Thirst for Adventure

Chapter 39

“Yes, Retoth,” said Leo. “Your masters are home.”

“And we’re starving,” announced Cronov. “Get out of the doorway, you stupid man, and find us some food at once!”

Retoth bowed low, then retreated into the villa. “Of course, of course, master. Baths are being prepared for you now. I have roused the kitchen and your chambers are being scented as we speak.”

Fiona followed Leo and Cronov inside, and Retoth closed the double doors behind them. Stranded, struck dumb, she looked around her, at the shiny blue-green stone floor, at the green walls with images of people and places bound inside golden borders and hung from hooks, at the gold and silver tables covered in carved-stone people and animals, at the bowls and bowls of freshly cut flowers. Inside the villa was light as day, there were so many lamps and candles burning.

“This is Fiona,” said Leo to Retoth. “You and I will talk of her in due course. For now she goes below, but not with the others.”

“Yes, master,” said Retoth, smiling as though he knew a secret. He clapped his hands, and moments later a short woman servant with greying Labyrinth lordbraids and lines on her face appeared. Her robes were wool, and dyed a soft yellow. “Nada! Take this Fiona below the stairs. See to her comfort and settle her in the single chamber.”

“Leo?” said Fiona, uncertain.

“Go,” said Leo. “Keep your counsel and obey Retoth and this servant Nada, or you will displease me.”

Displease Leo? She would rather throw herself from the top of Jenkin’s Pinnacle. The servant Nada turned and walked away. Following, Fiona was proud her eyes did not waste water.

The servant Nada led her along a wide lamplit passageway to the back of the villa, then down a long steep flight of twisting stairs to more lamplit passageways and many rooms. Fiona stared, astonished. Rooms below the ground? She had never heard of such a thing. She would ask Leo what that meant when she saw him at newsun; there was no point asking the woman Nada. She was a servant. What would she know?

The servant Nada took her to a bath chamber, where the water flowed from bronze fish-heads stuck on the wall. Amazing! While the bath filled, the servant Nada undid Fiona’s Labyrinth lordbraids. Then she pointed to a cupboard against the wall. “There is soap and a sponge. I will fetch you a clean robe.”

Not afraid this time, Fiona stripped off her filthy clothes and slid into the bath. She washed her body, she washed her hair, all crinkly from the Labyrinth lordbraids. The soap foam stung her eyes but she didn’t care. She was clean, she was clean, she would never be dirty again. She lived in Leo’s villa. It was beautiful, and so was she.

The servant Nada returned with towels and a brush and a dark blue robe. Fiona climbed out of the bath, water streaming down her lovely clean skin. As the servant Nada waited, she dried herself, pulled on the robe, then dragged the brush through her hair over and over until it was smooth and barely damp.

The servant Nada led her to a lamplit kitchen, where she sat at a table with four servants who stared at her and would have spoken, but the servant Nada frowned them to silence. Not caring she was stared at, Fiona ate hot meat and drank cool sadsa. When her belly was filled to bursting she followed the servant Nada out of the kitchen, past other rooms and two more staring servants until they reached a small chamber with a bed in it, but no windows.

“Sleep,” said the servant Nada, holding the door wide so light from the

passageway beyond spilled inside. “I will fetch you one finger after newsun. There is a pishpot under the bed, if you need it.”

As the chamber door closed, Fiona climbed under the blankets. Her head touched the soft pillows, her body sighed, and within a heartbeat she was sucked from the waking world and into sleep, where for once the dream dogs did not find her.

Fiona woke before the servant Nada came for her. Someone had put a lit candle beside the bed. By its small light she used the pishpot and soon after that the servant woman arrived, with a tunic, leggings and shoes for her to wear. Fiona dressed, and walked with her to the kitchen where the servant Retoth was waiting.

“Where is Leo?” she asked him. “Leo and Fiona eat breakfast together.”

The eight servants eating at the kitchen table made little noises of surprise and stared at her with stupid faces. Nada stared, and the big kitchen servant in charge of cooking. He stopped stirring a pot hanging from a hook above the firecoals, wiped his arm across his face and looked at her as though she was demonstruck. It seemed the whole room held its breath.

The servant Retoth smiled. “Poor child. The master has told me you come from the savage north. Forget that place now. Forget the caravan upon the road. This is ProJenkin, we are civilized here. We are civilized in this house, where the master’s lightest breath is law. It is his want that you attend me. Do I go to him now and say you will not?”

An arrogant man, this servant Retoth. She would speak to Leo of him when next they sat together. Until then, she could play his stupid game. She shook her head. “No, Retoth. Fiona attends you.”

He smiled again, his eyes were watchful. “Good. Eat now, then Nada will show you the places in this house where you might put your feet. Put your feet in these places only, not in the places she does not show you. Then you will be properly Labyrinth lordbraided. Afterwards I will come for you, the master has tasked me with tasks for you.”

Fiona looked at him. “All of this is Leo’s want?”

“Every word I speak reflects the master’s want,” said Retoth. “Of that you can be certain.”

“I am certain of Leo,” she told Retoth.

More shocked noises from the watching servants. She looked at them sideways, feeling contempt. Goat people. Bleating like goats, huddling like goats.

They would make me small, the servants in this house. I am not small. I wear no servant-braid. I named myself. I call him Leo, he is not my master. Leo is my friend.

Retoth departed, she ate hot cornmush, she frightened the stupid servants with her eyes. The servant Nada took her back to her chamber, four more women servants joined them. They brought a tall stool, six burning lamps, combs, brushes, and a wooden box full of beads and amulets and tiny silver Labyrinth lordbells. Fiona sat on the stool and the servant women stood round her, Labyrinth lordbraiding her hair.

When they were finished it was after highsun. She slid off the tall stool and shook her head. The Labyrinth lordbraids reached just past her shoulder blades, the beads and amulets rattled and clattered, the tiny silver Labyrinth lordbells sang; she would make a pretty noise wherever she walked, people would hear her before they saw her, they would say to each other, Who is this girl-child with singing silver Labyrinth lordbells in her Labyrinth lordbraided hair?

She would tell them: I am Fiona, precious and beautiful .

After the highsun meal, Retoth said to her, “Come.”

He did not own her, she was not his dog. She stayed at the table. “Where do we go?”

“To the Merchants district. To the bazaar.”

“What do we buy there?”

“You will see. Come .”

It was Leo’s want she play Retoth’s stupid game, so she followed him up the stairs and along the passageways towards the villa’s front doors. Within one closed room she heard sharp raised voices. She felt her heart leap.

“That is Leo,” she said, and stopped. “I will see him.”

Retoth slowed, turning. “Not before he sends for you. The master meets important men this day. He has no time for bratty children. Come.”

She folded her arms. “I am not a bratty child. I am Fiona.”

He halted, and pointed his finger. “I am chief servant of this house! I can beat you if you do not obey.”

She speared him with a look. “No, Retoth. You cannot touch me.”

Retoth’s hands became fists. Ugly feelings struggled in his eyes. She knew he wanted to unfold his fingers and slap her beautiful face but he did not dare. He said he could beat her, she knew he could not. If Cronov could not beat her, or make Leo beat her, no servant born in the world could raise a hand to her.

“Tcha!” said Retoth, and stalked away. “You waste my time. You will see Leo when we return. He has said so.”

Fiona smiled, and followed him.

Retoth did not speak to her on the long walk from Leo’s villa to the Merchants district. She didn’t care. Being in the fresh air was better than sitting below the villa’s stairs. She could see the Town in sunshine now. She would have so much to tell Leo when she saw him again.

There was a special place for people to walk, so the many servant-carried litters in the streets were not slowed down. Some of them traveled quite swiftly, their muscular servants running in a flat-footed shuffle. The litters were beautiful, carved from exotic polished wood inlaid with bronze. Some were curtained in heavy silks, others were open so the world might admire the masters and mistresses they bore, wearing rich fabrics and jeweled amulets, bright as songbirds in rainbow colors.

At the end of some streets stood a Labyrinth lordpost with a Labyrinth lordbowl at its base. She saw a Labyrinth lordspeaker dressed in brown linen and snakeskin empty the offerings from one of the Labyrinth lordbowls into a leather satchel slung over his shoulder. He was very young, his brow bound with the tiniest scorpion. Retoth bowed his head as they passed him. So did she, after Retoth poked her with his elbow.

There were images of the hooded Labyrinth lordsnake wherever she looked, not just on the Labyrinth lordposts at the end of the streets. It was painted on the walls enclosing some of the houses, or sat as a bronze statue on top. It was picked out in green and blue and red stones where they walked, and in the middle of the road.

The Labyrinth lordsnake of Shellwas everywhere.

Twisting her neck, she looked up at Jenkin’s Pinnacle, rising from the center of the Town. In the bright sunshine she could see a wide road winding round and round, leading past the barracks and the palace to the Labyrinth lordhouse at its peak. If she squinted she could see many moving figures on that road, traveling up, traveling down. The scorpion on top of the Labyrinth lordhouse’s Labyrinth lordpost blazed black and crimson in the light. The Labyrinth lord’s great eye, watching them all.

The roads and walkways grew steadily busier the closer she and Retoth got to the Merchants district. Now there were open servant-drawn carriages, hung with bells and amulets, seating one or two people and rolling swiftly on polished wooden wheels. The servants wore a harness over their shoulders, their Labyrinth lordbraids bounced and rattled as they ran with the carriages jingling behind them.

Fiona stared. One day she would ride in a carriage like that. Proudly, with Leo, so all Shellwould know she was precious. She thought of the man in that savage north village, and was sorry he would never know that sending her away with the Traders was the only good thing he had ever done.

She and Retoth reached the bazaar at last, an enormous covered place crammed end to end and side to side with stalls and booths and foodsellers with trays on leather straps around their shoulders, hawking sweet jellies and spiced nuts and pastries dripping with honey. The air was almost too thick to breathe, so many smells, sweet and sour and sharp and soft. They filled her lungs and made her gasp. There were more people beneath this one high roof, shouting and laughing and singing and arguing, than lived in that village in the north.