Two paras marched me across the thoroughfare. I stole a glance at each of them and recognized the one on my left; it was he who had pressed Gen’s token into my palm, the day Savga and I had been taken from the arbiyesku. His pres ence reassured me a little, though the set of his jaw and the way he refused to meet my eyes were unnerving.
They marched me down the very same dark alley Savga and I had sprinted through a short while before. I won dered where she was, prayed she’d had the sense to return to Yimtranu’s for the night and would then leave, come dawn, for the familiarity of her arbiyesku.
Sorry, Savga. Sorry.
Motherless and grieving, she’d been taken by me straight into danger. She was alone in every sense of the word now, and I shuddered at the image of her small, wan body navi gating the dark alleys around us. A drunk, or a pack of hun gry curs, or a man with base desires and no scruples could easily catch her and be the death of her. I was sickened and appalled with myself for putting her into that situation. She was only six years old.
Upon the command of one of the paras flanking me, the huge iron gates to the daronpuis’ stockade were opened and I was marched within. I was led across a humped stone bridge. Up a flight of dank stone stairs. Through two great, shiny doors of stamped tin. Along a sconce-lit cor ridor beaded with sticky incense, past stamped-tin doors and many kinked and cuneated dragon statuettes cupped in dimples in the white stone walls. Several times we came across a daronpu or an acolyte who was forced to hastily retreat to the nearest shell-shaped recess so that we could continue.
I was shown, without a word, into the same airless, cushion-strewn room where I’d met Daronpu Gen in his disguise as Wai Vaneshor. The door clanked shut behind me. A bar dropped across it with a metallic clang. I imag ined the paras stationing themselves on either side of the door.
I sank onto a pile of nubby cushions; dust billowed up thickly about me. Coughing and sneezing, I stared at the single narrow casement high up on a far wall. It was miser ably hot in the room, and a bad odor hung in the dense air, as if a bird or a mouse had recently found its way into the room and died.
Languid shadows slunk along the walls as the sultry night stretched onward. My bitoo clung to me with sweat. My temples pulsed with headache. I was parched. The pres sure from the cloud-heavy skies outside pressed against the back of my neck, as if the air were trying to force me to kowtow before it. The skies groaned with unshed rain.
Still, I waited, silently praying, over and over, that Savga was safe and unharmed, back at Yimtranu’s.
In the dark, the profusion of cushions about me looked like misshapen creatures, hunkered down and watching me. Briefly I was overcome by the terrifying illusion that I was back in the viagand chambers, imprisoned in Temple’s hid den jail, and that everything had been a dream: my escape, my return to the dragonmaster’s stables, my fight in Arena, my time in the arbiyesku of Xxamer Zu.
“Don’t be foolish,” I growled at myself, and I stood, shaking, and waded through the musty cushions to piss in a corner.
Outside, thunder rolled across the skies, a heavy rever beration that vibrated my back molars. I pulled my bitoo away from my skin and torpidly flapped it, to cool myself. No good. I slumped against a wall and slid down to sit at its base with my legs sprawled. I felt as if I were a melted candle.
Eventually I heard noises outside my door. Orders were curtly given. There was the clank and hiss of a door bolt be ing drawn back. The door swung open. I stood.
Lantern light streamed into the room, dust motes danc ing in the beams. A man’s silhouette entered, and the door clicked shut behind him.
My eyes adjusted to the light. Ghepp stood in front of the closed door, holding the lantern high. He hadn’t yet seen me. I stepped forward. Lantern and silhouette swung in my direction.
“I would have thought you more intelligent,” Ghepp said, each word bitten off like a sour plum. His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been arguing all night.
I approached him, careful not to stumble over the wretched cushions strewn calf-deep about the place. Si lence a moment as we stood before each other.
“What were you doing?” he asked softly.
“I was looking for Gen—”
“To wreak more havoc with your asinine demands that I refrain from trading in slaves?”
I tried not to clench my hands, forced myself not to snarl back a heated reply. “Bayen Hacros, I would remind you of our goal. The trading of slaves will become unnecessary once I learn the secret to breeding bull dragons in captivity. If you’d only hasten to purchase a venomous dragon, we’ll achieve that goal more quickly.”
In the lantern light, flecks of gold flickered in Ghepp’s eyes. “Do you forget with whom you’re speaking?”
“Forgive me, Bayen Hacros,” I said quietly, and I dropped my eyes momentarily before raising them again. “But per haps you forget with whom
you
are speaking.”
“You overestimate yourself, rishi via.”
“
You
underestimate
me
.” I strove to keep the tremor from my voice. “I
am
the Dirwalan Babu.”
“Remind me what, exactly, that is.”
“You’ve seen the Skykeeper I control. You know what I can do with it.”
“I’ve seen the creature once, on my bastard brother’s Clutch. I’ve never seen the creature appear where he is not.”
I stared at him. “You think Kratt controls the Skykeeper?”
“I have good reason to believe so.”
“Ridiculous—”
“No!” he snapped, and I suddenly remembered what Daronpu Gen had said of him:
One must tread carefully when dealing with a man such as Ghepp, a man who har bors both fear and dreams of greatness.
“Yesterday my brother deposed the Lupini of Clutch Cuhan and incar cerated the Lupini’s entire family. Temple sanctioned my brother’s appropriation. Know why?”
There wasn’t enough air in the room: I needed to sit; I needed to leave.
The lantern threw heat and light across Ghepp’s face. “A Skykeeper’s been frequenting Clutch Re. According to my brother, the creature’s absconded from you to support Kratt in his quest to eradicate Malacar of your presence. He claims Lupini Cuhan was your ally. A legitimate reason for him to depose Cuhan, hey.”
Waivia had used my mother’s haunt to Kratt’s benefit.
“Where’s your otherworld bird?” Ghepp continued, and his voice was a whiplash. “Why’ve I yet to see evidence of it in
my
Clutch? Why didn’t it appear when the Host at tacked you?”
“There was no Skykeeper at Clutch Cuhan,” I said hoarsely. “Your herald carries propaganda from Kratt—”
“Summon your Skykeeper. Show me your otherworld bird.”
“We’ve no need of it.”
Ghepp tilted his head to one side, plunging half of his face into shadow, so that I stared at a one-eyed man, a half-faced creature. “I recall that Kratt once forced you to summon your Skykeeper, back on Clutch Re. He had you whipped. Should I do that?”
I shook my head: no.
“Then call your bird. We’ll have need of it when Kratt comes for this Clutch.”
“He won’t.”
“Call your damn bird!”
“I can’t.” I forced myself to keep contact with his eyes. “Gen made me halve my ability to call the Skykeeper, made me share my power with him. Now I can only sum mon it when he’s present.”
Ghepp’s lips curled in disgust. “How convenient that he’s not here.”
“Not . . . here?”
Ghepp spun on his heel and strode to the door. He opened it and gestured abruptly with his lantern. Shadows swooped and swung like mad pendulums across the walls.
“Take her to the cell blocks,” he ordered the guards outside. “Tell no one.”
By the gray light that seeped beneath the heavy wooden door to my cell, I could guess when it was day and night. Gloom.
Darkness.
Gloom.
Darkness.
More gloom and more darkness.
Four days passed.
By then I was certain I’d been abandoned in the under ground cell. I’d heard no coughs, mutters, nor snores be yond my cell, and I’d seen no feet shuffling back and forth, nor any shadow flung by torchlight, beyond the crack that ran under the bottom of my door. The soldiers had sim ply deposited me in that stone room, barred the door after them, and departed, ascending the dank stairwell they’d marched me down.
Other than Ghepp, they were the only ones who knew where I was. The thought was not comforting.
I slept. I woke. I counted the length and breadth of my cell in footsteps. I thought of Savga and prayed that she’d found her way back to the arbiyesku and was safe with Oblan and Runami. I wondered why the lot of us had not been brought down to this cell block the day we’d been taken as slaves, and could only guess at the various reasons why: because the intent had been to fly us out to Diri, in bunches, to trade the very day following; because in a dragons’ stall, trough water was available, whereas in the cell block, acolytes would have had to carry heavy buckets down the dank stairwell to slake our thirst, and what a bother that would have been; because the cell blocks were unknown to all but a few.
That last reason seemed most likely. Ghepp wanted me not just imprisoned, but hidden. He wanted me incarcer ated somewhere where I could die and molder undisturbed, should Daronpu Gen never reappear to champion me as a prophesied woman of power and change.
I tried not to think of that happening—me dying in that cell—nor of Kratt and my sister. I also tried not to think of how hungry and thirsty I was, nor of how my madness for venom had led me into that dungeon. And because I was trying not to think about my craving for venom, that became all I could focus on.
I thought of dragonsong and the sublime numinosity I’d experienced while hearing it, and I was filled with a yearning so powerful, for something so out of my reach, I despaired. My head ached. I suffered stomach cramps. I trembled, I sweated. I started to convulse, then vomited. Thirst raged within me.
When the withdrawal symptoms passed—an hour later, a day; it was the same—I dragged myself to a corner and wished for unconsciousness.
Footsteps sounded outside my door.
The wooden bolt slid open with a splintery rasp. Door hinges creaked, like chalk ground between teeth. Torch light flickered across the floor of my cell.
Someone stepped in.
A soldier, with double topknots of hair protruding from his head like the small horns of a young buck. He stooped and placed a battered metal jug of water on the flagstone floor and dropped something small, perhaps a roasted tu ber, beside it.
The soldier straightened slowly. He was big, bearish, and filled the doorway. He wasn’t one of the two who’d marched me down into the cell. His great chest slowly ex panded and contracted. He was waiting for his eyes to ad just to the dark.
A guard didn’t feed a female prisoner late into the night, after days of ignoring her, unless he had a particular motive for doing so. I held myself still.
He grunted as he picked out my form, then kicked the door closed behind him.
“Come here, rishi via.” He lifted his leather loinskirt and withdrew his phallus, a club of meat clearly visible against the black boiled leather of his uniform.
My breath came quicker. He stood waiting. He expected me to obey.
Better to do it, a weary voice said within me. If you fight, he’ll beat you senseless and take his pleasure after. Compli ance will spare you the beating.
Slowly I rose to my feet, leaning on the wall for support. “You want me to undress?” I asked tonelessly.
“No.” He jerked his phallus forward, as if he could shorten the distance between us and speed me toward him by the action. “Jus’ come here, hey. Now.”
I shuffled toward the guard. Knelt. Gripped him.
“With your mouth,” he grunted, but he wasn’t speaking to me, because I wasn’t there anymore. The person I’d val ued had disappeared the moment I’d led an orphaned sixyear-old girl into the night, in a quest for venom. It wasn’t me feeling the tackiness of his unwashed phallus, wasn’t me smelling the seaweed stink of him as I worked my hands up and down his sheath.
He groaned, moved his hips. Sucked in a breath, grabbed my hair. “With your mouth, whore, with your mouth.”
Wasn’t me closing lips around him.
I wasn’t there.
But suddenly I
was
somewhere else: in the viagand chambers, where I’d suffered months of brutal degrada tion, where I’d witnessed the frequent rape and beatings of the imprisoned women, several whom had died before my eyes.
Rage exploded within me, and I bit down.
His bellows thundered through the dungeon, and still I didn’t release, even as my mouth filled with coppery blood. He yanked on my scalp, trying to wrench me off by my hair, and then I tore away from him without quite opening my mouth, ripping flesh from him as I snapped my head back. Then, just as swiftly, I slammed my head forward again, into his bloody groin. He released me and grabbed for himself even as the air whooshed from him.
As he staggered back, I lunged for the jug of water he’d set down by the door. Leapt up. Hauled back with both hands and swung the jug as hard as I could against the side of his head.
He staggered sideways, gel-legged. One of his bloody hands reached for the ear I’d struck; I smashed the jug into his face, dropped it, and wrenched open the door.
I slammed it shut behind me and fumbled with the wooden bar. Dropped it into place.
I stood there a moment, breathing heavily, heart gal loping. Howling, the soldier threw his full weight against the door. I leapt away. Again, another thud. The bar I’d jammed across the door creaked nastily.
I grabbed the torch from the wall bracket and ran.
Along the short length of the cell block, up the dusty, cool stairwell, the shadows of the stairs above me looming overlarge in the torchlight.
Giddy, I reached the top of the stairwell and came out into a courtyard that was hushed and dark beneath a blackclouded sky. Several men stood waiting for me. I froze with fear.
They didn’t move. I didn’t move. Long moments passed. The air was heavy as sodden cotton, the wind that blew sluggish. Overhead, thunder rumbled.
I abruptly realized that those hulking silhouettes were slabs of rock, tipped up on their edges and settled into impossible angles. I recognized the courtyard, then, from the day Savga and I had been stolen from the arbiyesku. This was where an acolyte had knelt, flogging himself ec statically.
I tossed the torch down the stairwell behind me and started for the opposite side of the courtyard, slinking around its edges, melding with the dark.
Then I stopped.
Why had I suffered the horrors of Arena and survived, if only to hand the Clutch I’d won to a man uninterested in justice for the rishi he governed? A man who, at the first sign of trouble from his half brother, had thrown me into a cell?
I’d be damned if I’d allow my fears to govern how I acted any longer. I’d create my own laws from now on. Why come so far and go only halfway? Better I die blazing in fire.
No half measures.
That would become my guiding prin ciple from now on.
My nefarious temper would be my strength. My impossi ble dreams my guide. No more would I hesitate. No longer would I listen to the base cravings of my body for venom.
No.
No more half measures.