SLV Chapter 12: What Ill Intentions Could a Widow Possibly Have?
April 12
Lin En had nearly forgotten what that scent was like, the smell of earth mixed with grass seeds, the kind that rises after a heavy rain but the moment he stepped onto Medya's oasis, it found him again.
"Remarkable... no wonder it takes 3 source stones every five days just to maintain this."
He took in the oasis, lush with green stretching in every direction, soft new grass, wildflowers, and even a separate plot dedicated entirely to cultivated plants and flowering herbs. Lin En felt the admiration settle in his chest and the most striking feature of all was the fortress not far from the center of the oasis, built entirely from great white stones.
Anyone living there would never have to lie awake worrying about skeletons battering down the door.
Compared to his own oasis, this was what the word actually meant.
Still, with his Thrifty Slaveowner title, surviving the blood moon and harvesting source stones for a decent stretch afterward, building up enough of a foundation, it wasn't impossible to bring his own oasis to something like this level.
Lin En had already begun to picture it, a coconut tree planted in his little patch of land, himself sitting beneath it, drinking coconut juice in the shade and he could push the heart well to its full potential.
Four source stones every five days, for instance.
Each investment into the heart well sustained the oasis for five days. From one stone to three, the area of workable fertile soil would expand along with it but at four stones, the area of fertile soil would stop growing and something different would begin to happen. There was a small but real chance that unusual plants would appear, rare flowers or strange herbs.
If any of them turned out to be usable as spices, the profit would be enormous.
No one in the outer city ran that kind of gamble, however. As far as Lin En knew, only the inner city's oases, those controlled by the nobility, ever put four source stones in every five days.
As for an upgraded heart well, Lin En had never heard of one in practice and had no idea what kind of transformation that might bring about.
Perhaps only the royal oasis of Sovereign Atreidi the Sixteenth had a heart well that had been upgraded.
Kalil walked ahead and glanced back at Lin En with a satisfied expression.
In his understanding, Lin En must have been burning with envy.
He thought about Lin En's barren, near-desert oasis, and the sense of superiority rose warmly in his chest, lifting his chin another notch higher.
He was just settling into that comfortable feeling when he felt a sudden weight against his chest, and his thin linen robe was splashed with water.
A crack rang out as a clay urn shattered on the ground.
He looked down to find a female slave sprawled at his feet, knocked over in the collision.
"I'm sorry, young Master, I'm so sorry!"
The slave girl realized what had happened and immediately began scraping up the broken shards with one hand while directing a stream of desperate apologies at Kalil.
"Get away from me, you wretched slave. This is my most expensive robe."
Kalil frowned and slapped at the water soaking into his clothes.
The clear well water, freshly drawn, seemed to have become foul and repellent simply by passing through the slave girl's hands.
"Yes, young Master."
The slave girl, as though granted a pardon, scrambled frantically to gather the broken shards. Her hands were already bleeding from the jagged edges in her hurry, but she paid the pain no mind, dragged herself to the side, and cleared the path for Kalil.
Lin En watched the scene, then looked at Kalil adjusting his clothes, then let his gaze travel across the full expanse of Medya's oasis.
Across the fertile ground, more than thirty female slaves, wearing nothing but coarse linen chest wraps and hip cloths, worked the soil with mountain copper tools, their efforts visibly straining.
Not far away at the heart well, several more female slaves were drawing water into buckets and hauling them to the storage tank.
It was only then that Lin En noticed something. Medya's oasis had nothing but female slaves.
Even the field labor was being done by women and by the sheer number of slaves, the workforce was nowhere near sufficient to sustain an oasis consuming this much source stone.
You would need at least forty male slaves just for the farmwork.
At the same time, Lin En used the scoring function built into the Slaveowner's Manual to glance at the scores on these female slaves.
Every single one was rated fairly high. On the open market, each would likely fetch more than ten source stones.
No wonder each of them was quite attractive. They had probably once been middle-class freewomen.
"Is it really just about her own comfort? All those source stones spent just for that?"
Looking at the garden-like stretch of cultivated land, Lin En felt he had probably guessed right.
"Quite the 'stone-rich' woman. Why on earth would someone with this many source stones suddenly want to see me?"
The curiosity stirred in him again.
Surely it couldn't actually be that she had taken a liking to him.
"Damned slave. Getting my clothes dirty. Fool."
Kalil finished arranging his outfit and threw out one final curse.
Lin En looked at Kalil. Kalil looked back at Lin En.
"What are you staring at? Move."
Kalil's earlier satisfaction at watching Lin En's reaction had evaporated entirely. He said it without warmth and turned to lead the way again, his pace noticeably faster than before.
…
On the third floor of the fortress, Medya stood before a narrow stone window.
The thin shawl draped over her pale shoulders drifted slowly in the warm, humid breeze.
She watched Lin En's figure drawing closer below.
"Lin En..."
As the youthful face came into clearer focus, the corner of Medya's lips curved upward.
"A boy who probably hasn't even finished growing."
She turned and descended the stairs slowly. The chest wrap straining across her figure rose and fell with each step, full and springy with her movement.
In her mind, she was already composing what she would say, carefully choosing words that would make Lin En gradually grow devoted and deeply grateful to her.
She would shape him into a puppet husband, one she could control completely, a man with the title but none of the power.
This was to protect herself against the disadvantage she faced under Common Law.
Under Common Law, designed to prevent incapable women from squandering precious heart wells, a woman who had lost her husband was permitted to hold the oasis for no more than three years.
After that, either a male heir had to come of age, or the oasis had to be sold to the city-state, or she had to find another slaveowner.
Unlike the Law Codes, this carried no supernatural force of enforcement but falling on the wrong side of Common Law would tie her hands in every direction.
After all, whether inside the city-state or beyond the desert, schemes and manipulation were never in short supply.
The preparations she had made until now amounted to buying skilled craftsmen who had fallen into slavery, making the oasis as self-sufficient as possible but that was clearly not a long-term solution.
Especially recently, several powerful slaveowners had been coming under the pretense of courtesy calls, each one delivering thinly veiled threats and pressure.
Thinking of those men and the way their eyes moved over her, Medya felt contempt rise sharply in her chest.
It seemed there was no other path but to stop concealing her identity as an astrologer and even that would only bring a different kind of unwanted attention, perhaps even the kind of trouble she genuinely feared then yesterday, Kalil had happened to mention Lin En in passing, and a new idea had taken shape.
She would bring a puppet husband under her control and a young, destitute slaveowner who had never known a woman was clearly the ideal candidate.
She had already imagined it, Lin En on his knees, begging to kiss her feet in gratitude.
When those insufferable slaveowners came around again, he would charge at them without hesitation, putting on a display of manly pride for her sake, ready to argue, even to brawl.
A faint, amused look crossed Medya's eyes as the image formed.
She settled onto the stone bed draped in desert wolf king hide, crossed her legs, and arranged herself into a posture that was both comfortable and unhurried in its elegance.
Her gaze turned toward the staircase.
She drew a length of silk, lustrous as pearls, across her full, pale thighs.
Kalil's head appeared at the top of the stairs, and behind him came the youthful face she had already committed to memory.
She read the expression on Lin En's face, and, without any particular surprise, let the corner of her mouth curl upward.
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