“Can you give me something to make me sleep? So I won’t dream?” My own voice sounded harsh and alien to me. I had gone weeks without speech.
Gorag, the Zhid surgeon, poked around in his leather case and came up with a blue vial. “Perhaps this will help.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I shouldn’t give it to you, but I have a wager with Cinnegar that you’ll make it past half a year. I don’t like to lose.” He poured the contents down my throat and called the handler. I slept for two days straight and had no dreams at all. When he examined my shoulder and pronounced it fit, I asked permission to speak again. He shook his head. “Better not. Just stay alive two more months.”
I managed it. I fought and trained like a madman, as indeed I began to believe I was. Gorag’s blue vial had only suspended my strange malady temporarily. I considered asking him for more of it, but I couldn’t afford to be drowsy either. The only way to sleep was to work myself to exhaustion. So even after a full day of training with a Zhid warrior, I would run in place or do some other exercise until I dropped to the straw like a dead man.
On the day I had been in the stable six months, I killed my seventh Zhid. Nincas was a murderously cruel villain, who tortured his servants and slaves to death for the pleasure of it. I enjoyed killing him. We battled for half a day in a series of timed bouts. A bull of a man, he was not about to yield to a slave as long as there were any onlookers, and Gorag had gathered at least a hundred of them to witness the winning of his bet. I could think of nothing but death that day, and when at last I pulled my sword from his belly, I stabbed it in again and again and again, until my arms were covered in blood and I could no longer lift my weapon. I fell to my knees on the hot desert floor and began to laugh, but there was no joy in it. I could not remember joy…
“V’Saro!” Hands slapped my cheeks. “V’Saro, wake up!” Straw poked at my cheek. I couldn’t remember being taken to my cell. I was achy and dull and smelled like death. “Here, have a drink.” My waterskin was thrust into my hands. I drained it and then promptly heaved the water up again. “Come, V’Saro. You’ve made me a rich man, and for that I will do you a favor. A risky matter. No one is supposed to talk to you until you’ve been interrogated.”
Gorag. He had helped me sleep. I slapped the back of my hand to my mouth.
“Yes, yes, speak.”
“Go drown yourself in your cursed water.”
“You’re raving. No one has ever seen such a match as you fought today. The slavemaster comes. He’s heard of your feat… and also of how you finished it.” The wiry little surgeon gestured in disgust at the dark blood that covered my arms and crusted my stiff tunic. “If you want to live, then you’d best gather your wits.”
My existence had no relation to life. I could not feel life any more-thanks to the collar. But I had to keep breathing. There was purpose to my existence. I was not alone. “How much could you win if I make it a year?”
“Not enough to make me a Lord of Zhev’Na, but perhaps enough that I could get out of this blasted camp.”
He stuffed a lump of graybread in my hands. “Eat, and clean yourself. They talk of sending you to Zhev’Na, where the elite of our commanders are trained. But they’ll not send you if they think you’re mad. They won’t allow a madman to live with such strength and skill as yours. Do you understand?”
I grunted.
Gorag slipped out of the cell and locked it quietly, then scurried away in the dark. After a while, I banged on the bars, and the smirking guard came.
“Speak,” he said, to my gesture. “Unless you are going to tell me about some whining slave who needs a nursemaid.”
“I want to wash.”
“Do you now?”
“I have an early match tomorrow with the protégé of Gensei Senat. I’ll sleep better if I’m clean, and it will save you trouble in the morning. Perhaps you’ll want to bet on my victory.”
He shrugged his shoulders and let me out. Likely a small share of Gorag’s winnings prompted his generosity. He sat on the half-wall and watched while I stripped and washed in the slimy sink. I rinsed the blood from my tunic, wrung it out, and hung it on the bars of my cell to dry, and then I pulled straw over me to keep out the chill.
That night I dreamed of a house in a great city, a graceful house whose owner clearly valued the refinements of art and music and literature. A silver flute lay on a music stand, awaiting its player, and books and manuscripts touching every aspect of history and nature and philosophy were poised to enlighten an intelligent eye. The library opened onto a small garden, its soft, sweet air touched with the scent of roses. I wandered through the softly lit passageways looking for someone, though I did not know who. No one was there. Only emptiness. Only sorrow.
The slavemaster woke me to the broiling stench of the slave pen and laid me under compulsions for questioning. It took him an hour to conclude that I was not mad; then he touched my collar to teach me my place and sent me to Zhev’Na.
CHAPTER 33
Seri
For unending days and weeks I ate and slept and stitched, refusing every intrusion of thought or sense until I could scarcely distinguish myself from my companions. Every so often my nagging conscience reminded me that I had purpose to my life, that people were depending on me. But impossibility and drudgery quickly stifled such uncomfortable ideas. I went for days on end without registering a single memorable word or incident or giving the least passing remembrance to my son or my friends or the perilous state of the world. My cherished hope that Karon yet existed somewhere in this world withered and died. He never would have abandoned me in this place.
The morning one of the sewing women was found dead on her pallet was the nadir. Gam had died in her sleep, and only when Kargetha asked where was our eighth did anyone think to mention it. Her body was dragged off by a slave to be stripped and burned. No sign of her remained when we returned to the dormitory that night. She had been a gregarious person as the sewing women went, and not unkind, but she was forgotten as quickly as the breakfast gruel. When I asked the others how long she had sewn in Zhev’Na, they only shrugged and went back to work.
My blood stirred. No one should finish her life in such a fashion. I had come close to it myself, in my days in Dunfarrie, when I believed I had lost everything, and habit was the only reason I could find to get up every morning. That time a mute, desperate stranger had collapsed at my feet, forcing me to re-engage with the world. Gam’s desolate passing pricked me awake before I had to make that long journey all over again. If I was going to die, then it might as well be to some purpose. And so, the next time Kargetha told Zoe to send someone to the Gray House, rather than staying quiet and sullen as the others did, I spoke up.
“I think Zoe should go.” The sewing women gaped at me in shock. I shifted on my feet and used my sleeve to wipe the sweat tickling my brow. “She always sends the rest of us, and never goes herself. ‘Tisn’t right. Dia got kicked last week, and Lun got beat bad when she dropped her basket in the Lords’ house, even though she was run into by a Worship. But Zoe never gets in trouble because she never goes nowhere.”
“What is your name?” asked Kargetha, staring. Incredulous.
“Eda, your Worship.” I cast my eyes down.
“Ah, yes. Eda. The one who talks too much. I think perhaps you have talked too much once again. From now on you will make all deliveries from this group and fetch all the thread, leather, and cloth from the warehouses. Do you hear me?”