Today I am a slave. But I imagine that tomorrow I will be free.

The Giedra's house slaves never go beyond the city walls. To do so would be an offence punishable by branding. The Giedra's slaves are for life. No slave leaves the service of the Giedra till they die. Or they are sold. Any slave that tries to escape is usually found and chained for life. Any blacksmith who removes a slave iron is hung. Any citizen, whether man, woman, or child, found harboring or assisting a runaway slave in any measure is hung.

But I still imagine, plan. There is more than one possibility.

I was not always a slave. Not a sem – born into slavery. I was a land Liege's daughter, before the Giedra came to my father's lands and killed and captured my people. My father is dead, but last I knew my mother lives. My brother . . . I don't know. When I saw him last he held his left hand pressed to his stomach and blood bubbled through his fingers.

I don't know. I pray he lives.

So I imagine freedom. I imagine how it might happen.

When I pull the last husk from a head of corn I think that tomorrow one of the Border Lieges will come to visit the Giedra. Maybe his wife, his daughter, perhaps himself will take a fancy to me and buy me. And then perhaps they would set me free. If they knew I had been a Land Liege's daughter.

But tomorrow comes and goes and no Border Liege takes a fancy to me. I scrub the last of urine from the night pots and hope that tonight the rusted loop on my ankle ring will wear through at last. My ankle will pop free from the chain I am bound to every night in the wall of the slave house. I will stand up and step over the other slaves. Quietly, softly. Hadlai the slave overseer sleeps in a cot before the door, but I can go around her easily enough. And then, using the scrap of fat I take from the kitchen and hide every night, I will grease the creaking hinges of the door.

And then I'll be gone.

But today Hadlai unchained me and glared at the loop on my ankle ring. “Go to the blacksmith before you're up to the palace. Have him set a new loop.”

Nothing will be rusting through now. I go to the blacksmith and he grunts and yanks my ankle up till my foot rests next to the anvil. It's a dangerous place for it. I won't move though, because he'll pull my foot up again and it still hurts from the first time.

When he welds the new loop into the ring it feels like my skin is burning. My foot jerks away before I can stop myself. The blacksmith curses, almost spilling liquid metal on the stones of the forge. He grabs my leg and holds it while he binds new metal and old.

My ankle burns when I walk out of the blacksmith's shop. I stop to look down at it and see blood trickling onto the arch of my foot.

But it doesn't stop me. I can still imagine.

While I soak underclothes today I wonder if I can strike up a friendship with one of the palace guards. If I could have him leave a gate open for me one night . . .

I know this won't work though. The guards are respected in their class and do not associate with slave girls. Not unless they want something from the slaves, and that I am not willing to give. I am not a pretty girl, so it is easier for me than some.

My thoughts run wild, though. I can think of a way to be free. I will.

My lot is not as hard as some. I am too narrow in my figure, my face too plain, to serve at the Giedra's table. I do not have to tolerate the attentions of drunken Lieges like my fellow slave girls. Because I can write and read though, I sometimes am called by the Giedres to scribe a letter for her. She is a young woman, years younger than the Giedra, but the match was revered as too good for her to pass up and her Father and Mother made sure she accepted it.

This noon she calls me. I follow the man who takes her the mid day tray of cold meats and pastry, squeezed fruit juices, chilled with shards of ice taken from the Mounts year long glaciers. We are not allowed to speak, but he smiles once when we reach the door. The Giedres is not a happy woman.

“Come at last!”

I don't see her expression because my face is down, my back bent in a low bow.

“Well get up. How are you going to write in that position?”

I straighten as the other slave sets down the tray and begans to serve. Somewhere behind the heavy silken drapes at one end of the room I hear music.

“What, still doing nothing? Stupid girl, over there. Careful with the stationary – it's new. I don't want to see any blots, and make sure you don't waste a page.”

I hear the trickle of liquid in blown glass, a long sigh from the Giedres, and then I stand before the writing table. I wait for the Giedres to tell me what she wants written. I am not allowed to speak to her unless she asks me something directly.

My mind wanders. I can't help myself, and I think about the man who writes for the Giedra. An old slave, grown ancient in the service of many Giedras. He is one of the last of a people almost all gone, one who revered words. The word in the palace is that he can speak any language you can think of, new or old. They say he was gifted by a god when he was born, and the mark was left upon him, a twisting knot painted in black on his hand.

I saw him once. I did not see a man gifted by some god long forgotten. I saw an old slave, eyes rheumy with age and too many words, tired of the service he's given to the men who have successively inherited him. And the mark on his hand was only a fading tattoo, no mark of power from a god.

I wonder if he ever thought of freedom. How could he not in so many years? I wonder he did not try for it, why he is not free now . . .

“Doddering fool!”

I bow my head and glance behind me. The other slave is bent double before the Giedres, half a pitcher of the fragrent juices puddled on the carpet between them. Some spot the Giedres' cream white skirt.

Her hand clutches her ivory fan and it jerks out and snaps him on the side of the head. I know the hard ivory is painful. I see a thread of red trickle down his ear.

“And you!” I bow before her. I don't want to feel the fan, or something much worse. “Stand up. Call the guards.” Her foot catches me in the ribs. I think it hurts her more than me.

I pull myself up and back to the door. Two guards are beyond, in the anteroom. “Her Grace wants you.” My voice is a soft one, but clear. They hear.

I don't want to go back into the room, but before I can escape the Giedres' finger points to me and the guards bring me in their wake. The slave is still on the ground.

“Take him. Two score lashes for clumsiness. Two score for insolence.”

I know this slave. Not well, but enough. The Giedres does him wrong. For thirteen years he has served the Giedra and Giedres, since he was only a boy of nine winters. Every slave is insolent in their heart. But he is not clumsy.

The Giedres is an unhappy woman. The Giedra has taken a new mistress, not weeks after the Giedres made sure the last died of the spring cough. She vents her anger on the slaves because we are there. Like the bright woven rugs under our feet or the porceilen urn she broke this morning.

“You haven't finished the letter?”

I keep my head down but I can see the Giedres looking at me. I cannot tell her she did not tell me what to write, or that I finished it. I should be diplomatic and quick with my words but I don't know how. I keep silent. I will be lashed in any case.

“Lazy, insolent . . . take her with you. The same as him.”

I have never been lashed. All those who serve the Giedres have been. Or will be. It's strange that it has not happened to me before. It is not like a whipping. The leathers are longer, notched so the hard leather will catch on the skin of the back.

The guards take us through the halls. I know we are going to the slave yard. There is a post there, weathered and stained by years of overuse. Dread holds my senses and I can't think. I set my mind wandering before the tears in my eyes run down my face.

I imagine what would happen if, as we turned this corner I put my foot out and tripped the guard beside me. I would run, they would chase. Through the halls, outside. I would duck out of sight and they might go past me. Then I would slip by the blacksmith's shop for a file. Steal the cook's market cloak from the kitchen and leave with the servants who are off for the afternoon market.

It won't work. There are three guards. I am fast, but there are too many. They would close the gates before anything else. No servants would be leaving for market then.

But I can still imagine. Hope. I always do. I don't tell anyone this, but Hadlai knows I hope and she calls me a fool.

“Do you know who's head will roll if you run?” She pushes her words out, the way she does when angry. “Mine! That's who.”

Hadlai is slave overseer. For the past three years she's watched each of us night and day. Her husband was slave master before her, a thin rodent-like man. Greasy and slick as a rat. Hadlai took on the work after he died from a wound infection. The steward never said otherwise and she keeps the position.

I know that if I escape she'll loose her position at the least. And I know that if I escape I will likely be caught.

Maybe not. If I could find the border lands, I could find my home.

“Watch it!”

I glance up just as my feet are knocked from under me and I hit the gritty cobbles of the slave yard. A cart and mule crunches by and one of the guards is glaring at me.

“Get up. You don't have the time for your daily mud bath.”

I stand up and he kicks me forward. They are already chaining the other slave to the post. My arm is grabbed and they lock me to the other side. The chains are short and hold my arms well above my head. They were measured for a man much taller than me and my feet just touch the ground.

“What's this?”

Hadlai's shoes make a scuffing noise in the general noise of the yard. She can challenge the guards because we slaves are her responsibility. Under her husband slaves were lashed without question, but Hadlai claims it only ruins the goods. She is a softer heart than her husband was.

“Who said you could be doing this?”

One guard spits brown juices. “The Giedres ordered four score for each. Her decree.” He says the last word with a relish that means it is new to him.

Hadlai curses and leaves the yard. A guard is sent to get the Giedra's whipping man. My shoulders hurt and I stand on tiptoe to ease the strain. Before me the other slave is silent, breath steady. I don't understand how he is calm. He has been lashed before, but never this many.
This is too much, even for him.

I am shivering now, my body anticipating the blows. I can't stop myself and I curse myself for weak. I will cry and scream and whimper, I know. I will probably die. Too much blood gone, nothing to heal the wounds, the infection running rampant in the filthy slave hall – I will die for certain.

“Permission to get on with it, slave mistress?” The guard laughs. Hadlai has come back. She says nothing. “Go ahead, Borl.”

I hear the snick of leather uncoiling from Borl's hand. My eyes have been closed but when I look I see Borl's assistant beyond the other slave. A long whip drapes from his hand.

“Take his shirt off.”

A guard pulls the shirt off the other slave. Another starts for me. “Leave her some dignity!” Hadlai shouts. The guard laughs but leaves me be.

Something snaps the air and a streak burns down my back. The arch of my body rattles the chains. Across from me the other whip cracks. The lashes fall to a rhythm.

I flinch when it hits again. The third time I gasp. I can't help whimpering when it strikes me a fourth time. I scream on the sixth.

I am weak. I scream until my throat is hoarse and my voice has left me. Then I can only jerk and whimper. Tears blog my eyes. The other slave does not scream. I hear his breath come out in ragged gasps, hear when he grunts, when he curses. Two score and ten lashes they give him before he makes a noise.

But I don't hear any more after that. My body goes limp and my mind falls into darkness as my face scrapes the splintered wood of the post. I must be dying. Death itself is a sort of freedom.



“She can't walk yet.”

“She'll have to.” Something hot and heavy touches my back. I whimper. “I don't know why she doesn't wake. She heals well enough.” Someone bends over me and they sigh, their breath brushing my neck. “Here. Take this. I can't stay longer.”

There's the brush of feet on dirt and the rustle of cloth. The warm heaviness presses into my back again, now from the other side. “If she wakes?”

“Make her eat. Get her on her feet. You need to leave soon.”

“And if – ”

“You're dead. Stay here.”

Nothing more except the bump of wood against wood and then the creak of footsteps above. I want to open my eyes, but it is too much. Water trickles and the warmth is on my back again. It stings.

“I'm thirsty.”

A basin clatters and there is a curse. “Awake are you?” A blanket scratches my back, pulled over me. Then they touch my face. “Can you sit up?”

I don't want to. It will hurt my back. They sigh and my face is tilted up. Lukewarm water spills on my lips and down my throat.

“Hadlai wants you up. Our time is running out.”

I know, but before I pull my arms under me I lay for a while with my eyes closed. They are impatient, but wait till I open my eyes. When I sit up it stretches the skin on my back and I sit stiff for a moment till the pain clears.

“Here.” They shove something in my hand and I open my eyes. It's the other slave standing in front of me, watching. “Eat it.” He turns away, his head bowed before the low beams above us. One tallow lamp shows the bloodstains on his shirt.

I eat and he sits down on the dirt floor across from my straw and blankets. There is a bowl in my hand, filled with broth and bread chunks. So I eat and wish the fog in my mind will clear.

“What happened?”

He looks up. “They think we are dead. Hadlai hid us and as soon as you can move we'll be going.”

I think I know what he means. “Free?”

He shrugs. “If we can make it.”

I finish the food in the bowl, but still Hadlai has not come so I lie down again. I fall asleep and it's the thump of a trap door falling that brings me back.

“Up, I see.” Hadlai looks at me, her arms full of cloth. “Here, dress yourself.” She drops a bundle on my blankets and turns to the other slave. “And you'll need something for your feet,” she tells him.

I inch to a dark corner with my blanket around me and pull the clothes on. A long skirted dress worn loose with a belt to pull in the waist and a cloak and thick shoes are what Hadlai brought me. I dress as quickly as I can, but my back is sore and stiff and makes it slow.

Putting on the low shoes I notice my ankle ring is gone. A band of pale skin, calloused around the edges, is what remains. I lace the leather shoes and stand up.

“Go now,” Hadlai says, giving the other slave a cloth sack. “You know the way.” She nods to him and then looks at me. He starts up the ladder and I follow. I am excited.

It's a dark night. With no moon and clouds on the point of rain it is a good night to leave. We pass through a low building that I don't recognize in the dark. At the gates guards keep the watch but we don't go anywhere near there. Instead we pass the privies and find a low round door set in the palace wall. It is open a crack and the lock hangs loose. The other slave hunches down and goes through. I follow into the stinking tunnel.

It's a long way to the grate at the other end and I can't hold my breath the whole way. I have to breath and so I smell the fetid air. My mind goes as it always has. I had not imagined I would be free this way. Not through a sewer. The grate is a blessing. We pull ourselves out onto a rocky slope that falls to a fast moving stream. There are trees across the stream, ferny undergrowth covering the ground.

The other slave clicks the grate back into place. Another lock hangs open here, too. I think Hadlai will come soon and click it into place again.

We cross the stream, reaching out in the dark so the tree branches don't poke our eyes on the other side. Then we are in the forest, almost running. I don't think to stop and its when the other slave does that I realize my breath is coming hard and my back aches with every footfall.

“Just – ” he gasps “ – we'll rest – a moment.” He drops to the ground and dead tree leaves and fallen twigs crunch.

I can't bend over and lean against a tree instead. I let some of my breath come back before I speak. “This is freedom.”

He doesn't say anything. Only smiles. “Yes. Yes it is.” He stands. “I don't know your name.”

And I don't know his. It is foolish to make friendships when you are a slave. No good comes of it. I do not know any of my fellow slaves name. Didn't know. I'm not a slave anymore.

“Eveeta. That's my name.”