Nisa looked at Ruiz with serious eyes. “So your heart is flesh, and not steel?”
“Flesh,” Ruiz said.
She tipped her head to the side and gave him a long speculative look. Ruiz wondered what thoughts that lovely head held, and how she had become such a stranger. The speculation frightened him. Were the Gencha to blame?
Dolmaero looked up. “What’s the matter, Ruiz Aw?” the Guildmaster asked.
“Nothing,” Ruiz muttered.
“Ah. Well,” said Dolmaero, turning to Gunderd, “you seem to know a lot about our captors. May I ask a few questions?”
“Let me ask Ruiz if he thinks it wise,” said Gunderd. “Ruiz?”
“Dolmaero is a thoughtful man,” said Ruiz soberly. “He has a unique perspective and a supple mind. Who knows, he may provide useful insights. Why not inform him?”
Gunderd nodded affably. “Why not? Ask away!”
Dolmaero rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We are among slavers?”
“They are that, at least,” agreed Gunderd.
“And they intend for us… what?”
Now Gunderd looked a bit uneasy. “Ordinarily I could answer with a high degree of certainty: They will market us to the highest bidders, or ship our meat to the Blades if no one offers them a sufficiently profitable price. But… now I’m not entirely sure; there are oddities here.”
Ruiz felt something stir deep in his mind, that paranoid part of himself which resonated to the possibility that the universe might conspire to snuff out the small particle of itself called Ruiz Aw. Ordinarily he sternly repressed such ideas; that way led to madness and, worse, ineffectiveness. But, he thought, times might have changed. “What do you mean?” he asked, as casually as possible.
“Well, there’s The Yellowleaf. Why would a hetman of that rank take any interest in a randomly collected scraggly little group such as ours? Begging your forgiveness, but none of us seems a truly valuable specimen.”
Dolmaero frowned. “Ruiz Aw informs us that we, as key members of a Pharaohan Expiation troupe, have considerable value.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Gunderd. “I don’t mean to demean your value; still… the hetmen deal in very large affairs indeed. The ordinary business of the island is left in the hands of tongues like Gejas.”
“‘Tongues’? What does that mean?”
“Ah. This is one of the more interesting elements of Roderigan society,” said Gunderd, adopting a professorial tone and shaking his finger for emphasis. Ruiz suddenly had no trouble seeing him as the scholar he claimed to have once been — though to the casual eye he might still appear to be a thin naked scoundrel with the crude tattoos of a sailor.
“You see,” Gunderd continued, “Roderigo is a place of intrigue, brutality, betrayal, all to a degree of intensity found in few other places in the human galaxy. The hetmen are obsessed with security, with secrecy. When a new hetman is initiated, he must accept the surgical removal of his tongue and larynx, so that never will the new hetman be tempted to speak a secret. Thus the ‘tongues’: persons trained to anticipate the hetman’s wishes and speak them.”
Dolmaero’s eyes widened. “The hetmen never speak again?”
“Never. Of course, in a way it’s a largely symbolic mutilation, since at need the hetman can communicate directly through dataslate or manual vocoder. Still, it’s one of the reasons why we think the Roderigans have evolved away from humanity.”
“I don’t understand,” said Dolmaero. “I’ve known men unfortunate enough to be born dumb; they seemed as human as anyone.”
“Of course,” said Gunderd. “And they are, they are. But, I understand you come from a client world where life extension is unknown, where all die after a natural span, no matter how rich they might be.”
“True,” said Dolmaero shortly.
“So an affliction with which a man can cope over an ordinary life — though such men may in their loneliness be more different than you imagine — becomes, in a thousand years, something else entirely.” Gunderd’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “How important is language — the exchange of ideas that raised us above the beasts? In its absence, can we retain those other qualities that distinguish us from the beasts: compassion, remorse… love? Perhaps their never-ending silence somehow makes the Roderigans strong enough, cruel enough, bestial enough to perform their terrible deeds. Who knows?”
Dolmaero looked shaken. “What deeds are these, worse than slavery and cannibalism?”
“They’re not cannibals; in fact I understand that they subsist on vegetable matter, finding the flesh of animals too disgustingly mortal to take into their bodies. Strange, that. As to their deeds, I find that I cannot recount any of them, at the moment. I’m already too frightened, and I don’t think I can bear to be more so.” But he smiled at Dolmaero. “Later, perhaps, when I’ve grown used to the fear. We’re so constructed, we humans, that even in the most fearful situations, we eventually grow calmer.”
“I have enough to think about, for a while,” said Dolmaero.
Molnekh returned soon after. He looked happier; his stomach bulged slightly. “Yonder is the nearest feeder,” he said, pointing to the left along the wall. “The pellets are much better than I expected — sweet and savory at the same time.”
Gunderd grinned, not pleasantly. “I see that you intend to cooperate with our keepers.”
“How so?” asked Molnekh.
“You’re fattening yourself for the hook. Notice how plump our fellow prisoners are, for the most part.” Gunderd made a gesture indicating the other humans that filled the hall.
Ruiz looked, and saw that it was true: They were surrounded by hundreds of terrified fat people.
Molnekh looked only briefly uncomfortable. “Always have I eaten gluttonously; never have I fattened.”
“You’re lucky in your metabolism, then,” said Gunderd.
Gejas sat across the wide armorglass table, watching the vastly subtle expressions of The Yellowleaf. His mind had gone to that place where he was no longer Gejas, but an organ of his hetman, more facile to her use than the tongue gone from her mouth had once been.
He spoke into the screen, to a beautiful madwoman in SeaStack. “Corean Heiclaro, The Yellowleaf hears your petition with favor. She is unoffended by your whining; after all, Roderigo is strength personified, and you would be foolish indeed not to perceive your own weakness in any dealings with us.”
It was his life’s work, to read faces, and the little slaver’s face was transparent, a thin lovely veneer over a writhing snake’s nest of bitter passion. He judged that she possessed enough cold amorality to take a small place in Roderigan society, but not enough discipline. Why else would she allow her vengeful lust for the Dilvermoon slayer to so override her sense of self-preservation?
Her mouth twisted into a sour shape, but otherwise she ignored his insults. “Then we have an agreement?”
“Yes. But… our sources tell us the battle is still raging, that more of SeaStack turns to ashes every day. The surviving Lords grow more desperate, do they not? More terrified that someone will escape with their great prize, whatever it is. Are you not afraid to leave your own interests there unprotected?”
“No,” she answered, in a convincingly careless tone.
Time passed in dim red tedium. Ruiz sat on the plastic riser and tried to force his brain to work, without much success.
The others seemed as lethargic as he felt. Dolmaero lay back, apparently asleep. Molnekh leaned against the wall, face blank. A few meters away, Gunderd and Nisa spoke together in low voices, and Ruiz wondered what they could possibly find to talk about. Einduix the cook remained quiescent in his odd coma.