Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

The guards took them across a narrow section of wasteland where they walked a beaten earth path between shivering silver-green walls of waist high grass, grass that buzzed with hidden insects and rustled gently in a soft erratic wind. Xalloor grimaced and scratched at her thin arms, rubbed at eyes beginning to water and redden; she sniffed and spat, glared at a guard who whapped her with his prod because her spittle had just missed the toe of his boot.

Ahead of them was a massive wall more than thirty meters high, a wall that rambled over the grassy hummocks and dipped into the water that spread out to the horizon on three sides. Aslan decided it was a lake because the smell told her the water was fresh, not salt. The lead guard thumped with his prod on an ogeed gate; it swung open in heavy, well-oiled silence.

The line of slaves marched through arcades and colonnades and formal gardens manicured to an order and an artificiality that seemed to deny the ordinary processes of change and decay. Jaunniko was just ahead of Aslan; she could hear him muttering under his breath as he looked around, his shoulders were pulled in and his fingers were twitching. She thought she knew what he was feeling because this dead place grated on her too. Figures appeared in the promenades, posed in the arches, showing a flicker of interest in the newcomers that faded almost as it was born. They were uniformly taller and fairer than the guards, with a high degree of physical beauty; male or female, it made no difference, in their own way they were as unalive as the garden, mobile ornaments as clipped and trained as the hedges were. Never, she told herself, I’ll die first, make them kill me outright before they drain the soul out of me. She shivered and knew the words were whistling in the wind, if Luck wasn’t with her… a few steps on, she smiled, amused at her vanity. She wasn’t young enough or pretty enough to qualify as an ornament, whoever bought her wasn’t apt to want her body. There was a hint of comfort in the thought, her usefulness and therefore her value wouldn’t depend on how soon her owner tired of her. She made a face at the taste of that word, owner.

A tower grew out of springing arches like a tree rising from its roots. The guards herded them through one of the arches and stopped them in a paved courtyard, dusty and barren, a pen for two-legged beasts. Xalloor edged closer to her.

“’minds me of a casting call.”

“I don’t think I like the roles we’re up for.”

“Or the audience.” Xalloor flashed a defiant grin at one of the guards who slapped his prod against his leg but showed no sign of coming to shut them up. She turned her shoulder to him, shivered and rubbed at arms roughened with horripilation. “Fools. They should’ve told us we were going to freeze our assets.”

Aslan looked up at the tower with its ranks of narrow windows glittering in the light of the lowering sun. “At least they’ve got glass in them. I wonder if we’re going in there? Hmm. Far as I’m concerned, they can take their time. No joy for any of us in that place.”

“I want to know now.” The dancer moved restlessly, fighting against gravity, working the muscles of her shoulders, arching her feet inside her boots, tightening and loosening her leg muscles. “You’ve led a sheltered life. Working the tran-circuit isn’t all that different from this. Once I know the terms, I can root round and finagle a way to live with them.”

“You dance, the Omperiannas are musicians, Parnalee designs large-scale events, Yad Matra’s a machinist, Churri’s a poet, Appel, Jaunniko, Naaien, go down the list, you’re all techs or artists or both, but me? There’s nothing I can do that has any meaning outside of University or a place like that, nothing I like to think about. What can they want with a xenoethnologist? It’s ridiculous.”

“Mebbe so.” Xalloor laced her hands behind her head, bent cautiously backward, straightened with an effort visible in the tendons of her neck. “I loathe these heavy worlds, move wrong and you tear up your legs.”

There was a loud clapping sound of wood on wood. They turned. A man had come through a door in the side of the tower; he stood at the top of the steps that led up to it, a clipboard in one hand, its bottom braced on the ledge of a hard round belly. “I am the Imperator’s Madoor,” he said. “When I call your name, come here, stand at the base of the stairs. You will be taken to your posts. There will be no argument, no protests, no threats, no struggling. Awake or drugged, you will go. We have no preference as to the manner of your going, but consider well, how you begin is how you will go on. You have no voice in your destination or what happens to you there. I want that very clear. You are not beasts, you are less than beasts. You are worth only what services or instruments you can provide. If you choose not to provide them, you will be beaten or otherwise persuaded to change your mind. If you still refuse, we will get what value out of you that we can. You will serve as bait for our fishermen or food for our hunting cats. Do not think to escape and hide yourself among Huvved or Hordar; you cannot, you do not look like us, you do not sound like us no matter how well you have got our language, you do not know custom or rite, you have no family here. No one will help you. Cooperate or suffer the consequences.” He looked down at the clipboard. “Kante Xalloor. Tom’perianne. Nym’perianne. Lam’perianne. Jaunniko.” He named five others, all performers of one sort or another, then waited while two guards and an escort of exquisitely robed and tonsured males sorted them into a proper line and took them off. They went without creating fuss, they went with prowling steps and narrowed eyes, plotting as they moved, too cool, too controlled, too experienced in the exigencies of surviving to waste their energies in a futile rebellion. Aslan watched them go and saw her vague notion of assembling a group to take one of Bolodo’s transports go with them, the vision fading like a memory of a dream. As she passed through the arch, Xalloor risked a wave and a grin and got away with both. Aslan waved back, then waited her turn, feeling bereft and lonelier than she had in years.

“Churri dilan. Aslan aici Adlaar. Parnalee Pagang Tanmairo Proggerd.”

Aslan moved as slowly as she dared toward the steps. During the trip here she’d done her best to avoid attracting Churri’s notice, not too difficult because he was tied to his bunk and except for the times when he added verses to the Curse Song and belted them out, for the edification of his fellow captives, he was either asleep or scribbling in his notebooks. She was afraid of getting closer to him, she didn’t want to be linked with him, she didn’t want him playing are-you aren’t-you games with her. She saw his head jerk when he heard her full name, the matronymic that linked her with Adelaar, and made sure the Parnalee stood between him and her, but she couldn’t miss the nervous dart of his yellow eyes as he leaned forward and looked around the Proggerdi’s bulky body.

No robed and perfumed types came for them. A guard prodded Aslan toward the far side of the court, herded the three of them through a bewildering cascade of arches and into a holding cell of sorts. The guard looked around the room; his eyes passed over them as if they were less important than the dust on the floor. He grunted and left, barring the door behind him.

Once the light from the doorway was cut off, several strips pasted on the backwall began to glow, producing a bluish twilight that hid more than it revealed. Parnalee sniffed. “Smells like dogshit in here.” He strolled to the door, leaned on it. It creaked and shifted a millimeter or so, balked. “Thought so.” He rested his massive shoulders against the planks, folded his arms across his chest, yawned and let his eyes droop shut.