When at last the conversation turned to Kaeska’s unexpected guest, I pricked up my ears like the good hound I was spending so much of my time emulating lately.
“Where is he from?” inquired Gar innocently, abandoning her attempts to hold Shek Kul’s attentions.
Kaeska swallowed a mouthful of sour pickled fish. “The north somewhere.”
Laio looked thoughtful but did not say anything. She had been asking me about the precise geography of the Old Empire recently, but everyone else seemed happy to treat the mainland as one undistinguished lump, for all that they could describe every reef and islet of the Archipelago and name its owner besides.
“A mainlander,” Shek Kul’s expression was somewhere between pity and contempt, “they are all the same.”
Kaeska tilted her head in a rather feline gesture. “His people live on islands; I do not find him as uncouth as most.”
“What does he have to trade?” Mahli looked up from her plate. “Are his people interested in proper barter or do they reduce everything to metal bits and paltry gems like the rest of them?”
Kaeska shrugged. “The north has long been a source of metals, timber, leather, has it not?”
I couldn’t decide if she was speaking from genuine ignorance or deliberately being vague. I would have to make sure Laio knew the Ice Islands had none of these resources, to my certain knowledge.
“Let me know when you find out what he wishes to trade for.” Mahli laid a negligent hand on her abdomen as she smiled fondly at Kaeska. “Gar and Laio have been making up their accounts for me and I have been assessing the treasury.”
“Have you examined those sapphires I had from Rath Tek, my dear?” Shek Kul spoke through a mouthful of spiky green stems. “I think you should be able to do very well with them the next time we visit Relshaz.”
Kaeska’s expression froze at this unusually unsubtle exchange and I even saw Laio blink a little at the realization that Mahli had been taking on so many of Kaeska’s duties even before the birth of her child.
“If this man is from a northern land, perhaps he might trade for that cloth of yours, Laio,” Gar rushed to fill the awkward silence, her eyes betraying an unaccustomed confusion. “It’s too thick for anyone in the Islands to want it, even if it were not such poor quality.”
“Oh dear, Laio.” Kaeska’s face was instantly sisterly concern. “Are you in difficulties with your weavers?”
Laio hastily denied any such thing and began to explain how she had only been looking to help the foolish Tani Kaasik. Kaeska nodded and sympathized, but every time Laio looked to be coming out ahead, Gar innocently sank another barbed comment into the sensitive conversation. I was surprised to see Mahli remain aloof from the fencing but she concentrated on discussing household matters with Shek Kul, which seemed to keep Kaeska all the more determined to pursue the issue of Laio’s mistakes.
As the night deepened beyond past the slatted shutters, I saw the greater moon rise above the battlements, not yet quite at the half as it waned, with the lesser moon just showing an edge above the trees. I tried to remember when I’d last seen an Almanac and how many days the Emperor’s Chronicler had decreed for Aft-Spring this year. As far as I could estimate, from what I remembered of the charted phases of the two moons, we would be in the early days of For-Summer, around the 5th or 6th.
Soft-footed house slaves answered Shek Kul’s abrupt summons with small lamps and I hastily gathered my wits. Delighted to realize this interminable evening was about to end, I saw my own relief trebled in Laio’s eyes. Gar and Kaeska linked hands in high good humor and led the way up the broad central stairs though I saw the satisfaction on Kaeska’s face falter when she turned and realized Shek Kul was giving Mahli the support of his own arm. When Shek Kul did not leave his wives at the landing to go to his own apartments on the floor below, Kaeska abruptly dropped Gar’s hand with a theatrical yawn.
“Do forgive me, I am so tired.” She turned away almost instantly toward her own suite. “Irith!”
The poor wretch hastened up the remaining stairs like a beaten hound and Kaeska swept through the opened door to her own apartments without a backward glance.
Shek Kul muttered something I did not catch as he was embracing Mahli at the time. She laughed loudly as she took Grival’s arm down the corridor, a sound that would have carried clearly through the louvered doors of Kaeska’s apartments as she passed.
“To bed!” Shek Kul kissed Gar briskly and then turned to catch Laio around the waist with a swiftness that caught everyone by surprise. He swept her off her feet and planted a smacking kiss on the exposed swell of her bosom. Laio giggled with delight. At her nod I hurried to open the door to her bedroom. As I stood to let the Warlord and his wriggling armful past, I saw Gar’s face, scarlet and a suspicion of tears in her eyes. She turned on her heel and strode down the far corridor toward her own rooms.
Beyond hoping that she didn’t take her chagrin out on Sezarre with a cane switch, I had no time to worry about Gar’s feelings. Shek Kul had Laio’s dress off her shoulders and down to her waist, hands cupping her ripe breasts, by the time I had dragged my pallet out into the corridor and fetched the canvas bag that held all the possessions I was allowed.
At times like this it was nigh on impossible to pretend to myself that I was a servant, not a slave. I was weary and ravenous, my back and shoulders were knotted with pain and, for all anyone cared, I might as well have been a door-post. Shek Kul’s falcons were treated better than us body slaves sometimes. I cursed softly to myself, loosened the thongs on my chainmail and bent over, arms outstretched to shrug it off over my head. The crash it made hitting the polished wood of the floor seemed to echo all around the silent corridors and I froze for a moment, half expecting a rebuke from Laio. I need not have worried; there was scarcely a pause in the sounds of rising passion coming through the flimsy door.
Getting the weight off my shoulders was some improvement, but my aching muscles still screamed their indignation. If I’d been able to go and find Sezarre or Grival, we could have helped each other out with some of the remarkably effective rubbing oils the Aldabreshi favored, but I now knew that once a Warlord’s lady has retired to her rooms for the night her slave is expected to stay with her. Unless he is sitting on his bed in the corridor like a hound that can’t be trusted with the furniture, that is. I couldn’t even hope for a proper bathtub for a hot soak in the morning. Laio had told me in no uncertain terms that only mainlanders wallowed in their own filth, while decent people rinsed themselves clean with fresh water. Rubbing my own shoulders as best I could, I tried to ignore the clamorous demands of my stomach. I hadn’t been this hungry since Laio had arbitrarily kept me without food for a day and a half as punishment for some mealtime transgression that I had never fully understood.
Shek Kul’s wordless expressions of pleasure were settling into a regular rhythm behind the door of Laio’s room and her uninhibited responses were answering him enthusiastically, accelerating to moans of rapture. I knew from previous nights that, when it came to chasing a snake through the undergrowth, the Warlord was a man of considerable stamina for his age, so I padded stealthily away on bare feet. The pages who spent their days in a lobby off the stairwell were always provided with water and I reckoned I should at least be able to get a drink to stave off the worst pangs of hunger.