In Conquest Born, page 3
Surely, my sister, you remember those zhents. Each day I hurried from my job to our compartment, where I waited until long past midnight. Only then did I dare to walk the streets for a while, when few were about. It was calming. You used to warn me of the danger, but better at that point a brutal death than another man like Jenar.
One night, as I walked by the Tuel waters, I saw a figure ahead of me on the beach. His back was to me. I almost turned back and ran, but something in his posture held me still, something that marked him as different than any man I’d ever seen.
His broad houlders were draped in a dark gray cloak, his legs and feet encased in high black boots. Where one hand was visible I saw a glove of the same color. What fool, I thought, wears such clothing in mid-summer?
Then it struck me. For only those of Braxaná blood, the upper class, cover themselves so completely and in so little color. Fearful, I had just decided to run from the place when he turned to me.
Hair blacker than shadow framed his pale face. His features were magnificent, deeply chiseled like an ancient sculpture, his body fine and his bearing arrogant. There are no words, my sister, to capture the beauty of his face and body, nor its effect upon me. I tried to turn away, as law demanded, tried to drop my eyes from his, but it was impossible.
I wanted him.
The traitor’s brand on my forehead burned shamefully as he came toward me. Who was I to desire this harshly beautiful youth, this man bred for beauty? Though he had the right to put me to death for it, I stared at him. Let my eyes, at least, drink of what the rest of me can never taste.
A slender sword swung at his side as he approached me—a Zhaor, I guessed, the traditional weapon of the Braxaná. He walked slowly, with the grace of born nobility, a motion so fluid and beautiful that it hurt to watch. And closing the collar of his cloak was the Seal of the Kaim’-erate.
A Lord, I remembered, as he closed the distance between us, to fall to my knees, but I couldn’t bear to take my eyes from him.
There was an eternity of silence as he regarded me. I saw anger in those dark eyes—not at me, but the fury which had driven him to this place—Sulos, the sector of poverty.
“Who was the traitor?” he asked, his voice devoid of all emotion.
“My mother,” I answered. The words nearly caught in my throat.
“Her name.”
“Shyerre, my Lord.”
His brow furrowed in thought. “I don’t recall the case. Refresh my memory, little one.”
“She attempted to . . . leave Braxi for Aldous, to serve the Holding in space.”
“There was enough alien blood in her that she could have passed for Aldousan?”
“She believed so, my Lord.”
“With what name have they doomed your future, little traitor?”
“Ni’en, my Lord.” Never had the name been so painful before.
“Conceived in treachery—yes, I see. Stand, woman. Why do you stare at me?”
I remained on my knees—my fear would be less obvious. “You’re very beautiful, my Lord,” I whispered.
He smiled slightly. “So I’ve been told. Yet the women of my Race can find no desire for me, little one, only duty. And I respond poorly to duty.”
Duty? What duty to a Race but that of the Braxaná females to bear purebred children? By Taz’hein, not purebred. . . .
He looked at me and laughed. He must have known my thoughts, because he nodded to me in answer.
Braxaná. Pure.
I lowered my eyes.
I felt his hands on my shoulders, and he lifted me to my feet. When he drew me against him I trembled, not from fear of him, but from hunger.
“You want me,” he observed, amused. “Do you know, I ran out on the Kaim’eri Yiril, Vinir, and Sechaveh today. They tried to feed me women. In refusing, I’ve insulted the image of three of the most powerful men in the Holding, my father among them. Because none of those women could desire more than the favor of a Lord, or the child of a Braxaná—one more duty completed, that much closer to freedom. What pleasure should I seek with them?” He laughed softly, but there was pain beneath it. “They believe me impotent. Good. That’s synonymous with harmless to my people. Let them keep that delusion—it gives me freedom.”
He kissed me, then—just that, and yet so much. I’ve been used and discarded in less time than he took to savor that kiss. Weakly, warmly, I wondered if the sensuality of the Braxaná was perhaps more than legend.
“Where can I taste you?” he asked.
The question surprised me—where did one have to go? Our wanderings had brought us to an isolated bit of Braxi, carpeted by fine natural grass and lit by the light of the Citadel shining across the Tuel waters. What more could he want? I looked at him, puzzled.
“Little fool!” He was smiling. “The Braxaná sleep with their women.”
Involuntarily, I shuddered. To be at the mercy of a male in one’s most vulnerable time, to have no escape from his demands . . . to sleep with a man!
Truly, I thought, the Braxaná are still barbarians.
We sought such a place.
And yet, when I awoke in the morning alone, I was surprised at how I could miss his warmth beside me, his arm confining and yet protecting me.
By my cheek were forty sinias in silver—the upper-class custom of a gift for pleasure. Spare change no doubt for him; more money than I would ordinarily see in a year. Handling the coins lent an aura of reality to an anonymous encounter that now seemed little more than a dream.
I would have given it all back to sleep with him again, my sister.
I stepped over the landlord’s body on the way out; the fool had tried to sneak in to rob the Lord’s cloak. He had met his end before he remembered that the Braxaná sleep with their Zhaori close at hand. And, smiling, I remembered discovering the truth in the legend, that no passion exceeds that of a Braxaná who has just killed.
Two—three zhents later, I think. You were on assignment that night, preparing to leave for work, when he arrived. Did you notice him? Could you fail to? He wore our clothes, he’d painted his hair, he had come without his sword, but could such beauty be disguised? You passed him in the hall that night as you went out; can I believe you didn’t notice him?
Without words, without questions, I ran to his arms when he entered, and therein found a welcome.
In his embrace that night, by his will, I told him of my past. I’ll not lead you to believe, my sister, that he dealt with me tenderly, or even kindly. When the Braxaná have such emotions they crush them. But he displayed curiosity, so I spoke. How sweet it was to have a man listen, regardless of his motives! He told me, in return, of the affairs of state, of battle and politics, and of his Race, living to hate, living for pleasure but not knowing any longer how to seek it. I understood little of it, or even why he told me such things. Perhaps it was to get across to me the loneliness I sensed beneath it all, an emotion no Braxaná would lower himself to admit to.
Dawn came at last and he gathered his clothes. I knew there would be emptiness when he had gone, and also knew that nothing I could say or do would keep him there, or cause him to come back. Such pain was new to me. Needing to speak, afraid to reveal my train of thought, I asked for his name.
“Zatar,” he said. “They call me Zatar the Magnificent, an attempt at sarcasm. Someday they’ll say it and mean it.”
“Is it true you have another?” I had heard, of course, of the Braxaná True Name—in superstitious tradition, given only to trusted intimates. I knew that to ask for such a confidence invited death by the Zhaor. I had only meant to ask if such things really existed. But he misunderstood
Anger almost crossed his brow, but it was replaced by a look of weary pain. “I’m not very Braxaná, I suppose, after all,” he whispered. “I’ve confided enough to you this night to set my plans back considerably. . . . What’s power over my soul, compared to that?”
I had no time to protest or explain. To hold the Name of a Braxaná is the greatest responsibility a woman can know. But the giving of a Name between the sexes must be smothered in pleasure, and so I was silenced.
“I’m leaving,” he said quietly. “Perhaps it’s fitting that I should have shared my Name so, at least once, first. But why it should be you . . . no, don’t answer. I’m thinking aloud.”
He was silent, then, and seemed to wish the same of me but I couldn’t oblige him. “Where will you go, my Lord?”
“To Azea, little one.”
“Azea! But how—”
“Shh! Listen, and seal your lips against speech. Even my father doesn’t know this. I’ve been studying the enemy for years now. I can speak their tongue without accent, think like them, move like them. My cosmeticists have dyes and drugs which will bleach my hair and keep my beard from growing. Skin dye will bronze my skin. It’s not unplanned, you see.”
“You’ll go among them?”
He nodded. “I’ll defeat them at their own game—assimilation, a fancy word for intrigue.”
“To what end, my Lord?”
His eyes grew hard and cold, the way they were on the night I had met him. “Power, pretty one. An interstellar Holding at my beck and call. The game is theirs, now, but after this venture, Zatar the Magnificent will start writing his own rules.”
I feared him then—his anger, his hatred of his own kind and his passionate need for them—feared his possible failure, and even more, his success.
He slipped a heavy gold ring from his left index finger, where it fit snugly over his glove. He toyed with it as he spoke. “I’ve stolen enough of my father’s poison to commit an assassination, or die trying. What’s life, without power? I’m Braxaná, born to rule. And I will—despite that whole pack of fools!”
He placed the ring in my hand and gently folded my fingers over it. “Little traitor, I cannot take ownership of you. We may never meet again. But a token of ownership is Just Cause for refusing a man, and I know what you’ve been through at the hands of my sex. The ring is Braxaná; men will wonder at it, but none will question its use. Will you wear it?”
I nodded, afraid of that last kiss because its end meant he would leave me. “You’ll come back,” I whispered when he had done, “and I’ll wait for you.”
He pried himself loose from my arms. “You’re Braxin, Ni’en, don’t forget that,” he said sternly. “Let’s not err as our enemies do. Find some pride in your heritage. Life is meant for pleasure, not dead memories.”
He left me then. Yes, dear Lord, but what if memories bring pleasure?
I knew I was being followed before I saw the guard. I had heard the footsteps pacing my own, I had seen the shadows staying an even distance behind me.
I fingered the spot where Zatar’s ring lay on a gold chain, hidden beneath my shirt. I tried to remain steady, tried to keep walking. All the while I kept glancing back, trying to determine the nature of this threat without being obvious about it.
Then I saw, and I knew.
The sash of bright blue, embossed with the Seal of the Kaim’erate. Central Guard! I stopped, turned to face them, fell to my knees, lowered my eyes. What else could I do?
There were three in all and I trembled as they approached, fearing for my life—and worse. The pain of a stun twisted deep in my nervous system, driving me into darkness; his Name moved silently across my lips, almost as a prayer.
Darkness. Then intense hunger—pain—a point of light in the distance. Voices about me: male, Braxaná accents. Pain again, severe pain, and descent back into darkness.
I longed for death.
“Is she awake?”
Cold water hit my face and I awoke, shuddering. A dungeon? My hands in shackles, pinned to the wall, my body dripping wet in the dank, still air? What ancient nightmare was this. . . .
Before me stood three Kaim’eri. One was older than the others, with the same facial structure as Lord Zatar, but much crueler in expression. One was middle-aged, with a face not incapable of mercy. The third I recognized even from Zatar’s sparse description, and I instinctively knew that he was the one responsible for the primitive barbarity of my surroundings.
“Sechaveh is a loner and a sadist,” he’d told me. “His parents fled the Holding to escape the Plague which thinned the ranks of my Race. But they took it with them and Sechaveh was raised by aliens, ignorant of his heritage.
“The man revels in destruction—peoples, planets, women. When they send him to war he returns with slaves and riches, and leaves behind him the rubble which once was a world.”
The older man paced as he spoke. “Woman, we will be plain. My son has disappeared. Where is he?”
My throat was dry. “Your . . . son, great one?”
“Zatar, you fool! Don’t play games with me. I’ve had him followed for some time now; we know he was with you the night before he disappeared.”
Listen, and seal your lips against speech. . . .
I lowered my eyes, fearful. “He used me, glorious Kaim’era. Nothing more.”
He struck me. I reeled under the blow, but the metal cuffs held me upright. I felt blood running in my mouth, and didn’t look at my wrists for fear of finding the same. This, then, was Vinir—and the third man would be Yiril, whom Zatar had described as “the only Braxaná capable of mercy.”
I envied those peoples with an active god, to whom they might pray for death.
I won’t pain you, my sister, with descriptions of the tortures I endured, modern pains that leave no scars. Yiril forbade the others from disfiguring me—if I refused to speak, he said, or genuinely didn’t know anything useful, they would need me intact to act as bait for the wayward Lord.
Ni’Ar, it wasn’t courage that sealed my lips. Ignorant though I was of the politics that moved these men, I could clearly read the tensions between them. Sechaveh was restless, irritated by Yiril’s restrictions. If I spoke, if I ceased to have value to them, I would be turned over to him. And that I feared more than the pain.
When was it that they cast me where they had found me, in the streets of Sulos? The three guards set to watch me used me roughly before dropping out of sight, while my body still shivered in pain.
They would wait—wait for Zatar, son of Vinir and K’Siva, to return to the lower-class filth he so enjoyed. They would kill us both, then; such was Yiril’s suggestion. But I suspected, against all logic, that he knew such a plan was doomed to failure. Why then did he offer it?
For two years, my sister, I suffered the attentions of my three captors. And you! You congratulated me for such regular attentions! Little did you know. . . .
At night Zatar’s gift of gold slept by me, its chain about my neck. But no longer did I dare wear it during the day. For often, without warning, the arm of a guard would drag me into an alley, or a darkened doorway, there to sate whatever lust the moment had conjured, in a mockery of the privacy their masters preferred.
Some nights when the pain became too great, I took Zatar’s ring to the Tuel, and there wept. It was conduct unbecoming a Braxin, but bless it all! A moment’s betrayal, I knew, if carefully planned, might end all of this. But I would not—could not—betray the one man who had seen through my shameful brand, to the woman who suffered because of it.
And when I felt his hands lift me from the grass one night, when with tightly closed eyes I kissed him once more, I knew from the touch of him that he was still cleanshaven; and as I felt the soft weight of his hair fall upon my arm, I knew without looking that it was still white as snow.
“Fool,” I whispered happily. “The first person that sees you will kill you.”
“They tried, little one. Three Central Guards with stun. And Zatar with Zhaor. Hardly a challenge.”
I laughed, and I cried, and I held him.
“They’ve hurt you,” he said quietly.
“No. I have no bad memories—only pleasure.”
He laughed, a lusty laugh that revived the most erotic of those memories. “I’ve not had a woman in nearly two years,” he told me. “Do you think you can handle that?”
I smiled. “I can try, my Lord.”
And he is fresh from killing, I thought, as his embrace wiped all else from my mind. His hunger I could sense, frustrated, powerful, demanding. What else is there to do with such a man but yield?
“I’m afraid, my Lord.”
“You fear me?”
I pressed closer to him. “No. Not you.”
“My father—the Kaim’eri?”
“Not beside you, no.”
“Kurat, then? Its dungeons?”
In answer, I shuddered.
“Then we’ll crush them, my little one—them and their creators.”
The autocarriage slowed as we approached his home, a second-eon mansion. He helped me out, holding me close as we came to the door.
“Your palm,” he said. “The House knows my hand.”
Obediently I put my hand on the doorplate. A second’s hesitation—then the door opened, revealing a guard.
“Lord Zatar!”
“My father’s in council now, is he not?” I was pulled past the bewildered guard.
“He is, but—my Lord!”
Zatar pored his confusion and drew me quickly through the forehouse. The enormity of the building was overwhelming; the power of the man who owned it was beyond my comprehension. Through the tightness of Zatar’s grip I could feel his rising tension, his exhilaration as he strode toward a confrontation with his father. He had chosen this moment with care and it was with calculated forethought that he chose to kick open the doors to the last conference chamber, overriding the portal mechanism with simple primitive force. The heavy wooden panels fell aside with a bang and he entered, taking me with him, accompanied by indignant smoke and the sputter of damaged circuitry.
To say that they were surprised would be an understatement.
There were five of them, all Kaim’eri, three of whom I already knew and feared. Until a moment ago their Zhaori had been set aside in an opulent weapons-rack, but as the doors fell aside they claimed their swords with Braxaná-swift reflexes. Only when they saw the cause of the intrusion did they relax somewhat.
