Journey to Huisinga
an excerpt

Chapter One – Sankari

Sankari helped in the kitchen all morning until she felt like it was she that was being cooked. Sweat soaked her russet fur as if it was she being glazed until sticky and orange-brown. Her nerves and dry muzzle certainly choked her and stifled her as much as a real apple rammed down her gullet might. She would soon have to serve the meal to her master’s guest, and as much as she was not actually an entrée, it was not certain she wouldn’t be mangled and consumed.
However she felt, Sankari did not act so much like a roast pig as a fly desperate to escape through a sealed window. For an hour now she had paced by the door of her master’s section of the seminary, opening and closing the door to see if the anticipated guest was visible in the gloom of the cavernous hallway beyond.
Their visitor, Brother Wurru, was habitually late, but today, as she opened the door again a few moments before he was due, her sensitive fox’s nose caught the distant reek of stale smoke. She flinched reflexively as Brother’s Wurru’s smell revived memories of ghastly exhalations, cruel laughter, and pain.
Soon after she scented Brother Wurru, her reliable eyes detected his shape in the distance. His silhouette was tall against the patches of rusty murk from the lanterns that lined the hallway and stained it with comfortless and cold “mage fire.” In moments, her excellent hearing picked up on quiet footsteps. He was calm and punctual today. She dreaded Brother Wurru’s timely arrival. Such moments marked either the formulation or finalisation of some plan he regarded with malignant relish.
Sankari was the slave of Brother Prayaga, a Luwamnas acolyte of the Theocracy of Huisinga, and he served the lords under the Hierophant whose divine office traced back directly to the prophet Gazzaruli and other sacred founders.
Sankari had been transformed into a petit fox girl. Nearly all Theocracy slaves were transformed in some way, from the animal men servants to the heavy labour “brutes,” to the war’s frontline hunter-killer “renders” that murdered everyone in a search radius in “hunting sprees” or attacked enemy soldiers in endless “inhuman waves.” The Theocracy’s vast expanse and countless subjects would be forever without a saviour just as she would be without a saviour now from what approached her out of the darkness.
Brother Wurru strode towards the door Sankari knew she must soon answer. She closed it again if only to dream of nearly a minute of solace, but even through the door, Wurru’s smoky reek disturbed her, pricking the inside of her nose so harshly it was like thistles tearing at tiny fingers. She longed to pray for deliverance but there were no benevolent deities to pray to and she was too insignificant to save even if there were.
Wurru’s stench became stronger; Sankari’s only solace being that Brother Wurru was far more violent on days when his rich robes were overwhelmed by the stink of fresh pipefuls. She soon sensed the full strength of the tearing at her snout and there was a loud striking of the door’s heavy knocker. She opened the door and Brother Wurru’s shadow forced its way in, pressing its way in through the crack of the opening between the door and its frame. Brother Wurru was backlit by the gruesome black lanterns.
“Yes, sir?” Sankari stammered.
“Let me in, girl. Your master is expecting me,” said Brother Wurru.
Sankari stepped back and opened the door wide. “Come in, sir. My master welcomes you, sir.”
Brother Wurru thrust himself into the front hallway of Brother Prayaga’s quarters. Sankari shrank away from him, motioning for him to follow and keeping as far in front of him as she thought permissible. He had not insulted her, spit invective, or upbraided her for being dishevelled like the beet skinned cooks she had been forced to help all morning. She had never failed to clean before serving the meal, but she was so apprehensive that she spent the hour before Brother Wurru’s arrival dreading his approach instead of changing. His punctuality only served to deprive her of future opportunities to redeem her appearance.
Sankari seated Brother Wurru at one end of a long wooden slab of the table at whose head Brother Prayaga sat. The two acolytes had long ago adopted pleasing shapes for themselves just as they had forced inhuman transformations on their slaves.
Wurru and Prayaga both appeared as if young athletes and they resembled each other markedly despite some few yet striking differences. Brother Prayaga was blonde with sky blue eyes and bronzed flesh. Brother Wurru was black haired with storm cloud grey eyes and swarthy skin. Brother Prayaga’s mastery of illusion allowed him to perceive details on the level necessary to leave him with enough blemishes to seem fully human and healthy. Brother Wurru was unsettlingly perfect.
Sankari tried to remain still and unnoticed. She avoided eye contact with Brother Wurru except as necessary to serve him. Her master’s closest peer was tumultuous and terrifying. Unlike her, Brother Wurru looked human, but equally unlike her, he was a beast inside.
Sankari watched Brother Wurru absent-mindedly scan the palatial room he had viewed many times before, obviously bored by the opulence that she still marvelled at.
When Sankari had served her last master, his position as a Lord made the gold, gems, rich velvets, silks, and hardwoods seem merely suitable surroundings to dine in. Only the imperial grandeur of his lands and the trivial attitude he had towards the splendour made the obscenity of his decadence apparent. When Sankari came to serve Prayaga, the regal surroundings customary for an acolyte teaching at a seminary were far more blatant a declaration of wealth.
Sankari brought the first trays of food to the table so the acolytes could begin their sumptuous multi-course casual dinner. She would spend the rest of the dinner between the table and the kitchen fires, from where her keen ears heard the conversation nearly as well as they did at her master’s side.
Brother Wurru spoke to Brother Prayaga after his long pause after sitting down. “Another day, another week… another month. When will you change these tiresome trappings, brother?”
Brother Prayaga answered with the matter-of-fact disinterest of someone who was polite but who had endured the same conversation as an opening more often than farmers sat through discussions of the weather. “You tire easily. I am not so easily bored. There is no need for endless novelty to divert me as if I were a restless child. If you must know, I have no reason to change the décor to prepare for a future I will only spend elsewhere,” answered Prayaga.
Brother Wurru did not react to Prayaga’s intimation of a forthcoming departure. “Hmmm,” Wurru said bored before looking over to Sankari. “I can see you neglect to replace even the most drab and filthy things among your burdens. Hasn’t that fox wench served us for more than a season now? You should spruce her up a bit. So many people make better sausages than servants.” Brother Wurru sliced the sausage on his plate roughly and stabbed three large pieces onto his fork before wolfing all of them down.
Brother Prayaga wasn’t obtuse enough to need a blatant threat to emphasize an obvious statement any more than Sankari was. “As much as our magic can turn kings into cabbages and cowards into chickens, Brother Wurru, I can guarantee you I ensure everything that passes my lips is of a low pedigree.”
“Obviously,” snorted Brother Wurru, again glancing toward Sankari.
Brother Prayaga remained inert at his colleague’s attempted wit. “Let us say that we have developed differing peculiarities.”
“Believe me, Brother Prayaga, I can tell,” answered Brother Wurru, calm but self-amused. Sankari trembled slightly as she heard how mild his insults were and watched how calmly he sat. In Wurru’s stillness there was a new and dire menace she had not yet encountered. She almost longed for the direct and obvious rants and enraged spurts of cruelty she had so feared just minutes before. “We have been brothers here for many years,” Wurru continued. “You aren’t as hard a man as you used to be.”
“And you are not as gentle a man as you once were,” Brother Prayaga said, rolling a grape between his thumb and forefinger. “Let us not fret over the past. We must look towards our futures as Luwamnas lords and as masters over new domains of the Theocracy of Huisinga.”
Prayaga and Wurru had yet to become lords and undergo the unconcealable monstrous transformation and initiation into the powerful “magicks” that were the gifts of numerous beings sacred to the Luwamnas and known collectively as “The Gulsa.” The more marked the dilution of a lord’s humanity, the more unadulterated his innate connection to these demonic beings.
The Luwamnas always seemed to Sankari to be like the storybook villains she heard from the slaves captured from the states of the Free Alliance of kingdoms that had seceded from Theocracy rule. They were definitely not all alike. They were not even quite a fit for the boring and faceless evil of storybook villains. The acolytes were content to compete in their displays of vice and corruption. The Luwamnas lords strove for newly grotesque expressions of wickedness. Somehow, however, they were colourful. Only the Luwamnas that were totally without panache joined Brother Wurru in the ranks of bland storybook villainy. Still, the “dread Luwamnas” deserved their reputation as generic bogeymen.
Sankari stood quietly as Wurru and Prayaga spoke idly during the dinner’s escalation. This seemed forever to her and again she almost hoped for Brother Wurru to erupt in a horrifying tantrum. His restraint seemed to hide hopes of investing his efforts in some extended plan of future devastation.
Brother Wurru looked down at the meat he had been served most recently. He played with the biggest cut amongst those on his plate and its juices beaded out like nervous sweat until he finally tore a strip from it. He looked over to Sankari again. “Come here, girl.”
Sankari didn’t want to disobey but she was unable to move closer. Brother Prayaga said that Wurru enjoyed inflicting pain. He also said a person’s temperament dictated his affinities for differing types of magic and Wurru had gained power by focussing on particularly vicious arts. Sankari didn’t know exactly how magic worked because everyone talked about how difficult it was but the masters seemed to control many powers effortlessly. She took a step forward but then felt paralyzed. Sankari never assumed Wurru had any ethical concerns when he was set to devour another living thing to sate his appetites.
Brother Prayaga looked over at Sankari sternly. “Serve our guest. Now, slave.”
“Yes, master,” Sankari answered sheepishly. She forced her feet off the ground and rushed Brother Wurru’s side. “Yes, sir?”
Wurru grabbed Sankari’s wrist and twisted her arm awkwardly until her arm and shoulder hurt as much as her wrist in his unforgiving grip. Wurru was always rough and her master barely ever made an effort to help her. He twisted Sankari in place by wrenching her arm around and her looked her over while grinning each time she grimaced visibly. Sankari did all she could never to let the pain show or it would increase his pleasure and prolong his fixation. Wurru’s hands were soft from opulent living but even through her fur they felt cold. “Delay obeying me again, slave” Wurru began, “and I will use my magic to very gradually incinerate every layer of skin and sinew until days later it leaves your bony frame charred – yet alive and still screaming.” Brother Wurru concluded with a self-satisfied little grin.
Prayaga appeared annoyed but remained motionless. “I have tried to be a good host brother Wurru. Now kindly be a civil guest and treat my property with greater care.”
Brother Wurru plainly knew Brother Prayaga too well to be perturbed by a first warning. He watched Sankari try to hold still and not provoke him despite the agony of his nearly dislocating her shoulder. Sankari knew Brother Wurru too well to feel optimistic that he would let go of her before he was forced to, and she knew Brother Prayaga too well to feel optimistic that he would force things so soon. “See?” Wurru said as he looked at Sankari with amusement, “Even now she squirms. That’s the problem with the odalisque spells on these harem girls. They can’t sit still even to… well… even to save their lives.” Wurru erupted in a twisted smile.
“Brother Wurru,” Prayaga insisted, “she is my servant not your plaything.”
Brother Wurru paused. “Fair enough, brother,” he said reaching into his belt purse and scattering coins across the table. “There is twice her worth in silver.” He spun his arm until Sankari’s arm twisted behind her back and he forced her to her knees. “Let her be my slave and my plaything.”
“Not this time, brother.” Prayaga rose. This one I need. She has potential.”
“Honestly, Prayaga, what matter potential? What is talent and intelligence to you? You don’t enjoy pain enough for her to need any brains. I don’t know why you don’t just give her the mind of a slug. She’d have as much utility.”
Brother Prayaga watched Wurru and emptied his near-full wine glass in a gulp. “Let her go, Wurru. A servant that can serve has utility enough. Now kindly leave her arms, and her utility, intact. My wine cup is empty.”
Brother Wurru raised an eyebrow and let go. Sankari hurried out of his reach without turning her back to the masters and refilled Prayaga’s cup. Wurru smiled. “Don’t worry, brother. Our friendship has endured too long for us to fall out over something as disposable as a slave.”
Prayaga and Wurru calmed back into idle conversation and interacted calmly but guardedly, as was normal for peers among the Luwamnas. They blended co-operation and intrigue. There was camaraderie in the mistrust. For several minutes they barely moved as they ate and conversed with a casual mix of compliments and implied threats. Sankari was pleased the conversation had changed, but anxiety was still causing her throat to burn with bile, and she wouldn’t relax until Wurru departed.
Wurru looked at Prayaga more closely now but had one eye on his food. He opened his mouth, but paused instead of speaking or eating. All the better, Sankari thought, because he ate like a wolf gloating over a kill and he cast glances around as if he expected other wolves to claim his prey if he was not mindful. Wurru still had not spoken after a few moments. Wurru disinterestedly turned the joint of meat he had picked off his plate until Sankari delivered a tray of glazed ham to the table. His mood brightened visibly at the sight of something with more novelty than what he now devoured.
“How long have we been friends?” asked Prayaga.
“Long enough for both of us to get lax,” Wurru growled back, his mood now momentarily grim at the prospect of Sankari’s inability to carve and serve a ham that weighed more than ten pounds in fewer than ten seconds.
“You are in no danger with me,” said Prayaga. “I teach illusion at this seminary and if I wanted you gleefully to imbibe ground glass with the wine that accompanies your meat, I could. In fact, I would already be watching your body shred its own innards until you expired from poor digestion.” Prayaga took his turn to smile. “Of course, as I said, you are in no danger here.”
Brother Wurru sneered at the comment, but was forced to agree, and Prayaga’s words were forgotten alongside the last of Wurru’s ham as Sankari entered with a tray of quails.
“I don’t think we need to fear gnawing at each other’s bones while this feast sits before us,” said Prayaga.
Wurru took a quail and ripped the cooked flesh off its bones enthusiastically. He continued talking as grease covered his face like a blood stained muzzle. “And what of after dinner, brother?”
“After dinner I will retire early and tomorrow I will leave forever. If you can resist any urges to murder me while I sleep, dearest brother, I will be ever absent thereafter.”
Wurru once again showed no curiosity at the comment that Brother Prayaga was leaving. As Sankari entered with the last of the meat, an ample crown roast of succulent slow cooked beef, he found what truly fascinated him.
The heavy smell of the beef, pork, and quail that was slow cooked and falling off the bone, with their rich sauces and accompaniment of perfectly prepared vegetables and freshly picked fruit now seemed rank to Sankari.
“I will no longer impede local intrigues,” said Prayaga as he pushed the plate he used for bones away and took a new bowl and drew handfuls of fruit.
“Just as you say, brother,” agreed Wurru as he eyed the crown roast. Wurru cut a large portion and left the crown roast toppled on its platter. “Whose politics do you intend to impede instead?”
Prayaga chuckled at Wurru’s exhibition of rare wit. “No, you see, I am going on a voyage. I will soon depart with that eccentric female Lord Lilwani.”
“I know, brother. I will sail too. And I would gleefully work with you to impede Lord Lilwani’s politics. Who does Lord Lilwani have to serve her? Only another idle woman named Lord Iazzai and a soft spoken healer named Lord Tanaro,” Wurru continued. “Women and weaklings aren’t meant to rule. They’ve watered down their wine to the point where it has no kick. We do not dilute our ruthlessness you and I. A wet nurse will not forge an empire. We are the strong ones and the strong always rule when they will it.”
The Luwamnas had no feminine version of the word “lord,” nor of other words such as “knight,” “soldier,” “hunter,” cooper,” or “blacksmith.” They also had no masculine version of worlds like “laundress,” “nursemaid,” “scullion,” or “skivvy.”
Sankari knew the traditional roles were sensible enough but she didn’t agree that women were incapable of making barrels or men unable to wash dishes. Wurru had to know that too, even if he did hate powerful women undermining the security of tradition. As for leaders being men like Brother Wurru, that was close enough to the truth as it was, and the Luwamnas lords were not masterfully dominating the expanding kingdoms of the Free Alliance.
Sankari had overheard Prayaga speculate that Wurru had recently become spiteful towards women only because he resented his treatment by a master alchemist named Lord Nelissai. Brother Wurru was overfond of a narcotic secretly prepared by Nelissai and which grew from a plant that grew only in her gardens. This “tlocana weed,” as it was called, was said to magnify a sadist’s enjoyment of his unique pastimes one-hundredfold.
“I will be strong,” continued Brother Prayaga. “I will rule I endeavour to. It is haste I refuse, not power. They are three lords, Brother Wurru,” Prayaga said, “and we are a pair of acolytes. I can see no advantage to such folly.”
“Lords Mezulla and Nelissai are casting off with us. They will elevate us to lordship for our allegiance. Then we will be four mighty lords against three idle dreamers. There would be no folly in those odds, brother.”
Sankari brought out more plates of vegetables and added them to Prayaga’s side of the table as Wurru showed his typical disinterest in such fare.
“The Hierophant himself blessed her mission and leadership. He personally appointed Lilwani leader.”
“He also appointed the Lords that he knew would undo her. The Hierophant foresaw a tidy means to be rid of troublesome weaklings. We will conquer the kingdom of Mivior when we usurp her because we have strength to succeed that Lilwani lacks. Mivior was founded by those who escaped the Theocracy’s founding and it is all that props up the Free Alliance. When it is crushed, all our enemies, both historic and contemporary, will be undone worldwide. Pitiless mutiny is our duty to the blessed Hierophant and to the most sacred Gulsa,” said Brother Wurru.
Prayaga’s customary weary patience and steely politeness weathered Wurru’s lengthy rant. When Wurru stopped for breath Prayaga said no more than “hmm.”
Brother Wurru stood and his rose to a crescendo as he concluded. “The Theocracy cannot establish new lands unless we are as savage and uncompromising as our forefathers.”
Prayaga stood as Wurru finished. “For once, in the face of your rousing my loyalties, Brother Wurru, I will be the voice of self-interest. View it as self-serving or selfish, if you will, but it is truly enlightened self-interest.
“We share a ship – a single ship manned by priests of an empire that has not plied the seas in centuries. You will have no estate or lands on the ship. No social prominence. You will have but one slave only – and share a room with him. There will be no retreats or sanctuaries upon failed intrigues. No intermediaries to negotiate settlements and ransoms. For the vanquished there is only death. To the victors belong the spoils and to them also belong the corpses and a trebled workload.
“For the victors, or they might say survivors, if any do live to claim a title, there will now be as great a task as ever in Mivior. They will undertake this trial with a fraction of the forces with which to battle a veteran army if they have the good fortune to reach land, or to overcome the greatest navy in all the world if they are spotted.
“No, Brother Wurru,” continued Prayaga, “taking sides now starts a war as we cast off on a voyage where the dangers are incalculable. Selecting allies once secure and know who will dominate ensures we judge aright. If we remain aloof in the middle we become more valuable every day that the lords are at a stalemate. Then alliance with us will be synonymous with victory.”
“There is no advantage to maintaining a middle ground that does not exist, brother. The coup will happen with or without us.” Wurru started pacing abruptly, barely containing his frustration. He didn’t get visibly angry, but was more disturbing when he left himself clenched in an attempt to be persuasive. “If we wait to commit we will not survive the voyage.”
“We may both die either way. I would rather calculate my best odds than rely on hunches and hopes.”
“The odds are already apparent,” said Brother Wurru. “We must join Lords Mezulla and Nelissai, brother. We must think of lordship and the Gift of the Gulsa. Let us receive their boon and a mild gift such as they each have. What is that in comparison to how Lord Lilwani might warp you?”
Lord Mezulla had craved blood and Lord Nelissai a horsetail that she could easily hide. So far Brother Wurru had a taste only for meat but his plate was full of scraps that he had half eaten and abandoned unreservedly as the newest tray of meat arrived to tempt him.
“I have seen their gifts. Lord Lilwani has no more than ebony claws. Rather less of a notable gift than even Lord Nelissai, wouldn’t you say?”
“She had a better guide than she can ever offer to you, brother. Lilwani guided Lords Tanaro and Iazzai to their gifts and left them a half lioness and a sheep-headed weakling. Look at what you might become.”
“Look at what I might become, Brother Wurru? I only have to look at what you have already become with Lords Mezulla and Nelissai to guide you.”
Wurru struggled visibly to shackle his customary temperament. He could not restrain himself fully, but managed to only shove his plate, still loaded with half finished slabs of meat, away from him. Too overloaded to rattle when it’s edge flew up, it merely collapsed again with a thump like a corpulent drunkard.
Now Prayaga was becoming agitated. Prayaga was impassioned but still restrained and resolute. “When you seize power, I assume you will deftly swat away Lord Nelissai. She is a woman, after all. There is just one thing. Before you kill her, you had best secure a lifetime’s supply of that tlocana weed of which you are so fond. It is hers alone, is it not? Always watch the price as closely as the prize. Would you choose to become a slave even as you become a lord?”
“I choose power. I hope you do not choose death.”

Chapter Two – Sankari

After showing Wurru out, Sankari finished her chores and ate supper, then her emotions overcame her. She was ashamed as she pleaded with her master to stay and keep their happy life in the seminary but he had just ordered her back to her room. Sankari wanted to see her master succeed but she felt too frightened at the idea of Brother Prayaga being in danger in the middle of two groups of scheming lords, especially if Wurru would now be siding against them.
Sankari was relieved that Prayaga eventually intervened to help her, even if he never did so quickly or forcefully. Even despite tolerating her rough handling, Brother Prayaga was far more protective of her than he was of his other slaves. He could be very kind to her when guests were not present, and especially when they were alone, but he never managed to be tender. Sankari was a slave for years but had not been as a child, so she lacked the habitual obedience common to other slaves.
Sankari served Prayaga out of affection and by being conscientious and reminding herself of proper etiquette. What did his newest comment that he “needed this one” and that she “had potential mean? Was it affection he would not baldly state? She desperately hoped so and found reasons to believe that, but part of her intuition grasped at something hidden and sinister in the comment.
Sankari feared she was being somehow preserved for something even more horrifying than if she was being literally fattened and shepherded only to make a more tender meal. A part of her now had the frightening thought that it was not the overt cruelty of Wurru she had to fear, but the subtle kindnesses of her master.
Sankari was thankful Prayaga was not abusive like Wurru or her old master and this made her very eager to please Prayaga. She felt gratitude as much as duty. Even so, she forgot herself when she became too emotional, and Prayaga tolerated behaviour from her that would cause him to beat or sell other slaves.
Sankari had only wanted to try to convince Prayaga, because alongside her fears for her master’s safety she now knew that she would have to be separated from all of her friends and that when they were sold they might get masters like the Lord she once served or suffer even worse fates. Powerless and unable to convince her master to advance himself here instead of going on the voyage she just returned to the concubinary where she shared a room with the other girls. Sankari explained everything that had happened at lunch.
There were over twenty of them in the concubinary and the oldest concubine, Marici, was giving Sankari advice for the last time. The next oldest, Udwadi, looked exasperated, as she did whenever Marici was teaching life lessons.
“I know you’re sad because we are going Sankari, but you can’t allow yourself to care. How many times have you been dragged from your home? Do you even remember your life before you were enslaved and transformed? Master Prayaga is not as bad as the men who owned you before, but you are property just like us and you can’t allow yourself to get attached to masters that don’t really care about you, or to people who might not be there tomorrow if their masters tire of them. All we can do is hope to be lucky enough that we are eventually sold to a master that feels embarrassed at the thought of beating a small girl until she has bruises bigger than dinner plates. You have to be a realist. The weak cannot afford to leave themselves vulnerable enough to love and the strong have no need for foolish sentiment.”
“I can’t believe you would say this to Sankari,” Udwadi said, finally looking disgusted with that she heard. “Don’t listen to Marici. I can’t believe she still relishes the taste of poison in her mouth after she has had to choke on her bitterness for so many years. I know it’s hard to live like this, Sankari, but would you really want to be so cold that you couldn’t even cry when everything you knew was taken away?”
Udwadi crossed the intricate rugs and squeezed Sankari tenderly. She pulled away slightly and slipped her hands to Sankari’s shoulders and then looked into her eyes and smiled.
Sankari looked back at Udwadi and then at Marici and the others. Udwadi was very tender with her, always encouraged her, and was affectionate at the right times. Marici never seemed able to do that. As much as she used her whole body she didn’t like touching people or being touched. She also didn’t like people being close to her except when she was dominating them to make a point. Sankari didn’t know how she hadn’t seen the contrast before.
When Sankari first came to Master Prayaga she looked to Marici. The cat-girl had offered her so much that made sense and never asked her to do anything uncomfortable. Three months later, the advice that sounded so good felt wrong. She wished it didn’t still make sense. Udwadi always argued with Marici but there were no reliable answers. The things that felt right to her were all wishful dreams with no logic to them. She was starting to choose fantasies instead of facts and use storybook dreams to escape because the truth left her tired and made her belly and head hurt all the time.
“I still can’t believe he wants to sell you all and get rid of all his possessions so he can run off somewhere to advance himself.” Sankari felt empty. “I really wanted to help him. I was willing to follow him anywhere but doesn’t he care about any of you? Anything could happen. Why does he need to live like a king when he already is outfitted like a prince? I thought he was happy. I forgot I was a slave for a moment and begged him to stay here and keep living the way we always did instead of going on this voyage and becoming a Lord. He just looked at me like I was mad. I guess I was mad to be talking to him like a wife instead of the slave I am.”
“Look Sankari,” said Marici, “I never wanted to tell you everything I was thinking, but I have to now. People who think they are happy are just fools who have a lot of practice lying to themselves. They can use logic to think they are good no matter how many bad things they do. They also can use logic to trick themselves into believing they are happy.”
Sankari wasn’t sure. She had tried everything to convince herself this was the right thing to do so she could be a good slave and help the man she cared about so much but nothing worked. She didn’t understand him and worried she never would. She was torn between her training to be a good slave that ran deep and all the feelings she had for Brother Prayaga and her friends.
“I just don’t understand how the master can be like two different men Marici,” said Sankari.
“Everyone separates themselves into pieces,” Marici answered. “They show their good side when they want to relax and their bad side when things have to get done. When they picture what they are like they remember the few good things and they forget the many bad things.” Marici sat on her bed and paused, fingering her fine linens. “Do you think Master Prayaga wasn’t tender with the rest of us? Udwadi, Masa, Zintuki, Tsylla, Yani, Adni, Torna, Wahla and another dozen came before you. I was first,” Marici said laying a pillow out separately on her bed, “and you make two dozen,” she concluded arranging her many richly colored throw pillows in a jumbled heap.
Sankari looked at the pillows. She had watched Marici arrange one after the other, the same types of pillows she took for granted and so often rearranged at her whim for her own comforts and something clutched at her gut each time Marici put a new pillow carelessly on the pile.
“I was his sweet little cat-girl,” Marici continued, “and you are his vivacious fox-girl. Each of us was adored for about a season.” Marici started casting the pillows behind her until there was only one left. “I am sure Master Prayaga will throw you away as soon as he gets where he is going.” Marici took the last pillow and swept it off the bed. “He was relaxed but now things need to get done the master will sell us and never worry about our safety.” Marici turned with her usual melodrama and swept all the pillows onto the floor with the one Sankari knew was supposed to represent her.
“No, Marici,” said Udwadi. “You only run to a castle when under siege. What do you have to make your walls from, the pillows there on the floor? The idea that you could build any kind of wall that would protect you from the masters makes me want to laugh. They’ll sweep your defenses aside as easily as you just threw those pillows aside. It’s a pity you don’t laugh anymore or you would see how ridiculous that is. Even the masters don’t have anything that will protect them more than your pillows when you consider the things that matter. Maybe the fact that their walls are taller and thicker and harder just makes it worse for them. Real strength means never hiding, or being so afraid you won’t trust anyone.”
“Sure Udwadi.” Marici stood up and walked over to stare down Udwadi who was still standing where she had hugged Sankari, before Sankari had moved around the room as she continued to pace. Udwadi retained her customary placidity. “Tell Sankari to cling to the dreams of a little girl. Chime to her like a grandmother: ‘Maybe if you are good you can marry a prince one day.’ How stupid.” Marici waved her finger. She always talked with her hands and got very forceful and animated. “Maybe my walls are useless but that just proves my point. Maybe the masters are as doomed as everyone else. I would still rather be a master and take what I want.”
It did seem stupid to Sankari that Brother Prayaga would work hard to succeed in a sad little marriage with a pathetic slave girl when he could just buy a new slave that suited him better or alter Sankari’s personality so she matched his needs more.
Sankari couldn’t believe how hard Marici’s words were and how unable everyone was to disagree with her. She just looked at Marici and Udwadi. “The master isn’t just embarrassed about beating us up. He is different. I know it,” Sankari said, finally voicing the mantra she had repeated in her head to still the doubts Marici’s bitter words stirred.
“Is he different?” Marici pulled one of the shoulder straps down on the silks she was wearing and exposed more of her fur and part of one of her sizeable breasts. “What does it say about a man when he has to buy women that are transformed into animal-girls before he can enjoy his harem?”
Marici’s words sounded right. Is a man like that capable of normal affection? Is he a man who wants to see Sankari as a person? Was she a cute toy to him that would have his favor for a few months and then be forgotten most of the time?
Marici did a mock harem girl’s dance and moved around the room to each of the harem girls contemptuously mimicking what they had been taught to do to entertain their masters before stopping in front of Sankari. “Master Prayaga might think you are sweet and entertaining when you dance for him, and find you satisfying when his lust fills him, but has he called you by your real name even once?”
Oh no. Was the master really so cold? He did call Sankari ‘Foxy’ like he called Marici ‘Kitty’ and Udwadi ‘Bunny.’ Did he not even think of Sankari as human enough to have a name of her own?”
Udwadi watched Marici tiredly for a long time before she spoke. “Sankari you have to have faith,” she admonished with her usual kindly look. “I can’t deny what Marici tells you. Maybe when the summer is over the master will have another favorite and your bed will start to be cold as the first leaves fall. Then again, maybe you have stayed his favorite longer because he feels pulled to innocence that you have but that we all lost.”
“Oh do you really think so?” Sankari said before stopping herself. Why could such a remote possibility fill her with hope so quickly when her intellect warned her that Marici’s dismal description of their life there was more logical? She felt so desperate she was sure everyone could smell the stink of despair in her sweat.
“Yes, I really do feel that, Sankari,” Udwadi continued. “It is true about the power, the cruelty, and the ambition of the masters. It is true we don’t have their strength and that they transform us to suit them.”
Maybe what Udwadi said had truth to it that even her intellect could accept. If strength could really overpower brotherhood, the Temple wouldn’t be losing more to the rebels every year. Sometimes what makes sense is wrong.
“You can’t argue against some things or win arguments with cold-hearted fools,” continued Udwadi, “but you can feel the truth and know the choice you have to make. The flaw in what Marici says is not her facts or her logic, it is just that the sort of woman she has become as a result of her attitude is not worth becoming.”
“I would rather be right than cling to fantasies Udwadi,” said Marici.
“If people like Marici really knew so much about life they would be happier,” Udwadi went on, regardless of the cynicism she had so often quietly tolerated. “Marici is more logical than happy. Always remember that it is how you transform yourself inside that matters and not how others transform your body. Most of all remember to smile.” Udwadi made a funny face until Sankari giggled.
Many things had never made sense to Sankari but she had always survived by trusting her instincts. She couldn’t argue. She just knew that what she was hearing didn’t feel true. “But…”
Marici didn’t let her finish. “No, Sankari, the master will not change his mind no matter what we say, and we cannot escape regardless of the storybook hopes you believe in. Just say goodbye and forget us.”
“I don’t know.” Sankari realized she was confused because she had spent her whole time here letting Marici be her mind and Udwadi her spirit. She had to think and feel everything naturally now that she would be alone.
“I’m sorry Marici. I can’t do things your way anymore,” Sankari continued. “I will miss you all very much. I won’t forget you. I promise. Master Prayaga is only allowed to bring one servant where he is going. I know maybe I am not as good or obedient a slave to him as some of you and I am not sure why he would pick me but I have to believe it is because he cares for me even if I am just a slave and he is a powerful man. I am going to make sure things are different. I will help him find what feelings he has and make a new home and when I do I swear will never lose my home and my friends again. I guess I’ll just have to have faith and hope to find a way.”
#
The slave girls argued for hours but all of them just said the same things many times. Sankari took a long time falling asleep, but was still too shocked to cry. She was still not sure of what was right, but she was determined that there was only one way for her to go.
When Sankari awoke there was nobody about and she could hear nothing. Nobody was working. She could not hear the master relaxing with any of the girls. She couldn’t see anyone asleep or awake. It was like being in an abandoned house where the chairs were all still warm. She had to find everyone and get them away from here before they could be sold.
“Udwadi? Marici?” Sankari called out their names again, and the names of Masa, Zintuki, Tsylla, Yani, Adni, Torna, Wahla, and more than a dozen others. There was no answer.
Sankari wanted to rush around but she felt very stiff, just like the time she was sick and had to stay in bed for days. Her limbs were sore and her muscles ached almost so she could feel bruises on her bones. Her neck moved only stubbornly and it aggravated things to look around as frantically as she did.
Most of the furniture was gone. As conservative and simple as Prayaga’s taste was he always made the place feel comfortable. Most of the opulence he exhibited was in the rooms where he entertained visitors. His own tastes seemed simple even if the rooms were not sparse. Even so, now there was not much more than the bed she had awoken in. She had to find her master and find out what had happened.
Sankari ran through the halls and looked in all the rooms of their wing of the teaching seminary. They were more bare than even the concubinary. Sankari never realized how dark the place was before. The shadows seemed longer and the light dimmer now. The hallways seemed to stretch for an imposing distance. The rooms seemed to be put together at angles that made no more sense than the nonsense poetry she once heard. They used to feel roomy yet cozy. Now they looked large enough to grow barley in.
Sankari’s master’s room was at the end of the wing. She decided she would go there and calmly try to find out what had happened. She arrived and the door was closed as it always was. She knocked and the wood felt very hard as her knuckles rapped on the heavy door. The hardwood was made from thick and heavy planks and knocking hurt her hand a little. She had never before realized how much of a barrier it could be if the master wanted to keep people out. She waited longer than a ten count and knocked again. Her jarred knuckles reminded her of how stiff her whole body was.
“Come.”
Sankari opened the door slightly. “Master?”
“Come.”
“It’s me, master.” Sankari opened the door all the way but didn’t step in. “It’s Foxy.”
“I know who it is. I was sure you would rush here when you finally woke up.”
“Can I ask you a question master?”
“Yes, Foxy.”
“What happened? How did the men come for all the furniture so quickly? Where is everyone?”
“Everything is gone. I sent it all away while you slept.”
“But master, I can’t have slept too long. Not long enough for you to give everything away. Not long enough for you to sell all of my friends. I always rise early to serve you. Please, master, do not tell me I have been remiss. I promise to work even harder in our new home.”
“Come in. Close the door behind you.”
“Master?”
“Do it.”
Sankari closed the door behind her and entered. She walked over to Brother Prayaga, big eyed and with a plea marring her face.
“I know this might seem scary. I can’t expect you to ever understand. Sometimes masters have to do things that are not easy. That is just the way the world is. I decided you would be hurt if you had to say goodbye so when you finally fell asleep I made sure you stayed that way. It was for your own good.”
“Oh master. No. I need to say goodbye.”
Sankari was panicking inside but tried not to show it. She was afraid for her friends and angry she could never say goodbye now. Still, she felt her emotions starting to take control of her and her words just now made her hope Brother Prayaga was tolerant of her questioning him.
Prayaga sat calmly on his bed. Sankari often had to remember to keep still when in her master’s room. She would often walk on her toes, pace around, swing her arms, spin in place, and almost hop in place because of how energetic the magic made her. She didn’t have to fear him like with Wurru but it did annoy him. She even used to do cartwheels and handstands down the great hallways on the way to her master’s room. Most of the slaves were given a lot of extra energy so they had stamina for endless work. Concubines were given extra resilience and exuberance so they could be entertainers after a hard day of work and good lovers after their performances. Sankari’s last master had made her very tough and unable to keep still and even then she had barely survived satisfying him.
Prayaga had trained Sankari as an acrobat, dancer, and performer to help her do something useful with her energy. When she fidgeted even after entertaining him, he had to teach her to read and write because concentrating on poetry was the only thing that could distract her and keep her in one place. She wasn’t hopping around now. She didn’t have any extra energy. What was he thinking? She was too drained and dumbfounded to do anything but wait for him to explain.
“Look Foxy,” Prayaga started, “you can either be realistic or live in a dream world where you never grow up. You might have an odalisque spell cast on you but the magic on you doesn’t leave you a child forever, like the magic on Brother Wurru’s slave Rasala, or make you stupid like the brutes we use for labor. With the harem magic you will never be a mother but you can at least be an adult.”
“I am master. I am trying to get through this. It is just so sudden and I don’t know what has happened.”
“I think you do. You are smart enough and brave enough to know and to accept what has happened.”
“Yes master. I just miss my friends and I wanted to say goodbye.”
Sankari just couldn’t stop herself no matter how many times she cautioned herself to say nothing more.
“Forget your friends,” said Prayaga. “When we get across the ocean I can get you more. That is part of why I am doing this. I can have all the power I want. I can have many people around us who would murder each other for the chance of being the one to help if I ever need anything. I can have everything. Don’t you see? You can have many more friends than the handful you said goodbye to just now.”
“That’s just it master. I didn’t get to say goodbye just now. When somebody dies you can get over it because you go to the funeral and say goodbye forever. When I compose a poem, I can finish the last line so everyone knows what happens and sees it is over. I can leave it behind. You decided I shouldn’t have that chance. You decided I should never be able to write the last line of my story with them.”
“Write your own last line without them. It’s for the best. I did this to make sure there was a new and better first line for the next story.”
Now was not the time to pour out her feelings. Her master hated emotional displays and she knew she must be exhausting his tolerance. Slaves didn’t question their masters.
Sankari looked around Prayaga’s large bedroom, despite his large study and enormous library, each book chosen carefully and read studiously, Prayaga’s slab of a desk was surrounded by countless monolithic bookcases that enveloped the room and made his considerable four poster bed seem like an afterthought that the decorator tucked in a corner.
“I know what’s best,” Prayaga said, looking at her like a stern father. “Think about how many more slaves you will have for friends soon and forget the old ones.”
“You decided to move us. You put us in the middle of a power struggle between Lords. You sold everyone I loved. You made sure I could never say goodbye. Now you want to tell me how to feel?”
Oh no. Now surely he would punish her. Prayaga just sat there looking stone faced like he did whenever he was deciding his actions among scheming peers. Was he hiding anger? Why would he even bother?
“I know you got used to things a certain way, Foxy,” said Prayaga. “I know you must be scared. Maybe you are angry because I upset your routine. Just try to accept the problems on the voyage ahead and when we get settled I will try not to ever disrupt things again after you get them the way you like in our new home.”
Prayaga cast his arm in front of him and Sankari followed it around the room with her gaze.
“I have to leave home too after years of trying to get everything the way I like it,” Prayaga continued. “I have to give up what I treasure as well. Sometimes you just have to be grown up enough to accept things. I am trying to be reasonable but you always react so melodramatically.”
“But master, why move if you are happy here?”
“Because it’s best. Cease your histrionics and show gratitude.”
Sankari was not upset because Prayaga decided they would have dinner an hour later from now on or because of some other little thing. Where was the lover she knew? Melodrama? Routine? Gratitude? Loved ones weren’t clothes to her. You didn’t throw them away when they looked a little worn. You don’t give them all up and just shrug because you couldn’t pack everything on your trip. People had value in a way clothes and books didn’t.
For Sankari, home had a meaning beyond being a power base, a safe haven, or a defense against attack. Even possessions meant more than just being useful for something. Prayaga gave her what he wanted, when he wanted, if he wanted to. That was okay. Sankari had to obey him and was glad to serve him and see him content. Prayaga told her what to do and how and when to do it. That was okay too. She had to obey him and it was happy work as long as she remembered it was all for him. She hated being told what to feel after losing all of her friends and without even saying goodbye.
Sankari started to cry. Her eyes were wet before but it had been years since she let herself feel anything this strong and the tears didn’t come easily. She sat on the bed next to her master as she started to cry but she was afraid to look at him. Prayaga grabbed her by the shoulders.
“I can’t talk to you if you are going to be a hysterical child,” Prayaga said. “I know this is hard but you don’t understand. Slaves can have ideals and fantasies because they have no power and nothing anyone would want. They can afford to dream. They don’t have anything to risk. They can make friendships where everyone gives nothing and wants nothing because none of them has anything to give and none of them has anything to take. In the real world with real people with real things at risk and a lot to win and lose there are no idealistic dreams and no naïve friendships. I am not stupid enough to think I have friends.”
Sankari gave Prayaga her body willingly, unlike the way she had to be cold with her old master but she hoped he would never force himself on her thoughts and feelings too. She wished he would never want to own her mind and spirit alongside her body. Sankari felt like after only six months she had friends. Real friends of a sort she never had before in her life. Not people that would do anything for her because they wanted to get something.
“Remember this one thing.” Prayaga grabbed her and pulled her up off the bed, but he stayed seated. He never handled her like this. “As much as you are a favorite of mine, I do own you. I own all of you. We are not equals. We only share a bed when I say so.”
“Yes master,” said Sankari.
“The only way for us to be real friends is for me to become a slave and buy into girlish fantasies, and I will never let that happen.” Sankari cried even more and he took her by her shoulders again and shook her but she still didn’t stop. “I am going to be a Lord. I am going to be a man.”
Brother Prayaga paused and looked at her for a long while. “Stop crying,” Prayaga continued. “I won’t talk to you while you’re acting like an undignified animal.”
“Sorry master.” Sankari wiped her tears away and sniffled. She tried to stop her tears and she succeeded after a moment but she still couldn’t stop herself from letting her private thoughts come out her mouth again. “I know we have to leave right away, we might not survive the voyage, and we are headed to war even if we arrive safely, but I can’t just worry about my own safety. I need to know my friends are safe. At least tell me you didn’t turn them into pigs and trade them to the meat men.”
Prayaga stood up and moved closer to her. He even tried to smile slightly. “Just get ready.”

Chapter Three – Sankari

Sankari packed everything that her master kept and when the brutes carried it to the ship the next morning. She put it in Brother Prayaga’s cabin and unpacked it. They went from a warm and comfortable home to a squat and bloated black growth of a ship that blighted the view of even this drab coastline and blemished the face of even this crude quay. In cramped cabins dozens of the Luwamnas priests would have nothing to do but plan the dark pacts and casual betrayals that would eventually consume her master. Limited power could lead to enough temptation and indifference when wielded by men who were ordinary. Power that had no meaningful limits could only lead to a lot of misery when wielded by men that had to slowly embrace corrupt values to advance socially.
Everyone in positions of command had learned how to think of themselves as basically good while confusing the conscienceless use of power with pragmatism. Allowing yourself to become a monster allowed you more magical mastery and that was the key to power beyond what robber knights in other lands could gain by burning and looting. Sankari often wondered if the priests and wizards of other lands were fallible rather than malevolent, and if their gods were as varied as she was told. Lordship was only granted when you murdered innocents as a sacrifice to sinister spirits and consented to becoming stained and twisted by dark powers. The responsibility of power might require Prayaga to be judicious in another society but in the lands of the Temple of Huisinga, becoming a Luwamnas Lord would guarantee he abandoned his humanity.
Sankari was often tempted to wish the rebels success but doing so might be the same as hoping for the death of everyone she knew. The masters were monstrous but men everywhere found it too easy to be savage. The slaves were transformed because they had no love for the Temple and being animal-men gave them a great stake in its success instead of a common cause with the rebels. Some slaves might be locked in menageries if freakish enough, or enslaved if sufficiently exotic and attractive, but most would be brutally murdered. Sankari could be attacked, beaten, maimed, and eventually killed. They might shear off her ears, brush her with pitch and light her on fire, peel away her skin with knives, or torture and kill her. The idea that the prophet Gazzarulli converted an entire continent to his dark gods and convinced proud warrior nobles to accept the rule of sadistic deviants and weak-willed lunatics made no sense to her. The idea that men everywhere could be lied to and threatened over so many years they were retrained so their worst urges became their natural responses was frighteningly likely.
Prayaga spent all day confined in congress with the black priests of Huisinga in the belly of the ship. Even though there were not many things to unpack, Sankari was so angry it took her the whole day to tidy the room because she was rough and careless with her master’s possessions when she dumped everything out in the cabin. She hoped that having so few things now would help her convince him he didn’t need power and possessions to make a good life.
When Sankari’s master returned after supper he was carrying something she had never seen before. Something wrapped up in cloth. She hadn’t packed or unpacked it. He must have carried it all day. She hadn’t seen the cloth before and the shape inside it didn’t look like anything she remembered. It was too large and flat for a book but not large and flat enough to be a painting.
Sankari tried to look happy. “Hello master. I hope you had a good day. How may I serve you?”
“Just sit down.”
Sankari looked around the room for chairs but the writing desk and its matching chair were still in crate on deck.
“Just sit on the bed please Foxy.”
Sankari sat down on the bed and Prayaga joined her. He handed her the cloth bundle.
“What’s this master?”
“Open it.”
It felt lumpy and something inside rattled. Sankari carefully unwrapped the cloth and looked at what it hid. There was a large writing tablet and some things to write with. It looked, well made, sturdy, and practical but attractive in a simple way.
“Do you need me to write your thoughts master?”
“No Sankari. My thoughts are mine and yours are your own. This is for you. I was hoping you could write your own thoughts. Write a diary, story, or poem. Anything you want. Start the first line of our new story here and say whatever you feel. I don’t want to force you to think my way.”
Did he understand her? Although she was far too bold before they left he had been very tolerant of her impertinence and now he seemed even to see what few thoughts she had concealed.
“Oh master. Thank you.” Sankari held the tablet close to her chest and started to feel like she could smile again.
“I want you to understand me. I hoped if you owned something and cared about it so it could be important to you that you would see. Then you can know how important it is to keep what you have and get more. Then you can have something to protect and see how you need to guard it against others.”
Oh. Prayaga didn’t want her to have her own thoughts. He just preferred manipulation to force. Sankari almost thought he cared. Possessions didn’t mean anything. She suddenly felt angry again instead of just sad and disappointed. She wanted to tell him not to bother with the tablet. He’d already traded for her once. He didn’t have to do it again.
Sankari resisted the urge to get off the bed and stand up, facing her master with her arms crossed. Part of her wanted to force him away like he had her. They weren’t equals. Part of her wanted to tell him they only needed to share his bed so she could satisfy his needs and never share it so he could satisfy hers. Mostly she was happy he had thought of her feelings and given her a thoughtful gift.
“I know you imagine possessions don’t matter, Foxy,” Prayaga continued. “You have to be realistic. Possessions matter to everyone because unless they or their masters have what is needed the people you always talk about loving die. We all need to feel secure and have a reliable source of food, clothing, and shelter. A slave thinks she does everything for her master and nobody does anything for her. It just isn’t true.”
Sankari knew she might be a slave but she also never had to fend entirely for herself. Brother Prayaga might be the master but a lot of what got done was for her. She knew she didn’t always work for him. Most of what the girls did was for everyone. Some of what Sankari did was just for herself. She wore her clothes, ate her food, and took shelter from the rain in her room, and a lot of her work went into all of those things.
Most people had to do all the work slaves did and more. Most people owned next to nothing. Serfs couldn’t leave their fields and villages. Even the Lords were trapped in their manors. Sankari knew her master also had masters. She knew he had to give away most of what he had, and couldn’t leave this ship any more than she could.
It was just different on the ship. Not only was this ship not a house but it was far from being a home. Sankari was not even sure if it was a place they could live. She thought probably it was more like a place to die.
Sankari tried to calm herself. If they had to spend months trapped in a small cabin she would try to make it a place they could feel comfortable in. The ship was far from a house but Prayaga’s gift to her felt like a house warming. She knew deep inside Prayaga wouldn’t sell all her friends to the meat men.
Sankari was afraid for Prayaga even if she felt better about her friends now that she was calmer. He had to come because Lord Lilwani came up with a plan and she convinced the Hierophant who is the Lord of Lords to give her the resources she wanted. The Hierophant chose the Lords that would come with Lilwani and Lilwani and the other Lords chose the acolytes. Prayaga came because his masters told him he had to.
Sankari had seen the Hierophant execute Lords for treason and Lords kill acolytes for disobedience. If Wurru’s boy Rasala had been born free there would still be people with the power to set his clothes on fire just because they enjoyed hearing him scream. What if her master couldn’t protect himself when trapped on this ship any more than Rasala could trapped in a cabin with Wurru?
“You have to be more careful now Foxy,” Prayaga continued. “Wurru is a Lord now. Just wait until I have to praise Lord Wurru for his good sense in disciplining you after I watch him break your arm because the chicken you served him was dry. You can paint whatever you want when you stretch a skin over a frame, but no matter how idyllic the picture, whatever you brush on conceals the remains of an innocent creature. The only way not to have to do what your master says is to cut his throat in the night so you can take his place.”
“Yes master. I will be careful.”
“I will have to be more ruthless now. A slave who rebels against his master will just die in agony, but an acolyte or Lord who murders the right people artfully enough will gain power and be welcomed as a peer. No, Foxy. If you really want to be safe you will help me become the most powerful Lord in a new land far away from the Hierophant.”
“I just want to help you any way you say master.”
“I don’t need to say any more for now.”
Prayaga grabbed her shoulder with one hand. He looked at Sankari and paused. He looked down at the tablet again. He let go of her and picked up the tablet.
“Go make some friends and write your feelings down on your new tablet. I have to start my work early. You may leave me now.”
#
Sankari left her master as she was ordered and closed the door behind her. She was still worried about Rasala. If she couldn’t help a powerful wizard-priest maybe she could at least comfort a little boy. She hoped Rasala was able to escape his master Lord Wurru and that he had the sense to go to the slave’s common room she was shown when she boarded.
Sankari walked to the common room at the aft of the first deck below topside, through the set of double doors on the other side of the hallway that led to the long hall with the doors to all the cabins. The very rear of this deck had a large common room for the guards, a common room for the slaves, a large area for some of the ship’s stores that had to be more easily accessible, and then a common room for the sailors. Sankari would not only make friends and protect Rasala; she would make everyone into a family and make sure nothing ever happened to them again.
Sankari opened the doors to the common room and entered, closing them behind her. There were easily two or three dozen of the masters on board and they all must have started early on their work because they each were allowed only one personal servant and there must have been as many exotic slaves here now. Sankari knew much of the work was done by the guards and the crew who had their own common rooms elsewhere.
Sankari quickly spotted Rasala. He resembled a whimsical squirrel in a boy’s tunic and was standing next to a woman with a large billowy cloak. As Sankari walked over to him, Rasala looked toward her and bared his big, chisel teeth.
“Sankari!”
“Hi Rasala. I am so glad to see you again. I am really glad to know someone here. I am extra glad it was you.”
She had met Rasala several times before and he was such a sweet boy she didn’t know how even Wurru could enjoy being cruel to him. Wurru was obviously sick enough that he could do things Sankari thought should be impossible even for the meanest masters. If she was worried about Prayaga antagonizing Wurru when they had to share a ship together she had no idea how scary it must be for Rasala to share a small cabin with him. She didn’t want to have Rasala deal with that alone but she didn’t know how to protect him. If the Lords were really all plotting against each other, they might all feel trapped in a cramped space with madmen soon.
Rasala tugged at her clothes. “Oh Sankari, I’m glad too. There are so many people here; maybe even all the servants except Lord Lilwani’s maid. You have to meet everyone. Is it true we are going across the big ocean to another place? Did nobody really do that before? I wonder how big the ocean really is. Oh! Did you want to meet Lord Iazzai’s maid Mari? She’s ever so nice.”
Rasala started tugging at the cloak of the woman standing next to him. “This is Sankari. She is Brother Prayaga’s servant. She can sing and dance and tell stories and everything. Once she told me a poem. She can even juggle.”
Sankari looked over to Mari but felt jolted when Mari first pulled one arm from under her cloak, then two, three, and four. Even she was shocked by how strange some of the slaves could be. They didn’t just look like little animal people, big brutes that could do heavy lifting, or savage beast men that the masters could send in waves into battle, but could have much stranger shapes. Because the slaves weren’t consistent except for being strange, everyone just called all of them “exotics.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you Mari.”
“The pleasure is all mine.”
“Come on, Sankari,” Rasala said suddenly. I want you to meet everybody.” Rasala started tugging at Sankari again and trying to pull her after him.
Mari looked at Rasala. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Huh?”
“Why did you come up to me before Sankari came in?”
“Oh yeah. Can I have a cookie? Huh? Can I? Oh Mari makes the best cookies. You have to try one.” Rasala held his hand out. “Cookie?”
Mari reached two of her four hands into her cloak again and pulled out half of a crumbly cookie with each hand. “Oatmeal or honey?”
“Oh the honey one!”
“Aren’t you forgetting something Rasala?”
Rasala scrunched up his face and obviously thought hard for a moment. “Oh. Right. Please?”
Mari smiled and laughed as she handed the honey cookie to Rasala. “Here you go dear.”
“Thank you.”
Rasala was one of the slaves they had transformed to be more like a little boy but he was hearty and used to drudgery and abuse like the rest of them. He doubtless had to endure much more. Sankari didn’t know why Rasala was behaving as if he were no more than a toddler when he was with Mari. He might hide his fright but need her mothering deeply.
Mari looked at Sankari again. “My master won’t eat cookies if they break. I save them for the little ones.” Mari reached her third and fourth hands into her cloak and pulled out more cookie pieces. “Oatmeal or honey Sankari?”
“Thank you, but no. I wouldn’t rob the little ones of their treats. Please excuse me.”
Rasala introduced Sankari to the other exotics, so that everyone would feel comfortable. She started with the other odalisque girls. An elfish, wavy-haired exotic named Pygela, introduced himself. Pygela also introduced Kaila, a cherubic boy with rudimentary wings, Skandi, a tiger-striped odalisque, and Derri, a doll-like odalisque. Kaila introduced Pandi, Mynda and Lari, who were so friendly and helpful Sankari liked them immediately. Pandi had vivid orange hair, Mynda had an illusion of cold, blue fire atop a bald head, and Lari was a pretty girl whose hair sparkled like stars, but they were as human as anyone. They weren't exactly like family yet, but it was going well.
There were male odalisques too, such as Lord Nelissai’s servant Sthanu. He was a large, handsome, golden-tanned youth, with a blonde horsetail. Sthanu’s mistress Lord Nelissai had a floor-length midnight-blue horsetail herself, and it pleased her that her mark was on him. His tail was not the only mark she left. Nelissai seemed to keep the young buck as some kind of virile plaything, since light lashes, teeth marks, and fingernail abrasions had marred his skin. Sankari would notice new marks each morning.
Those exotics that were kept as pets or clowns were less colorful than the others, and usually had animal features. There was a small goat-legged man named Putan who scurried toward Sankari, with a rapid tap-tap-tap of his hooves that drew attention to his eagerness to meet her. Putan introduced an androgynous boy named Trisir. Putan and Rasala weren’t the only ones with animal features. Sankari knew these performers were the objects of lust often enough and that only the most extreme deviants would misuse a sweet child like Rasala.
The brute Bhuvar was an exotic whose duties surely ended along with the daylight. He was of a common type used for heavy labor. He was massively built and as big as two men. His features were simple, as if his face was roughly outlined by a sculptor that never returned to finish the detail work. Sankari didn’t know why any master would need a brute after they set sail but perhaps it was the only way his master felt secure.
Lord Mezulla’s three servants were ordinaries, however, and the most sexually innocent of all. Jaimi, Vaivi, and Isani were triplets and Mezulla was a malevolent Lord whose considerable appetites preserved their virginity while penetrating their bodies in other unspeakable ways. The girls still suffered from their usual day’s end pallor and languor when Rasala introduced them to Sankari. Mezulla had been allowed three servants due to his needs, when the other acolytes and priests had to restrict themselves to a single servant, but even so, his appetites were enough to combine with his mistreatment of them in a way that ensured they would be invalided on the voyage ahead.
Rasala introduced Sankari to almost everyone and then grew reluctant. “Now you know everybody I guess. There are a couple of others that aren’t very nice. You don’t want to know them. They can introduce themselves if they want. I don’t think they will. They are never nice like that. Oh, let’s go back to Mari. You have to try her cookies. They are so good. I’m going to have oatmeal this time.” Rasala started tugging at Sankari again.
“Come on Rasala. We all have to be a family now. This is a long, dangerous trip. We have to stick together and get along. Maybe if we are nice to them for long enough they will relax and be nice back. Introduce me. Please?”
“Okay. I guess.”
Rasala walked slowly over to a dancing girl with colorful feathers that adorned much of her body. “Um… Sharma? Hi. This is my friend Sankari. She is Brother Prayaga’s harem girl. Isn’t she beautiful? Maybe you can get along. Sankari isn’t just a harem girl. She can sing and dance and tell stories and compose poems and juggle and act and swallow knives and breathe fire and do all kinds of things. Your feathers make you kind of pretty too. Maybe Sankari can show you the dances she learned.”
“See here little boy, I am not only the best dancer here but my choreography is highly esteemed. You should be grown up enough to tell the difference between an auteur and an amateur. The difference between uncommon beauty and a cutesy fur ball should also be apparent when you see it. Don’t you know not to speak until spoken to? Now go away.”
Sankari glared at her. “Sharma! I just came here to meet you. I know he could have phrased things better, but you don’t have to talk to him that way. We all have to get along. It is a long and dangerous voyage.”
“Oh look, it’s the whore with a hobby. I didn’t realize you could talk. Isn’t it enough for you to get by when just grunting like an animal?”
Sankari really wanted to build a family here and was willing to be polite to Sharma no matter what was said about her, but she couldn’t stand and watch Rasala get treated badly by anyone if she could help it.
“Please Sharma. Try to be nice, if not to me, at least to the little ones.”
“I don’t like children. Frankly, it’s beyond me why you have such a strong mother instinct considering you can’t have any babies. Not like that freak with the cookies. What a joke giving her four arms. Of course, I suppose your master thought it was the height of wit to make you such a ‘fox.’”
“You can leave my master out of this too.”
“Have a crush do you? Don’t mix up a love and a lay honey. I can see why they gave you legs to spread open but it frankly astonishes me they needed to give you this much of a spine when you spend all day and night lying on your back. I am doubly surprised that you cannot only stand up on two legs but that you are eager to stand up for others when it isn’t any of your business. Just go away before I am tempted to say something undignified. There’s a good girl.”
Sankari really had heard enough. She wanted to say something but she was still hoping Sharma would relax if they didn’t antagonize her. “Come on Rasala. Let’s go get cookies.”
Rasala spun and started running to where Mari had been and before he looked up he ran into a sour-faced old manservant. “Sorry.” He looked up. “Oh Avomutka. I didn’t see you.”
Avomutka gave the boy a diffident prod with his fingertips. Rasala just stood there. “Don’t pounce on me you wretched animal. I am a human, not some freak like the rest of you. I have seen more years and acquired greater dignity than you will ever realize.”
Avomutka prodded Rasala hard with his fingertips again and then gave the boy a malicious shove that forced Rasala to the floor. “By rights you should all be showing me proper respect and recognizing my leadership rather than charging around like an uncontrollable menace.”
Sankari couldn’t do anything about Lord Wurru torturing Rasala but she wouldn’t tolerate any of the slaves bullying him. Avomutka did look like an ordinary man, but he displayed less humanity and dignity than even Sharma. She didn’t see the need to restrain herself with him if he was not an exotic. An ordinary would never be part of her new family, no matter what she said to convince him.
Sankari helped Rasala off the floor and turned to Avomutka. “Leave him alone.”
“He attacked me. Everyone saw. It isn’t like I can reason with him. He is only an animal, even if he is just a puppy. Pups grow into wolves soon enough.”
“We might be slaves but we are not animals any more than we are blocks of wood or monsters. He isn’t a wolf or a mad dog. He isn’t even a squirrel. He is just a little boy with feelings.”
“I really doubt that.”
“You shouldn’t doubt it,” Sankari continued. “Everyone here is a person. Everyone here is good. Everyone here has a name. That little boy’s name is Rasala and my name is Sankari.”
“Well Sankari, let me teach you something. I am a person because I am a human and a man. You are not because he is a child and you are a woman and above all neither of you is human. As for your names I could care less.”
“Forget our names if you want Avomutka,” said Sankari, angrier than ever, and placing special emphasis on his name, “now I know what your name is and what you look like. Try to bully everyone into following you and I will tell the masters you were trying to help your master cause a mutiny.”
Avomutka looked about to talk and stopped himself while he assessed Sankari and tried to guess if she would really do it.
Sankari didn’t give him time to think. “My master is friends with Rasala’s master Lord Wurru,” she added quickly. “Touch Rasala again and I will tell my master that you were just trying to silence Rasala because he caught you spying on Lord Wurru.”
Avomutka deflated. “But he attacked me. How was I to know he wasn’t an animal?”
“You can explain that to Lord Wurru. When he questions people, they eventually tell him everything before he finishes with them.”
“No, that’s quite alright. I am sure I misapprehended the situation. I can assure you I had no intention of startling this darling little boy. Thank you for explaining things.”
“I am sure everyone can see how sorry you are. So we’ll let it go with an apology this time.”
“Oh I am sorry little boy. Please excuse my clumsiness.”
Rasala looked up at him. “Um, that’s okay, I guess.”
Avomutka mumbled some words to excuse himself and scurried away as Sankari and Rasala watched.
“Thanks Sankari. Avomutka’s an ordinary. Ordinaries always pick on us.”
“That’s why we all have to stick together and be like brothers and sisters if we’re going to get through this.”
“You just stood up to him. I don’t think I could ever be as brave as you.”
“I didn’t think I could be either.”
#
Sankari spent hours talking to the other slaves after repulsing Avomutka. She avoided Sharma and Avomutka, and Lord Lilwani’s maid still hadn’t visited the common room, but it was easy for her to befriend everyone else. Sankari was just herself to everyone and mingled rather than being too eager to win everyone’s love on the first day. She made an exception with Rasala. It was especially important to spend a lot of time with him so he’d be distracted from his life with Wurru.
Although Rasala had met Sankari several times before and he obviously liked her, he was very friendly with all of the grown up slaves despite the fact he had only known them a few hours. He almost seemed strangely friendly considering that he didn’t seem to have had any close friends when they were at the seminary and even now he got on badly with the other little ones. Many of them couldn’t play nicely together and had to be watched closely by Mari.
Rasala enjoyed Sankari’s stories, despite being even more easily distracted than most little boys, but when she tried playing a game with him where they made up a story together he only added pieces reluctantly, and even when he participated at her prompting his answers were unimaginative and lacked the spontaneous whimsy most children have a gift for.
Rasala was oddly closed and passive for a boy that was so welcoming to new people. When Sankari gently tried to coax him to add to the story he often talked about how he was “too stupid,” “no fun,” “bad company,” “difficult,” “useless,” and “boring.” She had to stop the game when he kept on asking her what to say and promising to try harder. As she added a hurried “they lived happily ever after” to their story, Rasala begged her not to be angry for ruining her game. When she was asked a question by someone else, Rasala even snuck away as she turned her head and then spent an hour trying to evade her attention.
Sankari tried to allow Rasala space to relax again, so she mingled, and she was not only friendly and encouraging, but she did her best to introduce everyone and help them to open up to each other. She progressed very well in a short time.
There was still some time left before she had to return to her master’s cabin when Sankari heard something disturbing. Outside the common room door, towards where the storage bins held some of the provisions, she heard men stomping. She went to the door and put one ear against it to remove some of the obstructions to her excellent hearing.
She heard a man with a strange accent. It had to be a sailor. “I wouldn’t run if I was you girl. Drag your pretty little body topside and we’ll bury you at sea.”
“Don’t be too quick to break her sweet body, mate,” said another man with the same sort of accent. “We ain’t finished with it yet. I like my women with some fight left in ‘em.”
“Yeah, we ain’t none of those sick priests. They’re into all sorts. Come back here so we can see what gentlemen we are.”
Sankari heard a woman scream. It was loud, but when her head and stomach started to hurt worse than they had in months it wasn’t from the noise. She felt angry and her heart beat quickly, but she restrained herself from leaving the common room. She couldn’t help the girl in a straight fight with the sailors and there was only the door between them. The sailors quickly charged away down the hallway and started clomping up topside. The woman was already shrieking uncontrollably.
Sankari opened the door and snuck after the sailors and whomever they were chasing. She was agile enough to be able to be stealthy even when moving very quickly and following them closely. The air in the hallway had a strange smell of lilacs mixed with the musky stink of a wild animal and the sweaty odor of sailors. She didn’t like this and her master had told her to stay out of trouble but she couldn’t allow what was about to happen.
When Sankari arrived topside one of the sailors had finally caught the woman and grabbed her by the ankle. He pulled her so hard she fell on her front and bloodied her face on the deck. A monkey-thing with a pocked skull-like face scrambled off her shoulder as she fell. The woman twisted around and punched the sailor in the face and then tugged her leg. He didn’t let go; he didn’t flinch.
“Heh. Cute.”
The woman thrashed ineffectually at the sailor despite seeing how impotent her punch had been. When he threw her arms aside she tried to claw herself away from them. The sailors watched her and reveled in her helplessness, amused as the girl’s attempts to drag herself to safety took her only inches and tore her flimsy top until her breasts were bare.
“Look, mate, her top’s started to come off by itself.”
“Must be a sign from the gods. Our very own wink and a nod when it counts.”
“Let’s just get to it. We don’t need any divine intervention to help rip off a few slutty frills.”
“Yeah, and we ain’t the ones that need to start prayin’”
The sailor still had the woman by the ankle and he grabbed her other foot with his free hand as his friend bundled her wrists together with the fingers of one of his enormous hands.
The woman they pinned to the deck was young and fit but didn’t have enough heft to push away either of the sailors. The sailors didn’t even undress, they just pulled their breeches to their thighs. They exposed unwashed bodies just enough to finish what they started.
Sankari snuck closer. Whatever else might happen to the woman on this dangerous voyage, she couldn’t allow another woman to suffer like this as she watched. She only wished she could scare them off somehow but she couldn’t even move closer now. She felt cold and sick.
“Now lemme take a closer look at what we got us.”
The other sailor restrained his friend. “Careful, mate. Her perfume is getting stronger even after the chase and being in the open air. I don’t think she’s wearing perfume. I think she’s sweatin’ that stink. She ain’t human.”
“I ain’t afraid of no whore. Magic or not, I just aim to give her some practice doin’ what she was made for. I can always hold my nose with this one. I didn’t pluck this flower for its smell.”
The sailor with one hand bundling the girl’s wrists grabbed the woman’s tousled blonde hair with his free hand and twisted it before pulling hard and stepping back to straighten her out on the deck. The other sailor used the weight of his legs to pin her feet and moved his hand up her thigh as she wriggled. He tugged at her clothes and exposed a flower-shaped slave mark tattooed high on her hip.
“Sure as silver, ‘x’ marks the spot.”
“Get on with it.”
The sailor that was pinning the girls legs ripped off much of what remained of her clothes and wriggled up what remained of her legs before forcing her legs wide open and really putting his weight on her.
Enough. Sankari leapt several feet screeching as loudly as she could. She landed between the sailors with one foot on either side of the young woman. Both sailors were so startled by the sudden eruption of white and red fur that they dropped the woman and scurried away from her. Sankari hissed caustically, raking the air with her long nails, and doing her best to look wild-eyed and feral. The sailors pulled up their breeches. Sankari hoped they would be distracted. Her appearance might startle the sailors but even while baring her fox’s teeth she was too small and feminine to fool them long.
Sankari had to avoid them taking too long a look. She darted around so her small size and bright coloring would make her seem more like a coral snake than a concubine. She bristled the abundant fur on her tail until it was as stiff as a tom cat’s.
“Careful! It’s one of those freaks. You never know what powers those priests put in them. Leave it.”
“We’ll soon find out,” said the first sailor as he swung a fist at Sankari.
Sankari was moving so quickly she actually jumped in the way of his fist. It would hit her before she could sidestep it.
The second sailor stepped forward and to one side of the woman and grabbed his mate’s wrist before it could hit Sankari. “Sorry. You can throw yourself overboard later if you wanna be reckless but you ain’t risking both our lives. There’s no way I wanna die with you if you’re wrong.”
The one nervous sailor backed away and then ran back below deck. The other sailor wasn’t as eager to leave. He turned to Sankari.
“I’m not so superstitious as my friend,” said the sailor. He grabbed the girl again and pinned her. She screamed and pummeled him uselessly while he fumbled at his clothes eager to force himself inside her.
Sankari had an idea. She turned and yelled at the sailor, hoping he was unfamiliar with all of the masters and slaves. “Don’t worry mistress, I’ll distract him long enough for you to cast a spell.”
The sailor was either too intent on clumsily peeling his breeches to hear her or didn’t believe her because he could only grunt as he finally succeeded in ankling his pants and ripping off the last of the girl’s silks.
The unknown dangers of the voyage ahead terrified Sankari but some things frightened her more than the unknown. She jumped on the sailor, unable to concentrate on defending himself as he was. He ignored her as if she was a toddler riding on his back. When he swung her up to force the girl’s legs so wide apart she screamed as much from pain as from terror; he casually flung Sankari out of the way.
The woman stiffened and then relaxed, succumbing to what she obviously saw was going to be inevitable but Sankari couldn’t give up yet. When the sailor used the girl’s exhaustion and acquiescence as a way to free his hands so he could perch his filthy weight on them for the initial thrust Sankari tore at his exposed genitals with her claws. She wanted the first blood he saw there to be his own.
The sailor reacted first in animal fury, lashing out with a backhand and driving Sankari hard into the deck. Then he looked down at the blood and withdrew cursing and threatening reprisals.

Chapter Four – Blossom

Before even introducing herself, the girl that Sankari had saved, whose name was Blossom, sat with Sankari for what might have been hours before either of them said more. She had thought talking with the guards and sailors, as rough as they looked, would be safer than going to the servants’ common room and being trapped with seeming freaks and wild things. Safe or not, she would have to spend her time in that common room now and wild or not, she wouldn’t feel right ignoring someone that had saved her no matter how freakish she was.
Blossom saw Sankari had a red tunic and pretty, but practical, clothes. Blossom was forced to wear something very different. Pink silks. The sailor was right when he said she was dressed in slutty frills. He just forgot to mention that they were cold, delicate, impractical, and uncomfortable. Pink didn’t bring out her girlish innocence and silks weren’t her idea of luxury. Her mistress, Lord Lilwani, always insisted on disempowering men by looking feminine, seductive, and mysterious. What mystery was left in the few parts of Blossom these silks hid? This new clothing had actually empowered the sailors with enough boldness to almost know her like no man before. They were even less good now Blossom was barely covering herself with the few bigger shreds Sankari had gathered up and offered to her.
Sankari hadn’t said anything but Blossom sat sobbing with her legs crossed and her arms folded while Sankari crossed and uncrossed her legs, shook her leg in place, stretched her legs out, tapped her toes together, drew her feet closer to her body again, patted her raised knees, twiddled her thumbs, sprawled on her back, drummed her fingers on the deck, look up at the stars and down at the ship, sat up, looked around everywhere, stood up, paced, crouched, balanced on one leg, hopped up, and paced around some more.
“Please stop pacing everywhere.”
Sankari stopped. “What? I just got up for a second to think.”
“You haven’t kept still this whole time. Thank you for helping me before but I am tense enough without you bouncing around.”
“Sorry, Blossom. I have so much energy because of the magic I can’t sit still. I just move around all the time and don’t even know it.”
“I didn’t know you couldn’t help it. Sorry I yelled at you. I’m also sorry I called you all freaks.”
Sankari looked puzzled suddenly. “You didn’t call us all freaks.”
Oh no. What an idiot. This could be awkward. “Sorry for thinking it then.”
“I bet you haven’t been an exotic very long, have you?”
“Exotic?”
“Yeah. Exotic. Special, changed, not ordinary anymore.”
The ape-thing chirped under the bench. Blossom dodged Sankari’s gaze and stared at the creature. She just sat there mutely and clutched the bundle of rags to her breasts, like a forlorn mother with a stillborn infant.
Blossom was once the maid of a female acolyte. Just before she boarded the ship, Lord Lilwani visited her mistress’s house, talked for a while, and then bought her. Lilwani took Blossom to her castle and touched her on the forehead. Blossom must have passed out. When she woke up she had her present appearance.
Lilwani should never have changed Blossom She was bigger and stronger before, if older, but not ugly. The hands she had now were clumsy when she did her mistress’s toiletry. The perfume smell was annoying, too. It changed with her mood so she sweat floral scents and musk and always felt self-conscious. Lilwani said she wanted Blossom along because she didn’t like the smell of the ship and the sea it sailed on, but the scents always bared her feelings so she felt constantly exposed.
Sankari shifted her position. When Blossom still didn’t respond, she tilted her head curiously and smiled again. “Are you still scared or is it that being special bothers you? It shouldn’t. You’re lucky.”
Blossom bolted upright, suddenly angry. “Lucky? What do you mean lucky? What is the lucky part? Being a slave, or being changed into a freak?”
“Look at how I was changed. I mean, you hardly look special at all. You’re pretty, but nobody would suppose you were an exotic.”
Blossom looked at Sankari, whose amiable manner was relaxing. “I know. I didn’t mean anything bad when I called everyone freaks. Really I didn’t.”
“That’s all right. You’ve just had a hard night. In a way we are all freaks. Anyone can see how the masters changed us. We aren’t ordinary anymore and we don’t pretend we are. It is just that we aren’t monsters either. There are more important ways to be human than to just judge by the skin we’re in. Still, that takes time to understand. It’s hard at first.”
“At first? How could you get used to this?” Blossom answered. She gestured to herself. Then she just nodded, suddenly aware she was screaming naked on the deck. She covered herself again and sat down.
“It’s mortifying,” Blossom answered. “I feel ashamed to show my face anywhere.”
“That will fade in time.”
“It isn’t what they did to my body that horrifies me. It is how they might have affected my mind. How they could have changed my spirit. My memories, my personality, everything might be altered. It all could have been played with without my knowledge. What if they planted something terrible inside my mind and it is growing and waiting to come out?”
“They can’t affect your mind too much. It changes you. It can make you stupid, or even turn you into a child forever. I don’t think they could have changed you inside. You aren’t simple or innocent like some of the other brothers and sisters they tried to change a lot.”
“I hope you’re right.” Blossom looked down at the repulsive monkey-thing. “I heard my master’s pet Shi-Shi here was probably a man once. I think he was a traitor or spy named Irshira that served General Vayu. Now he is just some poor, dumb creature. Being transformed into an ugly little monkey-thing was the least of what they did to him.”
“I can understand this is hard for you Blossom. The masters change a lot of us, inside and out. They change a lot of people into savage killers for their armies, and a lot of other people into big brutes for hard labor. My goodness, you should have seen me at first. Whenever I looked in a mirror I’d scream and run. If I heard the word ‘fox’ I’d cringe. I was afraid to laugh because it reminded me of how a dog yelps.”
“You seem all right now.”
“That is my point. It takes time for all of us but we accept it. It’s okay. Anyway, this spell is common. It’s supposed to make a person look cute and cuddly. What do you think?”
Sankari pinched the point of each ear with her fingers and stretched them as far as they would go, making a face of crossed eyes and pursed lips. Blossom let out a squeak of laughter, which she had plainly tried and failed to stifle. Sankari laughed the soft, yapping, fox’s chuckle that she had once forbade herself to yelp.
“That’s the idea,” Sankari said. “You have to let yourself laugh or you lose your mind. Then the masters turn you into something scary and send you to kill the enemy for them. Sankari reached out, but Blossom reflexively pulled her hand away. Sankari’s big ears drooped.
“Are you still afraid of me Blossom?”
“No, of course not.”
“Okay then. Touch my ears.”
Blossom narrowed her eyes and raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“So you can get over being uneasy around me and we can be learn to be sisters.” Sankari took Blossom by both hands and tried to raise them, but Blossom stepped backward and crossed her arms.
“Let go! I’m not touching anyone and I sure won’t let anyone touch me. I feel like I don’t want anyone to ever come close to me again.”
“Sorry Blossom. I should have known.”
“Alright,” replied Blossom. She was calm and able to talk again but she knew it was just emotional exhaustion that allowed her to sit and deal with Sankari as if they were meeting over dinner.
“My master says we’ll never go home again, no matter what happens,” said Sankari. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. We have no other home and nobody else that cares for us. Do you miss home Blossom?”
“Home? My home is gone in more ways than just my having been dragged away.”
Sankari sat them both down and looked Blossom in the eye. “How?”
“All day today I was sad because I don’t miss home. I don’t miss my friends, I don’t miss the people I used to work with, and I don’t miss any of the places that were familiar to me. I can barely remember what my own family looked like. How my friends’ voices sounded. How home smelled when we celebrated the festivals.”
Even when Blossom could clearly focus on her memories, she couldn’t recall the feelings. She remembered but she didn’t feel much of anything. It was like her life was something she watched happen to someone else but didn’t notice with much interest. Her memories almost seemed as if they belonged to someone else, but she had no other memories of her own, and knew they must be hers. Blossom felt out of touch with everything she was before she was changed.
“I can understand your feelings,” Sankari said when Blossom was finished. “We have all felt like that sometimes.” Sankari nodded somberly. “It’s those awful spells they put on us; they have bad side effects, sometimes. Still, I don’t think they changed you as much as they might have. I was made an odalisque, and not just an exotic like you were.”
“I know. I can see how you are all human now.” Blossom avoided everyone before because they all looked inhuman and she didn’t want to think that she was inhuman too. She didn’t want to think that she was a monster that belonged with freaks and could never live alongside people again.
Of everyone on the ship, the exotics might be the least freakish. The masters all received the Gift of the Gulsa and got horribly deformed by the sacred powers when they became priests. The sailors all had terrible scars and worse odors. Maybe what made people inhuman had nothing to do with having fur or sweating perfume. “Lord Lilwani changed me, but I suppose since then she hasn’t been cruel. I am glad she is a woman with a woman’s sensitivities to some things. How about your master, Sankari?”
“I guess he thinks girls with the sort of spell I have are cute. He had a big harem at home. All animal girls like me except made to look like kittens, bunnies, mice, and other furry people. They were all my friends. You would have loved Udwadi and Marici. I became my master’s favorite, so he brought me along when he came.”
“Favorite? Do you mean like a friend or just like a favorite toy?” asked Blossom.
Blossom was trying to be polite. She couldn’t imagine any of the masters being anything but either indifferent or cruel. Lord Lilwani was indifferent enough to her, busy as she was planning the voyage, and Blossom felt lucky. Blossom knew to have a male master must be the worst.
“I was changed with one of their ‘odalisque’ spells that is supposed to make you cute and a good companion,” answered Sankari “You’re lucky you’re not under one. If my master didn’t let me make love to him almost every day, I wouldn’t worry about sailors chasing me. I’d chase after them myself.”
What was she talking about? Blossom had to go with Lady Lilwani to visit another Lord one time when they had to wait and watch as he performed a rite that involved an orgy of sex and bizarre ritual practices. She couldn’t understand how anyone would do that if they weren’t forced to. It was so painful and degrading. Imagine needing something so sickening, it would be like having a spell that made you always hungry and only be able to eat rotten cabbage and rusty cans. Being nearly raped made it clear to her that sex could be far more degrading than even those experiences had shown.
“What do you mean ‘lets you’ make love?” asked Blossom.
“That’s how it is. You get so hot and excited; a man is doing you a favor if he takes you to bed.”
“I’m sorry.” Blossom didn’t know how Sankari could stand to live working through every day just to look forward to a rough lump heaving itself onto her and clumsily bludgeoning her most private places every night.
“Don’t you hate him for what he did to you?”
Sankari yapped amusedly. “Brother Prayaga didn’t enchant me. He’s not good at changing people, actually. He does illusions, levitation, and other things like that mostly. I think he has a library that could allow him to do some other things if he took the time, but he can’t perform those spells without a lot of preparation.”
Sankari’s transformation wasn’t what Blossom had meant but Sankari seemed bizarrely clueless. Blossom didn’t want to talk anyway so she thought she might as well ask a few questions and let Sankari talk about whatever she wanted until she gathered the courage to return to her cabin and face Lord Lilwani in her despoiled fineries.
“Back home my master had lots of girls,” Sankari said. “To keep us from feeling miserable he gave us alone time and let us take care of our own needs. If we can’t get time to ourselves a good dip in cold water usually helps. That is not such a bad thing. Some cruel masters clip their girls to make sure they can’t enjoy sex enough to be tempted to infidelity. My master would never do that. I was changed in a lot of ways that you can see right away but he hasn’t tried to destroy me inside.
“My first master changed me as an older child and sold me to a slaver once I grew up,” continued Sankari. “I was traded around a lot after that for a while and many of my masters were harsh. My last master left me the worst. Brother Prayaga found me in the pen for the slaves nobody expected to trade for much.”
“Is he tender with you? I can’t imagine any of the masters being gentle or caring.”
“Prayaga doesn’t let me get close,” Sankari continued. “Maybe he doesn’t want to feel loved.” Sankari bit her lip. “I’ve seen him do things that seemed cruel to me, but for some reason, I still feel, well, sorry for him. I just can’t share myself with a man who can treat me with such kindness for this long and not feel anything for him.”
She couldn’t not feel anything for him? Poor girl. Blossom knew Sankari’s master would find it quite natural to be unfeeling.
“And is he open with you?” asked Blossom.
“I get the idea he’s unhappy, like most other people are, but more so. He always worked with that terrible Lord Wurru, back when they were both acolytes, but he didn’t become the sort of man Wurru did. I still feel he is good inside. He is the most senior of all of the acolytes and he hasn’t tried to become a full priest. It’s almost as if he can see what the priests are like and part of him doesn’t want to fall that far. I want to make him feel better, but I can’t think of a way to do it. He can be so remote. Being with Prayaga sometimes feels like being in an empty room, and I just stay there hoping that someone will join me.”
Blossom sensed her intense regret.
“Do you love Prayaga, Sankari?” she asked, just to test how dangerously naïve her new friend really was.
Although Sankari was still smiling, she looked like a person that had been hurt while hiding and was trying to keep herself from crying out and being discovered. Sankari looked away. “Come on Blossom, you have to come meet everyone if we are all going to make it through this voyage.”
Blossom had her answer now. “I guess you are right. I should meet everyone.”
“I think that is about to become uncomfortably obvious. I don’t like sailing off to war. You don’t know how dangerous it is.”
“You sound like you do.”
“I haven’t actually seen a war,” admitted Blossom, “but I don’t want to. I have the feeling it’s something to avoid.” Blossom wished they weren’t all being shipped into it like baggage. Most of all she hoped they didn’t end up casualties… or spoils.
“I’m afraid too, but it won’t help us to worry about that now.” Sankari reached over to squeeze Blossom’s hand but remembered Blossom still needed time before she was ready for closer comforting and so she stopped herself. “Don’t let it eat you up Blossom,” she said gently. “It isn’t so bad. Maybe if we all had easy lives there would be nothing that is hard to endure, but even when our lives are very hard, they aren’t unendurable. Something bad happens you learn how to survive it and then maybe the bad thing becomes a regular part of your life, but you learn how to turn away from the pain and you get used to it. Then something else comes along and you learn you can handle that too.” Sankari shrugged. “A lot of life is that way.”
“It sounds like your life went that way, but you are the exception. I don’t think all of us go into the darkness but when we do most of us don’t get lucky and come out again.”
“It’s okay for me now and if people get stuck in the darkness that is a choice. Anyone who makes a choice to change can have the same success I did. What you have to suffer isn’t always the worst thing in life. Sometimes becoming the person you think you have to become in order to survive is worse. The master I have now doesn’t treat me so badly, but the ones I had before were different. At first I tried to make myself all dead inside so I couldn’t feel, but I learned how to survive it without it killing me inside.”
“And sailing to our deaths doesn’t change your opinion now?” asked Blossom.
“When I had to come with my master on this voyage, I started to feel myself go all hard again. When I arrived I was frightened and angry. I was sad to have left my friends behind and to have watched them get taken away. I thought it might hurt less to live as a stone and not try anymore. When I heard you scream I realized that was crazy. I have been wrenched from my friends too many times and forced from my home too often. Now I refuse to leave my friends and home again and I’m determined to survive. I will take you to meet our brothers and sisters. Then you’ll know why we can’t give up. It does not matter that there is a great chance we could all be dead at the end of this. It is enough to know there is a small chance we might not be.”
“Making it across the ocean alive may not be enough Sankari.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know what it is but my mistress Lady Lilwani plans something horrible.” Blossom’s voice trembled, and Sankari could see tears form in Blossom’s eyes again.

Chapter Five – Lilwani

After finishing the planning Lord Lilwani expected of him, Prayaga thought about his walk back to his cabin from the fore of the lowest of the decks. He always had heard ships were cold, damp, leaky, lolling, and creaking. Lord Lilwani had built a solid port in a sure harbor. The voyage was meticulously planned. The charts were copiously detailed. The ship itself was a masterwork of an expert shipwright.
The Ship of Huisinga was a formidable broad-beamed ship that was built wide and low and resembled an enormous barge. Three great masts were as tall as any tree Prayaga had ever seen and the slimmer one he had heard called a mizzenmast stood nearly as high. It didn’t roll with the water in an uncomfortable way or leave him feeling sick. The wood was solid and strong. The timbers were evenly stained, tightly fit, and free of warping, splinters and knots. The metal fixtures were highly polished and shiny, well oiled and quiet. The black stain on the wood matched the smooth pitch sealing the outside hull, and the tone was deep and natural instead of cold or slick. Everything was simple but handsome and adorned but tasteful.
Everywhere Prayaga walked offered easy footing. No floorboards were out of place and none had its edge raised higher than the one next to it so that they might grab his heel and trip him up.
He had stopped and listened at the doors of the three common rooms when he got back to the deck where his cabin was. He didn’t hear the sailors plotting or grousing. They had foreign accents but sounded like old hands and experienced seamen and not striplings that had never been to sea.
The guards seemed to have very good morale and discipline. There were dozens of them and they were well drilled but they didn’t seem like the small army a lesser Lord might assemble to take them all out to sea and murder everyone. Even the slaves seemed moderately content and their common room could not have been the work of a Lord completely indifferent to their comfort.
Prayaga had doubled back to look the quick access stores on this level after listening at the doors of the three common rooms. The supplies seemed good and the food of a fair quality with great trouble taken to preserve everything. He had heard the food on ships was rotten and filled with meal worms, maggots, and rot. The Temple of Huisinga had enough magic at its disposal to ensure they didn’t have to eat rotten food out of moldy barrels, but Lord Lilwani’s attention to everyone’s health and comfort was admirable. Her attention to detail was also a great virtue.
Lilwani’s claims about the ship were impressive but Prayaga’s eyes substantiated them. Prayaga stopped and pressed his hand flat against the wall of the corridor. His sensitivity to magic allowed him to feel the ship’s subtle vibrations. There was an aura of tremendous power. He pressed his chest to the wall and touched his ear and cheek to the wall near where his hand was. The whole ship must be some kind of magical battery or power conduit of some almost unimaginable and unequalled scope. It was glorious.
Prayaga looked around his cabin. It was small and plain but represented a fair compromise between the size and design specifications of the ship and the needs of those on board. The acolytes’ cabins were scarcely smaller than those of the Lords and Lord Lilwani’s own cabin was rumored to be no bigger than that of any other Lord. The acolytes and Lords were allowed one servant each but on a long voyage like this that probably ensured comfort rather than undermining it. Even Lord Lilwani had only one.
Lord Lilwani had not only treated everyone fairly but when Lord Mezulla required more than one servant because of his repulsive appetites, Lord Lilwani granted him three and Lord Tanaro and an acolyte that was a close ally of Lilwani agreed to forgo servants in order to accommodate Mezulla’s needs. She didn’t argue just to satisfy a need to feel in control, object due to a potential loss of face, or appear to mind allowing her most pitiless rival extra resources.
Lord Lilwani was wonderfully prepared for their briefing today. She didn’t have to check notes or hesitate when answering. She understood every part of her plan intimately. Lord Iazzai and Lord Tanaro sat quietly through the meeting and only commented as dictated by their responsibilities and experience. They didn’t split the room into two camps by defending Lilwani.
Lord Mezulla spent the meeting making cynical comments, trying to undermine Lilwani, and snorting snide and barbed quips to show his dominance to the pack of acolytes at the meeting. He bared his fangs, stood up, paced the room, sat down again with a flourish, and orated like he was presenting a legal case or addressing a congregation. Despite all his apparent proud bluster and braggadocio, he noted every word and inflection he heard and watched everyone with the predatory attentiveness of a prowling lion.
Lord Nelissai spent much of the meeting complaining that her quarters were too small, her one servant inadequate, and her situation demeaning for a Lord of her status. She thought the acolytes could make do with no servants and live in a barracks cabin and that every Lord should have twice as much space.
Lord Nelissai should be grateful to come along instead of complaining. It was likely she had called in favors with the Hierophant to get chosen. In a few years her lands might be no bigger than the cabin she was in now. The yeomen, soldiers, and knights of the rebel states were overrunning large parts of her neighbor’s lands, and mercenary scum and foreign pirates had already razed and plundered much of what that Lord ruled. On the ship the vain fool Nelissai was becoming as ill tempered as an overfed cat caught in a birdcage. She could be very dangerous if she squirmed until she was in the position to get her claws into any of the other cages.
Lord Wurru seemed to have formed a triumvirate with Mezulla and Nelissai to counterbalance Lilwani, Iazzai, and Tanaro. Mezulla had made good on the offer to help him obtain Lordship before the voyage. The Gulsa had bestowed their gift on Wurru and left him repellent. Wurru was large and awkward now. He still had one head, two arms, and two legs, but his skin was rough, craggy, and orange-brown like rust, and yet reflected light with a slick green sheen.
Wurru sat at the meeting and sprawled bloated on his perch like a sybaritic frog on an overwrought lily pad. What was this in comparison to how Lord Lilwani might have warped him? He would never know. The Luwamnas priests could cast no magic to transform themselves in a way that would overrule the Gift of the Gulsa. Priests could never demand the power to transform the shapes their godlings had bestowed and Prayaga would not cast an illusion to hide his form.
A few minutes after starting to contemplate his first day aboard the ship, Prayaga heard a knock on his cabin door.
“Come.”
The door opened. “Master, it’s me.”
“Hello Foxy.” Prayaga looked up. It was Sankari. It was good to see her.
“Hello master. How are you?”
“Fine.” Why did she even ask? Does she think anyone could like being confined to this cabin doing thankless busy work intended only to prevent murders he would not have planned anyway?
Sankari probably knew better regardless of how he pretended he accepted being here. She had once said to him that he told her he was ‘well enough’ whenever he felt fine. Then she pointed out he only said he was ‘fine’ when he was in a bad mood. Sometimes he wondered if he would ever have tolerated her if he hadn’t been ordered to by a Lord. At other times he was grateful that there was someone who could see through his facades but who didn’t become a threat because of it. Sometimes he couldn’t stand to look at her. At other times she was the only one he could stand to be with. Prayaga could handle things alone as always.
Sankari was the most impressive girl many people would ever meet but she was too often frustrating and exhausting. He tolerated a lot more from Sankari than he had ever done with a slave before because his masters wanted her to come for reasons he couldn’t guess but it wasn’t safe to allow himself to care, however many childish fantasies she obviously entertained about him. Spending time with her could be as comfortable as he had ever felt but as long as she was an impetuous infant Sankari was without potential as a true companion. As long as she was a gullible idealist she was might even be his doom.
“Did you make friends with all of the other slaves?” asked Prayaga.
“I did my best master.”
Sankari’s fur looked tousled. She seemed tired and it seemed to Prayaga like she had been upset recently. He had seen her upset before and knew the look of her afterwards. She also looked like she had hurriedly tried to neaten her fur and rumpled clothes. What was worse is that she had held her hands behind her back the whole time she had been in the room and had the look of a child trying to disguise the fact that she had broken something.
“Foxy?”
“Yes master?”
“What do you have behind your back?”
“Nothing master.”
Sankari looked like she was telling the truth but Prayaga could see in her face that she was still hiding something, something she desperately wanted to conceal.
“Show me Foxy.”
Sankari stretched both of her arms out in front of her.
“See master? Nothing.” As quickly as Sankari had stretched out her arms she retracted them and she clung her arms to her side and snuck her fingers carefully to the back of her thighs. What had she done now?
“Show me your hands Foxy. Put them in mine.”
Prayaga extended his arms and Sankari grasped them from the top, again hiding her fingers out of his sight. Prayaga grabbed her wrists and forced Sankari’s hands into full view. There was blood. Was she cut? No. The blood was on her claws. The blood clung to her claws like she had raked someone hard but there wasn’t a lot of it. Prayaga felt her hands. The fur was still damp. Was there this much blood left after she cleaned up? Was this how she stayed out of trouble? Was this how she made friends?
Prayaga grabbed Sankari roughly by her tunic. He swore he wouldn’t lose his temper but he grabbed her hard enough to frighten her. The Lord that had ordered him to tolerate her however she behaved might have endangered him as surely as any Lord that came to despise him.
“Tell me what happened or so help me your punishment will be based on the most vile actions I can imagine you doing.”
“Please master. Please don’t be angry. I can explain, really I can.” Sankari started to cry. Crying wouldn’t help her. Prayaga hated it when she refused to behave rationally.
Sankari explained everything that had happened with Blossom. She pleaded with him to understand how her old master was and how she couldn’t see that happen to anyone else. Then she tried to convince him it would be overlooked because they were sailors and Lord Lilwani would probably never allow her servant to be violated. She might be grateful to Prayaga that his servant had defended her maid.
“No Sankari,” said Prayaga. “Lord Lilwani needs her crew. The crew is skilled and irreplaceable. Slaves are disposable. That girl Blossom and all the others aren’t important. You need to be taught you are just like any other slave. I ordered you to stay out of trouble and obeying me must come before even saving a life if that life is expendable. If you anger me again I will no longer be forgiving and if you anger a Lord I will not save you.”
That night Prayaga overlooked his reservations and punished Sankari as if she were any slave and he any master.

Chapter Six – Sankari

Early in the morning on the second day aboard ship, Sankari woke up with Brother Prayaga shaking her gently. She felt disoriented and cold.
“Foxy. Foxy! Wake up. You had a bad dream.”
“Master?”
“Your sleep was very troubled. You always seem to have nightmares when you move to a new home.”
Sankari didn’t remember having nightmares since Prayaga had been her master. She looked at him. She was feeling more awake but her head something thumped very painfully. Something about what happened to Blossom caused her to remember things that had made it hard for her to fall asleep. She could not remember specifics but the memories of past feelings must have been strong enough to give her nightmares. Did her master remember things that she couldn’t?
“What do you mean master?” asked Sankari. “I don’t understand.”
“When you came to me you had very bad nightmares every time you slept. Even in the daytime you couldn’t concentrate on your chores. You barely ate anything and in bed you were very stiff and unresponsive. When someone startled you, you’d just panic and start shrieking. Even at your calmest, you were jumpy. I was going to trade you away but one time when Lord Tanaro was visiting me to discuss the plans for this voyage he offered to help you.”
“Lord Tanaro wanted to help me? What did you offer him?”
“He asked nothing. It was lucky for you he was there. Very few priests bother to learn healing because they don’t recognize its value and a priest’s temperament facilitates some magic over others. Even those that try to learn healing because they think having a rare skill will make them a valuable commodity lack the empathy to properly attune to healing magic. Lord Tanaro is an excellent healer. His compassion might have been genuine.”
Sankari had never imagined the Lords were very different from each other. They had their own personalities like everyone did but she watched the initiates become acolytes, and the acolytes become Lords, and saw how corrupting service to Huisinga and the Gulsa was. Prayaga and Wurru might have really shared affection for each other once. Wurru might have been more human when young.
Sankari sat up and looked at Prayaga for a few moments. “The Lords always want something. Maybe he just wanted to manipulate you by helping.”
“He wasn’t going to win me that way. I was happy to trade you away again. I had just got you and you didn’t matter to me at all then.”
“Master?”
“Yes Foxy?”
“Do I matter now?”
“You are a good slave. I wouldn’t trade you.”
Is that all? Was she just a favorite slave to him like Marici claimed? It still didn’t feel true. Sankari looked in Prayaga’s eyes. “Maybe he didn’t know I was new.”
“He