Free Riding the Serpent's Back by Keith Brooke

master.
    Even old Josa, who had sometimes helped her father in the stables, denied that he knew her. In one of the back rooms he cut her clothes away from her body with deft sweeps of a razor, then prodded her towards the door and marched her through the cold, hidden passageways of the house to a room that was filled with sulphurous steam.
    “Sorry,” he said, and gave her a gentle push. She fell headlong into a pool of scalding mud.
    She screamed, then gagged as her mouth filled with the vile ooze. She rose to her knees and spat and retched, but the lining of her throat had already been damaged so much that it would be six days before her voice fully recovered.
    She dragged herself clear of the hot bathing mud and as she tried to scrape it from her skin Josa said, “Okay. Through the arch now.”
    Through the steam Cotoche saw the vague shape of an archway and without question she struggled towards it. The air was clearer in the next chamber and occupying most of the room was another pool filled, this time, with bubbling, murky water. She tested it with her toes and it was lukewarm, so she lowered her body into its depths and submerged herself so that the mud would soak away from her skin and her hair.
    She was allowed refuge in this pool for a considerable time, but then one of the jealous young maids came in through another door and harangued her until she emerged, dried herself and was then led through to another tiny room where the maid and an older one shaped her hair, powdered and perfumed her body, dressed her in an elegant silk gown, the fabric of which Cotoche may even have woven and printed herself, at some time in the hazy past.
    And then Captain Esquellion appeared in his full dress uniform, the jade buttons polished to a mirror-like sheen, the tassels and feathers and golden scale imprint of the jacket immaculate. He offered her his arm and she took it, already resigned to act out whatever new role life had ordained for her. The lesson of placid acceptance had been well and truly learned over the year that had passed. Together, they went through to the official part of the Consul’s residence and joined a trickle of guests being presented for dinner with Tomas Melved.
    He didn’t recognise her at first. He merely took her for Esquellion’s latest fancy and made some coarse comment to that effect. When Esquellion merely smiled instead of laughing indulgently at his master’s witticism Melved looked at him closely, then turned to study Cotoche once again.
    “Please allow me to present Madam Cotoche Rey,” said Esquellion, bowing extravagantly. “I believe you were once very fond of her.” Esquellion’s choice of words was pushing the limits for a Captain of the Consul’s militia, but Melved laughed loud and clapped him on the shoulder.
    “Luc,” he said. “How terribly clever of you. Girl, look at me.”
    Until then Cotoche had kept her gaze fixed to ground level. Now, she met the Consul’s look. She had remembered him as a towering, dark-haired man with a domineering physical presence. Now, she saw that he was shorter than she had thought, but the physicality exuded by every slight movement of his body was all the more powerful for that: instead of the muscular strength taken for granted in a big man, Melved brimmed over with a sheer sensual magnificence that stirred Cotoche in a most disturbing way.
    She looked at him, and when she stared into his eyes she saw the line of severed heads, driven onto stakes in front of the smouldering remains of what had been no more than a simple chapel. She heard the background gabble of the chattering rich and in her mind she heard the rising wails of her poor sisters, her family reduced by half in a single day. If she had been standing closer to one of the heavily decorated dinner tables she would have seized a knife and slit his throat there and then, instead of later, as she now planned to do.
    The evening seemed interminable. The long rows of tables were