The Delegation Page 19

  We reached the ballroom. I pulled away from her and roamed for a minute, finally returning to her. I looked up into her eyes. “Olivia, would you dance with me?”

  We made our own music, Olivia humming for us, and we danced until Claary and Lisolte found us.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dinner was lovely. I met Judge Jessla and decided Bee and Dee were right. She was imposing, but I imagined she was an excellent jurist. Bess was there as well. Bee and Dee served, but there were places for them. I thought it was interesting that Olivia didn’t place them next to me. “You aren’t going to have them whispering to me?” I asked.

  “They’ve said everything they possibly could,” Olivia replied. “I want you here, beside me now.”

  At first, conversation was strained. That changed when Olivia asked me, “Did anything interesting occur after we left?”

  “Interesting question,” I said. “I was passed over for a promotion. Two promotions.”

  “What?” she asked. “What idiot would pass you over?”

  “The king?”

  She stared at me. “You’re being serious.”

  “I’m kind of bragging, actually.”

  “You’re bragging about not getting a promotion?”

  “Minister Heliodor is retiring. He asked the king to announce his successor so he can undergo a smooth transition. I don’t think it was coincidence this happened two days before I was scheduled to leave.”

  “Is this trip why the king chose someone else?”

  I explained everything, but then said, “The thing is this: Minister Heliodor put my name first on the list. I’m heartbroken he’s retiring, but I understand. He put my name first, in spite of my age, and in spite of being a woman.”

  “That part has to feel good,” Claary suggested.

  “And the king took my final recommendation, although I think the queen would have skewered him if he hadn’t.”

  “You said two promotions.”

  “The other position discussed was Ambassador to Ressaline.”

  Olivia began grinning broadly then her smile faltered. “Who does he think he’s sending instead?” she screeched.

  “No one,” I replied. “He said it was one thing to send an ambassador here, but if Queen Lisdee wants formal diplomatic relations between our countries, her choices are here and Barrish.” I paused. “I wouldn’t want to go all the way to Ressaline City, anyway. I might like to visit in the summer.”

  “She’d freeze long before we got her there,” Lisolte said.

  “And my friends are here, in Charth,” I added. “Which the king pointed out. Her Majesty was quite vexed.” I smiled. “But I got the consolation prize, and I think it’s a pretty good prize.”

  “Oh?”

  “The queen now introduces me as her friend. We went to an amazing concert. If you can, you must come back and hear it.”

  Jessla chuckled. “Consorting with your queen, and look at you now. Only a foreign duchess. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

  “Cute, Jessla,” Olivia said. “We’re backing up. The king would have appointed you ambassador to me?”

  “But that’s not really done,” I said. “And I build roads, Olivia. I’m no diplomat.”

  “She keeps saying that,” Lisolte said.

  “I’d be a terrible diplomat,” I said. “I just relayed a private conversation. I’m not sure I was supposed to do that.”

  “I promise you that King Leander will not be upset when he finds out,” Olivia said. “I am fairly certain you were supposed to tell me.”

  “So everyone knows I’m a blabbermouth?”

  “I want you to set those concerns aside,” Olivia said. “Our two countries are not in any sort of conflict. We have mutually pleasing trade agreements. You didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, after a fashion.”

  “After a fashion?”

  “Well, I already knew King Leander had no intention of establishing an embassy in Ressaline City. He told me himself. I didn’t know he might be open to establishing one here. That is an offer of friendship. I’m not an expert in foreign relationships. I’ve never been a diplomat. But it strikes me that this is the sort of thing he couldn’t tell me directly. If he asks to establish an embassy in Ressaline City, Queen Lisdee would have been pleased, but everyone sent would have to experience this custom first. But he couldn’t really offer to establish it here.”

  “But he can have me tell you?”

  “But he didn’t,” she said. “He told you, but did he tell you not to tell me?”

  “No.”

  “This is a form of backchannel communications,” she said. “It’s a way to unofficially either enquire into the feelings on a topic or indicate feelings. King Leander offered something he hasn’t offered before. Maybe it’s not a real offer. Maybe he’s negotiating for something else. Maybe Queen Lisdee isn’t remotely interested. I don’t know. I will tell the queen. She won’t be offended. She will decide whether she wants to discuss it. Do you see?”

  “I guess I do.”

  “Good. So. This is now behind you. Right?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Excellent.”

  “There’s one more thing, though.”

  “Oh?”

  “All of Barrish by now knows the queen befriended a murderer.”

  Jessla didn’t get it and had to have it explained, but everyone else laughed.

  * * * *

  We moved to the parlor. I grew nervous, and I didn’t think I was the only one. Olivia led me to a sofa, but then everyone took other seats, leaving me alone. “Allium,” Olivia said. “Everything we’re about to tell you is entirely true. We aren’t trying to trick you, and we won’t be teasing you. You’re going to have a hard time believing us at first.”

  I nodded. “All right.”

  “This has been a part of Ressaline society for a very long time,” Olivia explained, “from before Ressaline was really even a city.”

  “We discovered magic,” Jessla said. “The details have been lost. Books have been written filled with conjecture. Plays are performed. But no one knows.”

  “All right,” I said again, slowly.

  “On a girl’s sixteenth birthday,” Olivia said. “She may invite this custom we wish you to experience. If she does so before the start of midnight of her seventeenth birthday, the period is for two weeks. At seventeen, it becomes a month. Then two months, then four, then six.”

  “Sixteen is the age of majority in Ressaline,” Jessla said. “She may not ask before then.”

  “She must offer prior to turning twenty-one. The day she turns twenty-one, she may be turned in to the courts, and she is then auctioned off for a year.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will. The court keeps a portion of the money, but the rest goes to the people who turned her in.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “That’s what I said,” Claary said. “It’s not as terrible as it sounds.”

  “That’s what I did,” Olivia said, “although in a fashion that I received the money on my twenty-second birthday.”

  “You turned yourself in.”

  “Correct.”

  “I’m thirty years old, Olivia.”

  “The queen has declared that any foreigners who wish to spend time inside our borders must accept this tradition, and they may be treated as if they are eighteen.”

  “Two months.”

  “Correct. Or two weeks if they are still sixteen.”

  “Got it.”

  “At midnight tonight, that offer expires and becomes as if you are nineteen.”

  “Four months.”

  “And that offer expires at noon tomorrow or whenever you leave my home, whichever comes first. After that, you will be provided an escort to the border, but if you ever appear inside Ressaline again, you will be treated as if you are twenty-one.”

  “Sold for a year.”

  “Correct. No exceptions. You can stand o
n the Flarvorian side of the border and request other terms, but you will not receive them.”

  “What about the people who already know?”

  “The period begins from when I officially tell them here in Charth.”

  “So you could have told me all this in Barrish?”

  “Yes, and it would be no different than telling you now.”

  “All right. I understand. Please keep going.”

  “Bee and Dee are not just slaves. They are pleasure slaves.”

  “This is related?”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “The color the slaves wear indicates their roles within a household.”

  “Green for field hands,” I said. “I saw some during visits across the Verlies River crossing. How many slaves are there?”

  She didn’t answer but turned to look at Claary. And Claary said, “Almost every adult woman born of Charthan is now a slave.”

  “What?” I screeched.

  “Discounting the extremely elderly, or those who were children when the Ressalines came, there are 83 women born of Charth who have become citizens rather than slaves. I am one of those 83. In addition, there are some late teenagers who are still subjects.”

  I stood up and walked to the window to stare outside for a while. No one tried to stop me. Finally, without turning around, I asked, “Claary, your mother?”

  “A slave.”

  “Sister?”

  “Slave.”

  “They’re both happy, Allium,” Dee said. “Li-li was already deeply in love with Lassa.”

  I turned around. “Lassa is another of these 83?”

  “Yes,” Claary said. “My friend.”

  “Your friend enslaved your sister?”

  “I begged Lisbon not to do it,” she said. “She’s happy. She’s so happy. I’m the one who has a hard time with it. Still.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “Allium, do you doubt us when we tell you we’re happy?” Bee asked.

  “No, but I don’t understand that, either.”

  “And that is why we are having this conversation here rather than in Barrish,” Olivia said. “And it’s why I still don’t know the best way to do this.”

  I walked back and came to a stop directly in front of her. “Tell me the rest.”

  “Please sit.”

  “I don’t want to sit alone. May Bee and Dee sit with me?”

  “That’s a bad idea, Allium. You are already wrapped around their fingers, and you need to make this decision for yourself.”

  “You want me to be a slave.”

  “Please sit down, Allium.”

  “Please let them sit with me.”

  “Of course, if that’s what you want.”

  I sat. They both came over and cuddled me from the side. Bee kissed my cheek. Dee whispered, “We’re so happy, Allium. You must understand that.”

  I pointed to Olivia. “Tell me the rest. And you two. No more kisses and no more whispers. But please stay, if it won’t distress you.”

  “For now,” Olivia said. “But only for now.”

  * * * *

  It took time. They told me what I felt was probably everything. I stopped responding except to nod or grunt from time to time.

  Finally they wound down. I sat somewhat numbly then asked, “The king knows all of this?”

  “Perhaps not every detail,” Olivia replied. “Enough.”

  At that, absolutely everything else made sense, including the queen’s anger. “I’m fairly certain you’re not on Queen Ralifta’s greeting card list.”

  Olivia snorted. “Perhaps not.”

  “There are parts I don’t quite understand.”

  “We’ll answer your questions,” she said.

  “This clothing.” I stroked Bee’s arm. “It’s a resin from a plant.”

  “Fused with magic. Yes.”

  “But you said this isn’t what I’d wear.”

  “No. It’s far too intense. We already get a certain percentage of women who come though their first time and immediately beg to be permanently enslaved. The longer your first time, the more likely that is. The resin increases the percentage significantly.”

  “You lasted a year.”

  “Yes. It’s considered very risky, not for the year you spend, but because it’s very difficult to come out of this and not immediately ask your owner for a permanent challenge. Those are illegal, by the way, unless a judge approves.”

  “Which I do only if the woman in question is nearly out of her mind.”

  “Which happens,” Olivia added. “For people not born to this, it happens more than we would like.”

  “Is that what happened here?”

  “With some of the women,” Olivia said. “Yes.”

  “Allium, Olivia was my first,” Claary said. “And I nearly begged her, very nearly.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No, but it was close.”

  “Allium,” Olivia said, “it is a risk you would come out of this out of your mind to be returned to being a slave. It happens. You do not fit the profile, however. It is reasonably likely you would ask to be permanently enslaved, but we would help you through that period, and you would get through it.”

  I looked down, not sure what to say. Olivia said, “Bee, Dee. Please go get them.”

  The two got up, and I immediately lost their warmth. I looked up and watched them leave. “Will they be back?” My voice cracked.

  “Shortly,” Olivia said. “I’m going to let them hug and kiss you, but then you need to sit alone for a little while. Please do this my way.”

  “All right,” I said in practically a little girl voice. “Why is this so important to you?”

  “Everything I’ve told you is true,” Olivia said. “Do you think anyone, without knowing Bee and Dee, would believe half of what I’ve said.”

  “No.”

  “We can’t do business with people who spend the entire time judging us. You don’t fully believe me, and if you didn’t trust me, you would have already run, screaming. You won’t fully believe until you’ve been through it for yourself.”

  I sat quietly after that, only a minute or two, and then the door opened again. Bee and Dee entered the room, and they were escorting another woman between them. She was dressed in a similar fashion to them, although it wasn’t skin tight. After a moment, I realized it was Tess. Behind them were two more slaves, dressed as Bee and Dee were, escorting another woman: Yearly. Then I realized the other two slaves were Kylia and Rishia.

  They came to a stop inside the room. I stood and walked over to the six slaves. I came to a stop. “Tess?”

  “She’s not talking yet,” Olivia said. “Yearly will say a few words, but only to her owner or a few of the other household slaves, the ones she trusts the most.”

  I turned. “Whose are they?”

  “If you insist, I will tell you,” Olivia said. “But I believe knowing will color your choice of your own owner, and I don’t want to do that.”

  “In other words, between the five of you, and I bet Bess isn’t really in the list, you own Tess and Yearly.”

  “For another six weeks,” Olivia said. “We’re not to the point of you wondering about this. We’re still answering your other questions. I have one. Have you already decided?”

  “No.”

  “Have you decided who your owner would be?”

  “That’s two questions,” I said a little cattily. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Are you rejecting the people in this room for that role? If you want to do this, but are angry with us, I can assign someone else.”

  “I’m not rejecting anything or anyone,” I said. “No, that’s not true. If I have any choice at all, I’m not doing this with someone I don’t already know and trust. I might be talked into the judge, but if I do this, it’s with one of you.”

  “All right,” Olivia said. “We have not coached them. They may respond to you. Shi-shi and Ky are fully functional. Tess and Ya-ya a
re not. This is common. Allium, I know I don’t have to say this, but I’m going to. Be gentle with them. If you’re going to be harsh, wait until we send them from the room.”

  “I’m not going to be harsh,” I said.

  I turned back and looked at the slaves, then moved to stand in front of Kylia. She watched me, smiling. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, Allium,” she said.

  “You do this willingly?”

  “I practically beg to be allowed to come,” she replied. “Mother has come back twice.” She laughed. “She challenged Olivia and thought her stubborn nature would work.”

  “A practice challenge,” Olivia said. “Duration one week.”

  “The second time, she didn’t challenge anyone, but she’s already talking about what she did wrong. She’ll be back.”

  I turned to Olivia. “It’s all a big game?”

  “Competitive sports,” she said. “Not the first time, though.”

  “They’re all pleasure slaves?”

  “Yes,” Olivia confirmed.

  “When we give ourselves to Claary,” Ky said, “She does this.” She indicated blue piping in her outfit.

  “How does the resin do that?”

  “Magic,” Olivia said.

  “Sometimes it’s opposite,” Ky said. “Mostly blue. Jessla made me black, though.”

  “She worked at Government House with me,” Jessla explained.

  “Being a pleasure slave is better,” Ky said. “But I loved it. If she’ll have me, I’ll do it again. The challenge was fun, and being useful felt so good.”

  I moved to Rishia – Shi-shi. “How do you feel about it?”

  “I live here most of the time,” she said. “I only have one owner now. She takes very, very good care of me, and I completely love her.”

  I didn’t ask who it was, and I didn’t think I was going to guess, but then I turned and looked at Claary. No one said a word.

  I moved to Ya-ya, standing between Shi-shi and Ky. She was watching me. “Her name right now is Ya-ya,” Olivia said.

  I nodded then smiled. “Ya-ya, do you understand me?” She didn’t speak, but she smiled and then set her hand on my arm.