Tim voiced agreement. “Aye, Ahl, what the master says be true enough, at least in the north. Sword Council decrees only cover the conduct of warfare, open and declared warfare; many bravos and assassins use poisons, though the unlucky lout who’s caught with any in his possession is accorded a long-drawn-out and excruciatingly painful public death as a salutary lesson; so too are those few merchants whose greed led them to stock and peddle poisons.”
Master Fahreed frowned. “Which facts—though they do not really apply to our present issue—are why all my Zahrtohgahn medicines are shipped by sea and brought to me by special couriers, since many of them could easily be considered or used as poisons.”
When she was certain she was alone, Neeka Mahree-mahdees thrust the lethal brass pin deep into the glowing coals of a small brazier and then placed a couple of fresh briquets of charcoal atop it. Leaning back in her chair, she smiled to herself. It had gone better, easier, more smoothly than she’d hoped.
Following her directions to the very letter—which was more than the fat, slovenly, unpredictable bitch of a mother had ever been able or willing to do!—little Behti had skipped along the upstairs hall, her budding breasts tightly bound down to make her appear younger than her eleven years. She had entered into conversation with the ill-bred northern barbarian and finally sat upon his lap. After a few more minutes of conversation, the child had plunged the pin deeply into the man’s thigh, then jerked it out and ran swiftly to Neeka’s chambers. The girl showed definite promise.
But the dam… Neeka frowned. Mehleena had always been difficult to manage, very erratic, but she was gradually growing worse. That business at table, for instance. She could easily have slain Myron; he was lucky that his mother’s choice in foods did not require the use of a table knife, else his guts would have been around his ankles. Mehleena had never been completely sane, but she was becoming more and more irrational, and the fits were lasting longer and longer. Any little thing could now trigger outbursts of violent rage in the gross woman; her servants and her children were alert as wild deer around her, and not even her priest dared to gainsay her.
That priest! Neeka ground her teeth at the thought of almost any priest. Her husband had been a priest in the land of her birth—Kehnooryos Mahkedohnya, far to the north, more northerly even than the Black Kingdoms. She had been but a girl then, but she had been happy with him. Until the blackhearted bastard had renounced her and his marriage to her so that he might advance to offices wherein marriage was not allowed.
It had not been enough for Demetrios to renounce her and simply cast her out. He had sold her to the slaver captain of a coastal trading ship, who had raped or otherwise molested her body at least twice each day all the way down the length of the coast to Esmithpolis, one of the Karaleenos ports. There he and his officers had been jailed and his ship and cargo impounded for his ill-starred attempt to bribe a newly appointed inspector of imports. Since slavery was illegal in the lands of the Confederation, Neeka had been turned out upon the beach with the crew of the ship, glad that she at least was in a land wherein Ehleeneekos was spoken, even if that land was all of twelve hundred kaiee from her own.
But she quickly discovered that there were no convents and monasteries, here, as in her northern homeland, nor even any churches of the Ehleen faith. In the wake of a great, bloody rebellion led by priests and higher clergy a few years before her arrival, the practice of any form of the ancient faith of the Ehleenee had been forbidden by decree of the High Lords, all church properties had been confiscated to the Confederation, all senior members of the hierarchy had been put to death and all the lesser sorts had been granted the choice of similar deaths or banishment for life.
So, since there was no organized group from which a stranger Ehleen might receive charity, and since she then owned no trade, Neeka, to avoid starvation, began to offer the only commodity she had. But after less than a week, she was confronted by uniformed town guardsmen as she left a waterfront tavern one midnight. Announcing loudly that she was under arrest for unlicensed whoring, the six guardsmen bound Neeka’s arms and dragged her off to the port fortress. When they had thoroughly searched her, with many a crude and lascivious jest, robbed her of her few, hard-earned coppers and single, silver thrahkmeh piece, they stripped her and took turns raping her. Their sport finished, they loosed her arms and threw her and her tattered clothing into a narrow cell built into the wall of the fortress.
Neeka was never certain just how long she remained in that cell. It was damp and cold—so cold that she almost came to welcome the guardsmen who swaggered in in twos and threes to make use of her body, for at least then she was a bit warmer for a while. There were vermin, of course— fleas, lice, roaches and centipedes—but only once did she see a rat—and that was to prove a red letter day.
The big, gray wharf rat, large as a cat, scurried out from a hole in the wall, long, scaly tail dragging behind him. Neeka shrieked shrilly and took a precarious stance atop the rim of the straw-filled stone trough that served her for a bed, but the rodent gave her not even a glance, rather making a mighty effort to leap onto the sill of the high, barred window, through which the morning sun streamed. But it was too high and the rat fell back onto the floor with a meaty plop.
Before the rat could gather himself to try again, another animal followed him out of the wall. Neeka had never before seen such a beast. Long of body it was, at least two cubits, but of no more thickness than the terrified rat; the tail was thick and slightly flattened and furred like the body, with a close-lying, glossy brown pelt; the legs seemed short and stout and the paws were webbed and furnished with the retractable claws of a feline; the head appeared to be a blending of feline and mustelid traits—cat and weasel—with a mouthful of glittering white teeth, damp shiny black nose and slit-pupiled, moss-green eyes. The newcomer gave the terrified Neeka no more attention than had the survival-minded rat, heading directly for its quarry in a brown blur of swift motion.
The rat tried to fight for its life, but both fight and life were over in an eyeblink of time. While the rodent’s dying limbs still jerked and twitched, the strange beast lapped up every droplet of spilled blood, then tore into the carcass, devouring the tenderer portions of it.
Weak from suffering, abuse and privation—the guardsmen only fed her at odd hours and then only scraps, and she would long since have died of thirst had it not been that she had taken to licking the ice off the windowsill and walls every morning—Neeka could not stand on the stone rim long, then she had sunk back into the verminous straw, hugging the thin, filthy blanket around herself with numb, chapped hands.
Done with its grisly repast, the brown beast dragged the ravaged rat remains over to the corner of the cell, used the one paw to raise the wooden lid of the privy hole enough to push the carcass in, then lowered the lid again. That done, it sank upon its haunches and, catlike, began to cleanse its face with well-licked paws.
Seeing those moss-green eyes upon her, Neeka began to tremble, and a moan of terror bubbled up from her throat Then… then it seemed that the beast spoke to her!
“Why do you fear me, sister? The rat might well have harmed you, but not me. Two-legs are my sisters and brothers; wherever two-legs build their dens, always are there plenty of fat rats for my kind to kill and eat.”
“Oh, my dear God,” mumbled Neeka to herself, “I’ve finally lost my reason! I thought, really believed that that animal spoke to me in Ehleeneekos!”
So shaken was she that she did not even try to move when the brown beast moved fluidly to the stone trough, leaped easily upon it and snuggled close beside her in the straw, its cold, wet nose pressed against her temple through her dull, matted hair.
After a few minutes, it seemed that the beast spoke to her again, but this time she came to the realization that the communication was silent and was not truly in words; she was “hearing” its thoughts in her mind.