Her husband’s face was still angry. The hands picked up their tempo, one of them making a come-hither gesture. Not toward Demansk, but toward a figure standing nervously in the crude wooden frame of the doorway.
“Besides, I thought you would need Kata here. So I brought her with me.”
Demansk swiveled his head and gazed at the slave girl, rather like a cannon gazes on its target. For a moment, the fair-skinned former concubine of Ion Jeschonyk looked as white as a sheet. And was obviously on the verge of bolting in sheer terror.
But the Paramount Triumvir’s angry expression broke, before the girl’s fears crested. Demansk’s face seemed to cave in, for a moment; then, the way a man rebuilds something precious which has been broken, slowly came back to itself.
In the end, the Demansk who glanced back and forth from slave to wife was the man the wife had come here to salvage. He even managed something that might be called a smile.
“Yes. Thank you. She will be of help.”
A real smile, now. “As for the cot, it was never designed for the purpose you’re contemplating. Nor would I be in any mood for it, to be honest. But . . . in a few days, I expect we’ll be in more, ah, appropriate quarters.”
He turned back to Kata. “Remind me again, girl. The exact words.”
Kata cleared her throat. Then, in a little singsong, did her best to give a girl’s soprano the rasp of a man grown old from a life filled with duplicity, deceit, and debauchery.
“Just tell him to remember, that’s all, and think about it now and again. The word is ‘duty,’ I believe.”
* * *
In the days which followed, Adrian wondered from time to time why Demansk had included a slave girl in the small coterie which surrounded him during his ordeal. Not simply included her but even gave her a place next to his own child. Both of them standing just behind him, as he sat dispensing blood in the name of justice. The daughter’s hand on one shoulder, the slave’s on the other. She was not his concubine, after all, of that much Adrian was quite certain.
* * *
Center could have explained it to him. But, for whatever reasons impel a computer’s inhuman mentality, chose not to.
It was an old custom. Recreated here on Hafardine independently, to be sure, but drawing its roots from ancient times and places. The Romans, too, had used the trick. Not, perhaps, to any great purpose—but who was to say how crazed their great ones might have become otherwise?
Always a slave, riding with the conqueror in his chariot at the triumph, to whisper in his ear: this, too, shall pass.
And if Kata whispered nothing, the hand did as well. Perhaps better. The hand, after all, served to remind the shoulder bearing the world’s grief as well as its brutality, that triumphs produce many forms of madness—but all triumphs fade. Perhaps madness can, too.
PART V:
THE MAN ALONE
Chapter 30
Helga turned away from the city lying below the hillside, sighing quietly. Franness was a beautiful town, especially now with the spring in full bloom. Like a pearl-and-red gemstone, tile roofs atop whitewashed walls, cupped in a low valley draped in green and all the colors of the flowers. Nor, from what she could tell at the distance, had the long months of the barbarian occupation produced any noticeable damage.
But the sight brought her no pleasure, and even less in the way of comfort.
Most of all, I miss Jessep. Even more, I think, than I miss my husband or my own father. Both of whom are right here—
She glanced down the back slope of the hill, where the army of the Paramount Triumvir was erecting its field fortifications. Very extensive, those fortifications were; as they needed to be, given the size of the army.
—but might as well be on one of those “planets” Adrian insists the moving stars really are. Maybe he’s right, who knows? Big balls of rock or spirits of the gods, it hardly matters to me. Either one of them is untouchable.