3. N #3
The queasy feeling spread. She had paid little attention to the tutors; she and they had all shared a common goal.
Her to do just enough to stay out of trouble, them to just enough to live soft and get paid.
Still, she recalled one pedantic old wheeze, whose job was to teach her early (and pointless) ancient history, while she worked to distract him with her very shapely legs.
Her heart skipped a beat as she tried to recall …
the Passing? The Crossing? The Something?
When her ancestors had come … from somewhere.
A home-world. A terrible place, from all accounts, full of danger and monsters.
She hadn’t been interested in monsters, and the only terror she wanted was the terror she instilled in servants.
She hadn’t realized back then that you got more out of your servants when you were good to them on the surface, but they were well aware that was only the surface, and your displeasure was dangerous.
Much better to present both carrot and stick, and make it a choice for them.
What if—what if this is our home-world, the one we escaped from? And these two are some of the Overlords we were fleeing? Our Ancestors?
Did that fit? Once again she strained her memory.
She really wished she had been paying more attention to the lesson.
A rebellion? Running from oppression hadn’t been the only reason the elven lords had fled.
Life in the home-world had become untenable, with monsters constantly on the attack.
Many of those who had fled had grown weary of being grist for the mill of constant combat.
If life had been reduced to bare survival …
well, fine clothing and jewels would certainly be the first things to go.
The boring old tutor had reeled off a long list of names and places she’d never heard of, didn’t care about, and couldn’t recall.
Her mind felt afire. She hadn’t thought this hard about anything in a very long time. Not since her father died and she had had to fight to keep his title for herself.
The male cleared his throat, filling the lengthening silence, and drawing her back to the present. He ran his hand through his thinning hair, his expression focused and thinking. “Mayhap the tower?” Finally! Something I can understand!
The female … Andaleisia … looked nonplussed, then quickly nodded.
Triana recognized that expression as well.
Relief at a small victory, and eager to seal it, before it turned to ash.
“Abret,” she said. It took Triana a few moments to place the word …
agreed? Or something like it. The matron quickly helped Triana stand, taking her arm, and steering her towards one wall of the cage.
Triana knew the gesture for what it was …
make good on the decision before it could be reversed.
She tried not to stumble as she was helped to her feet. She still felt dizzy and weary.
The male raised the wand, and a section of the cage bars melted away, flowing like snakes up into the overhead and down to the floor.
Triana noted that he had closed Andaleisia in with her.
So much for hostage taking. It also said something about the female’s value.
Andaleisia had been sent in to tend her, with no real ability to rescue her if something went wrong and Triana had overpowered her.
Triana then recalled the rod he held. Maybe that was all he needed.
Triana felt her strength return as she moved, and felt some of her usual vigor flow into her.
Either the passage through the Gate sapped her, or they had done something to her afterwards that was wearing off.
She kept the women’s right hand in hers, even though it wasn’t strictly necessary for balance.
They moved together towards the cage door.
She felt the weight around her throat and raised her fingers, feeling the collar about her neck.
A collar! A slave’s collar! She started to panic, to try and pull it away with her hands.
“No!” she cried out. The woman held her wrists for a time and she struggled until he did something and a wave of weakness washed over her.
She started to slump, and the woman caught her, and helped her to the floor.
Triana tried pulling weakly at it. The woman held her hands, saying “ne-a” softly over and over, no, no.
In time, Triana let the woman draw her hands away from her neck, She glanced up at the elven lord with the rod.
He waggled the tip back and forth meaningfully, then said something too soft for her to hear.
She felt a bit of her strength return, and the woman helped her stand. Triana still felt the heaviness, as though weary and near asleep, and needed the matron’s help to walk. Together, they moved to the cage entrance.
As Triana stepped through the cage bars, the male extended his hand to her. Accustomed as she was to being handed down by her slaves, she took it. He ran a smaller rod, slim as a reed, across the back of her wrist.
She cried out as the pain seared her. Iron.
Red welts, a few dotted with blood, rose from the back of her hand in an instant.
“Elven bred, for cert!” he declared. Triana jerked her hand back and cradled it in the other, pulling it free of Andaleisia’s, and wincing at the pain that spread like fire.
Andaleisia reacted angrily, her voice rising in her objections, her speech staccato and rapid …
of which Triana understood absolutely nothing.
The male appeared unfazed, responding in another familiar tone …
the patient, put-upon male being forced to respond to feminine illogic.
Triana could actually hear Andaleisia’s teeth grinding, another sound she knew well.
He shooed both women out into a corridor, waving his larger rod like a baton, and reinforcing Triana’s initial assumption that the room she had found herself in was a minor part of a much larger construction.
She was able to stand on her own after a few hands, with only a guiding hand on her elbow.
They stopped near a station set into the wall where Andaleisia dressed and bandaged Triana’s injuries; the scrapes and contusions from the fight in the cave, the welt where she struck her head when she fell off the table, the wrist she landed on, the bitter burn from the iron,
and even the insect bites and sunburn from tramping around in the woods before the cave that had led to her being … here.
How common are injuries here, when they have things like this routinely installed in corridors?
If this place was, indeed, the long-abandoned home-world, the answer to that question would probably be: very.
This was terrifying in and of itself. She could hardly recall the last time she’d been really hurt; before her father died, surely.
Except in duels or as victims of assassination attempts, elven lords simply didn’t get hurt.
Others—slaves mostly—endured dangers for them.
It occurred to her that the two might be working a game, with the female building her trust while the male terrorized her …
except that if that were the case, then they seemed …
well, not very good at it. Oh their actions and reactions were genuine enough, but if they were playing parts, they were doing it badly.
The woman was not nearly cosseting and agreeable enough, and the man seemed utterly indifferent in his cruelty, as if she was merely ancillary to something larger that occupied him.
The situation frightened her. The room with its cages and unidentified tools terrified her, and the thing that brought her nearly made her void herself, but these two?
The female was by turns waspish and wheedling, and the male moved between condescending and uncertain.
On her estates, she knew how to cow slaves …
leaving the new-boughts standing before her when they first arrived in silence as she scrutinized them, and in such terror that she could smell the urine dribbling down their legs.
She rarely had to actually punish, as the fear of what she might do kept them firmly in line.
Then, later, the carrot came out. She’s a fine mistress if you please her.
Comforts, luxuries even. But cross her and …
. That was how you handled a slave. Or even an elven servant.
Whatever these two were about just was not even remotely behavior she recognized or knew how to deal with.
Another discussion between them, and along a short passage, to some kind of winding stair upwards.
The stairway gleamed with the same sourceless light as the room below had, but the structure appeared more normal.
Some kind of cut blocks, and smooth formed mortar, neatly set.
The normalcy of it reassured her, with no fused walls or odd corners.
She presumed this to be the aforementioned tower.
She reached out to grab a railing as they climbed.
Her life had been more sedentary before the expedition that led to the cave, the terrible fight, the nightmares, and then here.
The stair climb didn’t tire her as much as she made it look, but she did need to pause for breath as they ascended.
They had not even manacled her. She could shove against him, and past the female, and then escape …
fleeing down the stairs, but to where? And for how far, until he used the collar’s control and robbed her strength.
She took a deep breath. Could she grab the wand he carried, then flee?
Their unconcern told her that whenever she was, escape would not be had as a result of swift heels.
An escape attempt now, though, would surely result in the clink of cell bars, and she definitely didn’t want that.
Meek and mild. Well … she could pretend, as she had as a child.
Pretend, conform, and all the time, keep her eyes open, and take in everything that might give you the upper hand later.
The male turned back to say something to the female, and the entire tower vibrated, followed by a muffled sound. Both of her escorts grew pale, then started climbing in haste.
Several more turns of the tower brought her to a low door. Suitable for the woman, a bit inconvenient for Triana and the man. The man had to stoop only a bit, as did Triana, and they emerged into a small workroom and blinding, wrong-colored sunlight.
Triana held up her hand to shield herself and blinked rapidly, trying to get her pupils to adjust.
She’d been in the dark too long and her eyes proved slow to adapt.