Chapter 30

    One night passed, another night, a week, a month, two.  Talaski had time to spend with Princess, but before long he would find himself staring at the Fat Wizard’s ponderous belly.  Sometimes the Wizard would find him, and sometimes Talaski would find himself in the fat Wizard’s workshop.  The tasks that the fat Wizard set on him varied: he might be sent to shop in Bartiese, to search out rare items in dangerous places, or to sit in the workroom and hand things to the wizards as the man worked.  Talaski would fetch and carry as the Fat Wizard asked, but did his best to ignore the man’s rambling lectures.  As for the books that the Fat Wizard pushed at him, books that Talaski had neither the desire nor ability to read, Talaski pushed them back with a sneer.

    “You’re useless,” Azygous roared one afternoon.  Summer had returned to the island, with hot days, humid nights, and afternoon showers which served only to make the air heavier.  Four burning braziers, one in each corner, made the workroom intolerable.  “You’re worse than useless!”

    “I fetch what you want.”  Talaski snarled as he touched his reddened nose.  All day he had crawled over a great salt flat, searching for blue crystals that could only be seen in the sunlight.  With no food and only a goat skin of water to keep him alive, he had searched for crystals that were of sufficient size and clarity to please the Fat Wizard, enough to fill the rather large bag that the wizard had given for him.  His reward had been orders to sit at the worktable with a pile of books.

    “A slave could fetch what I want.  Are you no better than a slave?”

    “I was Dajournae of the Far Lands.”

    “Was.” Azygous flipped a flabby hand in the air.  “And even that life of luxury was too much for you.”

    “I’m powerful.”  Talaski clenched his hand.  He could feel power gathering under his skin.  “I killed a sea monster.”

    The Fat Wizard scoffed.  “A real sea monster would have put it under his control.  You’re a fake, a puppet.”

    “Did I ask for this?  You – you did this to me!  You made me this!”

    Azygous folded his fat arms over his fatter belly.  “As if being a half-satrved beggar-boy was so much better.”

    Memories of all those miserable years crowded Talaski’s brain.  “You did that, too.”

    “You did it to yourself, miserable thief. Brought the Balance on your own thick-skulled head.  Shut up, now, and do as you’re told.”

    “Just like a slave.”

    Azygous reddened at that, and power sparked green up his arms.  “Slave?  Not worth even that.  You’re no more than flotsom – trash I bound to keep in hand until–” he broke off suddenly and turned away.

    “Until what?”

    Azygous turned back with a list in his hand.  “Fetch these from Bartiese, whelp.”

    Talaski barely glanced at the paper and its useless scribbles.  The mention of Bartiese, however, made him pause.  The air was hot, blossoms were open.  How close were they to the worst night of the year?  “What day is this?”

    “A true wizard would know the date.”

    “Is it the mid-summer?”

    “Not yet, wretch.  You’ll know when it comes, Now go and do your chores, little thief. Now."

    Not yet the mid-summer, but much too close.  Talaski needed someone to read for him tonight, someone other than Princess.

***  
               
30.2

***

    The two sailors standing over the hatch seemed worried.  Lissandra could not understand their words, so many of them unknown to her, and spoken quickly with a thick accent, but she heard how they spoke in low tones and saw how they glanced furtively at the side of the ship.  What did they fear?  Pirates?

    But these were the pirates.

    She was no longer on the Green Leaf.  The Dajournae’s courier vessel had caught favorable winds from the Farlands, and according to the captain was making good time, but then she had met the pirates.  They came with magic and swords, and claimed both cargo and Lissandra.  Perhaps the Green Leaf got away with her hull intact and her crew safe – no other crew seemed to be chained with the slaves filling the hold.  The next ship that the pirates had taken had been far less lucky.

    Especially the women, kept at the other end of the underdeck.

    Lissandra could hear them screaming at night.

    She had been left alone.  Chained, sparsely fed, and dirty, but unmolested.  Perhaps the pirates feared the Farlander curse, though if that were true, why had they taken her in the first place?  More likely, there were other plans for her.

    The ship rolled to the side, hard, throwing Lissandra against the manacles that bound her, wrist and ankle, to the wooden floor.  Another blow came before she caught her breath, and then a third.  Someone shouted on deck, and the sailors slammed down the hatch, cutting off her light. Then the other two hatches were shut, plunging the below-deck into a heaving darkness.  The deck above her echoed with pounding footsteps, men running back and forth.  Soon the ship no longer rolled, but it rose and plummeted.

    A storm, she thought, just like the many other storms she had faced on this voyage.

    The ship creaked, then groaned.

    Just a passing storm. She prayed to the Balance that this was true – the Balance she had betrayed with her flight from her decreed marriage.  What right did she have to expect it would care for her?

***

30.3

***

    With the wretch out of the way, seeking impossible-to-find items, and perhaps getting himself killed in a spontaneous duel, Azygous could turn his mind to more important things.  He leaned out of his workroom window and looked off to the west.  High waves, their broken crests topped with foam, ran before the storm which was even now rising above the horzion like a giant black fist.  Wispy clouds draped over the sky shone red gold, but the edges of the cloud were the color of blood.

    His island stood before the storm.

    His island, not Jovibon’s, not Lord Fantail’s.  Neither man would have bothered to do what needed to be done tonight.  Neither understood that the wealth of the island lay not in their storehouses, but in the people and their goodwill.  Remove the people, and this would be just another rock in the sea.

    No storm had ever taken Azygous’s wealth from him.  No storm ever would.

    Gathering his power, Azygous began the task of building the framework for his shield.

***

    Talaski found Fat Ajoul’s tavern to be strangely empty.  The slave and the new boy were stacking sandbags in front of the steps, forming a wall that cut off the door and the drain from the rest of the room.

    “Here to give a hand?” asked Fat Ajoul from the top of the steps.  He pulled a sandbag through the door.  “We might still beat the water.”

    “The water?”

    “Big storm coming in, according to the fishermen.  We spent all afternoon digging up sand from the shore.  But it’s all out in the alley.”

    Taking the hint, Talaski drew on his power to collect the sandbags and put them in place.  They did form a nice wall, about waist high.  “I’m looking for–”

    Fat Ajoul cut him off.  “That will keep the rainwater out, no matter how hard it falls.  Yes.”

    “But what if the water rises high on the island?” asked the new boy in a voice which was high and decidedly feminine.  “Back in–my old village, during the calm of the storm the waters would run up the hills.”

    Talaski remembered how, in Bartiese, the storms would flood the port, the lower slums, and the slave pits.

    “In past years, we’ve been lucky, but still...”  Fat Ajoul pointed a plump finger upwards.  “We should move all the stores to the higher rooms. And the chairs and tables, if we have time – or if a wizard helps us.”

    Talaski crossed his arms.  “I’m searching for someone who can read.  Can you help me?”

    Fat Ajoul spread his hands, as he always did when there was bargaining to be done.  “If I did, I would be worried about looters, and might do a poor job.  Unless you could–”

    “I’ll do it,” said the new boy.

    Talaski glanced him with a critical eye, then saw, beneath damp robes, how the hips and thighs curved, not like a man at all.  He also saw the curve of the belly, a lump about the size of a melon nestled between the hips, and below that, no lumps at all.

    No.  Not tonight.

    “Let me,” the slave begged.  He glanced at the new servant, not at her face but at the bulge of her belly, and Talaski suddenly saw how things were.  Strange to think that the slave, meek and cringing, had been man enough to fill a woman, but was it stranger than a gutter rat with his own princess?

    Fat Ajoul also stared at the slave. “You can read?  How?”

    “All the boys were taught, just in case...”  The slave’s voice trailed off to a whisper.  “Let me go.”

    “Leaving Juel and me to carry all this upstairs by ourselves?  We might manage one...”

    “We have a deal,” Talaski said as he sent everything which could be moved to the highest rooms.  “And we’ll be back for the clean-up.”

***

30.4

***

    The ship groaned as it rose, then fell.  This storm was worse than any Lissandra had experienced on the Green Leaf, and from the shouts of the pirates and the sobs of the other slaves, it was likely worse than what any of them were used to.

    The Balance does not cover me, Lissandra thought as she clutched the chains to keep herself from being flung about. I will never see Jesland again, and he will never know that I tried to find him.  I will die tonight–but with my honor intact.

***

30.5

***

    Sceams greeted Talaski as Bartiese solidified around him, screams and a carrilon of manic laughter.  Flowers in dirty silk robes, wilted blossoms in their hair, stinking of sex and piss, waited for customers bearing vials of dreamdust.  Street vendors pushed carts laden twisted breads, spicy fried meats, and bunches of fruit.  Small children were chained to carts and tent poles, not enslaved but protected from thieving hands.

    The slave whimpered and pressed close to Talaski.

    “Have you been here before?”

    “I was sold here, once.”  The slaves’s words could barely be heard above the din of the street.  “It was spring, and I never left the slave grounds.”

    “Just how many times have you been sold?”

    The slave’s eyes flickered back and forth.  “Six.  Masters get bored.”

    Someone screeched behind them.  Talaski turned in time to see a Flower be dragged away by a burly man–either a customer that the Flower had refused, or, more likely, someone refusing to pay for what could be taken for free.

    A common theft, as the mid-summer approached.

    Untying his belt, Talaski fastened one end around the slave’s forearm, then tied the other to his wrist.

    “I won’t run away,” the slave sighed.

    “Not what I’m afraid of.”  Talaski shoved the list toward the slave.  “What the first thing?”

    “Red Butterfly wings, one measure.  Where...”

    “Yes?”

    “Who sells butterfly wings?”  The slave frowned, obviously unused to a world where wizards bought the strangest things.

    “Someone whose stock eats red butterflies, but is too cheap to throw the wings away.”