Sailing to Sarantium (sm-1) by Guy Gavriel Kay

Author:Guy Gavriel Kay [Kay, Guy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy
ISBN: 0-06-105117-9
Publisher: HarperPrism
Published: 1998-03-18T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

Could one forget how to be free?

The question had come to her on the road and it lingered now, unanswered. Could a year of slavery mark your nature forever? Could the fact of having been sold? She had been sharp-tongued, quick, astringent at home. Erimitsu. Too clever to marry, her mother had worried. Now she felt afraid in the core of her being: anxious, lost, jumping at sounds, averting her eyes. She had spent a year having any man who paid Morax use her in whatever way he wanted. A year being beaten for the slightest failing or for none at all, to keep her mindful of her station.

They had only stopped that at the very end, when they wanted her unmarked, smooth as a sacrifice, for death in the forest.

From her room at the inn Kasia could hear the noise from the Hippodrome. A steady sound like the cascading waters north of home, but rising at intervals-unlike the waters-into a punishing volume of sound, a roar like some many-throated beast when a turn of fortune, terrible or wonderful, happened over there where horses were running.

The zubir had made no sound at all in the wood. There had been silence, under and over leaves, shrouded and gathered in fog. The world closing down to the smallest thing, to the one thing. Something terrible or wonderful, and her own existence given back to her, leading her from the Aldwood to Sarantium which had never even been a dream. And to freedom, which had been, every night of that year.

There were eighty thousand people over in the Hippodrome right now. Carullus had said so. It wasn't a number she could even get her mind around. Nearly five hundred thousand in the City, he'd said. Even after the riot two years ago and the plague. How did they all not tremble?

She'd spent the morning in this small room. Had thought to have her meal sent up, reflecting on the change that embodied, wondering what girl, beaten and afraid, would appear with a tray for the lady.

The lady with the soldiers. With the man who was going to the palace. She was that lady. Carullus had made certain they knew it downstairs. Service was a function of status here, as everywhere, and the Bronze Gates opening were the doorway to the world in Sarantium.

Martinian was going there. Or, rather, Caius Crispus was. He'd said they should call him Crispin in private. His name was Crispin. He'd been married to a woman named Ilandra. She was dead and his two daughters were. He had cried her name aloud in the country dark.

He hadn't touched Kasia since that night after the Aldwood. Even then, he'd had her sleep in his cloak on the floor again at the beginning. She'd come to the bed herself, when he cried out. Only then had he turned to her. And only that one time. After, he'd made certain she had her own room as they travelled with the soldiers

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