The former metal worker’s widow was walking with slow, deliberate steps down the main road, steadying herself with two canes. She’d walked the length of the village and back every sunny day for as long as Tessia could remember. When Tessia was a child, and the widow less withered, other older women of the village had joined her and much gossiping had transpired during their circuit. Now the other women said they were too old to venture out, and feared they would trip or be knocked over by the village children.
Faint childish screams and laughter drew Tessia’s attention to the river, where small figures swarmed around the broad, flat curve of the waterway where she had played as a child. Then she heard her name spoken, and turned in time to see a local farmer nod at her as he passed.
He had come from the direction of Lord Dakon’s house, now only a few dozen steps away. Entering the alley beside the Residence, she walked up to the side door she and her father had entered the previous day, and knocked.
The door was opened by Cannia. The woman smiled at Tessia, then glanced around the alley.
“Father is still resting,” Tessia explained. “I’m to check on the slave and report back.”
Cannia nodded and beckoned Tessia inside. “Took him some broth this morning. Tried to feed it to him, since he can’t in the state he’s in. Didn’t take more than a few mouthfuls, I reckon.”
“So he’s awake.”
“Sure is, though I dare say he wishes he wasn’t.”
“Could you or someone else assist while I tend to him?”
“Of course.” She lit a lamp and gave it to Tessia. “Go on ahead and I’ll send someone to help you.”
Tessia felt her skin prickle slightly as she climbed the stairs to the slave’s room. She could not help wondering where the Sachakan was, and hoping she wouldn’t encounter him. When she reached the slave’s room and found it empty but for her patient, she sighed with relief.
The man stared at her, his pupils wide. She could not tell if it was from fear or surprise. Nobody had told her his name, she realised.
“Greetings again,” she said. “I’m here to change your bandages and check if you’re healing properly.”
He said nothing, and continued to stare. Well, she could hardly expect him to speak, since his jaw had been broken and his head was bound up to prevent it from moving. This was going to be a one-sided conversation.
“You must be in a lot of pain,” she continued. “I can give you medicine to dull it. Would you like that?”
The man blinked, then nodded once.
Smiling, Tessia turned to her father’s bag and brought out a syrup her father used to treat children. The slave would have trouble swallowing, and a draught of powder mixed in water was likely to leave bitter-tasting grit in his mouth if he couldn’t drink it easily. She would have to thin out the syrup with some water, too, and dribble it through a siphon inserted between his lips.
As the medication ran into the man’s mouth he stiffened, then swallowed. But he didn’t relax again and his eyes were wide as he stared over her shoulder.
He looks terrified, she thought.
A small gust of air told her that the door was open.
Pulling the siphon out, she stepped back and looked up to see who Cannia had sent to her. The man who gazed back at her was tall, bulky and wearing exotic-looking clothing.
Her heart froze in horror.
“I see you’ve come back to check on Hanara,” the Sachakan said, with a smile that lacked any genuine gratitude. “How good of you. Is he going to live?”
She drew in a breath and somehow found her voice. “I do not know... master.”
“It won’t matter if he doesn’t,” he told her in a reassuring tone.
She could not think of anything to say to that, so she said nothing. Where is the servant Cannia said she’d send? she thought. Where’s Lord Dakon, for that matter? Surely he doesn’t let the Sachakan roam the house unsupervised...
“I suppose he’s a good patient to experiment on,” the Sachakan said, looking at his slave. “Perhaps you’ll learn something new.” The slave avoided his master’s gaze. The Sachakan looked at her again. “Enjoy yourself.”
He backed out of the doorway and closed the door. Tessia let out a sigh of relief, and heard another exhalation follow her own. She looked at the slave and smiled crookedly.
“Your master has a strange idea of fun,” she murmured. Then she set to work replacing his bandages.
He made no noise as she worked, only occasionally catching his breath as those bandages that had stuck a little to the wounds came away. His injuries were looking remarkably good – minimal swelling and redness, and no festering ooze. She wiped all carefully with a purifier and replaced the soiled bandages with clean ones.
When she had finished at last, the Sachakan’s visit was a distant, unpleasant memory. She packed her father’s bag and picked it up. Pausing at the door, she nodded at the slave.
“Rest well, Hanara.”
The skin around his eyes crinkled slightly, the closest he could get to a smile. Feeling pleased with her work, she stepped out of the room and started down the corridor to the servants’ stairs, wondering if her parents were awake yet.
From one of the doorways drifted a voice that sent her heart sinking to her knees.
“Have you finished, Tessia?”
The Sachakan. She stopped, then cursed herself for doing so. If she hadn’t, she could have pretended not to have heard him, but now that it was obvious she had she could not ignore him without being rude. Drawing a deep breath, she took two steps back and looked into the room. It was a seating room, furnished with comfortable chairs and small tables on which a guest could rest a drink or a book. The Sachakan was sitting in a large wooden chair.
“I have, master,” she replied.
“Come here.”
His request was spoken quietly, but in the steely tone of a man who expected to be obeyed. With heart racing, Tessia moved to the doorway. The Sachakan smiled and waved a hand.
“All the way here,” he said.
Stepping inside the room, she stopped a few paces away from him and concentrated on keeping her face as expressionless as possible.
From behind her came the sound of the door closing firmly. She jumped, her heart skipping a beat. Then she cursed, because she knew she had let fear show on her face. Let’s hope he thought it was surprise, she told herself. She realised she was breathing too fast, and tried to slow her breaths.
The Sachakan rose and walked towards her, all the while staring into her eyes. Someone had told her once that meeting a Sachakan’s eyes was to show him you thought yourself his equal. Unless you were a powerful magician, he might decide to teach you otherwise. She looked down.
“There is a private matter I wish to discuss with you,” he told her quietly.
She nodded. “Your slave. He is—”
“No. Something else. I’ve been watching you. You’ve got some unique qualities, for a Kyralian. I’ve noticed nobody here knows your true worth. Am I right? I could change that.”
He moved a little closer. Too close. She took a step back. What game is he playing? she thought. Does he think he’s so powerful that he can change the way we live here in Kyralia? Or does he think I’d fall for something as stupid as an offer of a better life in Sachaka?
“If I can’t convince anyone here that I can be a healer, I doubt it’ll be any different elsewhere, where people don’t know me,” she told him.
He paused, then chuckled. “Oh, the healing is only part of your worth. The rest of you is being wasted even more. Look at you...”
Coming closer again, he reached out and touched the side of her face. She flinched away.
“. . . those fine bones. That sleek hair and such pale skin. When I first came here I thought Kyralian women were ugly, but now and then I’d see one that changed my mind. Like you. Your foolish men . . .” His voice had been growing quieter and more intense, and she found herself backing away from ha
nds reaching out to touch her hair . . . snaking round her waist.
“Stop it!” she said, dropping the bag and pushing his hands away.
He paused, then his expression darkened. “Nobody wants what you have, girl. So nobody is going to care if I take it.”
Something began to squeeze her from all sides. Looking around, she could not see any sign of the force pressing against her. A relentless pressure at her back pushed her forward. It forced her against the Sachakan, who laughed.
“Lord Dakon,” she coughed out. “He won’t let you—”
“He’s not here. And what’s he going to do when he finds out? Punish me? I’ll be halfway home by then. How many people do you want knowing, anyway?”
As he plucked at the front of her tunic she tried to move her arms, but some invisible force held them still. She could not move her legs, either. She could not move anything. Not even her head. And as she opened her mouth to yell she felt something invisible envelop it and force her jaw closed again. The Sachakan’s grinning, leering face loomed over her. Her skin crawled. Her skull throbbed as if it would burst.
Is he inside my head? She closed her eyes, concentrated on the feeling and tried to push it away.
Get off get off get off GET OFF!
Suddenly the force holding her melted away and she fell backwards. At the same time she felt a sensation of something pouring out of her. A bright, bright light behind her eyelids was followed by a resounding crash.
Tessia felt her back meet the floor. The impact hurt, and her eyes flew open. She scrambled up into a sitting position and then froze as she took in the scene before her. One corner of the room was now a mess of broken furniture. The walls were cracked. Black marks radiated away from her, and she smelled the acrid scent of smoke.
Rapid footsteps echoed from the corridor outside the room. The Sachakan rose from among the broken mess in the corner. He looked at her, scowling, then down at himself. His clothes were as scorched as the walls, the stitchwork and beading blackened. After brushing at the marks with no effect, his face twisted into a snarl.
The door to the room flew open. Tessia jumped as Lord Dakon stepped inside. He stopped, looking from her to the Sachakan, then at the damage.
“What happened?” he demanded.
The Sachakan said nothing. He smiled, stepped over a broken chair, and strode from the room.
Lord Dakon turned to her. His eyes slid from her face to her chest. Looking down, she realised the front of her dress was unbuttoned to the waist, exposing her undershift. Hastily, she sat up and turned away so he could not see her buttoning it up again.
“What happened?” he asked again, this time more gently.
Tessia drew in a breath to answer, but the words would not come out. Your guest tried to force himself on me, she silently told him. But she found the Sachakan had been right. She didn’t want anyone to know. Not if there were the slightest chance her mother might hear of it. As her father had always said, there was no such thing as a secret in this tiny community.
And nothing had happened. Well, nothing like what the Sachakan appeared to intend, she thought. She stood up and glanced at the scorched walls. I have no idea why he did that.
Turning back to Dakon, she did not meet his eyes. “I ...I was rude. He took offence. I’m sorry... about the mess, Lord Dakon.” She picked up her father’s bag and began to turn away, then stopped to add: “The slave is healing well.”
He watched her as she walked past him into the corridor, and said nothing. Though she did not risk looking too closely at him for fear of meeting his eyes, there was something odd in the way he stared at her. She hurried to the servants’ stairs, and down them. Cannia was in the doorway to the kitchen. The woman said something as Tessia left, but Tessia did not hear properly and did not want to stop.
The late afternoon sunlight was too bright now. Suddenly all Tessia felt was an immense weariness. She hurried along the road to her home, paused to gather her courage before she entered, then opened the door.
Her parents were in the kitchen. They looked up as she entered. Her mother frowned, and her father appeared to suppress a smile as she dropped the bag at his feet.
“The slave is doing well. I’m going to take a nap,” she told them, and before they could say anything in reply she strode out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Nobody pursued her. She heard low voices from the kitchen but didn’t pause to try to make them out. Entering her room, she threw herself on her bed and, to her surprise, a sob escaped her.
What am I doing? Am I going to cry like a child? She rolled over and took a deep breath, forcing tears away. Nothing happened.
But something could have. Her mind veered away from that possibility to a memory of blackened walls. Something else had happened. Not what the Sachakan had intended. Something powerful and destructive. But what?
Magic?
Suddenly it all made sense. Lord Dakon. He must have heard something and come to rescue her.
But he didn’t arrive until after it happened.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t have reached out from wherever he had been. It would explain the destruction. The magician would not have made such a mess of the room if he’d been able to see where he directed his power. He’d been working blindly.
I owe him gratitude for doing so, she thought. He broke a lot of expensive things to save me. No wonder he stared at me so strangely. He was expecting thanks, and all I did was rush off home.
After drawing in a deep breath, she let it out slowly. At least she had managed to treat the slave first. Next time she would not be going to the Residence alone. She would stay by her father’s side, every moment she was there. Closing her eyes, she surrendered to exhaustion and slept.
CHAPTER 4
Now that the pain had receded a little, Hanara was able to think, though his thoughts were slow and sluggish from the drug the healer woman had given him. He was not sure being able to think was to his advantage, though. There was no direction in which he could set his mind without finding fear and pain.
He never liked to look backwards. The past was stuffed with bad memories, and the good ones left him full of bitterness. His current situation was hardly one he could find pleasant distractions from. Even if moving didn’t send agonising pain through his body he couldn’t have got out of bed. He was so trussed up with bandages, he might as well have been tied up and gagged.
Considering the future was even more unpleasant. The servant woman who fed him had told him during her last visit that his master had left. Takado was gone, she’d said, declaring he was headed for Sachaka and home.
She had told Hanara he was safe now.
She has no idea, he thought. None of these Kyralians do, except perhaps the magician, Lord Dakon. Takado will come back. He has to.
Sachakan magicians never freed ordinary slaves, let alone source slaves. They never left them behind in enemy territory. Not alive, at least.
When he comes back, he’ll either take me with him, or kill me.
If Hanara hadn’t healed enough by then to be useful to Takado, then the latter was more likely. No Sachakan magician was going to waste time tending to the wounds of a slave, or wait while that slave struggled to keep up, or put up with a slave too weak or crippled to serve their master properly.
Would the healers have worked so hard, if they knew there was a chance their efforts would be wasted?
Remembering the young woman, Hanara felt a strange constriction inside. Her touch had been gentle, her words kind. A person like her could not exist in his homeland. Only in this country was it possible for a woman her age to be so lacking in guile and bitterness.
She was like all the other good things he had seen in this land, which filled him with longing even as he despised them. He wished Takado had never visited Kyralia. The healer woman and Kyralia were the same: young, free, blissfully unaware of how lucky they were. It was hard to imagine she could ever defend herself against the cruel power of Sachakan magic, yet eve
n his master had admitted that Kyralians could be “annoyingly feisty” when faced with a threat.
Takado. He will be back.
While slaves of Hanara’s value weren’t common, they were not impossible to replace either. Takado would test all his slaves when he returned home, and would probably find one with enough latent ability to be his new main source of magic. After all, once the man had discovered Hanara’s latent ability, he’d made sure his source slave had sired plenty of offspring.
Hanara felt only a faint pity for whichever of his progeny would be chosen. He’d never had the chance to know any of them. He was not even sure which of the child slaves were his. A working slave’s life had as many disadvantages as that of a source slave. All slaves’ lives were equally likely to end abruptly, whether by accident, overwork, the cruelty of a slave controller or the whim or violent mood swing of their master.
Why should I care who replaces me, anyway? When you’re dead, you’re dead, he thought. And if Takado finds another source slave, he’ll be more likely to kill me when he returns, if I haven’t healed fast or well enough.
But he couldn’t prevent that from happening. He could barely even move. All he could do was lie still and wonder, as he had all his life, if he would survive the next day.
The miniature paintings were quite amazing. Jayan peered at them closely, wondering why he hadn’t noticed them before. The woman’s tiny eyes even had eyelashes and he wondered what sort of brush could have produced such impossibly thin lines. There was a subtle blush to her cheek. She was quite pretty, he decided.
Where did Lord Dakon find the time to purchase art while entertaining Takado? Or has this always been here, and I’ve never noticed it?
He nudged a frame with one finger, swinging it slightly across the wall. Beneath was a faint dark shadow where the paint hadn’t faded as much as the exposed area around the miniature.