The Pharoah Contract

“He has not mentioned you. In fact, he says very little, so I don’t know what I can tell you about him.” Nisa paused to look into Corean’s blue eyes, saw a warning there. Nisa took fright, spoke on in a quavering voice. “Wuhiya is strong. He hurt a coercer, Casmin, very badly, when Casmin meant to kill me. And Casmin was held to be a mighty man; he killed three men in the Blooding Festival last spring, they say.” Nisa had a sudden sinking feeling that she’d betrayed the strange man who had made such delightful love to her in the bathhouse. “But he didn’t finish Casmin, though Casmin was helpless.”

“Merciful, is he, do you think?” Corean asked.

“He pitied me,” Nisa said.

“That, I think, is only one of the emotions he feels for you,” Corean said. She laughed again, and moved closer yet, until she was pressed against Nisa. Her breath was spicy. “Did you,” Corean asked, “enjoy your bath?”

Nisa didn’t know how to answer, but she felt a blush climb in her face. Corean took her chin, and turned Nisa’s head until she was looking directly into Corean’s eyes, those eyes like hammered blue metal. Corean kissed her, all soft moist lips, and then Nisa felt the touch of Corean’s tongue, a light tingling stroke.

“You still taste a little of death, Nisa,” Corean said. “But it’s all right. That’s not a bad taste, to me.”

Corean’s perfect face was still heartbreakingly beautiful — and that, Nisa thought, was a terrible, incomprehensible thing.

Corean drew away and signaled the giantess. “Take my guest to her quarters, and give her a helot to see to her comfort.” The woman moved forward with the leash, but Corean frowned and said, “She won’t need that.”

* * *

At the wall, in the night, Ruiz waited for the snapfield to fail. As he waited, he twirled the hook moodily. He thought unwillingly of Nisa, who had already caused him so much trouble. And who, though she was gone beyond recall, continued to trouble him. A rational being — such as Ruiz Aw — formed his attachments based on rational factors: intellect, or a commonality of interests.

Here he sat, however, mooning over a woman from a world that, with extraordinary luck and a thousand more years of Terran tech seepage, might become eligible for limited membership in the lowest rung of the pangalac culture. It rankled. In his darkest moments, Ruiz Aw worried that he was no better than any other foolish romantic.

The snapfield failed, cutting short further maundering, and Ruiz stood up. Well, now, he thought.

He flipped the hook up the wall, and it arced over, trailing the leather rope. He gave a jerk; the hook caught, and he swarmed upward. At the top he straddled the wall, jerked the hook loose. As he did, he took a split second to look about, and his heart sank. The compound was vast, covering thousands of hectares. And worst of all, there was no corridor below, just another paddock, shaped like a bowl, much bigger than the Pharaohan pen, and at the center a lake, glowing with a soft blue light.

“Ah, well,” he said. He was acutely conscious of the snapfield rail, cold against his crotch. He made his decision, pulled his leg over, flipped the hook loose, and dropped off the wall into the strange paddock.

It was a long drop, but he rolled out of the impact along a grassy lawn. The reengineered bones of his legs absorbed the shock successfully. As he sprawled to a stop, Ruiz heard the sizzling whump of the returning snapfield.

He crouched under a low bush. The paddock was lush and green, the darkness alive with the songs of night birds. The bush he hid beneath was starred with tiny white blossoms and released a scent of cinnamon and apples when he brushed against it. He waited patiently for long minutes, until he was reasonably sure there would be no hostile reaction to his arrival. He watched the snapfields that surrounded this new paddock, and was disappointed to see that they all appeared to be in perfect order. He could only hope there was another way out.

Finally he retrieved his rope and hid it in the fragrant bush. He headed downhill toward the center of the paddock.

The woods that covered the upper slopes of the bowl were park-like, manicured, and made for easy walking even in the pale starlight. Sook had no moons, unless one counted the myriad of tiny glints from the Shard orbital stations, the weapons platforms that enforced the peculiar laws of Sook.