The Humbled (The Lost Words: Volume 4) Read online

  Sonya wished she could kill them, but that would just ruin all her other plans. Soon. She had to keep calm and focused. Queens had a terrible burden to bear, as her own destiny showed.

  Bibi came in after knocking three times slowly. Sonya cringed. She remembered how she had snubbed the girl a few times in the past, before she had received Bart’s later. Be nice. Be polite. Yes, she had to remember to show some humility, even toward silly trollops like the secretary.

  The clerk nodded at her mistress. Sinead took her report and read. Sonya waited, keeping her face passive of any ill emotions. She thought Bibi was looking at her, but she pretended to be busy staring at the head of the guild of merchants instead.

  “This is quite interesting,” Sinead said. Sonya didn’t like her voice. It was too high.

  Sonya almost snapped her fingers impatiently. “Please, dear?”

  The report was written in code, as they had all agreed. On paper, it discussed mundane details of the city’s production, the coal, cloth, and pottery figures. But the real message was the change in the position of the nomad forces in the barracks and on the walls. Colors denoted the tribes and clans, tonnage signified the troops’ strength, names of shops and storehouses stood for origins and destinations. They had to keep track of the Kataji deployment. It was vital before the city’s liberation.

  Bibi looked over her shoulder, through the open door of the chamber, into the corridor. She was trying to see if any nomad might sneak around the corner and barge into their meeting. Burning of little notes over candle flame would not reflect well on Sonya’s position, so she had girls going back and forth with reports and messages all the time, and if a girl saw one of the nomads coming, she would enter and warn them in time. They even had thin cigarettes, the latest fashion with the ladies in Eybalen, so they could pretend to smoke, and hide the burning evidence.

  Strange, Sonya thought, staring at a silver box holding those rolled sticks of dried leaves. People had died in their thousands, mothers had to ration porridge to their babies, but you could find stupid little items like these in almost any villa. The Kataji had left them behind, uninterested or unsure how to use them. Primitives.

  Another clerk bustled in, pretending to bring in another missive, her face panicky. It read, “General Pacmad is coming.”

  Heart hammering like war drums, Sonya carefully rose and upended the candle holder into the hearth. There was time, no need to rush. She looked at her fingers, red polish glinting like blood. Steady. Calm. She sat back behind the desk, reached into the silver box, a gift from her captor, and picked up one of the cigarettes.

  Sonya had never bothered much about what Eybalen whores did. She had always had her own superior finesse and style. Using that marvelous gift between her legs that never went out of fashion. Now she rummaged through her memory, trying to remember how to light one of these things. Puff? Inhale? But the end caught flame, and she coughed, gray tendrils eddying out of her nostrils and mouth.

  Sinead waved the cloud of acrid smoke away from her, blinking rapidly. Delphine looked surprised by the whole idea. Giselle looked like she was considering the same thing as Sonya.

  No, it would be suspicious, Sonya warned.

  She could hear steps. Soon enough, Pacmad came into view, grinning. He was walking side by side with Aileen. The girl was wearing some thin white sleeveless dress with narrow straps, her nipples showing. There were bruises on her upper arms and shoulders. And what looked like a bite mark at the corner of her mouth. A sweat sheen on her forehead, hair tousled. She looked like she had entertained the bastard with her young, sweet cunt.

  “What an occasion,” he teased, the glint in his eyes dangerous. “Aileen will join you for consultations. Tell me, is Sonya teaching you well about city business?”

  The girl shrugged. “I guess so.”

  Sonya swallowed, her throat sore from that smoke. Every time she met that bitch, she felt weak, disoriented, frightened. With every little word, every little gesture, Aileen could condemn her, make Pacmad angry. She could not afford to lose his confidence now. But the mongrel only cared for fathering more children, the one thing she could not give him.

  He was staring at her, she realized and suppressed swallowing another hard lump. “Smoking?”

  She smiled weakly, unsure what to say. But it was obvious he expected her to demonstrate her affection for this new habit. Carefully, she sucked the bitter end of the rolled, vile thing, and it was nothing like the stories. No sweet taste of mountain herbs, no intoxicating lilt of the spirit, just the smell of old grass and foul smoke. Well, what else could she expect from lying Caytorean sluts?

  “Eybalen fashion,” she rasped, trying to keep tears away, and a monstrous desire to hack like a dying old man.

  He rolled his tongue over his teeth. “That stinks.”

  She placed the cigarette on the desk, and it decided to roll on its own, leaving tiny orange sparks on the gleaming oak. “I am sorry,” she admitted.

  “You will not do that,” he warned.

  Aileen pointed. “May I try, please?”

  Pacmad shrugged, his muscles twitching. “Yes.”

  The slut approached the table and picked up the unfinished stub. Then, she pressed it against her whorish lips, pouted, and tried the same thing Sonya had done just moments earlier. Cough, vomit, you bitch. But Aileen did nothing of that sort. She frowned, then inhaled once again. Frowned, inhaled. Eventually, she smirked.

  “Is this what ladies in Eybalen do?” she asked stupidly.

  Sonya mounted a smile of her own. “It is quite popular.” Well, it had been just before Leopold’s suicide and her imprisonment.

  “Can I take those, please?” Aileen was staring at Pacmad with beautiful, young adoration. Sonya wished she could ruin her face with a cheese grater. Take one of those cigarettes and extinguish it against the white of her eye.

  Pacmad showed his teeth, face going soft. “Take them. Sonya will provide more when you need.”

  Sonya made a tiny nod. “Please join us. We are discussing the production output.”

  The general looked instantly bored. He appraised the women in the room for a long moment, then went out, his footsteps receding. Aileen sat herself right next to Sonya, blowing smoke in her ear. She couldn’t stand it anymore, so she coughed, and then gagged on her own spit.

  “You don’t like it?” Aileen’s face was colored with concern.

  Sonya blinked the smoky bite away. “Now, sweetie, here’s what we did so far,” she started, ignoring the jibe. Like every time Aileen joined her for trade discussions, Sonya carefully altered the topics and began a slow, boring lecture.

  Pacmad might want to replace her with this young bitch, but fortunately, Aileen wasn’t very bright or too keen on studying. She got bored quite often, quickly, and she skipped many of the meetings, probably too busy fucking. Sonya was immensely grateful for that, because it allowed her just enough time to resume planning her realm’s defense. With Aileen around all the time, the insurrection would have been almost impossible.

  But the Kataji chieftain was rather lenient with the slut. If he saw urgency in her studies, he never showed it, never expressed his anger. Well, she could not unravel all truths and mysteries. She was fighting for her life, for her freedom, for the freedom of her nation, and she would use any chance to better her position. There would be time to ponder Aileen after Somar was liberated. Oh, there would be so much time to repay the whore for all her little tricks, for all the humiliation. They would make it into a song, Sonya promised.

  The guild mistresses sat quietly, looking somewhat shocked by this exchange. Delphine was the first to recover. “Lady Aileen, you might want to review these reports, too.” She piled a meaningless swath of papers in front of the whore.

  Another day slowly bled as they sat and talked. Aileen was asking too many questions, and they were forced to answer her, give her genuine replies about how the city was run, how one could estimate the required yield, how the supply o
f wood to forges and the casting of bolts and nails all came together. Sonya taught her about trade agreements, about loans, about collateral payments. She even told her an old cautionary tale about a greedy banker and a crazy goatherd who got rich through a simple mistake in a written contract.

  Eventually, the slut surrendered and left. By then, everyone in the room was dead exhausted, and Sonya was nauseated from the smoke. She was hungry, too, and she realized her body hurt from tension, muscles drawn taut.

  “We will meet again tomorrow. Early morning.” The slut usually slept late. That would give them enough time to resolve some of the difficult plans before they were interrupted.

  She was tired. She should just go to sleep. It was obvious that Pacmad had other entertainment. Instead, she left the monarchical chamber and went for a stroll through the palace. After all, she had to keep in shape. Sitting around all day long would not make her belly or her thighs any less lumpy. She had to be beautiful and ravishing, and she could not afford to lose to Aileen.

  A summer sun was setting, kissing the city rooftops. If her reckoning of time was correct, tomorrow was the name day of Monarch Raven, who had allegedly founded Somar. A week after that, her own. She would be that much older.

  Cruel how time favored men and made women uglier. With every new year, she had to work harder to keep her breasts firm, to keep her bottom round, to milk her skins with expensive lotions so that creases would not settle in. Men were valued by their deeds, women by their faces and breasts.

  Sonya considered leaving the palace and walking out into the cobbled courtyard. But her sandaled feet took her toward the workshops in the back of the manse, the ghost of a broken toe clicking faintly. She did not know why she chose to go there and stare at hairy men beating lumps of metal, feeding and grooming horses, or cleaning armor. Yet, their smelly, scarred, imperfect shapes gave her solace for some reason. Maybe after Aileen, she needed a dose of ugliness to calm her down.

  The courtyard was thick with nomads, but they ignored her, knowing all too well who she belonged to. They didn’t even dare look at her the wrong way. Morbidly, she was totally safe among her foes, these unruly, illiterate tribesmen.

  Their smells were offensive nonetheless. Disgusting. Animals, just like the horses and dogs slinking around them. She should be repulsed. Perhaps becoming a queen had changed her perspective, made her stronger. After all, if she could not endure the eye-watering stench of brown horse piss, burnt iron, and unwashed bodies, she did not deserve to lead a nation.

  From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed another alien presence, a clean spot on a dirty rag of meat and hair and leather and tools. None other than Verina. She had two ladies-in-waiting trailing her. Unconcerned, just like Sonya, the viscountess was strolling, enjoying herself.

  What! First Aileen, now this whore. What kind of trickery is this!

  Almost in a trance, Sonya moved toward the other slut. Verina saw her and beamed a precise, cordial smile in greeting. “My lady,” the slut greeted, as befitting her station.

  “Verina,” Sonya said, moving closer, blowing two pecks in the air near the woman’s perfumed cheeks. “What a strange place we meet.”

  “My lady, I saw you crossing the corridor. I thought it would be rude if I didn’t come over to greet you. I was just coming back from a visit to the park. General Pacmad provided me with an escort of his men so I would be safe.”

  What game is that mongrel playing? Sonya wondered, fuming. Perhaps he had discovered her and was merely toying with her. Perhaps she was a dead woman, and she did not know it yet. No! She could not give up. She could not let doubt smother her. She was a queen.

  “I was intrigued, so I came here,” Sonya lied. “I have never given the backbone of a functioning palace much thought. Now that I am in charge of providing for this city, this is an illuminating exercise. One must know the fine details to govern with efficiency.”

  “You are very brave,” Verina agreed, radiating nothing but pure sincerity.

  Sonya looked to the left. There was an anvil there, a big hammer resting on top of it, a bucket with iron rods on the ground below. She imagined herself dragging Verina by the hair into the smithy, laying her head on that cold, dusty metal, and beating her brains out, like egg yolk from a shell.

  She extended her hand. “Dear, we have not chatted in a long time.” And she led her inferior away from the noise and bustle, scheming with vigor, thinking how she would defeat this slut, too.

  CHAPTER 10

  Jarman was almost bored waiting for his friend to return. He sat on a tree stump, an old, charred relic turned black and stone hard by lightning, watching a beetle rolling a dung ball three times its size, his head swimming with thoughts and worries.

  There was a noise like someone whipping dried leaves. Jarman raised his head and saw a cloud of litter settle down. Lucas was standing there, back from his spying. He dusted himself off and stepped closer, his tattooed face stretched with worry and weariness.

  “It is bad,” the senior wizard admitted, striding past.

  Jarman pushed himself off the stump and joined his life slave for a walk back to Ecol, a shy league away. It would take them a while to get back to civilization, to the life of politics and intrigue, just enough time to let them talk uninterrupted.

  There was a knot of woodsmen coming out of the Weeping Boughs. One lifted a hand in greeting and waved. Jarman waved back. His robed appearance and Lucas’s blue face had made them quite recognizable with the people of the town.

  Lucas steered away from the cutters, into the wild grass expanse, surefooted and maybe agitated. To see the old Anada preoccupied was unnerving. “The Naum forces are coming closer. They have almost completely overrun northern Eracia and Caytor. The eastern body is lagging behind a little, but that doesn’t diminish their threat in the slightest.”

  Jarman tried to imagine the layout of the realms. So they had just a few more weeks before the armies clashed. Maybe a month, a month and a half. That was all the time he had to make Amalia forge peace with the Parusites. Then, it might be too late.

  “Their supply train is stretched awfully long and thin, though. We should be able to exploit that.” Lucas stepped over a rock. “Some of them have taken over abandoned villages and planted a few crops that just wouldn’t grow in this climate. But most are just plodding on south.”

  Lucas’s magical trips north and back had given both of them a valuable insight into the disposition of Calemore’s vast army. The van consisted of troops, a staggering number of them, moving as a landslide, unstoppable. But they did not have any deep strategy or any reserves. They had to forage off the land, and being bent on destruction, their progress was simply not sustainable. The army could not feed itself, and soon it would be forced to slow down.

  Following days and weeks behind, was the rest of the Naum nation, women and children and craftsmen, bringing their lives and culture to the realms. Or rather, returning after their ancient banishment. It seemed Calemore simply planned on killing everyone else, then settling his folk on the empty land. But war had its own unpredictability, and it burned more than it saved. His warriors were slowly starving themselves. Their headlong pace was their biggest enemy right now. They might have to wait for their kin to join them before they could resume their advance.

  Jarman was not fond of the idea of murdering unarmed people, but he could not really think of an easier way of fighting a superior foe. As long as the nations of the realms remained split and at war with one another, Lucas and he simply did not have enough soldiers to resist the Naum invaders. Slipping behind the enemy lines and cutting off all their supplies sounded like their best hope. That meant sending some of the defenders into the conquered, ruined territory to harry the Naum forces, maybe even make them stop their brutal war altogether. It was almost unimaginable, but he had to believe that. My visions…

  At the moment, he was not sure Amalia would listen.

  She was very frightened, like a cornered animal, and
she felt she desperately needed loyal men around her. Jarman could very well guess what her reaction to his idea would be: one of scorn and disbelief, maybe even outright mistrust.

  “You should help Amalia,” Lucas said suddenly.

  Jarman frowned. “I am.”

  The old wizard shrugged. “Not quite. You are holding her in your debt. She knows that. She begrudges you for that. No one likes being humiliated, and even less being reminded of their helplessness.”

  Jarman sniffed. “I have saved her life more than fifty times in the past two months.”

  Lucas shook his head. “You have indebted her fifty times.”

  “It’s the only way to get her to agree to my proposal.”

  “Well, so far she hasn’t made peace with the Parusites, has she? It’s pure luck the Athesians won that battle against Princess Sasha. Now, all Adam’s daughter can think of is that she has no friends and allies around her, and she resents that. Resents you.”

  Jarman was not expecting so much insight, so many words from his old friend. It was disturbing. But Lucas was not one to impose his ideas. “I am helping her,” he said weakly.

  “We have come here to avenge your third mother,” Lucas preached. “That does not mean we should let this land burn after we’re done. I’ve seen people burn their crops and houses before fleeing so that the Naum soldiers would not be able to take them for their own. Not a bad war tactic, but if Calemore loses, then what? Caytor and Eracia will be left scarred, ruined. People will just starve. We cannot allow that. It would be immoral.”

  Which is why the Sirtai never meddled in continental affairs, Jarman thought with some bitterness. No matter what decision he made, it would always have dire consequences. It would cause as much grief and misery as joy and progress. The only question was, did he want to be the one making the grim choices for the sake of pride?

  “I will stand by you to the death,” Lucas spoke. “But I will not turn a blind eye.”

  Jarman looked behind him, north. You couldn’t tell by the puffy, milky wisps of white clouds moving across the blue sky that there was death and destruction there, so far, yet so close. “Maybe our plan should focus on stalling the enemy. That could work. Force them to retreat.”