“Cat,” was the only word he could muster.
She lightened the pressure on his throat. “What do you mean, ‘cat’?”
“You know what I mean.” He panted. “There’s no food here anymore. I’m hungry. We all are. Cats be good eatin’. One of ’em ran into the store here. Make three meals out of a cat, I can, especially if it’s a big tomcat. Now, thanks to a street whore of the Ghetto, I’m still hungry!”
“Eating cats are you, little man?” she gloated, maintaining the pressure on his throat. “My last meal was highland pheasant with raptor’s eggs.”
“Not just a whore, but a lying whore,” he snarled. “That be only outside food, and only for the rich, at that!”
She released her foot. “Get up.”
He was perhaps all of three and a half feet tall, with dark hair, filthy clothes, and pudgy, greasy fingers. But she sensed a hidden intelligence in him. A perfect nocturnal creature of the Ghetto, he would be able to come and go virtually unnoticed. Such a person could be useful.
“What was your crime?” she asked.
“Robbery. I stole some bread for my family. We were starving. But they’re all dead now.”
The twisted mental image of a dwarfed hunchback trying to hide a loaf of bread that was the size of his arm brought a smile to her face. Growing even more curious, Succiu circled the dwarf as she examined him. The first finger of her left hand toyed with her bottom lip as the seed of an idea came to her.
“How would you like to leave this place? For services rendered, of course?”
“No street whore of the Ghetto has the power of freedom,” he said sarcastically.
Succiu was beginning to feel that some instruction was in order.
“That’s no way to speak to a mistress of the Coven,” she said quietly, pointing a finger at the dwarf.
“Mistress of the Coven, my arse!” He laughed. One of his fingers came up in an obscene gesture.
She had noticed the lantern hook earlier, long since looted of its oil lamp. It was fastened to the shop wall just to the left of the broken door. It looked sturdy enough, and if it was not, she would make it so.
Deliberately, almost gently, she levitated the dwarf up and back through the air toward the shop, and neatly hung him upon the hook through the back of his muddy coat. She turned her exotic head this way and that, examining him as if he were some kind of prize she had just won at a Eutracian province fair. Still defiant and not understanding the gravity of his situation, he wiggled all four limbs at once as if trying to obtain some form of purchase in the humid night air. Finally, he became still. But she could see that it was a stillness born of defiance.
“Bitch!” he spat venomously.
“Still don’t believe me, little man?” she asked. “I would have thought this small demonstration might have convinced you.”
“No cheap magic trick will convince me you’ve a true sorceress’ power.” He glared. “Besides, the mistresses of the Coven all live in a grand castle. Everybody knows that. No, you’re a street whore. Better looking than the others here, I grant you, and a whore with more tricks up her skirt than most, but a cheap street whore just the same.”
A smile came to her lips, exposing her perfect, white teeth to the moonlight. “What is your name, little man?” she asked, arms akimbo.
“Geldon.”
“Well, Geldon, it seems I have taken an interest in you. And, as I have said, I am a mistress of the Coven. But no matter. If you do not accept my offer, you will perish. Simple. And the secret that I sometimes walk the Ghetto by night will die with you.” She laughed at the irony. “Such a little man with such a big secret!”
He tried to spit at her again, but was unable to reach her. “For the last time, bitch, leave me be, leave me!” he screamed fruitlessly. “Go find some other poor fool to rent your crotch to!”
At last, she decided.
With her arms spread to the stars, her back arched, and her eyes closed, she began the incantation:
Two shafts of bright blue light shot from her hands, joined, and impaled the dangling dwarf to the wall. Immediately he began to tremble. The second mistress of the Coven was executing a Blood Pox. For the first time, true terror began to escape from the dwarf’s beady eyes as his little body shuddered, then began to shake more violently. Sweat streamed from his face and hands, and his clothing actually began to wrinkle from the heat as the temperature of his blood rose.
“Agree to my request soon, or I will take you past the point of no return,” Succiu hissed, watching her handiwork. “It is not a pretty sight.” She laughed. “But by then, of course, you will already be blind.” Still, the dwarf refused to speak. As he shook more violently against the clapboards of the building, Succiu continued to raise the temperature of his blood, the shaft of blue light becoming more intense in the dark night. She could swear she was beginning to see the toes of his boots starting to curl.
A stream of urine began to run down the inside of his left leg, then to his boot, and finally to the ground, forming a stinking, steaming, pinkish puddle beneath him. Then he started to scream. His body convulsed against the wall.
“I agree,” he said faintly.
“You’ll have to do better than that.” She laughed. “Address me correctly!”
“I agree, Mistress!” he screamed, his eyes rolling back in his head. She noticed a trickle of blood from one ear running down the side of his squat neck.
Immediately the shaft of blue light vanished, and Geldon crashed to the wooden sidewalk. Succiu stepped neatly around the pools of perspiration, urine, and blood, and stood over the scarcely breathing dwarf. With a smile, she bent down gracefully, touched a finger to the blood on the left side of his face just below the ear, and placed a drop of it on her tongue.
From that moment on, he was hers.
Taking him back to the Recluse, she had protected him with time enchantments and healed him to make him more useful. With two exceptions. She left his hunched back. And she left him impotent and sterile—results of the extreme blood temperature. Once he was well enough, she began using him to do her hunting for her. Hunting the Parthalonian countryside for the slaves that now made up the population of the Stables. And she had purposely left him broken. Teasing him with the possibility of a cure ensured that he would remain faithful.
She had instructed the Recluse maidservants to clean him, clothe him, and give him quarters. The First Mistress, upon seeing Geldon, had ordered him from the castle and rebuked Succiu for having brought him into their midst without permission. She found the hunchbacked dwarf disgusting to look at, not to mention an inferior life form, being a male of unendowed blood. But when Succiu had outlined her plans for using the dwarf to help her populate the Stables, Failee had relented, provided that Geldon was to be controlled and not left to wander the magnificent hallways of the Recluse at his own discretion. Succiu had gladly agreed and initiated the idea of the rings, thereby both humiliating the dwarf and condemning him to a life of servitude wearing the hated collar.
Smiling into the mirror as she admired herself in the stunning red gown, she knew that she would soon be gone from this place. Then she would have no need for the dwarf, and she could kill him.
After a final look of approval at her reflection, she walked to the door. Opening it, she reached down and picked up the end of the jeweled leash that the dutiful dwarf was holding up to her in both palms. Then she led the way down the hall, the dwarf waddling as best he could in order to keep up.
As Failee ascended the circular stone staircase, her mind raced. Moisture dripped from the dark stone walls, occasionally hissing as it fell into the wall torches. If the entire Coven was not present at the appointed hour, she would see to it that they were punished with some mild form of the Vagaries.