The Callianis rose above the waves.<\/p>\n
Mingled with the clamor from the deck and the shouts of the sailors, a low hum arose, its notes so deep they were at the limits of the audible. The levitation engines delivered the full thrust of their repulsion, making the ship’s structures tremble in the deafening creak of wood and rigging. The gravity wave pushed the water beneath the keel away in furious waves that struck, then submerged the docks. In a powerful blast, hurling bags of roaring spray over the crowd, the slender sailboat, carved in a line as sensual as her naiad’s name, tore herself from the waters to ascend into the skies. Appearing then as proud and arrogant as Jawaad the Merchant was, the man who had ordered her built, the Callianis reared nearly fifteen meters above the dock, overlooking the immense city of Armanth with all her arrogant beauty, raising her ivory-carved figurehead toward the firmament, as if casting her splendor in its face as a challenge.<\/p>\n
There was a cry of joy that rolled from the ship’s deck all the way across the pier, let out in unison by a hundred throats. It was so loud and enthusiastic that the victorious clamor accomplished the feat of drowning out the noise of the ship and her engines. Theobos roared hurrahs in chorus with his men who, all together, had made this moment, so uncertain and formidable, possible.<\/p>\n
On the aft deck, holding the helm, Jawaad, silent amidst the victorious clamor, let slip a genuine smile; something rarely seen on the face of this constantly sullen man. It was a smile of pride, echoing that of these men: laborers, shipwrights, slaves, deckhands, sailmakers, ropemakers, architects, and engineers who had built this vessel, unique in the world, and were now cheering her maiden voyage.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The departure had been largely rushed. While Jawaad had indeed planned to put back to sea toward M\u00e9lisaren, where Armanth housed a wealthy trading post of the Merchants’ Guild in which he held numerous shares, to reunite with an old friend, his new vessel was not ready to set sail; in theory, she shouldn’t have been ready for at least two weeks at best. They had therefore had to complete the outfitting in less than a day.<\/p>\n
Jawaad even thought Alterma would suffer a nervous breakdown over it.<\/p>\n
“What? Um, but all this, for tonight? But we’re never going to manage it, Jawaad!”<\/p>\n
The accountant stared at the list she had just written down under the Master Merchant’s dictation. She began making round eyes behind her work spectacles as she reread the document, nervously tucking back a curl of her eternally untamable chestnut hair. This made Jawaad smile, who had never shied away from admiring the young woman with her freckle-dusted face and, a rare trait, eyes of a beautiful olive green. However, he had not hired her for her pleasing appearance, but above all for her temperament, her skills, and her mathematical genius. But her beauty constituted an additional trait that he enjoyed at his leisure.<\/p>\n
Which she saw, of course, and which made her grumble as usual\u2014just what Jawaad was waiting for, much to his amusement. She had a strong character, which he liked to stimulate from time to time.<\/p>\n
“And stop looking at me like that. Yes, I’m panicking, but have you seen what you’re asking for? I don’t even know how we’re going to haul the entire library, and I’m not even talking about the kitchen stores, your shipboard furniture, and… and… thirty-five impulse-pistols, thirty rounds of ammunition for each with Loss-metal primers and a hundred naval cannonballs on top of the primers for all the cannons?! In a single day?! But… how am I supposed to find all that?”<\/p>\n
Jawaad straightened up with a smile, stepping behind Alterma to place a hand on the young woman’s shoulder and lean over her slightly:<\/p>\n
“With me. Saddle up.”<\/p>\n
It was rare for Jawaad to take a mount to travel through the city. The Master Merchant had, in fact, never shown the slightest inclination toward horses, though he owned a good dozen of them, purebred and pricey animals; he showed no more affection for the estate’s dogs, though numerous and also of various breeds. But given the tight deadlines to go acquire and have the list’s contents delivered, riding would prove a necessity here.<\/p>\n
Before departing, he leaned toward Azur, who had followed him, and after giving instructions for his personal slave to make the preparations and be ready upon his return, added, running his thumb over her cheek to draw her to him and take a kiss:<\/p>\n
“Get my new slave out of the cage. She follows you, whatever you do and wherever you go.”<\/p>\n
The young woman nodded with a tender smile, moved by the kiss, asking:<\/p>\n
“Should I give her chores to do?”<\/p>\n
Jawaad gave a slight shake of his head:<\/p>\n
“But don’t stop her from doing any if she tries. Go.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A few merchants and craftsmen nearly went mad from being driven up the wall that day.<\/p>\n
At a steady gallop, Jawaad, accompanied by Alterma, made the rounds of all the trading posts and stalls capable of supplying what he needed, necessarily of the highest possible quality. He was quickly joined by Alteruis, his accountant’s young and introverted assistant, then by sailors and a whole troop of dockworkers with carts and teams, and several messengers running from one end of the lower city to the arsenals, carrying lists of the difficult merchant’s supplies. Even pressed for time, Jawaad did not let go of his habits of exacting demands that brokered neither argument nor compromise. It was therefore a very long and grueling day for everyone, and especially for Alterma. She had to excuse herself several times from the purchasing meetings and negotiations to avoid bursting into a laugh as genuine as it was nervous, having had to endure the crestfallen faces of Jawaad’s counterparts, who all tried in vain to attempt what was systematically doomed to fail: making him change his mind.<\/p>\n
The troop that eventually formed consisted of a good fifty men and almost as many mules and horses rented on the spot for a dozen overloaded wagons, all heading in an organized chaos toward the Radia Granateo.<\/p>\n
At the Alba Rupes estate, it was the same hustle and bustle. Azur, who was the first to pitch in \u2014 she would have let no one else pack her master’s personal belongings \u2014 was giving orders and instructions to the girls of the house who, at that moment, had no other urgent tasks at hand. In truth, only Janisse had held Joran back, to watch the estate’s children. Her husband had joined Jawaad’s troop, along with the gardener couple and the dog handler. In the company of Abba, who, like her, was in no condition to move or lend a hand, she therefore witnessed the chaotic ballet of the household slaves running everywhere, poorly hiding her anxiety at the hasty departure of the master of the estate. After all the recent events, even Abba’s imposing presence and attempts to reassure her seemed to do little to help her relax. Behind Azur trailed Lisa, naked as a jaybird\u2014which bothered no one; it was common among slaves\u2014silent and looking lost. She did not leave the psyk\u00e9’s side, who had clearly ordered her never to wander away from her. To the shouts, the laughter, the joyous stampedes of the girls packing the trunks and bags that would be loaded onto the Callianis, she responded by flinching and panicking, trembling enough to make one believe she was shivering with cold. Azur read the terror on the face of her new and fearful sister-slave like an open book. She had been intrigued by her master’s choice to own a girl with such a fragile demeanor, physically as well as emotionally. Jawaad liked strong souls, uncompromised characters, even if he demanded blind trust and obedience from his slaves. But she had quickly guessed part of her master’s motivations, though she would keep them to herself as long as he didn’t speak of them.<\/p>\n
She beamed a broad smile when, as she carefully folded and packed Jawaad’s linens into a trunk, she saw two frail, hesitant hands approach to help her and hand her the bundles of clothing. She offered with a tender smile:<\/p>\n
“You have nothing to fear, you know? Relax a little, you’re trembling like a little cat.”<\/p>\n
Lisa formed a lost pout, searching for the meaning of the word. Azur burst out laughing:<\/p>\n
“Meow… a cat! A little cat. You know, cuddly, wild, easily frightened, with big eyes and sharp little claws?”<\/p>\n
“Th… there are… cats, here?”<\/p>\n
Azur nodded. The idea of teaching the young woman new words delighted her:<\/p>\n
“Yes. But they’re rare. Toshs eat them.”<\/p>\n
“The… toshs?… What is that?”<\/p>\n
“Vermin. They sneak into attics, pantries, grain stores, and devour everything. That’s why everyone has dogs; they hunt them. But you, you look just like a kitten who’s lost its mother.”<\/p>\n
Lisa added nothing, retreating timidly into herself. Azur had time to read her face with little difficulty, and realized that the simple words she had just used largely described the truth; the only difference between a lost kitten and this Earthwoman was simply that they were not of the same species. She encouraged Lisa with a patient smile to continue helping her, while she went to fetch a few pairs of boots and the Master Merchant’s belts:<\/p>\n
“Our master is a good man, and you will be treated well. Better than where you come from. I know you’re thinking of your sister. Cherish her, without forgetting her, but if you love her, start living again. Because here, you have nothing to fear, as long as you obey whatever our master might ask.”<\/p>\n
Lisa gave a timid nod, still without a word. Azur leaned toward her and brought her face close, placing a kiss on her forehead. She towered over her considerably, and could have lifted her at arm’s length without much trouble:<\/p>\n
“I’m not asking you to smile. Not yet. But when you can, come give me one. No need for you to speak, with me. I’ll understand everything you want to say, and I’ll know if it’s a real smile.”<\/p>\n
Finishing buckling the trunk, Azur straightened up cheerfully:<\/p>\n
“And now we’re going to get you dressed!”<\/p>\n
The bewildered face displayed by her young sister-slave\u2014still naked, and who had remained so since her arrival in this world where she felt like such a stranger\u2014made her burst into a bright laugh, as she dragged her toward the Slave Garden.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jawaad had returned late in the afternoon with Alterma and a few men, just long enough for his personal belongings to be loaded into the final convoy and for him to briefly bid his household farewell before departing. Among his baggage, he was bringing Azur, of course, but also his new slave. Airain almost rivaled Abba in sulking, though not for the same reasons. Abba would have liked to accompany his friend to the port and watch the Callianis depart, and Airain, who served as Tutor for the Master Merchant’s Slave Garden, was already sulking over her master’s prolonged absence. Jawaad did not linger, however, any longer than the time it took for his belongings to be loaded, despite Airain’s attempts to keep him a little while. Which ultimately made Abba laugh, before he called her back to him authoritatively, mainly to keep her busy and prevent her from annoying the Master Merchant.<\/p>\n
The return to the port was made along the same route. Azur was on horseback, a pleasure for her that Jawaad often granted. The Ar’anthia spent a good part of their lives in the saddle, and some claimed that, like the nomads of the Cymiad steppes, they knew how to ride before they could walk. As for Lisa, he had grabbed her to authoritatively place her in front of him, and seizing the reins, held her against him for the duration of the journey to the Radia Granateo. Still closed off and silent, she did not confess to him, and would only do so much later, that she was seeing a horse up close for the first time in her life.<\/p>\n
Lisa was still afraid. She was just a little less terrified, now; Azur had understood that it would take patience for her to begin to trust. She possessed plenty of it, and would do her best to tame her master’s new slave. Jawaad had made no comment upon seeing Lisa dressed, quite beautifully in fact, in a pleasant, loose, short tunic of unbleached cotton, its half-length sleeves enhanced with an elegant gold thread border, accessorized with a pair of simple leather sandals. It was the first time she was able to wear shoes. Lisa was almost uncomfortable because of it.<\/p>\n
She was finally discovering, with a mix of fascination and dread, the city of Armanth. She had seen practically nothing of it during the months she had been stranded on Loss. Tonight, on horseback in the embrace of this man whose scent she could not catch without immediately feeling an intoxicating wave of sensuality, she was crossing its entire breadth. The ride would take an hour, and she had every opportunity to observe and memorize this city from another time and another world.<\/p>\n
Everything was different. There were indeed comparisons, similarities with her hometown, to which she could have clung. Such as the dimensions: Paris is a huge city, and Armanth was roughly its size. Certain facades reminded her of the alleys and courtyards between the Rue Vieille du Temple and the Rue des Francs Bourgeois and their 16th-century architecture; certain tightly-packed neighborhoods reminded her of the \u00cele de la Cit\u00e9. She also thought of Italian palazzos or the alleyways of the souks in the heart of Marrakech, though she had only ever seen all that in photos or on television. But Armanth gave her a much more dizzying feeling of plunging into a baroque past, straight out of a swashbuckling costume film. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see a musketeer in flamboyant attire spring out of an alley. But she saw none, and quickly realized she was vastly mistaken in her comparisons.<\/p>\n
Most of the people she spotted had Middle Eastern features, and both their bearing and attire were a sort of blend between the finery of an unkempt Mediterranean Renaissance, and the trappings of an Arab world stripped of all the splendor of the Arabian Nights. There were so many people in the streets, so many shops and stalls crammed together that trying to detail each one, despite the slowness of the horseback ride, made her dizzy. It was too many colors, too many layers. Porticos opened onto small courtyards practically vomiting their workshops onto the street where children toiled. Others did not even hide piles of garbage thrown right onto the cobblestones, serving as feeding troughs for dogs, and other, stranger animals that she tried to liken to rats or even pigs and poultry, but which were too far removed for her Earthling mind and would remain unknown to her. There was such a variety of noises, shouts, smells that sometimes bordered on the unbearable, and so much chaos that she experienced shivers of panic. An immense mass of people and evidently no police and no urban services that she could manage to recognize as such. A human mass packed to the point of suffocation, with so little order, law, and organization, and which seemed to function without truly concerning itself with the nature of the miracle that contributed to the invisible harmony of its arrangement.<\/p>\n
Lisa did not know that a million and nearly a quarter inhabitants lived in the city, all managing with this chaos that overwhelmed her; but when Jawaad took the sloping streets barred by flights of stairs that here, the Armanthians call terraces, down toward the bay, she could almost take in the entire city at a glance and realize its immensity. From the north, facing the cliffs, standing on its rocky outcrop, was a white fortress of colonnades, domed roofs, and towers resembling minaret spires. At its feet, an incredible series of terraces, gardens, walls, temples, and bastions: the Palace of the Council of Peers, the heart of the city. It dominated the city by over a hundred meters, a city stretching as far as the eye could see into the Argas delta, all the way to the west, which was thus nothing more than an immense port made of dikes, piers, and overpopulated artificial islets, where the slightest acre of land reclaimed from the sea was built upon and occupied. In the misty, damp late afternoon of the rainy season, it was simply surreal; so astonishing, so surprising that Lisa would have been captivated by it had the sordid reality not striven to unexpectedly appear out of the corner of her eye. She saw, unable to ignore them: destitute lepers, elderly beggars, and starving children trying to draw the pity of passersby; men brutalizing a servant or a slave, she wouldn’t have known the difference; the biting crack of a whip and, in response, pleading cries; further on, the echoes of a brawl. And then, in the middle of this grandiose urban landscape, while the small troop descended toward the sea and the arsenals, she spotted it, immense, stretching almost to infinity \u2014 she would later reflect that terror had given her this impression, but it wasn’t entirely false \u2014 the Cage Market, the city within the city.<\/p>\n
At the sight of it, and of the hundreds of cramped enclosures, containing undoubtedly thousands of human beings reduced, as she was, to slavery, she felt a blade of ice plunge into her guts, coming to freeze her heart. It made her nauseous, and she burst into tears immediately, to the surprise of Azur, who was on horseback just behind them. Jawaad didn’t need to wonder what was happening. With authority, he pressed his hand over Lisa’s face, blinding her while letting her cry without a second thought. But while Lisa could no longer see a thing, and for once, she almost would have wanted to thank the Master Merchant had she dared, she nonetheless distinctly heard that vast, distant murmur rising from the Cage Market: the echo of moans, pleas, and thousands of other tears of despair…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Radia Granateo, even as evening fell, was not a place known for being peaceful and quiet. Night had to have fully settled in before it managed\u2014and not always\u2014to chase away the men who worked there in the shipyards, from the beginning to the end of the slightest glimmer of daylight. Some craftsmen began their day well before dawn and others stayed late after dusk by the light of Ortentia, fishing lamps, lanterns, and even a few Loss-metal lamps, in this human anthill of merchant ship builders and repairers. But tonight, on the docks, the night would have to admit defeat in frightening the men and forcing them to hide in their homes: there was across the entire pier a particularly dense, enthusiastic, and busy crowd, carrying out a task that nothing could interrupt. The Callianis was being loaded to be ready before the final evening tide, and over a hundred people were bustling around the sailboat.<\/p>\n
Jawaad lifted Lisa to set her on the ground before jumping down from his mount, greeted by Damas and Theobos coming to meet him. The latter, as was his habit, was wearing out his vocal cords roaring orders at the men handling the cargo, peppered with ever more creative insults.<\/p>\n
Lisa trembled, still lost and whimpering, shaken at having embraced with all her senses and in far too lucid a manner the horror and immensity of the Cage Market from which she had been extracted three months earlier. It was only a few blocks away, just beyond one of the branches of the Argas river. But fortunately, the Radia buildings hid it entirely from her sight. As he advanced toward the two men, Jawaad gave her a smack on the back of the head. The gesture had been made without any violence; it was mainly just surprising. Lisa gasped and swallowed her tears in astonishment. That had indeed been the Master Merchant’s goal, as he left Azur to look after her.<\/p>\n
Theobos anticipated his boss’s question. He was beginning to know him:<\/p>\n
“We’re all set! We were only waiting on your convoy and your things, Jawaad! But by Aeolus’s arse, there is something that’s really not right!”<\/p>\n
The Master Merchant raised a puzzled eyebrow looking at his foreman. And Damas, an amused and slightly weary expression further accentuating his sharp features, explained:<\/p>\n
“The Callianis hasn’t been christened. Theobos fears you’ll draw the wrath of the gods of the oceans, the winds, of whatever you like, because you don’t let a ship sail without a christening.”<\/p>\n
The foreman insisted:<\/p>\n
“Jawaad, I can’t let MY ship leave MY shipyards without it being christened. Especially this one! You understand, I know you’re not a man who fears the gods, but my workers care about it, you know?”<\/p>\n
Jawaad cracked a smile.<\/p>\n
“And so do you, don’t you?… It’s my ship. But what’s preventing the Callianis from being christened?”<\/p>\n
“But we have nothing to sacrifice! I would gladly have gone to fetch a sika or a calf or something like that for the rites, but it’s the shipowner who decides with whose blood to christen his ship, and you put us in such a mess that nothing was done for it, and at this hour, it’s too late. But we still can’t let the Callianis put to sea without sacrificing to the gods! You surely don’t want my masterpiece to sink because the sea gets angry about it?”<\/p>\n
Azur had joined her master discreetly, holding Lisa by the hand. She humbly greeted Damas and Theobos, bowing low with her eyes downcast, prompting her sister-slave to do the same with a small gesture. Lisa followed the movement without argument, still lost. Everything was too new, too big, too strange for her. Jawaad stared at his two slaves for a brief moment and reached back to grab Lisa by the wrist, before unceremoniously pulling her to him:<\/p>\n
“You’re saying that all that’s missing is blood, in fact,” he added to Theobos, “and that it’s up to me to choose?”<\/p>\n
The latter nodded:<\/p>\n
“Well, with a prayer to the gods and spirits of the sea, we can make do with the minimal rite, yes.”<\/p>\n
Jawaad nodded, and cast a knowing look at Damas, before heading toward his ship, through the middle of the men finishing the loading, amidst the mess of packages yet to be loaded still lying on the docks. He dragged Lisa behind him, indifferent to feeling her tremble and pant with panic. She was not resisting; that was the most important thing. Azur followed as well; she watched Jawaad curiously. Naturally, she had caught the look exchanged between her master and Damas, and had understood that Jawaad had an idea in mind that was evidently important to him.<\/p>\n
Theobos also followed in the Master Merchant’s footsteps. He wasn’t entirely sure Jawaad had understood the importance of the matter and the sacred rite, and was about to point it out to him a bit more, just to be sure he’d been clearly understood, when the Master Merchant cut his attempt to insist short with an enigmatic smile:<\/p>\n
“We shall settle this, then.”<\/p>\n
The working men stopped one by one as they saw their boss’s boss approach. It created a slow movement that spread across the dock: everyone was drawing near, yielding to curiosity, while Jawaad dragged an increasingly frightened Lisa toward the ship’s hull, near the gangways.<\/p>\n
The Master Merchant knew the christening customs and those old pagan rites dedicated to the gods of the skies and the oceans. Even without a priest of these ancient beliefs \u2014 they were rare anyway, even in Armanth \u2014 a man initiated in the rituals would be summoned and an animal sacrificed to bless the ship that was about to set sail.<\/p>\n
And sometimes, instead of an animal, a slave was slaughtered to sanctify a ship. When Jawaad drew his dagger from the sheath strapped to his bicep, a great silence gripped the entire crowd. The spectators’ initial thought was that the Master Merchant was indeed going to offer his new slave as a sacrifice to bless his ship.<\/p>\n
Which was not like him at all.<\/p>\n
It was a rare occurrence anyway, quite simply because most of the time, a slave is worth considerably more than a sika, a calf, or any other animal usually utilized for this kind of ritual. Only highly superstitious men, rich enough to afford such a cruel whim, went to these lengths, that some considered foolish. Slaves may be utilitarian objects, but sacrificing them when livestock will do is a somewhat despicable luxury in the eyes of a Lossyan.<\/p>\n
Theobos therefore widened his eyes, incredulous at the idea that his boss, rather reputed to largely mock occult forces, would commit the act he nonetheless seemed clearly determined to do. Even Damas raised an eyebrow, briefly surprised and notably disapproving; he did not at all appreciate the idea of wasting a human life for a superstition regarding spirits that exist mostly in the heads of the gullible. Azur swallowed hard, out of reflex, but a glance toward Jawaad to read his face immediately reassured her. She had understood. And naturally, the psyk\u00e9 was not mistaken.<\/p>\n
Jawaad yanked on Lisa’s wrist and grabbed her left hand. She pulled back on her arm in response, shaking her head and whining in terror, yet without begging. But in her tear-drowned gaze could be read the obvious realization that she had understood what was going to happen, and no longer possessed the will to try to oppose it.<\/p>\n
There was a very profound silence. The only person who had no apprehension at that moment was Azur, looking, smiling, at her master’s face. The latter cracked a brief, barely visible smile as he cast a dark look at his favorite. She understood his slightest sign better than anyone. But she kept quiet, motionless and impassive. Oh, of course, she deemed what he was doing at that moment a bit cruel, but not enough to hold the slightest grudge against her master.<\/p>\n
In the quasi-religious silence that had just settled over the entire crowd, Lisa wept, staring in terror at the Master Merchant. Her mind screamed at her to act, to flee, to attempt the impossible, futile as it might have been. She would have no chance of escaping; without even exerting effort, Jawaad’s grip was enough to hold her better than any shackle. But even if she managed by some feat of strength to free herself and hypothetically lose the crowd surrounding her, there were only the docks and, further on, the dark alleys of a massive, unknown city. If Jawaad truly wanted to kill her at that moment and she managed to flee, which was nearly impossible, it would only be to die just a little later. What was the point of fighting?<\/p>\n
In her jade-green gaze, its edges drawn with red circles, drowned in tears, more than a sense of fatality could be read: a final imploring and resigned plea, as she was about to die and she knew it well. Answering it were two jet-black eyes, unfathomable and hard. Jawaad stared at her impassively without anyone, except his psyk\u00e9, having a chance to guess what his thoughts could be at that moment, nonchalantly holding the dagger in his free hand.<\/p>\n
Azur bit her tongue, however, to fight to remain silent in the face of Lisa’s poignant distress, which she perceived in all too much detail. It was ultimately Damas who broke the silence. He was neither psyk\u00e9 nor seer. The situation was weighing on him and was even starting to annoy him prodigiously; he wondered what demented idea was crossing his friend’s mind, going and sacrificing this slave that he and Abba had taken so long to find:<\/p>\n
“Um, Jawaad, are you sure that…?”<\/p>\n
He did not have time to finish his sentence. Without warning, Jawaad ran the blade of the dagger across Lisa’s palm, slicing it wide. She cried out, in surprise and pain, in a fresh fit of panic.<\/p>\n
There was a sort of great collective gasp in the crowd. They all had just understood.<\/p>\n
Jawaad, unperturbed, forcefully guided Lisa’s wounded hand; and holding it, he smeared her blood across the hull of his ship in a broad streak. The young Earthwoman was still crying with sharp fear, and let out a second cry of pain. But she, too, had just understood: she was not going to die today; he had never intended to end her life and use her as a sacrificial lamb. She was alive, and the pain in her hand was the stinging proof of it. Which only redoubled other tears, floods of sobs of bitter-tasting relief. For a short moment, she had accepted that it would end like this, in such an absurd manner, ultimately. She had even almost accepted it with serenity, a serenity that Jawaad’s act had just swept away.<\/p>\n
The Master Merchant, without releasing Lisa’s hand, contemplated the long, sticky crimson mark on the immaculate white paint of the Callianis. No one could truly have said if he was satisfied; he showed nothing of it. Only Azur truly understood her master’s gaze: he was disappointed, or at the very least puzzled, as if he had expected something that should have happened and that had not occurred. He seemed to draw an intense reflection from it rather than true frustration. The disappointment therefore lasted only a brief instant. He finally pulled an invisible smile as he turned to Theobos:<\/p>\n
“And what does one say, with that?”<\/p>\n
The foreman, still a bit stunned by the scene \u2014 he had been fooled like everyone else and had genuinely expected to witness a human sacrifice, which would have been a first for him \u2014 took a moment to collect himself before raising his powerful voice toward all the men gathered on the docks:<\/p>\n
“May the gods of the sea and the skies appreciate the sacrifice offered for this nave! She shall sail upon their waves, and beneath their winds, and will be known to them by the name of the Callianis! May they be merciful and remember that the rites have been honored! To the Callianis!”<\/p>\n
A hundred throats then echoed in the same clamor: “To the Callianis!”<\/p>\n
Damas was not the only one not to shout with the shipyard men, observing Jawaad and wondering what the true motivation was that had led the Master Merchant to agree to submit to this custom; because the Jemma\u00ef knew it, all of this held no value for Jawaad. And his boss never, ever did anything without a very good reason. The other person who was not shouting was Azur. She watched her master with a smile, but her expression betrayed her curiosity. What she had guessed regarding her master’s motivation left her thoughtful.<\/p>\n
Jawaad settled a dark, impassive gaze on the psyk\u00e9 before cracking a brief smile, ruffling her hair. He had pulled Lisa against him, who was crying from the pain and the fear she had just experienced. Lifting her by the waist, he came to take her lips in a kiss to which she surrendered immediately without resisting, her tears redoubling. She understood nothing of what had just happened and let herself be carried away docilely, conquered by the terror she had just lived through. Her hand hurt terribly, and the blood continued to flow, spreading over the Master Merchant’s clothes, which he didn’t care about in the slightest.<\/p>\n
When Jawaad set her back on the ground, she clung to him out of reflex, her complexion pale, as if he were the only refuge to hold onto in the emotional storm she was plunged into. She felt dizzy spells coming on far too quickly and a faint taste of metal in her dry mouth, as she continued to lose blood. The Master Merchant let her hold onto him, addressing Azur:<\/p>\n
“Tend to her hand.”<\/p>\n
He detached Lisa from him, almost with tenderness, to push her toward the psyk\u00e9. And he headed toward his men, seeming entirely indifferent to what had just occurred, to help them finalize the departure.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The levitation engines rumbled in a deafening hum, vibrating the wood of the Callianis as she tore herself from the waters of the harbor. Down to the depths of her holds, under the force of the engines of copper, wood, gears, and pistons tasked with forcing the poles of Loss-metal together to thereby generate their repulsion, the noise drowned out everything, and the creaks of the hull added to the deafening din.<\/p>\n
Sonia sketched a smile, hidden in the bowels of the hold where the ship’s provisions were piled high. She hadn’t really had any trouble climbing aboard at the dead of night. The main risk she took was the cargo inspection, which was systematic, primarily to verify that ships weren’t taking on a nest of toshs, which would make quick work of ravaging anything that could be eaten \u2014 and even things that couldn’t.<\/p>\n
In truth, her only real difficulty had been catching a fine, live tosh and bringing it aboard with her in a bag, hiding inside a crate that, for any perfectly normal individual, was obviously so small that even a child couldn’t have fit in it. That detail, and Sonia was counting on it, had not stopped her. Contortionism was among her skills, but she nevertheless congratulated herself on never having stopped maintaining her shape. The crate was truly cramped, and the hours she spent in it were long and painful.<\/p>\n
Once loaded aboard, along with the rest of the merchandise, she had briefly extracted herself from her hiding place with her stowaway, and released the tosh into the hold after shaking it thoroughly so it would squeal furiously. With no surprise at all, she had watched the sailors chase after it, forgetting where they were in the count of their inspection. And within a few minutes, she had been able to find a hiding spot between some barrels, on the side of the stores already inspected.<\/p>\n
The feline, formidable slave looked up, a reflex when she heard the clamors coming from the docks and the deck. It was the sign of departure, and a moment later, the ship was shaken by a heavy jolt as she settled back onto the waves.<\/p>\n
She had succeeded. She was exactly where she wished to be. Once again stinking of dog urine, dirty from having had to cross the docks by swimming through the polluted waters of the harbor, aching from her agonizing hours folded up in her crate, but she had achieved her ends, in accordance with her plans.<\/p>\n
And smiling, she mused, without even a doubt, that Jawaad likely knew full well she was aboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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