Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [18]
As sacrifices for abundant livestock, how many of those blue-eyed girls had laid their mewling firstborn sons on Khali pyres? For abundant crops, how many of those expressive men had caged their aged fathers in wicker coffins and watched them drown slowly in bogs? They wept as they did murder—but they did it. For honor, when a man died, if his wife wasn’t claimed by the clan chief, she was expected to throw herself on her husband’s pyre. Dorian had seen a girl fourteen years old whose courage failed her. She’d been married less than a month to an old man she’d never met before her wedding. Her father beat her bloody and threw her on the pyre himself, cursing her for embarrassing him.
“Hey,” Hopper said, “you’re thinking. Don’t. It’s no good here. You work hard, you don’t have to think. Got it?” Halfman nodded. “Then let’s strap this on and you can work.”
Together, they strapped the wicker basket to Halfman’s back. There were thongs that wrapped around each shoulder and his hips to help him bear the great weight of the clay pot full of sewage. Hopper promised to have another pot ready by the time Halfman got back.
Halfman trudged through the cold basalt hallways. It was always dark in the slaves’ passages, with only enough torches burning so the slaves could avoid colliding.
“I’m tired of banging toothless slaves,” a voice said around the next intersection of hallways. “I hear the new girl’s in the Tygre Tower. They say she’s beautiful.”
“Tavi! You can’t call it that.” Bertold Ursuul was Dorian’s great-grandfather, and the man had gone mad, believing he could ascend to heaven if he built a tower high enough and decorated it solely with Harani sword-tooth tygres. His madness embarrassed Garoth Ursuul, so he’d forbidden the tower to be called anything but Bertold’s Tower.
Dorian stopped. There was a torch at the intersection and no way he could retreat without being noticed. The aethelings—for no one else spoke with such arrogance—were coming toward him. There was no escape.
Then he remembered. He was Halfman now, a eunuch slave. So he slouched and prayed that he was invisible.
“I talk how I please,” Tavi said, coming into the intersection just as Halfman did. Halfman stopped, stepped aside, and averted his eyes. Tavi was a classic aetheling: good-looking if with a hawkish nose, well-groomed, well-dressed, an aura of command, and the stench of great power, despite being barely fifteen years old. Halfman couldn’t help but size him up instantly—this one would be the first of his seed class. This would have been one Dorian would have tried to kill early. Too arrogant, though. Tavi was the kind who needed to brag. He would never make it through his uurdthan. “And I can fuck who I please, too,” Tavi said, coming to a stop. He looked down each of the halls as if lost. His indecision froze Halfman in place. He couldn’t move without possibly moving into the aethelings’ path.
“Besides,” Tavi said, “the harems are too closely guarded. But the Tygre Tower’s just got two dreads at the bottom, and her deaf-mute eunuchs.”
“He’ll kill you,” the other aetheling said. He didn’t look pleased to be having this conversation in front of Halfman.
“Who’s gonna tell him? The girl? So he’ll kill her, too? Fuck! Where are we? We’ve been walking this way for ten minutes. All these halls look the same.”
“I said we should have gone the other—” the other aetheling began.
“Shut up, Rivik. You,” Tavi said, speaking to Halfman. Halfman flinched as a slave would. “Khali, you stink! Which way is it to the kitchens?”
Halfman reluctantly pointed back the way the aethelings had come.
Rivik laughed. Tavi cursed. “How far?” Tavi asked.
Halfman would have found some other way to answer, but Dorian couldn’t help himself. “About ten minutes.”
Rivik laughed again, louder.
Tavi backhanded Dorian. “What’s your name, halfman?”
“Milord, this slave is called Halfman.”
“Ooh hoo!” Rivik hooted. “We got a live one here!”
“Not for long,” Tavi said.
“If you kill him, I’ll tell,