Jeff Salyards - Scourge of the Betrayer

The indecision must have been inscribed on my face, but she waved me in with her half-hand, which was surely the most disconcerting invitation I’d ever received.

I found a space against a barrel and, after folding my blanket over and placing it behind me as a cushion, sat down as well, though I shifted and tried again, as nothing I did seemed to make any position remotely comfortable.

Lloi smiled, but had the good grace not to laugh outright. After letting me settle in, she held out a pouch balanced in her palm filled with some sort of seeds.

I’d never eaten seeds before, and assuredly not when offered in a fingerless hand, but uncertain how she’d take a refusal, I reached into the pouch and grabbed a few. She pulled out some with her other hand, popped them in her mouth, and began working them around. A few seconds later, she spit some shells out the back of the wagon.

I did my best to mimic her, but breaking the seeds open in my mouth without swallowing the shells proved more difficult than I imagined. I managed to work a few open with my teeth and then promptly swallowed the shells, choking and sputtering as I did, and this time Lloi did laugh. However, hers seemed less prone to mockery than Braylar’s, and it wasn’t harsh on the ear, so I smiled in return.

I broke a few more open and managed to dislodge the contents without swallowing the shells this time. The meat of the seeds, tiny though they might be, was surprisingly tart, but not unpleasant. Still, not being near the rear of the wagon and not wanting to spit them onto Braylar’s back on the front, I had no idea what to do with the shells. Having no alternative but trying to swallow the tiny husks again, I spit them into my hand and dropped them on my lap.

Lloi spit a few more shells out the back, still smiling. “Bought them in the city. Good?”

I nodded, but when she offered me the pouch again, I said, “Many thanks, but I’m fine.”

Lloi withdrew the pouch, pulled a few more out. “As you like.” She popped them in her mouth and turned to look out the back of the wagon.

Worrying that this would be the full extent of our conversation, and reluctant to return to Braylar’s side until requested, I said, “Forgive me if this is too brusque, but it strikes me as, well, a little odd that you’re with a Syldoon commander. What exactly do you do for him?”

She turned back to me. “I do what needs doing. That’s what I do. Got nothing to do with the Syldoon, except by incident. Captain the only one that got my loyalty, and him only just barely.” She smiled broadly, discovered a shell in her teeth, worked the tip of her tongue around to dislodge it, then spit it out. “Syldoon the same as all men-greedy, crafty devils that use you when they got appetite, spit your husk out when they’re done. A lot like these.” Out came another shell. “No, I’m not tethered to them nor theirs. Just Captain Noose. Him and me, we got some sort of…” she searched for the word and stumbled across the wrong one, “affiliatory thing betwixt us.” The words “Captain Noose” conflated, with the rugged “t” dropping out entirely.

I said, “So, you have some kind of history or bond, is that it?”

“You asking if he mounts me?” She cackled, spitting out shells. “No, none of that. No mounting going on.”

That wasn’t quite where I was going with that. “How is it you came to share each other’s company?”

“Same as any two people, I guess. One day, we were strangers. The next, we weren’t.”

I could see I’d need to be exceptionally specific. “Where did you meet?”

“Captain Noose was right-you got more questions than a leper got sores. Met in a whorehouse.”

I coughed and tried to hide my shock.

She laughed again. “You got a lot of red in the face for not being the one there. Wasn’t you whoring or being whored, was it? Or maybe that’s it, maybe you was wondering which it was I was doing there? Maybe that’s what coloring you up like an apple, eh? Well, I’ll tell you straight, I wasn’t fucking of my own volition, and that’s as factful a thing as ever’s been said. Clear it up some?” Seeing my hot cheeks, she added, “All bookmasters as delicate as you, or you that glass-fragile all on your lonesome? Or maybe you’re just struck dumb because you’re wondering how a beauty like me came to be a whore, that it?” She cawed a rough laugh and continued, “Like I said, wasn’t no choice of mine. Didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘Lloi, I think today’s the day you go whore.’” Another few seeds in, another few shells out. “Sold off before my thirteenth summer.” She said all of this with the complete nonchalance of someone talking about porridge. “That’s right. My tribe gave me a trim first,” she wiggled her nubs, “something nice to remember them by, then they sold me to the first slave company that come by. Turns out, these slavers were on the coin for a silk station, edge of the Green Sea. So that was that. Until it wasn’t.”

“Why… why would they do such a thing?”

“Expect they didn’t want nobody thinking it was on accident. A missing hand, well, that could be just about anything, couldn’t it? Crushed under a wagon wheel, eaten by a ripper, a souvenir of battle. Lots of ways to go getting a hand lopped off. But the fingers, all of them but the little bit by the meaty part of the hand proper? Well, hard to mistake that for much else but a real deliberate chopping, one by one. Not many accidents happen that particular.”

I’m sure I blanched before clarifying, “Why did they mutilate you at all, I mean?”

“On account of what I was, of course. No mistaking that for much else, neither. Some tribes, they send my kind through the Godveil.” Lloi shivered a bit, though I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or done for my benefit. “Ought to count myself lucky they just cut me up some and turned me whore. Silk house would’ve done me in, time enough, weren’t for the captain coming along, but the Veil… well, that would’ve done it straight away, sure as wind is windy. Seen it happen. No kind of way to go at all.”

She looked at me blankly, gauging my reaction, then continued, “Guessing they do something different to my kind where you from, eh? Can’t guess it’s six shades of nicer, though. Might even be worse, though can’t imagine how. Still, people got a whole lot of creativity when it comes to maiming and killing.”

She pulled the drawstring on the pouch shut, tucked it into a sturdier leather pouch hanging from her belt and looked ready to close the conversation off. But she was right about one thing-I did have questions, and I wanted to hear more, so I tried a different tack. “I’m sorry to hear that happened to you. I certainly have nothing in my experience that compares. But we’re not all that different, for that.”

Her hands fell into her lap and she leaned against a barrel, looking me up and down in that quiet, disconcerting way she had. “Do tell.”

“Well,” I tried to frame the words carefully to avoid being disingenuous, “I might not have been a nomad, or a girl, or mutilated and sold off exactly, but I do know what it’s like to have no family to speak of.”

She nodded slowly, still seeming less than convinced. “You do, do you?”

I debated backing away from the statement all together, leaving the conversation where it was. I wasn’t sure how revealing I really wanted to be-but if that’s what it took to keep her talking, I supposed it was worth it. “My mother worked at an inn, a lot like the Three Casks, but it was on a road. I was born there, grew up there. I never knew who my father was, and my mother refused to discuss him at all. Even bringing up his name earned me a wooden spoon across the backside, so I learned to avoid the topic.