CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Serilla's Choice

THE RICHLY APPOINTED CHAMBER WAS CLOSE AND STUFFY WITH SMOKE. Serilla's head reeled with it while her stomach protested the constant swaying of the deck. Every joint in her body ached from the unending motion. She had never been a good sailor, not even when she was a girl. The intervening years in the Satrap's palace had not improved her stomach for travel. She wished they had taken a smaller, more seaworthy vessel. The Satrap had insisted on an immense, full-bellied ship for himself and his entourage. Half of the delay in their departure had been the revamping of the ship's interior to allow for these spacious quarters. Serilla had heard some arguments from the shipwrights doing the work. It had had something to do with ballast and stability. Serilla had not understood the basis for their concerns, but she now suspected that the ship's wallowing gait was the result of Cosgo's insistence on his own plans. She reminded herself yet again that every tedious lurch carried her one wave closer to Bingtown.

It was hard to recall that she had spent days looking forward with eagerness to this voyage. She had packed and re-packed garments, choosing and discarding and choosing again. She did not want to look dowdy, nor suggestive. She did not want to look young, nor old. She had agonized over what attire would make her appear scholarly but still attractive. She had settled on simple robes, modestly cut, but elaborately embroidered by her own hand. She had no jewelry to adorn herself. By tradition, a Heart Companion possessed and wore only the jewelry the Satrap had given her. The old Satrap had always given her books and scrolls instead of jewels. Cosgo had never given her anything, though he decorated the Heart Companions he had chosen for himself with jewels as if they were cakes to be sprinkled with sparkling sugar. She tried not to care that she must appear before the Bingtown Traders unadorned. She was not going to Bingtown to impress them with her jewelry. She was going there to see, at last, the land and the folk she had studied for more than half her life. She had not known such anticipation since the old Satrap had first noticed her and invited her to become his Companion. She prayed that this visit to Bingtown would be a similar beginning.

At the present moment, it was difficult to cling to such dreams. Never had she felt her life so sordid and tawdry as now. In Jamaillia, she had always been able to insulate herself from the more debased practices of the Satrap's court. When the young Satrap had begun to let the feasts degenerate into celebrations of gluttony and lewdness, she had simply stopped attending them. On board the ship, there was nowhere to flee his excesses. If she wished to eat, she must eat with the Satrap. To leave this chamber and walk in the fresh air on the open deck was to invite the coarse attention of the Chalcedean crew. There was no relief there, even if she had had Cosgo's leave to depart the room.

Satrap Cosgo and Companion Kekki sprawled on the large divan of the chamber. They were both nearly insensible from pleasure herbs and smoke. Kekki had whined that they were the only way to keep her mind from her queasiness, and loudly lamented that never before this had she been so seasick. Serilla had been too tactful to ask if she might be pregnant. It was not unheard of for a Satrap to impregnate one of his Heart Companions, but it was still seen as tasteless. Children of such unions were turned over to the servants of Sa as soon as they were born, to be raised as priests. They were never told of their parentage. Only with his lawful spouse could the Satrap conceive an heir. Cosgo had not yet taken a wife. Serilla doubted that he would until his nobles forced it on him.

If he lived that long. She glanced at him, sprawled half atop Kekki and breathing hoarsely. Another Companion, also stupefied, lolled across the pillows at his feet. Her head was flung back, her dark hair scattered across the cushions. Her slitted eyes showed slices of white. Periodically, her fingers spasmed. To look at her made Serilla queasy.

The entire voyage so far had been a series of feasts and entertainment, followed by Cosgo's extended periods of nausea and stupor brought on by too much wine and soporifics. Then he would demand his healers, who would dose and drug him in a different direction, until he felt well enough to prescribe his own pleasures again. The other nobles on board were as self-indulgent, save a few who often claimed seasickness as an excuse to remain in their quarters.

Several Chalcedean nobles journeyed north with him. Their ships traveled in company with the Satrap's flagship. They often joined him for dinner. The women they brought with them were like dangerous pets as they vied for attention from those they deemed most powerful. They horrified Serilla. The only more terrifying aspects of those dinners were the political discussions that followed. The Chalcedean nobles urged Cosgo to make an example of Bingtown, to tolerate none of the Traders' rebellious talk, to take a firm hand and quash them. They were building in the Satrap a sense both of self-righteousness and anger that Serilla deemed unjustified. She no longer attempted to make her own voice heard. The Chalcedeans only shouted her down with their laughter, or made mock of her. Last night Cosgo had bid her to be silent as befit her. The thought of his public insult to her still stirred the flames of anger in her heart.