"And where are the slaves?" I asked. "Will I see them?"
"They are quartered in a special area of the palace."
That would be the jail part, I decided. The part with bars on the windows and locked doors so they couldn't escape. "Special?"
"It is more suited to the requirements of their species."
This was sounding even worse, more like a zoo than a prison. "Don't they try to escape?"
"They are not... unhappy."
By which I suppose he meant that they
were
happy, though I doubted it. I couldn't imagine anyone
ever
being happy about being a slave!
"Really?" I tried not to sound overly skeptical, but it was difficult.
"As I said before, they are well treated, and they are...
protected." Wazak seemed to be getting more irritable by the second, for the tip of his tail was now tapping the side of the car in much the same way that an impatient person will tap their foot. He obviously didn't care to discuss this any further.
"Like pets, then," I said in an effort to sum things up quickly.
I wasn't sure if the concept of having pets was famil-iar to him or not, but he nodded anyway. As we were approaching the palace by this time, I was momentarily diverted by the view, so I left it at that.
To say that the palace was ornate would be a serious understatement. It appeared to have been constructed from something like marble, while the lesser structures were made of a type of sandstone.
With its gleaming, domed roof, imposing pillars, and multitudes of arched doorways lavishly decorated with floral carvings, it made the Taj Mahal look like a quaint little cottage.
"Nice place," I remarked dryly.
Wazak's facial expressions might have been more subtle than a human's, but if my eyes didn't deceive me, what was on his face was essentially a smirk. However, he didn't take the opportunity to brag, and when he did speak of the palace, his tone was merely informative. "It is built of a type of stone called shepra, which is highly prized. It is quarried in the mountains near here, along with other precious stones."
His gesture indicated the mountains I'd seen on the horizon. I almost let out a snicker, because if that was what he called "near," I wondered what he would consider to be distant—halfway around the planet? I also wondered how many slaves it had taken to haul the shepra across the desert and then build the palace. A vision of Hebrew slaves building the pyramids of Egypt—same weather conditions, too—popped into my head.
Wazak seemed to be reading my thoughts, for he added, "And it was not built by slaves, and not strictly for the Queen. It was built as a monument to our people."
He seemed to be quite proud of that fact, though he didn't come right out and say it. As I gazed at the structure, I concluded that while it might have been intended as a tribute to the Darconian people, it was also a monument to beauty. Perhaps living in a barren desert had made them appreciate beauty all the more, making it as highly prized as the shepra—or the water.
And music!—what could possibly be more beautiful than that? Now I understood why I was there: to bring more beauty to an otherwise harsh and desolate world. And I would do it, too, because if they weren't all tone deaf, these people were going to love Mozart.
And Brahms. And Beethoven. Maybe even Bach. I just hoped the kid could play.
MY OTHER HOPE WAS THAT THEY UNDERSTOOD JUST HOW
much water a member of my species would require to survive in such a climate. I seriously doubted that they bathed in water as we did on Earth, and I'd have been willing to bet that they didn't drink two or three liters of fluid a day, either. Their scaly skin probably didn't perspire; it was more likely they were similar to other reptiles and stayed out of the sun to avoid getting overheated. Aside from the fact that there wasn't much else around to use, this was surely the reason they favored stone as a building material—good insulation.
The heat was unrelenting, and even the breeze created by the movement of the hovercars didn't help very much. My mouth was dry, and I could already feel the skin on my face beginning to tighten up and burn. Being pale even by human standards, I doubted that I would last a day out in the desert, even with adequate water.
I knew I could survive with a lowered water content in my body, but it would take some time for me to adapt. I ought to have tried to drink less on the journey here, but this was one of the finer points about life on Darconia that I hadn't anticipated. I'd read that there were deserts, but I hadn't known I'd be living right in the middle of one of them! Maybe that was why the job had been posted on Earth; we were too far away to know many of the details. Now that I was here, I was wishing I'd paid a little more attention to the fine print—and I might have, if there'd been any.
When we stopped at an entrance to the palace, Wazak actually helped me out of the hovercar. I suppose his irritation with all my questions was overborne by the need to observe at least some of the niceties, and as before, his two sidekicks carried my luggage.
Once underneath the portico, the temperature seemed to drop about ten degrees, and I heaved a sigh of relief.
I couldn't even tell that I'd been sweating—the air was so dry that it evaporated immediately—until I brushed a hand across my arm, and it felt slightly gritty with salt.
"You will require some refreshment," Wazak said stiffly. "This way."
I found myself following him again, and as his buddies disappeared with my stuff, I wondered if they would go through it and confiscate all of my clothes. This was a palace, after all, and perhaps there was a rule I didn't know about: "Thou shalt not wear more clothing than the Queen," or something of that nature. I also wondered if shoes were permitted. I had worn some of my nicer shoes—they were an iridescent turquoise and had the virtue of matching my dress—since I thought it was possible that I'd be meeting the Queen. Now I wished I'd worn slippers instead, because the way my footsteps were echoing off the walls, I sounded like a herd of el-ephants strolling through the corridor. Wazak, on the other hand, was barefoot and the soles of his feet made a soft slapping sound as he walked. I figured he must have had calluses about an inch thick on the bottoms of those feet—walking across a bed of hot coals would have been no trouble for him at all. That was one way to keep the slaves from running off; just keep them barefoot and they wouldn't step a meter beyond the palace walls.
I was glad Wazak had mentioned refreshment, because I was getting pretty hungry by then, on top of being thirstier than I'd ever been in my life. I had no idea if it was dinnertime or lunchtime or what, but if this was how hot it was in the early morning, I would be remaining inside the palace for the entirety of my stay.
As if he'd known what I was thinking, Wazak an-nounced: "It is time for the evening meal. You will be dining with the Queen."
"What?" I squeaked. "Right now? Don't I have to change clothes or pass through a weapons sensor or anything?" Perhaps I needed to be vaccinated against something, too. Or I might need to be decontaminated.
After all, I might be carrying a germ that would wipe out the entire population. They didn't know.
Wazak stopped and turned to face me. "Do you have a weapon?"
"Well, no," I admitted, "but I thought you'd want to be sure..." My voice trailed off as I looked up at him. He certainly was imposing! Asking Wazak questions while sitting opposite him in an open vehicle was one thing, standing toe-to-toe with him was quite another. No one in their right mind would have followed him into the palace carrying so much as a pen knife.
Wazak didn't reply, but if he'd had eyebrows, one of them would surely have risen before he turned and started off down the hall again. I hoped the natives weren't all as unfriendly as he was, though I thought if I spent more time with him, he might warm up a little. It was possible he was trying to intimidate me on purpose, just to make sure I didn't cause any trouble in the future.
Imagine that! Me, a troublemaker!
"Will the Princess be having dinner with us, as well?"
I asked, trotting to catch up with him. "I—I'd like to meet her."
"Perhaps," was Wazak's noncommittal response.
I closed my lips firmly.
Oh, just shut up and follow
him, Kyra! Keep quiet and stay out of trouble!
Which shouldn't have been difficult for me, since I'd never been in any kind of trouble in my life. My record was clean— no felonies, no misdemeanors, no minor infractions of the rules. I'd never even gotten a parking ticket.
I tried to focus on where we were going and where I had been. After the open portico, we were now passing through a maze of corridors, which all looked alike.
This was probably another way of keeping the slaves safely inside, because even if they did get loose, they'd never be able to find their way out. Maybe there was a code in the carvings on the walls. Hell, there could have been numbers and signs plastered all over them, and I wouldn't have known what they meant! If I was ever left on my own, getting lost was a certainty.
"Should have listened to my mother," I muttered to myself. I wished I had Nindala with me for moral support. We would have been whispering behind Wazak's back, making fun of his tail or something, which would have eased the tension.
I tried to imagine what Nindala would have to say about Wazak and nearly bit my lip trying not to laugh out loud. I could almost her musing, "Do you think his penis is as ugly as his face?" I couldn't have said at that point, for, despite his lack of so much as a loincloth to cover the area where one might normally expect to find a penis, there didn't appear to be one. I decided that Darconians were probably one of those species that kept their tool drawn up inside until it was needed, but without Nindala around, I doubted I would ever find out.
After all, I was lucky ever to have seen a
human
penis; what chance did I have of finding one on a lizard? Aside from that, I didn't want anyone to get any strange ideas, because I was pretty well convinced that having sex with someone like Wazak would be fatal to a Terran.
I was watching his tail sway back and forth, so I noticed when Wazak's swagger became more pronounced.
Looking ahead, I saw that we were approaching a large set of carved doors, which were flanked by two guards who looked a lot like Wazak but had a different style of breastplate—more ornate than his and more polished, as though they'd never seen actual combat. Queen's guards, I decided. This was it.
The guards stiffened slightly, but Wazak waved them aside and pulled the doors open himself. I had a new thought: if there was a queen and a princess, shouldn't there also be a king? I couldn't remember anyone ever mentioning one, and while the room I entered contained two Darconians, one much smaller than the other, neither of them were nearly as large as Wazak, which led me to believe that I was now facing the Queen and her daughter.
Smaller than Wazak and not quite as ugly—though she wouldn't have won a beauty contest on any planet except, perhaps, her own—Queen Scalia had enough jeweled necklaces draped around her that she wouldn't have required clothing, even if she'd been human. She could have had mammary glands hidden under there somewhere, but, as an egg layer, she wouldn't nurse her young anyway. It was quite possible that I had the only tits on the whole damn planet.
Since I couldn't even swear Wazak had a cock, maybe the overt differences between the sexes had to do with color, because they
were
different: Wazak was an iridescent green with yellow highlights, while the Queen and her daughter were both a shimmering mixture of green and purple. I remembered seeing a few on the street who had a bluish tint, though, and decided that this characteristic corresponded to hair color in humans and had nothing to do with gender.
The room wasn't particularly large, but the table at which the Queen and the Princess sat was quite beautiful, made of that same marble-like shepra stone and polished to a high sheen. There were windows at the far end looking out on a grove of trees and the farms beyond. It was relatively cool there, and though the room wasn't lit with any conventional light that I'd ever seen, there was some kind of glowing stone set into the ceiling. It must have been in the corridors, too, for I hadn't seen any torches, yet the windowless hallways had been well lit.
"Welcome to Darconia, Kyra Aramis," she said. Her accent wasn't as thick as Wazak's, and she spoke the Standard Tongue quite clearly. "I am Queen Scalia, and this is my daughter, the Princess Zealon, your student."
"I'm very pleased to meet you," I said. I wasn't sure if I should have added a "Your Majesty" or a "Your Highness" to that or not. No doubt I would be informed.
I smiled and bowed slightly toward the Queen and then to Princess Zealon, who, though she had coloring similar to her mother's, wore much less jewelry. "Will you join us for dinner?" the Queen asked.
I was starving, but the table was empty. No doubt the food was still squirming in the kitchen. "Yes—" I broke off there, not knowing quite how to address her and blurted out: "Urn, what should I call you?" before I could stop to phrase it more delicately.
Zealon giggled, but Scalia was a bit more tactful. She stared at me for a moment. "I have given you my name,"
she said. "Have you forgotten it already?"
"Well, no, I haven't, but, on Earth, queens are usually called something else when you're actually speaking to them."
"How odd," she remarked with a questioning glance at Zealon. "Such as?"
"Your Highness or Your Majesty for queens," I began. "Your Grace for a duchess, My Lady for lesser nobles. Of course, there haven't been any queens for some time now, and I only know that much from reading books. We don't have kings anymore, either," I added, hoping that last statement would prompt her to tell me about her own king, and it did.
"We do not often have male rulers here," Scalia said.
"Their tempers are too volatile." She gazed past me, looking at Wazak for a long moment. "We queens have only consorts."