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The stowaway flinched as if under attack, and huddled tighter.
Torchay leaned close and murmured in Kallista’s ear. “That was Adaran. Maybe if you tried speaking Tibran…?”
She glared at him. She hadn’t known she was speaking Tibran in the first place. How was she supposed to know which language she spoke when they sounded the same to her?
Abruptly, the stowaway threw herself to the deck again, so swiftly that Torchay had a blade out and poised to strike before holding his blow. The woman curled onto her knees, arms once more stretched toward Kallista.
“Please, please,” she said. “Allow me to stay. I will do anything you ask. I will cook your food and wash your clothes. I will rub your feet. I will even service your man—” There came a little pause in the woman’s babbling before she went on. “Though, if I could choose, I do not think I would choose to, because he looks large and would probably hurt me, and he is rather ugly, but if you wish it, great lady, I will do it.”
Kallista could hide neither her shock nor a quick amused look at Torchay.
“What?” he muttered, flipping the naked blade in his hand. It was a good-size one, narrow and long enough to come out the back if he thrust it in the woman’s throat.
“What? What is she saying?” the captain echoed.
“She wishes to stay. She is offering herself as my servant.” Kallista turned to Torchay and lowered her voice, letting her amusement out. “And she offered to ‘service’ you, though she’d really rather not, since she thinks you’re ugly and probably too big.” She finished with a significant glance below her bodyguard’s waist, expecting a snort and a roll of the eyes. She got it, along with a blush she didn’t expect.
Puzzled, she swung back to the prostrate stowaway. Was Torchay attracted to the woman? Was that where the blush came from? She’d thought he had better taste.
“How did she get on board?” the captain said.
Kallista finally repeated all the questions.
“I am Aisse, woman of Haav, assigned to Warrior caste. I climbed onto the ship from the water, during the night, when the watch was on the far side.” The woman did not move from her submissive posture. “I beg of you, great lady, if you will not let me stay, allow me death rather than sending me back.”
“Why?” Kallista asked before translating for the captain.
“I will face death anyway, but theirs will not be a gentle one. It is so for anyone who rebels against his lot in life, but it is worse for a woman.” The Tibran, Aisse, looked up then, finally exposing her face to the lanterns’ light.
Kallista recoiled, shock exploding in gasps from throats around her. This Aisse might have been beautiful, might be beautiful again. At this moment, it was impossible to tell, given the swollen discoloration of bruises covering her face.
“What—” Kallista reached for the woman’s hand, beckoning when she did not seem to know what was wanted. “Stand up. Stand up straight and look me in the eye.”
Aisse did as she was told, slowly straightening from her hunched defensive attitude until she stood in a smaller echo of Kallista’s. Her eyes were a dark, rich brown, rarely seen in Adara. The smudges on her arms were more bruises, not dirt.
“What happened to you?” Kallista asked. “Who did this?”
“One of the Farmer caste.” Aisse shifted a shoulder. “I did not know him. He caught me as I was escaping. The morning the warriors died.”
The day of the dark magic. Kallista stifled her shudder as she translated, sensing Torchay’s impatience. He did not respond well to a lack of information.
“When they died,” Aisse went on, “I got away.”
That sent another chill through Kallista. Did she sense the hand of the One in this? “You were already running away, before this beating?”
“Yes. One beating is much like another, just as one man is like another. They are a woman’s lot, men and beatings. But I wish to choose. I want a life that is mine.”
The sincerity in her voice rang clear to Kallista’s soul. She too had wished for more choices than she’d been given, though she’d had more than Aisse. “Neither men nor beatings are a woman’s lot in Adara.”
“That is why I want to stay.”
Kallista nodded, her mind made up. “Will you renounce Tibre and swear loyalty to me as representative of Adara’s Reinine?”
Aisse started back to her knees again, joy shining through the bruises on her face, but halted at Kallista’s upraised hand and the sight of Torchay’s glittering blade.
“What are you doing, Captain?” Torchay asked through gritted teeth.
Kallista shifted her upraised hand to halt him as well. “Slowly,” she said in Tibran. “Kneel. Swear on the One, the Mother and Father of all, that you renounce all ties and loyalty to Tibre.”
“I worship Ulilianeth, great lady,” Aisse said as she knelt, eyeing Torchay’s blade all the way down.
“A beautiful aspect of the One, but only a small part of Her glory. Do you swear?” Step by step, Kallista led her through the oath, cobbling it together on the spot from other vows she had heard and sworn over the years.
“Naitan.” Torchay stepped close, bending to growl in her ear, “Kallista, what are you doing?”
“This woman has renounced her Tibran birth and begged citizenship in Adara,” Kallista said in Adaran as she gestured Aisse to her feet. This time it did not take so long for her to stand straight.
“And you gave it?” Torchay demanded.
“I will take responsibility for her as my servant, until we reach Arikon and the Reinine can decide whether to grant her request,” she said to the riverboat captain, “and of course I will pay her passage to Turysh.”
“And you’re sure she’s not a saboteur or spy?” The captain studied Kallista’s new servant with doubt.
“I’m sure.” Though her certainty bothered her. How was she so sure?
“How?” Torchay asked, voice ringing through the foredeck. “How can you know she speaks the truth?”
I just do. But that wouldn’t convince them. “My magic is of the North.” Her blue tunic would have told them so already, but truthsayers were also of the North. It wouldn’t convince Torchay, but it might the others. Probably.
He retreated first, however, giving her a hard look that faded to worry, then stoic acceptance. He bowed. “As you say, naitan.”
His acquiescence convinced the others. The captain nodded, dismissing the crew still standing guard.
“If I could beg a bath for my servant Aisse?” Kallista said.
The male officer, in charge of passengers and cargo, if she remembered right, bowed. “I will see to it, naitan.”
“I will be watching your new ‘servant’ with careful eyes, naitan,” Torchay murmured as he gestured for Aisse to follow the other man.
“I expect nothing less.” Kallista gave him a wicked grin. “That’s why I’m putting her in your charge. See that she has what she needs—new clothes and a pair of shoes to start with. Probably food. And then, teach her Adaran.”
“I’m no scholar.”
“No.” She patted his shoulder. “Which means your teaching will be eminently practical. Just try not to teach her too many curse words.”
“Here! What are you doing? Are you mad?” A hand caught Stone’s arm, jerked him back.
Stone was standing at the prow of a boat, trying to climb onto the railing. The shackles he wore on his ankles and wrists wouldn’t allow it.
“Of course you’re mad,” the voice attached to the hand muttered. “What was I thinking?” It was male, belonging to the officer in charge of the soldiers escorting Stone up the river to the Adaran capital.
“Sergeant!” He shouted back down the length of the boat, and the fat guard from the prison came clattering up the stairs to the high foredeck.
“Sir!” The sergeant came to attention, obviously missing the presence of his pike. He had nothing to pound on the deck.
“Who, Sergeant, is supposed to be guarding the prisoner this watch?” The icy fury in the lieutenant’s voice made even Stone shiver with fear.
“I am, sir. Me and Dyrney. The Tibran’s asleep.” The guard’s voice faltered as he realized just who his superior held by the elbow. “Or he was. How’d he get out?”
“Precisely what I would like to know.”
So would he. Stone had lost time. Hours, if not days. He did not remember boarding this boat.
Stone tried his voice, swallowed and tried again. “How long—” His voice crackled, as if he’d either not been using it, or been using it too much.
“I dunno, sir,” the sergeant answered the lieutenant. “I swear we was watchin’ him. He couldn’t’ve got out the door.”
“Then perhaps he left by the window, hmm?” The officer turned to Stone, impaling him on the glare from his uncanny blue eyes. Save for those eyes, this man looked like a proper officer. His brown hair was pulled smoothly back from a high forehead into that tight Adaran queue, his face set and hard with an attitude of command. His rank was marked by a single white ribbon on either shoulder of his dun-colored tunic.
“How long?” He repeated Stone’s question. “Are you with us, warrior?”
Stone cleared his throat. “How long have we been traveling?”
The man leaned closer, peering into Stone’s face. “Yes, I believe you are here. Welcome back. Do you recall who I am?”
It took some effort, but Stone finally dredged up the information. “Lieutenant Joh…I don’t remember your other name. Twenty-first Infantry.”
“Joh Suteny, but that doesn’t matter.” He continued staring.
“How long?” Stone asked again.
“Oh. Yes. We have been on the river almost one full day.” He gestured at the lowering sun, then at the stairway. “Shall we go down?”
Surprised by the courtesy—it was seldom offered to prisoners in shackles—Stone shuffled toward the steps. The sergeant moved as if to take Stone’s arm, but the lieutenant got there first.
“I will secure the prisoner,” he said, his voice all ice and iron. “Since it seems your incompetence knows no bounds.”
“Yessir. Nossir.” The fat guard bobbed his head, backed away.
The lieutenant had to hold Stone upright during the descent down the steep gangway. The shackles made it almost impossible to maintain his balance.
“However did you get up there?” Suteny asked in a mild conversational tone as they made their slow way down the walkway to the cabin that was his prison during the river journey.
“Up is easier than down.”
“When you leave us—” Suteny opened the cabin door and ushered him inside, then followed to lean against the closed door “—where do you go?”
Stone shuffled to the bunk and sat down. How had he got out of the cabin? He would have sworn his shoulders could never fit through that porthole.
“Warrior?” The Adaran spoke.
Oh yes. He’d asked a question, hadn’t he? Stone fought through the fog clouding his mind. He didn’t have the brains Fox had, but he’d never had trouble thinking. What was wrong with him? Was he mad? “I don’t know,” he said. “I—the time is just…gone. I don’t—”
But he did remember something. An urgency. A pull. A need to—“I have to go…somewhere. I’m—I’m looking for something. I don’t know what it is. But I must find it. I must. Or…” He shook his head again. “I don’t know. I don’t know what will happen if I don’t find it. Bad things, I think.”
“I see.” The lieutenant looked down, seeming to think. “I am afraid we are going to have to add to your burden. I have been ordered to treat you with courtesy, as far as I might. But when you do not yourself know what you are doing…
“I will make the chain a long one so that you may move about the cabin, and you may take the air on deck with an escort, as the journey is several more days. But—for your own safety—I must chain you in place. Do you understand?”
Stone nodded, hiding the relief that ebbed through him. A chain would hold him. Even if he injured himself fighting the chain, which he feared was likely, at least he could not plunge to his death over the side of the boat.
“You seem a reasonable man, warrior—Stone, is it?” Suteny waited for an answer. Stone nodded and the other man went on. “When you are here with us, that is. Do you know what triggers these…little spells of time?” The lieutenant put his head outside the door and spoke in a voice of quiet authority before closing it again and turning back to Stone.
Hunching his shoulders, Stone shook his head. He wished he knew. He wanted to be rid of it, his madness or whatever it might be.
“Would you allow me to try calling you back?”
Stone stared at the pale-skinned Adaran. “You wish to do this?”
Suteny seemed surprised by Stone’s surprise. “It would make my job easier, would it not? If you could retain better possession of your senses.”
“True.” Stone shrugged. “I see no reason why not. Try.”
“Very well. We are agreed.”
A knock sounded at the door and the lieutenant opened it to admit one of the other guards, young, with a dogged determination that made up for his lack of experience. He proceeded to attach a long chain to Stone’s ankle bonds and to the bolts holding the cabin’s bunk to the floor.
“Is there anything else I can provide for your comfort?” Lieutenant Suteny asked. “Some reading material perhaps?”
Stone shook his head, testing the chain’s length. “I can speak Adaran, but I can’t read it.” He’d tried to read the words on the general’s map.
“Oh?” A single eyebrow arched high on Suteny’s forehead. “Pity.”
Stone shrugged. He’d never been much for reading anyway. Not like Fox.
Suteny watched him another long moment. It made Stone uneasy. As if the man was studying him. Preparing a report. He probably was. When they reached Arikon, he would likely be called upon to report to his superiors everything observed about their Tibran prisoner and whether he was too mad to be of any use. Stone would like to know the answer to that himself.
Aisse was sitting in complete idleness on the back of the boat a short space apart from her mistress and the man. It was the second afternoon from the time she had been discovered and Aisse still did not understand what sort of service was expected of her. She didn’t understand much of anything in her new country.
Kallista was the captain, but it did not seem to mean the same as it would in Tibre. She did not own the man. Nor did he own her. He protected her. He served her, carrying out duties Aisse had thought would be hers.
When the man came that first night, while she was in her bath, Aisse had feared his purpose. But he had ignored her naked self to empty her bag on the floor and search it, then carried her clothing away. Aisse had been confused, then amused when she realized the man had been searching for weapons, things that could harm the captain. Then she remembered that in this place, women were indeed as dangerous as the men, if not more so.
The man brought her new clothes, a tunic much like the old one and trousers to cover her legs, all the way to her waist. Aisse liked trousers. The man brought her to the cabin, gave her a blanket and a corner for sleeping. He gave her food and the words for food and blanket, for cup, bowl and spoon. But when she tried to begin her duties by putting away the captain’s things, he had growled and sent her away.
He would not allow Aisse to touch anything belonging to either the captain or himself. He did not allow her to collect their food from the boat’s kitchen. He did not trust her. It was a strange feeling for Aisse, to be considered important enough for suspicion, worthy of distrust.
She rested her head on her knees and wrapped her arms around her folded legs as she watched the captain and her man. She did not understand relations between men and women in this new country either. She had thought women ruled here—and they did, but not in a way Aisse could comprehend. She did not have words for the things she saw.
