“You said that you couldn’t tell who he was looking for. Could you tell who paid him?” Laeth’s voice was still excessively gentle, so she knew that her face wasn’t as blank as she wanted it to be, and she redoubled her efforts.
“No,” she answered. The metal of the doorknob was cold against her hand. “I could tell it was someone that the guard was not afraid of, and that this wasn’t the first time he’d asked the guard to do this kind of work. The guard wasn’t worried about leaving his post, so it was someone with enough authority to stop any punishments. It wasn’t your brother, because he wouldn’t have had to bribe the guard at all. You’d know who would best fit such a description.”
“Lord Jarroh?” he suggested, doubtfully.
Rialla opened her eyes and shook her head. “No. All the servants are terrified of him and I’m sure that the guards would be too. Besides, that’s not his style. He would never hire someone to spy; it’s not something that a proper noble would do.”
“The only other person besides Lord Jarroh, my brother and myself with the authority to halt a punishment would be my uncle, Lord Winterseine. But he’s not here yet.”
“How about the overseer?” asked Rialla.
Laeth shook his head. “Dram’s orders wouldn’t be questioned. He’d never have to bribe a guard to patrol the corridors of the keep rather than the walls. Not to mention that the guard would be terrified of him.”
Rialla nodded and then said, “Lord Winterseine’s servant Tamas was here this evening.”
Laeth nodded. “I saw him and asked around. He came with Uncle’s luggage as he always does. Were you chasing after him this evening? I wondered where you were. He probably left to tell Uncle about the poisoning attempt.”
“Couldn’t he have arranged for a guard to watch someone for your uncle?” suggested Rialla.
“He could have,” replied Laeth, “but I just can’t see my uncle doing something as improper as spying; he’s worse than Karsten when it comes to decorous behavior.”
“It is possible that the guard was sent to protect someone rather than spy on them,” Rialla commented. “I don’t suppose talking about it all night will help us. I think I will sleep in the slaves’ quarters; sometimes they have information no one else has.”
Before he had a chance to protest, Rialla slipped through the door and into the darkened hallway.
The slaves’ quarters were in the basement, next to the wine cellar. Rialla supposed that they had originally been put there so as not to use space in the valuable ground floor, while allowing the slaves to attend their owners quickly. Whatever the reason, the result was that the quarters were more comfortable than the rest of the castle. Underground there were no chilly drafts in the winter, and in the summer when the rest of the castle was baking, the quarters were cool enough to need the single blanket that lay neatly at the foot of all the bunks.
In Darran, slaves were used for pleasure rather than work, so most were female. The few male slaves primarily worked in pleasure houses where a wealthy Darranian would be preserved from the social stigmatism of homosexuality. Women in Darran did not own slaves. With little need to separate male and female, the slave quarters at Westhold consisted of a single, large room.
Rialla didn’t really expect to find out anything in the quarters, but she wasn’t ready to relax and sleep either. It might have been a touch from her talent or just instinct, but something caused her to hesitate before she entered.
“… sleep here. You will stay here until I come for you in the morning. Do you understand?”
The man’s voice was gentle and quiet. There was nothing in it to account for the sudden cramping of Rialla’s stomach or the shaking of her hands.
She turned frantically to the locked door of the wine cellar. Traders teach their children how to pick locks and pockets as soon as the tots are tall enough to reach a doorknob. The wine cellar lock had never been intended to keep out anyone but the servants, and it gave her little trouble.
Rialla closed the door of the cellar quietly behind her. She huddled against the wood in the darkness and heard the man’s hard-soled boots click across the stone floor. He paused briefly before the wine cellar door, as if he’d heard it open. But he continued up the stairs without investigating further.
Rialla folded her arms around her knees and listened to the pounding of her heart in her ears. What was her former owner doing in Lord Karsten’s hold? As Laeth had put it, Karsten would be as likely to invite a swineherd as a slave trainer to his celebration.
She’d spent seven years as his slave, but most of that time was spent in the little bar in Kentar, the capital city of Darran. The rest had been in a small estate in the south. Uneasily, she remembered little hints that he might have been more than a simple slave trainer: the servants who called him “lord,” and the ambience of age and respectability at the estate where she was trained.
If he was highly connected, it would be possible for him to take part in polite society, as long as his occupation as a slave trainer could be kept quiet. Laeth, she knew, had never had any interest in the slave trade. It was feasible that Laeth knew her former owner, but didn’t know he was a slave trainer.
Rialla knew that she ought to go back to Laeth’s room and warn him that the slave trainer was in the castle, but… in the dark, beer-scented room she was safe. She curled into a tighter ball in the corner of the room and rested her cheek against the side of a wooden barrel, letting the rough wood dig into her tattooed skin.
She despised the cowardice that had been beaten into her, but that didn’t keep her from shaking with bone-deep tremors. If her father could see her, he would be ashamed. She’d worked so hard to shed the habits of a slave, and all it took to bring them back was Laeth’s anger or her old master’s voice.
She swore silently and dug her nails into her palms, reminding herself that he would be unlikely to visit the quarters again this night. With a shuddering sigh, she came to her feet, wiping the tears from her face with the sides of her hands. Like most of the Traders she had good night vision, but in the underground cellar the darkness was absolute. It took her a moment to find the latch on the door.
Taking a deep breath, she exited the wine cellar, locked it, and walked with outward calm to the slave quarters. If one of the slaves noticed that she’d been crying, they wouldn’t comment upon it—such was a slave’s lot. Quietly she let herself into the large room.
A few scattered torches lit the large room, allowing Rialla to see that only twenty of the bunks were occupied. That meant the rest of the slaves were either working, or sleeping in their owner’s rooms. There was no one awake, so Rialla strode quietly to a pair of unoccupied bunks away from the door.
She climbed to the top bunk and stretched out on it: only a new slave would take the vulnerable bottom bunk. Among slaves, status was very important. Occasionally fights broke out in the quarters when one slave tried to establish dominance. The top bunk offered some protection against unwanted aggression.
Rialla had started to close her eyes when she heard a slight noise from the bottom bunk next to her. She leaned over the edge of her bed and looked at the girl lying there.
As a Trader, and later as a horse trainer in Sianim, she’d seen every color that a person could come in—from her own pale ivory to the deep bronze of the Ynstrah people—but this slave’s skin was closer to black. Fine dark hair that might be brown or red in daylight cloaked her shoulders in waves of curls. Her face was buried in the thin mattress and her body shook as she cried.