Jane Carver of Waar (26 page)

“Women of breeding, I meant. You wouldn’t...” She had the decency to look embarrassed. “Only women of the lower classes enjoy this. A noblewoman is pure. Her love is the love of the soul.”

“Honey, the love of the soul only goes so far. You can’t have true love without a little true sex thrown in.”

Wen-Jhai recoiled. “You defile the word, mistress.”

I leaned back, staring at her. “Oh, come on. Are you honestly telling me you’re not supposed to like it?”

Wen-Jhai started shading toward pink. Her voice changed like she was quoting. “Only the love of her noble Dhan, within the bounds of holy wedlock shall spark the flame of desire within the breast of a true Dhanshai of Ora. All other... hungers are unnatural and depraved.”

I smacked the floor. “That’s crap! You’re acting like you’re a whole ’nother species. You may have been born with a silver spoon in your mouth, but you got the same ‘hungers’ as every other woman on this planet.”

Wen-Jhai’s eyes flashed. “How dare you suggest that I have kinship with...”

“Come on, sister. Wise up. You’re your own proof.”

“What... what do you mean?”

“You’re a princess, right? An Aldhanshai? Who’s got more breeding than you?”

She looked uncomfortable.

“So, can you tell me you didn’t like playing Jiffy Lube with Shae-Vai last night? And even though you’re mad at him, don’t you get a little turned on when Sai and the Captain are hitting the high notes?”

“Stop! Stop!” She covered her ears. “’Tis a disease. My father’s physician said it was a disease. He made me take cold baths and drink salt water.”

“Fucking... It’s not a disease! It’s nature!” Goddamn backward planet. Back on Earth—well, actually, back on Earth there were still places where women weren’t allowed to show even their faces, and they had their clits cut off so they couldn’t enjoy sex. Maybe I didn’t have room to talk after all. Where were the good planets? “Come on, Wen-Jhai, why should men have all the fun and women all the shame when they’re both the same animal?”

I turned away. Maybe I should have been more patient with her. It takes people a while to get around shit they’ve been told all their lives. Try telling a gun nut they’re more likely to get shot if they own a gun than if they don’t. I started doing pushups again. I’d only done five hundred so far that day. I was falling behind.

Somewhere around rep eighty I felt a delicate finger tracing the line of my tricep as it flexed and relaxed. I stopped and looked up. It was Wen-Jhai. She wouldn’t look at me, just kept watching her finger as it trailed along the cords of my arm.

“Mistress Jae-En?”

“Yeah?”

She started again. Maybe she’d lost her place. “Mistress Jae-En?”

“Still here.”

“Mistress Jae-En. You know so much of all this. You seem to know both sides of... of it. You seem to...
be
both sides of it. You have the strength of a man, and the... ripeness of a woman...”

That other shoe was going to drop any minute now.

“Mistress, I wondered if... if you might teach me...”

Christ. All it needed was this. I restarted my pushups. Almost pushed myself to the goddamn ceiling. “Sorry, Princess. I’m... I’m not inclined that way, but I’m sure Shae-Vai will be more than happy to give you another lesson.”

“I... Forgive me.”

She hurried off, blushing. I felt like a jerk.

***

I did a lot of pushups that day. It was the only way to keep my mind off... other things. What with all the whoopie being made all around me, I was horny enough that the crack of dawn was starting to look good, and Wen-Jhai had looked so sad and snuggly that I wanted to eat her up with a spoon.

The problem was, even though I’d poured all that free love crap in Wen-Jhai’s ears, the idea of diddling the future wife of my oldest friend on the planet was more than the little red-haired angel on my shoulder could stomach. It killed me that me, the bad-ass biker chick, with more notches on my bedpost than Mae West, was acting like the biggest prude on board this goddamn love boat.

I didn’t get any sleep again that night. Sai and Captain Kai were hard at it upstairs, and down in our little nest, Wen-Jhai and Shae-Vai were tickling each other’s fancies and being none too quiet about it. Wen-Jhai was making up for lost time. She had Shae-Vai wailing like a siren.

I turned to the wall and covered my ears, pissed at Waar and Sai and Wen-Jhai and everybody else who’d been part of getting me into this fucking situation, but mostly at myself. I knocked my head against the floor.

“I’ve created a monster.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SLAVES!

D
oshaan was the wettest place I’d been to on Waar—a swampy pit of a town with blue-green moss growing on gray stone buildings and big, ferny trees out of a dinosaur book. It stank like low tide in Galveston.

The buildings, at least the ones I saw through the bars of the rolling cage the pirates loaded us into for our trip from the shipfield to the slave market, were wide and flat, with windows like mail slots and pitched swamp-grass roofs. Even though they looked like jungle shacks, they felt more like home to me. I finally realized it was because they were rectangles instead of hexagons.

The city was crowded with more different kinds of people—races, I guess—than you could shake a stick at. Back in Ora everybody had pretty much looked the same, which made folks like the Andag priests stand out. Here, nobody would have given them a second look. The locals were thin, maroon guys who wore dark blue togas, but I saw folks with skin tones from lip-gloss white to eggplant black, hair from straight to kinky, bald heads, bristle heads, braid heads, big noses, little noses, hawk noses, tall thin guys, short square guys, big round guys, all in wild costumes: Oran harnesses, kilts, robes, leggings, tunics, loincloths, furs, culottes for God’s sake, and more silly hats than a shriner’s convention.

I couldn’t understand them all either. Most of these guys spoke languages not included in my traveler’s translation package.

The slave market was a big square in the center of town. On a pedestal in the middle was a twenty-foot statue of some fat lady whose tits had eyes instead of nipples and whose belly had a mouth full of shark teeth. I bet the kids in these parts ate all their vegetables and didn’t sass back.

Around the edges of the square, rickety wooden stages had been set up. Some were big and fancy, some were small and dingy. Each had a duded-up barker shouting his lungs out in front, and cages around the back to hold the merchandise. That is, us.

The pirates paid some guy to rent a stage and hung out colorful banners and curtains. Burly, dressed up in a yellow and red caftan as subtle as a Vegas neon sign, did his best used car salesman act, raising his big voice to call in the suckers. The rest of the crew took care of the details like writing up bills of sale and collecting the money.

Captain Kai wasn’t in sight. None of the pirate gals were. I wondered if they ever left the ship. I could see why they wouldn’t. Doshaan was different from Ora in about every way possible, but not as far as women were concerned. They followed behind their men just like in Ora. They swept and washed. They traveled in packs for safety when they went out. In the sky, the pirate gals were equal partners. Down on the ground the rules of Waar were back in full effect.

Burly said the pirates almost never came this far south, so we pulled a good crowd just on the novelty factor. Half the square stopped to check us out. There were lookee-loos, window shoppers, serious customers, professional buyers looking for wholesale lots, rich folks killing time, and social climbers desperate to buy some class. There’s nothing that says you’ve arrived like owning someone.

They pushed me on stage with the rest of the goods. I didn’t like it. Okay, that’s an understatement. I hated it. I hated being looked at like a piece of horseflesh. I hated the pirates for being the coolest guys around and evil, slaving fucks at the same time. I hated the buyers, who talked about you right in front of your face. I hated Sai and Wen-Jhai for cursing the pirates and whining about being slaves when they had slaves of their own back home.

But the thing I hated the most was that, when they opened the bidding I felt insulted when I wasn’t picked. I started tensing my arms to show off the muscle and sucking in my gut anytime somebody gave me the once over. I was putting on a fucking show, for Christ’s sake!

Up to then I hadn’t felt any shame about being sold, but when I realized I was playing up to the damn buyers I turned so red my ears burned. Didn’t stop flexing though. I couldn’t help it. I felt horrible. Only time in my life I’ve ever called myself “whore!”

But though I didn’t sell, Sai and Wen-Jhai were snapped up right away, both after some serious bidding wars. Two heavy hitters fought over Sai; a tubby, fortyish woman in jewel-caked pajamas who was carried around in a chair by four sweating Chippendales dancers, and a frail old man in a rich carriage whose hands shook when he made his bids.

Burly worked the price up into Cadillac territory, and was trying to drive it up to Rolls-Royce. “Two thousand golden Tolnas says the lady. Do I hear two thousand five hundred? Two thousand five hundred for this handsome, well-bred house slave. A Dhanan of Ora, he has impeccable manners, a classical education, and the face and figure of a Batu votive statue.”

The old geezer flapped his hand, twice. Sai flinched. Burly smiled. “A double bid! Three thousand golden Tolnas from the Dhanan in the carriage.”

Lhan groaned. It was the most anyone had bid all day.

Sai was trembling. “Lhan, in the name of the Seven, what shall I do?”

“You must be brave, Sai. I will deliver you if I can.”

I snorted. “And who’s going to deliver you?”

“Three thousand golden Tolnas! Can no one improve on three thousand? Madame, will you not rise to the challenge? No? Anyone? Anyone to bid three thousand five hundred? No? Three thousand going once.”

Sai whimpered.

“Three thousand going twice.”

Lhan cursed.

“Sold to the noble Dhanan in the jeweled carriage.” The geezer’s eyes gleamed. He looked at Sai the way Kitten had when she first saw him—that “oh-boy-a-new-toy” look.

Sai choked out a sob. Lhan hissed through his teeth. “The filthy old profligate!”

The old guy’s bodyguards collected Sai as one of the pirates crossed to the carriage with a handful of papers.

I looked at Wen-Jhai. She’d been weeping in Shae-Vai’s arms since the pirates had pushed them on stage. Now she just cried harder. That was nothing compared to Lhan.

I was amazed. I’d never seen Lhan like this. He’s taken everything that had happened to us so far as cool as James Bond. Now he was straining at his chains like a gangbanger’s pit bull. “Unhand him, you debased bravos! Dare you give an innocent over to such evil? Such lecherous...”

Burly cuffed him on the ear with a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt. “That’ll do, noble heart.”

Lhan picked himself off the stage as Sai was dragged away, weeping. Lhan shouted after him. “Courage, Sai. Let him not—”

Burly knocked him flat again. The old guy’s bodyguards put Sai in the carriage and it pulled away.

I helped Lhan to his feet. “Come on, bro. Don’t take it so hard. He’ll be okay.”

I wasn’t actually sure about that. The old guy gave me the creeps. It wasn’t so much that he was obviously as queer as a three dollar bill—I switch-hit myself and I’ve got no problem with whatever two consenting adults get up to in the privacy of their own homes—but there wouldn’t be any consenting going on here. This geezer would take what he wanted, and wouldn’t bother to ask Sai for his okay.

Lhan shrugged away from me, his eye never leaving the carriage. “Leave me be.”

I let him be. I wasn’t sure why he was going off the deep end. I remembered he’d told me somebody had violated him once. Maybe that was it. Whatever his trouble was, it was my professional opinion that he needed to be hugged until he squeaked, but if he wanted me to let him be I was fine with that. Really.

Next it was Wen-Jhai’s turn. She and Shae-Vai must have looked cute together, because two playboy-types started digging deep into their bank accounts bidding on them as a set. They finally went to a brawny guy with a top knot. He looked like an ex-bodybuilder who’d gotten too friendly with the dessert tray lately. He would have been one scary motherfucker except he was wearing more make-up than Wen-Jhai and Shae-Vai put together. Actually, that made him scarier.

Wen-Jhai shrieked and struggled when they loaded her and Shae-Vai into his coach. Shae-Vai took it in stride and tried to calm her down. For once I was glad Wen-Jhai had her around.

After that the pirates pushed Lhan and me and a bunch of the tougher prisoners to the front of the stage. They’d held us out to show to the gladiator schools.

Burly went down the line, giving us each a big build up. Lhan was first. “The pick of the lot, gentlemen, an Oran Dhan of noble stock, trained from boyhood in sword, dagger, lance and bow. A fighter of style and grace with the looks and dash to bring in the ladies as well as the men.”

Lhan didn’t look exactly dashing just then. He stood with his head down, fists clenched, not paying attention to anything.

Burly grunted, annoyed, and stepped to me. “Next, a one-of-a-kind curiosity, sure to bring the crowds. Behold the savage Jae-En, barbarian giantess from beyond the Andag mountains in the frozen north. Never before has a woman such as this walked the face of Waar. Note her powerful legs, the thickness of her arms, the muscles of her torso, and, disbelieve me if you will, noble lords, she is stronger than she looks. With my own eyes I have seen her slay six men with a single sweep of her man-high Aarurrh sword. Can you afford to let an attraction such as this go to your competitors?”

Burly could have sold sundials in Seattle.
I
would have bought me after that pitch. He moved down the line and started the snake oil all over again with the next guy.

There were about five gladiator schools checking us out, all with names like The Shining Axe School, and The Glorious Victory School, but there was really only one that counted. The Twin Blades School appeared to be the big leagues down Doshaan way. The other schools just hung around to fight over the scraps they didn’t want.