“Cousin… I haven’t seen anyone preparing for the banquet you spoke of…” General Yanlim said in passing, when he found his Prince idling in the garden. The dew was still fresh, the bees had not yet begun to buzz, it was just the flowers, plants, the breeze, and the flowing water.
“I cancelled it.” Prince Yanmelu answered abruptly and waved it away with barely a thought.
“Oh? That is unexpected. Why would you do that? This was a marvelous opportunity to connect with the rising noble house of a long time ally and trading partner.” Yanlim’s voice was neutral as he went to stand beside where his cousin sat on a smooth gray stone bench.
“Ah, well one of the servants informed me, there must have been an accident, the bronze collared slave must have fallen last night, most of the wine was drunk, she must have overindulged, tripped, and hit her head. Because she is dead.” Prince Yanmelu lied easily to his cousin, and Yanlim felt the gnawing at the pit of his stomach.
“We’ll have to send some compensation with her bodyguard after he wakes up, and ask her to send another servant to help establish ties. It is inconvenient, but it’s like being chosen for a Tlalmok harvesting, it cannot be helped.” The Prince again just waved away the matter.
General Yanlim looked at his cousin with coal dark eyes. “We are alone, cousin.”
“I know that. What’s your point?” Prince Yanmelu uttered in his blunt fashion.
“That you don’t need to lie to me.” Yanlim growled out with fury. His cousin’s confused face turned up to meet his, but the General did not give him time to lie again.
“I know what happened, because she is not dead. Perhaps you knocked her out, but she got up after you were gone, she informed her bodyguard, and they left the city. I saw her dress, the blood, were you jealous? That jealous? Or was it just that she was with Sado and you wanted to stick it to him by sticking it to someone he was responsible for? You’ve always been petty, cousin, but this is a new low!” Yanlim shouted the final words at the Prince, his fists shaking with rage, the Prince stared open mouthed for a moment while he gathered his senses.
‘Alive?!’ Prince Yanmelu all but paled.
“Yes, she was a slave, but she was a bronze who was your guest, and she belonged to another noble house of an allied city! Besides that, I… there’s no way you didn’t know.” His anger at his cousin went from professional… to personal and became darker accordingly.
“You have a whole harem to enjoy, you could have your pick of women… and I… I’ve never begrudged you that! But finally I’m enticed by someone…” Yanlim shouted furiously as his cousin caught his wits at last.
“Just a slave! A bronze maybe! But to a noble who may as well have just killed herself! It’ll be some mild compensation to the Prince for any damages, and a private apology, and that will be that! Go buy her if you like her so much, I wanted some fun with her because Sado was responsible for her, and I wanted to, as you say, stick it to him again…!” Prince Yanmelu shot to his feet and yelled back at his cousin, “Send someone to keep an eye out on the auctions when her owner’s house is dissolved, buy up the bitch, and I won’t touch her. It’s not like I want your leftovers!”
General Yanlim’s fist slammed into his cousin’s face, knocking him solidly to the ground.
Prince Yanmelu’s hand came up to his own face, and touched the place that had been struck, “You just… hit me?” He said disbelievingly. His beady eyes bared the fullness of the whites around the pupils. “I’m the Prince… it’s a death sentence to strike the Prince!”
“So are you going to kill me… cousin?” General Yanlim kept his fist balled up.
Prince Yanmelu touched the spot on his face above his jaw that radiated pain, he could already feel the bruise forming, and started to stand up, slowly, haltingly as his cousin’s blow had been heavy.
“No… no, I won’t. But you will pay for that!” Yanmelu snarled out and looked over his shoulder, “Guards!” He shouted. The cousins stood there facing off against one another, glares of anger going back and forth until a half a dozen men in heavy plate armor appeared at the Prince’s back.
“See my cousin to his room, two months confinement.” Prince Yanmelu snarled the order and pointed from his cousin to the door.
Yanlim took out his sword, held it out in front of himself… then turned it tip towards the grass and stabbed it into the ground. “Fine, cousin.”
As he walked past his cousin and reached the door surrounded by guards, Prince Yanmelu said, from over his shoulder: “Oh, by the way, this isn’t the punishment, this is ‘time’ for the punishment. I’ll send an offer of many times her worth to buy your little Komestran whore, I’ll make her part of my harem for a few weeks, then you can have my leftovers, and maybe then you’ll remember that I am the Prince, and a Komestran whore is just that, nothing more, no matter how pretty her words.”
“You sonofa-” General Yanlim shouted in outrage when the door cut off the space between them both.
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Sado sat across from Diana and listened as she finished explaining everything. “Well, now I feel as intelligent as a rock.”
Diana rubbed the mark on her head uncomfortably, “It really does sting though.”
“I’m sure it does.” Sado groused, “I assumed you planned on seducing one of them… but really? This?”
“I am a weapon of my mistress, and one of the deadliest in her arsenal.” Diana said with pride, “Not that I don’t feel a little bad about playing it with the General and all, but… things will work out one way or another.”
“That’s… chillingly cold, Diana.” Sado said and looked out the window while he watched the dawn break.
“Like killing my family, cutting my mother’s throat after letting her nurse me, and raising me as a slave to the house that ordered their deaths, Prince of Dreams?” Diana gave him a long stare.
“Perhaps I am… not exactly in a position to be critical?” Sado answered, keeping his face turned away.
“Apology accepted,” and Diana let out an amused laugh, “relax, everything will be fine. We’ll be home well before the mistress returns, report our ‘mixed’ successes, and then we just wait and watch what happens to Hanak’sen, while the power of our mistress continues to rise. We sow the seeds of victory, and let her reap the harvest, and we’ll all be the better for it.”
“Maybe so, maybe so, but I wish I had been told my part in this from the outset.” Sado put his chin in his hand and watched the scenery pass by.
“Our mistress needs to trust that your ideals won’t get in the way of your service, and they definitely would have here, this isn’t a hero story from a bard, Prince of Dreams…” Diana reached out and touched his knee.
He could not help but look to her when she was like this, speaking from the core of herself, not as the manipulator, the spy, the weapon… but as someone with thoughts of her own. Drives of her own. And above all, a connection to her city. Diana squeezed his knee gently and said, “I love what I do… I’m good at it, I love my life, I’d land on my feet no matter what happens… but… think about everything you’ve seen since it all went wrong. Hundreds of our people ended up going into Tlalmok bellies, thousands more were dead and… went on to end up the same way as the living sacrifices. Another hundred ended up going just because Kaiji lived. And in a few months, you’ll be seeing a lot of women nursing on the mistress’s grounds, who have no idea who the fathers were, and wake up to nightmares of their children’s conception. If our mistress fails… all that will happen to our people… all over again. I don’t want that to happen.”
“I know that. I know that. But it feels wrong! But…” Sado clenched his jaw and put his meaty hand over hers.
“But…?” Diana asked, leaning forward further.
“But I’ll do all this anyway, anything, everything, no matter how wrong it feels. The lessons of you, our mistress, and the Lady Solution, are now well learned… I will make sure we win, no matter what I have to do to make that happen, and if I can’t live with how I got there, well, I can die after the fact.” Sado answered.
“Prince of Dreams, have you finally woken up?” Diana asked, and then reached into a small bag on the floor of the carriage.
When he nodded mutely, she handed it to him, “Here, call it a reward for your… understanding, or my thanks for… truth be told, it was nice to see you think of me that way.” She winked at him when he took the bag and opened it.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“My… the primer, my work? When did you grab it?” He asked, “I thought it would be weeks before I got those back.”
Diana gave a sly smile, “I knew what we were here for of course, so naturally I made sure to take it when we left, you just had your head elsewhere.”
“Thank you, Diana.” Sado said sincerely and took the primer and his book of blank sheets out and returned to his translation effort.
“You’re welcome… Sado.” Diana replied, leaving his name a whisper not even he could hear.
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Tir remained sullen and silent as she sat in the pen. She’d barely spoken to any of the other women she was confined with, and they barely spoke to anyone either. ‘Shog’nai women.’ She barely held back a huff of contempt. They had stooped shoulders, limp hair that was all but uncared for entirely but for a brushing, and their eyes were full of sorrow. One might have pitied them for their leather collars, but Tir knew the truth. ‘This is just how they are, free or not, this miserable city and its endless death march obsession… no wonder it never became great. They just wait to die.’ She had nothing to say to them. The men in the pens nearby were no different, everyone was listless and hopeless and devoid of any purpose but the next breath.
Tir sat apart, keeping her arms wrapped around her legs that were drawn up to her chest, and simply waited with her bright eyes burning with anticipation. In the quiet hours, when the others slept, she recalled the many auctions she had attended in Pas’en, and practiced the poses she would need to use. The ones that always brought higher prices. Her hands stretched out overhead, with her fingers toward one another and her back arched. She practiced the twirl that would make her beautiful long hair bounce just so, and sway as if to music. The shifting of her legs that showed enough flesh to entice and make others wonder what lay just beyond the cloth and spurred many a bidding war on many a proud courtesan.
That was how she spent her days, eating the bland, dull food that was prepared by uninspired cooks who did nothing to improve the materials given to them. The gray substance that she ingested might as well have been a metaphor for growing up in Shog’nail
Still, she ate it. Dipping her hand into the lumpy stuff, eating it with relative gratitude, and licking her fingers clean just to keep herself going. Tir could only wait during the day, practice at night, and so it went, until the wagons came for them all and they had chains of dull iron affixed to their wrists and they shuffled out and mutely, meekly climbed into the covered wagons that would ferry them from city to city for miles around.
She relaxed fairly easily within the confined space, even with the chains on her wrists, for Tir had her mind elsewhere, thinking over what she knew of the marketplace for labor in all its fields, and what she knew of how the Lur’gin company operated. Tir glanced around her to see what was along for the ride. Relatively little anxiety on their faces, Shog’nai men just… didn’t seem to care. Mostly large men, they were destined for brute labor. ‘Mines, with the post rainy season military campaigns this year, metal will be vital to replace what was lost or stolen, or simply to repair what was damaged.’ There were almost no women in the cart, those who were… ‘Specialists, artisans, weavers…’ She concluded from their mild conversations. It helped her relax to recognize this. ‘All the way from Pas’en in a carriage, all the way back in a wagon.’
She settled in and stretched out, a serene expression on her face that made others inch a little away from her bizarre beauty. Tir was alright with that. ‘More room to stretch out, as bad as the Shognian philosophy is, I will say one thing for it, they’re right about not worrying over things you can’t change.’
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“Prince Rasgen… we… well… I have… I have letters for you…” The Prince heard the voice of his minister beyond the door, but Barsam did not sound himself.
“Come in.” The Prince said unhappily from within his private office, his body tense, bracing for bad news, he looked at the drawer where the bottle of wine sat, then forced his eyes to the door and set down what he was reading.
Minister Barsam tottered in. “There are… well, two letters and… and some news.”
The old man’s hand came toward the prince, shaking as he did so… “Sire… I… well… they came to the palace, I wasn’t… I was just… to brief you on the correspondence and…”
Rasgen couldn’t take the way the old man was sweating, shaking even more than the elderly usually did, he snatched the documents up and looked at the first of them. “Sobella… this is in Sobella’s hand.” He muttered as he read it… then re-read it. Then read it yet again.
He brought the letter up to his face as he stared ahead, the words mere inches from his eyeballs, demanding that they change, demanding that no such thing be true. Yet the words stayed the same. “General Leaman… set the Duchessa on a path to death… she found out… and went anyway?”
The Prince slowly lowered the letter.
His eyes were filled with murderous rage, he had to drop the letter before his fingers tore his beloved’s last words to him.
“When you get out of this office… go… and have General Leaman arrested, Minister Barsam.”
The skinny old minister nodded numbly.
“Why am I just getting this now…?” The Prince demanded.
“Well… sire, they left it with the village, they only come this way once a month, so they sent it with their trade goods…” Minister Barsam replied, and wrung his sweaty hands anxiously, the smell of old man sweat was starting to grow.
“I see.” Rasgen said, as he took up the second letter.
“Lodira’s hand…” He muttered, and read over her plea for his help.
He raised his eyes to Minister Barsam. “You all argued against my helping her… but this? This is too much. Listen, with one of the guard’s still missing, why can’t we just assume ‘that’ man did it, and he just ‘missed’ Lodira in the killing… it may seem far fetched but…” He rubbed his temple and laid the letter gently down on top of the one from Sobella. “Listen to me, I am not saying I should marry her, only that she’s been a dear friend my whole life. She is begging in this letter, and I won’t let her live like that. Now, speaking of, what did you find when you went searching for her?”
“Sire… she is dead. We went to her family, her siblings, her father, the steward, the maids, we asked them all. She must have been so despondent over her fate that… that she took her own life.” Minister Barsam replied with a humble downward look.
Rasgen felt his body go stiff. “Lodira? My Lodira… took her own life…? That… it can’t be, that can’t be right! It can’t be right!” Rasgen shot up from the desk, flinging his chair back with the force of his motion and taking the desk in both hands, he flipped it towards the minister, it landed upside down with a thunderous crash, papers and quills and ink crashed, broke, or flew everywhere.
“No! No! She didn’t do it! You all told me to let this happen and now… now look! I should never have listened to you, any of you!” Rasgen roared at the old minister, “Get out! Get out of my office! After you have General Leaman arrested, summon the remaining ministers to their last council meeting! It’s time you all retired! You’ve done enough damage, to me, and to everyone who mattered! Get out! Get out! Get Out!” Rasgen roared as the minister tried to back away, bowing as he did so, while the raging, grieving Prince of Pas’en, who could think of nothing else in his office that he had the power to destroy, collapsed to his knees and yelled his grief to nothing and no one, as there was none left to listen...
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Crossing the border proved far easier than Nua recalled. ‘It was probably easy then, too. I was just tense from the nature of the task.’ She paused in her thoughts and considered the matter. The border at least, was clearly identified, no doubt more for the sake of the non-beastmen who lived on the other side. Large flags jutted up to the sky on poles, warning of the danger beyond. The area itself of course, was unmanned.
However, she did find the ruins of a fortification in short order. The tumbled and broken wood was clearly rotted, it was also devoid of indication that it had been deliberately or even accidentally destroyed. The gate was toppled at an outward angle, dangling from a single rusty hinge, the others long ago reduced to broken bits when that metal succumbed to the same fate the last one was bound for. The wood was ‘intact’ in the sense that nobody had destroyed it, the sharp spikes were still in place, but the body of the wood had been eaten by termites. The towers were low, sufficient to look over the wall, and in front of the gate, the rotted wooden barriers slumped into pieces broken not by any force but time.
The smell of fungus and mold hit Nua’s nose first, but… no blood. Nua carried Number Four through the ruined gate and she looked around, she fairly shrank into Nua’s body, pressing herself uncomfortably there until Nua came to a door that hung wide open. Her ears twitched in search of danger, and the sound of skittering feet reached her almost immediately. She drew her knife without a sound and turned to put Number Four away from the door, and held her blade out to one side. Her eyes scanned the darkness, searching for noise, and she found it in some glowing yellow eyes.
A raccoon, it recognized that she saw it, and rushed for the exit, skittering past her feet, over the light of day, out the gate, and presumably off to safety on the Tlalmok side of the border.
‘Irony.’ Nua thought succinctly and scanned the darkness until she found an old candle sitting on the window sill.
“Stay here, Number Four.” Nua said and taking out her flint, she smacked the rocks and the spark caught the wick. The candle jumped to life immediately.
She could feel Number Four relax somewhat behind her. ‘No bodies, no blood, no sign of hasty departure… no real sign of occupancy.’
Reassured by the light Nua held, Number Four breathed easier, able to see the adult move in the dark and walk about the room.
“Nothing, just tables, chairs, and none of it really used.” Nua said out loud and shrugged it off.
“Alright, so I think that answers that.” Nua said decisively and walked back out to where Number Four waited with fidgeting fingers.
“What?” She asked, craning her head back to look up at Nua.
“Someone built this place, but then couldn’t get anyone to stay here, so at some point everybody just abandoned it. Well, at least that means we’ll probably be fine here. We’ll find their quarters, get a few hours sleep, and then go to the nearest village and get a horse. It’ll only take a day before I show you where I live.” Nua picked her up and began to carry her around the ruined fort, searching door to door to find quarters to sleep in.
“Oh, you got a wall to go back to?” Number Four asked innocently looking up at her, “How come you’re off your wall anyway, and how come you got no eatmen to pick a mate for you, an how come you got a funny claw in your hand, and how come you can run so far so fast, an how come the world is so big, an what was that big bucket in the ground where we took a bath an where are your numbers an…” Number Four kept the heart tearing questions coming, leaving Nua unsure of what to say.
She just stroked the blue hair of the little human girl, trying and failing to keep her blue eyes from weeping.
“Why are you crying, is it a Short Day?” Number Four asked, “Do you have to go somewhere because you got no numbers?”
“Numbers? Short Day? I don’t understand.” Nua’s genuine confusion seemed to add only to Number Four’s confusion, but she answered.
“Numbers, like I’m Number Four. See you make numbers, like me, and then short days are when you stop making them, and Crawlmaker takes you away. Everybody is sad on Short Days. So we do this.” She kissed Nua on the cheek, and hugged her a little tighter.
“We don’t have those… but a Crawlmaker did make a Short Day for a dear friend of mine… and it has made me very sad, I miss her.” Nua replied, and went quiet again.
It was then that Nua pushed aside a broken door that had been chewed through at the base, it swayed open, the latch lay on the floor, having fallen through a rotted part of the wood that had been eaten away by termites. As luck had it, a bed remained in place. All that remained was a rotted frame and musty straw, but the space atop the boards was intact.
Number Four’s belly rumbled, and it occurred to Nua… ‘She hasn’t asked for food this whole time… I’m used to going short but…’ The thought drifted off, “Here, you’re hungry.” Nua said and slid the pack off of her back and down to the floor.
She set Number Four down and opened it up, then reached in to find something wrapped in green leaves, these she took out and unwrapped it to hand over to the little blue haired girl whose face had become quite curious again.
“What’s this?” She asked, looking down at the bread with bits of meat sliced within.
“This is what we call a ‘sandwich’, it’s very popular, from where I’m from. There was even a famous… or infamous… demon who… never mind.” Nua snorted derisively at her rambling, “Just open your mouth.”
Hazel eyes full of doubt, Number Four kept her eyes up at Nua while opening her little delicate mouth, Nua inserted a corner of the sandwich over her tiny child tongue, and doubtful eyes shone like stars. She bit down hard and grabbed the bread as fast as she could.
She ate with vigor, even violence, and a complete lack of manners. Nua forgot her troubled mind for a moment while she watched the little girl consume her first sandwich of bear meat and soft bread.
“Good, isn’t it?” Nua winked and with her face stuffed till she made chipmunk cheeks, the girl nodded excitedly.
“Good, now eat up, because tomorrow I will be taking you to my home.” Nua said, and laid herself down on the ruins of the bed. She stared up at the blackened ceiling in silence for what felt like longer than it probably was. Weariness caught up to Nua quickly, before the sandwich was even fully gone, but her exhaustion was so total that she barely noticed when the little girl climbed on top of her stomach and fell soundly asleep.