face.
“Have you serious injury?” Cool. Even. No hints as to reasons or intentions. Yet he was asking. It was very odd.
“No, my lord. I don’t think so.” Ribs would heal, and I assumed the hot knife embedded somewhere at the base of my spine would stop twisting some day. If I could just be still for a while....
He motioned me to a pile of cushions on the floor beside the hearth. “No, no. Sit. For the gods’ sake, sit,” he said as I creaked back down on my knees beside the cushions, wobbling dizzily and wrapping my arms tight about my ribs. He sat on a similar pile of pillows opposite me, leaning back and propping his long arms on his knees. I was not easy enough to lean back, but I basked in the heat from his fire while I waited for him to speak.
“Why did you do it?”
His quiet question answered my own. He had destroyed the enchantment. Good enough. Now I just needed to get out of his sight without any more damage. Yet the question was unexpected. It sounded as if he really wanted to know the truth. I shifted on my pillows, and my gut screamed a harsh reminder of truth.
I fixed my eyes on the tiles of the hearth. “My life is to serve you, my lord.”
My words hung in the air, of no more substance than smoke from the hearth. He did not deign to comment, but sat quiet. Unmoving. Waiting. The fire snapped and a chunk of wood dropped into the ashes, shooting a stream of sparks upward.
I tried again. “I know of enchantments. Your other servants do not. Life is ... better ... when my lord is well.” It was a bold statement for a slave, implying imperfection on the part of the master. But the moment was extraordinary, and it seemed he expected something beyond common phrases.
“And what reward do you expect? Is there no favor you would ask me for this service?”
“Nothing, my lord.” A spark jumped onto the white tiles, flared bright orange, and went out, leaving a black speck on the polished tile.
“Yet you would do it again, if there was something else like, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.” I scolded myself after saying it. It was too quick a response, as if I were interested. Better to stay dull. “My life is to serve you.”
I felt him lean forward. The sheer intensity of his posture forced me to glance up at him. His eyes, burning with curiosity, were fixed on my face. “Let’s start again. Why did you do it?” There was no menace in his quiet questioning. He was waiting for truth. He was listening as if he expected to hear it amidst the obsequious mouthings of a slave.
Would he recognize truth if I gave it to him? I paused for a moment, not moving, lest my bruises demand their say in the exchange. “What do you know of rai-kirah?” I said at last.
And because the moment was so far out of the ordinary, he did not rant about mindless superstitions, laugh at my barbarian parentage, or damn me for my insolence in avoiding his real question with a question of my own. “Demons? I’ve heard stories ... warriors’ tales told around battle-eve campfires. ‘The rai-kirah gather on the night before a battle, ready to eat the souls of the dying.’ Soldiers say they hear the sighing of the demons’ lust and see them peering out of the eyes of other men, as the creatures seek out the ones who are most afraid. Rai-kirah are legends born of war and cowardice.”
I expected nothing else from a Derzhi. But he wanted truth, and so in a fey recklessness likely caused by blows to my head—or perhaps by my desire to sit unmoving before his fire for just a bit longer before being thrown back into my cold cell—I decided I would give it. “My answer to your question will make no sense unless you suspend that belief for a moment, my lord. I warned you of the enchantment that was stealing your sleep because it was demon-wrought, and if I can say any word or do any deed that will hinder the purposes of a demon, then my life has meaning. For a slave that is an end worth any risk.”
“Even to
“Have you serious injury?” Cool. Even. No hints as to reasons or intentions. Yet he was asking. It was very odd.
“No, my lord. I don’t think so.” Ribs would heal, and I assumed the hot knife embedded somewhere at the base of my spine would stop twisting some day. If I could just be still for a while....
He motioned me to a pile of cushions on the floor beside the hearth. “No, no. Sit. For the gods’ sake, sit,” he said as I creaked back down on my knees beside the cushions, wobbling dizzily and wrapping my arms tight about my ribs. He sat on a similar pile of pillows opposite me, leaning back and propping his long arms on his knees. I was not easy enough to lean back, but I basked in the heat from his fire while I waited for him to speak.
“Why did you do it?”
His quiet question answered my own. He had destroyed the enchantment. Good enough. Now I just needed to get out of his sight without any more damage. Yet the question was unexpected. It sounded as if he really wanted to know the truth. I shifted on my pillows, and my gut screamed a harsh reminder of truth.
I fixed my eyes on the tiles of the hearth. “My life is to serve you, my lord.”
My words hung in the air, of no more substance than smoke from the hearth. He did not deign to comment, but sat quiet. Unmoving. Waiting. The fire snapped and a chunk of wood dropped into the ashes, shooting a stream of sparks upward.
I tried again. “I know of enchantments. Your other servants do not. Life is ... better ... when my lord is well.” It was a bold statement for a slave, implying imperfection on the part of the master. But the moment was extraordinary, and it seemed he expected something beyond common phrases.
“And what reward do you expect? Is there no favor you would ask me for this service?”
“Nothing, my lord.” A spark jumped onto the white tiles, flared bright orange, and went out, leaving a black speck on the polished tile.
“Yet you would do it again, if there was something else like, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.” I scolded myself after saying it. It was too quick a response, as if I were interested. Better to stay dull. “My life is to serve you.”
I felt him lean forward. The sheer intensity of his posture forced me to glance up at him. His eyes, burning with curiosity, were fixed on my face. “Let’s start again. Why did you do it?” There was no menace in his quiet questioning. He was waiting for truth. He was listening as if he expected to hear it amidst the obsequious mouthings of a slave.
Would he recognize truth if I gave it to him? I paused for a moment, not moving, lest my bruises demand their say in the exchange. “What do you know of rai-kirah?” I said at last.
And because the moment was so far out of the ordinary, he did not rant about mindless superstitions, laugh at my barbarian parentage, or damn me for my insolence in avoiding his real question with a question of my own. “Demons? I’ve heard stories ... warriors’ tales told around battle-eve campfires. ‘The rai-kirah gather on the night before a battle, ready to eat the souls of the dying.’ Soldiers say they hear the sighing of the demons’ lust and see them peering out of the eyes of other men, as the creatures seek out the ones who are most afraid. Rai-kirah are legends born of war and cowardice.”
I expected nothing else from a Derzhi. But he wanted truth, and so in a fey recklessness likely caused by blows to my head—or perhaps by my desire to sit unmoving before his fire for just a bit longer before being thrown back into my cold cell—I decided I would give it. “My answer to your question will make no sense unless you suspend that belief for a moment, my lord. I warned you of the enchantment that was stealing your sleep because it was demon-wrought, and if I can say any word or do any deed that will hinder the purposes of a demon, then my life has meaning. For a slave that is an end worth any risk.”
“Even to
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