The Usurper Read Online Free PDF

because there was little else at hand on which to vent her anger and frustration. On the other hand, Nika’s back and legs had not been immune from attention even in the Lady Publennia’s more halcyon days. First, the Lady Publennia, as many free women, was a most impatient, demanding, and exacting Mistress. The slightest perceived imperfection in service, a supposed tardy response, a brief lapse of attention, a wrinkle in a garment, a disk of rouge out of place, slippers misaligned in a closet, a bath ill drawn, improperly heated, or wrongly perfumed, many such things, would earn a woman’s serving slave the admonitory sting of her Mistress’ switch. Too, as is well known, it is always easy to find reasons to strike a slave, even the most frightened, zealous, and desperate-to-please slave, if one wishes to do so. Perhaps the Mistress is not satisfied with the arrangement of flowers in a vase, perhaps she is not pleased with the view from her terrace on a cloudy day, perhaps she did not care for a party or theatrical event recently attended. But, second, in the case of Nika, there seems to have been an additional, and subtler, matter involved, something beyond the typical domestic hazards of a slave’s trying to please a temperamental, impatient Mistress. On the streets, the Lady Publennia had noted that Nika was often noticed, even regarded, by free men. This attention, accorded a slave, had muchly displeased the Lady Publennia. They might admire herself, if they wished, but surely not Nika, a mere slave. How stupid are men! Can they not see that a free woman, in her robes and hauteur, in her noble dignity and arrogance, resplendent in the raiment of station, is a thousand times more beautiful than a helpless, needful, half-clad slave? And once she had caught Nika inadvertently, naturally enough, I suppose, apparently without thinking, returning the smile of a free man. How dared she? What a reflection on the dignity of her Mistress! This wantonness had cost the slave much. Did she not know that she was a woman’s slave? Thereafter Nika often accompanied her switch-bearing Mistress on a leash, blindfolded, with her hands tied behind her. “She is naughty,” the Lady Publennia had explained to one or another free woman encountered in the street. “I do not know what to do with her.” “Switch her,” was the usual suggestion. After all, this sort of situation was not wholly unprecedented amongst Mistresses and their serving slaves. “Excellent,” the Lady Publennia would say, and then give the slave two or three swift strokes on the back of the thighs. But now, unbeknownst to the Lady Publennia, Nika was no longer in Lisle, on Inez IV, but on Tangara, and, even now, in the traces of a sled, drawing it for two men, Julian of the Aureliani, a minor naval officer but kin to the emperor, and Tuvo Ausonius, a former civil servant on Miton, and was approaching the camp.
    The Lady Publennia again recalled the slave in the gambling palace. How she had scorned that simple tunic in which the slave had been garbed. And yet, clearly, she noted, it was far more ample, tasteful, discreet, and modest than that which she had been forced to don, a tavern tunic, fit for tavern slaves hurrying about in the half-lit, low-ceilinged rooms, serving their Master’s customers, whose use, at the patron’s discretion, might accompany, say, a second drink.
    Who would bring her the dagger, that proposed, convenient article of assassination, with its slender, yellow, oval handle, and slim guard, and fine narrow blade, with its invisible coating, as unseen as air, as patient as acid?
    She had seen it only once, in a small room late at night, in the imperial palace on Lisle.
    Then it had been returned to its case.
    It was well the implement had a guard. It would not do at all for the hand which would dare to wield such a thing to slip onto the blade, even to the tiniest break in the skin.
    She