Tripping over a step quite deliberately to let them know I was helpless and had no idea where I was being taken, I took stock of our progress. Up the long flight of steps to the villa, past the guardhouse, around to the side where I heard the soft night breeze rustle in the yellow mushk and I smelled its sweet perfume. That recalled Valka to me, and the high fortress of Esser Rarioch. Then I was pushed roughly through a narrow door for those shoulders of mine brushed against each jamb. Up a long carpeted stair. Then a wait before a door, and the faint sound of a girl’s laugh, and a door closing, and then the rustle of soft clothes, and the rough hand on my arm relaxing, and a smaller, softer hand, urging me forward. The door clashed at my back, a harsh sound in what I guessed must be a scented, soft and downy bower. I heard the harsh breathing of a man near my right shoulder, and the creak of his harness as he breathed, and I smelled oiled leather and steel, and so knew a guard stood over the doorway, ready to kill if the Kovneva so ordered.
There was mystery and a haunting terror lurking below the threshold here, if I allowed. A normal man might be forgiven if he trembled at what awaited him. I did not tremble; but I admit I wondered if I had been so clever in allowing myself to be brought here. I had thought it a capital scheme, to further my plans. Now, the doubt occurred. Maybe I should have bashed Hikdar Covell and taken his thraxter, and cut up the guards, and gone my own headstrong way.
But, as you know, I was trying to be clever. .
The girl pulling me forward halted and again I heard that soft silver jingling. I had an idea what that was, and if my idea was right I would be less than polite to the Kovneva. . I heard a slithery sound that told me a screen had been pulled across. Probably it was sturm-wood cunningly pierced into a grille, or fabricated from ivory from Chem. I heard a low laugh, and then a hand whipped the black bag away and I had to shut my eyes against the glare of soft samphron-oil lamps. The Kovneva’s voice said, “A great shaggy graint! Yes, Merle, I shall enjoy taming this one!”
“Indeed, yes, my lady,” responded a young voice, and yet the voice, although bright, held a note of dullness and despair.
Sound of a slap and a muffled shriek, and then I opened my eyes and I could see again. I’ll give her this, Esme, Kovneva of Apulad; she tried to make of her private bower as sophisticated and luxurious a shrine to love as she imagined the empress’ in far Ruathytu’s must be. She was a Kovneva, and therefore a very great lady; but her husband the Kov had been personally charged by the Emperor with voller production at Sumbakir, and that meant a dreadful provincial prison sentence for Esme. If I had had any feelings of sympathy for her they hardened as her maidservant, a young apim girl, put a hand to her cheek, which flamed scarlet and angry. Bright tears stood in the eyes of the girl, and her bosom moved beneath the scrap of peach-colored silk which the Kovneva allowed her as her only clothing.
“You need not stand looking like a fambly, Chaadur! You onker! Sit on this cushion and drink this wine.”
I sat. The room had been festooned with draping silks and tapestries embroidered with various scenes from the more amorous of the legends of Kregen. I saw many that depicted stories I knew, others that at the time I did not know. Samphron-oil lamps stood upon balass-wood tables. Gilt chairs stood against the walls. The sofa upon which Esme reclined rested on six feet sculpted to look like the pads and claws of zhantils. I thought they might be solid gold and then noticed a claw knocked off and the sturm-wood showing through the gilt. Provincial, provincial. .
Another slave, a black girl probably from Xuntal, stood waving an exotic fan of whistling-faerling feathers to keep the air moving and sweet. If there were windows in the room they had been closed and shuttered and concealed by the draperies. Rugs upon the floor were strewn here and there; they were not of Walfarg weave.
A third slave girl brought in the wine. She was a Fristle, a superb little fifi, and I thought of Tilly, my little Fristle fifi of the Jikhorkdun of Huringa, who now waited with Delia and my friends in the airboat — to which I would return, by Zair, to which I would return.
The Fristle girl slave poured the wine. The goblet was glass, of a pale cream color, and twisted in the stem, and of a flat shape. I do not care for twisted glass stems, and I prefer a wineglass — given that one must use different shapes for each different wine or liquor — of a more rotund appearance. But all these things meant little besides the debased appearance of the three slave girls. They did not wear the gray slave breechclouts. I had heard of this manner of collaring and chaining slaves, girl slaves, the manner known as nohnam. They wore scanty silk garments, pale green, peach, lake-blue. Around their necks, their wrists, their ankles, were fastened bands of silver — the collars were high, causing the girls to lift their heads when they wished to let their chins sink in misery. I doubted if the metal was really silver. From the collar ran chains to the wrists and to the ankles, and from ankles to wrists ran more chains, caught up beneath the girls’ bodies. As they moved the chains swung. During my time at the Jikhorkdun in Hyrklana I had heard men talking of taking a delight in chaining and collaring their girl slaves in nohnam. They seemed to think that by debasing a girl they exalted themselves. Merle, the slave whom Esme had slapped — for no reason apart from the enjoyment of administering the punishment — moved near me as I made no attempt to drink the wine the Fristle girl had poured. I looked at Merle’s neck, and wrists, and ankles.
The sores on her wrists and ankles were bad enough, some scabbed over and broken again. She had stuffed a few pitiful scraps of cloth down to try to prevent the chafing. But the sores around her neck were nothing short of disgusting. The collar’s friction, which is unavoidable in a metal collar in nohnam, had rubbed the skin away in wide areas, and the scabs had formed, and had been knocked off, and the blood and pus dribbled down. Esme saw my look and belted Merle across her backside with the flexible length of tuffa tree handy, as she spoke most viciously to her.
“Wash your neck, you filthy rast!”
“Yes’m, my Lady,” said Merle, and scuttled with jangling chains to a screen across one corner. I heard the sound of splashing water.
The black girl’s scabs were not so bad, but she suffered, too. As for the Fristle, her fine and delightfully snuggly fur had been worn away where the fake silver of the nohnam chafed, and the skin showed, red and raw and bleeding.
“These girls are useless, Chaadur! Now when we return to the capital I shall buy slaves who understand the refinements of good breeding and fine manners.”
I still had not spoken.
Esme went on talking.
“You are just a gul, Chaadur, at the moment. You are little better than a slave. Now I want you to take the baths of nine — we have a reasonable establishment here, as you will discover — and then I think you and I may talk to our mutual advantage. I can assure you of rapid promotion. I can get you what you desire most in all Havilfar. The Empire of Hamal can be yours for the taking.” Then she checked herself, and laughed, and sipped her wine, with the color flooding her cheek. She had overstepped herself. “I mean, of course, that in Hamal under the Emperor’s wise and benign rule you may make your fortune. You can be a Horter, a Notor — there is no reason why you may not be a Kov yourself, one day.”
Still I did not say anything but sat on the cushion, which was lumpy and was clearly not stuffed with fine quality feathers. I looked calmly at her, and her slaves, and her tatty little bower. When I think of the women I have met on Kregen — and only those few whom I had up until now met