Speaking in her usual dead tones, Fingel said, "His magnificence, Devoth of the Lvin, summons you." She held out the small marker of carved silver that proved it.
"Does he?" Rialus took the marker and rubbed his finger across the Lvin emblem embossed on it. "What do you think would happen if I didn't go? Told him I was busy?"
Fingel stood, no expression animating her features, as if her mind were blank and she had not heard him speak. It was her customary expression. She had looked at him directly only once. Early on, he inadvertently spoke to her in the Meinish tongue. It just happened, a flashback to his years spent in Cathgergen, brought on by the racial purity of her features. She raised her gray eyes and studied him, the look on her face the sad, sympathetic expression one might fix upon a child with a damaged mind. And that was it. She turned away and never, as far as Rialus could remember, looked him in the face again. Her constant silence prompted him only to blather more than usual.
"Am I important enough to him now that he would tolerate insolence?" he asked. "I should be. Where would he be without me? I'm his expert on the Known World. Perhaps," he added, offering a faint invitation to conspiracy with his tone and grin, "we should tell him I'm not well. A headache perhaps. What think you of that?"
The girl could have been asleep with her eyes open.
Even a beauty like you can get tiresome, Rialus said silently, though he did not mean it. Aloud, he acquiesced, "Fine. I'll meet with his magnificence."
Fingel pivoted. He followed her, his eyes incapable of looking away from her figure. He almost detoured to the toilet chamber before he left. There, in the near privacy, he regularly used mental images of Fingel as he pleasured himself. He knew he could have physically taken her anytime he wanted to. She was a slave in his complete power. Devoth had made that clear. For that matter, he had bedded servants back in Acacia who he knew were not terribly willing. Just a part of the privilege of his office, it had seemed. But here he was not so sure he could face Fingel's reaction.
She deposited Rialus in the care of four of Devoth's slave soldiers. They were young men, thick about the chest and as haughty as newly appointed Marah, though sullen as well. Two of them had the Lvin clan's white facial tattooing. The third had whiskers. None of them were a match in appearance to the victor of the melee, but few men would be. Like Fingel, they spared no words for Rialus. As they trudged through the city streets, Rialus framed by the square of them, they occasionally talked among themselves. When Rialus offered a thought or question, however, stone silence. They acted as if they were waiting for an excuse to ram their rather horrific-looking pikes through his guts.
Nothing new. All the slaves he had interacted with in Ushen Brae made it clear that they held him in complete disdain. Total lack of interest. He could make no sense of it. Shouldn't they look to him as a connection with their homeland? Anger or hope. Either emotion would have made more sense to him. They gave him nothing. Despite his strangely privileged position, this troubled Rialus. Might he find no allies here? Nobody to turn toward to help him find the means to defy his captors? Though he could not define the shape of his eventual defiance, he was sure it must come. Must, if he could find the way to achieve it. But he was no closer now, weeks later. He still knew nothing, it seemed, of this land or people.
If he could slip away on his own for a bit, explore where he wanted to, probe around… Devoth had promised him that he would learn about Ushen Brae. What had he said? You'll see many grand things. You're our guest, so you'll see the things that make us great. So much for that. He had never left the environs of his own quarters except for excursions of a mile or so to meet with other Auldek officials, escorted always by slave guards. Would that he could see what they were hiding from him.
Although, having thought that, maybe being by himself would not be a good idea either. There were things living in Avina that he had no interest in coming upon by accident. Once, while following Devoth through a long hallway, past doors that opened onto different gymnasium chambers, he had seen a creature that made him stop abruptly. It had caught his eye because of its size, which was like that of no other creature he had ever seen. Like one of the foulthings, perhaps, but he had never set eyes on one of those.
This thing stood to the height of three or four men; and even that was not an accurate measurement, for it squatted on long, bent legs. It was winged as well-large, black, jointed wings, membranous and foul, awkwardly held out as it waddled. It looked like some sort of bat, made gigantic. It was furred on the chest and around its long-jawed, canine face. Horrible, and somehow made more so by the sight of an Auldek high on its back, fastened there in a harness. The creature leaped about at the Auldek's direction, its wings aiding it. The Auldek held a spear in one hand and had several more quivered beside him.
"Nice, huh? That's a kwedeir," Devoth had said, having stepped back to see what Rialus was gaping at. "You don't want to go in there. It's near feeding time."
As Devoth said this, Rialus noticed a slave being led in and then pushed against his will toward the creature. "You don't mean it's going to-"
"Eat that man? Yes, I do. Strange, the way they eat. They like to stalk their food. Even when it's presented to them, they stalk it, and then leap and bite it around its head and then pause. Every time they do the same. They pause and listen as the unfortunate one screams. And then they bite down and rip the head off while the body still flails about beneath. Do you want to watch?"
His eyes seemed inclined to do just that, but Rialus snapped up a hand to block the view. "By the Giver, no!"
Devoth rumbled out his mirth, but he nudged Rialus to get him moving down the corridor. A few steps farther on and a high-pitched scream cut through the air, an anguished cry of terror. Devoth did not so much as flinch. He did, however, grunt and say, "We use them to catch runaways. Good sport."
On reaching Devoth's estate, his escorts put Rialus in the care of the household servants and then turned away without a word. And what then? Was he rushed right in to an audience with his magnificence? Hardly. Instead, as he expected, he was told to wait in the inner courtyard. It was a beautiful enough space, partially open to the air, with pillars of marble that supported trellises thick with flowering vines. A pool in the floor gurgled, home to eel-like fish that cocked their heads and followed Rialus's every move. It would have been a pleasant enough area to wait in, if there had been something to sit on. What kind of waiting area did not provide a place to sit?
Typical Auldek, he thought, display luxury while making one uncomfortable at the same time.
Standing, he wondered what Devoth wanted to talk about this time. He feared he had exhausted his knowledge of usable information. Their last meeting, actually, had a note of finality to it, as if everything had been decided. Devoth had summed up the entire plan of attack. It was to be one great march of virtually the entire Auldek population, all except those unfit the journey. Many of the divine children would accompany them, warriors and servants both. The Auldek did not seem to fear to return the quota to their homeland, at least not the ones they were planning on taking with them.