The Usurper Read Online Free

brunette. “He may be wondering if you, despite your seeming inertness and rigidities, have the makings of a slave.”
    â€œI am extraordinarily beautiful,” said the blonde.
    â€œThere are things in this camp, and things about you, I do not understand,” said the brunette.
    â€œIt seems that I am to prepare myself alone,” said the blonde.
    â€œI think it is just as well,” said the brunette. “You are not popular with the other girls. You hold yourself apart from them. You behave as though you were superior to them. This is resented. Many times, were it not for my switch, they would have dealt roundly, and effectively, with your impatience, your lofty manners, your impudence.”
    â€œA slave is grateful,” said the blonde.
    â€œYou are not,” said the brunette, “but you should be.” The brunette then turned away, but, before exiting that portion of the long, warm tent, turned back. “Prepare yourself,” she said. “See to it! Be ready, soon!”
    â€œYes, Mistress,” said the blonde.
    â€œWhen the gong sounds,” said the brunette, “proceed to the kitchen, to be given your flagon or tray.”
    â€œYes, Mistress,” said the blonde.
    The blonde, naked save for the tavern tunic, knelt before the mirror, and returned the tiny tube of lip coloring to its place on the table.
    She hooked her fingers over the chain on her neck, with its disk, and drew against it, once or twice.
    Hateful thing, she thought, but it is, in its way, attractive.
    In her days of liberty and wealth, of travel and extravagance, she had had high collars of rows of jewels closed about her neck, nine such rows, collars worth fortunes, and these had been well matched by the bracelets on her arms, the rings on her fingers, the diamond tiara fixed in her bright hair. She was well aware, so bejeweled, in her off-the shoulder gowns, lengthy, silken, and shimmering, of her striking appearance at the gaming tables. How beautiful she was, and yet she suspected that many of the men present might have been more struck by the glitter of jewels and the brandishing of position and station, than the lovely, living manikin which served as the cabinet of their mounting, and the tray of their display. Few, it seemed, in such precincts, looked past the blaze of taste and wealth to the model by means of which such things were exhibited. Lady Publennia Calasalia did not much care for men, save for what benefits might be derived from them. She had, of course commonly seen through and scorned a variety of suitors, most of whom, clearly enough, even of the honestori , were merely interested in accruing to themselves the advantages which might appertain to an alliance with a patrician, particularly a wealthy one. But these advantages, eventually, muchly diminished, as various accounts became unavailable to her. No longer could she draw on her family’s wealth on a dozen worlds. Later, her very name was excised from the Calasalii’s rolls of lineage. For better than a year she had lived in nigh destitution, supported only by a pittance begrudgingly extended by her outraged family. Soon she had been reduced to marketing her jewels, her goods, and slaves, to inhabiting humble quarters in poor districts, even to patronizing the women’s public baths, and had but one slave left of her former retinue of slaves, a small, exquisite, redhead, Nika, whom she had often beaten, perhaps because there was little else at hand on which to vent her anger and frustration. Men who had sought her hand now avoided her, and would not extend her loans. Then, somehow, it seemed, eventually, her plight had come to the attention of a sympathetic, mighty figure, Iaachus, the Arbiter of Protocol in the court of the emperor, Aesilesius.
    She looked at the simple, plain, light, attractive chain on her neck. Any beast, even a dog, she thought, might wear such a collar.
    And the fools who saw it on her would