The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [44]
“There you are. Now that I’ll have the time, we’re going to start educating you.” She swept the tiles to one side, then looked up to consider him. “You don’t do too badly when it comes to serving food, but you’ve got to learn how to carry my fan properly and other things like that. And then there’s the way you talk. Your accent’s dreadful, and we’ll have to spend some time on correcting it.”
Although Rhodry was hoping that Alaena would tire of teaching him such dubious skills as the proper way to fold scarves and arrange cushions, she took every detail so seriously that he soon realized she was quite simply bored with her life. Thanks to her inherited wealth, she had to work or wait for nothing, and while she understood financial affairs perfectly well, one of her many brothers-in-law did all the actual work of managing her properties. Twice a week this Dinvarbalo would come to lunch. Over a long feast of many elaborate courses, they would discuss her investments in land and trading ventures; she would ask sharp questions and make sharper suggestions while he wrote her wishes down on a wooden tablet covered with wax. Once he was gone, the spirit would slowly fade from her eyes again, and she would summon Rhodry for one of his lessons. Usually she would be irritable, too, slapping him across the face for the least mistake or even sending him away in a flood of insults. Yet, the next time that she called him back, she would be pleasant again, if strict.
Porto and Disna told him something of her history. She’d been born the second child of ten to a poor oil seller down in Ronaton, in poverty so extreme that she’d nearly been sold as a slave to feed the rest of the family. Her beauty, however, had saved her by catching the eye of a rich merchant who had most honorably married rather than bought her. Since he was fifty-two when she was fourteen, the marriage had been far from happy, even though her childhood sufferings had made her obsessed with being the perfect wife. More from his incapacity than any other reason, they had no children before he died at seventy-four, after a long debilitating illness during which she nursed him with her own hands. Now, although she was far from eager to bind herself to another husband, she also knew that her beauty was sure to fade, sooner rather than later. Cosmetics and herbal baths filled her mornings. She often sent Rhodry to the marketplace as soon as it opened to buy rose petals, fresh cream, and beeswax while she and Disna closeted themselves like alchemists in the bath chamber.
Much to his surprise, Rhodry found himself growing sorry for her. Although he wanted to hate her for keeping his freedom locked up on a bit of paper in her jewel chest, he simply couldn’t. There came a time, in fact, when he realized an even more bitter truth about himself. With cosmetics for the mistress and spices for the cook, he was jogging home from the market one morning when the air was fresh and crisp with the scent of coming rain, and the last of the summer’s flowers bloomed bright over painted walls. He found himself singing. With a shock he realized that for a moment he’d been happy, that he’d come to accept his new life. All day he noticed other things, how pleased he was when Porto praised him, how he laughed at jokes in the kitchen, how he smiled when as a sign of her favor Alaena gave him a silver piece. He realized that if he someday took Porto’s place, being a trusted warreko would give him security no matter whom Alaena married.
At first he’d wondered why slaves didn’t rise up in open revolt; now he was beginning to understand. For a slave with his standing, life wasn’t cruel enough to take the risk. Any slaves such as the tin miners who might well be driven to desperate measures were kept branded, chained, and half-starved, and their lives were too short for long-term plans. Any slave like himself who had a firm commercial value had every necessity in life, a few comforts, even, and the possibility, though a chancy one, of someday earning freedom. If he’d remembered his former life,