Nature's Servant (56 page)

“I know nothing about my rescuer,” she said at last, her carefully composed expression enlivened by genuine curiosity. “Tell me about yourself Jonn.”

…

Adela was released from the infirmary the next day, and Jonn used his savings to rent a small room near the barracks. She struggled to accept his generosity but when he asked her where else she had to go, she didn’t have an answer. Faced with no other options, she grudgingly accepted his offer on the condition that he let her pay him back in time, and that she owed him nothing more than money. Jonn accepted those conditions readily enough, and she moved into her new lodgings.

Over the next week, he visited her whenever he wasn’t on duty. Initially she was reserved, saying little about herself and asking a lot about him. Her constant questioning made him uncomfortable, mostly because he was naturally reserved and didn’t like to spend much time talking about himself. There were always people willing to fill the gaps in a conversation, and he was usually happy to take a back seat, but Adela didn’t allow him that privilege, asking him about practically every detail of his life.

Initially he held back, saying only what was necessary, but after a few days of her digging he gave up and told her everything she wanted to know. He figured that she might need to know everything about him to feel safe in his company, which was exactly how he wanted her to feel. She shed a tear when he talked about how Rhetta had been taken from him, and the knowledge that he had never had another woman since that time seemed to melt much of her remaining frostiness. Slowly, she began to share little bits and pieces about herself in return, starting with safe and simple details and slowly letting him in.

She was from Beran, a frigid land on the
Western coast of the continent of Grattelund. Jonn had rarely met anyone from outside the borders of Antropel, whose sweeping landscapes stretched from balmy coastal regions in the South to arid deserts in the central regions and icy mountain ranges in the far North. It was an enormous land, variously peopled and unconnected to any other except by long stretches of treacherous ocean. As a result, it was not unheard of to come across occasional visitors from far flung lands, but it was a rarity.

She had grown up in snowy, mountainous Beran, and was apparently typical of her race - tall and fair-skinned with blond hair and blue eyes. It was a country rich in natural resources, its slopes covered in thick forests which supplied wood for their towns and cities. They kept sheep and long-horned cattle, and the land was plentiful with game. She had grown up the child of the mayor and mayoress of a small but prosperous coastal town called Lunt, and she had been betrothed to her childhood sweetheart, Keil, an apprentice to the town blacksmith.

It took several days for her to share even these few details, and Jonn patiently listened, stopping her only to ask clarifying questions. As she shared the innocuous stories of her childhood, she gained in confidence, until one day, when she felt safe enough, she told him the whole harrowing tale of how she ended up in Helioport.

The day Adela’s life had been destroyed had dawned much like any other. The sun was shining, the sheep were bleating, and if not for the fleet of ships sailing into the harbour, everything was exactly as it ought to be. When scores of filthy men swarmed onto the quayside like ants spilling from a disturbed anthill, and ran through the town like a tide of destruction, the well-ordered life she had once known was torn down piece by piece, until she had nothing left at all.

The invaders were the fabled Ghannai, a nomadic race that live on the ocean, raiding ships and coastal towns. She had always known of them of course, but only as a story parents scared their children with to coerce them into behaving:

“If you’re a bad girl the Ghannai will come and take you,” was a threat that sent small children scurrying for their bedcovers throughout the region. She had never really believed in them, but on the day her town was raided, when her parents and lover were killed before her eyes, when she was raped and captured as a slave, she’d discovered the ugly truth behind the fable. Everything had changed that day. She’d been ripped from a comfortable, privileged existence and bound in the heavy chains of slavery.

The pirates’ interest in her was first and foremost a financial one. A girl of her beauty would sell well in the underground slave auctions of Namert, a metropolis in the far
north-western regions of Antropel where slavery, though technically illegal, was tolerated by the notoriously corrupt officials of that city state. The pecuniary interest didn’t stop the pirates from taking their pleasure with her while they had her in their possession, however, and Adela’s suffering was drawn out mercilessly at the hands of cruel men.

She was kept with other girls like herself, a collection of battered beauties that never failed to flinch when the door to their tiny cabin opened. Sometimes it was to bring food and water, but more often than not it was some drunken pirate coming to take a girl back to his bunk. The first time one of the men tried to use her, he made the mistake of leaving her hands untied and had lost an eye to her gouging fingers. She had thought she was dead then, and would have welcomed it, but the captain wouldn’t allow valuable property to be destroyed and her misery had continued. She was a popular choice among the men, and hardly a day went by without her being forced to surrender her body to some lusting invader. The worst time was when the man she had half-blinded had recovered sufficiently to revisit her. He returned wearing a
blood-stained eye-patch, and after tying her hands so tightly her wrists began to bleed, he made her pay dearly for the loss of his eye.

After a while the abuse wore away her will, and the lack of light, food and exercise took their toll, making her sick in body and in spirit, but even the developing sores and lesions spreading through the once-private spaces of her body didn’t put the most determined men off. Eventually the captain stepped in, banning the men from using her for the remainder of the voyage. It might have looked like an act of mercy, but Adela knew the real reason for her protection. A ruined sex-slave sold for much less gold than a healthy one.

The captain, known as the Gentleman by his crew on account of his fastidious habits, began to allow her up on deck to get some air, closely guarded of course, in case she decided to jump ship and embrace oblivion. He made sure she was given fruit to eat and plenty of water to drink as well as providing her with a healing ointment to rub on her body. He even entertained her in his cabin, and to her surprise, never forced himself on her. He was a strangely sophisticated man; ugly as sin but elegantly dressed in scrupulously clean clothing. His cabin was plushly furnished and his table served with provender fit for a prince. Every evening after dinner, he took a long cigar from a polished mahogany box and lit it up, making light conversation with her as if she were an honoured guest.

Adela struggled to understand the contradiction in the Gentleman. He was polite and well-mannered, cultured in a way that made her feel like a bumpkin, and yet he knew what was happening in the bowels of the ship, ironically named the Maiden, and did little to stop it, even if he didn’t indulge in it himself. She couldn’t respect him, or like him, and though she learned a form of pretence to get through those peculiar evenings in his cabin, she was broken inside, a woman robbed of ever
y last scrap of self-respect by the abuses of men. It didn’t matter that the Gentleman was polite to her – it was he who held her captive and at the opportune moment he would sell her for as much gold as he could get.

As she recovered her strength, she was gripped by a steely resolve to escape, and to make him pay for what he’d done to her. Her anger and hatred fused into a cold determination to have her revenge. When her chance came, she would be ready.

When the ship finally reached the coastal waters of Antropel, the Gentleman avoided port authorities by sailing up the river Helia and stopping at Helioport for supplies. He was planning to take Adela on to Namert and sell her to its well-heeled rulers, and they would need provisions for the long voyage. The slave trade was flourishing in the far north-western part of the continent, and the Gentleman knew that her blond hair, blue eyes and tremendous beauty would fetch a princely sum. Owning exotic slaves was a status symbol in Namert, and in a land where people tended to be dark-haired and short in stature, what was more exotic than a tall, shapely blond woman? He’d explained to her during the long voyage that she would live a life of luxury, the concubine of a powerful man, but she knew better. A cage was a cage, whether it was made of iron or of gold, and she would be expected to give up her body on demand for the rest of her life and pretend to like it! Before her capture, the only man that had ever touched her was her beloved Keil, and he’d touched her with his heart and mind as much as with his body. The thought of spending the rest of her life deprived of that kind of affection, forced to accept a loveless pretence in its place, was enough to send her to the very brink of despair.

It was in the city of magicians that her fate took an unexpected turn. She wasn’t allowed off the ship, and so spent the daylight hours locked in the Gentleman’s cabin, waiting while he attended to business in the city. She’d considered trying to escape but the door was locked, and even if she could get out, the crew would be ready to spring into action in a heartbeat. They were a pirate crew, and though they may have looked idle, lazily performing repairs to the ship’s worn fixtures and fittings, she knew that they were used to sudden departures, and much of that laziness was just for appearance.

The surprise came when the Gentleman brought a guest back from the city for dinner. Adela was made to serve them, and as she poured the wine and lit their cigars, she surreptitiously took in every detail of the stranger as he talked with the Gentleman. What stood out to her most strongly was that there was nothing remarkable about the man whatsoever. He was of average height and build, his clothes were ordinary, and his mousy hair was cut in a functional style, if indeed it could be called a style at all. His chin was covered in short, greying stubble that set off his slate-grey eyes. He was neither handsome nor ugly, and she had the feeling that if she looked away she would struggle to recall his face. She didn’t allow herself to be fooled however. Among the Ghannai, a ship’s captain was a form of nobility. She was pretty sure that whoever this man was, the Gentleman wouldn’t invite him to dine with him and allow him to see one of his captives unless he was both powerful and a criminal.

Filled with wariness, she listened as the Gentleman talked openly of his plans to clean up in Namert, and the stranger listened intently, laughing along at all the right spots, sharing bits and pieces of his own enterprises that she didn’t fully understand but which sounded entirely criminal. He talked of a group called “the rats” and some underhand business they were up to in the city, but she couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. At the end of the meal he looked her up and down.

“I think I will take this one Lesair,” he said, using what she had to assume was the Gentleman’s real name.

The Gentleman raised an eyebrow in surprise, but that was the extent of his reaction. “She is the pick of the bunch,” he said matter-of-factly. “I was going to charge ten thousand for her in Namert.”

“Eight thousand and you can sell her today,” the stranger said, bartering casually, as if she wasn’t even there. Adela’s blood ran cold as she saw her powerlessness more clearly than she ever had before. She had no more control over her future than a head of cattle being sold at auction, and there was something about this stranger that frightened her even more than the pirates did. It was something about his anonymity, something hiding behind his averageness that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

“Nine thousand,” the Gentleman responded.

There was a long pause while the stranger eyed him steadily.

“Eight and a half,” he responded quietly, “and my flexibility is only due to our long association.” There was some unspoken threat in his words, a darkening of the mood that made the hairs on the back of Adela’s arms stand up. The Gentleman’s countenance paled.

“Of course, of course,” he said far too quickly. “Shall we do the deal today?”

“No, I will send Vosul tomorrow evening with the gold,” the stranger said. He stood up swiftly, making Adela jump. He studied her with his flat, grey eyes for what felt like far too long before turning his attention back to the Gentleman. “Thank you for your hospitality,” he said.

“And for your company Belash,” the Gentleman responded, and the stranger left without a further word.

The Gentleman regarded her then with an expression that looked very much like pity. “I regret that we are to part ways,” he said, running a slow hand through his thick black hair. “I’d like to take you on to Namert, but I must leave you with Belash. It’s not the life of silks and perfume you would have had, but if you don’t anger him, he will treat you well.”

Adela could hear the lie in his voice, and her knees buckled under her as the weight of a life sentence landed squarely on her shoulders. Instead of helping her up, the Gentleman acted as if nothing had happened.

“Return downstairs for tonight,” he said, “and be ready to leave tomorrow evening.”

She stumbled from the room and ran to the rail, throwing up noisily into the water before returning to the cabin she shared with the other girls for one last, sweat-drenched night of fear on the Maiden. Despite her best efforts, she didn’t get any sleep that night, her stomach churning with anxiety at the thought of being handed over to Belash. She didn’t know exactly what it was she feared that could be worse than the indignities she’d already suffered, but something about the man had filled her with mind-numbing dread that made her hands shake and her bowels turn to water.