The Family Tree by Sheri S. Tepper Read Free Book Online Page A

want you for that!” His furry eyebrows went up in astonishment as he grinned fiercely. “Why would he?”
    Which was a good question. Here in the Palace of Delights lived seventeen young wives of Sultan Tummyfat, all of them beautiful and voluptuous and politically useful. Here were also over two hundred young concubines, mostly nice looking, mostly politically useful, mostly selected to gain the support of this faction or that. Elsewhere, in the Autumn Garden, Sultan Tummyfat housed an unknown number of retired wives and concubines, his own or his father’s or uncle’s, and between the Autumn Garden and Palace of Delights, he had hundreds of female slaves, each attractive enough of her type, none of them heretics or members of an opposition family, and not particularly distinguishable one from another. I myself was a slave called Opalears, and I was among the youngest and least distinguishable. I was surprised that the eunuch even knew who I was.
    Which, it seemed, he wasn’t all that sure of himself.
    “You’re the storyteller, right?” the eunuch asked, looking me up and down as though tallying points against a description. So high, so thin, such and such color hair.
    “I tell stories,” I murmured. “But lots of us do.” And what else was there to do, shut up the way we all were?
    “You’re the one they like, though. Sultana Eyebright. Sultana Ivory-arms. Sultana Winetongue. They say you tell good ones.” He slitted his eyes at me, then turned and went on.
    “Very kind of them,” I murmured, trying to keep up with him. He was the one named Soaz. “Very kind.”
    “Got stories from your father, I suppose,” he said, leaping four or five steps at a time up the long flight of marble stairs while I scrambled to keep up. “I rememberold Halfnose. He was a good storyteller, and a good quartermaster. Better than the idiot we’ve got now.”
    I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I felt the tears start and couldn’t stop them.
    “Oh, mustard and growr,” said the eunuch, turning with a horrid scowl that made me cry all the harder. “I shouldn’t have mentioned him, should I. Stop here. We can’t go up with you sniffling.”
    I wiped my face on my sleeves, sniveling, “I was there,” which brought on another blubber.
    “At the execution? Yes, I suppose you were. Typical. The regent could be a cruel old bastard. Some of us tried to tell him Halfnose wouldn’t steal anything, but he wouldn’t listen. After the execution, then he listened. He always used to calm down after an execution. That’s when he took you in, was it?”
    I was wiping my face with my wadded up veil, trying to soak up the tears. “I don’t think he had much to do with it. I think it was Bluethumb.”
    “Well, whoever. You’ve had a home, at least.” He wiped at my cheeks with the backs of his hands, gave me a close looking over and then continued the climb. “That’s something.”
    I suppose it was something. A ten-year-old commoner orphan has small chance of survival out on the streets, except through degradation, so palace slavery had its good points. It wasn’t like being a mine slave or a field slave or a brickyard kiln slave or a sex slave in the brothels. I always had plenty to eat, good quality clothing to wear, even some amusements. And no one fooled with me. Add to that the fact the regent had died shortly after I came to the Palace of Delights, and my life wasn’t all bad. When they burned the horrible beastly creature, I was there, watching, relishing the smell, for when father died, I’d made an oath to avenge him, though I’d probably have been caught at it because I had no idea how to kill anyone. Since then, of course, I’d become well versed in killing. Half the harim occupied itself either putting curses on the other half, or warding offthe curses that were put in return. The wives and concubines were secretive with one another, but they’d say anything in our hearing, as though slaves weren’t even