The Crimson Gold r-3 Read online

  Tazi matched each of Heraclos's blows, but Naglatha could see that her bodyguard was forcing Tazi back. The two knocked over tables and chairs in their deadly ballet, but Tazi never cried out once for aid. Naglatha suspected the girl wouldn't as, technically, she had started the fracas. You take care of your own problems, don't you? Naglatha deduced. Good.

  Heraclos forced Tazi toward the stairs with a series of blows that grew in intensity. It was clearly visible to Naglatha that her candidate was tiring. She appeared so fatigued that she was unaware of her surroundings and tripped on the wide stairs behind her. Tazi fell back onto the staircase and lost her sword. Heraclos raised his scimitar high overhead and swung the huge blade whistling down. Naglatha momentarily thought she might have to interview another candidate until Tazi hugged herself and rolled quickly to her right. The force of Heraclos's swing was so strong, his blade became momentarily embedded in the stairs.

  Tazi used the opportunity, as she lay stretched out on the steps, to kick savagely at his knee. The blow was enough to topple Heraclos, and it gave Tazi the chance to bolt up and rush past him. By the time he had recovered his feet and his blade, Tazi had retrieved hers as well and the duel continued.

  With all the patrons gone, they had the run of the bar. Naglatha watched as Tazi, who must have found her second wind, danced around Heraclos. She jumped onto chairs and swung around support timbers, making good use of whatever shields she could find to block his powerful arm. Resourceful, Naglatha said to herself, and she was more certain than ever that this woman was the one she needed.

  Heraclos's color rose in his face, and Naglatha suspected it was not just because of the physical exertion of the swordfight. He was becoming enraged at the girl who spun around him and was still standing despite his best efforts. What expertise he had mastered was evidently lost under his growing anger. Naglatha saw that his attacks were becoming more bullish. He was relying on his strength alone, a shortcoming Naglatha had pointed out to him on more than one occasion.

  His pendulous swings forced Tazi to back peddle toward Naglatha and her other bodyguard. Naglatha nodded to Milos, and they made an expedient retreat behind the bar. Heraclos continued to push Tazi back to the now-abandoned table in the corner. She rolled backward along the length of the table and landed on the floor in front of Naglatha's empty chair. Heraclos leaped onto the tabletop and stomped his way to the end where Tazi was crouching. Naglatha saw the woman look around and suddenly smile a lopsided grin. She kicked out at the mended leg, which gave way at once. As the table listed to one corner, Heraclos lost his balance. He dropped his scimitar as his arms pinwheeled about in a frantic attempt to keep his footing. It was no use, and he crashed back full length onto the table. He was dazed and breathless. Tazi did not waste the chance.

  She braced her left hand against the cockeyed table and placed the tip of her blade up under his chin with the other. Breathing hard, Tazi cocked back her sword arm but then stopped. Naglatha was prepared to lose the bodyguard as an unfortunate business expense; however, she was surprised at her candidate's lack of action at that point. Naglatha could see hesitation cross Tazi's features, and she deduced that killing did not come easy to the raven-tressed woman. It was something to note.

  Before Tazi was forced to make a decision, a small garrison of the tharchion's guards burst into the tavern. The five well-equipped men rushed over to Tazi and Heraclos. Two of them seized Tazi, each grabbing one arm and pulled her away from the prostrate servant. Naglatha smiled at Tazi's shock as they yanked her roughly to the bar. She argued with them and struggled. Naglatha was certain that if they had arrived earlier, Tazi would have put up a better fight, but she was clearly winded now. They slammed her against the bar and pinned her there while their comrades helped Heraclos to his feet. Naglatha's other bodyguard used the commotion to retrieve and secret Heraclos's fallen scimitar.

  "I was defending myself," Tazi sputtered to her captors. Naglatha smirked at her distress. "He left me no choice."

  "Shut yer mouth," one of the guards snarled back at her.

  "I have a right," she demanded. "Ask that woman over there," Tazi demanded and nodded in Naglatha's direction. "She saw the whole thing."

  Naglatha slowly walked over to the captain of the tharchion's garrison, who was standing a few feet in front of Tazi. The other two guards had walked Hera-clos back over to Milos, and they remained stationed there. Naglatha could see Tazi's face brighten as she turned to look first to the guard on her right and the one on her left with a certain amount of smug satisfaction. It was obvious she was certain Naglatha's testimony would absolve her of blame. As she looked toward the Red Wizard incognito, Naglatha returned her smile warmly.

  "Milady," the captain addressed her, "what has transpired here?"

  Naglatha lookejd at Tazi and watched the captive woman stand straighter in expectation. She turned to the captain and replied, "I am glad that you and your men arrived when you did. This was an extremely unfortunate situation and entirely my fault." She paused and regarded Tazi once more. She could see the younger woman's confidence grow.

  "I had been warned about the types that frequent establishments like these, but I was certain I would not have trouble since I was accompanied by my servants. As you can see," Naglatha paused and pointed to Heraclos and Milos, "my eunuchs are hardly a match for anyone, unarmed and so obviously out-of — shape as they are."

  "What?" Tazi shouted, and the guard who had warned her to be silent struck her in the mouth.

  "Milady," the captain responded, "I am only sorry we could not have arrived before your property was damaged. We will see to it that this ruffian is properly punished." Then he tipped his head deferentially to Naglatha and turned in militaristic fashion toward his men.

  "Take her," he ordered. The men restraining Tazi started to drag her toward the main door. She pulled at her captors as they hauled her away, and she twisted her torso to look back at Naglatha.

  "That's not how it happened," she shouted at the Red Wizard.

  As they yanked her out the doorway, Naglatha waved farewell sweetly to the furious woman.

  "Just perfect," she whispered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I azi stood in the center of a small chamber with her arms bound behind her at the wrists and a guard flanking her on each side. Her lip, where the guard had struck her at the tavern, had finally stopped bleeding. Only a thin trail of dried blood remained between the corner of her mouth and her chin. She looked calm, but Tazi was seething inside. She had been standing roughly in the same spot for over an hour and hadn't been allowed to move or speak during that time.

  The room she had been taken to was in one of the inner studies of Pyrados's magistrate's office. It was dark and somber, devoid of any windows. Along three of the four walls were floor to ceiling bookcases in a rich, ebony wood. A few sconces dotted the walls and cast odd shadows along the tomes and floor. It reminded Tazi of one of her father's rooms, crammed full and somewhat stuffy. Each shelf was bursting with scrolls and manuscripts, but Tazi doubted that Thay could actually possess that many laws and bylaws. She wondered if, along with the black wood, the shelves of books were meant to intimidate the less intelligent of those dragged before the 'court.' Tazi refused to be such a victim.

  She stood facing a large desk, almost like a podium, made of the same wood as the bookcases. It was set on a raised section of the floor, similar to a dais, so when the magistrate sat behind it, he always looked down on whoever was brought before him. All she could see of the official who was perched back there was his bald, wrinkled head with its single tattoo and his cloaked shoulders. The Thayan sat bent over some documents that he was ostensibly reading through, accounts of various transgressions, Tazi imagined. She had tried to crane her neck once to get a better look and was cuffed for it. She kicked at the guard who did it and was struck again. She had settled down over the last hour, realizing that struggling at this moment was not in her best interests.

  Her weapons, incl
uding her boot dagger and even her lock pick, rested on a small table to her left. Her worn, leather sack containing the crimson gold was also amongst her things, and she occasionally cast a longing eye toward them. But one of the guards caught the direction of her gaze and moved closer to Tazi. She knew she had little chance of retrieving her weapons quickly and decided it wasn't worth the risk for now. Not for the first time since she was taken into custody, Tazi berated herself for not paying closer attention to the Rashemi barmaid back at Laeril's Arms.

  She tried to warn me, Tazi thought morosely, about how things worked here. I should have listened more closely. I should have had a plan just in case. The magistrate's artificial cough snapped her back to her present situation.

  "I have given this matter a great deal of thought and consideration," the older man began as he opened a large ledger and made a show of selecting a quill.

  About an hour's worth, Tazi mused to herself. And never once talked to me.

  "It is fairly clear that a terrible crime was committed," he continued, unaware of Tazi's internal monologue, "and reparations must be made. In addition, suitable punishment must be meted out. It is the law, after all." He began to scratch some words onto the parchment pages.

  Unbidden, Tazi responded, "I agree with you. I was assaulted."

  The old man looked up. It was plain to see he did not appreciate what he viewed as an interruption and continued speaking. "Because you, young woman, did visit damage upon the property of a high-ranking Thayan citizen, all your goods and possessions are now forfeit."

  "What?" Tazi shouted. She made a step toward the desk, and the guards pulled her back. "You can't just take my things."

  "They will go to the woman whose goods you damaged as her compensation," he explained. "Furthermore, injuring the property of a citizen is the same as injuring the citizen herself, and that is a grave offense in these lands. Because of that," he paused dramatically and looked Tazi straight in the eye, "it is the decree of this court-"

  "How can you call this a court?" Tazi demanded. "I never heard the details of my 'crime,' never heard the woman I supposedly injured tell her side of it, and I never got to tell my accounting." She shrugged out of her captors' grasp and moved right over to the desk and stared up at the official defiantly. "Just what kind of court is this? Please explain that."

  The two armed men each grabbed a shoulder, but did little else to Tazi other than to pull her back to her original spot. She suspected they were simply saving up their anger for later and didn't even want to contemplate that. Blackly, she saw only one way out and she detested playing that game. But she recognized she was running out of any other options.

  "As I was saying," the official continued as though there had been no outburst, "it is the decision of this court to commit you to eternal service to Thayan country and people."

  "Slavery?" Tazi sputtered. "I don't think so!"

  "You may now have an opportunity to say your last words for the record before you cease to exist as a person," the magistrate magnanimously allowed and held his pen poised over his ledger.

  Tazi bit back on the first thing that came to mind, knowing that it would be a mistake to say. She reigned in her temper and pulled out her trump card, though she hated to have to resort to it.

  "How much?" she asked simply. "How much will it take?"

  "Excuse me?" the magistrate questioned her, genuinely shocked.

  "I have coin," she told him.

  "That pittance over there?" he asked and pointed to the pile of Tazi's effects on the small table. "Perhaps I spoke too quickly for you to understand. That now belongs to the Thayan citizen you assaulted. It is no longer yours to bargain with."

  "No," Tazi sighed. "I have access to a near limitless amount of funds. I am Thazienne Uskevren of Sel-gaunt. My family will gladly pay whatever price you can dream up to free me. Name it, and it's yours."

  "You were Thazienne Uskevren," the old man corrected her. "Now you are the property of Thay."

  "No," Tazi said and struggled against the men who restrained her. "I am not! My family will find me," she warned him, "and there will be hell to pay! Trust me on that!"

  "Let me explain something to you: you have broken Thayan law. You have been tried and found guilty. You have now been punished and no longer exist as a person in your own right. Do you understand?"

  "They will find me," she warned him.

  "Even if they could, which I seriously doubt," the magistrate wheezed, "there is nothing for them to do. You are a slave, and slavery in Thay means in perpetuity."

  Tazi cocked her head at the pronouncement.

  "You are a slave and will die a slave. The decree is irreversible by our laws. And should you and another ever mate, any issue of yours will be a slave, as will their issue and their issue's issue until time's end. Slavery here in Thay is final."

  Tazi blanched at the ramifications of the decree. It was most definitely not how she had expected the situation to resolve itself. For the moment, she was at a loss as to how to proceed. However, as a slave, that was not even a concern of hers any longer. She had lost all rights and others would decide what she could and could not do from then on. Tazi could not fathom the turn fate had taken.

  "You may remove her now and take her to the pens," he ordered. The guards began to tug her from the magistrate's study. Tazi tried to dig in her heals and slow them down. "I'm not done yet," she shouted over her shoulder.

  The magistrate closed his ledger and shot her a deadly look. "I am finished here," he told her. "And so are you, Thazienne Uskevren."

  The two guards dragged Tazi out into the cool, evening air. The distant roll of thunder echoed, and Tazi half-consciously realized that the nightly rains were about to commence. The Thayan sentries took her through to a rather large building annexed to the magistrate's offices. To Tazi, it looked like nothing so much as a grandiose stable. After the initial shock of her sentence, Tazi was numb. Now, her mind was thawing, and she began to study her surroundings very carefully.

  Two other men stood guard in front of a pair of large double doors. One of her escorts approached them, and he and they exchanged a word. Tazi supposed it was a password of sorts, but she suspected that as the two easily recognized each other, the safeguard was merely a formality. The two doormen slid the long beam aside that secured the doors across the center and swung them in for Tazi and her party. She was shoved into the black maw, and the first thing that struck Tazi was the smell. It was beyond nauseating. As her hands were still bound behind her back, she couldn't block her nose, but she stopped in her tracks and turned her head aside, her face twisted in disgust. The guard who struck her earlier, obviously used to the smell of human waste and sickness, laughed as he shoved her harder.

  "Sorry to offend yer sensibilities, 'milady,' " he mocked. He and his cohort exchanged a raucous laugh.

  As they pushed her through the building which had been a stable for centaurs some years past, Tazi was horrified at what she saw. The whole structure was two hundred feet long and one hundred fifty feet wide. There were rows and rows of former stalls. These stalls had been converted into pens of steel and wood. The metal bars were woven so that each cluster of folk could see the other captives, and there were a few openings in each cage to allow small articles to be passed in and out by the guards and the occupants within. But the pens were placed just far enough apart so that the slaves could not reach their neighbors. Nevertheless, Tazi could see that some tried.

  The first pen she passed held four men inside and one small girl. All of them were nearly naked and Tazi was shocked by how thin the girl was. Every one of her ribs was clearly visible under skin that looked like it had been stretched too tight. She was whimpering slightly, but none of the adult men raised a hand or offered a word in comfort. They were sitting about with dull, listless eyes.

  In the pen adjacent to theirs, which held two women, that was not the same case. One of the prisoners, with matted hair that might have been the same color as
the little girl's, strained her thin arm through the cage and called out a name. Tazi winced when she saw the festering wounds on the woman's arm. She had rubbed it raw trying to comfort what Tazi guessed must have been her daughter. One of the guards stationed intermittently along the aisle leaned across and hit the woman with a short staff.

  Tazi's escorts pushed her along the poorly lit aisle. Only a few torches were blazing, scattered sporadically through the stable. Underneath the smell of vomit and waste, she could also detect the odor of damp decay. She rightly suspected that these stables were never even given the most basic maintenance, not even mucking. Anger and disgust filled her up and pushed aside any fear she might have felt, however fleeting. Now, in a red haze, Tazi was searching for any way out. If she had still possessed her lock pick, the cage itself would have been simple enough. Though a heavy length of chain and a large padlock sealed off the cage door, the locks were old and rusty. Tazi recognized the style and knew they presented no challenge, but she was empty handed. She suspected her best time to flee would be when the guards actually unlocked the pen.

  However the deeper she went into the stable, the more difficult she found it to scheme. The conditions only worsened. Just like the first set of pens, obvious families were kept apart. The better to demoralize them, Tazi thought. And each prisoner was nearly nude, their emaciated bodies covered by varying degrees of sores. It was a rag-tag collection as well. Not only were there humans imprisoned, but halflings and other creatures Tazi could not easily recognize, partly because of the poor lighting and partly because of their filth. Only one or two looked up as she was marched past. Tazi was overwhelmed by their unresponsive, sunken eyes. Her jaw was beginning to ache because she had it clenched so tight. The buying and selling of living creatures was something she could never reconcile herself with, and these images were beyond haunting. As she neared the end of the aisle, her captors stopped her and spun her to face one of the pens.