Vacillian Read online

  When they returned from town, Silvana ordered the two guards to lock her new swords and knives into an outbuilding that held her other weapons, all awaiting the day when she would finally be ready to make use of them. Two or three years at most.

  As she handed over the reins to her mount, the rheumy-eyed stable master said, “The scavengers have returned.”

  “How many did they get?” she asked.

  “Only three, Master.” His nose was dripping but he didn’t seem to notice. “Wildmen had passed through the village not long before. There were many deaths.”

  These packs of roving wildmen were a constant thorn in her side. Even the worst of them left the babies alone, but they often killed their mothers, and a baby without a mother soon died. Someday when she had sufficient numbers and sat on the throne of Estneva, she would send her Clavos to exterminate them. Silvana was a patient woman, but sometimes it felt very hard to wait.

  Pio followed her from the stables into the scullery where a slave was scrubbing wooden bowls and plates. The girl had her hair gathered up in a blue kerchief and wore a matching apron – the same uniform worn by all female slaves at the Orphanage. Silvana examined a bowl from the draining board and tossed it back into the soapy water.

  “Once again,” she said. “Do it better.”

  In the kitchen, another slave girl sat cross-legged near the hearth and turned haunches of meat on a wooden spit. Other slaves chopped roots with stone blades, or kneaded dough for the evening bread – enough to feed the hundred or so orphans. Silvana saw nothing to criticize and moved on. She passed through the empty dining hall with its long tables and benches, Pio close upon her heels. His breathing was heavy with anticipation. As Overseer, he had the right to choose among the slave girls but he had never wanted any of them, never desired anyone but her.

  After all these years, she still savored the moment when she opened the door to her private chamber and moved from spare order into luxury. She’d chosen this room because of its large fireplace and a view of the coastal plain sloping downward toward Sudana port; only a few broken panes in its large window were blocked over with leather. Brown and white furs covered the massive bed and chairs, with a rare sea panther pelt, glossy and blue-black in color, hanging upon the wall. Her personal slave boy kept the bedposts and other wooden furnishings to a high polish and kept a large fire blazing in the hearth.

  Her favorite piece of furniture was a small cabinet beneath the window, with a chair where she could sit and gaze down on the port. For what purpose it had originally been made, Silvana didn’t know, but she liked to makes plans there while looking out. She sometimes sat and counted gold pieces, chalking tally marks upon a slate.

  Pio followed her into the room. As soon as he’d shut the door behind them, he began to disrobe.

  “Wait,” she said, “I have something to show you first.”

  From the top drawer in the window cabinet, she took out a small leather pouch. She opened it and inhaled deeply – the aroma like pine sap and loamy soil together. She offered the pouch to Pio, whose flat blunt face wrinkled up as he sniffed.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “The leaves of a plant called foria,” she said. “I learned of it from one my spies. The king uses it to increase his pleasure when rutting.”

  “Just by smelling it?”

  “No, it must be burned.” From the same drawer, she took out a small object made of clay, with a bulbous part that looked as if a thumb had pushed into it, and a hollow tube on one side. “You’re supposed to put the leaves in here, hold fire to it, then suck the smoke it makes out of this hole. It’s called a pipe.” She placed the pipe on the wooden surface of her cabinet.

  Pio squinted at the pipe. He sniffed again at the pouch. “How did you come by this … what did you call it again?”

  “Foria. A foreign-looking man in Sudana sells it, down by the port. He says that foria won’t grow here and so he must bring it from some far away country in the south. He said the journey takes many months and that’s why it’s so dear. This pouch alone cost me twenty gold pieces.”

  “Twenty gold pieces! And you paid the price?”

  “I was curious to see why Nical is so fond of it. My spy says he uses it every time he ruts.”

  “Because it increases the pleasure?”

  “So I’m told. I haven’t tried it yet.”

  Silvana took the pouch back and shook some of its contents onto her palm – brown-green leaves, dried but sticky. She crumbled them up and stuffed them into the pipe’s thumb-like opening. When he gave her instructions, the foria merchant had called it the “bowl.” The other part was called the “stem.” Pio looked doubtful when she held the pipe toward him; he hesitated before taking it.

  She held a wooden spill to one of the candle flames until its end glowed, then she pushed it into the foria leaves. Smoke began to rise.

  “Put that end of the pipe to your lips and suck,” she said. Though a dauntless man most of the time, Pio looked afraid. “Do what I tell you!” she snapped.

  Pio always obeyed her. He put the stem to his lips and breathed in. “Don’t let the smoke out,” she said. “Hold it in for a little while.”

  She took the pipe from his hand and breathed in foria smoke. Not burning like she had expected but oddly cool against her throat. It tasted something like mint. She held the smoke inside as long as she could then let it out.

  Pio usually took his time: he liked to fondle her breasts first and pillow his head upon them. He liked to hold his torso away so he could watch her body as he slowly entered. Today he pushed right in and began thrusting roughly. His panting was loud and hard. He made unusual sounds, too – like a grunting boar. The foria was clearly having its effect.

  Silvana felt nothing.

  She’d wondered whether foria might unleash her own pleasure and make her feel the way she’d done that one time, the night she took Lukah into her bed. She supposed that her wetness today meant she must be aroused but she couldn’t feel it. As always, she was aware of sensations – the size of him within, the weight of his massive body upon her – but they brought her neither pleasure nor pain. This time when his body shuddered, he moaned with such raucous joy that it made her almost angry.

  She waited a minute, no more, and rolled him off of her.

  “I need to wash,” she said. “Then we’ll see to the new arrivals.”

  * * *

  Silvana had grown up on the streets of Sudana and remembered little about her mother except for her face – thin and wan, cracked lips, lines deeply carved into the flesh around her mouth. She’d disappeared one day, leaving a six-year-old to fend for herself. In the beginning, Silvana had begged and stolen. When she grew older, she sold her body. After a wealthy fur merchant bloodied her face, blackened her eyes, and then refused to pay, she returned at night to kill him. She knifed him in his sleep and found a heavy bag of gold pieces under his pillow.

  She spent it all to buy the Orphanage, a very different place in those days from what it had become in the sixteen years since. A group of insipid, softhearted women used to run the Orphanage, supported by the merchants in Sudana who saw it as a way to keep thieving urchins off the streets. “Placekeepers” the women called themselves, part of some obscure order from a faraway country. They worked without pay, asking only for food to eat and a bed in which to sleep. Another one of those Placekeepers lived at Castle Inario and had tended to the king and his brothers when they were children.

  Silvana was only 19 years old when she took possession, not much older than some of the orphans who lived there, a dry-eyed young woman who dressed like a man in trousers and tunic. When an elderly Placekeeper led her through the boy’s dormitory on her very first morning, Silvana felt appalled at the disorder and lack of discipline. Many of the boys were still asleep on their pallets long after the sun had risen. Others were awake but still in their nightshirts, mock wrestling or playing stick-and-stone games on the floor.

  With no
effort to conceal her contempt, Silvana turned to the white-haired Placekeeper. “Is it always like this?” she demanded. “Have they no routines, no work to do? Do you let them sleep as long as they like?”

  As the Placekeeper smiled, the lines around her eyes grew taut and thin. “Young children need their sleep. We believe they do best when thoroughly rested.”

  Silvana scoffed and continued down the row of pallets. At the very end, she found one boy standing apart from the others, fully dressed in plain woolen clothes, the blanket so tight across his pallet that not a single wrinkle could be seen. He reminded her of guards on watch at the castle gate, only more alert. Ten years old, maybe eleven, but tall and powerfully built for his age. When he turned to look at her, his gaze was forlorn. He looked as if he’d been standing there for years, waiting for … something.

  “And who are you?” Silvana asked him.

  “His name is Pio,” said the Placekeeper.

  “I wasn’t speaking to you,” said Silvana, and shot her a sharp silencing glance. She turned back to the boy.

  “Your name is Pio?”

  “Yes, Master.” The use of the word “master” was instinctive, heartfelt, as if he had always been her servant.

  “And why are you standing here like this?”

  “We tried to conceal the news of your coming,” said the Placekeeper. “The prospect of change can be so frightening for children. Somehow, Pio found out.”

  This old woman would be the first to go. Silvana ignored her and looked closely at the boy. “So you’ve been waiting here all morning for me to come?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “Since before dawn,” said the Placekeeper. “He wouldn’t listen when we told him …”

  “Pray hold your tongue,” Silvana snapped, without turning to look at the old woman. “I won’t tell you again. Is that clear?”

  Pio’s face lit up at Silvana’s commanding tone. He stood up a little taller, pulled his shoulders back, and stared straight ahead as if in readiness for orders.

  “You will accompany me now,” she told him. “I want you to teach me everything you know about this place. Speak freely and hold nothing back, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master.”

  “And you will refer to me as “my Liege” from now on. You must never think of yourself as my slave.”

  Joy suffused his face so intensely that it brought tears to his eyes. He was hers for life – Silvana knew it in that moment. You couldn’t buy such loyalty.

  * * *

  After the first week, she dispatched all the Placekeepers and brought in her own people. The orphans needed molding in order to be ready for a harsh world, not coddled by women who offered false hope for something better. They needed to learn obedience, first of all, which meant a system of clear expectations and punishments rather than smiling indulgence. Under Silvana’s care, the orphans also learned valuable skills: sewing, cooking, how to care for farm animals, how to tease and card wool then spin it into yarn for the looms. The very stupid ones were taught to muck stalls or labor in the scullery.

  Once they had become useful, Silvana sold them. The slave trade had nearly vanished by the time Silvana took over the Orphanage and she single-handedly revived it. She sold her well-trained, obedient slaves to wealthy merchants in Sudana and other trading centers throughout Estneva. She’d even placed two of her slaves in neighboring Bregasso, as personal maids to the daughters of Queen Carinna. Slaves from the Orphanage commanded a very high price; Silvana had since become an extremely wealthy woman, even wealthier than most people realized.

  With abandoned babies always showing up on the front stoop, she always had a fresh supply of new slaves, but demand continued to grow. She began sending her scavengers on missions abroad in search of even more unwanted babies. She sent them only to the most backward villages, where men and women rarely made pair bonds and the mothers cared little about their children. Here in Sudana and the other major towns, it wasn’t unusual for children to grow up with both mother and father, and such parents rarely agreed to sell. Easier (and cheaper) to go into villages like that one near the river where her scavengers had bought five babies only last month.

  Three more today, awaiting her in the dairy.

  After rinsing the residue of Pio from her cleft, Silvana dried herself and dressed in her usual trousers and fur-lined cloak. Pio had already climbed back into his clothes and was standing at attention near the bed. She forced herself to give him the smile that he wanted.

  “Come with me now,” she said, “we’ll go test the arrivals.”

  “Yes, my Liege.”

  * * *

  Three babies lay upon the table, tightly wrapped in fresh blankets. “Swaddling” the Placekeepers had called it – one of the few useful techniques they had taught Silvana before she sent them all away. The slave girl keeping guard on the babies wore an expression so blank her face looked as if it had been carved from heartless stone.

  “Wait outside,” Silvana told her.

  Only Pio had seen her perform the test. He’d never asked what she learned from it and had never seemed curious. What did matter to him, what she had made him understand, was the complete trust she placed in him: he alone was responsible for delivering those babies who passed the test to Montano, Silvana’s other orphanage near the border with Bregasso.

  After the slave girl had stepped outside and closed the door behind her, Silvana unwrapped the first blanket, exposing a naked baby to cold air – a girl, five or six months of age. Far more boys passed the test but sometimes the girls surprised her. When Silvana gently rubbed the small flap of flesh within her cleft, this baby grew very still. Her gaze seemed to turn inward toward this new sensation; her brown eyes looked shiny, like little balls of glass. Pleasure. Her tiny face glowed with it.

  Pio, watching from behind, said, “No trip to Montano for this one.” He had said this many times before, during prior tests. He meant it to be funny.

  She moved on to the next baby without wrapping up the first one. The slave girl could renew the swaddling once Silvana had tested the others. A boy this time. She moistened her fingers with saliva and rubbed his little worm until it stiffened. Like the girl, he grew still and showed clear signs of pleasure: the inward look, glassy eyes that seem to glow with a light from within.

  Again she moved on and unwound the cloth from around the third baby – another boy. She refused to hope. It wouldn’t be the first time that a whole group had failed. Again she wet her fingers, again she rubbed the little boy’s worm until it grew stiff. In all her years of testing babies, she’d never seen a boy who didn’t respond to her touch.

  But some of those boys turned away from it. Some – like this one now! – they turned their heads to the side, as if they wanted to escape from the pleasure of Silvana’s touch. This little boy balled his fists and turned a deep angry red. If he were a fully-grown man, he might have risen from the table and strangled her, just to make her stop. The pleasure you didn’t expect or control made you weak. Pleasure could easily lead you to want more of it.

  “Another one for the Clavos,” said Pio. Even though it meant undertaking the days-long journey to Montano, he sounded pleased. Pleased for Silvana, his liege.

  “A good day,” she agreed. Within a drawer in the wall cabinet, she found a fresh blanket, a red blanket to mark this baby’s difference. She swaddled him herself.

  Long ago when she’d given birth that one time, it had nearly killed her. She felt relieved that the baby was stillborn and rejoiced when the midwife told her she would never again bear children. She had nothing of the mother about her.

  These babies who passed the test – these were her true children – her Clavos, as she called them. Discipline, obedience, and the skills of waging battle – these could be learned, but a taste for pleasure might undermine years of training.

  She’d been testing for years now and had several hundred Clavos, many fully-grown and battle-ready. Back when she first bough
t the Orphanage, she’d taken the long view. Soon, perhaps very soon, her patience would at last bear fruit. More Clavos and a few more weapons – that’s all she needed.

  As she was leaving the stables, a stout woman with a white cook’s apron was crossing the yard toward her – one of Silvana’s spies from Castle Inario. Her ruddy face was moist with sweat.

  “They said I’d find you here,” the woman said. She seemed a little out of breath. “I came as fast as I could.”

  “What is it?”

  “There’s a visitor at the castle. An unexpected visitor. I thought you’d want to know.”

  Chapter Three

  When Nical returned to his chamber after his morning ride, he found Raffiela in his bed, her naked body arrayed in a posture of submission – arms outstretched, breasts exposed, legs spread wide for him. She’d grown wan and sickly in the months since he’d first bedded her, so thin now that ribs protruded through her pallid flesh. Nical shivered in disgust at the sight of her.

  “I’ve told you before,” he said, “you’re not to come until I send for you.” He began pulling off his outer garments, filthy from the ride, and tossing them onto a chair.

  “But you never do,” she whined, “not any more. If I wait, I’ll die before you send for me.”

  Nical thought she probably would die, like the two slaves he’d bedded before her. He didn’t understand why his women seemed to waste away after a time. “Love sickness,” his younger brother called it. “A passionate devotion to their king consumes these poor girls until there’s nothing left of them.”

  Arn didn’t believe in love any more than Nical did, but he might have a point. Even when Nical chose carefully – the most self-confident of slaves, secure in their beauty, indifferent to the feelings of others – these girls gradually came to dote upon him in a heated way that burned up who they’d been before. The more consumed they were by passion for him, the more they wasted away. If this truly was love, then Nical was glad he’d never felt it.

  “Please,” Raffiela moaned. “Take me any way you want. Only don’t banish me from your presence. I cannot bear it.” She came onto her knees and crawled toward the foot of the bed.