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terror. I noticed how slowly Gloag and his men had come to the
assistance of the slave-master. Now they stepped forward,
whistling their rattans about their heads, and I was prepared to be
taken back to my room. Here Gloag administered the single stroke
I had earned by spilling wine on my silk glove. I thought his stroke
oddly fierce. He whispered to me as they left.
The time is not yet. Do not arouse their suspicions, or by
Father Mehzta-Makku I ll break your back myself!
Then he was gone.
Of course I tried to find out about the slave who had
smashed and spilled the water jar; but no one would tell me
anything and I fumed and fretted in that stifling room.
Occasionally, wearing those infernally idiotic clothes, I would be
taken out into a tree-shaded courtyard for exercise, and twice I saw
the green-gowned and veiled form of a woman I surmised to be
Natema watching me. No noble woman of Zenicce would venture
beyond the confines of her enclave unveiled.
There were three more interviews with her, as unsatisfactory
as the first, and on the last occasion she made me strip for her, a
proceeding I found extraordinarily unpleasant and degrading; but
necessary in light of the swordsman in the alcove and the rattans of
the beings of Mehzta on guard outside the door. I gathered from
the laughing comments of the pearl-strung slave girls that the
princess was sizing me up and taking stock of my points as she
might a zorca or a half-vove. The half-voves were the smaller and
lighter and far less-fierce animals, like small voves, these people
used.
Her contempt blazed on me, her scorn dripped on me, her
complete disregard of me as a human being showed me how
utterly she despised me. I did not care. I craved news of Delia.
How Natema loved to flaunt her insolent rosy curves in my face! I
sensed she was attempting to arouse me to some grand act of folly.
I was not to be so lightly gulled.
Once she had Gloag and his men flog me with their rattans
for no reason other, I supposed, than a girlish desire to impress me
with her power. This time Gloag took it easy on me, and my skin
was not broken, although it hurt damnably enough. All the time
Natema stood with her lower lip caught between her teeth, her
cornflower blue eyes enormous and shining, her hands clasped
convulsively to her breast.
Understand, rast, that I am your mistress, your divine lord
and master! You are as nothing beneath my feet! She stamped her
jeweled foot at me, her breast heaving with the tumult of her
passion. I did not smile at her, although it would have been
treacherously easy a thing to do, for I thought the gesture
meaningless. Nevertheless, I did say: I trust you sleep well
tonight, Princess.
She stepped forward and struck me with her dainty white
hand. A blow across the face I scarcely felt, so intense were the
pains from my back. I looked at her, brows lowered, chin lifted,
broodingly.
You would make an interesting slave, I said.
She whirled away, shaking with a passion that Gloag, for one,
did not want to try. He and his men hustled me out and a crone
with a withered face and one eye doctored my back. I d been used
to flogging as part of naval discipline and four days, with the help
of ointments and rest, saw me completely recovered. Gloag had
proved a friend.
Can you use a spear? he asked me as the crone worked on
my back.
Yes.
Will you use one, when the time is here?
Yes.
He bent down to me as I lay face down on the bed of my
room. His blunt, square, powerful face studied mine quizzically.
Then he nodded, as though finding something that satisfied him.
Good, he said.
The Noble House of Esztercari employed no Rapa slaves.
According to the other slaves it was because the Rapas stank in the
nostrils of their mistress. This would be true. They employed no
Rapa guards. There were Ochs, and the Mehztas, who were slaves
but with petty powers involving the use of the rattan, and other
fearsome creatures I occasionally glimpsed about the opal palace.
And still I could find no word of Delia or the girl who might be
Delia of Delphond.
The palace was a warren in the manner of these immense
structures built by slave-labor and accreting through the years
under the varying whims of successive dynasties. I had a limited
run of those corridors and halls beneath the roof; but all exits were
guarded by strong detachments of Chuliks, who were born with
two arms and two legs like men and who possessed faces which,
apart from the three-inch long upward-reaching tusks, might have
been human; but who in all else knew nothing of humanity. Their
skin was a smooth oily yellow and their skulls were shaved except
for a green-dyed rope of hair that fell to their waists. Their eyes
were small and round and black and habitually fixed in a gaze of
hypnotic rigidity. They were strong, bodies well-fleshed with fat,
and they were quick. The House of Esztercari uniformed them in a
dove-gray tunic with emerald green bands. Their weapons were the
same as gentlemen and nobles of Zenicce the rapier and the
dagger.
The rapier is known generally as the Jiktar commander of a
thousand and its inseparable companion the dagger as the
Hikdar commander of a hundred. Of the throwing knife men will
often say, dismissingly, that it is the Deldar the commander of
ten. In this I think they make a mistake. For some strange reason
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