Treason (5 page)

I smiled. “I’m not sure what’s proper diplomatic procedure. Let us say I’m a woman from a land where women are not used to being attacked on the road—but where they’re also not used to such kind concern from a stranger.”

He lowered his eyes in humility. “As the Book says, ‘To the poor give comfort, and cleansing, and care better than to the rich.’ I but do my duty, little woman.”

“But I’m not poor,” I said. He stood up abruptly. I hastened to reassure him. “At home we have a house with two rooms.”

He smiled patronizingly. “Ay, a woman of such a land as yours might well call that comfort.” When he left I was relieved that there was a bar on the door.

In the morning I had a pauper’s portion at breakfast—larger than anyone else in the family. The innkeeper, his wife, and his two sons, both much younger than I, urged me not to travel alone. “Take one of my lads with you. I wouldn’t have you losing your way.”

“It won’t be hard, from here, to find the capital?”

The innkeeper glowered. “Do you mock us?”

I shrugged, trying to look innocent. “How could such a question be a mockery?”

The woman placated her husband. “She’s a stranger, and plainly untaught in the Path.”

“We here don’t go to the capital,” a boy helpfully informed me. “That’s lost to God, it is, and we stay away from such gaudy doings.”

“Then so shall I,” I said.

“Besides,” said the father, huffily, “the capital is sure to be full of inkers.”

I didn’t know the word. I asked him.

“The black sons of Andy Apwit,” he answered. “From Inkumai.”

Must mean Nkumai. Victory for the blacks, then. Ah well.

I left after breakfast, my clothing mended very neatly by the innkeeper’s wife. The older of the two boys accompanied me. His name was No-fear. For the first mile or so I queried him about his religion. I’d read about that sort of thing, but had never met anyone who actually believed it, aside from burial rituals and marriage ceremonies. I was surprised at the things his parents had taught him were true—yet he seemed disposed to be obedient, and I thought perhaps there was a place for such things among the servile classes.

At last we came to a fork in the road, with a sign.

“Well,” I said, “here I send you back to your father.”

“You won’t go to the capital, will you?” he asked fearfully.

“Of course not,” I lied. Then I took a gold ring from my sack. “Did you think your father’s kindness would go unrewarded?” I put the ring on his finger. His eyes widened. It was enough, then, for payment.

“But weren’t you poor?” he asked.

“When I came I was,” I said, trying to sound very mystical. “But after the gifts your family gave me, I am very rich indeed. Tell no man of this, and command your father likewise.”

The boy’s eyes widened even more. Then he whirled and ran back down the road. I had been able to put his stories to good use; and now I had added to the lore of angels who appeared to be poor men and women at first sight, but who gathered glory to bless or punish according as they had been treated. From man to woman to angel. Next transformation, please?

“Money first,” said the man at the counter.

I flashed a platinum ring at him and suddenly his eyes narrowed.

“Stole it, I’ll swear!”

“Then you’ll commit perjury,” I said archly. “I was set upon by rapists on one of your fine highways, and I who have come as an emissary. My guards slew them, but were slain in the process. I must continue in my mission, and I must be dressed as befits a woman of rank.”

He backed off. “Pardon, lady.” He bowed. “However I may assist.” I did not laugh. And when I left the store I was dressed in the gaudy, tight, revealing style of clothing that had surprised me when I saw it on women on the way into the town.

“Emissary from where?” he asked as I left. “And to whom?”

“From Bird,” I said, “and to whoever is in authority here.”

“Then find the nearest inker. Because no white person has rank here these days, lady, and all the inkers from Inkumai thinks they rules.”

My white-blond hair attracted a few glances on the street, but I went on toward the stables, trying to ignore the men who watched me by using the haughty manner of the high-class whores of Mueller as they ignored the men too poor to afford their services.

That was the full circle of my transformation. Man, monster, woman, angel, and now prostitute. I laughed. I would be surprised at nothing now.

I parted with a platinum ring and got no change, but the carriage the stableman was hitching up belonged to me. The capital of Allison was still a good many kilometers on from this town, and I had to arrive in style.

A thundering of wooden horseshoes on the stone road. I opened the door to the stable and stepped outside. A dozen horses at a walk clopped along the road, raising a deafening din. But I had no eyes for the horses. Instead I watched the riders.

They were as tall as I was—taller, in fact, two meters if anything. And far blacker than any Cramers I had seen. They had narrow noses, not like the flat wide ones of the blacks I had known before. And every one of them carried an iron sword and an iron-studded shield.

Even in Mueller we didn’t equip our common soldiers with iron until it was time for battle. How much metal did the Nkumai have?

The stableman spat.

“Inkers,” he said, behind me.

But I ignored him and stepped out into the street, raising an arm in salute. The Nkumai soldiers saw me.

Fifteen minutes later I was stripped to the waist and tied to a post in the middle of town. I decided that being a woman was not all it was cracked up to be. A fire was blazing nearby, and an iron brand was already glowing red.

“Skinny, this one,” said one of the soldiers. He was nursing his elbow. I could have shattered the bone so he’d never have the use of his arm again. I could have put a hand into his throat so he dropped to the ground dead without even time to see his life pass before him. But that would have compromised my disguise. Now, standing bare-breasted awaiting the torture, it occurred to me that my disguise wouldn’t last long if my wounds started to heal before their eyes.

“Be quiet,” the captain of the troop said in a mellifluous, educated voice. “You knew you were supposed to register three weeks ago. This won’t hurt.”

I glared at him. “Let me go from this post or you’ll pay with your life,” I said. It was hard work to keep my voice high and feminine, and to sound like my threat was just bluster when in point of fact I was certain I could kill him in three seconds if I could get my hands loose—thirty if I stayed tied.

“I’m an emissary,” I said, for the dozenth time since they took me, “from Bird—”

“So you’ve said,” he answered mildly, and he beckoned to the soldier who was heating the brand. They were too calm. They meant this to be a show to last for some time. My only hope was to provoke them to anger, so they’d damage me too much, too quickly. Perhaps then the punishment would be swift, and they’d carry away what they thought was my dead body.

I didn’t have to pretend to be enraged, of course. In Mueller we only branded sheep and cattle. Even our slaves remained unmarked. So when the grinning Nkumai brought the red-hot brand near my stomach, I howled in fury—hoping my voice sounded somewhat womanly—and kicked him in the groin hard enough to castrate a bull. He screamed. I noticed briefly that the kick had torn my skirt. Then the captain hit me in the head with the flat of his sword, and I was out.

I woke soon after in a dark room with no windows—just a small hole in the roof for light and a heavy wooden door. My head ached only a little, and I was afraid that I had been unconscious so long my quick healing would have given away the truth. But no, it had only been a few minutes. My body was still only half healed from the beating they must have given me after I was out.

They were disciplined troops. Even angry, they hadn’t tried to rape me—I was still dressed as I had been, stripped to the waist but otherwise still covered. I quickly pulled the torn blouse back into place, still gaudy but no longer dazzling. It was so tight there was no hope of refastening it or even doubling it over, but all my wounds were on my back, and the tear was down the front, so it did the job well enough, serving my need, not of modesty, but of concealment of my wounds.

Someone knocked timidly. “Here to treat your wounds, ma’am,” said a soft girl’s voice.

“Go away! Don’t touch me!” I tried to sound adamant, but probably ended up merely hysterical. Whether the would-be nurse was of Nkumai or Allison made no difference. When she found wounds that looked days instead of minutes old, all bets would be off. Even in the unlikely event that they had heard no rumors of Muellers’ regenerating powers, they’d know
something
strange was up. There’d be a complete examination, and even if I castrated myself first, they’d realize my anatomy was at least somewhat confused.

The girl spoke once more, and again I ordered her away, telling her this time that a woman of Bird allowed no foreign man or woman to touch her blood. Again, I was improvising some sort of cultural folderol to meet my present need, but I had studied folkways and rituals in school and pursued it somewhat more than the curriculum required—enough to get a sense, perhaps, of what kinds of things were sacred or tabu in other places. Women’s blood—primarily menstrual, but extending to all female blood—was more likely to be invested with holiness or dread than even the bodies of the dead.

Whether it was a local tabu about bleeding women or the hysteria in my voice, the girl went away, and again I waited in the stifling room. The tickling of my back told me that my wounds were completely healed now, scabbed or scarred. I began searching for ways to escape without using the door, trying to remember the layout of the village outside the room so I could plot the quickest possible dash for freedom.

The door creaked open on its heavy wooden hinges, and a black man in a white robe came in. He carried no unguent, so apparently I had carried that point. He held out to me another robe, a light blue one.

“Please,” he said, “come out.”

I took the robe. He turned away and closed the door.

I stripped away the trashy-looking Allison clothes I had been wearing, drew the robe on over my freshly healed back and shoulders, and bound it in front of me. I felt more confident now, less vulnerable. I opened the door and stepped outside, blinking in the light. The man in the white robe stood two paces back from the door.

“I demand that I be set free,” I said.

“Of course,” he answered, “and I hope that you will continue on your journey to Nkumai.”

I made no effort to conceal my disbelief in the sincerity of his invitation.

“I was afraid you’d feel that way,” he said, “but I beg you to forgive our ignorant soldiers. We pride ourselves on our learning in Nkumai, but we know very little about nations beyond our borders. The soldiers know far less, of course, than
we
do.”

“We?”

“I am a teacher,” he said. “And I have been sent to beg your forgiveness and ask you to continue on your way to our capital. When the captain applied for permission to put you to death for maiming one of our soldiers, he told us that you claimed to be an emissary from Bird. To him the idea of a woman on an embassy is absurd. He is from lower down the tree, where a woman’s true potential is not always recognized. But I know that Bird is governed by women, very wisely I am told, and I realized at once that your story must be true.”

He smiled and spread his hands. “I cannot hope to undo what our officer has, in ignorance, done. He has, of course, been stripped of rank, and the hands that actually beat you have been cut off.”

I nodded. That was probably the least they could do and still appear to be serious about punishment. But I also knew that I had done some damage, too. “The man I kicked,” I said. “I believe he has been punished enough.”

He raised an eyebrow. “He didn’t think so,” he said. “You must understand—to be castrated by a single kick from a bound woman—he couldn’t bear to live with that story in his name.”

Again I nodded as if I understood completely.

“And now,” he said, “please let me escort you to Nkumai, where perhaps your embassy can still be offered.”

“I wonder,” I said, “if our desire to procure alliance with Nkumai was wise after all. We had heard of you as civilized people.”

He looked pained for a moment, but then smiled helplessly. “Not so,” he answered. “We are not yet civilized. But we are at least trying, which is more than can be said of many peoples here in the East. In the West, I am sure, things are different.”

At this point I thought I still could back away, slip out of Allison with no further involvement with Nkumai, and from there disappear from Treason, at least as far as Mueller was concerned. But for good or ill I was still determined to complete my mission and find out what they were selling to their Ambassador that gave them iron in greater quantities than our bodies bought for Mueller. So I said words that would reopen the possibility of negotiation. “There are barbarians in all quarters of the world, and perhaps in troubled times one must befriend those who wish to be civilized in order to protect oneself from those who disdain the refinement of law or courtesy.”

“Then indeed it will be good for you to converse with those in power in Nkumai,” he said. I nodded benignly, then accepted his invitation. Yet as we got in his carriage and started eastward toward Nkumai, I had the sickening feeling that I was caught in a whirlpool, already so far in that I would be sucked down; I couldn’t get out now.

We changed horses daily, and made good speed, though still we stopped for sleep more than a dozen times along the way. My guide pointed out botanical and zoological curiosities, and told some stories and legends that made little sense to me at the time, though later became clearer as I learned more of the ways of the Nkumai. He also told stories of battle, and I noticed that each story seemed to end with a homily about how impossible it was ever to defeat the Nkumai in battle.

He was careful, though, not to offend me. I was always given a private room in the inns of Allison, and though guards attended outside my door, they made no motion to restrain or even follow me when I left my private quarters and ventured into the common room, or even outside for a walk. They were clearly there to protect, not confine me.