Standing up, Delia let Claw and dagger dangle. She stared at Nyleen, and her face expressed contempt. Splendid, she looked, Delia, Empress of Vallia who was just Delia. Only a light sweat glinted on her body. She breathed deeply. Superb, superb, and consummately deadly...
Nyleen was staring past her, at the door, and the kovneva’s eyes opened wide. An expression of great joy filled her icy face. She smiled. Then she giggled, as at a supreme joke.
“Slave! You fight well. You have skill. Chica was good, in my service, very good with Whip and Claw. But now, I think, now you will face a greater! Now you will be tested to the utmost!”
Delia did not turn. Hell and damnation! She’d fought and fought well and won. If they shafted her, well, she’d try to deflect the arrows in the way her husband had shown her. But that was difficult, by Vox! When the door bashed open and this newcomer entered, she had felt the flicker of a hope she had resolutely refused to acknowledge. An obvious hope, a pent-up desire that would burst out like flame. He had done it before. She’d been naked, chained up, staked out as a sacrifice, menaced by steel and talons and fangs. And he’d come storming in like the maniac he was, and rescued her.
But not this time.
She’d won, and she could feel the tiredness creeping up on her, a fatigue she pushed aside and ignored which yet insisted on trembling her legs and jerking her muscles. And now the bastards were bringing on another champion.
From what Nyleen said, from the expression on her face and the satisfied oohs and aahs from her cronies, this newcomer was going to be very good indeed.
If she was better than Chica — and she would be, she would be! — she’d be the very devil to handle.
Oh — why hadn’t she practiced more!
“Drag Chica away!” commanded Nyleen. “Give the slave her Whip. Now we shall see some
real
Whip and Claw.”
She called along the length of the refectory, a glowing, commanding woman, joying in her power and enjoying her own joy. “Come in, my dear. Lahal and Lahal. You are more than welcome. Now you can show us how it should be done. As you can see, the onker Chica could not manage it.”
From the swiveling movement of the watching women’s heads, Delia realized they were watching the newcomer walking from the door toward her unturning back. She did not hear her. That, alone, boded ill. If only she’d put in more practice sessions... Chica had not been easy. And the dismal truth of the coming encounter was made crystal clear as Nyleen crowed her own pleasurable anticipations.
“Here is a slave shishi for you to — well, my dear, I hardly dare call it fight — for you to cut up. Step forth, my dear. For you are supreme, far far better than Chica with Whip and Claw.”
“Cut her! Cut her!” screamed the waiting women.
When a Claw struck and cut it could rip your face off...
Delia turned around.
She saw the woman walking down between the tables. She saw. The newcomer, this redoubtable champion, lifted her head and spoke.
“You wish me to fight this silly little slave girl and cut her up for you?” said Jilian Sweet-Tooth.
All for Vallia...?
Jilian swirled off her enveloping black riding cloak. Dust stained the hem. She wore black fighting leathers, trim, taut, still shining although scuffed. At her waist the belted rapier and dagger swung to hand. Terchicks snugged across her shoulders. Her Whip coiled up her right arm. Somewhere in her baggage would be her bronze-bound balass box. She did not look at Delia.
“I do not think, kovneva, I shall fight this girl.”
“Not fight her, my dear? Oh, of course. You are tired from your journey. I see! Well, this shif must be tired, too, since she has defeated Nadia Woodraven who used to be my cadade, and Chica Trevalmin ti Alvondsmot, whom we used to call the Fangs.”
Jilian let her dark intense gaze pass broodingly across Delia. She drew off her left-hand glove, supple and black. She did not remove the right, for the Whip coiled its sinuous lashes about the leather gauntlet.
“If Nadia and Chica are both defeated, have you not found yourself a Jikvushi who would serve you and fight for you — if you treated her well?”
Giving the kovneva no time to reply, Jilian gestured with her right hand. “Slave — bring me wine, a light yellow, for my mouth is as parched as the Ochre Limits.”
The slave girl thus addressed scuttled to obey. Delia stood motionless. Jilian looked almost just the same. Her pale face bore its normal look of brooding intensity, her dark hair cut low over her broad white forehead setting an added luster in her dark eyes. Her whole face looked almost the same; pleasing, broad and well-proportioned and with a warm and mobile mouth. But there hung about Jilian Sweet-Tooth an air of dejection, of more than usual brooding hurt. She took the wine and quaffed it and threw the goblet at the slave girl as Nyleen arched her back, like a cat, her face rigid in its icy smile.
“You have been unsuccessful, Jilian?”
“Yes and no. I have almost certain news of the rast. Almost certain. But I must follow up even this slender lead. I came to advise you that I leave for Pandahem tomorrow.”
“Do not forget to bring back his head — or some other part of Kov Colun’s anatomy — for our inspection and delectation as you tell your story.”
“If there is anything of him left.”
“Ah! And, now, Jilian, mayhap you will cut this slave shishi up for our inspection and delectation —
here and now
?”
Still Delia stood motionless. Truth to tell, in all their practice bouts together, she and Jilian had never settled the issue — who was the better. It had not mattered. They had joined in combat, joying in the tussle, in the skill and expertise. In the nature of practice bouts they had used rebated weapons and heavily padded Claws. Whips, one against another in practice, were uncommonly difficult to manage. Delia just did not know who would win, if she and Jilian fought in the Jikvar and the Grakvar with razor-edged Claws and Whips that could flay.
Again, truth to tell, she was aware of the odd trifling deficiency in Jilian’s technique. She had told her friend. And Jilian had told her, in her turn, of Delia’s mistakes. Perhaps, if it came to a fight to the death, just perhaps, Delia felt she might win. But that victory would leave her a ruin. Then she thrust those thoughts aside. So Jilian had renounced the Sisters of the Rose and had joined the Sisters of the Whip. Very well. That did not mean she had renounced her friendship. Being Jilian, she would do what she wanted to do, and Delia found herself confident that Jilian would unravel a way to settle this without fighting.
She hoped so, she devoutly hoped so...
Moving with her lithe easy swing, Jilian crossed the open space and hitched herself up onto the edge of a table. Her body sat erect, and one long leg swung backward and forward, backward and forward. If anyone here could think it of anyone else, then that swinging leg in the tall black boot was a most insolent gesture, most insolent indeed.
Jilian took up a goblet of wine. She said: “Let me compose myself, kovneva. As I said, I have ridden hard and long.”
She drank the wine down. Then, with her bare left hand, she wiped across her mouth. Deliberately, she said: “By Mother Zinzu the Blessed! I needed that!”
Delia showed no startlement. She just hadn’t given a thought to the idea that Jilian would tell the kovneva and her cronies who this slave girl was. Delia showed no startlement; but she was profoundly moved. Jilian, a member now of the Sisters of the Whip, could so easily have told, so easily done what would amount to a betrayal of her friend. But, by saying what she had after she drank, Jilian was reassuring Delia. Jilian had never, to Delia’s knowledge, visited the inner sea of Turismond, the Eye of the World. But she had heard the emperor, many times, say those words when he was dry and downed a draught.
“By Mother Zinzu the Blessed, I needed that!”
Yes, those words had been used many times, and Jilian was reaching out to Delia. Now, she went on in a conversational tone: “People call me Sweet-Tooth. Many people — and, I think, all men — believe that because I was born in a Banje shop and like sweet things, I was given that name. That the Tooth does not refer to any tooth I have in my head is so; men do not know.”
Nyleen’s frustration grew visibly upon her. Now she took what Jilian said in an entirely different context from that intended. Jilian was speaking to Delia, reassuring her that her secret was safe; Nyleen imagined she was making excuses for not fighting this slave girl.
“Do you tell me, Jilian, that because she is a girl you will not fight her?”
“Give me the moment I ask, kovneva. Then, as surely as a leem takes a ponsho, you will see...” She pointed negligently at the length of whip sliced from Chica’s favorite Fang. “Chica relied too much on her Whip. You did well, kovneva, when you brought her away from the Sisters of the Rose, for she spied for them in Delka Ob. Now, they know nothing of our plans.”
The horror hit Delia then.
Could Jilian be a party to the plot to kill the emperor?
That did not seem credible to the empress.
The emperor had rescued Jilian and brought her out of humiliating bondage to a position of respect. Jilian was a loved and valued member of the household, who had raised her own regiment of Jikai Vuvushis to fight for Vallia. At first she had known the emperor only as Jak the Drang, a now famous cognomen. Delia understood well enough the ties Jilian might form.
Between the emperor and the empress existed ties that had not been broken by the sundering of four hundred light-years, by the interference of superhuman beings, immortals, godlike beings of supernal power. Those bonds had not been broken by the petty slanders of evil tongues. Other attachments, for these two, were matters of supreme indifference. Yes, considered Delia, poor Jilian might well have formed a romantic attachment in her mind. Perhaps that had gone sour.
Perhaps she
was
in the plot to kill the emperor.
If so, then she was going about it in a remarkably peculiar way...
Also, this explained what had happened to the spy sent by Thalmi Crockhaden, pro-marshal and spy mistress of the SoR. A girl of Chica’s caliber would be needed for that work. Yet she had turned sour, gone rotten, been suborned, turned herself over to the Sisters of the Whip.
The cause of that rapid overturning of the beliefs of a lifetime and the embracing of inferior beliefs, now entered the refectory.
The witch, Fiacola the Gaze, walked in on the arm of the flunkey woman, Ilka the Silver Rod. Following, spitting and snarling, prowled two couples of werstings straining the leashes held by Rinka the Stripe. The intrusion of the witch brought everything else to a halt.
Even so, in the respectful hush, Nyleen called crossly to Ilka: “Where is that tiresome girl Sissy? I shall surely stripe her when she comes crawling and sobbing to me.”
Ilka made a small gesture with her free hand. “I have not seen her, my lady.”
Fiacola the Gaze kept her face hidden by the deep folds of a dark blue hood. She moved heavily to a chair quickly vacated at the side of Nyleen’s chair. She sat, and Ilka fussily arranged her robes. The hood was not thrown back.
Only those two eyes caught the torchlights and gleamed a deep crimson in the shadows of the hood.
Not for nothing was the sorceress Fiacola called The Gaze...
Standing quite still, Delia took note of what went forward. She was able to feel amusement that amid this respectful hush, Nyleen still could react in her cross way, and Jilian could still swing that long booted leg back and forth in her insolent fashion.
When Fiacola spoke her voice surprised Delia. That voice sounded deep and clear, like a note from a woodwind, like a sonorous chime.
“Does Jilian Sweet-Tooth forget what she now is?”
Jilian’s booted foot stopped swinging.
“She says she is tired, Sana—”
“I am aware, kovneva, of what goes forward here.”
Delia clamped her mind shut. Witches did have powers; of course, this Fiacola could merely have been listening at the door. But, all the same, it was a mightily powerful performance.
The witch’s hood turned and inclined and Delia was aware of that sliding crimson gleam upon her. In the silence the hoarse breathing of many of the women sounded like the scraping of sword upon shield, the grating of a badly balanced spinning wheel. Even the werstings slobbered into silence.
The witch spoke again. “You promised me a diversion tonight, Nyleen. I do not object to seeing women cutting up other women if they deserve it. But that does not compare.”
“You are right, Fiacola,” responded Nyleen instantly. She lifted her right hand and gestured. She made of the gesture an imperial demand. “Begin!”
“Leave the slave girl to me.” The ominous ring in the words was not lost on Delia.
The two Jikai Vuvushis with half-bent bows shepherded her away to stand near the side table. Jilian sat on the edge of her table across the central space. And, into the space from the flung open doors, on the kovneva’s command, advanced a familiar, a sorry, a horrible procession.
The women who used their whips upon the naked bodies of the men were careful. All the shuffling men wore chains loading them down. There were various sizes and weights of chain in common usage among slavemasters. Sometimes they would refer to a slave as a one-chain man, or a three-chain man. This gave an indication not only of his troublesomeness but also of his strength and the care they took over restraining him until he was brought to heel and trained into the ways of slavery.
Most of the men wore one set of chains.
One man wore two. One man was a three-chain man. One was a four-chain slave. And one was loaded down with no less than six sets of chains. He could walk upright, which he did, defiant, arrogant, his four arms cruelly chained up his back.
“Oh!” said Delia to herself. “My poor Djangs!”
The two-chain man was Jordio the Hawk. The three-chain man was Lathdo the Eager. The four-chain man was Dalki, and the six-chain man was Tandu, his father.
So Jordio and Lathdo had fallen safely from the storm-wrecked airboat and had been taken up, at last, and so, eventually, brought here to be tortured to death. And her two ferocious Djangs? Surely, she reasoned, surely they must have ridden up to take service with the kov, bearing the letter from the Lord Farris, and had been sent on, and so been entrapped. They would not have been taken easily...