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T HE RICHLY-APPOINTED chamber was close and stuffy with smoke.

Serilla’s head reeled with it while her stomach protested the constant swaying of the deck.

Every joint in her body ached from the unending motion.

She had never been a good sailor, not even when she was a girl.

The intervening years in the Satrap’s palace had not improved her stomach for travel.

She wished they had taken a smaller, more seaworthy vessel.

The Satrap had insisted on an immense, full-bellied ship for himself and his entourage.

Half of the delay in their departure had been the revamping of the ship’s interior to allow for these spacious quarters.

Serilla had heard some arguments from the shipwrights doing the work.

It had had something to do with ballast and stability.

Serilla had not understood the basis for their concerns, but she now suspected that the ship’s wallowing gait was the result of Cosgo’s insistence on his own plans.

She reminded herself yet again that every tedious lurch carried her one wave closer to Bingtown.

It was hard to recall that she had spent days looking forward with eagerness to this voyage.

She had packed and re-packed garments, choosing and discarding and choosing again.

She did not want to look dowdy, nor suggestive.

She did not want to look young, nor old.

She had agonized over what attire would make her appear scholarly but still attractive.

She had settled on simple robes, modestly cut, but elaborately embroidered by her own hand.

She had no jewellery to adorn herself. By tradition, a Heart Companion possessed and wore only the jewellery the Satrap had given her.

The old Satrap had always given her books and scrolls instead of jewels.

Cosgo had never given her anything, though he decorated the Heart Companions he had chosen for himself with jewels as if they were cakes to be sprinkled with sparkling sugar.

She tried not to care that she must appear before the Bingtown Traders unadorned.

She was not going to Bingtown to impress them with her jewellery.

She was going there to see, at last, the land and the folk she had studied for more than half her life.

She had not known such anticipation since the old Satrap had first noticed her and invited her to become his Companion.

She prayed that this visit to Bingtown would be a similar beginning.

At the present moment, it was difficult to cling to such dreams. Never had she felt her life so sordid and tawdry as now.

In Jamaillia, she had always been able to insulate herself from the more debased practices of the Satrap’s court.

When the young Satrap had begun to let the feasts degenerate into celebrations of gluttony and lewdness, she had simply stopped attending them.

On board the ship, there was nowhere to flee his excesses.

If she wished to eat, she must eat with the Satrap.

To leave this chamber and walk in the fresh air on the open deck was to invite the coarse attention of the Chalcedean crew.

There was no relief there, even if she had had Cosgo’s leave to depart the room.

Satrap Cosgo and Companion Kekki sprawled on the large divan of the chamber.

They were both nearly insensible from pleasure herbs and smoke.

Kekki had whined that they were the only way to keep her mind from her queasiness, and loudly lamented that never before this had she been so seasick.

Serilla had been too tactful to ask if she might be pregnant.

It was not unheard of for a Satrap to impregnate one of his Heart Companions, but it was still seen as tasteless.

Children of such unions were turned over to the servants of Sa as soon as they were born, to be raised as priests.

They were never told of their parentage.

Only with his lawful spouse could the Satrap conceive an heir.

Cosgo had not yet taken a wife. Serilla doubted that he would until his nobles forced it on him.

If he lived that long. She glanced at him, sprawled half upon Kekki and breathing hoarsely.

Another Companion, also stupefied, lolled across the pillows at his feet.

Her head was flung back, her dark hair scattered across the cushions.

Her slitted eyes showed slices of white.

Periodically, her fingers spasmed. To look at her made Serilla queasy.

The entire voyage so far had been a series of feasts and entertainment, followed by Cosgo’s extended periods of nausea and stupor brought on by too much wine and soporifics.

Then he would demand his healers, who would dose and drug him in a different direction, until he felt well enough to prescribe his own pleasures again.

The other nobles on board were as self-indulgent, save a few who often claimed seasickness as an excuse to remain in their quarters.

Several Chalcedean nobles journeyed north with him.

Their ships travelled in company with the Satrap’s flagship.

They often joined him for dinner. The women they brought with them were like dangerous pets as they vied for attention from those they deemed most powerful.

They horrified Serilla. The only more terrifying aspects of those dinners were the political discussions that followed.

The Chalcedean nobles urged Cosgo to make an example of Bingtown, to tolerate none of the Traders’ rebellious talk, to take a firm hand and quash them.

They were building in the Satrap a sense both of self-righteousness and anger that Serilla deemed unjustified.

She no longer attempted to make her own voice heard.

The Chalcedeans only shouted her down with their laughter, or made mock of her.

Last night Cosgo had bid her be silent as befit her.

The thought of his public insult of her still stirred the flames of anger in her heart.

The Chalcedean who captained his ship accepted the rare wines that Satrap Cosgo offered him, but disdained the young ruler’s company.

He pleaded the responsibility of his command, but Serilla saw the veiled contempt in the older man’s eyes.

The more Cosgo tried to impress him, the more the captain ignored him.

Cosgo’s attempts to mimic the Chalcedean’s swagger and aggression were humiliating to watch.

It pained Serilla to see Companions like Kekki encourage him in it, as if his juvenile pushiness were manly.

Cosgo now took umbrage at everything that was not precisely as he ordered it.

His behaviour reminded Serilla of a spoiled child.

Nothing pleased him. Cosgo had brought jesters and musicians with him, but their routines had grown stale.

The Satrap grew ever more peckish with boredom.

The slightest challenge to his will propelled him into cursing, stamping tantrums.

Serilla sighed. She wandered the room, then paused to toy with the tasselled edge of the embroidered tablecloth.

Wearily she moved some of the sticky dishes out of the way.

She sat down at the table and waited. She longed to return to the small closet that was her own chamber, but as Cosgo had summoned her on the pretext of seeking her advice, she could not leave until he dismissed her.

If she woke him to ask his permission, he would surely refuse it.

She had tried to dissuade him from this journey.

He had suspected her of wanting to travel alone.

That was true; she would far rather be travelling to Bingtown alone, empowered to make decisions for a land she knew much better than he did.

However, he was too jealous of his power to allow that.

He, the reigning Satrap, would descend upon Bingtown in all his power and glory and cow them with his might.

The Bingtown Traders would be brought to heel, and reminded that he ruled them all by the grace of Sa. They had no right to dispute that.

She had been confident that the Council of Nobles would dissuade him and had been sick with astonishment when they had supported the journey.

His Chalcedean allies had encouraged him as well.

There had been many nights of drinking with them before the preparation for the journey began.

She had heard of their bragging and promises.

They would support him. Let him show those Bingtown upstarts who ruled Jamaillia.

His Chalcedean friends would back him up.

He need not fear those festering rebels.

If they dared to lift a hand against their rightful rulers, Duke Yadfin and his mercenaries would give them fresh reason to call their land the Cursed Shores.

Even now, Serilla shook her head to herself when she thought of it.

Could not Cosgo see that he could be used as bait in a trap?

If the Chalcedeans could provoke the Old Traders to kill him, they would have complete licence to plunder and destroy all of Bingtown.

The wallowing mothership carried, in addition to the Satrap, a selection of his Companions, a full complement of servants, and six nobles he had ordered to attend him, with their smaller entourages.

A lesser vessel, full of hopeful younger sons from noble houses, accompanied the Satrap’s ship.

These he had lured into the adventure with the prospect that, if their families invested in his expedition, their sons might be given grants of land in Bingtown.

In vain had Serilla remonstrated with him about that.

To arrive with these would-be settlers would insult the Traders.

It was a plain sign that the Satrap had never taken their complaints about the New Traders seriously. He ignored her.