Fool's Quest

“He’s just a boy, with a boy’s way of shouting when he is angry. Or frightened. Were not you once a boy yourself?”

He looked at her flatly, not taken in by her effort at all. “I was a boy once. I was a boy who saw my father strangle my older brother for failing to show him respect. I was a smart boy. I needed only one lesson to learn my place.”

Odessa had dragged me to my feet. She stood behind me, her arms crossed over me to hold me up. I still didn’t have my breath back. When Commander Ellik pointed his thick-nailed finger at me, I gave up any thought of taking a breath. “Learn. Or die. I don’t care what name they call you by, boy, or what value they place on you. Still that tongue, or you and your whore-tender will be thrown to my men.” He turned and stalked away.

At last, I drew air into my lungs. I desperately needed to piss out my fear.

Then Dwalia spoke, boldly calling her words after the man. “That is not our agreement, Commander Ellik. If this boy is harmed in any way, we will not be obliged to pay you when we reach Botter’s Bay. The one who holds the gold will not release it to you unless I am alive to tell him to do so. And unless the boy is unharmed when we arrive there, I will not tell him to pay you.”

Her tone was firm but reasonable. On another man, perhaps it might have worked. But as Ellik turned back to her with a snarl on his face, I suddenly knew that she should not have mentioned money, as if money could rule him. Money was not what he lusted for.

“There is more than one way to turn you and your pale servants and your precious boy into gold. I need not even wait until we reach Botter’s Bay. There are slavers still in every port in Chalced.” He glanced about him at the staring luriks and spoke with disdain. “Your pretty white horses might fetch me a better price than your bloodless serving girls and flimsy men.”

Dwalia had gone pale and still.

He lifted his voice to fill our night. “I am a Chalcedean, and a commander and a lord, not by birth but by virtue of my own good sword-arm. I am not ruled by whining women or cowed by whispering priestesses. I do as I think best for myself and the men who have sworn to me.”

Dwalia pulled herself straighter. Her followers had bunched like sheep, each striving to be behind someone else. Odessa still held me in front of her. Was she bravely protecting me or using me as a shield? Shun had recovered herself. She stood alone and apart from the luriks and stared fiercely at the Chalcedeans. I had breath in my body now. I readied myself to run.

Stillness. Be still as the hunter and listen.

I settled myself into my motionless body. Dwalia mastered her fear and spoke back to Ellik. Was she insane? Or so used to being in command that she did not see the weakness of her position? “Your men are sworn to you. Promised to you, then? And you believe in their promises when you do not honor your own? Promised to you, just as you gave your word to me when we set our bargain? A generous advance on the payment was given to you, that you need not loot. But loot you did, in defiance of my order. You promised there would be no violence beyond what must be. Yet there was. Foolish destruction, breaking doors and slashing tapestries. Leaving signs of our passage that need not have been left. Killing beyond what was needed. Rapes that served no useful purpose.”

Ellik stared at her. Then he threw back his head and laughed, and for a moment I saw him as he might have been in his youth, wild and reckless. “No useful purpose?” he repeated. He roared with laughter again. His men were appearing, by twos and threes, to stand in witness. They shared his mirth. I knew that his display was actually for them. “There speaks a woman who knows nothing of her true purpose in the world. But let me tell you, I am certain that my men found those women useful enough.”

“You broke your word to me!” Dwalia tried to put certainty and accusation in her voice. Instead she sounded like a whining child.

He cocked his head to look at her, and I saw on his face that she had become even less powerful in his eyes. So insignificant that he bothered to explain the world to her. “A man has his word. And he can give his word to another man, for both of them know what that means. For a man has honor, and to break his word to another man defiles his honor. The breaking of a man’s word merits death. But all know that a woman cannot give her word to anyone, for women cannot possess honor. Women promise, and later they say, ‘I did not understand, I did not mean it that way, I thought those words meant something else.’ So a woman’s word is without worth. She can break it, and always she does, for she has no honor to defile.” He gave a snort of derision. “It is not even worth killing a woman who breaks her word, for it is what women do.”