Текст книги "The Last Hour of Gann"
Автор книги: R. Lee Smith
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Текущая страница: 54 (всего у книги 80 страниц)
Meoraq was coming. And for the first time, that thought brought horror, because he couldn’t possibly be prepared to find something like this, let alone fight it.
Zhuqa turned her aside while they were still two flights from the surface, leading her down a wide corridor past several sets of curious, disgusted, and fascinated eyes. Raiders were in constant movement here, hauling crates, waterskins and packs, while others just seemed to be lounging around, but all came to attention for Zhuqa and showed him their fists. He tapped a few, ignored most, and brought Amber without comment to a closed door at the far end of the hall.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked, bringing out his keys.
Startled, Amber looked back, wondering why he thought she should, and suddenly realized they were in what he’d called his slave quarters. They’d walked right past the door where Zru’itak had given birth.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked again, now with his hand on the open door and staring her down. He wasn’t smiling. He wanted her to know this door before she walked through it. He wanted her to think about where she was while she waited for him and wondered if she was ever coming back out.
Amber knew she was a bitch a lot more often than was smart, but that didn’t make her stupid. Where was she? Speaking lizardish, looking him straight in the eye, she said, “Zhuqa’s House.”
It wasn’t the response he expected (and judging from the twitching of his spines, it took him a second or two to work it out), but it was definitely the right one. He smiled and reached out to stroke the back of his hand across her brow. Meoraq’s touch. It was nauseating, but Amber would not allow herself to wipe this one away.
He opened the door on a huge room, maybe even several rooms, all connected. The stink was immediate: unwashed bodies and the green reek of compost. It was hot—she could see a huge fire burning in another room—but not stuffy. There were fans in the ceiling, big ones, locked away behind metal bars that either drew up the heated air and carried it away or blew cooler air down at them. It gave her a hell of a jolt to see that and to realize that, just like all the other ruins she’d seen, some parts of this one were still working. That maybe Zhuqa was even fixing it up. The metal bars that kept desperate slaves from trying to crawl out through the air ducts weren’t that old.
Amber saw the fire and the fans because they were moving. The lizardladies that huddled around the walls, shelves and tables that cluttered these rooms were not. Her eye had taken them in only peripherally as lumps of laundry or stacked sacks right up until Zhuqa waved at them and they went back to work.
Now Amber flinched. Zhuqa gripped her shoulder, then patted it. “Easy, Eshiqi. Go on, then. You have work to do and so do I.”
And with that, he left her there.
Amber waited for a few seconds, but the frenetic hush of all this work made it impossible to just stand there. She began to walk around, randomly at first, glancing back at the door every few steps, and then with more of an eye for what she was seeing.
None of it was work she knew how to do. After spending the whole winter in a cave doing one menial thing after another, that surprised her. Amber could put a pretty good cure on a hide, render fat into soap, draw sinews and turn them into strong cord, and countless other useful things, but she didn’t know what half these women were doing.
Most of it was plant-related. Not cooking—that, at least, Amber could do—but other stuff. The plants in question were long, bulbous roots terminating in two wide, rubbery leaves with serrated edges as sharp as knives. Lizardladies with wrapped hands stripped these dangerous looking leaves; others split the stalks, pried them open, and scraped out the whitish meat; this was pounded into a flat, fibrous substance, which was in turn briskly combed out into fluff. Huge rough-woven bags of this fluff were positioned throughout the room, and when one got too full, someone took it into one of the adjoining chambers where more lizardladies and half a dozen pale-scaled children hip-high or smaller spun it into thick thread using nothing more than hooked sticks and spools. From there, the thread went on to be made into rope, cloth or who knew what in one of the other rooms.
It was a lot of work and should have made a lot of noise. Amber had worked line jobs of some kind or another all her adult life, and the eerie silence with which all these people went about their various tasks put an honest-to-God chill in her spine. She found herself thinking of Zru’itak’s tongueless mouth more and more as she studied the faces around her, all of whom pointedly refused to study her in return. Only the children were at all animated—whispering and coughing quiet laughter, throwing fluff or spools at each other if they thought no one was looking, staring at Amber even as their little hands kept busy, and scuttling away if she got close enough for their courage to fail.
When Amber finally made her way back into the first room, Zhuqa was back, with a line of shivering, naked, dull-eyed lizardladies. His newest acquisitions. Standing beside them was another raider, a big one. Easily a head taller than even Zhuqa and built as solid as a coffin, with stocky limbs that bulged with so much muscle, he surpassed mere strength and seemed grotesque. He was missing two fingers on one hand, as well as an eye and most of the knobby ridges that should be above it. Several of his spines were either broken short or missing entirely and his snout had a wedge-shaped hole through it that looked like it had been on the wrong end of an axe years ago.
Zhuqa and the stranger exchanged a few low words as they looked over the women, then Zhuqa paused, noticing Amber’s stare. He gave the broad, scarred chest a slap and said, “This is Hruuzk, my slave-master.”
Hruuzk looked startled, then perplexed. He scanned the room as what remained of his spines flexed. “Who are you talking to?”
“Eshiqi. Come here and give your man a greeting.”
Unsure how demonstrative he wanted her to be, she obeyed. Hruuzk grunted as he watched her ease up against Zhuqa’s side. His gaze held nothing but the purest academic interest. “I heard about that. What is it?”
“Something new.”
“Nothing new in Gann’s land,” the slave-master said. A philosopher. He bent his head in a distracted, deferential manner and held up his mutilated hand, scarred palm to heaven. When Zhuqa grunted approval, Hruuzk reached out and rubbed some of Amber’s hair between his two remaining fingers. “Can you fuck it?”
“Yes. Shift your skirts, Eshiqi.”
She looked at him, alarmed.
He brushed the back of his hand along her cheek, then gripped her chin and lightly squeezed. “You are Zhuqa’s woman, never fear. Now shift your skirts.”
As comfort went, it was a cold puddle of piss indeed, but it wasn’t like she had any real choice. She lifted her dress up to her waist, shifting uneasily as Hruuzk hunkered down to get a better look at her pubis. He grunted, then raised his hand and gave Zhuqa a second inquiring nod.
Zhuqa’s approval was a long time coming, but it came. “Hold still, Eshiqi.”
But she couldn’t, quite. Hruuzk’s hand was huge and abrasive, repulsive in every touch no matter how impartially he prodded at her. She shuddered, twisting the fabric of her shift to keep from slapping him away, and shut her eyes as he wedged one thick finger inside her.
“She’s open,” Hruuzk said, amused.
“I’m beginning to think she’s always open.”
“Oh, that’s a seller, if it’s true.”
“Isn’t it.”
Hruuzk got his finger up as deep as it would go, rubbing at her in a clinical fashion, then withdrew to clasp both hands between his bulging thighs and study her some more. “If you ever decide to sell that, I want it,” he said at last.
“Vek has my promise of first refusal. She took his hand off.”
“So I heard, but there’s good coin in this thing. Let me have it for one year,” he said, rising to his feet again. “Vek can have it back in just this condition and if I pour less than fifty thousand strips in your hand, you can have my other eye. Not points. Not rounds. Strips.”
“Take it up with Vek, but for now, she’s mine. Put your clothes right, Eshiqi.”
Hruuzk grunted and shifted his gaze to the other lizardladies, the matter closed to him. While Amber adjusted her clothes, he moved out to get a better look, catching at their heads to examine their teeth or eyes, turning them around to pass a hand down their spines, and stopping at every one of them to pry their slits open and test at their insides.
“Weak batch,” was his ultimate judgment. “Were you told these were virgins?”
“No,” said Zhuqa, flexing his spines in a careless, shrugging gesture. “But they must be fresher than the ones we have, surely.”
“Those two,” he said, pointing, “are the pick of the lot. Virgin, or close enough, since I guess you let your runners go at them. If you put them up for bidding, they might go for as much as two hundred rounds each, maybe more. But with respect, sir, if you want me to stable them under you, I’ll only send you back a quarter of their coin until I see for myself that they don’t come with cargo.” He gave the slave nearest him a pat on the belly. “They don’t turn a dip this pretty out of Praxas on a whim.”
“A point, but I’m bidding them all out. If there’s cargo, it’ll fall in the hands of the man who buys the cart.”
“Please yourself.” The slave-master turned his good eye back on the ladies. “This one’s not as fresh, but she might go for as much as a hundred rounds. Slant-Eyes is the tightest of the lot, but she has a good case of the twist coming on—”
“Yes, I saw that on the run.”
“—and Black-Stripe’s mouth isn’t right. Could just be bad feeding, coming from Praxas.” Hruuzk shrugged again. “But I think it’s the juun.”
“Piss,” said Zhuqa disgustedly, his spines going flat.
“Won’t hurt for fucking.”
“I am not selling a dip with the juun to my men.” Zhuqa thought about it, stroking at his throat, where faint streaks of yellow were beginning to show. They faded while he pondered the matter, and at last he said, “Catch her up with Shu’ir and Ila, see if Ghelip wants to buy them. I don’t mind cheating him.”
“He might not be feeling very receptive. You know we killed three of his patrollers while you were gone.”
“Throw Salahkthu in with them and call it an apology.”
Hruuzk snorted laughter. “Done. The rest of them ought to go straight to the stables in my opinion, and if I see fifty points by year’s end for the lot of them, I’ll pay you back in rounds. They’re worn loose already and two of them have been cut.”
“The piss you say!” The color flared in Zhuqa’s throat. “By my men?”
“No, they’re good and scarred. Probably done when they were hip-high, so they could take an early poke. Bunch of perverts in Praxas,” the slave-master remarked, his gaze once more straying to Amber. “But you may as well keep them because, as you say, they’re fresher than the ones we have, and besides, we lost some while you were away.”
“So I heard,” Zhuqa said coolly.
The slave-master spread his huge hands. “What would you have me do, stand over them and help push?”
“It’s a very simple thing, Hruuzk. If a man can’t be trusted not to break the toy, he doesn’t get to play with it. If you have to kill a few men to make that lesson clear, do it. I can always get more men. The dips are hard to come by. So.” Zhuqa looked the new slaves over one last time. “Gather those three…no, those four and show them around to whoever’s got coin to spend. How soon can you have them ready for the block?”
“How ready do you want them to be?”
“They’d ought to know their way around the workpit.” Zhuqa glanced over at Amber. “My Eshiqi needs to know how to care for her man’s House.”
“Ah, you’re doing this again,” the slave-master remarked with a small smile. “All right. I’ll start it on lamps for now. Does it talk?”
“Not much, but she understands you.” Zhuqa pinched Amber’s jaw again and put his face very close to hers. “And she’s going to behave.”
Hruuzk grunted and gestured for Amber to stand beside him, watching with undisguised amusement as she obeyed. “Ugly little thing, but I did like the grip of that cunt. How would you feel if I took a dip?”
“Murderous,” Zhuqa replied mildly.
“All right,” he said again, in much the same easy-going way. “Yllgami, come get the rest of the cattle and put them to work. Not you, Gold-Eyes. Stay right here and wait for me. We’re going to take a walk. Come, Eshiqi.” His huge hand dropped comfortably over her shoulder as he took her into the next room. “Let’s get you started.”
7
Amber’s first jobs were plainly tests of her ability to understand and obey Hruuzk’s orders: she wiped down tables, bagged fluff, hauled water around to each of the work stations, swept without a broom, washed without a sink, and did it all without a word. When Hruuzk was satisfied, he put her to work cutting lamp wicks and left her there while he took one of the slaves out on her ‘walk’. Even this simple task was trickier than it seemed. They didn’t have scissors, or maybe just didn’t trust slaves with them. Amber had to feed the rope through a blocky guillotine-like device and smack a spring-loaded lever to make the cut. She’d worked a lot of monotonous factory jobs; she soon had the fiddly business of feed/measure/cut/pull/feed down to a comfortable routine.
When Hruuzk returned from showing ‘Gold-Eyes’ around to potential buyers, her table was piled high with dry wicks and he made her stop and soak them. While he took ‘Shivers’ out on her walk, Amber swished wicks around in a jar of xuseth oil, then hung them up on rods to dry. The oil ran down her arms each time she reached up to hang more wicks and soon the front of her shift was soaked and clinging to her like a second skin, exposing every line and shadow of the body beneath. Hruuzk’s interest when he came back to drop off ‘Shivers’ and pick up ‘Crook-Toe’ was evident, but he kept his hands to himself.
“Good girl,” he said, patting her head after she’d hung up the last wick and put the xuseth oil away. “Unless I tell you different, you start each day with wicks. This camp runs through about two, three hundred a day and they have to be fresh. You seem to be quick enough with those freakish little hands…you can make lamps.”
Back he went to the door, to bellow at someone outside to bring him two blocks of clay. He waited, watching Amber clear off her table and fiddling absentmindedly with any slave who caught his eye, and soon after, a knock on the door heralded the arrival of the clay. Hruuzk inspected it as intently as any slave, judged it acceptable, and thumped both blocks down on the table in front of Amber.
A lamp began with a clay-snake, just like the kind she’d once made in state-care art class out of colored dough. The snake was coiled into a fat, shallow bowl with a bit of a lip for a mouth. Smooth down the sides, pinch the lip tight at one end to hold the wick (but not all the way closed), set it on a tray to be fired, and that was a lamp.
“Use it all,” Hruuzk ordered, patting her on the head again. “Do a good job and I’ll tell Zhuqa what a hard-working woman he has.”
“Fuck you and him,” Amber muttered, concentrating on smoothing her lamp without thinning out the side.
“Good girl. Crook-Toe, let’s go.”
So the next time she heard the door unlock, she thought it was Hruuzk again. She’d only made four lamps and she was a little relieved when it opened on the raider Dkorm instead, along with Xzem and two crying babies.
Dkorm looked around the workpit with an expression of profound disgust, kicked an empty bag out of his way, and stomped over to sit on a crate. The children who had been squabbling and playing through their work all morning withdrew very quietly to another room. The lizardladies bent their necks and focused even harder on whatever task was at hand. Dkorm pulled a heavy-looking sack of something over, punched it down in the middle, and put Rosek in the depression. She tried to climb out at once. He slapped her and thumped her down harder. Xzem flinched at the sound of the blow, but only bent her head at her child’s howl of pain.
“Fucking sprat. Shut up and lie there. Xzem, I swear before God and Gann, if you don’t quiet your little dip—”
“She’s hungry,” Xzem whispered.
“Then feed it! Do I have to tell you to do everything?”
Xzem crept over, hesitated, and held out the baby.
Dkorm folded his arms. “I don’t want it. Put it down. Anywhere,” he added as Xzem looked helplessly around. “Just put it—shut the fuck up!” he roared suddenly and Rosek, who had in fact been winding down now that her mother was beside her, went right back into screams.
Amber gave her lamp a vicious finishing pinch and stalked over to take Zhuqa’s baby. It turned toward her at once, its small cries quieting. Xzem snatched up Rosek and retreated. Dkorn leaned back and laughed at both of them.
“Prick!” spat Amber, taking it with her to her table.
Dkorm laughed again, but in a puzzled way. “What was that?”
She remembered suddenly and with a sharp pang that ‘prick’ was also a dumaqi word and that she’d just called him a hingepin or something. It brought Meoraq right back to the surface of her thoughts, made her feel taken all over again.
Amber looked down at Zhuqa’s baby and watched its tiny hand flail and punch until she gave it a finger to latch onto. Its grip was surprisingly strong. It squeezed once and then towed her finger up under its chin. It bit her, gumming harmlessly at her fingertip while she watched, transfixed by the working of its jaws, the minutia of its tiny fingers wrapping her giant one, the impossible detail of each individual scale. It was hypnotizing her and she wanted to be hypnotized, wanted to forget where she was and why and how long she was likely to stay because rescue was coming, sure it was, but it he wasn’t here yet.
“It’ll piss all over you,” Dkorm warned, watching her wrap the baby in the loose folds of her oversized shift.
She ignored him. The baby was singing, its chirring breaths gradually lengthening to fall into rhythm with the rise and fall of her breasts. It relaxed, arms and legs falling slowly open like a bud in the sunshine. Basking in her. Not her warmth or her scent or the sound of her voice. In her.
She lost herself in it. She never heard the door open, never knew anyone was behind her until she felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder.
Amber stiffened, her own hand cupping protectively over the baby’s hot, wrinkled back, but that was all she did. She didn’t try to shrug off Zhuqa’s touch. And it was Zhuqa. She only had to look as far as the lizardladies bending their necks or Dkorm standing at attention next to Xzem to know who was behind her now.
The hand gave her a pat, then took itself away. Zhuqa stepped out from behind her and walked around the table, moving toward Xzem, whose breath quickened but who did not quite dare to cover her baby in the huddle of her own body. She crouched, rigid and in anguish, as Zhuqa peeled back Rosek’s wrap and watched her nurse.
The silence was a hammer on Amber’s ears. She could hear every wet sound as the baby sucked at her finger, every happy grumble and purr as it nestled close.
“Am I making you nervous?” Zhuqa asked mildly, still gazing at Xzem’s baby.
“Isn’t that what you’re going for?” Amber countered.
“Not you, Eshiqi.” Zhuqa’s eyes shifted, shining lazily back at Dkorm. “Am I making you nervous, Dkorm?”
“No, sir.”
“No?”
Dkorm fidgeted, checked himself, tried to stand taller. “I don’t expect to see you in the workpit, is all.”
“Ah.” Zhuqa returned his easy stare to Rosek. “I thought you might be nervous.”
“No, sir.”
“It would not be an unreasonable feeling.”
“Sir?”
“Particularly since the task of caring for whichever little sprat is not biting at Xzem’s ample teat is supposed to be yours.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes?” Zhuqa allowed himself the posture of very mild surprise. “Then this was understood?”
“Yes, sir. Very well.”
“Very well,” Zhuqa mused. “So then. I confess to some confusion.”
“Eshiqi wanted to hold it.”
“Ah.” Zhuqa reached down to stroke the nursing baby’s cheek, and while he did this, Xzem did not breathe at all. “As it happens, I like to see Eshiqi hold it, but I believe my last word on the matter was that Eshiqi could see the baby, Dkorm.” He straightened up and turned around. “See it. Not hold it.”
Dkorm was frowning, flustered. “My apologies, sir.”
“Well, yes.” Zhuqa indulged himself in a small chuckle. “Apologies would certainly appear to be in order. You are passing my first-born around, Dkorm.”
“I am very sorry, sir.”
“To a slave, actually.” Zhuqa began to walk back around the table.
Dkorm did not back away, but was quick to say, “Sir, I wouldn’t have done it if it were not Eshiqi.”
Zhuqa glanced back to rest his eyes on Amber and the baby in her arms. His spines were forward, relaxed. The scales at his throat remained black. “She does seem rather fond of it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I confess to being fond of it myself,” said Zhuqa. “Have I made any secret of that?”
“No, sir.”
“No. I do not consider myself a sentimental man, but that is, as far as I know, my only living child. Do you have children, Dkorm?”
“I…I don’t know, sir.”
“Truth?”
“Sir.”
“That is a howling shame. A man’s legacy is in his loins. Once the soul is pissed out and the body goes to rot, there is nothing left in this life that endures, not the coin of his hoarding or the good word of his friends or any damned thing at all, save the name he has left to his children.”
“I…Yes, sir.”
“Look there—” Zhuqa dropped his arm around Dkorm’s shoulders and gestured at the sleeping infant in Amber’s arms. “—and you look upon my eternity.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nestled in the arms of an unbroken slave.”
Dkorm hesitated, but there was no safe answer and not a lot of give to the truth. “Yes, sir.”
“Did you ever stop to think such a slave could, in a moment of defiance—” His fingers drummed once on Dkorm’s shoulders. “—dash its helpless little brains out just to strike a scar on me?”
Amber’s arms tightened on the baby.
Zhuqa waited, then looked down at Dkorm. “Did you?” he prompted.
“No, sir.”
“Not even once?”
“No, sir.”
“You disappoint me, Dkorm.” Zhuqa studied the man standing rigid under his relaxed arm, then gave him another pat and stepped away. “I accept your apology. Let Eshiqi hold the baby if it makes her happy.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dkorm, only a little shakily.
Zhuqa came to the table and hunkered comfortably before Amber. He cocked his head, listening to the breathy rumble of its sleeping purrs. At length, he raised a hand to stroke at the side of its blunt snout, which caused it to curl up at once, mewing indignantly and turning into the swell of Amber’s breast. Zhuqa grunted, his spines fanned all the way forward. He looked at Amber. “You could hurt me very easily if you chose to kill it,” he said quietly. “But not so deeply or so well, I think, as I could hurt you by doing the very same thing.”
He glanced back down to watch her arms tighten into a protective shell around the baby, then grunted, pleased, and rose to his feet. “Xzem, take it.”
Xzem bent her head, then placed her squirming, complaining child in Dkorm’s hands, then came to take the infant from Amber’s equally reluctant grip. The baby’s mews, ignored, became howls. It fought the teat Xzem offered, twisting its head violently side to side and straining with all its fragile might to find its way back to Amber.
“Now, Dkorm, let me make my next order very clear to you: Nobody touches Rosek except you and Xzem…and Eshiqi, I suppose. If she wants to. Nobody else.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Xzem is to hold my child every moment that her own is not sucking at her.”
“Yes, sir.”
“During those times, Eshiqi can hold it. If she doesn’t want it, you hold it. If anyone else touches either child—look at me, Dkorm—if God Himself lays on His benevolent hands in blessing, I will devote the next six days to killing you.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dkorm. His posture was exemplary. His hands on Xzem’s wailing baby did not shake.
“Do you believe I can make it last six days?” Zhuqa inquired, chucking at Rosek’s chin. She did not stop crying, but did give him a wet-eyed incredulous look.
“Yes, sir.”
Zhuqa rubbed Rosek’s small snout and smiled up at Dkorm. “I should have a certain reputation for honesty in this camp. I’ve worked hard to cultivate it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dkorm after a puzzled moment, since Zhuqa seemed to be waiting.
“So I know that I am understood when I tell you that sitting in the workpit with slaves may not be how you want to pass your days, but it is a sign of my trust and my high regard. It is, in fact, an honor and I want to know that it is appreciated.”
“It is, sir.”
“Good. That eases my mind.” Zhuqa headed for the door, then paused and turned back. “As an honest man,” he said evenly, “I say if I have to tell you to play with this fucking thing one more time, I will make her a rattle-stick out of your own teeth.”
Dkorm shrugged the baby up onto his shoulder and started rapidly patting her.
Zhuqa grunted and left, closing the door quietly behind him without another glance for Amber.
Dkorm immediately turned on Xzem, saying, “If there’s a trick to shutting this thing up, you tell me right now or I’ll muzzle it.”
Xzem surged forward only to cringe back, her wide eyes filled with panic and pain in equal measure. The infant squirming at her teat renewed the full force of its waning screams immediately.
“Shut one of them up at least,” snapped Dkorm, jostling the baby harder. And suddenly his spines smacked flat against his scales and he thrust Rosek out at arm’s length, not quite fast enough to avoid the stream that came spraying out between her kicking legs.
Dkorm closed his eyes. He took a short breath between tightly-clenched jaws and sighed it out. His head bent. “I hate sprats,” he muttered.
Amber eased warily onto her feet.
“Sit down!” Dkorm snapped, slapping at his leg. “Oh fuck Gann, it’s in my boot! I’m going to be walking in your little poke’s piss the whole rest of the day! Xzem!”
Xzem darted forward, pushing Zhuqa’s screaming infant into Dkorm’s hands and snatching her own away. Dkorm dropped with a mutter onto a bench, hooking the baby over his arm so that he could keep rubbing at the wet patches on his leathers. “Fucking sprat. I want you to know, Xzem, the very instant this thing dies, I’m pulling your little pisspot in half.”
Xzem shivered, but made no sound.
“Baby,” said Amber in lizardish, putting out her hands.
Dkorm glared at her. “What’s the matter, Eshiqi?” he asked blackly. “Think I’m going to drop it? Think I’m going to bash it’s screaming little face into the floor and stomp on the fucking thing until it shuts the fuck up at last? Huh? It’s fine. Leave it alone.”
His neck was lighting up brighter and brighter with every breath.
Amber dropped her hands, looked around, then dashed into the other room to dunk a rag in wash-water and bring it back to Dkorm.
He eyed her with an ominous lack of expression, but then leaned back and gestured at his leg. Amber knelt beside him and scrubbed carefully at his breeches, feeling his stare like a physical thing on the back of her neck. The baby, inelegantly folded over his arm, squirmed and cried.
