The following day Inda discovered himself thinking ahead to prolong Wafri’s interest; how, in fact, he’d thought all day about how to please him.
So he’d shut up. Questions, he permitted himself. But no part of his own life: no memories, or plans, or feelings. Questions only, to get information, not to give it. Wafri held the reins controlling his body, but he would get no halter on his mind.
Wafri sighed, recalling Inda’s attention to the present. “What I do know is that I cannot bear to lose you to Rajnir’s grabby hands.”
Inda said, pain flaring through his jaw, “So kill me.”
Wafri grinned, then fingered a lock of Inda’s hair. He’d had Penros dunk Inda’s hair into an ensorcelled bucket earlier that day, as the smell of old blood, sweat, and the mold from the garrison prison had begun to offend him.
He did not know that Inda had felt far more degraded having his hair combed out than he had lying there in his own stink.
Inda’s eyes snapped shut again, and Wafri laughed, thrilled at the flinches that his prisoner fought so hard to hide.
“Never,” he said, tasting the word. “No, I amend that. You are far too valuable alive, but if I think they will find you, I’d be forced to do it because I cannot bear for you to fall into their hands.” He sighed. “Your hair is so coarse, probably from so many years of sun and sea. Would you like it cut? I assure you, short hair is the very latest fashion in Colend.”
Inda said nothing. From the evenness of his breathing, Wafri suspected he did not care what happened to his hair. Few men did, he’d discovered. Not true with most women.
“I want you to remember that my admiration for you has never faltered, though you have often made me angry. But that is at the waste of precious time. We could have accomplished so much by now.”
Inda did not answer.
Wafri gave Inda’s hair a gentle tug, then let it go. “If anything, ” he whispered in that ardent, intimate voice, leaning forward, his entire concentration on Inda’s face, his breath smelling of sweet wine, “your resistance enhances the prospective gratification of your consent.” He leaned back, and spoke to be heard, with laughter roughening the edges of his words. “But you must talk again. I think next time we will use the kinthus. I discover in me a desire to know everything about your life, every detail. Everything you think. Your mind will close no door to me; perhaps your will may follow the sooner.”
Then came the sound Inda had longed for: Wafri got to his feet. But Inda had learned not to relax or betray any reaction beyond what he couldn’t help.
And his reward was the quick wisp of Wafri’s slippers as he crossed to the door. “Penros! Good. I want you to do a general healing. I don’t like how little response I’m getting.”
Penros spoke in that detached voice of academic inquiry. “It’s hard to do much about nerve centers when your men hit them so hard.”
Wafri uttered his soft laugh. “Is that an oblique remonstrance for coming here too often? But you must know how time is against us.”
Penros said, “I, too, am losing strength.”
Wafri sighed. “I know the cost, my loyal mage, I know. Do your best now, and then I command you to drink a sleep-herb. Sleep through the night, and tomorrow as well. Tonight I must go to Rajnir; tomorrow I will have my time with Prince Indevan, but it will only be kinthus, and that I can manage with the help of the men. I wish for him to share his past with me, his most cherished moments, his dreams. Such conversations we will have! Do your best, and then to your well-earned slumber.”
He left. Inda heard the quick steps recede despite the closer clutter of noises: the chair being taken away, the approach of the mage. He did not relax until that familiar wisp-wisp had receded out of hearing.
The mage’s murmured spells sounded like Old Sartoran but the cadences and speed muffled distinct words. Inda had given up trying to pick out magic words; like those old taerans Tdor and Joret used to read, there was a context that was impossible to guess at by a few words here and there. That and the gestures. Often Inda’s sight was too blurred to make them out. Now he listened to the gentle flow of words, the occasional rustle of cloth as the mage made his ritual gestures, and treasured his very small triumph.
He and Wafri had become a distortion of new lovers: each unfamiliar with the other’s ways but watching hungrily to learn. Wafri because he wished to, and Inda because he had to.
Wafri had gotten very good at intuiting most of the motivations and reactions Inda strove to hide. But he had made one mistake, probably the most important one: he thought Inda’s strength in resisting was a result of the healing sessions, and so he withheld them as long as he could.
He was wrong. Pain made Inda more angry, and anger gave him strength. It wasn’t physical strength, but it was a strength that might, in the end, make it possible for him to choose the moment of his own death.
Tau sensed he was being followed.
He never ignored instinct, so even though he’d taken painstaking precautions, he took more. He loitered along passages that had reflecting surfaces, seeing nothing. He risked angering or missing his royal patron by being late, and doubled back via roof and drainpipe. Once he entered a house by using an open window, tiptoeing down a hallway past the oblivious family inside, and exited the front door as if he lived there.
He saw nothing, so he continued on, using the short route to Prince Kavna’s appointed rendezvous at the back house beyond the Drapers Guild building. He sensed a shadow, so he opened the tall gate and passed silently through the quiet garden, watching and listening.
The only sounds were the rustling patter of raindrops on the flowers and leaves and the musical plink of drops in the wide, shallow fountain that magically stopped when rainwater fell into its pool.
The air was cool; for the first time in months the sense of impending winter could be smelled in the air, felt in the chill on wet skin.
Tau stopped in the shadow of a drooping fern and descried nothing untoward, so he ducked under the branch and rapped twice on the low door to the garden house.
The door opened a crack, then wider.
Tau slipped inside the room, which smelled of the mold and damp of neglect. Someone had made a brave attempt to make the room more habitable: nuts roasted on the hearth, wine freshly mulled with tart spices, and a twig of herb lay on the Fire Stick to spread a fresher scent through the warming air.
Kavna was alone, a stout young man dressed in well-made but unobtrusive clothing in a style favored by merchants. He had been reading while seated in one of two overstuffed chairs that seemed to represent fashions at either end of a century; between the chairs sat a sturdy table. The stone flooring had been covered with a worn carpet of dark blue with stars.
“The final word,” Kavna said wryly as he set aside his letters, “seems to be that Ramis of the Knife does not exist.
My sister is tired of the subject, and has made that as close to a Royal Decree as she can without risking ridicule.”
Tau had discovered that the prince was far more subtle than he seemed. “Unacceptable,” he said as he approached the fire and stretched his hands out to its welcome warmth. “I saw him. More important, I saw what he did.”
“My sister will have everyone know that if she has not seen such things as holes ripped in the universe, they are dreams and delusions for the simple. Unfortunately, I cannot, try as I have, and pay what I probably wasted far too much on, prove different: his land of origin seems to be at least twenty places, and everything else about him is mere rumor—”
The door slammed open. Tau had his knives out—Kavna stared, tensing as in walked the Comet, bedraggled and angry as a wet cat.
“Is this what you’re doing?” she demanded, dismissing the prince with one imperious flick of her hand.
“This?” Tau retorted, mimicking her gesture. “How many reprehensible scenarios do you imagine that word includes?”
“None of which are true,” the prince said, inviting her with a gestu
re to the other armchair. “Sit down, please, Mistress Arrad.”
The Comet plunked down. She frowned, her outrage— which had been mostly theatrical—giving way to curiosity, though the real hurt remained.
The prince tipped his head, giving Tau a wry glance that invited him to speak.
“It’s politics, not sex,” Tau said.
As usual, he had uncovered what she wanted hidden. And that meant he knew of her jealousy, which she had worked hard to hide.
So she rose, tripped to the other side of the fire, and as Tau withdrew to stand behind the armchair she’d vacated, she held out her dainty shoes to the flames.
When no one spoke she sent a practiced glance back over her shoulder through dripping curls. “You could have said something. You know I am discreet.”
“The matter we meet here to discuss is not mine to share,” Tau returned.
“Nor is it mine,” the prince added, unexpectedly. “It transcends us both.”
The prince’s civility almost ushered her into guilt, but she caught the edges of the metaphorical door and turned to stand at bay. “How many are in on this secret that isn’t yours?”
Tau and the prince were both practiced at masking emotions, yet no one can completely rein instinct, and when they sent an interrogative glance toward one another, brief as it was, she crossed her arms. “Shall I step outside again so you can get your story straight?”
Tau flushed. “That’s not ours to tell either,” he said. “In fact, neither of us know.”
“Either you trust me, or you don’t. Tell me who is at the top of this supposed ladder of scheme and intrigue.”
The prince tented his fingers, sending Tau a look that signaled, It is yours to answer if you wish.
Tau said, “Elgar the Fox.”
Her eyes widened with disbelief, then narrowed. “Did that come to you as the most unlikely name, or the most impossible?”
Tau lifted his palms. “Believe what you will. And now that you know, to spare you the necessity of dictating terms for your silence, I will withdraw from your life, your service, your house. And the kingdom.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she retorted. “Don’t you dare. They come to hear me sing and to look at you. If you were another woman I’d hate you for that, but you aren’t, and anyway they still come to me.”
“Which is the most important thing,” the prince observed, his fingers still tented.
“What does that mean?” she demanded, pushing the delicate fabric of her sleeve up past her wrists so she could extend her hands to the fire. Her gown was dark, and far more simple than anything she usually wore, which was a signal to the others that she had planned her campaign well.
They had not been clever, they had been clumsy.
The prince said a little more heatedly than he had intended, “That the welfare of the kingdom is of far less importance to you than its gifts.”
The Comet shook out her pale blond hair, the droplets glowing before they hissed in the fire. “How tediously sententious that sounds!” She lifted her rounded shoulders, then added with faint humor, “But then I never do tell anyone what I really want, do I?”
Tau caught the change in her mood, and came forward, bending to take her hand. He kissed it smackingly.
“Eugh.” She gave an extravagant shiver. “Your lips are cold. Spare me your frog kisses.”
“How did you follow me?” he asked.
She considered them. They were really listening now; further, they were seeing her, and not what they expected to see. She’d made her point, and without either of them being drearily obvious.
“In pieces,” she said. “You lost me a couple of times, but each time I marked where, and next time you left dressed like that—” She pointed to Tau’s ordinary sailor clothes, the cap that covered most of his hair. “—I’d race ahead to where I left you last, in hopes you’d pass me by and lead on. Your twistiest evasions were always at the beginning.”
The prince raised his brows, and Tau flushed, laughing.
“It took only three attempts to follow you,” she finished. And, less triumphantly, “I was trained. But I left my home and that life. And no, I’ll never talk about it. My voice gave me a new life, one I built with care.”
Tau grinned.
She grinned back. “If it had been something honest, like your mother’s pleasure house, yes I would have told you. But it wasn’t.” She sighed. “I know plenty about politics. I don’t really understand the motivations behind risk for an ideal—I’m used to risk for gain. But though I cannot be loyal to a place, or an idea, I am to people. And I do communicate with prominent performers all over the continent, who have their own ways of hearing things.”
Tau turned to the prince, hand open, a gesture the prince successfully interpreted as Tau’s tacit acceptance of the Comet’s implied offer. But the decision was his. Elgar the Fox’s needs could be pursued anywhere; the kingdom’s welfare was the prince’s affair.
He hesitated only a moment. It had taken a long time to discover her real name—Denja Arrad—back when he was first taken with her. Now he suspected that the name was as false as her initial interest in him had been. But despite it all, he liked her, admired her.
Could he trust her?
Taumad seemed to think so. And he had learned to trust some far more surprising characters.
“All right, then,” he said. And with an attempt at humor, “At least we won’t have to sit here breathing mold anymore. ”
Chapter Twenty-three
EVER since his return from the unsuccessful search, Fleet Commander Hyarl Durasnir had been rising before dawn—but not for his meditation watch, during which he had long been accustomed to working through the old weapons patterns as he let his mind range free. He was too busy for that luxury now.
The result was a sense of day-long physical as well as mental cramming. There was no help for it. The stream of reports and decisions that had been abandoned for the harbor search had dammed up, clogging the course of business, trade, cruises—everything. While Rajnir brooded at his window, encouraged by Dag Erkric to design a series of entertainments to lift morale, the labor of governmental log-jam clearance fell to Durasnir.
Despite the complexity of demands, delegated tasks, interviews, and reports, Durasnir found his thoughts returning to the private interview that old Dag Ulaffa had requested the day of his return.
The sea dags seldom interfered with land matters; the Yaga Krona were even more removed, involving themselves in daily affairs only when a matter concerned the welfare of the prince. Sometimes such “matters” led to jurisdictional bickering. The army and navy were customarily united in only two things: their oaths to the king, and their resentment of the powers granted the Erama Krona and Yaga Krona, whose chain of command ran parallel to everyone else’s.
There were a few who never raised petty conflicts. Dag Valda, Chief of the Sea Dags, was one. The other was old Ulaffa, senior Yaga Krona under Erkric. Ulaffa spoke as Yaga rarely, but when he did, Durasnir always listened.
Ulaffa had come to him because Erkric was elsewhere; even Valda, he knew, had been summoned home to Venn. Ulaffa was therefore the ranking dag in the south, and Durasnir the ranking warrior.
So Durasnir had heard Ulaffa out. The problem was Durasnir did not take young Wafri seriously. There had to be a reason no one among the Venn knew the wounded guard who had been whisked away to Limros Palace. Patrol schedules were changed often, whether on land or at sea. It was not just humane but good policy to avoid anyone being stuck on night duty for months on end. The Ymaran guards had a different schedule rotation than the Venn and no one had paid much attention hitherto. The Venn guards looked down on the Ymarans. Said they had at best rudimentary military training, they were weak, soft, frequently drunk on duty, worthless for much beyond standing around wearing their lord’s livery. But Prince Rajnir wished the Venn and the Ymarans of Beila Lana to work side by side, so they did—without much mixing.
It was
n’t until late one night, as he lay awake beside his sleeping wife and took the time to think the matter through, that he finally identified what had bothered him.
The problem of the wounded warrior was not isolated.
First, there was the question of how Elgar the Fox could have attacked someone when under the influence of white kinthus. It was an accepted function of the herb for people to behave as if their limbs had been unstrung; most, in fact, couldn’t walk at all until it wore off.
Second was his own private doubt. How could someone as preternaturally competent—if not to say long-sighted—as Ramis of the Knife waste a commander on a mission that should have been given to those trained in covert and solitary action? There was absolutely nothing in Elgar the Fox’s confession that indicated he had been trained as a spy or assassin. It would have been far more believable that Ramis would perform such an assassination himself.
That didn’t even touch the question of motivation. How would Ramis benefit if Prince Rajnir were assassinated? Assassination would succeed only in turning the king’s eyes away from the northern problems to the south. And that would result in him sending a force to descend in punitive fury. Rajnir’s plans were his own—that was understood in the Land of the Venn, while the Great Houses were still stalemated over the choice of another heir—but the goal of settlement and regulation of trade under the aegis of the Venn was the king’s will.
What he was fairly certain of was that the anomalies in this situation, for once, did not have Erkric’s guiding hand behind them. Dag Erkric had been as surprised as, and perhaps more angry than Rajnir, which suggested he had in fact wanted the Marlovan alive for his own purposes.
Now, lying awake on the first cold harvest night of the year and gazing through the window at the icy sliver of moon, he mentally reviewed Ulaffa’s report on his interview with the Ymaran officer who had written out Indevan Algara-Vayir’s confession.
He was either angry or fearful, Ulaffa had said. He did not want to talk with me. So I approached him again, this time with Dag Signi to witness, and she said he was mortally afraid.
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