Neveryona (40 page)

‘Here,’ the man was saying, holding out his mug before the hunched slave woman, ‘take a drink, Bruka. You’ve worked through this day long and hard – you don’t have to tell me. I know the worker you are. Who deserves a drink more than you?’

‘Oh, no, my lord.’ Bruka gave the man a worried grin. Some of the woman’s teeth were gone. ‘We’re not supposed to, and I might get in trouble. It’s not worth the beating, my lord.’

The man laughed. ‘Now I know – and you know I know – that you folks have your own ways of getting your drink, that Old Rorkar, if he doesn’t know about for sure, at least suspects. He’s just decided to look the other way. Don’t tell me you’ve
never
tasted the work of your own hand before, Bruka …? How can a drink with me hurt?’

‘If it’s true that we get our own – and I’m not saying it is, my lord – it’s only another reason why I needn’t drink from that!’ The old woman jammed a wooden spoon full of vegetable stew into her mouth, laughing and chewing at once. (It was the same cinnamoned stew Pryn had eaten earlier for supper inside.) ‘Besides, that elegant mug of yours – it’s beautiful work, for sure. Why would a man like you want my dirty mouth on that!’ Bruka laughed again and turned back to her bowl.

‘A man like me …?’ mused the white-haired gentleman. ‘The truth is, Bruka, there are very few men like me in this world, lord or slave.’

‘That’s true, my lord.’

‘And if I were so weak that the touch of a slave’s lips to my cup would topple me from my position, what sort of position could it have been in the first place? You’ve worked hard, and I know the thirst that must be upon you. As a child, didn’t I spend my share of days working in these fields? I know how thirst can crawl into the bones and dry the body out from within. Drink, Bruka.’

‘You speak the truth again, my lord.’ The slave shook her head. ‘But my father told me, my lord, when I was a child: “Never drink from the master’s or mistress’s cup. For the slave, such a cup holds only the dregs of disgrace, pain, and death.” ’

‘Did he, now, Bruka? And let me tell you: when I was a child – before you were born – I saw my father, with this very mug, go to the slave-barracks where your father lay, sick with the fever that killed off a third of both your family and mine, and give him a drink. Your father took a long, cooling draught from my father’s hands out of this same cup I hold now.
Your
father drank from it. And
you
refuse?’

‘Did he now?’ The slave woman frowned. ‘I didn’t know my father very long, my lord. He died the same week your late mother sold me and the rest of the orchard gang to Old Rorkar, here. Rorkar’s a good master, my lord. But he’s not your father.’

‘I know, Bruka. Murjus, there, was one of that same gang, weren’t you, my man?’ The gentleman gestured to another slave hunched on the bench ahead, who glanced back now and said:

‘Yes, my lord. That’s the truth, my lord.’

Bruka was still looking at the mug. ‘My father, you say?’ Suddenly she put her bowl down on the stone beside her. ‘I think I
will
take that drink!’ She seized the green-and-red ceramic in both hands. (Two of her nails were deformed from some injury, and another was split to the
quick.) Bruka put the mug to her mouth and raised it, while her adam’s apple rose and fell, rose and fell in her red, wrinkled neck.

Pryn watched – she had stopped only two meters away. All that had really surprised her from the exchange was the realization that the man in the cloak was older than the woman in the iron – though both had almost equal bald spots.

The adam’s apple
still
rose and fell. The slave-woman was draining the mug – the gentleman realized it, too. His bushy eyebrows rose. Consternation worked into the lines around his lips and eyes before amusement blurred it.

‘That was good, my lord!’ Bruka wiped her mouth with her wrist.

Shaking his head, the gentleman took the mug back. ‘Well, you certainly
were
thirsty, old woman!’ That was when he saw Pryn – who suddenly wanted to move off in several directions or bury her face in her own mug, all at once.

But she stood and looked.

‘And hello, young woman!’ The gentleman put his mug on one knee and his large, clean hand on the other, regarding Pryn with a friendly enough look. ‘Now you certainly can’t be from around here. Let me see. I’d say …’ Still smiling, he narrowed his eyes. ‘Mountains … yes, a young woman of the mountains. From somewhere near … Ellamon? Go on, tell me I’m right!’

Surprised, Pryn nodded.

His smile broadened. ‘Ever ride a dragon?’

Mouth open, Pryn nodded again.

‘So did I!’ Spreading his elbows, the gentleman leaned forward, so that the wonderful cloak fell down around them. ‘ “Now look at that!” my father cried, on our way down from the high slope where we’d gone to watch the little girls and their trainers put on their fabled
performance. “They’ve got one here the
kids
can ride!” ’ Smiling, the white-haired gentleman dropped his head to the side, as though inviting Pryn into his memories. ‘ “Well,
he’s
not going to ride it,” declared my mother. But then, you know, nothing would do my father but that I try – I couldn’t have been more than half your age. But I remember it all, just as clearly! Oh, yes, at Ellamon – my father took me up to the bark fence, with mother looking stern, and father reassuring her that it was bound to be perfectly safe, and when would we be back at Ellamon any time soon, and just how often
did
a boy get a chance to ride through the air on a dragon. It was a very old dragon.’ The gentleman chuckled. ‘The little corral, all decked out with perfectly useless prods and flails and dragon-manacles to look like a real one, was out on a stony ledge. The very bored young woman managing it explained to my father that the dragon took off and flew over that gorge there, landed on the ledge over
there
(where we could see another young woman sitting), at which point it would turn around, take off again, and fly back
here
; and, yes, it was a
very
well-trained dragon and had been doing it for years – all this in a peremptory tone that rather put my father off, I think. He wasn’t used to being spoken to like that, though it pleased my mother, who assumed it was what he deserved for condescending to such foolishness in the first place. Finally my father said, yes, go ahead, and the young woman put a wide belt around me and buckled it – not very tightly, either. It had four metal rings on it. She lifted me onto the dragon’s hard back. The beast wore a leather body-harness, with several straps hanging from it down to the ground. She picked up one and another, and put them through the rings, lashing me on. Then she handed me the reins to hold – I’d already noticed they didn’t go to the dragon’s head, like the reins on the dragons we’d just seen
performing; they were tied to the harness’s shoulder strap, so that no matter how hard or in what direction I might pull, they wouldn’t have guided it anywhere. But that, I suppose, was in case I got it into my head, midflight, to take my dragon off somewhere I wasn’t supposed to. “Don’t you think there should be a rope or a chain to the creature from the corral here?” my mother asked in a loud voice. “When it’s flying, I mean. Just as a precaution …?” No one answered her, which only confirmed her notion that the concession was evil, silly, and dangerous. The young woman dashed around to the other side to tie the other straps to the other rings. As she was lashing the last one to the belt, the scaly old thing waddled forward, lifted wide wings – When it went off the edge, I was quite terrified! I mean, it just walked to the cliff and … fell. But then those laboring sails beat, and beat, and beat again; and we began to rise through the late morning, while I tried to lean forward and hug its cool windy neck. I remember glancing behind me. There was my mother, holding on to her chin, and my father, looking like he might leap after me, and the bored young woman, who’d sat down on an upturned barrel, all growing smaller with the swaying mountain. I tried to sit up – and was brave enough to
half
do it. But we’d already reached our glide’s height. Wings banked for descent to the far ledge … I remember hearing claws scrape rock. My dragon scrambled a few steps over stones. The young woman waiting there wasn’t as bored as the other. I looked down at her as she seized the dragon harness to walk the creature about on the ledge. To this day I can recall how dirty her nails were. Her short hair was wrapped through with some decorative cord. As she came around with us, she tugged one of my straps to make sure it was tight – I guess it usually was. Then she gave me a big grin. I think I fell
in love with her. The beast completed its turn. She slapped its haunch –

‘And we fell off the cliff again.’ The old gentleman’s eyes blinked above wet cheeks. (Was it raining harder?) ‘No, my parents agreed, this time in accord, I could
not
do it again. My father paid with both gold and iron, so it must have been rather expensive, even for those days. And I played at dragons and dragon riders all the way to the aunt’s brother-in-law’s niece’s where we were being hosted for lunch; and where I charmed some of the guests – and bored some others, I’m sure – with my loud version of dragon riding, till one of the servants took me with five or six other children down to the lake by the fountain. After we paddled about a bit, a slave brought
our
lunch out in several ceramic bowls, one of which had a dragon painted on it – I’m afraid it only got me going again.’ He sighed, smiling. ‘And
that’s
practically all I remember of the entire Ellamon trip!’

After moments Pryn said: ‘My dragon was a wild one. I caught her myself.’

‘Of course you’re much older than I was,’ the gentleman said.

Pryn said: ‘I don’t think they have the dragon ride anymore. For children.’ She looked at her mug. ‘The dragon corrals still put on exhibitions for people who come up to see. But some of the corrals have been closed down – they tore down the biggest when I was nine. My cousin was on the work crew … but the rest still put on shows.’ She blinked because of a drop of water on her eyelash. ‘There’re not so many dragons anymore.’

‘Never a hearty breed,’ the gentleman said. ‘They’ll probably be extinct in a hundred years. That’s why they were put under Imperial Protection.’

‘My aunt said something once about there being a
children’s dragon ride, a long time ago. But they … closed it down. Before I was born.’

‘This was
certainly
before you were born!’ The gentleman turned to pick up his mug. ‘Forty years ago, at least – fifty years ago, More than fifty years ago!’ He shook his head. ‘I
am
getting on. We are getting on, aren’t we Bruka?’

Just then the rain doubled, and – in the next breath – tripled.

On the bench ahead Murjus looked at the sky with a whiny grunt.

The gentleman stood, pulling his cloak first over one shoulder, then over the other. ‘We’d better be going inside.’

Pryn walked with him between stapled benches, gone dark and shiny with rain, back toward the building. The slaves hunched further over their bowls, spooning faster at their stew. The rim of the gentleman’s empty mug appeared and disappeared from under his cloak’s edge. The roof stuck out enough to give them some protection. He moved in front. She followed on the strip of drier ground, her inner shoulder bumping the wall, watching drops stand on the deep nap of his outer.

‘That slave drank all your beer,’ Pryn said. ‘She was a greedy creature.’

‘I
was
looking forward to a last mouthful before I went in, yes.’ He glanced back, smiling (so Pryn stepped up beside him). ‘But slaves grow thirsty too.’

‘Would you like some of mine?’

A bushy eyebrow rose. He looked at Pryn, at his own mug, at hers again, at his own. ‘Eh … no. Thank you, no.’ He stepped ahead at the door, and pushed back wet hide.

Pryn stepped in behind him.

She watched him walk through the hall, water dripping
and gleaming from the dark embroideries. Making her own way to the counter, she climbed to the stool.

The gentleman had stopped to speak to three barbarian workers – and in their own language, too, just as clearly as he had been speaking with Pryn in hers. Yrnik knew a few barbarian phrases that he could shout to get the workers to move faster. And Tetya had told her some words you were not supposed to say – which barbarians said all the time. But now, with both that man’s hands on his blue-black shoulders, now with his own hand on the shoulder of that one, the gentleman seemed a kind of magnificent little barbarian himself. Pryn sipped her beer (was it watery from the rain?) and watched two women nervously wait behind some men – to present their five children to him, Pryn realized. Days ago, indeed, one of those little girls had been made to return a peach Pryn had given her, which had bothered Pryn a while, before she realized the kinds of separations that existed about her. She put her elbow behind her and leaned back on the counter. ‘Juni …?’

With the hem of her apron around her forefinger, Juni was rubbing at a spot of spilled food which had escaped the general wiping and dried to the wood.

‘… who is that?’

Juni looked up and opened her mouth. ‘Why, it’s the earl!’ She leaned closer to touch Pryn’s arm. ‘Didn’t you see the caravan that went by here a while ago?’

‘That was
his?’

‘No,’ explained Juni. ‘That was his visitors! But now he’s finished entertaining his friends from the north, he can come along here and pay us a visit.’ She laughed. ‘Look at him there! You know, he’s a great magician. So
if
you look at him, don’t look at him wrong!’