"Have you any idea the incredible mess that you have created?"
A crowd had gathered outside my villa. Perhaps crowd isn't the right word; a crowd can be dispersed. Whatever this one was, it reformed the next day or even a few hours. It began a few days after I had stood up for the Armaneans at the Tavern of the Sleeping God. Each day, it grew a bit larger.
Some days, most of the crowd was Armanean. Other days, poor Durans. More often than not, it was a mix of all the shades and accents of the city. The sort of random sampling the ancient Athenians would have let run things. Here though, the city guard would show up and disperse them. The next day they would be back. They were, for want of a better term, my fan club.
They'd cheer if they saw me leave the building and follow after me. Some would clap me on the back and thank me for standing up to the burghers. Others would tell me they'd not eaten in days, and would I hire them to clean the stables or the chamber pots? Still, others would hold up their wriggling, blinking babies to me and ask that I bless them.
Whenever they caught me, I tried to be kind but hoped for the guards to turn up so I could get away.
"Of all the trespasses and all the laws you could have broken, Gerard, this is the last I could have imagined. Burghers do not turn on Burghers!"
From where I sat, I could see through the window behind Iskelda. A hawker was pushing through the crowd. He carried a large tray of black, rice-flour buns covered in cream made from slave girl milk. He called out his wares, homing in on any who made eye contact like an eagle after a baby rabbit.
An Azathoth cultist was pushing a cart hung with bells and water lilies. Atop it were oven-baked mud idols of the Idiot God. An Armanean man stood with a Shemite beside it. The Shemite picked up an idol and studied it. The Armanean seemed to ask him a question. The Shemite shook his head and laughed and quickly put down the icon. The men walked away, but the Shemite looked back over his shoulder at the cart. This is the price of cosmopolitan life: if their God is not so great, then why would yours be?
A group of men had set up a gambling table (illegally) in the center of the street. Cards were down, others held in hand. Dice clattered, and one man cheered, fist raised. The others groaned and put down bronze coins.
"The girl must be returned, Gerard. There is nothing else for it. I will do what I can, but the wrath of the Council will be heavy."
We when a large, airy room. The floor was white marble. It was cool beneath my feet. Woolen tapestries made by Shemite horse tribe folk covered the walls. They showed a simple but elegant palette of blues, off-whites, and purples. Heavy, reclining couches of dark wood ringed the room. They had been fitted with heavy, bronze, chaining rings. Good enough to hold three of four girls, even if they all pulled as one.
In the center of the room was a small wooden stage with steps going up to it. Atop it danced two slave girls. One was Perfect Feet; named so for obvious reasons. She was a tall, slender beauty. She had long, gently curling, black hair that swished from side to side with her movements. I had decorated her in silver: silver anklets, bangles, nipple rings, and of course, her collar. Her body was oiled: it gleamed as she turned and swayed. I had paired her with jasmine and mint. It had been mixed into her dancing oil. Perfect Feet was quite thorough: as she moved, I noticed how her lips sparkled and the wet look of her labia. She had taken care to put more oil over those.
Dancing alongside her was a tall brunette with hair like shining silk. This was Yarina; I had taken her as a prize at the fall of Aymund. Yarina had particularly large and well-formed breasts. Her aureoles and nipples were the color of milky coffee. I had tattooed them myself: sitting over her belly while she was strapped down to a wooden table. With a bamboo needle and dark green ink, I had marked her breasts with the Hyperborean constellations. The northern ones I had done in the daylight, looking over sailors' charts. The southern ones I had done at night, looking up at the sky before attending to my fire-lit subject.
Yarina wore a crude iron collar and oversized cuffs and anklets. The locks had all been fused where I had poured drops of liquid bronze into them. With a more petite girl, the weight would have been too much, but Yarina had an Amazon's frame. The fused irons worked as weights, and now she had a splendid physique. Athletic and graceful, She too gleamed with oil. I had paired her with wild ginger and cinnamon. Such an oil could not be put between her thighs, of course (unless I wanted to see her dance with a bit more vigor!). Instead, she'd poured it over her breasts. It was a wonderful thing to take a sip of iced red wine and then a big, slow lick between those oiled breasts. Whenever I had red wine, I had Yarina brought to me.
Each girl danced with a chain fastened to her left ankle. The chains ran to a ring set in the center of the stage. Their hips went from side to side, their arms up as their bodies twisted. They threw their hair back and crouched, coming up slow, hands running up their legs. Every so often, they turned their eyes towards me and my exalted guest.
Kneeling at my feet, her throat chained to my couch was Little Slut. She leaned her pale body against my leg, one arm wrapped around it. I ran my hand through her red-brown hair. It was thick and rich, and yet it felt as soft as moving my hand through smoke. Her dark pink nipples were erect. She kept rising up on her knees, tossing her hair and clenching her knees with her hands. It was the physical unruliness of one with too much energy to keep still. She watched the two dancing slaves with a jealous pout. She was out of her cage, at last, and there was only one thing she wanted to do…
She looked up at me; her cool blue eyes were filled with adoration-and hunger. I wanted to push her down and give her a good, hard-
"Gerard, Shub Niggurath take you, man! Are you even listening?"
"Of course, I'm listening," I snapped back into the real world. "Don't you think, Iskelda, that there are much bigger issues that need the attention of the Burghers than what I do to Sempren's daughter in the next room?"
"Oh, so now you care about Council Meetings? Ha!"
The most powerful woman in Dura, and for all I knew, the world, folded her arms and frowned at me like a schoolteacher with an annoying little boy she wasn't quite sure how to punish. She wore a dress of black silk with silver trim. Her headdress was a crown of silver wire trimmed with pearls. Her face was powdered as bone white as an 18th-century French nobleman's. It gave her a more threatening, inhuman aspect when she was angry.
Iskelda was very angry.
No slaves attended her. Instead, standing behind her was a seven-foot-tall giant wearing black armor. Over the giant's head were plates of matte, dull grey iron with holes cut for air. A metal mesh hung over the face and neck area. The chest was encased in bands of iron over dark, old leather. Canvas strips wrapped his arms and legs as if to hide some hideous burn. The giant's hands were hidden in heavy gloves. I had never seen a scrap of flesh on the giant. I wondered if even Iskelda had.
This was Surab, a bodyguard she had picked up from Shem (she claimed). If he had been permitted to enter with it, Surab would've worn a harpoon over his back. It's blade was 3 feet long and serrated. It had been made from meteoritic iron taken from the sword of a dead king (or so the rumor went). It was the kind of harpoon used to hunt the giant, armored sharks of the river Black and the still-deadlier sea beyond.
In our time, it is not the sea but the dark where humans find terror. This is because we evolved in the rarest circumstance: one where the ocean's top predator slot has been left vacant. It had been held by the hugely successful Megalodon for 20 million years, but even that horror's number had come up.
Yet, it is the nature of the sea to always produce such monsters. Prey animals like whales will always, in time, shrink back to the size of dolphins and remember their place. It was this sort of monster-dominated sea that the Hyperboreans had to sail.
Men like Surab, with their monster-killing harpoons, were why they could.
"Where was your concern, Gerard, when our ship returned from the Hataduri expedition with half its crew dead? Or after the Armaneans rioted? The emergency Council session lasted the whole damned night. Where were you?" She looked at the dancing slave girls and down at Little Slut. Her lip curled in disgust. "You were here, drinking and playing with your whores!"
Little Slut looked down, and her grip around my leg grew stronger. Slave girls are always nervous around free women.
"Nevermind," Iskelda shook her head. "I'm not here to berate you for that. I am here about the girl. What you did was stupid, Gerard. Thoughtless. Did you think that you were in the wilds, perhaps raiding some farm or passing through a foreign city?" She put her hands on her hips and wagged her finger at me. "You cannot just do whatever you like!"
"Did you see the crowd outside when you came?" I replied, stroking Little Slut's cheek. "Did you hear earlier when they were chanting my name?"
She stared at me as if I had asked, out of the blue, why the water in a cup was clear but the sea, blue.
"What does that matter?"
"I am popular with them, Iskelda. No one in this city cared if I lived or died until I kidnapped Sempren's daughter. I should strip her naked and hold her up from my balcony for all to see!"
"Of course, taking her was popular! They hate us. But, if we turn on each other, Gerard, they will tear us apart. Do you understand?" She paused as if to see how I reacted to the words. Whether I would nod and grunt as one who plainly didn't understand or if I would show evidence of cognition. "You are not the only one who knows that this town has become a city filled with hungry foreigners. Do not make Dura unstable! I have to fix this now."
"If you want to worry about the city becoming unstable," I folded my arms, unimpressed, "stop the Guard from trying to disarm the Armaneans! You can't possibly think anything good is going to come of that, do you? Or do you want to see a bloodbath, like in Starka?"
"How can I do that," Iskelda glared at me and threw up her hands, "if I cannot even do this? Are you truly too stupid to understand that you cannot just take another Burgher's daughter?"
At that moment, everything changed. I didn't see a grand and powerful old woman who had come to dress me down like some upstart child grown too big to punish. Iskelda was here because she was trying to help me. This was a tired, and very frustrated ally, trying to clean up my mess.
Since the riot, I had done whatever I wanted to and not cared for the consequences. Now, I could see what that meant. It meant others would have to care. Others I should not be letting down.
"I'm sorry I have made things hard for you," I stood.
"Sorry?" Something in her relented. She stopped holding back the tiredness hidden beneath her white makeup. This was an old woman who had not slept well, if at all, for days. "Do not speak of being sorry, Gerard. This is not a game. Why did you join the first circle of the Burghers if you were not willing to take the responsibility that comes with that? If you were planning to act like a spoiled child as soon as you didn't get your way?" Her tone softened. "I like you, Gerard. I will try to protect you from what comes next, but it will hurt either way. However, do not tell me that you are sorry, Burgher. That is worthless. Where is she?"
"Stay here. I will go and get her."
***
I unlocked the heavy door and pushed it open.
Inside was a large and well-lit guestroom. A thick red carpet shot with blue and gold thread covered the stone floor. The walls were brilliant white; they had been finished with powdered gypsum mixed with flecks of mica. The room was lit by oil-burning braziers set in its corners. In the center of the room was a large bed with four iron chaining rings.
Lying on the bed, hogtied and gagged, was the Lady Ansa of House Sempren.
She glared at me as I entered, a lock of dark brown hair falling over her face. She still wore the same green sari that I had captured her in. It was soiled and ragged, but she had refused to remove it. I had, of course, offered her nothing else but an iron collar. It still lay across the room where she had hurled it. She had lost her green slippers. Her feet were well-shaped, and her legs were long and athletic. How I wish to feel them in my hands! I had mentioned that to her earlier in the day. Her answer had been to kick me. Fair play, but I could not have a houseguest risking injuring herself by kicking things. So, I had hogtied her. Our conversations soon ended in the usual screaming, so I gagged her, as well.
"I'll say one thing, Lady Ansa," I walked towards her, "this keeping you hostage business has not been enjoyable for me, either."
She kept still as I removed her gag.
"What is it now?" She spat. Her blue eyes burned like that of a hunting cat peering at prey it has chased down and trapped in a cave. "Will you offer to feed me meat if I eat it out of your hand? Or have you come to tear my clothes to create strips of dancing silk instead?"
"Just be thankful," I began untying her feet, "that I have more regard for those who care about me than I do for those who care about you."
"And what does that mean?"
"It means," I tossed the rope aside, "that I'm releasing you."
"Ha!" She rolled to the side and rose to sit cross-legged. She held out her bound wrists to me as one might hand an empty cup to a slave. "Has my father come with his bodyguard? Which of his allies has come? Burgher Koron? Burgher Rona? Burgher Yajan, himself? Does the great Gerard Lighting Shield fear getting to a fight? Ha! I expected better!"
"None of them have come," I untied her wrists. "There has been-"
She slapped me, the heel of her hand connecting right with my eye. It exploded with pain, and for a moment, I saw stars. I staggered back, one hand to my face.
"I have been waiting to do that to you from the beginning, you dog!"
Lady Ansa jumped off the bed and stood before me, legs apart, feet planted on the stone floor as if ready to run - or give me another slap.
I couldn't think what was more unusual. A beautiful young woman before me who I could not seize, or that she might have just given me a black eye. Hyperborea was strange enough without needing to be surreal.
"Come with me if you want to leave," I said and left the room.
Behind me, somehow not leashed, not naked, and not in my power, a beautiful woman followed after me. I don't often worry about losing face; I care little for the opinion of others. Yet, in those moments, all I could think of was how small I would feel, releasing her under the eyes of Iskelda, Surab, and even my slaves. The smallest you will ever feel, I tell you, is when you are worried about what your slave girls think of you.
"May the sun never shine again, Lightning Shield," she began, iron in her tone, "if that be the price that you never feel it against your skin. Let the worms of corruption rise up from the soil and strangle the seeds you have planted, be they flowers or children. Let all your slaves be barren as the wastelands of the Red River. Let the iron in every nail, chain-link, and blade you own turn to rust and collapse, along with all memory of you and your deeds. I curse you, Gerard Lightning Shield. Let father Dagon hear me, deep in his ocean fortress, and come hither to visit my curse upon you!"
It was a good curse, I thought. I wondered if she had worked on it. No, it was too heartfelt. Hyperboreans become poets when they're angry.
"Do not feel too put out that I didn't brand and collar you. Politics, you understand? Nothing personal."
She glared at me but was quiet after that.
I returned to the audience room. Iskelda was sitting on one of the couches, drinking wine. Perfect Feet stood before her, holding a clay jug. Yarina knelt before the burgher and massaged her foot with both hands.
Iskelda pulled her foot away and stood at the sight of us. Her eyes became wide, and she clapped her hands together, smiling (a little too hard).
"Lady Ansa! It is good to see you, my child!"
"Likewise, well met Burgher Iskelda!" Lady Ansa ran to her and bowed her head. She noticed the wine jug Perfect Feet was carrying. She yanked it out of her hands and took a swig. Then, another.
"I have not seen you, my dear, since your father's banquet for the Settite priests! When was that - two, three years ago?"
"Five years, Burgher Iskelda."
"Oh, well, you have grown so much since then! You are -- well?"
"Well enough," lady Ansa finished the wine, throwing her head back as she poured out the last drops. Then, she hurled the jug at me as hard as she could. It missed but made a loud crash sound as it shattered against the floor. "Better, after that!"
"I see," Iskelda looked this way and that. "So child, have you - there has been no -"
"Yes?" Lady Ansa regarded her.
"She is asking if I fucked you."
"Disgusting!" Lady Ansa spat on the floor. It is a more insulting gesture among Hyperboreans than it is to us in our own time. "No! He has not touched me. He has not dared!"
The look Iskelda gave me suggested she was not convinced that was the case or the reason.
I shrugged.
"Very well then! That is - good. Let us leave," she took Lady Ansa by the hand. "We must go out the back, though."
"A slave girl will show you the way," I looked to Perfect Feet and snapped my fingers.
The slave bowed her head.
"The back?" Lady Ansa looked both disappointed and surprised. "No, I want everyone to know that I walked out of here and that he lost!"
As if on cue, the crowd outside began chanting.
"What's that?" Lady Ansa asked.
The chanting settled into a cadence.
"Can't you tell?" said Iskelda. "Like I said, child. We go out the back."
"It was my name they were chanting, over and over.
At that moment, enlightenment came to me. It was as clear and transforming as the revealed knowledge that comes to an ascetic who sits in the desert with approaching scorpions and vultures.
"I am loved," I said, looking out the window. In the crowd, flaming torches had been lit. Some waved back and forth. "You hear that?" I laughed. "Have any of you ever heard such a sound before in all your lives?"
Iskelda, and wonder of wonders, Lady Ansa, had nothing to say.
I walked to the balcony, threw open its doors, and stepped out into Dura's darkening evening. The crowd saw me, and a cheer broke out. A woman waved and held up her child. The child held up a wreath made from dyed rags, cut and sewn together to look like flowers. An old Armanean man with a beard that fell to his belly held up a woodcut. I could not see its details at this distance or with such poor light. However, I knew what it showed. Other hands held up woodcuts.
I waved to the crowd. They erupted in cheers.
"By the wriggling worms in all the dead, what are you doing?" Iskelda's looked both mystified and disgusted.
"A private word, Iskelda?" I asked. "If you will?"
The most powerful woman in Dura gestured for the others to remain and joined me on the balcony.
There were no cheers for her.
"What you said earlier about the Council, you are wrong, Iskelda. They cannot discipline me."
"What?"
"You are correct; I don't care for the Council," I blew a kiss into the crowd. There were 'oohs' and 'ahs,' and a young woman shrieked and giggled. "I also don't care about their power. That," I pointed to the crowd, "that is power! Dura's poor are hungry - and angry. They will, at least for now, stand by me. Instead of refusing - or betraying - this love, how much hard you think it would be for me, Iskelda, to grow it, instead?"
Even under her makeup, Iskelda seemed to turn white.
"Don't be a fool!" She hissed. "Do not play with the masses; it is like playing with fire in a room full of tinder and pitch!"
"How would you know? You have never seen people do it. Where I come from, it is how most states are ruled. When you go back to the Council, with that spoiled brat you are working so hard to pretend to like, why don't you tell them of this? Why don't you point out to those fat estate owners eating their grapes imported from the gods knows where that Dura's crowds want to rip them apart. Tell them those crowds have found someone they like. Someone who might ask them to indulge themselves."
"What? What! You fool; are you threatening us?"
"I suppose so, yes. But don't worry, I like you, Iskelda. I'll protect you from what might happen. I can give you better protection than you could, or would, ever give me against the Council, yes? Perhaps then we should speak of certainties. I certainly don't need your counsel anymore, Iskelda. Take the girl back. It means nothing. Tomorrow, I could have every burgher's daughter hanging naked from crucifixes in my training yard if I wanted."
Iskelda turned and stomped off, hitching up her with both hands. It was not like her to be at a loss for words. However, what could she say? I think she believed I was right.
I did not bother to watch her, lady Ansa, and Surab leaving.
A cool wind blew from the hills of the Mist Wall. It crept under my collar and through my shirt, but I did not feel it. All I could feel was the electricity and energy that one feels before making a performance before a large and rapt audience. And that, my friend, is what I did.
"People of Dura!" I stepped to the balcony's edge, fingers clenched around the guardrail. "Thank you for coming on this cold and miserable day! Some call me the Lightning Shield. Others call me Burgher. But to you, I hope I can just be Gerard.
"Under the bending of your backs and the treasures from your purses, Dura has grown into a great city - perhaps one day, it will be the greatest in the world. Yet, where is that wealth for you? How often do you eat, and must you choose whether you dine or your children do? The markets are filled with the loveliest slaves from every land, but will any kneel at your feet tonight? And do they not live better than some of you do?
"All of this can change. Did not our Armanean brothers and sisters ask this, in the language of fire and blood?"
The crowd cheered.
"And what did the Burgher Council do then? Did they listen? Or do they, even as I speak, close the hands around the throat of those people that they may never speak again?"
There were shouts of assent. The crowd was growing.
"I say to you, friends, if they will not listen, then perhaps we must shout louder!"
We must shout louder!
The new chant grew. Hearing it filled me with electricity! I felt 10 feet tall, invincible. Forget the Council; this was power! I didn't need their help to get sewers made and Deep One agents dealt with. Why anyone with the savvy to win a school board election could run this town!
I wondered what had just happened to me. I had planned none of it. How different would things of been if the day had gone just a bit different? Not too long ago, I had been concerned about becoming a demagogue. Now, I was trying to become one.
I bowed to the crowd and went back inside. Applause followed me, squeezing its way through the balcony doors.
Facing me, kneeling with their wrists crossed behind their heads, were Yarina and Little Slut.
"Come," I picked a pair of leash chains off the table. "I want to drink wine off your breasts."