The Pharoah Contract

Ruiz took delight in the sound of Corean’s voice; it caressed the ear, as her face pleasured the eye.

“It’s this, then. Preall will never believe that it was you who visited such destruction on him. It was too extreme for any but an act of vengeance or madness. I’ll see to the repair of the snapfields immediately, and there will be no evidence to tie us to it.”

“Good.”

With returning warmth came a comfortable lassitude. Ruiz resolved sleepily to think about recent events at a later time, when his mind would be clearer.

He slipped slowly into a healing oblivion.

Chapter 23

The rooms to which the giantess conducted Nisa were at first glance more Spartan than any dwelling she had ever known.

The giantess pressed one beefy hand to a small rectangle of pulsing light at the side of a metal door. The door jolted aside with a gasping sound.

Darkness lay within, and Nisa was afraid to enter. The giantess shoved her impatiently.

As soon as Nisa crossed the threshold, soft white light flooded the room.

“Oh,” she said, dismayed. Surely Corean hadn’t meant for her to stay in this featureless box. There was nothing at all in the room. The ceiling glowed brightly, banishing shadow. On the far wall, a doorway opened to another, smaller room.

Nisa turned to her escort. The large woman was turning away, blank-faced. “Wait here,” she told Nisa. She stepped out, and the door clashed shut.

Nisa stood in the center of the box, too overcome with strangeness to move. By degrees her amazement left her, and it was as if only that astonishment, like the stuffing in a scarecrow, had been holding her up. She slumped to the hard floor and set her face in her hands. She made no sound, but presently tears began to leak through her fingers.

Finally her eyes ran dry, though her nose continued to drip. She rubbed at her face, and pulled her fingers through the worst of the tangles in her hair.

The open doorway into the next room drew her. She rose and went over to it. It was equally featureless, as she could see by the light spilling from the first room. As she stood peering in, she heard the gasp of the door and whirled.

An exotic creature entered the box with a curious prancing stride. Nisa’s first thought was, How elegant. Her next was, How strange. Her visitor was tall and broad-shouldered, with tumbling ringlets of auburn hair, wearing a knee-length shift of some light, clinging white fabric, patterned with random flecks of warm color. Below the hem, the calves were strong and smooth. The slender feet wore thin sandals, laced with lavender ribbons. Small high breasts thrust against the robe, and rounded hips swayed as the visitor moved. The naked arms were strongly muscled, the hands long and fine, the well-shaped nails striped with delicate bands of color. The chiseled face was mercurial: at one moment as innocent and open as a young child’s, the next suffused with a dark cynical calculation.

It spoke. “A burning paramount pleasure to serve you, noble lady.” The voice gave no clue to the creature’s gender; it was a melodious contralto.

It swept into a low bow, legs straight, curls brushing along the floor. “One rises as far above one’s station as Sooksun at his apex rises above the jungle, to introduce oneself: One is called Ayam.”

Nisa scarcely knew how to respond to such flowery abasement. “Hello, Ayam,” she said lamely.

Ayam bowed again and again, apparently overcome by hysterical joy. “Oh,” Ayam cried in a throbbing voice, “one swoons at the undeserved honor of your greeting, noble lady. One swoons with delight and wonder, both at the generosity of the noble lady, and the wisdom of my great mistress, whose name need not be spoken by such as Ayam—” Ayam seemed willing to go on in that vein for a long time, but Nisa made a gesture of impatience and the stream of hyperbole cut off.

“Why are you here?” Nisa spoke sharply.

Ayam wilted, collapsing into a mound of misery on the hard floor. “Oh, noble lady, Ayam is devastated, that one has failed so terribly to inform the noble lady properly, oh woe, woe—”

“Ayam, please!”

Ayam pulled itself together and wiped at its lovely eyes, though Nisa had seen no actual tears on Ayam’s smooth cheeks. “Yes, of course,” Ayam said in tones of shaky restraint. “Noble lady, Ayam is your helot, here to serve in any small capacity one can, to make you comfortable, to ease your ills, to fetch and carry, to warm your bed, to answer any request—”

“Yes, yes,” Nisa cut off Ayam’s speech. “Well, we won’t be very comfortable here, will we?” She gestured at the barren room.

Ayam’s eyes widened in theatrical shock, but it suddenly came to Nisa that the helot was amused. “Noble lady,” it said. “This is one of the finest of my mistress’ apartments, which you may shape perfectly to your needs. Allow one to show you, though, of course, one is unworthy to instruct the noble lady in the smallest—”

“Never mind that,” Nisa said. “Show me what you mean, Ayam.”