The Gods of Amyrantha (67 page)

CHAPTER 68

The 'Senestran batch' turned out to be a group of five Torlenian women of varying ages, waiting in a holding cell on the other side of the compound. Arkady could just make them out in the fitful light from the torch across the hall. Two of the women were younger than Arkady. One seemed about the same age, the other two were well into their thirties.

Still faint from the pain of her branding, Arkady staggered as she was shoved into the cell with the other women. None of them showed much interest in her. The two older women returned to the game of stones they had improvised on the sandy cell floor, the younger pair seemed completely disinterested, and the woman who seemed about Arkady's age glared at her with such venom, she recoiled from her in shock.

She turned, instead, to the guard who was locking the gate, forcing back the tears of pain that choked her. The man had seemed almost sympathetic as he held her down while she was branded. Perhaps there was something left in him. Some shred of decency she could appeal to. 'Please! Can you get a message to someone for me?'

The guard looked at her for a moment without answering. He took so long to answer, in fact, that Arkady was starting to wonder if he understood what she'd said to him.

'How much?'

'I'm sorry?'

'How much to deliver your message?'

Tides! He wants to get paid.
But he hadn't said no. That was a start. 'My friend will pay you when you tell her where I am. Anything you ask.'

He shook his head. 'I don't work on promises. You want me to deliver a message? You pay up front.'

'With what?'

'Tides, you silly bitch,' one of the women behind her remarked. 'You have to
ask?'

Arkady glanced over her shoulder. It was one of the older women who had spoken. 'What does he want?'

'You
are
new, aren't you?' the other woman remarked with a shake of her head.

The woman who had spoken first laughed. 'Get down on your knees, stick your face through the bars, and open your mouth, lass,' she suggested, not taking her eyes off the game she was playing in the sand. 'You'll find out what Strakam accepts as payment, quick enough.'

Arkady turned to look at the guard. Strakam — presumably that was his name — grinned at her, and thrust his groin forward until it was up against the bars. Disgusted, Arkady stepped back, not sure she was quite that desperate.

The guard shrugged, a little disappointed perhaps, but not surprised. 'You got three days to change your mind, sweet thing,' he told her. 'After that it won't make a difference.'

He turned and headed back down the corridor, leaving Arkady staring after him. After a moment, she turned to the other women, wincing as the fabric of her shift rubbed against her injured breast, which had settled down to a dull throbbing pain. Whatever was in the paste the farrier had slathered on the wound, it seemed to be numbing the agony somewhat. 'What did he mean?'

'What did who mean?' the older woman asked. 'The guard. Strakam? He said I had three days to change my mind, didn't he? What did he mean?'

'He meant you've only got three days to change your mind,' the woman replied. She smiled at her companion. 'Not real bright, this one, is she?'

'Are we to be auctioned off, then?'

The woman shook her head. 'We ain't up for auction. They only auction off something a person's likely to want to bid on. You, me, the rest of us here ... we ain't worth the worry.' She looked up, squinting a little at Arkady in the gloom. 'You might have been all right if you'd been a bit younger, I reckon. You're probably a looker when you're cleaned up, but not enough to tempt the men of Elvere.'

'Then what's going to happen to us?'

'We've been batch sold to the Senestrans.'

'Batch
sold?' she asked, unfamiliar with the phrase.

'Means we've been bought in a bulk lot,' her companion explained. 'The Senestrans just put in an order for slaves ... you know, certain sex, certain height ... weight ... colouring ... whatever — I don't know exactly how it works — and the slavers fill the order. We ship out in three days time.'

Three days. Three days for Tiji to find her, assuming she had any idea Arkady was now a slave waiting to be shipped off to Senestra. Three days for Arkady to decide if she was desperate enough to give Strakam what he wanted, with no guarantee he'd even attempt to deliver her message, and she was willing to risk catching something disgusting from him in the process.

Three days for Cayal to learn of her fate and come looking for her. Assuming he
cared
enough to come looking for her.

There was no guarantee of that, either.

In pain, filled with despair and lost in a world full of a people she didn't understand — either their language or their customs — Arkady sank to the floor, her back against the bars. She gave into her tears for a time, telling herself it was the pain of her burn; knowing it was much more than that.

There had never been a time in Arkady's life when she'd felt as desperate as this. Not the night they arrested her father, not even the first time she knocked on Fillion Rybank's door when she was fourteen years old. Then she had been younger, more easily persuaded to hope. Less able to see the consequences; less harsh in her judgement of the reality of her situation.

The truth was, Arkady had now been enslaved. Worse, she'd been
branded
as a slave — which meant nobody in Torlenia would believe she had ever been anything else — and the only four people on Amyrantha who might care enough about her to come to her aid were completely out of her reach.

Stellan was imprisoned, possibly even executed by now, falsely accused of killing the Glaeban king and queen. The Tides alone knew where Declan was, with the frightening spectre of him being the one responsible for fabricating the charges against Stellan a real possibility. Cayal was off looking for another Tide Lord in the mistaken belief his old enemy had agreed to help him.

And Tiji... the clever, resourceful little Scard might only be several streets away, but to get a message to her, Arkady would have to give Strakam what he wanted, and then hope the guard would keep his word. And hope his offer wasn't just a ploy to get himself pleasured at the expense of a desperate slave.

The older woman glanced up, noticing Arkady's shuddering despair. 'If you're that desperate to get out of here, lass, give Strakam what he wants.'

Arkady wiped away her tears, sniffing loudly, and turned her head to look at the woman who had spoken, wincing as the movement once again made the fabric of her shift brush against her burn. 'I don't think I'm that far gone, just yet.'

'See how you feel three days from now,' the other woman advised. 'Strakam's cock may start to look a

mite tastier than spending the rest of your life underground in a Senestran copper mine.'

Three days. Tides, this can't be happening to me.

Arkady didn't sleep much that night, nor the next night, either. The pain from her branding would have kept her awake, even if the dire nature of her circumstances didn't make her afraid to close her eyes. The other women in the cell showed little interest in befriending her, except for the older woman who'd advised her so pragmatically to give Strakam what he wanted to get a message out to her friend.

Her name, it turned out, was Saxtyn. She was a debtor slave, sold into servitude when she couldn't pay her late husband's debts. She'd been a slave for more than a decade, she informed Arkady, and was resigned to whatever the fates might bring.

When Arkady asked her how far she'd be willing to go to escape this place, Saxtyn smiled sadly and shook her head. 'Not that far, Kady. But then, I ain't as desperate as you, neither.'

'You'd do it, then? If you were me?'

The older woman laughed harshly. 'Puttin' Strakam's cock in my mouth on purpose is way past the point I'd be willing to go, I'd reckon, even if it meant a pardon. Tides. Who knows where it's been?'

In the end, the decision was taken from her. The guard changed the following morning and the new man showed no interest in any of the women. He did bring them news, however. Their departure had been moved up and they were to be loaded onto the Senestran ship later that morning.

With her burn still throbbing in time with her heartbeat, Arkady began making plans this time to flee as soon as they were out of the compound. Her plans were dashed once again, however, when later that morning, the guards returned with shackles for the women. Arkady was chained between Saxtyn and the

youngest girl in the cell, a dark-haired young woman of about twenty, with a lazy eye and drooping eyelid that distorted her face and made her seem quite vapid. She was not, however, Arkady decided, judging by the stream of invective she unleashed on the guards who tried to shackle her. They slapped her for her temerity and after that she quieted down and allowed them to chain her.

The women were marched from the cell, through the compound, and then loaded onto an ox-drawn wagon for the journey to the docks. Every movement caused Arkady pain and the bright sunlight beat down on her like a relentless weight as they rocked along the crowded, potholed streets of Elvere. Adding to Arkady's surreal feeling was the realisation that this journey was the first time since arriving in Torlenia she had appeared in the streets unshrouded. To be able to see everything, and not just the small view of the world afforded by the narrow eye-slit of a shroud, was a strange and unsettling experience. And she didn't like what she saw, through her tear-misted eyes. The place was crowded and dirty and smelled like raw sewage.

'Your grace!'
she imagined someone calling, wondering if the heat and the pain were making her delirious.
'Over here!'

Arkady closed her eyes, wishing the pain was bad enough to make her pass out, rather than this agony that bordered on intolerable.

'Arkady!'

Her eyes snapped open. She hadn't imagined
that.
Arkady twisted around, trying to determine where the call had come from.

'Tiji?' she called out, certain the little Crasii was the only person in Torlenia who would recognise her. Certainly the only female in Torlenia likely to seek her out. And the call have
definitely
been a woman's voice. 'Tiji!' she cried again, trying to climb to her feet, but Saxtyn pulled her down.

'Tides, woman, do you want to get us all beaten?'

'But I heard my friend! She called to me!'

Saxtyn rolled her eyes impatiently. 'Then she's seen you and she can follow you to the ship and try to buy you back from the Senestran captain. Now sit down and shut up, you silly bitch, before you get us all into trouble.'

Saxtyn probably had the right of it, and in the crowded streets, Arkady had no hope of finding Tiji. She could be looking at her right now, camouflaged against a wall somewhere, watching as the wagon inched past, and she'd never know it.

Arkady turned and settled herself down again, filled with hope. Tiji was somewhere out there. Tiji had seen her. Tiji would follow them to the docks as Saxtyn suggested and with the resources she had at her disposal — provided she hadn't lost her diplomatic papers — she would be able to buy Arkady back and set her free.

Arkady dared not think beyond that moment, afraid she would jinx her imminent release if she allowed her excitement to run away with her.

But she had hope now. A future.

Arkady clung to that hope for the next few hours. She clung to it as they were marched aboard the Senestran freighter. Clung to it even as she was led below decks, freed from her shackles, and then shoved into a narrow, foul-smelling compartment in the hold with the other female slaves.

It wasn't until she felt the ship lurching beneath them, and she realised they were pulling away from the dock as the amphibians towed the freighter out into open water, that Arkady was forced to let the hope go.

Only then was she willing to admit that she was on her way to Senestra as a branded slave and nobody was going to save her.

CHAPTER 69

The Dog and Bone was, for an inn that catered almost exclusively to Crasii, quite a salubrious establishment. Like much of Torlenian architecture, the inn was really more a set of separate buildings contained within a high, enclosing wall, than the traditional definition of a house. It offered separate taprooms for canine and feline patrons, and a smaller room with a shallow pool out the back for the many amphibious sailors who frequented this busy seaport. Tiji, with her diplomatic papers and guarantee of Glaeban funds to settle her bill, was able to secure the best room in the house.

Cayal and Tiji had parted ways on the outskirts of the city. The Tide Lord kept his promise to Arkady to see Tiji safely back to civilisation, but had no interest in prolonging their acquaintanceship. Even so, he'd been in a strangely buoyant mood on the way from the abbey, as if the spectre of Brynden's assistance had lifted a heavy weight off him. Tiji had been unable to glean any useful details from him — she'd begun to suspect Cayal had no idea
how
this miraculous cure for immortality was supposed to work — but she was certain of one thing.