Jo Clayton - Shadow of the Warmaster

“Aici Adlaar?” Churri’s voice.

Aslan twitched. The voice was a large part of the Bard’s reputation, a mellow flexible baritone capable of turning a nuance on the flick of a vowel. On the trip here she’d listened with pleasure when he talked to his neighbors, when he chanted his verses to the hold. Now that voice was turned on her. It was only a part of her name that he said, but folded into those syllables were question, speculation, a touch of fear, a touch of wonder, a demand for an answer and other less identifiable implications. She drew her tongue across her lips. “So?”

“Soncheren?”

“I was born there.”

“I knew a girl on Soncheren, long time ago, one Adelaar.”

“I know.”

“How?”

Aslan hesitated, decided there was no point in hedging. “She’s my mother.”

“So Ogodon got her married off. That hamfisted cousin of hers, I suppose, he was hot after her.” More nuance-casual overlay, eagerness beneath, sharp tang of anxiety, all of which turned into laughter.

She ignored that. “Married? A spoiled virgin? Don’t be stupid. Not on Soncheren. He sold her to a Contractor after I was weaned, sold me into the baby market.”

“You’re mine?”

“So she says.”

“I didn’t know.”

“She told me that.”

“Why didn’t she send me word?”

“Not much point, considering how fast you cut out before.”

“I went back.”

“How nice of you.” She heard the acid in her voice, she felt ugly, she knew she was making him despise her, but she couldn’t help it; years of anger and pain were erupting from the darkness where she’d shoved them.

“I did all I could to find out what happened to her without getting my head taken , I assume you know the habits of your male relatives.”

“Of course you did.” Cool, steady and very bitter.

“You’ve got an adder’s tongue, you know that?” She shook her head though she knew he couldn’t see it. Anything she said would make things worse. “My name gets around. She could have found me if she wanted to.”

“Yes.”

“Ah.”

She could feel him staring at her; his short stocky body vibrated with… what?… something… that made demands on her she didn’t want to answer. After a moment of thick silence, with a whine in her voice that appalled her when she heard it, she said, “Adelaar made a good life for us, she didn’t need anyone, she didn’t want anyone sticking his nose in.”

He stirred, but before he could speak, the door rattled, Parnalee moved away to let it open (Aslan jumped, cursed under her breath, she’d forgotten he was in here). The guard whapped his prod against the door. “Out.”

Parnalee ambled out, not about to hurry himself at the order of some snirp who didn’t reach past his ribs. Aslan followed him, struggling to regain control over her emotions, wanting a mirror to see what was written on her face. She heard Churri behind her though he was softer footed than a thief. Perhaps heard wasn’t the right word, felt was more apt. She was intensely aware of him; part of it was a sexual awareness that she half-feared, half-understood; she’d never known him in the role of father, she had to keep reminding herself who he was (for the first time she understood why her mother kept such fond memories of him). Part of her reaction was a mix of needs that were more intense than sex. She needed a father. She didn’t want to. She wasn’t a child, she hadn’t missed him when she was, or so she told herself, refusing to acknowledge the old angers that drove her into sniping at him a few minutes ago. Now, with him there, so close, too close, she ached for what she hadn’t known; it seemed somehow a betrayal of her mother, of herself, but she couldn’t deny the feeling.

The guard took them high into the tower, left them in a six-sided room with wall to ceiling windows in four of the sides, windows that looked out across the city and the lake. Churri went at once to one of the windows and stood staring across the lake toward mountains on the far side, mountains that were little more than a ripple of blue in the paler blue of the sky, their peaks touched with pink from the sunset he couldn’t see. Parnalee walked to the middle of the room, looked casually about, eyes half-shut, his face sleepily bovine, then he went to inspect the two walls that had no windows, only tightly pleated drapes woven from a fiber like raw silk and dyed a matte black, drapes meant to be drawn across the windows when the sun was coming up and its light struck directly into the room. He ran his hands across wood panels behind them, thick short fingers that seemed clumsy but were not. Rather like Sarmaylen’s hands, Aslan thought, and shivered with the memory; when she realized what she was doing, she swore under her breath and crossed her arms over her breasts as if she were trying to shut herself away from him and everything else. A low, backless bench angled out from the wall near the door; Aslan dropped onto its black leather cushions. A moment later Parnalee joined her.

“Anything interesting?” She crossed her legs, turned a little away from him.

“Built into the walls if there is.” He inspected her, chuckled.

She looked round. “What…”

“Nothing.”

Aslan scowled at her feet, angry at him and herself. He was too perceptive and what he saw mattered too little to him. The same thing happened when she visited her mother, Adelaar ended up hitting her in every one of her vulnerable spots.

The door they’d come through opened again and two men walked into the room.

Aslan got to her feet. Before the door closed behind the men, she saw guards lounging in the triangular antechamber beyond.

Churri came away from the window and stood beside her; he was vibrating with anger, but managing to control it. His hand closed over her shoulder, tightened hard.

Parnalee sat where he was.

One of the newcomers moved to the last window and settled his shoulders against the glass, folded his arms across his chest. He was a tall man, as handsome as an addiction to biosculpture could make him; he had skin like thick ivory, smooth and unblemished; his hair was a burnished silver-gilt helmet brushing his broad shoulders. He wore trousers and tunic of Djumahat spider silk, immaculate pewter gray with crisp white accents. Bolodo rep, Aslan thought, and no junior on the make, not him. Slaver, you pretty shitface. She blew him a mental raspberry and turned to the other.

He strolled to a large armchair beside that window, settled himself, waved a long-fingered hand at three smaller chairs arranged in a shallow arc facing him. “Come,” he said, “sit.” In tone it was an invitation, not an order, but ignoring it would be stupid.

When they were seated, he said, “I am Fangulse Tra Yarta, the Divine Imperator Pettan Tra Pran’s chief security officer, in effect your slavemaster, subject, of course, to the will of the Divine. With that proviso always in mind, I tell you this: contract law doesn’t rule here, I do. How you live depends on me. Whether you live rests on my good will.” He smiled at them, tapped his fingertips on the chair’s arms. He was a broad man, not fat, only big; he had a lined, square, intelligent face, a long square torso, heavy arms and legs, large hands with tapering fingers, rather beautiful hands; he posed them m ways that showed off their elegance. “You are, of course, indulging in the fantasy of escaping and capturing a Bolodo transport. Forget it. You won’t get near that field and even if you do, the Bolodo guards have had much experience in puncturing such fantasies. The dreamers that survive their attentions spend a few months working in the mines and emerge quite anxious to cooperate.”