The Prince of Shadow (20 page)

The governor's lady gave a slight nod of dismissal, then she turned and entered one of the low wooden houses that surrounded the garden. When the door slid into place behind her, Llesho could not tell where it had been.

The stranger, Habiba, bowed to Master Jaks and smiled at the boys. “This way,” he said, and gestured toward another bridge, leading deeper into the complex of houses and waterways. Over the bridge, down a path between two slightly larger buildings with two tiers of curled roofs they followed him, to a small house with fragile, greased parchment screens for walls. Habiba slid a screen aside, and they entered the office of an overseer. The bearers of Bixei's litter set him down and departed, leaving the novices alone with their teacher and the governor's witch.

Habiba went to the elegantly fragile desk and pulled out a sheaf of papers, turning first to Master Jaks. “Do you have your prize-book?”

Jaks reached into his leather tunic and pulled out a worked leather case that hung by a cord around his neck. From the case he pulled a small book, which he handed to the overseer.

Habiba opened Jaks' prize-book and studied it for a moment. “You were close to winning your freedom when Lord Chin-shi put an end to your aspirations, Master Jaks.”

“Lord Chin-shi pulled me from the arena before I had earned my price,” he confirmed. “His lordship valued my skill as a teacher, and did not wish to lose my services to death or manumission.” Master Jaks recited his history in a flat voice, but Llesho saw the muscles in his teacher's throat tighten with restraint. Manumission: the freeing of a slave. What emotions the master hid, Llesho could not see, but he imagined them much as his own at his captivity: a helpless rage more suited to a child than the powerful man-at-arms.

“Some day you must tell the tale of how a hero with the bands of an assassin on his arm landed himself in the arena at all,” Habiba commented, “and how it was that your kin allowed the slight to remain on their honor for so long.”

“I have no clan,” Master Jaks answered with a voice like stone falling on stone. “My family all lie dead.”

Llesho remembered the bodyguard who had died to keep him safe.
Was he your brother?
he wanted to ask.
Your family, did they all die fighting at Kungol, too few against the invading horde?
But he could say nothing in front of Bixei or the governor's witch, who flitted an expressionless glance over Llesho before returning his attention to Master Jaks in front of him.

“So I have heard.” Habiba reached for a chop and an inkstone, as if the conversation had revealed the likelihood of rain, not the destruction of a clan of mercenaries and assassins.

“Her ladyship's family rules, in the emperor's grace, at Thousand Lakes Province, where slavery is outlawed,” Habiba explained, his voice soft but commanding, and terrible in its quiet anger. There was no comfort in his voice—a warrior would acknowledge no need of comfort—but Llesho felt the softness of his words tame some hurt he felt in his own breast. Master Jaks inclined his head, an acceptance of comradeship if not peace.

“According to her marriage contract with his grace, the governor of Farshore Province, her ladyship's household shall always be a mirror in which she may see the Thousand Lakes reflected. No one serves here as a slave.”

He stamped Master Jaks' prize-book with the governor's chop and returned it solemnly. “The gift to his lady of your freedom has cost his excellency very little.”

Habiba then held out the contract with its blue seal. “Your manumission papers,” he said, and added, “her ladyship would like to hire you, Freeman Jaks, to train the warriors for her house. The contract is here,” he offered a second folded packet. “If you need someone to read it to you, a scribe will be supplied for you.”

“I can read,” Jaks informed him.

Habiba nodded. “In that case,” he said, “shall I offer you rest in the guards' quarters, or in the guest quarters?”

“In the guest quarters, until I have read the contract.”

Habiba gave them the blank smile of officials everywhere. “If you choose to accept the contract,” he said, “this will be yours.” He handed Master Jaks a slim gold chain like the one he wore around his own neck. “It marks one as being in his excellency the governor's service, and should be worn at official functions and when representing the household in a formal capacity.” The overseer's smile seemed more genuine when he added, “Her ladyship does ask that you leave it at home if you decide to go pleasure-seeking in the city, so that no scandal may fall upon his lordship. At any other time, you may wear it as you choose for the protection this house may afford you.”

Master Jaks took the gold chain and slipped it into the leather case where his prize-book had rested. “I will keep that in mind,” he said, and bowed his thanks for the papers he now held in his hand.

So the gold chain had not marked Habiba as a slave in this household, as Llesho had believed. He wondered how much difference there truly was between a free man who acted the slave, and the slave he pretended to be, but Habiba did not look like he invited the question.

“As for the boys,” Habiba continued, “her ladyship faces a dilemma and must, for a time, bow her head to the decree of the land. His divinity, the Celestial Emperor, has foreseen the possibility that the unwanted infants of slaves may be cast upon the mercy of the empire for their upkeep. The empire has enough prostitutes and thieves already, and further has no wish to act as nursemaid to the castoffs of its lords and nobles. The law therefore requires that children born or bought into slavery must remain the property of the slaveholder, with all the responsibilities that entail to property ownership, until the youthful slave has developed the skills to sustain his or her own life at no expense to the empire.”

“I don't understand,” Llesho said, though it terrified him to speak up in front of the governor's witch. “What does all of that mean?”

The witch, Habiba, leveled the full power of his gaze on Llesho, and Llesho quaked on the inside but held his ground. He had a destiny, and had better start acting like it or he'd spend the rest of his life hiding like a rabbit.

“It means, Llesho, that in the eyes of the law, you and your friend will remain the private property of her ladyship until you pass your seventeenth summer. During that time you will each choose a trade according to your talents and needs, and at the end of that time, when you have proved to the governor, in accordance with the laws of the empire, that you can provide for your own needs, you will receive these—” he lifted from his desk two packets sealed with blue ribbons. Manumission papers. Freedom. And already signed, or they would not have the governor's seal on them.

“What do you want to do with your life, Llesho?”

Llesho met the witch's gaze. The man would think him a fool if he told him the truth, or he would think him a spy and a traitor. By law, the entrails of a spy were torn out in the public square, their place in the spy's body filled with hot coals, and the flesh sewn together around the coals with whipcord. The coals cauterized the wounds while they burned the hidden flesh; it took a long time to die. Llesho had already seen the witch's idea of mercy—Madon was dead—so he said nothing about his quest.

“I only wish to serve,” he said.

Habiba studied his face for a long moment. He must have seen the color disappear, the life fading behind the stone of Llesho's eyes, because he sighed and broke the contact to glance over to Bixei, including him in the questions to follow.

“Can you read and write?” he asked, and Llesho answered, “Yes,” while Bixei shook his head.

“Sums?”

“A little bit,” Llesho said, and Bixei shook his head again. No one trained slaves destined for the arena in the arts of the nobility, and Llesho little knew how much he had given away about himself with his simple assertions of truth.

But Master Jaks did understand. “An educated slave, a prisoner taken in battle from the same land as Llesho, took an interest in the boy when he worked in the oyster beds. He taught the boy a little of reading and arithmetic.”

Which gave scant credit to Llesho's palace tutors, and shied the truth a bit about Lleck's captivity—not a battle, but an invasion, the few left alive dragged into captivity behind the horses of the conquerors. Llesho kept his mouth shut about that, too. He liked his guts exactly where they were, thank you. Liked his head in its current position, too, though beheading as an enemy of the state was preferable to the end of a spy.

Habiba accepted Master Jaks' explanation with a wry twist of his mouth around the sour taste of doubt.

“Can you fight?” he asked. Bixei, from his litter on the floor, answered “Yes!” while Llesho shrugged his shoulders and said, “A little.”

“Spells? Incantations?”

“NO!” both boys answered in unison. Bixei responded with the usual horror of the unknown, but Llesho could not hide the shuddering dread of the months he had spent chained in Markko's workroom. Suddenly, it was too much for him, and his traitorous legs betrayed him. He sank to the floor in front of the governor's witch, and covered his face to hide his shame. “I don't know anything,” he cried. “Nothing!”

Cringing at the humiliation, he did not at first feel the gentle hand on his shoulder, the man reaching to draw his palms away from his eyes. Habiba, the governor's witch, knelt before him, all the irony and formal distance fled from his eyes, which were warm, and sorrowful, and full of understanding that ran deeper than Llesho understood himself.

“It's all right,” Habiba said. “Mistakes were made with you, but no one will hurt you here.”

When the witch rose to his feet, he seemed more tired, older than he had just moments ago, and when he shook his head, Master Jaks looked stricken and guilty, though why, Llesho didn't know.

“Maybe later, when we gain his trust,” Habiba said. “We'll see what Kaydu can work with him, but he may never realize his potential.”

“Her ladyship will be disappointed,” Master Jaks pointed out, and Habiba sighed again.

“Before we make any decisions, let's see what Kaydu can accomplish. Have you thought enough about her ladyship's offer of employment?”

“I haven't read the contract yet,” Master Jaks replied, with a bitter laugh. He gave Llesho a long, thoughtful look. “But, yes, I agree to her terms. Whatever they are.” He drew out the packet and opened it, took the pen Habiba offered, and quickly sketched the characters of his name.

Habiba smiled, gracious in victory. “I'll have the servants put you in guards' quarters after all. As your first duty, you will work with Kaydu on training.”

Master Jaks nodded. “I suppose I'll have to keep her chain, now.”

“In time, you will find that it weighs lightly at the throat,” Habiba replied. “It is the chains you cannot see that bind you.

“For the boys, silver.” He held out a chain to Bixei, who set it around his neck as if it had been a gift, and not a symbol of his servitude. He did not offer the chain to Llesho's hand, but settled it himself around the neck of the boy. And something in his eyes told Llesho that the last words to Master Jaks had been meant for him as well. Not the chains he could see, but the ones he couldn't. Still, the one he could see was coming off just as soon as he was out of the overseer's office.

“Bixei,” the overseer asked, “does the life of a warrior suit you?” and Bixei answered, “Yes, sir,” with speed and a bit of arrogance considering that he could not, at that moment, stand under his own power. “I am a fighter by trade, sir.”

“Perhaps not yet,” the overseer commented, “But with time. I think you have, indeed, found your calling. Take him to the infirmary,” he said to Master Jaks. “When he is healed of his wounds, we will decide where to put him.”

“Yes, sir.” Master Jaks managed to make his bow ironic. Llesho wished he could do that, and decided that he was in enough trouble as it was.

“As for you.” He studied Llesho's closed face with a serious frown. “I have been led to believe that you will be pleased with your accommodations. You can train with the guards, and then come here for scribal training with the clerks. Once you settle in, we'll see.”

Llesho didn't like the sound of that “We'll see.” Habiba had said nothing about sending him off to decorate his lordship's bed or chaining him with the poisons in an alchemist's workroom, which meant he was already ahead of where he'd been. With an effort, therefore, he subdued his panic, determined to wait and see where this next step would take him. In the meantime, he would learn all he could. But he seriously wondered how this put him any closer to his goal.