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Swindapa listened to the Silent Song, the song that the stars danced to with their mother the Moon. Sometimes it was hard to hear it, but then you must try less, not more, and it came.
Voices murmured outside the canvas cubicle; Raupasha recognized King Kashtiliash's. Her hearing was still very sharp.
"You did not know, my brother?" he said in that bull rumble. Then Ke
"Among the Mita
Words I would much have given much to hear, Raupasha thought. I have given much for them. I have given all I have, save my life-and that would be a little thing beside the cost. Then: No. I did what honor required. I must not count the cost. Ah, but that is hard!
Hands touched her face, and she flinched an instant before steeling herself.
"The burn will heal faster with a light gauze covering," Justin Clemens said gently, putting down the mirror he had been holding for his patient.
Raupasha daughter of Shuttarna let her head fall back on the pillow; it still felt odd, shorn. So is the fleece of all my hopes shorn and lost, she thought. The words did not hurt much, no more than the dull background ache of her face and hand and side.
Clemens's hands were as gentle as his voice as he administered the ointment and laid the light covering on the left side of her face. The message of the mirror was burned into her, the thickened red scar tissue, the empty, sightless white eye.
"Will the healing… make the skin better?"
"Somewhat," Clemens said.
She turned her head-knowing she would have to learn to do that to see, with only her right eye-and watched his face. It held a compassion that hurt like fire, but also honesty.
"The scars will become less red, but the tissue will remain thick and rigid over about a third of your face."
Feather-light, his finger traced a line from one cheekbone across her eye to the forehead.
"Nor will the hair grow back here. I am very sorry, Princess, but all I can do is give you an ointment that will keep the damaged skin supple."
"Thank you," she said; he touched her shoulder once as he gathered his instruments.
"This will help you sleep," he said, and she felt the sting of an injection in her arm. A curtain seemed to fall between her and the pain, as if it was still happening but to someone else.
"My thanks again," she murmured, as he led on his rounds.
There are others who need his care more than I. Those with no eyes at all, or faces; those lacking limbs; those with worse woundings who yet could not die-it was not altogether a blessing, the healing art of the Island folk. It could save you for a life that was worse than death.
But at least I may weep alone. There was another murmur of voices outside, and Clemens saying something in a grudging tone.
Then the canvas door was pushed aside again, and she must be brave again. Then she saw who it was, and her hand made a fending gesture.
"No-" she said.
Ke
Well, he is a warrior. He has seen worse. But not on the face of a woman who-I hoped-he looked upon with the gaze of desire.
"Hello, Lord Ke
"Is the pain very bad?" he said, a trace of awkwardness in his voice. This too must be endured…
"No," she said.
"You-" he cleared his throat. "You did very well. You may have saved us all."
And I won his gratitude, when it is useless, she thought. Then, thrusting the bitterness away: I would have given my life for his, she thought. What I had to give, I gave. Let it be enough. Let him remember me… perhaps name a daughter for me. It is enough.
"Thank you," she said. "My father-and my foster father-would not be ashamed of me, I hope."
"Any man would be proud of such a daughter," he said. Then he took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for a difficult task: "And… any man would be proud of such a woman."
Her one gray eye sought his. The medicine against pain is giving me dreams, as they warned me it might.
"My lord?" she whispered. Then with a flash of anger her hand rose and lifted the gauze. "You saw me when I was fair-saw all of me, at the place of hot springs. Now look at me! I am a thing of horror-and princess no more."
"I have seen your face," he said. He leaned closer. "At least it isn't the face of a coward, like mine." She was struck wordless, and saw him force himself to go on. "Who wouldn't speak, because he was afraid… of politics, complications, of himself."
"Oh," she said. "This is a matter of honor."
"No, it's a matter of belated good sense," he said harshly, and squeezed her hand. "I faced the prospect of a life without you in it, Raupasha, and as for your kingdom, that was never more than a hindrance to me."
Now she did weep, as he bent forward to softly touch his lips to hers. "There it is, for what it's worth. If you spit in my face, I'll understand." A hint of his boyish grin. "Although I'd be very disappointed."
"Never," she said, her free hand going up to touch her lips and then his. The IV rattled as she moved. "Never in all the world."
"We're meeting him here!" Arnstein said incredulously.
"Yes," Odikweos replied, with that slight secret smile of his.
Walkeropolis had recovered with surprising speed from the Emancipator's raid; the firefighting service seemed to be efficient, and they were already in the middle of so many construction projects that repairing damage just meant slowing the schedule on new buildings. He got a few glares as they rode downtown in Odikweos's chariot, and winced a bit at one long row of bodies laid out by the sidewalk to wait the corpse-wagon. Some were very small…
The slave market where they stopped was bustling, a huge complex of linked two-story buildings and courtyards, with doors and corridors color-coded for convenience. Ian worked his shoulders against the prickling feeling that went over them as they entered through polished oak doors and merchants bustled over to greet them.
"No, we will look ourselves. Do not trouble me more," Odikweos said, with an imperious gesture.
This place gives me the creeps, Ian thought.
Not least because it all seemed so ordinary. Sales were made in bulk and coffles marched off; men spat on their palms and slapped them together to mark a deal, as they might have for mules or sheep. Others looked at teeth or felt muscles, and some of the buyers had collars on their own necks, household stewards or workshop managers. Posters advertised skilled labor; stonemasons, bricklayers, seamstresses. Others offered to train raw slaves, and listed fees. There wasn't even much of a smell; Walker's hygiene regulations were in full force; otherwise, this crowded series of iron-barred pens would be a natural breeding ground for half a dozen different diseases. Fear and hopeless misery still sweated out of the dry whitewashed walls in a miasmic cloud he could taste.
It isn't as if Walker invented slavery here, he told himself.
That was true-every Achaean who could afford it had owned at least one to help around farm and house. In an economy without machinery, money, or a market for paid labor, it was the only alternative to doing everything yourself. And the palaces of the wa