“If you want me to leave,” I said, “I understand.”
She was in the middle of a sigh when some idea occurred to her, and her eyes narrowed. “You can see me.”
“Uh, yes?”
“Is that your doing or Thaena’s?” Tyentso’s tone was full of fierce curiosity.
“I was trying to see beyond the Second Veil—”
“Mortals can’t do that,” she snapped.
“Then I guess it was Thaena’s doing.”
She pursed her lips, nodding, and then held out her arm. “Take my hand.”
“I can’t—”
“Take my hand!” she insisted.
I reached for her, knowing as I did my fingers would slide right through hers.
Instead, her fingers vanished when they touched mine, as if dissolving into acid.
Then the world went dark.
Literally dark, and not because I was blinded or unconscious. Tyentso was gone, and I was instead in a dark cave that looked like Khaemezra’s room but with all the furnishings removed. The basalt walls had been replaced by something softer. Roots grew through the ceiling and up through the floor, and the air was thick with the smell of humus and rot. A more ambiguous quality coated everything, a sense of decay and disintegration reminding me of tombs and corpses left long undisturbed.
I tried to move forward to look outside, but found I couldn’t move at all.
“Easy now, Scamp.” I heard Tyentso’s voice even though I didn’t see her. “What are you seeing?”
“Where are you?” I asked her. “What are you doing? Stop it.”
My hand moved without my orders then, fingers turning back and forth in front of my eyes. It was as if I’d never seen my own hand before and wanted a better look. I hadn’t thought to move my hand, hadn’t wanted to move my hand.
I realized where Tyentso was: she was inside me, controlling me.
“Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.”
“No. I need you to stop this. Stop it please. Stop.”
Everything that I had feared would happen if the Old Man dug his claws into me was happening now. Right now. It didn’t matter that Tyentso was a friend, and that I had asked for her help. I had known she was going to do this, but somehow just hadn’t realized what possession would mean or how it would feel to be thoroughly under someone else’s control. Unable to physically protest, my very soul rebelled hard against the idea. I couldn’t run. There was no way to move, no way to hide from this. I was trapped.
I panicked.
You wouldn’t have known it to look at me, of course. I couldn’t even widen my eyes, but inside, I was screaming. A giant sense of revulsion and denial welled up inside me, even as I drowned, each metaphoric flail dragging me under a little bit more. The whole universe pressed down, and something inside me pressed back. There was a terrifying moment when I could feel not just myself but the sense of something other. Something far away and yet so close I felt its presence in the room, in my heart, under my skin, trapped and angry. Terrible. Hateful. Hungry.
Something inside me snapped.
And that quickly, I was no longer on Ynisthana.
58: THE PRICE OF FREEDOM
(Talon’s story)
Once Tishar established they wouldn’t be able to buy Talea, she left Kihrin in the great hall with two of her guards and withdrew to the private salons a second time.
The great hall was the main auction arena of the Octagon. Vendors wandered up and down the aisles, selling sweetmeat-stuffed sag or cooled teas for the patrons. Watching the cleaners, who didn’t wait for guests to leave before sweeping the aisles, Kihrin deduced this hall never closed; there was always someone up on the block for sale. Kihrin also realized right away that royalty seldom came to this hall. While it was the closest to entertainment of all the auction blocks, it was also the equivalent of slumming. The slave masters of this hall didn’t hold themselves with the same sober professionalism of the salons, perhaps because they sold to merchants and commoners.
One such smarmy salesman took note of Kihrin and his guards and attached himself to the young man as an unwanted tour guide.
“Would Your Highness care to see the inspection pens? A rare chance to see the slaves before they go up on the block, yes?”
“I’m not looking for anything,” Kihrin said.
“Oh no? But Your Highness, we have everything! Need a pillow girl? Servant boy? Exotic tastes are our specialty … Zheriaso, Doltari, old, young, fire-hairs from Marakor and piebalds from Lake Jorat. I have a half-morgage virgin from Khorvesh who is delightfully alien and yet quite beautiful…”
Kihrin stopped and looked at the slave master. “What about troublemakers?”
“Troublemakers?”
“Sure. Troublemakers. Thieves and the like. Ones sentenced here in court to slavery as punishment for crimes.”
The slave master raised an eyebrow, and his gaze on Kihrin changed its regard. “Oh. You want gladiators?”
“I want cheap and expendable,” Kihrin corrected.
The slave master snapped his fingers. “This I can provide. Please follow me, my lord.”
* * *
Merit sighed and changed the position of his legs, at least as far as the chains let him.
There wasn’t much else to do, although he spared a minute to curse the fates that brought him here and the people specifically involved. He elaborated on what he’d begged the gods to do to their genitalia, in detail, then spat to the side.
Across from him, his cellmate spared him an affectionate chuckle, which of late had become Merit’s way of judging his creativity in the cursing arts. If he came up with something clever, Star might even laugh.
Merit had never learned his cellmate’s proper name, but he’d taken to calling him “Star.” A diamond-shaped patch of white marked his forehead, like he was a horse or something. His skin was patterned in a way that looked more like animal coloration than tattoos. The name seemed to amuse Star, and Merit’s street sense told him that his fellow prisoner was best kept smiling. Merit didn’t think he would want to be on the receiving end of Star’s unhappiness. It didn’t take high-born schooling to figure out Star was bound for the gladiator’s arena, and that he’d do well there.
For a while, anyway.
Merit had little such faith in his own chances. It was enough to make him wish they’d taken a hand instead.