dark,” said the boy, watching as he began to pace again.

“We’ll run through the night.”

“Do I look like I can run through the night?” the boy asked, amused. “I couldn’t run all the way down that tunnel. Hit me all you like,” he added as Meoraq swung back his arm to do just that. “I’m not a runner and you can’t make me one by beating on me. It’s three days to travel. Four with weather.”

Meoraq lowered his arm. It hurt. He turned his back on the boy with effort and began again to pace. Six breaths, he told himself. Six breaths, deep and slow. Six breaths, and think of Amber.

Amber.

* * *

She dreamed of Meoraq and the mountains, so that when she woke, the arm around her waist and the breath on the back of her neck felt safe and right and welcome. She had to wake up a little more before the bed she lay on had any meaning for her. It wasn’t until then that it all came back.

She must have tensed. Perhaps she made some sound. She did something, anyway, because Zhuqa’s sleep broke at once. He lifted his head, listening as she lay motionless, then grunted and pushed the cupboard door open.

“Hold still,” he said, climbing out into the room. In another moment, he had a light struck and two lamps burning. He glanced her way, saw her staring back at him, and smiled. “Have you a kind word for your man this morning?”

Amber opened her mouth, closed it, took a few breaths (six breaths just like meoraq always says six breaths and calm down), then said simply, “Hi.”

“No. Say, ‘I see my man, my Zhuqa, first. I pray, let him see me.’”

“All that, huh?”

“Say it, Eshiqi. Use my words. Say it as best you can.” Now he looked at her, just the shine from one eye. “To please me.”

She tried. He did not correct her, although she knew she couldn’t have possibly hit all the right tones and that every pause as she fought to fit her mouth around his stupid words changed its whole nuance. He let her wrestle it all out, and only after she was done did he look at her again.

He smiled. “I see you.”

“I’m thrilled.”

“Now come,” he said, beckoning. “Do you remember how to show your man a proper respect?”

Amber got out of the cupboard. She went to him, fighting to keep her face a safe blank and hold all the hate on the inside where it couldn’t kill her, but still, when the time came to kneel in front of him, she slapped the back of her open hand on the ground next to his bare foot and let that flat, brittle sound be her ‘good morning.’

Zhuqa’s smile became a tolerant laugh. He patted her on the head and moved away to put his boots on. “I’m going to leave you now. Just for a short while. I hope you are not tempted to do anything foolish while I’m away. I would hate to lose you so early in this game.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Amber got up off her knees and went back to sit in the cupboard.

Zhuqa grunted, shrugged into his harness and strolled over to the door. He looked at it, at her. He waited, buckling buckles, smiling.

“Oh, you son of a whore.” Amber heaved herself up again and opened the door that kept her his prisoner. “I really, really hate you.”

He nuzzled at her stiff neck before he went out. She shut the door…but she didn’t slam it and she made sure she wouldn’t catch him on the ass. She couldn’t bring herself to be good, but she wasn’t dumb enough to be as bitchy as it was in her to be.

She waited in the cupboard, for no other reason than because she was naked and it had blankets. She didn’t know how long he was gone. Ten minutes or an hour felt like the same empty, elastic time. She tried to think of Meoraq, but it was hard to visualize him without seeing how big the world was. He was looking, she knew he was looking, but he’d been looking for Scott and Nicci and the others too. And never found them.

The door opened. Zhuqa let himself in. He did not have the breakfast with him that she’d hoped for, although he popped the last bite of something into his mouth as he entered. He caught the look on her face as he chewed, or perhaps he heard the sullen rumble of her stomach. His spines flicked forward. “Hungry?”

She looked away.

His smile broadened just slightly. “Not hungry enough, I see. Come here, Eshiqi. I have something for you.”

“I’ll bet,” she muttered, but she went.

And it wasn’t what she’d thought. The bundle of something half-glimpsed in the crook of his arm turned out to be a woven garment, shapeless as a hospital-gown, stained so often and by so many substances that it was impossible to tell just what its original color had been.

Amber took it, shook it out, turned it over in her hands. She could count her fingers through the threadbare fabric and when she rubbed a fold, her skin pinked up like she’d taken a scouring pad to it.

She couldn’t help herself.

“Good enough,” she said, speaking lizardish with extreme difficulty, “for Zhuqa’s woman?”

His spines shrugged, amused. “At least I mean to dress you.”

“In crap,” she agreed, switching back to English. “And I happen to know you have plenty of good clothes, you thieving bastard.”

“My Eshiqi isn’t happy,” mused Zhuqa, leaning back to study her. After some thought, he rolled the shift back into a bundle and tossed it aside.

And then he just stood there.

It took a long time, fighting not to squirm under that stare, not to anticipate too obviously the blow that he never threw, before she suddenly got it.

And he knew she got it, because no sooner had the thought hit her brain then his eyes narrowed and his chin raised. So there was no point in faking ignorance, only the question of whether or not she’d rather go naked.

And no, she’d really rather not.

So, biting down on all the dangerous things she wanted to say, Amber knelt and smacked the back of her hand onto the floor again.

“That was cute the first time you did it,” Zhuqa remarked far above her. “Now do it right.”

She took her hand back, calmed herself with a few deep breaths, and quietly bent to lay it palm-up beside his boot.

“Very good.” Zhuqa tapped the top of her head and moved away to the cupboard. He opened a compartment above it, rummaged through its contents, then tossed her a new bundle.

She put it on—a simple pullover in a pale beige color that hung to her knees. It smelled musty, unused, but she could already see that it was nicer than the first one.

“I’ll see if I can find better for you once the trade wagons start moving,” said Zhuqa, watching her. “But for now, you are pleased.”

It wasn’t a question as much as a warning. Amber smoothed down the wrinkled front of her new shift and nodded. The gesture couldn’t have meant much to him, but he accepted it.

“So today, you will make every effort to please me further,” he said, crossing back to open the door. “I am going to take you to the workpit, where you will learn to keep my House. How say you?”

“Yippee.”

He grunted and beckoned for her to follow him out into the hall.

She went.

The guards were positioned on the landings already, or maybe they were always there. Other men walked in the halls and passed them on the stair, more and more as they climbed toward the surface. Her clumsy estimate of their numbers kept stretching and stretching, until the word ‘dozens’ just wasn’t enough.

There were a hundred men here. There might even be two. Like roaches, the ones she saw were only indicators of the ones that scurried around in the greater darkness. They might as well be infinite.