The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (60 page)

He was not restrained, but he did not need to be.  Though he could unfurl into higher form and flee into the sky, he did not have the energy to go far, nor did he know where the Isle was situated now.  It had a tendency to wander.

“Mallandriach has been informed,” said the wraith on his right.  His captors were not kin, or else they would have opened a portal directly into House Mallandriach—but neither were they enemies, else they would have subjugated him immediately.

He nodded slightly to show his understanding, not that it mattered.  What came next would happen no matter what he did.  He had always known he would return here some day, no matter what he'd told his
eshar
Seimaranth.

With the thorn of Tirindai-
sanwy
hidden inside him, he was almost glad for it.

The curse upon the Thorn Protector was such that it could not speak, but he had felt its desires as soon as it pierced him.  It wanted contact with the haelhene
sanwy
Lalliel, the one who had betrayed it on the Wrecking Shore long ago.  It wanted to understand their separation and what had become of its partner.

It wanted to crack the White Isle like a shell, pull out the broken pieces of Ahnvanir, and sink this hideous corruption into the sea.

And Ilshenrir would help it.

Not because he followed it, nor because he hated his kin—for neither was true.  Not out of spite, though he knew the haelhene at his shoulders felt spitefully toward him, and so would his House Leader.  Not because he thought it was right, or good, or even helpful.

Only necessary.

In his imagination he saw purified haelhene flattening the human cities, torching the forests, finishing all that they had started.  He saw the airahene rising to join them or else break them permanently.  Neither option mattered.  His people had been clamped to this world for too long, and it had ruined them.

If reuniting Tirindai and Lalliel could free them, then he would do it.

And after that...

...after that, I will return to the others.  To the Guardian.  I will keep my promises.

Mallandriach and the others who benefited from the White Isle's parasitism would resist him—perhaps even try to destroy him.  He would have to be careful.  And so, when the great gate opened at the base of the Mallandriach tower and the white-robed figures approached him through shadow and light, he did his best to hide his smile.

Chapter 16 – Burning Bridges

“So Wes, darling, have you decided what to do about her?”

Specialist Weshker paused with the fork halfway to his mouth.  Across the table, Nerice raised pale brows expectantly, her honeyed eyes reflecting the glow of the club's lights.  To the side, Pendriel pushed root vegetables around her plate, indifferent as always.

“What d'yeh mean, do about her?” said Weshker cautiously.

Nerice shrugged one white-leathered shoulder, the movement making the golden teardrop in the cleft of her bodice glint like a wink.  “Take her or leave her.  It's that simple.”

Weshker stared.  He knew she was talking about Sanava, but it made no sense.  He had managed to visit her only once since his return to camp three days ago, and that for barely a quarter-mark before she was called away to service a customer.

His stomach soured at the reminder, and he set down his fork.  Around them, the officers' club bustled with its usual crowd, muted arcane lights casting glimmers off a constellation of rank marks.  He and the two women sat at what had become their usual spot: a padded booth on the right side of the dining room, looking out to the trestle tables studded with young officers and the low wooden wall that divided them from the older, higher-ranking men beyond.

Not that this side wasn't lavish.  Burnished wood and brass, comfortable padding even on the benches, black-garbed servants that he had initially taken for scouts.  Tableware, wine and salt, napkins!  And the fully-stocked bar at the end of the room, past the T-bend of the dividing wall.  Grey heads and dark mingled more companionably there than at the tables, and there were ladies present as well—not in the white of hospitality but in uniforms or proper dresses, with their own constellations on fingers and at throats.

A whole different world even without the plates of actual meat, and fish, and fine bread and pies and—well, everything.  Twenty-two years of backwoods- and slave-living had not prepared Weshker for things like sauces and creams, or pork with its crispy shroud of fat, or game-birds with actual identifiable limbs.  Slaves got stew and gruel.  He knew how to stab someone with a knife, but eat with one?  Or use a fork, or a napkin?

He didn't want to remember a time before this new life.  But he had to think of Sanava.  She was the reason he had come back.

“I dun—  What are yeh sayin'?”

Nerice rolled her eyes.  “Was that not clear?  She can be your woman exclusively, or she can be a slave.  Not both.”

He stared again, trying to make sense of Nerice's statement.  “I'm not an officer.  Only officers get women of their own.”

“Normally.  But you're with us now, and the Field Marshal's guard get a few extra perks.”

So I've noticed.
  Nerice and Pendriel had taken custody of him upon his arrival at base-camp, and introduced him first to his room—private! with its own door and bed and everything!—and then his new comrades, specialists all.  A small elite crowd, or so he was told.  One which he could aid with his new-found spiritist skills, should he discover how to control them.

That made him anxious.  He still had no idea what made the crows come out, or how to command them.

But there had been an interview with a nice lady mentalist, who had asked questions rather than grabbing his head and prying into his brain.  Easy ones, too.  Where he was from, what his time as a slave and freesoldier had been like, why he had returned to the camp.  He had nothing to hide; in fact, he got the feeling he had talked too much, because the mentalist had developed that pained look people often wore when he got enthusiastic about a topic.

Since his right wrist was still mending, he had no duties yet.  He'd tweaked it on the first day and gone to the infirmary but found no medics there, only attendants in white hospitality dresses.  They'd adjusted his splint but had none of the salves or herbs of their predecessors, not even their striped coats.

And one of the infirmaries was a Light temple now.

“Well?” Nerice prompted.  “Do you want her or not?”

“What...would that mean for us?”

She smiled slowly, and Weshker felt her boot slide up the inside of his thigh.  He squelched the instinct to recoil.  They had been sleeping together since that first night, when he—thoroughly soused and convinced this was a dream—had accepted her offer to break in the bed.  Even drunk, a part of him had expected it to transition to a nightmare.  Now, on the fourth day, he was getting annoyed that his nerves wouldn't just let him enjoy it.

But she was dangerous.  The nail-marks she'd left all over his back were only the start of it.  And he didn't want to anger her by choosing wrong.

“Darling, don't worry,” she said.  “I'm not the jealous type.  And you need someone to look after you when I'm not around.”

“So yeh'd...  We'd still...”

“Sure, if you want to.  And I don't mind girls.  We could all be together.”

Weshker opened his mouth, but no sound came out.  The blood had left his brain.  All he could see was the twining of limbs in his nice new bed, two pretty faces gazing up at him in adoration—one fair, one red-haired...

Then a vision of Sanava strangling him.

She might go for it!  Never know until you ask!
  But though he knew his people were more likely to marry as groups than as couples—his own parents had been two of six—he couldn't see her bedding down with an Imperial.  Not after what she'd been through.  Though maybe it would be all right if it was a woman...

No, she already has a mate.  Children.

But this'd get her off the fuck-roster...

“I'll...I'll take her, then.”

Nerice dimpled girlishly.  “Terrific.  We should give her the good news, don't you think?”

He looked down at his plate, at the piece of garto on his fork and the picked-over array of vegetables.  It felt unnatural to leave food behind even though he was stuffed to the gills, but the officers' club wasn't going anywhere.  And he could bring Sanava with him next time.  She'd been so skinny under that white dress...

“Yeh,” he said, and pulled the napkin from his collar to scrub the sauce from his tuft of beard.  “She en't made for that kinda life, the one she's got.  She'll be happy to get out.  Will she be free?”

“Not instantly, but it's negotiable,” said Nerice, sliding from the booth.  Even after having explored her thoroughly, Weshker couldn't help but stare as she straightened her bodice and adjusted the truncheon-bearing belt across her hips.  Something in him expected her to evaporate at any moment, or transform into...into...

Don't fool yourself.  That gold pendant means she's already a monster; she doesn't need to do any transforming.

Shut up shut up shut up.

Pendriel slid free on that side, and Weshker slipped out as well, noticing the glances the surrounding officers sent their way.  Most followed the women, but as Nerice hooked her arm in with his, he saw jealousy flash his way from all directions.  He stifled an apologetic wince.

Together they headed out, Pendriel tailing them like a bodyguard.  The club door opened into a little courtyard walled in by barracks, its space set up with awnings and benches and tables like a tavern's yard in summer, the packed earth beautified with potted plants and brick paving.  A few officers sat out there, enjoying the lukewarm winter sun, and their eyes followed Weshker's escorts as well.  Part of him wanted to preen, part to run and hide.  He wished that latter half would go away.

It was nice out now that the rain had stopped.  Fresh and bright, with clouds scudding across a pale sky and reflecting in the puddles.  Elsewhere in camp, it probably stank to the rafters, but here by the officers' housing and the command-post hill the refuse was well-tamed, the alleys patrolled.  He could breathe air untainted by the rankness of other men, and walk through space uncrowded by bodies.  He could laugh and not expect a strike.

Nerice matched his stride with ease, and they turned east from the entry, toward the mages' district.  The great glass-and-steel dome of the casting chamber rose high over the cottages that surrounded it, ropes of red and white energy crackling up from its peak to constantly reinforce the camp-ward.  The sky above it looked pinkish, and he wondered how many of the old Crimson mages had been replaced by white-robes.

He had helped build that structure: digging the foundation then laying the first stones under the harsh sun, a hundred other men straining alongside him.  The mages had brought earthen servitors and great constructs to raise the walls, evidently not trusting the slaves, and magic had assembled the domes, sealed the cracks, and laid the inner floor with its circles of precious metal.

On the other side of the street ran rows of freesoldier barracks, military police bunkhouses and their associated jails.  The three of them passed close to the cottages then tucked down a side-street that ran south, the crackle and hiss of energies fading slowly behind them.  Here were warehouses on one side, doors standing open as supply-officers paced and checked and hollered at civilian haulers, and the military police on the other—sitting or leaning by the steps to their bunkhouses, smoking and looking bored.

And ahead, the laundry-lines and white banners of the women's quarters.

Weshker's stomach tightened.  Abruptly he felt ill, overfed, guilty.  He'd been out here, roaming free, while his lover was trapped within those sheet-marked borders...

Calm down.  Gonna save her.  No need to fear.

It was difficult to convince himself.

The usual crowd filled the central service-area: freesoldiers and non-commissioned officers of all types, archer and infantry and lancer, specialist and support.  Women in white dresses scuttled about, dodging hands and pouring drinks, or else perched in laps with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  A few military police lurked about, perhaps to keep the peace, and the matrons were at hand as well: bulkier or older women who did not participate but directed the serving and lap-sitting, and kept a sharp eye on dresses and hands.

Weshker approached one—a broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced woman of middle age, dimly familiar.  “Hoi, uh, mistress,” he said, trying not to quail at her glance, “I'm lookin' fer one a' yer girls, Sanava...”

Her face scrunched in displeasure, perhaps at him or perhaps at his escorts, but then she jerked her chin toward the hospitality houses.  His heart sank.

“She's out back, sir,” the woman said.  “Doing the wash.”

It took him a moment of trying to decipher the euphemism before he realized it wasn't one.  Laundry-lines cloaked the area beyond the first few buildings, as if to shield the rest of the women's area from the sight of their required service.  “Oh.  Can I go see her?”

“Can't stop you, sir.”

There was something hard in her voice, and he remembered that the matrons were slaves too.  For all their show of authority, they would be executed like any other if they harmed a freesoldier.  He nodded, then unlinked his arm from Nerice's with a mumbled, “Wait here,” and cut through a thin part of the crowd toward the hanging sheets.

A few steps along, he remembered where he had seen the matron.  The infirmary.  One of the medics' aides who had watched over him while he was sick.

Did they all end up here?
he wondered as he brushed past the sheets.

Beyond was another open area, with a crowd of a different kind.  Laundry-lines ran from bunkhouse to bunkhouse, creating a labyrinth of garments that stirred in the breeze, while at the open center stood great vats being stirred by women with poles.  Young children—girls and boys—fed the occasional goat-chip or chunk of charcoal into the brick furnaces beneath them, the smoke threading up from central pipes to avoid the laundry.

At first, Weshker thought they were boiling the clothes, but as he pushed clear of the forest of sheets he found other women arrayed around the furnace-space, sweating as they scrubbed garments in much smaller basins.  Each had a basket of dirties and a basket of cleans, replaced regularly by the children, while another handful of women went around to empty old washwater into barrels and refill the tubs with new.  Around the fringes, a few crones and some heavily-pregnant girls worked with needle and thread, mending gear.  The air reeked of lye and smoke.

A handful of women looked up at his entrance, but most kept their heads down, feigning disinterest.  He pretended he didn't see them either, and skimmed the crowd for Sanava.  It took a while; he almost thought the matron had lied, but then he spotted her rust-colored eyebrows under the edge of a white kerchief.

“Hoi!  Sanava!” he called, and she looked up sharply.  One eye was swollen shut, purple.

His heart clenched, but it was all the more reason to take her from here.  He beckoned and she rose, casting a glance to a watching matron who gave a nod.  As she stepped around her neighbors and drew close, he saw more bruises on her neck and arms, up to the edges of her rolled up sleeves.

“Yeh all right?” he said as she halted just in reach.  Her cold look told him it was the wrong question.  “Who did that?  I'll get 'im.”

“Dun matter,” she said.

“I'm wi' the Field Marshal's guard.  I can kick his ass inside out fer yeh.”