19. N #2
She thought back to her time … before. Her joy at being an elven lord, a ruler of her own estate, her very existence a thumb in the eye of those who thought women capable of no more than being brood-mares for heirs.
The strain and constant worry of whether she was rising or falling, the nagging feeling of something left undone, some weakness a male elven lord could use to deprive her of her estate …
the property that made her who she was, Triana.
She took that idea out and examined it for a bit.
The guard had kept her appraised of the time she’d been locked down here, and she had a decent estimate of how long she had been Haldeen’s “guest.”
She considered whether Haldeen had lied about the difference in time, then concluded he had taken too much joy in dropping that particular cowflop in her soup for it to be a lie.
She did a quick calculation on her fingers.
By Haldeen’s count, she had already been away from her home for years.
Her estate had long since passed to another; either her human slaves had joined the revolt, or one of the Young Lords had snatched it up before someone else realized it was no longer in her control.
All things considered, it was probably in the hands of the humans, since her cousin Kyrtian was with them.
She had strongly suspected that he had somehow been kept apprised of what she was up to.
Still, she was not dead. The loss of her estate had not in fact killed her.
Her life here, literally shoveling shit, had been a long, long fall from what she had been, but was certainly a step up from the food-making room.
“No offense, old boy,” she said aloud, and squirmed a bit, taking the weight off of sore back muscles.
“As nice as this is, I’d still trade it for a good feather bed. I really need to start thinking about how to get out of here.”
She fell asleep instead.
The dream felt strange, strange in perspective and focus.
She knew she dreamt, even telling herself it was an odd sort of dream, but where she also could not will herself to awaken.
It wasn’t like the nightmares she’d had while wearing the collar, either where she had not dreamt dreams, but been dragged through them.
This was something different yet, not fully hers, but drawn from her.
The part that was awake inside the dream understood she had a choice here.
To choose to follow, or to choose to awaken.
She chose to follow. She crossed from the old stable building, where her brothers had taunted her, and where she now kept her best steeds.
Down past the new barn, and along the wall where the first barracks had been damaged by the winds.
She could see the stakes marking out where the new gladiator hall would be, along with the visually decorative and highly effective wall that would keep her male property where it belonged.
She stopped and turned, perplexed. The details were oddly specific in places, in others barely sketched or suggested.
She wondered what would happen if she suddenly turned and headed towards the distant woods.
Would they remain a hazy gray-green, or solidify into the trees as she walked towards them?
She shook her head …. Tromlier’s ass-wit son had brought dried mushrooms that he’d slid into the first course, and the resulting hallucinations had bordered this dream in strangeness and intensity.
She felt more observer than participant in this one.
She looked around again then saw herself emerging from the barn, wearing a light sundress and hat to shade her face, and carrying a riding crop.
She paused to test her control. She felt the edges shimmer. She could still leave if she chose.
My first culling, the day I started breeding gladiators, not just training and showing them.
What … the … hell? She drifted along behind as the younger her stopped to address a pair of guards, then proceeded into the first barracks.
There, she watched as she had the human males strip.
She inspected them, using the riding crop to turn heads to one side, or lift chins to better inspect a face.
She was of a height with most, and examined each carefully, looking for blemishes or other marks, imperfections in skin or scars.
Flick left … the man went to sale. Flick right, and to the training hall to perfect his craft for her profit and pleasure.
One she kept standing for a long moment, a borderline fighter with good bones and stamina, but slighter of build than the others.
Triana remembered her indecision, and remembered her internal debate.
Watching her younger self study the gladiator and seeing her expression …
you fancied him, didn’t you? Even now, in truth, she saw now what she saw then, if through older eyes. He was still beautiful.
Then the moment broke, and Triana saw the man’s gaze, not on her as his owner and mistress, but over her younger self’s shoulder.
She watched as her dream-self turned her head, and framed in the light was a young woman, a laundress with an armload of clean sleeves for the straw mattresses the slaves slept on.
The younger Triana turned her head slowly back to face the man.
His head had fallen, his eyes staring at her knees.
She used the riding crop to raise his head to meet her eyes, then flicked left. Sale.
The man’s eyes went dark with desolation, along with the hurt and anger he dared not express, for fear of the collar.
She saw young Triana look back at the girl, and saw the laundress’ expression turn to anguish as she comprehended what had occurred.
The slave might be collared, but she fell to the floor and wept.
Triana remembered the culling. That was just business.
A simple matter of deciding which stock to keep …
nothing personal. Yet the expression on her younger self’s face suggested otherwise.
She had chosen to separate the young fighter and lover precisely because of the anguish it would cause them.
The older Triana saw the mix of hurt and anger on her younger self’s face.
The dream froze and the tableau faded, leaving her to walk along the corridors of her hall, now decorated from her father’s years, after her mother had died in childbed.
What in the hell is going on? Why that dream? Why that memory? She both thought and spoke, her mind and voice echoing across the empty hallways. And why is it so different from the way I remembered it?
She felt confused, uncertain about the boundary between dream and memory.
The events had happened, though she recalled the emotions differently.
Yes, that was it. The way she remembered it, the only reason it stuck out was because it was her first culling.
Until this point she had left cullings up to her trainers, but the results had been less than completely satisfactory, and she’d decided to take over herself.
She didn’t remember feeling anything except satisfaction that now all of this was hers to control; not her father’s, not her brother’s.
She didn’t understand how she could be outside herself, and seeing things that she could not have seen before, such as her own face.
Yet she remembered the riding crop, the inspections, the flicks left and right.
She remembered the gladiator and the laundress, and the sale.
Still enmeshed in the dream, she crossed the empty entry hall, still styled for the unhappy time after her mother’s death. She froze, her mind tracing back to the expression on her younger self when she comprehended the love between the human man and his mate.
She saw herself again, for just a moment, right before the dream faded. The naked envy written across her younger face that the gladiator and the laundress had found something she would never know. Love.
The expression Triana had seen on her own face had been jealousy.
She awoke.
“What the hell was that all about?” she said aloud.
She slid down out of the nest Rock had made for her and slid gently to the ground.
She often felt disoriented after waking from a dream, but this time her mind felt clear and rested.
She took several steps before she realized the soreness had gone and she felt well and strong.
And … not hungry. Or, well, yes, a bit hungry, but the hunger wasn’t that gnawing creature in her belly that made her weak at the knees and got between her and thought.
She turned around to give Rock a long look. “Could you do that all along, or are you just feeling better now that another rod is out?”
She took a long look at Rock. The mage-lights cast a blueish hue that managed to be both harsh on the eyes and diffuse at the same time.
Everything in the cage looked pale, and she had no doubt that she must have looked near to death, given her own fair skin.
Still, the Rock seemed less pearlescent, and more … earthen-hued.
She washed herself, then fed Rock, moving in time with him as he consumed cartloads’ worth of straw and dung.
Gelbert made an appearance soon afterwards, bringing the empty ash bucket and her breakfast.
She noticed that Rock shifted himself to keep Gelbert from seeing the fresh scars where the rods had been removed.
Pretty good. I wonder how you see? How do you know?
She did her part, engaging Gelbert in small-talk and staff gossip to keep him focused on her, and not on Rock.
It was also the only way to stay current on the latest gossip.
The lady physician who had treated her had joined some kind of expedition, some great task that would save the world …
and to Triana sounded much too much like an act of the desperate.
The way the guard repeated it, suggested this was apparently old gossip, dredged up again when Haldeen had culled the Household staff for …
what was the guard’s word? Voluntolds? Triana had only met the woman a couple of times, the first for an examination that left her feeling humiliated, and again when she had been delirious and sick.
Triana really couldn’t have cared less about the rumors, but her attention kept Gelbert’s from wandering.
So she had done as women have since time immemorial.
She nodded attentively, made polite noises at the right moments, smiled at the half-jokes, and tried desperately not to yawn.
Her sacrifice appeared to work. Her extractions had gone unnoticed, and if Rock’s hue had changed, the guard certainly hadn’t noticed.