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Kait lacked the magical skills to make herself heard. But that would change.
She would learn whatever she needed to learn, because in the moment that
Hasmal brought her into his circle, her world had changed for the good. She
had so much to live for, and so much to do. The Reborn was real, and would be
the son of her beloved cousin, who had not died at the hands of the Sabirs.
Kait would do whatever she had to do to keep them safe, and to help the
Reborn s love restore the world.
* * *
Rrru-eeth s diffident tap at the cabin door woke Kait, who had spent the night
alone.
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 Come in. She yawned and stretched. In spite of the increasing tension caused
by her need for Shift, she felt good. Lighthearted, full of hope, certain for
the first time that the future would be better than the past. Danya, mother of
the Reborn. She grinned at Rrru-eeth when she peeked her head in the door.
 What shall I do for you today? Do you have any laundry, or does anything in
your cabin not meet with your satisfaction?
Kait grinned at her.  Do you have something else you d rather do today? Spend
time with Jayti, maybe?
Rrru-eeth shook her head.  Perry the Crow sighted the islands you described,
and until they ve made sure we won t ground on a reef, Jayti will be on deck
working.
Perry the Crow was a sociable crewman named Perimus Ahern, who had a liking
for heights and whose eyesight was as sharp as Kait s. During meals, he told
amusing tales of his life before he d joined the
Peregrine, when he d been a Calimekkan barrister prosecuting cases of patent
theft among the city s inventors. In his last case he d made the mistake of
winning the case for the actual inventor who had accused a minor member of a
major Family (though he refused to say which one) of the theft of his idea.
Perry discovered to his chagrin that he needed to make both a career and
location change the very next day. He said, though, that he had come to love
the sea, and his trial against the Family  inventor had turned out to be his
luckiest one.
 I ll be glad to reach land again, Kait said.  I m tired of the sea.
Rrru-eeth s smile had an edge to it.  The ship can be confining for even a
short time. Imagine spending your entire life on it.
Kait thought of living in a tiny world built of wood and bounded by nothing
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but water and sky. She shook her head.  I can t imagine that. But surely you
only spend some of your time on the ship.
Rrru-eeth s dark eyes narrowed, and she said softly,  I wouldn t think of
leaving the decks of the
Peregrine.
As long as I m on board, I answer only to Captain Draclas. If I were to leave,
well . . . there are those in Ibera and the Territories who have reasons to
want my neck in a rope.
Kait sensed the other woman s pain as a change in her scent, a tensing of her
body, a shift in the pattern of her breathing. All those things came to her
clearly  the Karnee senses were growing more acute as she neared her next
Shift. She leaned forward and said,  I can t believe you earned that fate.
She shook her head.  You re a good person.
Rrru-eeth clasped her hands together and said,  Yet by Iberan law, I ve earned
death in any Iberan land.
 How?
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 It s not important.
 If it s your life, how can it not be important?
Rrru-eeth laughed  a sharp, angry bark.  My life is important to me. To
Jayti, I suppose. Certainly not to you  you re Family.
Kait shook her head.  Not anymore. My neck is, I m sure, marked for the rope,
too.
Rrru-eeth sighed, and Kait pointed to the chair across from her bunk.  Sit.
Talk. We have some time, surely.
With obvious reluctance, Rrru-eeth took the offered chair and said,  My people
were from the mountains to the southeast of Tarrajanta-Kevalta, what you would
maybe know as Lake Jirin in
Manarkas.
Kait nodded. The Galweigh Family had holdings in the New Territories south of
Lake Jirin, which was one of the lakes the Wizards War had created.
 I lived there until I was about six, I suppose. Maybe a little younger. Then
diaga came to our town, and claimed all the people in it as their slaves.
Kait said,  The diaga? That s humans like . . . she was going to say me, but
at the last instant, she changed that to  the captain? And Jayti?
 Yes. Our people were good fighters, and they stood against the diaga, but
your people s weapons were better. Most of our fighters died. This left the
injured, and the old, and the young, and a few of the women who were pregnant
at the time and not able to fight. The diaga gathered all of us and took us to
the New Territories. We went first to Old Jirin, then to Badaella, then to
Vanimar, and finally  for me, at least  to Glasmar. At each stop, the diaga
sold such of us as they could. No one had much interest in a child as small as
I was until we reached Glasmar, and there, at last, a buyer found me.
Her voice had grown harsh at those last few words; Kait had the idea that the
buyer had not been some kind family who needed a companion for their young
daughter. She was right.
 A man named Tiroth Andrata bought me. He also bought my younger sister, who
was the only other member of my family to survive, and two other little girls
from our village. We d been acquired to be trained as concubines for those
among the upper classes of Glasmar who had . . . exotic tastes. Tiroth
Andrata apparently had a thriving business in exotic concubines; he became
wealthy from his trade, and met his own needs at the same time. He trained us
all himself, you see. He was very fond of small children, and perhaps fondest
of all of little Jerrpu girls.
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Diplomacy of Wolves
 Jerrpu?
 My kind of person. As you call yourself human.
Kait swallowed and nodded to show she understood.  So he . . . trained you . .
.

Trained.
A weak word for what he did. Rrru-eeth smiled thinly.  Oh, yes. He trained us
regularly. We learned all sorts of techniques for pleasing those who would one
day be our masters. Bagga, which is what he had us call him, was especially
fond of teaching us to take pain and humiliation, which he said was the
ultimate form of giving pleasure. She looked away and her eyes narrowed
again.  We spent long years with him, my sister and I. The other two from our
group he sold, and all of those children that he bought afterward, as well.
The two of us he kept until we were no longer little girls at all  but you
see, we had become very good at taking pain and humiliation, and he spent a
great deal of time and effort finding new ways to give it out. He told us he
kept us because we were stronger than the little children that he could sell
for a better price, and he didn t want to risk breaking one of them while
developing new training when he could practice on us.
Kait closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. She felt sick. She d taken the
existence of servants and slaves for granted all her life; they were the
silent faces in the hallways, bringing things or taking them away, making sure
rooms stayed clean and beds had fresh linen and food came on time and tasted
the way it was supposed to. They d never had voices to her before. They d
never seemed entirely real.
Now she thought of the slaves that belonged to her own Family  they were
different because in Ibera they had to be human, of course, not Scarred, but
they were still slaves. Among the Galweighs, she could think of several men [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]