This was the task Tlayesha hated most: ministering to the field-slaves. The women she did not mind; the children she treated with affectionate patience; and Chnesuru’s “special wares” were interesting, if sometimes sad or strange. But the field-hands-! A blister here, a stomach pain there, a suppurating sore, a fever, a flux, a nose mashed in one of the interminable fights in the pens! Often they teased her, pinched her, laid hands upon her, or even tried to pull aside the thin veil she wore to conceal the deformity of her face.
That thought she. pushed firmly from her mind.
Far back down the Sakbe road Bey Sii lay to the southeast beneath the blanket of pre-dawn mist. Somewhere there the sun would shortly stride up into the sky to begin another weary day. Tlayesha sighed and set down her bucket of water and bag of medicaments. They were ten days out of the capital now, and pompous old Chnesuru was in the worst mood she could remember: a trustee slave had decamped, taking a woman and two sacks of Dna — flour with him, and the pair had not yet been recaptured. -And already Tlayesha. had more than she could handle to keep her charges healthy!
Was this the slave Mtiru the cook had sent her to cure? Yes, he lay with a cheap clay amulet of Balme, the healing Aspect of Mother Avanthe, pressed to a red and infected cheek, and he moaned softly in his sleep. He must be treated. Chnesuru kept his merchandise in the best possible health. Soon the month of Halir would come, when the crops were, cut and the demand for field-hands would beat its peak. At every village and Sakbe — road tower the overseers of the manors of the nobility, the stewards of the temple farms, the officers of the Emperor’s state lands, and the elders of the agricultural clans awaited Chnesuru’s coming with impatience. Slaves might not do all the work-, but if the Chlen-caxt of the Empire had four wheels, then the slave population certainly made up two of them.
She squatted down on her heels beside the man and took out a clay pot of salve, a relatively clean rag, and her most treasured instrument, a needle of rare iron fixed in a wooden handle.
“You’re not asleep,” she said. “Get up, and let me look at that cheek.”
A sullen eye opened, and the fellow made a great pretense of waking up, a big muscular man burned almost black by the sun. Tlayesha was used to such responses; she brought her needle up to point directly into the open eye. The slave sat up.
“In the name of Qon, girl, it’s only a boil.” He was probably trying to ingratiate himself. Many thought she worshipped Qon, Lord Belkhanu’s canine-headed Cohort. The clergy of the Temple of Qon wore veils to conceal their faces-some odd tenet of their sect-but theirs were invariably yellow while Tlayesha made do with any bit of fabric she could find.
“It must be seen to, man. No pretty Aridani lady will buy you for her harem until that carbuncle is gone.”
“Cha! Go tickle the boy with the shaking sickness there! He needs healing more than I!” He reached out a hand to caress her thigh, but she set the needle’s point firmly against the skin of his wrist.
“Be patient. Bountiful Chnesuru arranges harlots for all of you tonight when we reach Tkoman Village.”
“The decrepit hags he provides are only useful to frighten demons!” He gave a coarse laugh. “Why not minister to me yourself? Are you not a physician? Some say that you are ugly, but others claim you are so lovely that you hide your face to keep us all from going mad. For my needs, my lady, you can keep your head-scarf; the parts I want are lower down.”
“I am no slave to lie upon the open road with field-hands. Master Chnesuru employs me-for what his coppers are worth. Come-let me lance your cheek, else I must advise him that he would profit by having you altered for service as a eunuch. Mayhap you would enjoy the soft life of a servant in some clanmaster’s harem!”
The slave grunted and spat, but he held up his face and made a show of feeling no pain. Tlayesha salved the boil and rose, dodging a final pat on the backside. She walked on down the line.
There sat the boy with the shaking sickness. They had picked him up outside of Bey Sii, the Gods knew why! Some demon must have muddied Chnesuru’s wits that day! They’d be lucky to get twenty Kaitars for him. A hereditary disease, people said, and reason enough for his clan to sell, him off for a pittance. No room for such in a peasant’s household! At first they had had to feed him, and he had not even been able to hold his bowels. He bore bruises and manacle-scars on his wrists as well. Fright and nervousness at being sold into strange hands had doubtless added, too, to his condition. Now he was steadier, and she had only to see that others did not steal his food or kick him too severely when he stumbled and drooled.
She stopped beside the boy. Actually he was a youth as old or older than Tlayesha herself. She had got into the habit of thinking of him as a boy, a child almost, because of his malady. He had no name, or if he did he could not control his tongue to tell it. She did not even know if he understood Tsolyani. He was almost certainly from some low clan of Livyanu, for his face and torso were covered with Aomiiz, the arabesques of red, blue, and black tattooes every Livyani received in childhood. They indicated the wearer’s clan, city, and religious affiliation. Yet when two of Chnesuru’s Livyani slaves had tried to question him, they had got no farther than had Tlayesha. There was a riddle indeed.
Like most of Master Chnesuru’s slaves, the boy wore no shackles. The lot of a slave was no worse than that of many peasants, and at least a slave’s belly usually stayed full. A squad of overseers, a few guards, and the ever-present row of impaling stakes that graced the gates and plazas of the cities of the Five Empires were enough to vouch for good behaviour under most circumstances. When they had first left Bey Sii the boy had hung back or stumbled away from the column two or three times; Chnesuru had put this down to his illness rather than to any wish to escape and had not even scolded him, much less had him beaten. Now there was a second puzzle!
“Here,” she said, and held out a sponge of water and a blob of greasy V'e-root paste for him to soap himself.
He looked up at her with some odd emotion showing in his eyes, and for a moment it seemed as though he would speak. But then his tongue lolled out, his eyes unfocussed, and he fumbled for the sponge with shaking fingers. Tlayesha poured water over his back and noted idly that the skin there was still sunburned and peeling. His previous owners must have kept him indoors. She wondered again what his history might have been.
“Hoi! — Ohe!” Someone called from the front of the column, and the slaves groaned and stumbled to their feet. The day’s march was about to begin.
Behind her the horizon showed as angry-red as that slave’s boil, but to the north the Kraa Hills still bulked black beneath diadems of cloud. Only the sword-bright pinnacle of Akonar Peak thrust above the foothills there, blood-splashed by the dawning sun. Tlayesha looked to the northwest, but Thenu Thendraya Peak was not yet visible. Once the road turned after the town of Tsuru, they would journey under the shadow of that granite monolith-“The Sentinel of Hrugga” people named it- for many more days before reaching the swamps surrounding old Purdimal. Thenu Thendraya Peak guarded the jumbled mountains and deserts of the impoverished and fragmented nation of Milumanaya, it was said, although there was nothing there to see but wild nomads and sand and barren stones. Beyond, however, lay Yan Kor.
Tlayesha picked up her bucket and medicines and walked along beside the caffle, ignoring the calls and obscene pleasantries of the slaves. She had heard all of that since she was twelve years old and had fled her clan in Butrus in Pan Chaka. Her deformity had stirred up the superstitious fears of her clanspeople. But the fault lay more with a certain facile rogue who had called himself noble and called her by many more honeyed names! Cha, he had sold her soon enough into the brothels of Jakalla! There she had spent five miserable years earning her freedom again by “the tasks of the bed,” as fat Tanere the brothel-keeper charitably named them.
Remembered hurt and insult arose to plague her memory. She was not unbeautiful. Were it not for her birth-curse, she might have attained the higher status of courtesan. As it was, she was forced to cater to those who were too low, too uncaring, too strange in their desires, or too drunk to notice. As Tanere said, “Darkness makes everyone beautiful.” She had taught Tlayesha to keep her room shuttered, the candle low, and to dance nude save for a veil upon her face. “Mystery adds attraction-and coins upon the brass plate.”
After Jakalla there had been a dozen cities. Freedom does not fill the belly, and those days were not easy ones. At least she had learned about medicines, drugs, and treatments-among other things-and when Master Chnesuru offered to hire her as physician for his merchandise, she had accepted gratefully. For two-no, almost three-years now she had accompanied the slaver’s caravan from Thraya in the southeast to Khirgar in the far northwest of the Empire. Twice she had gone beyond: once to Kheiris in Mu’ugalavya, and once to Pijnar on the shores of the foggy northern sea. Now she counted herself experienced, travelled, and able to look upon her Skein of Destiny without fear-though with no particular joy.
Qoyqunel, the chief of the caravan guards, was coming back along the column to pick litter bearers for the morning shift. The pretty girls, the trained courtesans, the dancers, the children, the old, and the sick were not required to walk but rode instead in palanquins or in the trundling Chlen-carts.
There were a few closed litters as well, tended by selected female slaves or by some of the slaver’s nonhuman henchmen: Shen, Ahoggya, a Pe Choi or two, and others. On this trip Tlayesha had been called to minister to the occupants of two of these. One was a beautiful little girl of ten or twelve, to whom she had given dream-potions to help her forget her lost home in Haida Pakala, a land so far away across the southern ocean that Tlayesha had heard no more than its name. The other was a delicate-looking, long-limbed girl, a victim of the dreaded Zu’ur, who lay like a corpse behind the heavy curtains of her litter. The Gods take pity upon that one! But then the poor wretch would never know what was done to her, and that, at least, was a mercy. Her mind was gone, and within a few months she would surely die. Such was the way of Zu’ur. Those who supplied it risked their lives, but there were those, even in the highest places, who made use of its addicts for their own morbid pleasures. This, to Tlayesha, was the worst part of slavery, and she realised only too well why the profession of slaver was held to be the lowest of the low in all the Five Empires. Master Chnesuru might become as rich as a God, but never would he be received within the gates of any clanhouse save those that followed the same greedy occupation.
Qoyqunel waved his scalloped sword of hardened Chlen — hide and shouted. The fool had never used the weapon and wore it only to impress the village trollops. He chose a score of slaves from among the plodding field-hands and sent them trotting forward to help with the litters. Tlayesha saw that the boy with the shaking sickness was in the group. Well, he seemed fit enough to hold up a litter pole.
Tlayesha let herself fall into the mindless rhythm of walking, her thoughts far away from the dusty vistas of yellowing grain and baked-brick hamlets. The morning passed.
She was awakened from her revery by shouting and the sound of blows ahead. Someone was being flogged. She hitched her bag of medicines higher on her hip and went forward to see what was amiss.
As she drew nearer she saw that Old White-Side, the Ahoggya overseer, had somebody down upon the roadway, belabouring him with its knurled cudgel and hooting obscenities in a mixture of human languages and its own gurgling, gobbling tongue. The victim was the boy with the shaking sickness! Tlayesha broke into a run.
She had always disliked this particular Ahoggya for its needless cruelty. Now she ran up to it and snatched the staff from its four-fingered hand.
“What do you, woman?” Old White-Side cried, and reached for its cudgel with another of its four arms. Everything about the Ahoggya came in fours: a knobbly grey carapace of homy material sheltered a brown-furred, barrel-shaped body. Just below this carapace, four arms were set equidistantly around its circumference, and below these, at the base of the barrel, four gnarled legs bent outward in a permanent crouch. Between each pair of arms, high up under the carapace rim, it had two wicked little eyes on each side. Below one of these pairs of optics was its fanged, crude-looking mouth, and in similar positions on the other three sides were its organs of hearing, smell, and reproduction. No human could pronounce an Ahoggya name, and hence Chnesuru’s people called this one “Old White-Side” because of a patch of bristly silver fur on one of its “shoulders.” The creature smelled rank, like a barnyard in a swamp, reminiscent of its homeland in the sea-marshes along the southern Salarvyani coast.
Tlayesha held the cudgel out of reach. “Why do you beat this slave? Master Chnesuru has forbidden the flogging of slaves save for serious offences! You’ll spoil his value!”
“What value?” Old White-Side wheezed. “No money in one who slobbers and soils his breechclout! And just now he would have pulled open the litter curtain and looked within.”
This was more serious. None was allowed to see into the Zu’ur- victim’s litter. Chnesuru might indeed order a whipping for such a transgression.
“You are mistaken. The boy is witless.”
“Even witless humans make sex,” the Ahoggya retorted in its rumbling bass voice. It made obscene gestures with three of its four hands. “See!” It pointed with its remaining hand.
The boy was sitting up now, looking at Tlayesha, but with one shaking arm extended towards the litter. He looked more appealing than lustful, and she could not imagine him opening the curtain for any purpose other than half-witted curiosity.
“He has had enough,” she snapped at Old White-Side. “You know not your own strength. You may have marred him ”
“No loss,” the Ahoggya grunted morosely; but it desisted. Then it added, “I say he be sold, woman. Tonight at Tkoman Village. Lord Fyerik comes to buy field-hands, and we can put this idiot into the midst of a lot where no one will notice. At least Master Chnesuru gets a Kaitar or two for him.”
Tlayesha knew that the creature said this only to vex her. She tossed her head contemptuously and held out a hand to help the boy to his feet. She found him surprisingly strong and lithe for one with the shaking sickness. Other cases she had seen were always softer, flabbier, less muscular. The look he gave her as he returned to the caffle surprised her too: his eyes seemed to contain a spark of real intelligence. And something else: anger, perhaps, or was it determination?
She motioned another man forward from the ranks and got the litter picked up and moving again. Then she went back to join Qoyqunel, leaving Old White-Side to stare maliciously after her from its back pair of eyes.
They marched, then rested during the afternoon in the scanty shade of a Sakbe road tower, then marched again. By the time the sun sank down into the dust-haze on the western horizon Village Tkoman lay before them, a huddle of mean little buildings overtopped by a row of temple spires and the jutting stump of an ancient, ruined citadel.
Master Chnesuru ordered his tent set up on the Sakbe road platform nearest the ramp down to the village gates. The litters were ranged in a circle, and some of the older women were sent to fetch cool water for their occupants. The others had to make do with the muddy tank at the base of the road platform wall. Miiru the cook got the commissary going, and soon the amber-gold twilight was filled with the pat-pat of dough being shaped into bread-cakes, the sweet-harsh smoke of charcoal fires, and the clatter of knives upon wood as the pulpy Shirya-tubers and fat A'ao-squash were chopped up for stew. Tlayesha helped with the buying of a great heap of black Hreqa- fruit, now at the best of its short season. Canny Chnesuru was a good provider; his slaves were sleek and healthy, and he had few problems with escapes. The Salarvyani were sound businessmen.
The slaver himself disappeared into the village to look for buyers, and it was not long before a troupe of harlots arrived, true to Tlayesha’s prediction. The sounds of cooking became submerged beneath the clash of silver bangles, the thready notes of a Sra’ur, and the laughter of men and women. Tlayesha had never quite sunk to the level of a Sakbe road trollop!
She strolled along the platform. This was a frequent stopping place for travellers, and there were peasants with fruits and meat to sell, peddlars bearing hampers piled high with cheap cloth and jewellery, itinerant priests, hawkers of amulets and potions, and what seemed like a legion of children selling wine, bitter beer, and Chumetl, the salted Hmelu — buttermilk that everybody preferred to the dubious-tasting water. There were other wayfarers too: a family of villagers in ragged breechclouts who ogled the harlots with interest, a party of sturdy merchants, some men from one of the Chlen — hide tanners’ clans, two or three litters belonging to the Temple of Avanthe by their blue curtains and insignia, several soldiers of at least three different legions-probably going north to join their units at Purdimal or Khirgar-and even a lesser nobleman, judging by the gaudy clan-symbols that swung from the pole before his tent.
All of this was as familiar to Tlayesha as a well-worn sandal, and she went to stand in the charcoal-and-spice-smelling dusk to look down over the jumbled shadows of the little town. Soon she saw Master Chnesuru returning in the company of a slender, ageing man in the pleated kilt of a minor aristocrat: probably Lord Fyerik, whose fief lay about ten Tsan to the south of Village Tkoman. Two brawny overseers trailed along behind. Her employer appeared a little tipsy, but she knew this to be part of his cleverness. When it came to selling his wares Master Chnesuru was a consummate actor.
“Here,” the slaver cried, “you have strong hands for your crops, my Lord!” He called for torches, and Qoyqunel herded the slaves up into the light so that they could be inspected.
Lord Fyerik made a sarcastic face, walked up and down in front of the group, and then snapped his fingers. “Fifty men-a score of Kaitars for each!”
Chnesuru made the expected. gestures of astonishment and pain. “My Lord, you do not buy old wcSmen! These slaves are sound, perfect, industrious, experienced, willing…’’He seemed to run out of qualities and shifted to his hurt but honest expression-a good actor, Chnesuru. “You have dealt with me before. You have seen that I never wrong you!”
They chaffered awhile, at first amiably, then with pretended acrimony. At last Chnesuru was satisfied with ninety Kaitars apiece for his brood. Not a bad sum, more than Tlayesha had thought he would get-but then demand was high during the month before harvest time.
Suddenly she felt anger rising within her. There, in the midst of the group, stood the slave with the shaking sickness! Old White-Side had been as good as his-its-word!
It was too late to do anything now, and Tlayesha could only stand and watch as the overseers herded him and the others down from the Sakbe road platform. Lord Fyerik took his leave, and then they were gone.
She could not repress a pang of-something. She had no idea why she cared. Was it only because the Ahoggya had flouted her, or was she going all soft and motherly at the age of barely twenty summers? By all the Gods…!
The following morning she sought out the Ahoggya.
“You did it, didn’t you?” she accused. “You sold off the sick boy.”
“What would you have done? Kept him to tickle you, as the priestesses of Dlamelish keep little boys and RenyuT'
“Of course not,” she bridled, “but you did not have Master Chnesuru’s permission!”
“He will be pleased. Ninety Kaitars for one worth less than ten.”
“When Lord Fyerik finds out he has been sold a sick slave-!” “We shall be long gone.” The creature turned around so that she faced another pair of slyly wicked eyes. “Why did you not order the slave to lie with you? Master Chnesuru would not have minded. The boy might have enjoyed it-little enough pleasure for his kind in this world. And maybe later another infant to sell for a few coins!”
“Tla! Cha! You talk foolishness!”
“Or you might find a normal man to jolly you?” Old White-Side gurgled a chuckle. “Some say that your body is appealing in spite of your veil. Now if it’s pleasure you seek, then know that we Ahoggya have eight sexes and-”
“Wretched pisspot with legs! Shall I give you a drug that will loosen your sagging bowels all over the road?’ ’
The Ahoggya turned, flipped his dangling reproductive organs at her, winked broadly with one of the eyes on that side of its body, and lumbered away.
They camped that night at a place called Ha’akel’s Wall, some twenty Tsan before the market town of Tsuru. Tlayesha busied herself with a pregnant woman slave and had almost succeeded in putting the matter of the sick boy out of her mind when she saw Master Chnesuru waddling toward the sick-cart. His expression told her that something was seriously wrong.
“Where is the man with the shaking sickness?” the slaver asked abruptly in his accented, mushy-sounding Tsolyani. “Qoyqunel said you were treating him yesterday.” He laid a stubby hand on the lashing of the cart and peered within. “He is not here with the sick?”
She knew better than to compromise Old White-Side; the creature was capable of a hundred devious little vengeances. Yet the situation seemed to call for at least part of the truth. “Why-I believe that he was among those sold to Lord Fyerik-” She got no further.
“WHAT?” Chnesuru actually shook her, something he had never done in the years Tlayesha had known him. “The slave is sold? Somebody sold him? Who-? How-?” She had never seen him so furious. His features went to dirty grey, then to apoplectic red. Terror filled her for Chnesuru could be cruel.
The slaver whirled and bawled for lanterns. The camp was swiftly searched from end to end. The boy could not be found. Nor could anyone recall who had made up the lot offered to Lord Fyerik.-Naturally.
Chnesuru stamped and swore and fumed. Calling upon his unpronounceable Salarvyani gods. At last he ordered Qoyqunel to take two men and return to Lord Fyerik’s estate. Now. Tonight. Not tomorrow morning! The slave boy must be brought back-at any price! This last was easily the most amazing thing Tlayesha had heard her employer say yet. He vouchsafed no reasons for his concern but strode into his tent with all of the dignity a small, fat man can muster. He pulled the flap shut.
Qoyqunel had wit enough to make no protests. Somebody would surely pay for his long run back down the Sakbe road and his return the next day under a scorching sun. If he ever found out that his discomfort was to be laid at the Ahoggya’s door, then the smelly old beast would need all of its eight eyes to keep watch over its skin!
To Tlayesha’s even greater wonderment, Chnesuru did not march on at dawn. Instead, he had the caravan tarry at the road tower (and what Ha’akel’s Wall was-or had been-she never found out) until Qoyqunel returned in the late afternoon, panting and perspiring, with the boy in tow. He glared at his comrades, screwed up his mouth, and pushed the slave into Chnesuru’s tent. Presently he emerged and bellowed for Tlayesha.
“He calls you, woman! The idiotic slave has been beaten, and you are summoned to coddle him.”
The nameless boy squatted on Chnesuru’s elegant carpet, as filthy and sweaty as ever she had seen a slave. Old White-Side’s weals were livid upon his shoulders, and he had a new abrasion upon his belly as well, probably a kick from one of Lord Fyerik’s overseers when they discovered the nature of his malady. She bit her lip and began to wash his wounds. They were angry-looking but superficial. Chnesuru must be badly shaken to show such interest. There was more to this than met the eye.
On impulse she said, “Master, this slave may have internal damage. Someone has kicked him. May I keep him with me to observe for a time?”
The slaver raised a thick eyebrow. He seemed to ponder. “Why not? Why not? He’ll likely come to less trouble. Yes, girl, take him with you.” He smoothed his thick-woven Hmelu- wool tunic down over an expanse of hairy belly. The Salarvyani were always cold away from their hothouse southern lands.
Tlayesha finished, bowed, and urged the slave out of the tent before Chnesuru could think of anything else. There were times when he conveniently forgot that she no longer had to cater to men’s needs for money.
The more she thought the stranger the affair became. A Salarvyani might weep bitter tears over the loss of a copper Qirgal but never over the hurts of an idiot field-slave. Was the boy a “special,” then, to be sold to some customer with tastes odder than most? She did not think so. The slaver’s- mood seemed more that of a man who has safely managed to skirt a deadly peril.
Tlayesha could not resist a further chance to interrogate the boy. As soon as the evening meal was done and her sleeping mat was spread beside one of the ponderous wooden wheels of the sick-cart, she sat him down and began to question him as gently as she could.
His responses were as she expected: trembiing, infantile sounds, and meaningless gestures. She speedily verified the existence of some affinity between the boy and the Zu’ur victim, nevertheless. As far as she could recall, he had not been bought from the same person as that unfortunate girl. Or had he? Chnesuru had acquired both of them on the last morning before they broke camp outside of Bey Sii. But from whom? She wracked her brain to remember and came up with nothing.
Then there was some enigmatic business about gold and Mtiru the cook. The slave took Tlayesha’s arm in his quivering fingers and clutched at her one gold bangle while waving at old Miiru, whose sleeping mat was nearby.
Did he mean Miiru specifically, some other man, or just people in general? Perhaps he was trying to tell her how he had been bought with gold?
One thing puzzled her: unlike others with the shaking sickness, this victim appeared almost normal until he tried to communicate. In repose he hardly trembled, his face and body were still, and his long-fingered, sensitive-appearing hands lay quiescent in his lap. But when he had to respond to her queries his eyes twitched, his jaw convulsed, ridges of strain stood out upon his neck, his tongue refused to obey, and he made childish gagging noises.
Tlayesha sighed and gave up for the night. Later, when she awoke in the pre-dawn chill, she found the boy sitting much as she had left him, staring down at her. He saw her looking at him and smiled back, as easily and normally as though there were nothing wrong with him at all.
What would it be like, she wondered sleepily, to lie with him? Would it help to have a woman? The sleep-demons came and took her again.