She went out again, walking the halls, acutely conscious that she was naked under her gown. No one gave it a second glance – the other women wore more or less flamboyant versions of the same article.
Tiaan came down a staircase into the colonnaded marble foyer, whereupon she was stopped by an elderly man in maroon and grey livery.
‘Tiaan Liise-Mar,’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To the markets. I have some shopping to do.’
‘You may not go out unescorted. Your indenture has not been cleared.’
She whirled and stormed up the stairs, back to her mother’s room. ‘They won’t let me go out!’ she cried.
Marnie looked up irritably. ‘Of course you can’t go out. You might run away.’
‘You mean I have to stay trapped in this hideous place until I die?’
Her mother pursed her lips. ‘You are permitted to go shopping once a month with an attendant. You will, of course, wear a discreet wrist manacle.’
‘What, forever?’
‘Until your indenture is paid off.’
‘But that’s two years away, even with what I’ve got saved.’
‘The old indenture was paid out when you came here, and a new one written. All this has to be paid for,’ Marnie said. ‘Your gowns, food, attendants …’
‘Not forgetting the manacle. I suppose I have to pay for that too?’
‘Well, of course you do. Money doesn’t float in the air like butterflies.’
‘I didn’t ask for any of this.’
‘It comes with the position.’
‘How long?’ Tiaan cried hoarsely.
‘Depends on how many clients you service, how many children you bear, and how many of them survive. Some women have done it in five years, some ten or twelve, and some …’
‘Twelve years!’ Tiaan sank down on the bed in despair.
‘Tiaan, daughter. It’s a wonderful life here. You’ll soon come to love it.’
‘If it’s so wonderful, how come we have to be chained to a guard when we go out?’
ELEVEN
Tiaan had two more days of eating, sleeping and being waited upon. Her attendants appeared three times a day, doing more work on hands, skin and nails. She hardly noticed. Tiaan had not stopped thinking about her father. It sounded as if he’d been a young man of good family. Clearly he’d loved his daughter, and Marnie had repaid him by sending him off to be killed. Every time she thought about it, tears streamed down Tiaan’s cheeks. How could she find out? There was no one to ask. Her grandmother had died nine years ago and Tiaan had no other relatives. She was never alone, even for the few minutes it would take to sneak into Matron’s office and check the register.
On her third lucid evening, Tiaan sat in silence until the attendants finished working on her hands, trying and failing to work out a plan. Tomorrow was to be her first time with a client, so she had to escape tonight. No way was she going to give herself to a man for money. There were too many of her grandmother’s romantic stories in her head. Too many dreams. As she had that thought, her first dream came back – the young man on the balcony, crying out for help. The later dreams she had had of him followed.
But were they dreams? They were different from crystal-induced ones, which were like chopped-up nightmares that vanished on waking. The young man had been much more vivid. She could remember every incident perfectly, as if they had actually happened. He must be real. And he had cried out to her for help. Her soft heart was touched. She had to find out who he was. But how could she, except through her dreams?
Maybe her artisan’s life was over, but never would she work in this disgusting place. They had no right over her, no matter what the law said. She would break out and make a new life for herself, far away. At that thought, Tiaan felt the terror of the unknown. Her whole existence had been organised for her. In the manufactory everything was taken care of and all she had to do was work. Here it would be the same. But if she fled, how would she survive? A runaway would not be welcome anywhere. Did she have the courage? She was no longer sure.
The moon was rising through her barred window. There had been gales and snow all day but they had passed, leaving clear skies. It was late, past ten o’clock. Tiaan was not tired – she’d slept for a week. How to escape? She’d gained the impression, from the chatter of the attendants, that the work of the breeding factory went on until the early hours of the morning.
Sitting by the window, she ran various schemes through her mind. The window bars were set solidly into the mortar and it would take days to dig them out. She must have money and warm clothes, for winter was coming and even down on the coast the nights would be bitter. But first she had to recover her artisan’s toolkit, her most precious possession. If only she still had her pliance. Just the thought of it set off a flood of withdrawal. Deprived artisans had committed the most degrading acts to get their pliances back.
The door opened. It was Matron. ‘Your first contract begins at one tomorrow afternoon. The attendants will wake you at nine with breakfast. They will take you to your bath at eleven, then make you ready. Go to sleep now.’
Matron pulled the door closed. A key turned in the lock.
Tiaan was left with her despair. Would the fits start again, the next time she used a hedron? What if she had an attack out in the snow where there was no one to look after her? Tiaan knew little about the world and how to survive in it. She’d never had to and was not sure she could. Maybe she was more like her mother than she’d thought.
The moon, shining on her face, roused Tiaan. It was bright for a crescent – the bright face of the moon, not the dark. It must be well after midnight. She lit the lamp and tiptoed to the door to examine the lock. It was an old-fashioned one, enough to keep in any ordinary prisoner, but not an artisan with her skills.
Bending one of the tines of her dinner fork over, Tiaan picked the lock in a minute. The corridor was dark but for a night lamp down the far end. She went back, grabbed the knife and headed up the hall. She had to find clothes and shoes; but first, the register.
Tiaan opened Matron’s office easily enough – the lock was similar to the first. She felt around until she found a lamp and got it going. The bloodline register was no longer among the mess on the table. The cupboard was locked and her probe would not fit through the tiny keyhole.
She looked around for something to break in with. Her eye lighted on a climbing vine in a pot in the corner, which spiralled up around a length of wrought metal. Pulling it free, she jammed the point between the doors and wrenched. The timber split from top to bottom with a loud squeal. She whipped out the register and frantically turned the pages.
Someone called out, down the hall. Better hurry. The book was arranged in date order. Unfortunately Tiaan did not know what year Marnie had come here. Matron’s writing was hard to read in the dim light and it was not until Tiaan noticed a familiar name, Jaski, that she realised she was on her mother’s page. Jaski was one of her half-sisters, only four years old. Tiaan looked to the top of the page. No name. Marnie had been here so long that she had several pages. She flipped back to the first, scanning the entries until she found her own name, details of her birth and her first years. A cryptic note was scrawled in the Comments column, ‘Does she have it?’ and below that, in another hand, ‘Not possible to tell. Put her into a suitable job and see.’
Have what? Footsteps roused her. Someone was coming. The name, quick! She checked the entry but could not make it out. The ink was faded, the handwriting abominable. Was the first name Omarti, or Amante, or even Arranti? The second name was a scrawl she could not decipher at all. It might have been Ullerdye, or Menodyn, or something quite different. She ran through the sounds in her mind. They did not seem to fit. Below the name, in different ink, it said simply ‘Deceased’.