6- Mélisaren

“Another dose of péramine, and prepare me a catheter and a drain!”

The man leaning over his patient possessed a tall stature and that stooped carriage age imposes on tall frames. No doubt in his youth he would have rivaled Jawaad in that regard. But in his case, youth was nothing more than a distant memory recalled by the off-white curls of hair peeking out from his linen cap, extending into a meticulously trimmed beard hidden by a surgical mask of the same cloth. Duncan was one of the foremost physicians in the entire South of the Seas of Separation to use this kind of sanitary precaution, teaching its methodology and usefulness as often as possible and imposing it on all his staff whenever necessary. As was the case here, as he operated with dexterity and precision on his friend’s slave, under his watchful eye.

Jawaad stood at the far end of the large room, entirely tiled in white from floor to walls. Leaning against the door with his arms crossed, he obeyed the strict order not to approach within three meters. His presence was a privilege Duncan had allowed; for anyone else, he would have refused any spectator who was not one of his students or staff from his hospice.

His assistant, wearing a long white coat, a cap, and a mask like him, nodded, moving to fetch what the senior physician requested and to prepare a syringe of the potent painkiller Duncan had demanded. Jawaad watched Lisa, who had been plunged into a coma since morning. He maintained absolute silence, motionless. He would have had trouble claiming to understand what the two doctors were doing in detail, at least. But it was simple enough to summarize: they were trying to save his little Earthwoman, for whom he had taken such risks to entrust her to his old friend in time.

 

***

 

Sonia was perched at the very top of the Callianis‘s mainmast, several meters above the crow’s nest. From her perch, she enjoyed both the cool wind dissipating the nauseating stench of the docks and a unique view of the entire vast port, which extended on a gentle slope up to the city sheltered by formidable walls built into the flanks of the rocky massif serving as its foundation. After five days of relentless exertion, this was the first true rest she could grant herself. From now on, Lisa’s fate no longer depended on her, but on the surgeons who held Jawaad’s trust. Distractedly, she thought that if anyone had asked her opinion, she would have said she wouldn’t give the little Earthwoman a chance of seeing the sun set. For a second, barely more, she felt a surge of emotion and was surprised by a tear forming under her eyelid. She wondered why that tear was there. Was it genuine affection for the young woman, or the fear that her own fragile hope might die with her? She was surprised by her reaction, only to forget it the next instant. She savored with delight the stroke of the wind and the rays of the sun gently falling on the hills to the west, and would not have moved from her warm, pleasant spot had her peaceful farniente not been interrupted by a powerful voice she recognized immediately:

“Get down from there!”

Sonia rolled over onto her stomach atop her mast. She raised an eyebrow to look down at Damas, who was staring up at her from the deck meters below. Thoroughly disdainful, she resumed her original position, basking in the sun like a lizard.

Damas pressed:

“Hey, are you deaf?!”

“I’m quite comfortable right here!”

Damas let out a curse, feeling his temper flare. The Jemmaï was patient, and it would have taken sheer bad faith to claim he was harsh or cruel with slaves—where he came from, enslavement was looked down upon, sometimes even strictly forbidden—but he loathed having his authority challenged, especially on his ship and in front of his men who were hard at work refitting the vessel. Naturally, the crew wasn’t missing a single word of the exchange. Anyone else might have sent a sailor to retrieve the rebellious slave, but Damas felt personally targeted:

“You’re going to get what’s coming to you if I have to come get you!”

Sonia’s laughter answered his threat. He blew a sharp breath through his nose and, in a single bound, began scaling the mast.

Fast.

Very fast!

Damas was agile and never hesitated: his handholds flowed without a pause, and he climbed like an arrow. Sonia opened her eyes in surprise—and delight: he deserved to be San’eshe to show such skill. The game unfolding promised to be amusing, and it was with a laugh that she stood up, not to climb down at the threat, but to taunt the Jemmaï further, awaiting him with arrogant provocation as she stood straight on her perch, displaying all her splendor.

Damas swore again, though a smile could have been glimpsed through the tense lines of his sharply chiseled face. He had caught a glimpse of Sonia’s acrobatic talents, as well as her audacity bordering on recklessness. He was curious to see how far she would go and was beginning to enjoy testing how much she could defy him, even if it forced him to demand too much effort from his injured shoulder.

Reaching the top of the mainmast took him less than a minute, accompanied by the cheers and encouragement of his sailors who, from the deck, watched the scene with hilarity, wondering how it would end. Sonia was still looking down at him, proud and arrogant, perched on the mast. And by all the seas, she was breathtaking, and she knew it! Damas smiled again as his prey was now only two meters above him, amused by the thought of how he might enjoy the aftermath with such a sensual slave.

Then he was left looking foolish.

Sonia had just dived through the rigging, catching herself with the breathtaking confidence of a bird in a tree, swinging from the mainmast to the foremast and running across the rigging, still laughing and taunting him even more. The sailors burst out laughing at the sight, thrilled to witness the display of acrobatics.

“Foutrepute!” Damas forgot the rest of the curses in his head and lunged after her under the cheers of his men as he leaped and caught himself following the same swinging path. This slave wasn’t about to humiliate him at his own game!

Old Jaspus had been fishing on his corner of the docks for years. He had seen them grow when the port was entirely rebuilt into a massive complex of fleet sheds capable of housing shipyards for twenty vessels back when he was a young man. He had even been one of its carpenters all his life, until his legs and old age betrayed him. Since then, more out of a desire to kill time than to supplement his daily life with fish, he came to fish here every day, greeted by dockers and shipwrights; everyone knew him. And he used to say with a laugh that he had seen it all.

Except this. He never would have imagined witnessing such a thing in his entire life. He barely had time to understand that the two figures who had just—he could never have explained how—leaped from mast to mast across three consecutive ships using ropes to swing like actual kalicis, the only primate-like animals known on Loss, were about to land right on top of him, before he jerked backward. It was a reflex he would later consider utterly foolish when the first of the two figures crashed into the middle of the sacks and crates piled on the quay. He had time to see that it was a woman, nearly naked; by all the gods, how beautiful she was! And she was laughing heartily, pursued by a man as grim in appearance as she seemed radiant. Just as the woman sprang forward again, running to the wall of the neighboring workshop to leap in a single bound and—he couldn’t say how she did it—climb onto the roof in the very same movement, reality and his sense of balance caught up with him. He slipped suddenly and went to join his fishing line in the waters of the harbor.

There was a loud splash that drowned out his outraged curses.

 

Damas was hot on Sonia’s heels, admiring her speed and agility, which fully matched his own. Seeing the old man fall into the water, he slowed down just long enough to deliver a hard kick to a barrel as an improvised lifebuoy:

“Hold on, grandfather!”

But he didn’t linger. Leaving his prey behind was out of the question; she was already running across the rooftops, dislodging tiles in her stride without it seeming to slow her down in the least.

On the quays, the clamor of the men watching the incongruous spectacle grew louder. The sailors aboard the ships who had witnessed the acrobatic display in their masts were eagerly following the chase across the port, cheering on either the flamboyant slave or the relentless Jemmaï. They were joined by dockers and quay workers, stunned, but above all amused and delighted to witness the scene. The bets being placed were all in favor of the girl, though likely more under the influence of her attire than an objective consideration of her talents. In any case, it would be a memory these men would talk about for a long time.

Two leaps later, Damas was on the rooftops, sending another shower of tiles down onto the sandstone slabs of the quays, accompanied by the angry shouts of bystanders who hadn’t backed away fast enough and had nearly had their skulls smashed. He couldn’t care less, but the longer the chase went on, the more impressed he became. In his estimation, there were probably no more than twenty people in Armanth capable of matching him in this kind of physical exertion, and here Sonia was practically pushing him to his limit, even if he could have claimed without bad faith that his injury handicapped him. But he planned to make her pay dearly for her provocation as soon as he could lay hands on her.

Sonia moved like the wind. In twenty paces, she crossed a wooden gangway, clinging to scaffolding beams to slide through like a snake under the bewildered gazes of the workers. She began ascending it with such ease that it seemed impossible. The construction workers all felt like spectators at a show, and with good reason. There was as much to admire in the incongruous feat as in the tutor’s sensual and almost entirely exposed body, wearing little more than a few pieces of jewelry, a tiny diaphanous tank top, and a long silk sarong. Heads turned toward the sky, they didn’t see the second speeding projectile coming. More’s the pity for them.

Damas had neither the time nor the slightest desire to slow his momentum, running like a madman. The six workers blocking his path suddenly became, against their will, so many bowling pins struck by the Jemmaï. The sound of their fall into the drainage canal below and their screams and insults didn’t slow him down in the slightest as he too tackled the scaffolding climb. Eight meters higher, Sonia, perched atop the structure, was still laughing—provocative, splendid, exulting with life—briefly looking for a route to escape her pursuer and prolong their wild run.

She found it. Damas’s jaw dropped.

Sonia threw herself into the void. The ground was four stories below—a fatal fall for certain—and the Jemmaï was left completely dumbfounded as he realized what she was doing. His prey caught herself in the nets stretched out to dry against the quays, sliding through the meshes to cushion her fall and regain her footing on the flagstones effortlessly. He swore. No, he was not going to attempt an acrobatic stunt that had every chance of breaking his neck. Instead, he grabbed one of the pulley ropes on the scaffolding and, with a powerful swing, let himself slide down to return to solid ground. Twenty meters away, Sonia had just parted the crowd, which, still in complete admiration, let her pass while shouting enthusiastically, eager for the show. In three bounds over a low wall of crates and barrels, she vanished into a side alley. A few dockers and sailors shouted all the louder, overjoyed to have won their bets.

Damas caught his breath and sprinted after Sonia at full speed.

 

***

Azur was pacing back and forth in the vast atrium of the hospice. The villa was sprawling, adjacent to a large inner garden enclosed by colonnades beneath the three floors of the main building. Everything else consisted of outbuildings—including a greenhouse—staff quarters, and the apothecary shop opening directly onto the Via Pallia, the main artery of Mélisaren’s Upper City. But everyone was busy at this hour, going about their work in a light, discreet murmur. Everyone except Azur.

The surgery room was just a few paces away, behind a hall opening onto the inner garden’s corridor. But the psyké had been quickly sent away and ordered to wait outside while her master’s friend, Duncan Hazelon—senior physician of the city and indeed of the entire region—busied himself with saving her sister-slave. She was too far to hear anything, and at Jawaad’s dark glare when she had attempted to protest, she had obeyed with her head lowered, without argument. Ever since, she had been waiting.

It would soon be three hours at the very least. She had been able to make use of one of the fountains to quench her thirst, and in an attempt to pass the time, she had watched the procession of patients, staff, and visitors. There were many people working here, including half a dozen slaves, though she assumed they didn’t all belong to the owners of the premises. The hospice’s slaves wore the same attire: a short tunic of immaculate white linen with a fine red trim, and a pair of comfortable sandals. Seeing them walk about, they seemed well treated and very busy. Apparently, there were only women, which didn’t surprise her in the least: Lossyans always preferred having women as domestic slaves. They claimed them to be more docile and malleable, less dangerous than males who were more prone to fits of anger and rebellion. The second reason for this preference was that most enslaved men, far fewer in number than women owing to laws more favorable to preserving their freedom, ended up in mines and quarries. But above all, one could not practice High Art on men… or at least, Abba claimed, it could only ever be incomplete, as well as far less reliable and effective than with women.

She could only assume, however: Jawaad had never trained her according to the codes of High Art, and she was thoroughly glad to have escaped it.

With the end of the day, the coming and going grew increasingly sparse, no longer able to distract her from her anxiety. Nothing was left for Azur but to wait; and as time slipped by, her dread deepened, leaving her completely in the dark as to how the surgery was progressing.

 

***

 

Jawaad had taken his injured slave in his arms as soon as the Callianis docked, followed by Azur; then, without a word, they crossed the distance between the port and the city. The city militia, far more nitpicky than the civil guards of Armanth, had tried to show a bit of misplaced zeal upon the arrival of the dirty, disheveled master merchant and the burden he carried so precious to him. Jawaad had barked sharply, his dark stare intensified by his drawn features, introducing himself—something he practically never did—and declaring that he was coming to entrust a wounded girl to the care of Mélisaren’s senior physician, insisting on their friendly relationship and that he had no time to lose. At the time, Azur had kept quiet and made herself small to try and blend into the background, fearing that the guards might start becoming more hostile.

Mélisaren was not Armanth. To these militiamen, a slave, even wounded and dying, did not represent much and did not justify them having to hurry. Only Jawaad’s insistence and his title of master merchant of Armanth had managed to convince them. But Azur had felt a shudder of anxiety: never had she seen her master lose his patience, and at that moment, she had almost felt as though he was holding himself back from starting to Sing and thus getting rid of the men wasting his time in a single impulse. Which, had he dared, would have signed his death warrant in the short term.

Azur had been forced to trot to keep up with Jawaad as he strode through the city streets without stopping and, again, without dropping another word, his face cold, dark, and closed. Facing the procession, most people stepped aside, curious and bewildered, while he walked straight ahead, tailed by the psyké. She didn’t really have the time to take an interest in the city she had never visited, Jawaad always leaving her at the port or on the boat whenever he stopped there to pay a visit to Duncan. She simply realized that Mélisaren, much smaller than the vastness of Armanth, also seemed more packed in on itself, made of alleys intertwined with rare wide avenues, with simpler architecture where the facades of temples with majestic, almost incongruous columns and capitals occasionally stood out between rows of white houses with low doors and narrow windows.

Mélisaren was divided in two. The Upper City possessed its own formidable ramparts, and the streets broadened there, adorned with squares and gardens. Jawaad crossed a vast esplanade decorated with elegant trees and an ornate fountain, entering without delay a large building flanked by an apothecary shop selling remedies, entering the villa of Duncan’s hospice—which also served as a training center for the best doctors in the entire South of the Eteocles Plains, and, it was said, throughout this whole half of the Seas of Separation.

Less than five minutes later, Azur found herself alone, Jawaad having followed Duncan, who had welcomed him himself into the maze of the hospice to perform emergency surgery on Lisa.

And since then, she could only wait.

She sighed heavily, raising a distracted gaze toward the rooftops, tears threatening to flow from her eyes once more. If her new little sister died, what would happen to her master? And to her? She did not know what Lisa could do to save Jawaad from the fate awaiting him, but she knew that he was convinced she was capable of it—that she alone could do it. She didn’t know why or how. What made this little red-haired Earthwoman so unique?

She was trying to understand, with the little information she had, when her gaze fixed in astonishment on the human form rushing along the eaves of the gardens, running at full speed.

Springing forth like a spectre, she recognized the silhouette of Sonia sprinting along the roofline, leaping with an almost superhuman bound to reach the next one. Stunned, Azur looked to see who could be pursuing her, and she saw Damas burst around the same corner—recognizable even from afar, his long, straight black hair floating in the wind—running at top speed along the ridge of the building, trying to cut the tutor off and intercept her route.

The scene lasted only a handful of seconds: both leaped and disappeared behind the crest of the roof. Azur remained dumbfounded… What on Loss was happening?

 

***

 

Damas was still hot on Sonia’s heels, never letting up. And he could now add another quality to the growing list of his prey’s talents: she had endurance. He was breathing as heavily as the wide-open mouth of a fiery furnace and was beginning to run out of air, yet she still wasn’t slowing her pace. The Jemmaï, however, did not lose his grip. She couldn’t sustain such an effort and take such acrobatic risks for much longer—she had already taken enormous ones, and it had nearly gone wrong.

Mélisaren is encircled by high, thick walls built upon a rocky ledge a few hundred meters from the shore, overlooking the Eteocles estuary. The port and its outbuildings were thus constructed at the foot of the city and linked to it by a winding avenue that, at times, was more of a ramp. Surrounded by the cramped hovels and workshops of the lower city—which over the years had sprouted outside the ramparts, housing mostly fishermen, fishmongers, small artisans, market gardeners, and dockworkers—the road reached the high, well-guarded ramparts.

None of which had stopped Sonia. To her credit, no one expects to see anyone leap from roof to roof and possess enough momentum—and strength—to cling to the stone edges of a twelve-meter-high wall, then scale it purely by the strength of arms and fingers.

The guards on duty on the ramparts could hardly believe their eyes. Even less so when the nearly naked woman who had just slipped into the middle of the city right under their noses in a few bounds was tailed by a man just as agile and fast as she was, but with an altogether more menacing bearing. Once their stupor passed, the sentinels suddenly realized they needed to raise the alarm.

In less than five minutes, Damas and Sonia had managed to sow utter panic among the city guard—and a great deal of surprise among the citizens who discovered them running after one another across rooftops and through alleys—and found themselves pursued by two squads of soldiers who were hard-pressed to catch up, yet all the more enraged and determined to arrest those responsible for such an unacceptable civil disturbance.

Neither of them cared in the least. The exhilaration of the chase intoxicated them. Never had Sonia been forced to push her subterfuges so far since the distant past when she had learned to run across rooftops with the same ease as in the trees of her native jungle. As for Damas, never had he pursued a prey so fast, elusive, and enduring, forcing him to draw deep upon his reserves and take risks he would otherwise have wisely avoided. His shoulder was beginning to ache severely.

The walls of the Upper City were no more of an obstacle than the city ramparts had been. And the two annoyed squads of guards became three, causing in their haste more chaos than the two strangers they were chasing ever had.

Lost, the first group of guards burst onto the Via Pallia and the esplanade of the great fountain, triggering exclamations of surprise and protest among the onlookers enjoying the evening cool in the shade of the trees. A good portion of them consisted of representatives of Mélisaren’s ruling nobility and their retinues—people hardly inclined to let anyone dare disturb their peace. Heated exchanges bordering on a brawl ensued between the civil militia and the aristocrats’ escorts, some of whom were officers commanding the city’s regular legions and hardly men to put up with the sudden displays of authority from uniformed bumpkins.

For the few guards who managed to extricate themselves from the uproar, it was too late to pick up the trail of the two cat burglars who had sown such discord. Sonia was already far away, jumping from the hospice’s roofs toward a tree that served as an improvised ladder, down which she tumbled under the bewildered eyes of two maidservants carrying their laundry back from the washhouse. She had been able to catch a brief glimpse of the scene on the main square, which afforded her a wide respite to throw off the guards, but Damas was still hot on her heels. She was nearly at the end of her strength, and she would not escape him. The thought made her smile.

Sonia veered toward a small alley covered in flowering arbors, seeking shelter to catch her breath. The garden gate to the courtyard of a noble villa offered her an escape route into which she plunged, finding a hiding place among the fragrant thickets. Night was beginning to fall, making it easier to conceal herself in the shadows of the bushes. Her heart pounding, her breath raspy enough to make her cough, she thought she had surely lost Damas. She could hear the guards in the distance busying themselves in vain, trying to find them.

She realized too late that she had underestimated the Jemmaï.

Damas had nearly lost his prey. The Upper City was dotted with enclosed gardens and rows of peroniers with thick foliage and cool shadows. As soon as Sonia had left the hospice’s roofs, she had vanished from his sight, and he had thought he was thrown off her trail. Which annoyed him exceedingly.

In all evidence, their chase had been a game and a challenge whose purpose Damas could guess, and he had decided to indulge in it. Sonia had slowed down several times to wait for the Jemmaï—a provocation that heightened the playful nature of their risky sprint. Damas had taken the challenge literally, forgetting his initial ill temper that would have meant a very bad time for Sonia. It was a duel between two beings with similar skills and training, where each was testing the other. The fact was that the Jemmaï had been blown away and conquered. There weren’t many people capable of standing up to him like this. Ever since Sonia had managed to slip into the middle of the city right under the guards’ noses, he had come to desire her; he wanted her. And since she played her part with such fervor in this duel, he wasn’t about to hesitate to make her his. That was clearly what she wanted.

But seeing that she had disappeared, he wondered if she was ultimately trying to flee for real. Or play him for a fool. Short of breath, he scanned the area for a high roof to perch upon and begin searching the surroundings darkened by the early evening to spot his prey. In the gloom settling over the city, his eyes pierced the darkness with the sharpness of a cat.

 

Sonia didn’t hear him coming. That had never happened to her before. The thickets of the garden where she had crouched to catch her breath were dense and still hidden by thick foliage; she could thus recover a little and let Damas wander in search of her. He was undoubtedly continuing to track her on the roofs, where he was clearly in his element. She was all the more surprised by the trick he played on her.

She heard the whistling of the bolas, but before she had time to see them, they wrapped around her arm in an inextricable mess of knots. Damas yanked hard on the cord attached to his weapon, sending the tutor falling as he dragged her out of her hiding place. Sonia protested:

“Ouch! You’re cheating!”

Damas dropped from the low tree branch where he had crept silently, landing heavily on the ground. His legs—and not just them—vividly reminded him of the effort he had just made; they were sore. And his shoulder screamed in disapproval, promising to make itself severely felt all through the coming night. He wouldn’t have been able to pursue the chase much longer:

“I don’t recall us stopping to discuss the rules. I told you I’d get you; it’s done.”

Sonia let out a sigh like a hiss, her teeth clenched. Like game, the Jemmaï pulled on the bolas’ cord, forcing the tutor to draw closer to him. She attempted to stand, but another sharp yank on the cord threw her to the ground. Damas smirked, looking down at her:

“You tried to run, you panicked half the city guard, made every dog from here to the port bark, made me run like a madman… and in my opinion, quite a few people owe you a few scares and a few bruises. So, you know the law, don’t you? What do we do to a slave who tried to run away?”

Sonia displayed a viperous smile, her gaze blazing without a trace of fear. She was beyond such dread, feeling no apprehension toward her fate. She answered in a suave voice:

“Over here, I’d risk a slow, agonizing death in a public square, displayed as a lesson to all slaves for my escape attempt and the chaos we’ve sown. It would be a very unpleasant moment. But above all, what a waste, wouldn’t you say, master?”

“You’d thoroughly deserve it, though.”

“I agree, master. But you don’t want to reserve that fate for me. Otherwise you wouldn’t have let me run so long, and I’d be spilling my blood somewhere with a dagger planted in my body. You never miss your target. Or should I believe I misjudged your intentions, and your pleasure in our chase?”

Damas had a hard time holding back his laughter at the tutor’s last remark. With both hands on the cord, he yanked her toward him in tugs, forcing her to find herself at his feet. Sonia, forced to follow, approached him on all fours, her back arched in fluid, feline movements, seductive and sensual enough to set the surrounding air ablaze. Damas savored it.

“You shouldn’t think in my place,” he resumed, lying outright about his words—which, though true for most people, seemed absurd to him; he generally paid them no mind. “And you know that’s not tolerated for a slave… Presuming for me isn’t a good idea. That said, you’re right, I never miss my target…”

By dint of pulling, Sonia was now at the Jemmaï’s feet. He was drenched in sweat, his face still tense from the exertion he had just made, but in his eyes still shone the exhilaration of the pursuit, fed by another delight—that of all the tutor’s lasciviousness, returning a burning gaze with bluish glints:

“…and I never let go of my prey,” Damas grinned, showing all his teeth.

There was a silence; their eyes locked onto each other. He desired her, she could see it and even feel it. The powerful erotic and virile charge of the Jemmaï looking down at her out of breath, his dark eyes shining with the greed to take the slave he admired with so much lust, sent a sharp shudder coursing through her whole body.

Damas yielded first. Grabbing the steel collar at Sonia’s neck, he pulled to force her up and slammed her roughly against him. Her lips became a carmine fruit calling for him to bite into them. Answering this overwhelming hunger, he kissed her passionately, his hands violently gripping her hot body whose skin quivered in response to his fervor.

The tutor groaned with delight, shivering, while the Jemmaï tasted her lips and mouth frantically, holding her vigorously in the vise of his arms. She could feel his heart pounding, still shaken from the intense effort they had both just emerged from, and his powerful scent of sweat and leather, still mixed with faint fragrances of blood and dust. She inhaled with all her strength, letting the scents overwhelm her in another ecstasy. She drowned her senses in a tumult of pleasures, responding to the man’s fervor in sensual sways at the whim of his kiss and caresses. Another muffled groan of pleasure on her part completed Damas’s conquest, leaving him spellbound.

He made her tumble, rolling to the ground with her, pinning her beneath his weight as he abandoned her lips to bite her neck above the collar. She let out a surprised cry, and the pain of his teeth cruelly pinching her skin set her ablaze again in sighs of desire. Damas wrestled growling with the belt of his kilt and the buttons of his breeches. Sonia wrapped her arms around his shoulders, holding him against her in turn.

Damas chuckled, as if in defiance:

“And when I’ve caught my prey, I never let go!”

Sonia let out a laugh with the accents of a lascivious groan:

“Who caught whom, master?”

Damas grunted again, smothering a laugh in response as he raised himself, making the splendid creature release her grip—a creature he fully intended to enjoy. Desire knotted his stomach to the point of pain. He barked, his voice hushed by a desire turning into bestiality:

“We’ll see soon enough who gets taken and who takes.”

Damas roughly parted Sonia’s thighs to drive into her with a thrust of his hips. She cried out in pleasure and craving. It was a laugh, an exclamation of victory that echoed through the entire garden. But Damas cared nothing at that moment about being heard or caught; he gave as little of a damn as about his last shirt, as much as about the distant echoes of the guards searching for them in vain. She was his. And he was going to take her, to his heart’s content.

It was an entirely different battle, body to body in the shadows of that garden’s thickets, that the Jemmaï fought. But he would never afterward claim that he had truly won that one. He knew the obvious: Sonia had wanted only one thing—to choose him as her master. And he had given her what she wanted.

 

***

 

The sliding door of the operating room finally opened onto Jawaad, who scanned the area for Azur. He didn’t need to call her; she had been watching for him from the atrium and rushed to his side. The master merchant stepped forward a few paces to clear the doorway, followed by Duncan, now freed of his gown, cap, and mask.

Jawaad opened his arms in a subtle gesture, and Azur clung to him without needing to be asked twice, momentarily forgetting the doctor who was joining her master and making no secret of his smile at the sight, despite his drawn features:

“My master! How is she?”

Jawaad wrapped his arms around his slave, letting her enjoy his embrace for a moment, pressing a brief kiss to the top of her head:

“We will know tomorrow.”

Duncan added, nodding as he stretched—one could almost hear his bones crack:

“If she makes it through the night, she’ll be out of the woods. It’s still too early to say for certain, but I have good hope she’ll recover.”

Azur turned around, flustered; she had not greeted the old man and lowered her head, looking a little rueful:

“Forgive me, master, I was rude.”

The old doctor offered a broad, charitable smile with surprisingly white teeth:

“No, simply eager to see your master and concerned for your sister’s fate. You are entirely forgiven.”

Jawaad cracked a brief smile. Duncan was among the kindest and most compassionate men he had ever known, a trait all the more striking in this rigid city, heavily influenced by the centuries-old traditions of Eteocles and the Dogmas of the Church of the Council. Still, he gave his slave a light tap on the head as a reminder to mind her manners.

The doctor resumed:

“Now that we’ve done everything we can for your girl, Jawaad, it’s about time we take care of you.”

“I am fine.”

“Allow me to doubt that, both as a friend and as a physician. Where should I start: describing your state of physical exhaustion, the spreading infection in your arm wound, or the sheer number of injuries all over your body that will soon give you a proper fever?”

Jawaad raised a perplexed eyebrow, still holding Azur against him. Though accustomed to his old friend’s quirks, he would have obstinately clung to his own opinion, even if it was a lie. He was at the end of his strength, and he knew it all too well:

“You’ve just spent three hours saving my slave; I can wait. A good night’s sleep, a real meal, and it will be taken care of.”

“You’re not wrong. I’m a bit wiped out myself, but believe me, I’ve done far worse. You’re welcome here; the guest room is already prepared. Go ahead with your slave, who must be dreaming of taking care of you. I’ll send my assistant over to tend to your wounds a bit.”

Jawaad offered a faint smile and, releasing Azur, who was looking at the senior physician with surprise and curiosity, placed his hand briefly on the old man’s shoulder:

“Thank you.”