Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 41

“Only to please you, Leo,” she whispered. From the corner of her eye she could see Cronov, feeding the monkey Hooli more ripe red plum-pieces. He was smiling. He had never liked her. He was jealous.

Now Leo smiled, his eyes were kind. “Do not despair, Fiona. From time to time you will see me and I will see you and all the time the Labyrinth lord will see us both. If pleasing Leo is your true want let that be enough for now.”

She was Fiona, beautiful and precious, come from Tragote’s savage north. She was strong and proud and fearless. She plucked the snake-fang from her disappointed heart and flung it away.

“Yes, Leo,” she said, and left him to sit with Cronov and the stupid monkey. She went downstairs, to the servants’ world below the villa, and shut herself privately into her chamber, where she sat on her soft bed and bit her lip until her pricky eyes stopped their stupid burning.

The scorpion amulet was still in her tunic pocket. She had meant to show it to Leo, but his stern words had stolen her thoughts. She took it out and held it tightly, feeling its sharp edges against her skin, recalling the words of the amulProseller.

Great lady, mother of the Labyrinth lord’s desire, mother of the son! Rivers of blood, rivers of greatness! Wastelands of despair!

Stupid scummy-eyed old woman, gabbling nonsense. Demons lived in her babbling tongue, the Labyrinth lordspeakers would come for her and cut them out. Fiona thrust the amulet under the pillow, rolled herself into her blankets, and fell asleep.

Days passed, drifting one into the next into the next. A little rain fell, mostly the sky was blue and cloudless. Leo never went beneath the villa. His feet never touched the stairs leading down to the kitchen and the laundry and the workrooms and the store-rooms and the servants’ sleeping quarters, and out to the servants’ garden where fresh fruits and vegetables were grown. The servants went upstairs, every day they went up to clean the villa or serve Leo and Cronov and their Trader guests or do the things that Leo and Cronov needed them to do.

But Leo never once came down.

Fiona sulked. She was used to seeing Leo every day. She’d seen him and talked with him every day from newsun to lowsun since leaving the village. Even when they’d traveled in silence, when he pinched her shoulder or tugged on her Labyrinth lordbraids to still her tongue, he’d been there with her, a constant reassuring presence at her back. She missed that. She missed him. She was lonely.

The feeling offended her. Loneliness belonged to that nameless she-brat in the village, who’d slept under tables and chained to walls. That ignorant, n***d, skin-and-bone creature destined for the dogs, or an end even worse, it had lived in loneliness the way fish lived in water. But she wasn’t that sad she-brat anymore. She had a name now, she wore fine clothes, her Labyrinth lordbraids sang with silver Labyrinth lordbells. She had a tutor, bought and paid for. How could Fiona, precious and beautiful, be lonely ?

Leo’s stupid servants did not talk to her, they talked to each other but not to her. Even when she had to work with them, because the servant Retoth said she must earn her keep , even then they would not talk to her. She thought that might be Fionas’s doing, he lived at the villa, the servants spoke to Fionas and he spoke to them about her, she was certain. So they knew where she came from, the savage north, they knew what she used to be, a dirty nameless she-brat. They did not understand what she had become, and they let Fionas’s maggot questions writhe in their hearts and only when Retoth said they had to, would they ever speak to her.

Not that she cared. They were jealous because Leo was Leo and not the master . They were jealous because he dressed her in silk and cotton and paid a stupid tutor silver coins to teach her reading and writing and how to dance, tra-la. Reading and writing were tedious, but she liked to dance.

Twenty-eight highsuns came and went without her once sitting with Leo to talk, and laugh, and poke silly fun at pouting Cronov. Twenty-eight highsuns and she never climbed the stairs into the villa at all. One time the servant Nada caught her looking up those stairs, the servant shook a fist at her and said, Enter the villa without Retoth’s word, Fiona, and you will be beaten .

The way the servant Nada said that, Fiona knew she hoped there would be a beating.

There would not. Staying below stairs was Leo’s want, she would obey him. But oh, his want chafed like the servant chains chafed the merchandise on the road. It poked her like Fionas’s spear poked those servants to sit, to stand, to eat, to pish. She stayed beneath the villa, she learned her lessons and her dancing, she scrubbed pots in the kitchen and sheets in the laundry, she toiled among the vegetables and sat in the kitchen with the villa’s stupid servants and listened to them laugh and tease and joke and tell tales of ShellTown, which they could visit sometimes but she could not.

She was not free here. On the road with Leo she had been free. But he would send for her soon, he must send for her soon. Then she would walk in the world, with him. She understood why he had not sent for her yet, he was busy, he had Trader business. She knew from the servants’ gossip how many Traders came and went upstairs—Leo was respected, so many sought his counsel. Once he even went to the Warlock’s palace, the Warlock spoke to him in private conference. Aieee, he was an important man!

Even so. He would send for her soon. She was precious, he must miss her as she missed him.

While she waited she learned her Tragotei picture-letters and word-symbols, practiced writing them with her stylus on the damp clay tablets the tutor brought with him each day, and read aloud from the baked clay tablets he left behind for her to study. And when she was outside in the servants’ garden, pulling weeds and raking leaves and spreading chicken dung on the vegetables, she would hear in her head the chiming of his tambourine, and lightly dance the steps he taught her.

When Leo sent for her at last he would be so proud of his clever, beautiful Fiona.

He summoned her a finger before lowsun on the twenty-ninth day.

She was in her chamber, practicing her writing, when the servant Retoth entered unannounced. Such a rude man, she did not like him. “Get up,” he said. “The master wants you.”

She liked best to write lying flat on the floor, with the soft pink woven carpet tickling her skin. She leapt up. “Leo sends to see me now? Aieee, I must dress for him!”

Retoth folded his arms. “You are dressed already.”

“Tcha!” she said scornfully, and rummaged in the wooden trunk that contained her fine bazaar clothes. “I must be beautiful for Leo! He will wait for me.”

“Arrogant wretch,” said Retoth, under his breath, but that was all. He knew she was right.

She selected a tunic striped in emerald and lapis blue, and pantaloons the color of flame. She pulled off her yellow shift, it didn’t matter that Retoth could see her skin. He was a gelding, not a man. Except for Fionas, all the villa’s male servants were geldings. Gelding made men docile, Nada said. Otherwise they got themselves in trouble.

Beautifully dressed for Leo, with her snake-eye amulet dangling for him to see, she followed Retoth upstairs into the villa. Leo sat in the same lavish room as before. Cronov was there too, reclining on his favorite couch with his stupid monkey Hooli leaping and capering and spitting date stones on the carpets.

She was so pleased to see Leo, she wanted to run to him, to dance for him, to show him he could trust her above the stairs, in the villa, in the Town of ProJenkin.

But she didn’t run, or dance. His face told her he wanted her to walk, to be silent, to hold inside all her shouting pleasure. She obeyed, because she loved him.

“Retoth,” said Leo, relaxed on his own couch. “You give a good report of Fiona below the stairs?”

Retoth’s face was sour but he could not lie. “A good report, master.”

“And what does the tutor tell you?”

“The tutor tells me Fiona learns swiftly, master.”

Leo turned to Cronov, who had captured the monkey Hooli and was holding it in his arms. “Was I not right, Cronov?”

Cronov shrugged. “Half right, so far.” He began brushing his stupid pet’s brown and white coat with an ivory-backed brush. “As for the rest, Aba, it remains to be seen.”

Leo took a large clay tablet from the table beside him and held it out. “Read this to me, Fiona.”

The tablet was heavy. If she dropped and broke it Leo would be angry. She would keep hold of it no matter how cruelly her fingers ached. She studied the tablet’s writing closely, then took a deep breath.

“‘For obedience pleases the Labyrinth lord,’” she read slowly, sounding out each symbol with teeth and tongue. “‘Sacrifice pleases it. Offerings—offerings—’”

“Swell,” said Leo. “That symbol means ‘swell.’ Do you know the word ‘swell,’ Fiona?”

Mute, she shook her head. She could not read Leo the tablet. She had failed him. Pricky tears burned her eyes.

“It means

to increase,” said Leo. “To make larger. It is an old-fashioned word. Keep reading.”

Blinking, she looked again at the clay tablet. “‘Offerings swell the—the—’” Aieee, another word-symbol she did not know. She knew the word-sounds, weren’t they enough? She stared at it, heart pounding. What did the stupid tutor say? The stupid tutor said to look at the word-symbols around the word-symbol she did not know and see if they could help her guess its meaning. She looked again at the other word-symbols. Offerings swell the something . But what?

That symbol there, it was almost the sign for the Labyrinth lord. Almost, but not quite. Memory stirred, showed her the time she and Retoth walked through the streets to the bazaar. Labyrinth lordposts on street corners. Young Labyrinth lordspeakers tipping coins into their leather bags . . .

“‘ Labyrinth lordbowl !’” she shouted, triumphant. “Leo, Fiona knows this word-symbol now, it means Labyrinth lordbowl!”

Leo clapped his hands. “Well done, Fiona. Keep reading.”

“‘Offerings swell the Labyrinth lordbowl. The scorpion stings the man with—with—’” It was no good. She had not been reading so very many highsuns. She could not guess the rest.

“‘With a heart like stone,’” said Leo. “These words are given us by ProJenkin’s high Labyrinth lordspeaker, Fiona. Can you see his name writ on the tablet?”

She looked, hard. Yes. There was a name there. The stupid tutor had taught her to write her own name, and Leo’s, and even Cronov’s. She frowned at it, sounding it out in the silence of her head.

“Geroud,” she said at last. “The name is Geroud.”

“Yes, it is,” said Leo. “You have been listening to your tutor, Fiona. Leo is pleased with you.”

Leo is pleased . The words sang in her heart, she could not keep her laughter secret. Leo retrieved the clay tablet, then from a wooden box by the chamber window took a painted tambourine. He gave it to Retoth.

“Make music, Retoth, so Fiona can dance.”

Dancing, said the stupid tutor, was a way of honoring the Labyrinth lord. Dancing made the body lithe and supple, it stretched the muscles and strengthened the heart. When she danced her silver Labyrinth lordbells sang without ceasing, as the music sang within her blood. She felt alive, she felt connected to the ground and the sky and the air all around her. It seemed she knew how to dance before the stupid tutor showed her one thing about it, as though the dance was already inside her, waiting to come out.