38. The Red Dragon

“Line up, warriors!”

Kroon’s black glasses stood out on his face. Obviously, the dragon-monk had found a solution to be able to see and keep the light from bothering him. His appearance had not changed much… nor his gruff character, he sensed.

Exchanging glances, the Xalyas eagerly lined up. The captain managed to get in line next to Dashvara.

“What about that one? Do you know him?” he asked in a whisper.

Dashvara nodded.

“This is—”

“Silence in the row!” Kroon bellowed, moving forward on his wheelchair.

Bloody monk…, Dashvara thought with a clear throat.

“You, stand up straight,” the monk barked at Zamoy.

Several disgruntled sighs were clearly heard. They all knew that, as slaves, they could only expect to be treated as what they were—mere traded goods—but, as Doomed, they had never had to deal directly with the masters who kept them on the Border. Blessed are we the Doomed, Dashvara laughed to himself.

The arrival of the Xalyas had attracted a number of idle guards who had settled on the other side of the courtyard to watch them. Dashvara gave them a weary look. Had they nothing better to do?

“Look straight ahead, soldier,” Kroon croaked.

Since there was no way to tell which way the monk was looking, Dashvara had trouble understanding that he was addressing him. He sighed, complying with his command, and the Dazbonian began to quickly question each of them in a particularly affable, biting tone. He was insufferable.

“Sashava, huh?” Kroon hurled toward the beginning of the row. “Straighten up like a man and be glad you still have the other leg.”

Dashvara gasped, and as he saw the old Xalya clench his fists on his crutches and his face turn crimson with anger, he feared the worst. Control yourself, Sashava… Luckily, a few whispered words from Lumon calmed him down. Dashvara breathed out. Good. Just out of curiosity, how long do you think you’ll keep the session going, you old grump? Until someone jumps on your neck and strangles you, maybe?

When he had reprimanded Makarva on the deplorable state of his uniform, the dragon-monk passed to Dashvara and said:

“You don’t look any better. What’s your name?”

Without being able to see his eyes, it was difficult to guess his expression.

“Dashvara of Xalya,” he replied with a scowl. Any joy he might have felt when Kroon appeared had vanished after hearing him spew so much venom in just a few minutes.

The monk pouted.

“His Eminence Atasiag Peykat has entrusted me to choose his new slaves. Don’t you see my badge? I am an officer and administrative secretary. Call me secretary.”

Dashvara glanced at his badge, which depicted a golden scale. He sighed again and gave him a warning look before saying:

“Yes, Secretary.”

“I don’t like your face,” Kroon growled. “Consider yourself lucky that Atasiag Peykat saved you from a Doomed life. You feel grateful, soldier, don’t you?”

One part of Dashvara would have gladly punched that damned “secretary” in the face. But the other part advised him not to. He repeated firmly:

“Yes, Secretary.”

“Good, good. Good barbarian,” Kroon said with a smile, and then turned his attention to the captain.

This time, Zorvun was careful not to add the title of “captain” in front of his name. When he had finished his pernicious questions, Kroon said to the federate in the hat:

“Boy! Take them out to be marked.”

“The drow too, secretary?” the young man hesitated.

Kroon did not answer immediately, and Dashvara understood that he was trying to find out if Tsu was part of the lot. Dashvara nodded quietly, and the monk followed suit briskly.

“The drow too.”

As the young federate led them in line to a door in the courtyard, Makarva hissed through his teeth.

“Mark us?” he complained in a low voice. “They too are going to mark us?”

“All masters own a mark,” Tsu whispered.

“Quiet!” the youth in the hat shouted. “Roll up your shirt sleeves and come in.”

Dashvara rolled up the sleeve of his right arm, where the black beetle of the Doomed already appeared. Next to it was an almost invisible identification rune that allowed some celmist inspectors to identify each slave individually. And just below the beetle were the numbers 547, the year the seal was applied according to the Cili calendar. As Tsu rolled up his sleeve, Dashvara saw Kroon’s eyebrows appear above his glasses. The truth was, no matter how many times he had seen them, he never ceased to be impressed by the number of marks the drow had on his arm. As a kid, he had served on a country estate, then he had been bought by a middle-class man who had sent him to study in Titiaka with his own son to “help” the latter in his studies—as Tsu had confessed, during the six years of his service, he had done all the homework for his young master—; later, he had been bought by a rich doctor, then by a mercenary chief, before falling into the hands of Arviyag. In all, he had five marks surrounded by the counter-seal of the “loyal serf”. For a skilled doctor like Tsu, what wouldn’t a rich merchant give? Once, Dashvara had asked Tsu how he had managed to force Arviyag to give him up. The drow had shrugged and looked at him with an amused glint in his red eyes. As he walked behind Makarva, Dashvara smiled. If anyone had taught him to respect the secrets of others, that was Tsu.

The windows of the room they entered let in a dim light. Two men were waiting for them there, each holding a large ornate seal in their hands. Dashvara knew that slaves were branded with red-hot branding iron in some places. The Essimeans did it on the steppe. However, as the man who had branded them with the black beetle seal had pointed out back in Titiaka, the federates were more advanced in the field: they used colored products that seeped deep under the skin like parasites. They were impossible to remove. Dashvara had tried many times and concluded that, to get rid of the mark of the Doomed, he would have had to cut off his forearm. In the long run, he had even come to appreciate the beetle, for if there was one thing the Diumcilians had to be credited with, it was artistic taste: when it came to the coats of arms and marks of the slaves, they were true experts.

While one of the men began to apply a counter-seal to the black beetle, the other passed in front of all the former Doomed, scrutinizing them intently. When he met Dashvara’s gaze, he turned white as a shroud, and the Xalya recognized him immediately.

“Dash?” Rokuish murmured. Dashvara nodded imperceptibly with a small knowing smile. The Shalussi swallowed hard, and realizing that if the Rayorah guards caught him recognizing a slave, things could get ugly, he immediately looked away and went straight to the front of the line. The other had already affixed four seals. “Hold out your arm,” he asked Sedrios the Old.

The Shalussi’s voice was not very authoritative, but precisely, this brought obvious relief between the Xalyas. Kroon’s behavior had made them doubt that they were really on the road to freedom, but Rokuish’s kind and expressive eyes reflected all the truth they needed to keep moving forward.

“The Shalussi?” Captain Zorvun inquired in a whisper.

Dashvara nodded without taking his eyes off Rokuish.

“Himself.”

The young steppeman had not changed much since the last time he had seen him. Clean-shaven and elegantly dressed. No matter how hard he tried to hide his nervousness and emotion, all his movements betrayed him.

Brave Shalussi, what the hell are you doing in Diumcili?

Dashvara wiped the smile off his face as the Rayorah man came before him with his seal. He held out his arm, and with efficiency, the guard applied the mold with the product. He held it there for thirty seconds, and Dashvara felt the cold, abrasive touch of the liquid. When the federate withdrew the mold, a black circle of thorns and intricately intertwined vines surrounded the beetle.

I’ll end up becoming a walking work of art, Dashvara thought, looking away from the mark.

The Rayorah guard was done well before Rokuish, and without waiting for him to finish, he walked away, leaving them alone. Immediately, the murmurs rose.

“Is this a real mark?” Zamoy asked to the Shalussi.

Rokuish became flushed.

“Well… I think so.”

“So we’re still slaves?” Sashava muttered.

Rokuish stirred, uneasy.

“Look, there’s no other way—”

“Shalussi,” a threatening voice suddenly cut him off. Everyone jumped, and Dashvara saw Kroon enter on his chair, alone. The dragon-monk stared at Rokuish through his dark glasses as he said, “Get back to work. And the rest of you, shut up.”

Rokuish cleared his throat, nodded, and continued to apply his mold. When he reached Makarva, Dashvara looked curiously at the red mark: it was an intricate scarlet and silver seal with the elongated body of a dragon curving through it.

Impressive. How long did they have to spend making this wonder? We may be slaves, but they do decorate us well.

When Rokuish approached the seal on Dashvara’s arm, his hand was trembling.

“Don’t worry, Rok,” Dashvara smiled. “I’m not nearly as tattooed as the Essimean priests. You still have enough room to draw on my arm. Go ahead.”

The Shalussi’s eyes expressed all the emotion of their reunion, and Dashvara’s smile widened. I, too, am happy to see you again, Shalussi…

Kroon whistled quietly:

“Barbarians, cooperate a little! Save the feelings for later.”

Dashvara recovered a half-seriousness, and more calmly, Rokuish pressed the seal against his skin. Under the effect of the product, he felt his muscles contract, but afterwards, he was only left with an annoying itch. He remembered that, three years ago, this sensation had lasted a whole week, so the first thing he did was to get used to it and ignore the burning of the two seals.

“He looks like a nice boy,” the captain murmured as Rokuish was already attending to Alta, the last in line.

Dashvara gave him a wry pout and completed Zorvun’s thought:

“For a Shalussi. That’s what you just thought, right, Captain?”

Zorvun rolled his eyes but did not deny it.

“Anyway,” Dashvara added, “our required level of sympathy for others has dropped significantly in the last three years, don’t you think, Captain? I even managed to feel sympathy for an orc who was coming to kill me.”

Zorvun smiled, but it disappeared immediately.

“What about this cripple?” he whispered.

Dashvara shrugged.

“A good man,” he assured. “Although he has a drinking problem.”

Kroon grunted, and Dashvara paled as he realized that they had been speaking in Common Tongue.

“You are mistaken, barbarian. I haven’t had a drop of wine in three years,” he revealed.

Dashvara raised an eyebrow and was about to declare that such a feat should be celebrated with a bottle of wine when the young man with the hat who had led them to Rayorah entered the room; the dragon monk let out a roar.

“Straighten up, soldiers! Now you belong to a new master named Atasiag Peykat. You will travel to Titiaka, and there you will be informed of your new occupations. You, my boy, take them to the dining hall, let them eat something. Then send them to the baths, they stink like the canals of Dazbon. Once that’s done, get them into the carts before the bells ring twice, got it? I want them to get to Akres tonight.”

The young man with the hat nodded energetically and did his duty efficiently: Dashvara came out of the dining hall full and left the baths scrubbed and soaped. When the young man came out of the baths and handed them new boots and newly washed and dried tunics and pants, Zamoy chuckled.

“Say, being a slave is starting to look less terrible to me,” he confessed to his two brothers.

“I’m even going to have boots without holes!” Kodarah rejoiced.

“That’s what I was saying,” Dashvara confirmed aloud while tying the laces of a boot: “send a man into a dark well, and he will rejoice in one small ray of light.”

“Well, that’s just it,” Miflin said, sitting on a pallet. “The one who lives continuously able to see the sun does not enjoy it as much as the one who can see it only rarely.”

Dashvara looked up at the ceiling with a skeptical expression.

“Following your reasoning, someone could not enjoy his freedom if he had not lost it before. Or at least he wouldn’t enjoy it as much. Is that what you want to explain to me?”

Miflin nodded his head vigorously as his brothers and Makarva huffed, amused.

“Obviously, yes. A slave who regains his freedom can really appreciate it.”

“So you mean that everyone should be enslaved and then freed,” Dashvara reasoned with a small smile. “And everyone should die and then live. That way we’d all be much happier, rejoicing in all that we’ve lost and gained. Sorry, Poet, but your reasoning doesn’t convince me. It is not necessary to have suffered to rejoice. For me, it is enough to know that I can lose the little freedom I have left to appreciate it. And I even consciously enjoy the freedom of thought, even though I know that, that one, I will keep it until my death.”

He finished tying his bootlaces while Miflin nodded. Makarva, Kodarah, and Zamoy had been watching the exchange like perfect spectators, but they soon burst out laughing when Dashvara fell silent. Makarva cleared his throat.

“This time, the one who started ranting was Dash, didn’t you get that impression, Zamoy?”

“The impression, yes,” the latter agreed. “But, as Dash would say, an impression does not necessarily reflect reality.”

As his friends laughed, Dashvara shrugged, sighing and feigning resignation. He noticed that the young man in the old hat was watching them curiously from the bathhouse door. He couldn’t have understood what they said, they were speaking in Oy’vat, but perhaps he was just surprised to see the Doomed so happy.

“Hurry up, soldiers!” he barked.

Dashvara exchanged a weary look with the captain, but imitating the others, he hurriedly left all the old clothes in a large basket, and since no belts had been brought to them and the clothes were very loose, he put his white Doomed belt back on before following the official into the corridors of the barracks. He snorted inwardly. Seeing familiar faces had made him deeply happy, but even so, he had the uneasy feeling that neither Rokuish nor Kroon had a very clear idea of what lay ahead for the Xalyas. They were involved in the transfer, that’s true, but they were not the ones who initiated it. The one who really held the strings of this transfer seemed to be this Atasiag Peykat. A slave buyer and a stranger who, for some reason, had chosen them.