‘Useful to let him best me in something. And Carullus can hold his wine. We might have been down there all night, and I need to sleep.’
‘Best you in something?’ Kasia heard herself say, in a voice her mother and others in the village would have recognized. ‘He knocked you senseless and nearly broke your jaw.’
‘Trivial. Well, for him it was.’ Martinian rubbed absently at his bearded cheek. ‘He had a weapon, no great achievement. Kasia, they carried me here. And carried a servant who struck an army officer. I made them do that. He lost a lot of prestige, Carullus did. Decent-enough man, for an Imperial soldier. And I wanted to sleep.’ He lifted a booted foot and she wrestled the boot off and then did the same with the other.
‘They said my father could drink most men down onto the tavern floor or off their couches at a banquet. Guess I inherited that from him,’ Martinian murmured vaguely, putting his tunic over his head. Kasia said nothing. Slaves did not ask questions. ‘He’s dead,’ Martinian of Varena added. ‘On campaign against the Inicii. In Ferrieres.’ He wasn’t entirely sober, she realized, whatever he might say. The drinking had gone on a long time. He was bare-chested now, had matted curls of dark red hair on his chest. She had seen that when she bathed him yesterday. ‘I’m . .. Inici,’ she said, after a moment. ‘I know. So’s Vargos. Odd, in a way.’
‘The tribes in Sauradia are … different from those who went west to Ferrieres. The ones who went are … wilder.’ ‘Wilder. I know. Why they went.’
There was a silence. He pushed himself up on an elbow and looked around the room in the wavering light. ‘A fire,’ he said. ‘Good. Build it up, Kasia.’ He didn’t call her Kitten. She went over quickly and knelt putting on another log, pushing at it with the stick.
‘They didn’t bring you a cot,’ he said from the other side of the room ‘They’ll assume there’s only one reason I bought you. I must tell you I was informed at great length downstairs that Inici girls, especially skinny ones, are evil-tempered and a waste of money. Is this true? Carullus did offer to spare me the duty of bedding you tonight while I was in pain. Nice of him, I thought. They should have put a cot in here.’
Kasia stayed where she was, looking at the fire. It was difficult to sort out his tone sometimes. ‘I have your cloak to sleep on,’ she said finally. ‘Over here.’
She busied herself sweeping ashes into the hearth. He probably did like boys, she decided. The pure-blooded Rhodians were said to be inclined that way, like Bassanids. It would make her nights easier.
‘Kasia, where’s home? Your home?’ he said.
She swallowed abruptly. This was not what she’d expected.
She turned, still kneeling, to look at him. ‘North, my lord. Most of the way to Karch.’ He had finished undressing himself, she saw, and was under the blanket now, sitting up, arms around his knees. The firelight moved on the wall behind him.
‘How were you captured? Or were you sold?’
She clasped her hands in her lap. ‘Sold,’ she said. ‘Last autumn. The plague took my father and brother. My mother had no choice.’
‘Not so,’ he said quickly. ‘There’s always a choice. Sold her daughter off to feed herself? How civilized.’
‘No,’ Kasia said, clenching her fists. ‘She … we … talked about it. When the slave train came. It was me or my sister, or we’d all have died in the winter. You won’t understand. There weren’t enough men to do the fields or hunt, nothing had been harvested. They bought six girls from my village, with grain, and coins for the market town. There was a plague. That. .. changes things.’
‘Oh, I know,’ he said softly. Then, after another silence, ‘Why you? Not your sister?’
She hadn’t expected that, either. No one had asked these things. ‘My mother thought she was. . . more likely to marry. With nothing to offer but herself.’
‘And you thought?’
Kasia swallowed again. Behind the beard and in the dim, uneven light it was impossible to discern his expression.