Wenyarum Taleza’s oiled skin had an ashy look and his eyes were uneasy. “Vema vema, Amrap. Forgive me. A moment.” He hastened out, wiping at the sweat that popped on his brow as he stepped over the severed head of his wife’s personal Kassian. He’d seen too much. He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat at the memory of Famtoche kicking the door open and slashing with his saber at the maids who were trying to protect Penhari, then ordering Wenyarum to throw the
– bodies in a pile. He could only hope his usefulness still outweighed any flash of prudence that might strike his unpredictable brother-by-law.
He seldom came into his wife’s suite, so it took him a while to find the water room, long enough to wet him down with nervous sweat. Hastily he soaked a hand towel, squeezed it out, and went rushing back.
When he reached the sitting room, Famtoche was standing over his sister, pissing on her. Face twisted in a grimace of fear, Wenyarum drew back and stood swaying and holding his breath until the sound stopped; then he went hurrying in, the towel folded on his hands.
“Hah!” Famtoche strolled from the room, cleaning his hands, dabbing at the spots of blood on his tunic. He looked over his shoulder at Wenyarum following two steps behind. “Clean your own House, he says to me. Me! Jegging Kasso. True, though. Too long I let family feeling sway me. Well, it’s done.” He paused before the door into the public rooms. “One more thing, General. I’ve let the boy please himself. He’s got spirit. Didn’t want it broken. That’s over.” He tossed the towel on the floor. “You go down to Pili and bring him back. Don’t care how you do it, get him here. We’ll soon have that Prophet nonsense knocked out of him.” He stepped aside and scowled at Wenyarum Taleza who hurried past him and opened the door for him. “nn days,” he said. “Want him at the Falmatarr no lateen that.” He walked briskly into the entrance hall, his escort coming to practiced alert the instant the moment they saw him.
› › ‹ ‹
Flies buzzed about the room. One crawled up Penhari’s arm, tickling unendurably. She twitched, came painfully awake. The fly kneaded at her arm with its thready legs, then crouched by one of the flagellum cuts, thrust its drinking tube into the crusted flesh. “Hash!” She shook her arm violently, arched her back and thrust herself up from the floor, rested on her hands and knees as pain lanced through her. Groaning and gasping, she staggered to her feet and groped blindly for the nearest wall.
She nearly fell over the bodies of her maids, grabbed hastily for the back of a chair as her brain whited out and her stomach convulsed.
Later-might have been a moment or half an hour-she stumbled on again, forcing herself to move though she wanted to lie down like the maids and die.
In the water room she pulled the bronze chain and stood with her bloody back pressed against the cool tiles while the shell bath on the dais at the far end filled with steaming water, it hurt, but it was a duller ache than when she tried to move.
The bath overflowed; she didn’t know it until she came from a haze and saw water running across her feet. She reached, cried out as cuts tore open, but completed the movement and pulled the chain Ft lain to shut off the flow.
She went up the stairs on hands and knees and rolled into the bath.
The slave waiting for her in her bedroom was a stocky fair woman with fine brown hair and small brown splotches sprayed across her square cheekbones and hooked nose.
Penhari eased herself down on the stool by her dressing table. “What’s your name?” She inspected the woman again, sighed. “Where do you usually work?”
“Desantro, heshal.” Her shoulders were rounded, her worn hands trembling. “In the garden, heshal.”
“Diyo.” Penhari closed her eyes. “Who told you to wait here?”
“The Chambermassal, heshal. He wouldn’t let Yeadah come… or… any of the chambermaids.” Her thin mouth compressed a moment and there was a dull resentment in her eyes she wouldn’t have dared show before this. “He said… he made me come.”
“I see.” Penhari managed a slight smile. “No matter his reasons, I am happy to see you, Desantro.” She lifted an arm, winced as the movement pulled at cuts, but continued the motion. “Go through the door there, follow the corridor to the water room… which hand do you use?”
Desantro lifted her right hand, held it palm out toward Penhari; it was lined and callused, with dirt ground deep into the skin.
“Diyo. Put your other hand on the wall and go in the first open door you touch. You will see a chest just inside. Lift the lid and bring the red box you find there. Do you understand?”
Desantro bobbed her head. “Diyo, heshal.” Her eyes shifted uneasily, then she turned and went out.
› › ‹ ‹
“Sa saaah, heshal.” Desantro clucked over the ruin of Penhari’s back and buttocks. “Men!” She poured distillate of kuzury in a small bowl, sopped a fiber ball in the liquid and began cleaning the wounds, her big hands surprisingly gentle.
Penhari chuckled, then gasped. She closed her hands into fists and ground them into her thighs as her back burned and throbbed.
“There there, luv, that’s over,” Desantro crooned at her. “Noi, this should feel a lot better, hmmm?”
Coolness. The creamy salve killed the fire and eased the stiffening of her skin. Penhari sighed, relaxed. “Diyo,” she said. “You have good hands.”
There was a short silence, then a hesitant laugh. “Was thinking of you like my plants, heshal, I mean, your plants, the ones I tend. If you don’t mind.”
Penhari smiled. “I am honored, Desantro. Plants have a proven worth, I have none.” She grimaced. “In the eyes of my family.”
Desantro worked a while in silence, then she said, “I’ve finished with the lotion; there’re strips of bandage in the box. How you want me to do this?”
Penhari frowned, touched her breasts, smoothed her hand down her battered stomach; she was sore, bruised where Famtoche had used his fists on her, but the damage didn’t seem to be that bad; he was too flabby to have much power behind his punch. “Bind the bandage round me, but not too tight. Enough layers so the salve doesn’t leak through.”
Desantro helped Penhari to stand, then eased her arms into a wrap-around robe of linen so old and so often washed it was softer than fleece. Leaning heavily on the woman’s arm, Penhari shuffled to the bed. With Desantro supporting her shoulders, she eased down on her side and lay in a loose curl with her knees bent to ease strain on her stomach bruises. She turned her head, wincing at the pull on the cuts. “Have cook make some broth for me and an infusion of singizzia.”
Desantro shifted nervously. “I’ll tell the Chamber, massal.”
Penhari managed a smile. “I think you’ll find him… urn… more cooperative than you expect. The Wheel turns, Desantro, he’ll be remembering that about now.” She lowered her head on the pillow, closed her eyes. “Tell him,” she murmured, “to send you again. I find being tended like a plant comforting.”
› › ‹ ‹
Desantro brought the tray in, planting her sandal soles flat with each step. She shuffled to the bed, set the tray on the bedtable with a loud sigh of relief, then bent over Penhari. She hesitated, touched the back of Penhari’s hand. “Heshal?”
Penhari blinked, tried to move, cried out as her body resisted and the pain she’d briefly forgotten came stabbing back.
Murmuring words in her own tongue, Desantro eased a strong arm under her, helped her to sit up, then shifted the bedtray over her knees. “‘S better to drink this when it’s warm, heshal, orwise I’d a let you sleep.”
Penhari wrapped both hands about the mug and with some difficulty lifted the fragrant steamy broth to her lips. She sipped, shivered with pleasure as heat curled through her. “Do you follow Abeyhamal, Desantro?”
“No, heshal.” Desantro stood at the foot of the bed, her hands one atop the other at her waist, her feet spread apart. “I come from Whenapoyr. It’s forests there. And mountains. My folk when they want a god, they mostly follow Geddrin the Mountain Groomer and Isshann Birthmistress. Rest a the time it’s the tree spirits we talk to, Whauraka we call them. We don’t take up much with strangers, be they gods or men.”