The Merchant Emperor (46 page)

How lucky you are in a way, my child, to have this time. You are being steeped in elemental magic—the baptism of the sea, the fire that warms and dries us when the tide is low, the sheltering cave of earth that was formed in fire and cooled in water, the wind that blows through, singing its ageless song. One day you will make a fine Namer if you choose to be one
.

Several times she could have sworn she heard his voice within her speaking to her, singing along with the music of the sea.

“I love you with everything that I am, Meridion,” she said, the tone of her True-Speaking ringing in her words, even over the sadness with which she pronounced them. “And I swear to you, as dearly and completely as I will love any siblings you may one day have, if God the One, the All blesses us with them, you will always be uniquely special to me, because of what we have lived through and endured together.”

The baby cooed as if in agreement.

She struggled to keep the tears out of her voice, but her throat was tightening to the point it was hard to swallow. “It was you that made me a mother, something I wanted to be more than anything for as long as I can remember. You,
pippin
. Thank you—I am so—honored—that you chose me. So honored to be
il mimen
, your mama.”

She bowed her head, trying to keep the halting words steady, but choked with the effort of restraining her tears from the baby’s sight.

Her words ground to a halt as her eyes overflowed. Rhapsody kissed him again, wiping back the tears as she did, and coughed softly, trying to keep her voice steady.

“
Il hamimen
, your grandmother, would have loved you so,” she said when she could speak once more. “It was she that gave me the name I am keeping—Rhapsody—because she wanted me to have a Lirin name, a musical name—my parents gave it to me as my middle name. I need to hold on to this name, because I learned most of my lore as a Singer, as a Namer, under it. I will need that lore, those powers, in the days to come.” She smiled at the baby, and received a beaming grin in response.

“But I am now going to give you the rest of my name, the name my father chose, by which I was known in the old world. It was by this name that my family knew me, both the formal and the nicknames, my human name. It was the name your father called me by when we first met. It has only been spoken one other time in this world, in the ceremony in which he and I first married in secret. It is the name I carried when I first learned how to love, Meridion—it is from that time when I was taught about family, and music, and the tending of the earth, and our tie to the stars. It was the beginning of the fulfillment of my greatest dreams which led, eventually, to your entry into this world. Keep it for me, will you?”

The baby whimpered.

Rhapsody lowered her lips to his tiny ear where the pearl earring gleamed.

“Please,” she whispered. “Please, Meridion, please don’t forget me. Though others will care for you, and tend to your needs, and love you, please don’t forget me. Please, remember your father, too—he loves you as much as I do. Please—remember—”

Meridion whimpered again, more insistently this time.

Rhapsody kissed the tiny ear. She hummed her Naming note,
ela
, the musical tone her child shared, then whispered words, almost too soft to be heard, commanding them to leave her and be held within the pearl.

Amelia Turner,
she said.
Emily. Emmy
.
Il mimen
—your mother.

She kissed his ear again. The pearl was warm, humming against her lips.

Deep within her, she felt the fire in her soul diminish somewhat.

Leaving her internally colder.

Meridion began to cry.

The tears evaporated from Rhapsody’s face. Quickly her hands went to the brads on her shirt, and she put her son to the breast, gentling him, soothing him, singing his wordless lullabye, the song they had learned in the sea together.

“Shhh,” she said as she caressed his tiny cheek. “Hush now,
y pippin
. I love you.”

As the baby suckled, she heard him sigh, but for the first time that she could remember, she was unable to tell what emotion he was trying to convey.

And at that moment, the realization dawned that, just as his entry into her life had changed her dramatically, the loss of him from it would do so as well.

42

THE IRON MINES, VORNESSTA, SORBOLD

The lashmen must have been tired today,
Evrit mused absently as he hauled his third load of the day to the ore stockpile and dumped it onto the screen. It was almost noon, and he had only tasted the whip once; by this time on most days, his back had been striped at least four times.

He stepped out of the way of the line of his fellow slaves who were likewise waiting to offload their scuttles, and hurried back to the wall.

As he made his way to his slice of the wall of the volcanic deposit where he was assigned to scrape ore, day into night into day, with but four hours for rest, Evrit cast a subtle glance over the edge of his section. The sheer size of the area of the mine that he could see never ceased to take his breath away; the tall cave in which he spent his days beside several hundred other slaves was but one of dozens, similarly populated, on the same level of the mine. On levels above and below him, many of which he could see beyond the edge, hundreds more slaves toiled in each of dozens more caves, forming an immense, moving mass of muscle and sweat, producing a noise that had all but deafened most of them. Evrit had once tried to estimate the number just within the section he could see, but gave up quickly, because the very thought threatened to consume him with despair.

Despair was an adversary that had defeated him long ago.

Evrit returned to his labor.

In spite of the horror that was his daily existence, Evrit had managed to maintain a resolute will to survive his enslavement. Unlike his hollow-eyed companions in the mine, men who were little more than sinew and a blank expression whose very existence was nothing more than a cycle of the harvesting of iron ore interrupted by brief moments of urination, defecation, consumption of tasteless sustenance and unconsciousness, his mind was always working, always focused on one thing.

Finding his family.

Evrit was not by any means alone in this vision, he knew. All of the men who had been brought here under the lash of the emperor’s guards had started out bristling with rage and murderous intent, determined to escape and find their own wives, children, siblings, parents even. The endless torture of the routine coupled with a regimen of abuse and deprivation just short of starvation had leached the anger from them, had stripped them of every bit of energy that could be put toward sustaining fury.

Evrit, however, had managed to maintain his determination.

Prior to his enslavement, trained and experienced as a tailor, Evrit had been a leader and influential member of a gentle religious sect, known as the Blessed, for most of his life. It was in that capacity that he had undertaken to hire a vessel, a ship named the
Freedom
, to transport him, his wife and two sons, along with a number of other members of their order, away from a life of religious persecution in Marincaer in search of tolerance in the land of Golgarn, a place known for its lack of a state religion and an acceptance of other points of view.

The ship had never made it there.

Evrit brought new force to bear with his diamond-edged trowel against the stone wall, remembering the
Freedom
foundering in the treacherous waters off the Skeleton Coast of southern Sorbold. As death loomed, a rescue sloop had launched from the shore and come to the aid of the sundered ship, bearing every one of her passengers to safety, only to turn out to be piloted by slavers, who had informed the pilgrims politely that their rescue would require them to serve for three years in the olive groves of Nicosi, after which time they would be released.

Evrit had thought as he sat, blindfolded and bound in the slavers’ wagon, that his lot could not have been worse. It was then that a coterie of soldiers of the newly chosen emperor-to-be had come upon the slavers, had ridden them down and taken them into custody, had executed the leader, and set about unbinding the eyes of the slaves. The Emperor Presumptive had addressed them initially and apologized for their capture; Evrit had prayed in relief and thanksgiving.

Until Talquist had informed them all that rather than being indentured in the olive groves, the men would be serving in his iron mines and steel foundries, the women working in the linen factories, and the children sweeping the soot from the chimneys of the cities of Sorbold. The Emperor Presumptive had taken Evrit’s own wife into his coach and ravaged her, then had returned her to his wagon, graciously allowing her to sit by her husband’s side once he was done with her.

Hatred flashed and burned behind Evrit’s eyes at the memory.

Then faded into the determination of survival again.

As he scratched the iron ore from the endless stone before him, he pushed away the memory of his beloved spouse’s face, tear-stained but set in a rigid mien, unable to look at him as the wagon carried them away from the southern seacoast and into the mountains of the central part of the kingdom. He wondered where she was; he had been able to gain no indication from the conversations of the guards and the lashmen as to where the linen factories of Sorbold were located, except the broad implication that there were many of them across the country.

He suspected his sons were closer to him in proximity. He had been blessed to catch a glimpse of Jarzben, the elder of the two, in a line of ore-scratchers like himself, being transferred into a cave on the level below him many months before, and had been even luckier to have met his glance; his son looked thin and hollow-eyed, but in one piece, and the exchange of recognition had brought a look of shock, followed by a wan smile, to the lad’s face before he was led away.

He had not seen his younger son, Selac, since he had been unloaded from the slave wagon, but suspected he was working as a chimney sweep in the capital city of Jierna’sid, if he was still alive.

That last thought shattered Evrit’s brave determination.

A knot of immense size tied itself inside his throat. Dearly as he wanted to believe that each of the members of his family was still among the living, his rational mind knew that most likely he was the only one to be so.

He dug even more furiously into the stone before him, ignoring the thin tears that were streaking his cheeks, spilling what little water he had within him.

Sometimes he wondered dully if his determination to find his family alive was even crueler than what the emperor had laid out for them; at least with death would come the end of the pain and the degradation, as well as sweet rest and the chance to be reunited with one another in the Afterlife.

He was so intent in his thoughts that at first he did not notice the other slaves around him freezing in their assigned places.

When their cessation of work finally caught his eye, Evrit looked up.

Beside him, staring down at him, was an enormous soldier, a lashman of great musculature, his eyes dark and piercing, his expression forbidding. A long whip with metal falls at the tip was coiled in his hand.

Evrit’s chest began to heave with fear.

The soldier looked harshly up at the other slaves, glaring them back to work, their eyes averted in terror. He seized Evrit by the leather collar around his neck and hoisted him off the ground, his black eyes boring into Evrit’s wide green ones. He dragged the terrified slave up until their gazes matched. The lashman wrapped his whip around Evrit’s throat, making a motion as if he were tightening it like a noose, though it did not actually cut off his air.

Then spoke to him in a soft, deadly tone.

In the language of Marincaer.

“Fear not, friend,” he said, too quietly for anyone but Evrit to hear. “Your liberty is coming. Be ready when the call comes to fight. Tell no one else. For what I must do now, I apologize.”

Then his expression changed to one of disdain, and he dropped Evrit harshly to the floor of the cave. He jerked the whip back, causing it to crack menacingly; Evrit could feel the other slaves, their backs to him and the soldier, wince at the sound. A red line of blood appeared, circumnavigating his neck.

But the pain from it was minimal.

“Back to work.” The words were spoken in the harsh tongue of Sorbold.

Shaking, Evrit obeyed.

The lashman watched him rise unsteadily to his feet. Evrit made his way back to the wall, after picking up his trowel, and set about scratching ore again. He was fairly certain he caught a nod of the head of the lashman as the soldier met the gaze of another guard, who seemed to nod in return, but his head was spinning too fast to be certain.

After a few moments of filling his scuttle, a sense of peace descended on him that he had not felt since long before the
Freedom
had departed from Marincaer.

He had no idea why.