103 - Fourth however-you-say-his-savage-name's guard

I woke up on a pallet in a room I’d never seen before, lined with plain grey brick, with one high window that had bars. My wrists were manacled before me and my elbows joined by ropes behind my back, slave-style; my ankles were chained to a ring in the wall. I took a deep breath, trying to will away the pounding agony in my head, and the desperate needs to piss and have a katzerik; who knew when I’d get the chance. I was still dressed in the black-on-black embroidered satin suit I’d been wearing in the carriage, but what had become of my other things, including Chirel, I couldn’t know. Part of me wanted to remember how I’d got here, and part of me didn’t; it came back anyway.

The door, which was steel-bound oak, opened. “Raikas, wakey wakey, you should be by now… ah, you are.” A primly-uniformed, flat-faced man with his solas-length hair tied back in a neat club came in. He was one-downing me, which from a solas to a slave is in fact an honour, but made it hard to understand; he said something about talking, I thought, and “your okas friend Piras,” as he sat on a stool beside me, taking up a notebook and pen.

By the belt-buckle and shoulder-pieces on his unwrinkled grey tunic, I knew he was a Sereniteer. It was not as good as waking up in the Mezem, but better than in the hands of Mahid, which would mean the Marble Palace had taken notice of me.

My neck still hurt from lying in the funeral carriage; I flexed and stretched it, making the headache worse, and cleared my throat. I was thirsty, too. “Pardon me, but who is my okas friend Piras?”

“What, you’re going to play stupid and tongue-slight me?” he said, meaning speak as if I were higher or he were lower; I’d spoken equal-to-equal as I always did.

“I mean no slight; I only really know equal-to-equal,” I said. “And I have no okas friend Piras that I know of, second Fire come if I lie.” I couldn’t hold my crystal, but that would probably mean nothing to him anyway.

He sat silent for a bit, divided in himself; I think, on retrospect, he wanted to hit me, or felt it was his duty, but didn’t only because I was polite. “Well… do your best to one-up me,” he said. “And hurry up learning it.” He didn’t stop one-downing me, but spoke slowly and carefully and in a way more similar to equal-to-equal. “We’ve had to expend one dose of truth-drug on him, and so learned everything he knew. So we’re hoping not to have to waste more on you or Mannas.” That will let you know the state of my head, not to have seen Piras must be Erilas. “You might want to know, they both blamed it all on you. ”

There, I knew he was lying, at least about Mana; probably he wanted to find things out by getting me to defend myself, or blame them. But I said, “That would be correct, particularly of Erilas… Piras, I mean; if you truth-drugged him that must be his real name. We went to him. Ser Sereniteer, may I beg three mercies of you? A piss, a draught of water, and a katzerik? It’s been beads since I’ve had any of all three.”

“Piss and water, yes, katzerik, no,” he said. “No such indulgences are allowed on these premises.” We were in the headquarters of the Ministry of Internal Serenity, I guessed. He sent for a slave, who held a cup of water to my lips, then unceremoniously unfastened my belt, yanked down my leggings and held the bottle. “Thank you,” I said, very sincerely.

“You are something else, thanking the slaves,” he said. “I’ve never had Yeolis here before.” He pulled one curl of my forelock out straight, and let it spring back, just as the Palace of Kraj concubines had relished doing, then took me by the chin to make me face him and stared into my eyes, looking at them, not me. I think he was fascinated with the colour. Under the thin glove, his fingers were cold.

After a while he let go and took up his pen. “You were trying to get out of the city. Why?”

“You need to ask that?”

“What, you’re going to tell me you were homesick, a young adventurer like you?”

I am not an adventurer, I wanted to say; but then he might ask me what I was. “I never wanted to be here in the first place,” I said, and he transcribed. How was it they never understood? “Perhaps you can understand it this way: I’m a slave. Doesn’t every slave want to be free?”

“But you’re in the Mezem. There are men who do it willingly; Kallijas Itrean would have, except that his dad wouldn’t let him, and everyone knows about Riji Kli-fas.” This was the first I’d heard either name. “Raikas… look, I liked Lobryr Flame-hair. I thought he was headed for great things. You took him as easily as picking your nose. I should make you taste my knuckles a few times for the silver chain I lost on that… but you’re obviously meant for even greater. So why throw it all away?”

The excitement, the drama, I thought. But it suggested an answer to my own foremost question. “I guess that means I’m not going to be killed for this?” Or Mana; but I would not give away that we were friends if I could help it, so I didn’t ask. Jinai had foreseen pain in Arko, not death; I clung to that.

He shrugged, in the brusquely-restrained Arkan way. “No idea. Not up to me. You didn’t answer my question, though. Do you understand that in this room, I can do anything to you I want?” The slave had fastened my belt again; now the Sereniteer laid his gloved hand pointedly on the buckle.

“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t know that I can make you understand. I don’t like it here. I don’t like being a fighter. I have family at home who I love and should be with. I learned fighting only for my—”

He cut me off. “Fine, fine, all right, I understand.” Those who own and use slaves never want to think of them as having lives the way people do. “I’m curious about another thing or two, though. Where’d you get the money? Six-hundred gold chains is not okas-rations, and there were close to two-hundred more in your pack.”

If I lived, I’d be sent back to the Mezem, and it would be a flogging at the very least if the Director knew I was the thief. What would Mana most likely have said, asked this question? I took a guess. “I have a benefactor,” I said. “Who… should remain nameless, I think.”

“Mmm.” Guessed right, ha. Once he’d done scribbling this, he took my chin and made me face him again, looking into my eyes. “What if I told you your friend said different?”

“My friend? You seem to think I have more friends than I do, here.”

“Mannas; you’re not friends? You were very cozy in that carriage, from what I hear.”

“Only way to fit. You asked, and I answered the truth; I assume he did, too, though I guess he might have thought it best to lie.”

A flash of pique crossed his face, for some reason, letting me know to ready myself. He struck me on the cheek with the back of his hand, fairly hard; the best way is to take it relaxed, of course, and let it throw your head over, which I did. He slapped back the other way, realized I was leaving my neck lax on purpose, and did it a few more times, back and forth, ending up chuckling. “I’ve never had anyone like you in all my years with Serenity,” he said. “I think maybe you are crazy. I’m never going to bet against you again.” He grabbed my forelock to hold my head steady, and gave me the hardest one, to the sword-side of my sword-side eye; I knew it would end up black. At least that required him to let go of my belt. “This can’t be helping the stun-drug headache,” he grinned.

It wasn’t. I was close to throwing up the water I’d just been given. “The other thing I’m curious about, Raikas—oh, two things. Did you give yourself that hare-brained name?”

“No. The Spark of the Sun’s Ray did.”

His mouth, open to speak again, snapped shut, and his flat eyes took on a little alarm. With any luck, he was concluding that Minis had been my benefactor. “Well… one other thing. The report was that every Yeoli in the honour guard of the new king of Yeola-e got killed, when the young idiot was stupid enough to go through Roskat, coming here on a state visit. But Mannas was one of them; he’s said so. You were captured not far away from there, and about that time, and are obviously elite. Might you happen to have been one of them too?”

“One of Fourth Chevenga’s guard?” I said. “No.”

“Second Fire come if you lie?” He grabbed my chin, and my belt-buckle, again. “Look me right in the eyes, boy, and say, ‘second Fire come if I am not telling you the truth, I was not one of Fourth however-you-say-his-savage-name’s guard.’”

I looked him in the eyes. “I should hold my crystal, but I can’t. I hold it in…” I didn’t know the Arkan word for spirit. “In my mind. Second Fire come if I am not telling you the truth, I was not one of Fourth Chevenga’s guard.”

“How did you get captured, then? It can’t have been easy for whoever did it.”

He seemed in a hurry—I knew how that was—so I said, “It’s a long story… do you want to hear all of it? Or can I just say I was at the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“Right, same as anyone. Don’t bother.” He let go of me to make a few more scrawls and snapped shut the notebook. “I’ll see you in the Ring again, then, Karas Raikas, unless someone higher up decides to waste you. Right till fifty, my fearless martial God willing. I know you won’t try to escape again, after what you’re about to go through.” He rapped me lightly under the chin with his gloved fist, stood and was gone.

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