The Dragon Revenant (14 page)

“And now I’m to hurry to his beastly inn and deliver it before he leaves. Oh well, at least he’ll be gone all winter. He’s not the type to travel in the rain.”

“Our mistress can read and write?” Rhodry was honestly amazed.

“Of course she can.” Disna wrinkled her nose at him. “That barbarian kingdom of yours must have been awfully primitive, that’s all I can say. You’re surprised by the strangest things.”

“Well, so I am. I hope you don’t think too badly of me.”

Disna merely gave him a slow smile, hinting of many answers, then hurried off on her errand.

That afternoon Alaena summoned Rhodry to her side. Dressed in a simple white tunic, she was sitting cross-legged on a cushion at the low table and frowning at her fortune-telling tiles when he came in. A pair of warty brown gnomes materialized at his entrance and grinned at him.

“There you are. Now that I’ll have the time, we’re going to start educating you.” She swept the tiles to one side, then looked up to consider him. “You don’t do too badly when it comes to serving food, but you’ve got to learn how to carry my fan properly and other things like that. And then there’s the way you talk. Your accent’s dreadful, and we’ll have to spend some time on correcting it.”

Although Rhodry was hoping that Alaena would tire of teaching him such dubious skills as the proper way to fold scarves and arrange cushions, she took every detail so seriously that he soon realized she was quite simply bored with her life. Thanks to her inherited wealth, she had to work or wait for nothing, and while she understood financial affairs perfectly well, one of her many brothers-in-law did all the actual work of managing her properties. Twice a week this Dinvarbalo would come to lunch. Over a long feast of many elaborate courses, they would discuss her investments in land and trading ventures; she would ask sharp questions and make sharper suggestions while he wrote her wishes down on a wooden tablet covered with wax. Once he was gone, the spirit would slowly fade from her eyes again, and she would summon Rhodry for one of his lessons. Usually she would be irritable, too, slapping him across the face for the least mistake or even sending him away in a flood of insults. Yet, the next time that she called him back, she would be pleasant again, if strict.

Porto and Disna told him something of her history. She’d been born the second child of ten to a poor oil seller down in Ronaton, in poverty so extreme that she’d nearly been sold as a slave to feed the rest of the family. Her beauty, however, had saved her by catching the eye of a rich merchant who had most honorably married rather than bought her. Since he was fifty-two when she was fourteen, the marriage had been far from happy, even though her childhood sufferings had made her obsessed with being the perfect wife. More from his incapacity than any other reason, they had no children before he died at seventy-four, after a long debilitating illness during which she nursed him with her own hands. Now, although she was far from eager to bind herself to another husband, she also knew that her beauty was sure to fade, sooner rather than later. Cosmetics and herbal baths filled her mornings. She often sent Rhodry to the marketplace as soon as it opened to buy rose petals, fresh cream, and beeswax while she and Disna closeted themselves like alchemists in the bath chamber.

Much to his surprise, Rhodry found himself growing sorry for her. Although he wanted to hate her for keeping his freedom locked up on a bit of paper in her jewel chest, he simply couldn’t. There came a time, in fact, when he realized an even more bitter truth about himself. With cosmetics for the mistress and spices for the cook, he was jogging home from the market one morning when the air was fresh and crisp with the scent of coming rain, and the last of the summer’s flowers bloomed bright over painted walls. He found himself singing. With a shock he realized that for a moment he’d been happy, that he’d come to accept his new life. All day he noticed other things, how pleased he was when Porto praised him, how he laughed at jokes in the kitchen, how he smiled when as a sign of her favor Alaena gave him a silver piece. He realized that if he someday took Porto’s place, being a trusted warreko would give him security no matter whom Alaena married.

At first he’d wondered why slaves didn’t rise up in open revolt; now he was beginning to understand. For a slave with his standing, life wasn’t cruel enough to take the risk. Any slaves such as the tin miners who might well be driven to desperate measures were kept branded, chained, and half-starved, and their lives were too short for long-term plans. Any slave like himself who had a firm commercial value had every necessity in life, a few comforts, even, and the possibility, though a chancy one, of someday earning freedom. If he’d remembered his former life, he decided, he would have felt differently, longing, no doubt, for freedom with a hiraedd befitting a man born free, but as it was, Deverry was a thing of shadows and patched memory to him. His only certainty was that he’d been a silver dagger, a despised outcast without clan or home, a shamed man without honor, doomed to fight endlessly in one petty lord’s feud or another until an early death claimed him. There were plenty of times when being Alaena’s footman seemed a better throw of life’s dice.

Yet there was one memory that kept contentment from trapping him. Baruma. Every afternoon, when the entire household, slave and mistress alike, took a couple of hours to nap or at least rest on their beds, Rhodry would remind himself that he owed Baruma a bloody death, even though it would cost him his own life. What’s the swine done with my silver dagger? The question became an obsession, as if the weapon itself, those few ounces of dwarven silver, contained his very honor the way a body contains a soul. Every now and then he dreamt of killing Baruma and taking the dagger back; after one of those dreams he would be silent, wrapped in himself all morning, and he would notice that everyone would avoid him then, even the mistress.

There came an afternoon, as well, when he recovered another memory of his lost life, one that stabbed him to the heart. After a gray morning, rain broke, a chilly drizzle that set everyone grumbling. Since he couldn’t work outside, Rhodry went to attend their mistress, who was as usual pouring over her fortune-telling set. For some time Rhodry merely sat beside her and handed her tidbits of dried apricots and sugared almonds when she held out an impatient hand. The rain droned on, the oil lamps flickered, while Alaena laid out tile after tile, only to sweep them impatiently away and start all over. When she finally spoke to him, he was nearly asleep.

“This wearies me, and don’t yawn like that.”

“I’m humbly sorry. Shall I put them away now, mistress?”

Alaena shrugged, pouting, and held out her hand. Rhodry gave her an apricot, which she nibbled while she considered.

“I know.” All at once she smiled. “I’ll tell your fortune. Sit round the other side and start mixing up the tiles.”

He’d seen the fortune-telling game so many times now that he knew what to do. After the mix he picked twenty-one of the ninety-six tiles at random, then laid them out in a star-shaped pattern. Alaena helped herself to an almond and ate it while she studied the layout.

“Now, of course, this is all in the past, because you’ve never had your tiles read before. Sometimes you get several readings that refer backward before you start going forward again. I don’t know why. The scroll that came with the set didn’t say.” She paused, thinking. “By the hem of the Goddess’s robe! I never knew you were a soldier. I see lots of battles in your past.”

“That’s certainly true, mistress.” Rhodry moved closer, suddenly interested in this game. What if she could find out other things about him, ones he didn’t know?

“And you fought in many different places.” She pointed to a tile of two crossed spears. “This indicates you were a mercenary, not a citizen volunteer.”

“I certainly was.”

“How very odd, because it looks like you were born to a highly placed family.” She laid a painted fingernail on the ace of Golds. “Very highly placed. But, oh yes, here it is! You got in trouble with law, and you were either exiled or you just ran away. Honestly, Rhodry, how naughty of you! Was it gambling that time, too?”

Since he couldn’t remember, he merely smiled, a gesture she took for a yes.

“You never had any sense about money, that’s certain. Draw two more tiles.”

When he handed them over, she turned them faceup and placed them by the two of Golds.

“No sense at all,” she laughed. “I see you handing out rich presents to everyone who asked.”

“That’s the way of a Deverry lord, mistress. They have to be generous, or they’re dishonored in everyone’s eyes.”

“So you
were
noble-born. I rather thought so, but Pommaeo said it was a stupid idea, and I should forget it. Honestly, Rhodry, how awful, to fall so far, and all because you couldn’t keep your hands off the dice.” She considered the tiles again, then smiled wickedly. “There were other things you couldn’t keep your hands off, as well. Look at that prince of Swords with a Flower Princess on either side. You had lots of love affairs.”

It struck Rhodry as unjust to the extreme that he could remember none of them.

“Oh, look at this! You have a child back home.”

“I do?” The shock made him forget his mask of servility.

“You didn’t know? What did you do? March off with your army before she even knew she was pregnant, probably.” She burst out laughing. “Well, Deverry men are certainly like Bardek men in some crucial respects, aren’t they? I’m afraid the tiles can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl.” Still smiling, she took another apricot and ate it slowly while she thought. “I wonder about this Queen of Swords at the top. It seems such an odd place for her. Draw me two more.”

The pair turned out to be the Ace of Spears and the Raven.

“Oh!” Alaena gasped in honest shock. “How very sad! She was the one true love of your life, but it all ended tragically. What happened? It almost looks like she got sold into slavery, too, or married off against her will to some other man.”

Suddenly Rhodry remembered Jill, remembered the name to put with the blonde woman who at times had haunted his memory and his dreams, remembered with a rush of emotion his despair when he had lost her, somewhere along the long road. Dimly he could remember beginning to search for her, somewhere in dark woodlands …

“Rhodry, you’re weeping.”

“I’m sorry, mistress.” He choked back the tears and wiped his face on his tunic sleeve. “Forgive me. I loved her very much, and she
was
forced to go with another man.”

He looked up to find her watching him with a startled expression, as if he’d just materialized like one of the Wildfolk.

“No, you forgive me. I forget that you weren’t always a slave.” She looked down at the tiles and frowned, then swept her hand through the pattern. “Just take that fruit away, will you? Do whatever you want until it’s time for dinner.”

Since he had no other privacy, Rhodry went up to his bunk in the men’s quarters and lay down, his hands under his head as he stared at the ceiling and listened to the rain. Slowly he pieced together a few of his memories, but only a few. He knew that he had loved, that he still did love, with a fierceness that shocked him, this woman named Jill, but who she was, where he’d met her, why she’d been dragged away from him—they were all mysteries still. He wept again, but only briefly, a few tears of frustration more than heartbreak.

Although Alaena never referred to the incident again, from that afternoon on Rhodry was aware of a change in her attitude toward him. At times, he caught her watching him with a little puzzled frown, as if he’d become a problem for her to solve. Outwardly, nothing seemed to have changed; he spent his afternoons with her as before, learning the protocols of greeting and announcing guests of various ranks, and none of the others seemed to have noticed anything, except, perhaps, Disna. Suddenly Rhodry noticed that the maidservant had grown cold to him; whenever he complimented her, she gave him the barest trace of a smile or even a downright nasty look. When he tried to turn the whole thing into a joke and tease her about it, she refused to answer, merely walked away fast with her nose in the air, making him wonder if all those love affairs that had appeared in the tiles were doomed to remain in the past.

After some days the rain stopped, and Alaena went out to the marketplace. Since everyone in town seemed to be there, catching up on their shopping and gossip, they left the litter on a side street, hired a shopkeeper’s lad to watch it, and walked to the market itself. Carrying his ebony staff, Rhodry followed a few paces behind the mistress while she went from booth to booth, looking mostly at jewelry and silks while merchants groveled before her. Finally she motioned Rhodry up beside her and pointed at some silver brooches set with bits of semiprecious stones.

“I want to buy a present for Disna. Do you think she’d like the one with the large turquoise?”

“I have no idea, mistress. I don’t know anything about jewelry.”

“You should learn. It helps you judge people when you first meet them—their taste in things, I mean, not just what they can afford to spend. But I don’t think these will do.” She walked on, motioning him to walk at her side. “I have heaps of things Pommaeo gave me at home, of course, and some of them are quite fine, but …” All at once she flashed one of her wicked smiles. “No, I have a different use for them. Come along. There’s another jeweler over here.”

This particular jeweler was a fat man who reminded Rhodry of Brindemo. On each hand was an amazing collection of garish rings, and he wore a dozen different pendants around his neck, too. Among his collection of merchandise was one pin so different from the others that it seemed to call to Rhodry, a tiny rose, worked in fine silver, no more than an inch long but so lifelike that the leaves seemed to stir in the breeze. Alaena picked it up.

“What an odd thing,” she said to the merchant. “What kind of alloy is this? It’s much too hard to be pure silver.”

“I don’t know, oh exalted and beautiful exemplar of womanhood. I won it in a dice game actually, from a man who said it came from the barbarian kingdom.”