Deep in the stables, there was a stall composed of three connected compartments. A musushu was pacing across them, back and forth, a small, wiry, pitch-black drake with an old scar on its neck. Nua guessed it was Shadow, Hessa’s steed. True to her words, the reptile was behaving differently than the laid-back, sedate Maximus. Shadow had a kind of nervous energy to her, and from the look of it, she did not like the enclosure despite having more space than the other animals.
At Hessa’s sight, the drake reached for the fence, chewed on it, then made a few groaning sounds.
“Easy, now, Shadow.”, the huntress said, reaching into her saddlebag. “You need to wait. We leave tomorrow. You can wait until tomorrow.”
Shadow gave out a pitiful squeak. Then, she focused her sight on Nua, who slowly approached the stall, keeping the same distance as Hessa. The musushu bristled the spikes on her neck, arched her back, and hissed as if preparing to charge.
“Do not run”, Anki advised. “You’ll establish yourself as a prey.”
“Just a domesticated animal.”, the girl mumbled, clenching her fists so tight that her knuckles paled.
“Shadow, this is Nua.”, Hessa put her arm on the girl’s shoulder. “See? She’s a friend.”
With the other hand, she tossed a piece of jerky in the air. Shadow caught it with one snap of her jaws. Then she trilled in a half-aggressive, half-inquisitive tone.
“She wants more. It’s your turn”, Hessa instructed and handed her the dried meat. Nua thought that her arm just turned to stone. She took a few deep breaths.
“Here, here”, she said and repeated the movement. The jerky flew too close to the fence. Shadow almost jumped across it, missed her catch, and hissed with anger. Then, she lowered her head to the floor, sniffing. The meat was lying on the ground nearby.
Calmly, but firmly, Hessa pulled Nua a little back.
For the next thirty-something heartbeats, Nua observed Shadow reaching for the jerky with her front paw. When she finally managed to impale the meat on her claw and draw it into the stall, she trilled again. Then, with a snort, she crushed the snack. What followed was a series of sing-song questioning trills at Nua, and with that prompting, Hessa gave her two more pieces to throw.
“That’s it, girl”, she approached the steed and started scratching the side of her head. Shadow was trilling, seemingly elated. “That’s all you can get today. Don’t cheat. You’re not hungry, just greedy. See? Nua’s a friend.”
“I didn’t know they can talk that much.”
“Shadow’s unique”, Hessa sighed. “Truth be told, if she’s in a mood, she’ll try to bite anyone including me. It’s not hard to recognize it, though, because she will tell you, and there are ways to placate her. Once she’s on the road and has enough exercise, she becomes more relaxed. The upside of working with Shadow is that she’s a trained scouting mount. She follows the track, she fights side by side with the rider, and she is pretty darn smart. Right now she sees us talking and she is capable to remember that we’re in good relations. If you practice with Maximus, she will think of you as a part of the pack.”
“She looks bored”, Nua remarked. “How long do they stay in the stables when you’re trading?”
“Oh, musushu are not wagons, mind you. You can’t leave them in the stall for the whole day. There is a paddock here we can use, and for longer periods, Ashra rents a racing track with bait catapults, so they can play-hunt. At the end of their stay in the city, they all get a tad restless anyway.”
She scratched her back.
“And truth be told, so do I. Come on. I think it’s dinner time already.”
*****
The dining hall was as large as a temple, with an arched roof and multiple fireplaces built into the walls. Groups of people gathered near them, sitting on the chests and stools or reclining on the benches near the low, round tables. Servants were bringing the dishes in quantities that to Nua seemed unreal. The scent of incense mixed with the body odors of numerous guests, as well as kitchen smells, saturated the air.
Most of the tables were occupied by the employees of Ashra’s caravan. There was an order to it, as the mercenaries socialized within their own group, and the traders and servants were dining separately. Nua tried to pry apart the rules, and all she could guess so far was the diners’ respective station in the caravan by the look of their clothing.
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Hessa led the girl to her own table, with Ashra, Ezekiel, and several other, important-looking people to boot. Nua was not the only personal servant there, and she sheepishly took her place with the other four young people occupying the same bench. One of the men looked at Nua, opened his mouth, then glanced at the huntress. Clearly, it was a bad idea to voice his prejudices in front of Hessa. Nua tried to remember his face for the later, to avoid unnecessary run-ins. Who knew if he would behave when no one was looking?
The huntress herself sat at Ashra’s side. She touched her arm gently and whispered to her ear, and the caravan leader gave her a warm smile. Their familiarity stirred a nebulous feeling in Nua.
“Isn’t Hessa too young for her?”
Anki chuckled.
“They’re both in their forties. Hessa’s just very fit. Nua, don’t go crushing on your employer. It is unwise.”
“Anki. Don’t be crass. I am not crushing on my employer”, she stated. Still, the feeling was there, and for a moment, she strived to hone in on the impression and give it a name. “I just think… I think I like what they have.”
“It’s always a good thing to know what you want”, he nodded and looked as if he was gathering his thoughts to say something more. Meanwhile, servants started bringing in the food, and Nua focused on the immediate priority, giving it full undivided attention. Eyes wide as saucers, the girl watched platers filled to the brim with fresh loaves of bread, skewered meats, fried vegetables, and a huge pot full of something delicious, driven on a cart. Unsure what to start with, feeling in a haze, she barely noticed a bowl and a spoon that was set before her and only regained awareness when she heard someone pouring a large quantity of thick beer into a goblet.
Apparently, her goblet.
She saw other diners reaching with their bowls to the servant with the pot and worked herself into a state close to panic, quite sure that she was too late, she was the weakest, and they were going to eat all of it, leaving her hungry.
She extended her arm, holding the bowl and received a generous portion of spicy, hearty stew. Following others, she took a small bread with a brown crust, and then two round fritters. With a tentative bite, she identified them as slices of turnips in sweet dough.
Anki was saying something about moderation. She didn’t care. So what if she was sick tomorrow? Today, she was in heaven.
Sometime later, sated, drunk, and satisfied despite having to keep down the contents of her stomach each time she burped, she heard a chime. She ignored it, contemplating if she could fit in another bite of that delicious bread until the sound repeated. Then, she lifted her head.
A silhouette of indistinct gender, enveloped in an oversized patchwork cape of contrasting colors, made their way into the middle of the dining room, hitting a tambourine. They were accompanied by a striking young woman, scantily clad and with an intricate tattoo of a mythical Great Dragon on her back. She was holding two torches, and the very moment Nua looked at the pair, she breathed fire.
The girl’s focus returned in an instant.
“Hear ya, hear ya!”, the patchwork cape person – apparently a storyteller – half-sung, and half-shouted the words. “Listen to the epic of the great hero Electryon, the grandson of the king of gods Diospiter.”
The fire eater woman was making hypnotizing turns and circles with her torches.
“Listen how the cunning demi-god searched to obtain the water of life from the Maiden of Destiny to become immortal, and due to the trickery and ill will of his foes, he was denied.”
“Oh, I know this one”, Nua mumbled. “Totally the same. Only the true one. Listened to it at the Midnight Festival.”
“Oh, really?” Anki’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “The true one?”
“Yeah, so Electryon is really the sage vizier of the gods, Adapa. Son of Apsu.” she said. At the moment, she wasn’t even realizing that the names she usually struggled to remember came so easily to her. “The Maiden of Destiny is really the goddess Ninkarrak. It’s just they changed it like all our legends. Butchered it, Anki, totally butchered.”
“Why, it is despicable, of course”, the king said. “But it’s still not the true story.”
The storyteller was singing in a clear voice, one that can be achieved only with a surgery in early boyhood.
“So tell me the real true one”, With an effort, Nua kept her beer down.
“I am quite sure it is about my distant cousin.”, Anki said. “Or the situation is so similar that it might as well be. He was a talented sorcerer, but he did not inherit all the powers of an Autarch and lacked our prolonged lifespan. He repeatedly pestered my daughter, a reputed healer, to change it, but she refused.”
“Why?”
“You see”, Anki continued, more to himself than to his young inebriated pupil, “We were near immortal due to being broken in very specific ways. Death of old age is normal for the living. To deny death is to mess with natural aging with immense precision, in both etheric and non-etheric ways. Doing that to an adult who wasn’t born with the whole “Autarch package” would kill him. He believed that she lied and did it out of spite, or rather, I guess, he preferred to believe it. His attempts were made public and mocked, and his reputation didn’t quite recover after that.”
“Oh yeah”, Nua felt that she needed to say something empathetic. “That’s horrible.”
“Yes, it was.” Anki paused. “Immortality. We were so naïve back then.”
Nua had a vague impression that there was more to the story, but she didn’t press the matter.
“But the legends are your heritage, fiction or not, and so I have a question for you”, the king said. “You don’t like that the Azurians, or the Tiberians, uproot them and destroy your culture.”
“Nope. I don’t.”
“And how often, do you gather, our brethren in the Bottoms dine as those people here do? Do they allow you to tell your stories? To learn? To develop? Are you peaceful and content with it now, that your belly is full, that you have worked your way into their establishment? Are you glad with the role of a mercenary or a desert guide, and nothing else? Would you recommend it to your siblings?”
Anki leaned in very close, in front of Nua’s eyes.
“I’m leaving you something to think about until tomorrow.”