“That is fortunate.” There was no seduction in the woman’s voice now.
“Majesty… I was thoughtless.”
“Very! You know his value.” She was furious, and that was encouraging for me.
I peered narrowly through eyelashes. A huge black shape was kneeling at my side, his fingers on the pulse in my neck. It had to be Ing-aa.
“Majesty! Forgive me!” He sounded heartbroken or…
“Forgive you? Why?”
“My Queen…” No, not heartbroken. I had heard that tone in the ants’ nest. The fingers on my throat trembled.
“I want no fools in my service.” Her voice cut like a butcher’s knife. “Go to the pens and make yourself useful there.”
“Oh, Great One… I beg you…” The giant was whining. A drop of water fell on my chest.
The spinster spoke again, less harshly. “Your strength will serve me well, and if you make amends, then later we shall see…”
Ing-aa moaned and rose. I closed my eyes. Feet squelched in the mud and were gone.
Ayasseshas’s voice again: “Um-oao, Ah-uhu? Bear him gently. Put him in the shade. I shall see to him shortly, when I have thanked all these brave fellows.”
Hands lifted me and rushed me away. I heard gravel, then bare feet on boards, as I felt myself carried up steps. Continuing to feign unconsciousness, I was gently laid down. The footsteps departed.
I seemed to be alone, but I lay still, pondering what I had learned. I had value. That was very hopeful. But what were the “pens” that could so terrify a colossus like Ing-aa? Pens implied livestock, and Shisisannis had mentioned pasture. I could still hear a bleating in the distance, but the only punishment that came to mind was mucking out stalls, and a trivial indignity like that would hardly provoke such obvious dread.
I had been laid upon a rug, I thought, and a cautious glance showed a roof of beams and woven leaves far above. Quick looks to each side… I was lying on a sort of porch, stretched out on a thick woolen rug laid over what must be a plank floor. I raised my head and confirmed my assumptions.
There was no one watching. I sat up and felt only a passing dizziness. I heaved myself back a few feet to lean against a wall, then rubbed the scrapes I had acquired in my fall. There was a door at my side, so my guess of porch had been correct. In the center, two chairs and a table sat on another richly patterned rug. The only real furniture I had ever seen had belonged to the ants, and this was much finer than theirs, gleaming bright. I knew the style of the rugs. They had come from the grasslands, tough woollie yarn in bright colors, though the specific designs were none that my mother and aunts had ever used. My trader experience wondered how much they had cost here, so far from their birthplace.
Beyond the shadowed veranda the sun blazed on the apron of white gravel. At the far edge of this stood Shisisannis and his little band, black men and dark brown, still in their line of inspection. Only Ing-aa had gone. The spinster was working her way along the line, welcoming each man in his turn. At her back stood two more of the tall swampmen bearing swords, a personal bodyguard. As I watched, Ayasseshas rose on tiptoe again to embrace one of her champions. How did one woman bewitch so many men?
And in the shadows of the huts beyond the snake totem pole, I saw again those strange hooded and gowned figures—solitary, motionless, and apparently watching. Who were they, and why so idle?
“What happened to your knees?”
I twisted around in alarm. One of the brown-shrouded people was standing in a dark corner, beside the door. I had overlooked him—or possibly her, although the voice had sounded more male than female. There was no way to tell who or what was inside that garment, and I could see nothing but darkness within the peephole of the hood.
“How do you know about my knees?” I asked warily.
Just when I had decided that he would not reply, he uttered a curious little gasping sigh and said, “The lady told me she was buying a wetlander, but his knees were damaged.”
“How many wetlanders are there here?”
“Just me. And now you.”
My heart sank at the news. I had hoped for more company. But conversely this stranger must be very glad to have me join him.
“I am Quetti.” His voice was muffled by the hood, but there was also an odd quality to it that I could not place.
“Knobil.”
“That is not a wetlander name.”
“My father was a wetlander, I think. My mother was of the herdfolk.”
“That explains…” He paused again, this time for longer. Again he sighed. “That explains your size.”
“What about my size?”
“You are too big for a wetlander. We are slighter.”
I thought of Orange-brown-white, the ants’ captive and the only wetlander I had ever met. He had been a slim small man. “My mother was little, though.”
“Herdwomen bear large sons.” The curious quality in my companion’s voice was a jumpiness, a quaver. “You’re as big as Shisisannis!” He sounded annoyed at that.
I had believed myself a dwarf in my youth, but now I knew I was as tall as the men of most races. Swimming, and then slavery, had given me fair bulk, so what he said was perhaps true, but why did it matter?
“Who are those people, the ones dressed like us?”
“Snakemen. Swampmen. A couple of treefolk.”
“But why are they being kept covered?”
“It is better to be out of doors than shut up in the pens.”
“She just sent Ing-aa to the pens. What—”
“I saw. But he will be of little use at pasture. The lady has told me often: Small as I am, to her I am worth fifty like Ing-aa.”
“And me also?” I asked cautiously.
“More, I suppose,” he agreed grumpily, his tone showing a trace of the jealousy I had expected in Shisisannis and Ing-aa. “There is more of you.”
My questions were not bringing me much wisdom. How much time did I have to cross-examine this cryptic Quetti? Could I trust whatever he might tell me? I glanced out at the spinster. She was near the end of the row, embracing one of the snakemen. “How does she do that?” I asked. “Can she really reward so many men with her favors?”
Quetti chuckled dryly under his hood. “She rewards them mostly with promises. And pretty ribbons. Shisisannis, sometimes…” Again a long pause, another sigh. “The rest of us rarely get more than words. Even me! Um-oao and Ah-uhu do better, I think.”
So Ayasseshas was largely a tease? That made the men’s ensorcellment even more incomprehensible. Or did it? “I don’t understand!”
“You will.”
“And no one has ever told me what a spinster wants with wetlanders.”
He grunted. “Do you know why they are called spinsters?”
“Not even that.”
“Then you—” He choked. “Wait!” I heard a foot tapping, and he seemed to shrink slightly. He was breathing hard.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as the silence lengthened. “Are you ill?”
He shook his head but did not speak, and he was curiously hunched. I rolled over on my belly and levered myself upright. I took a couple of rolling steps toward him, but he held up a hand, draped in its too-long sleeve. He made his curious heavy breathing noise again, and relaxed.
“You’re in pain!” I said.
“Of course.” He seemed proud that I had not realized sooner.
I shook my hands free from my sleeves, reached out to unfasten his hood and push it back so I could see what he looked like. He did not resist, but he stared up at me resentfully.
He was barely more than a boy, his mustache downy, his beard too faint to hide the dimple in his chin. A mop of golden waves framed a thin, rather sulky face. His eyes were a pale, pale blue, like the far end of the sky.