They cause a lot of damage, she didn't say, because in staring at Rallant's startled face, she realized he hadn't known. It should have been obvious, but she often forgot that people couldn't see what she saw, or sense what she sensed. To them, Rallant was not a scar-etched wilderness but a cunning traitor, a cold controller, a grudging captive advisor. Or, in Linciard's case, a former beloved master.
Knowing the truth behind the cultivated mask didn't make Mako sympathize. It was just essential for understanding him and thus countering any tricks.
“So you're a semi-witting spy,” she said thoughtfully. “You didn't know how they were reaching you, but it didn't matter because it was what you'd signed up for. Right?”
The senvraka nodded slowly. “I take it this erases any chance that you will let me out.”
“Pretty much. I'll need to dig into your head to find the hook, and even if I do, I don't know if I can remove it. Block it, maybe, but since the other side contains a fragment of your mind, I'm not even sure that's possible. Do you feel it when they're contacting you?”
“Yes, the same as any mentalist communication.”
“Do they ever lurk in your head without talking? Can they see through your eyes, hear through your ears?”
Fear kindled on his face and in his mind. “I don't… I'm not sure. If so, they've never indicated it. As I said, I have only ever given condensed reports.”
Mako tapped her chin, puzzling it over. She thought it was possible that someone could remote-view and listen through a hooked proxy, but she wasn't sure. It could be done through a gestalt, but not a normal mind-touch—not unless the mentalist wrested control from the proxy, a process both violent and unmistakable. For the first time, she cursed her limited exposure to other mentalists, her keen focus on scrying. If only she could be sure.
“You think his handlers could be watching us through him right now?” prompted Sarovy.
Slowly, she shook her head. “No. I'd notice the attention, and I think he'd sense it and be distressed. If it does happen,” she said, pinning the senvraka with a look, “you need to alert us immediately. You want to be on our side, right?”
She saw the slight shift of honeycombed eyes that indicated a glance toward Linciard. “I do.”
“Good. Then let's table this discussion for now. I need to take a look inside your head, see if I can find anything. Since you're keen to help us, though, I think we should talk about Linciard.”
She felt the lieutenant tense up. In the cell, Rallant's eyes narrowed. “Surely not in front of him.”
“True. Captain, if you don't mind...”
Sarovy gave her a flat, unamused look, and she felt momentarily bad for being so flippant. Linciard's perils of the heart had been on her nerves since the start, though, so she just matched his gaze until he nodded. “Lieutenant, you are dismissed.”
To his credit, Linciard didn't protest, just picked up his camp-chair and ducked out through the soundproof ward. The pain and worry that wafted out from him gave Mako a headache.
“Tanvolthene, you too,” she decided, then looked significantly from Sarovy to Enforcer Ardent and back. He returned her gaze with barely-raised brows, grey eyes like stormclouds, so she didn't press.
Once the Warder had stepped outside, she looked back to the senvraka. “I know you had him nearly thralled. And I've been watching him since, and he did get better. But he's plateaued. We've kept some sort of ward between you at all times, so I want to know why he hasn't recovered.”
Rallant exhaled and shrugged his mottled shoulders. “My perception of it is scent-based, so I can't tell you from in here. From experience, though, there is no going back once the thralling threshold is reached. A chemical change occurs in the thrall's brain to put all focus on their controller, usually with an emphasis on obedience but...not always. You would know if he was thralled because he would be incapable of leaving me alone.”
“That's not so different from—“
“It is,” the senvraka cut in. “A thrall will stop at nothing to reach its controller. He would never have been able to give away the keys, nor even let me be locked up in the first place. So don't be concerned about that.”
Mako frowned. He was hiding something again, a thick layer of disquiet wrapped around another thought he had not voiced. “What about the inoculation?” she guessed. “You told us it wasn't a trick, it really had an anti-controlling purpose.”
“It does, yes. Just enough of the venom that your body can fight it off and learn better how to resist it later.”
“And he was inoculated, which let him throw off the thralling, yes?”
“That...” His segmented gaze flicked away, trepidation rising in his mind. “Yes, technically.”
“Technically,” Sarovy echoed with ice.
“Understand, it isn't something I'd tried before. I'm not sure any controller has—because what was the use? Either you inoculate someone or you thrall them, there's no point in doing both. And the results seemed to indicate that I was right, there was no point to it.”
“Seemed.”
“Except yes, he keeps coming back. Has plateaued as you said, Scryer. It might not be a product of my work—might just be him, Light save the poor fool. But I suppose it's possible that the inoculation has been unable to fully remove my venom. Or that the thrall-level doses I gave him caused some change in his brain, just not the one that it was supposed to.”
“A vulnerability,” said Sarovy. Mako could feel him whetting his mental knives.
The senvraka shook his head. “As long as I'm behind a ward, I can't do anything to him. Wouldn't anyway. The problem is that...some thralls are self-directed. I've had a few. They didn't need me to give them orders, and sometimes they outright ignored them so they could—”
He cut himself off, a sympathy-twinge spiking through Mako's head as the black river within him surged and foamed. No one spoke, and after a long moment he got his emotions under control again, the tension smoothing from his golden features.
“Well,” he said dryly, “suffice to say that some still have minds of their own. What remains is a sort of magnetism between us, which I have no capacity to control.”
You deserve that, Mako thought, watching him. A slave-maker being taken down by your own obsessed pets. But the words rang sour in her mind, for she'd spent time shoring up conditioning and presiding over mindwashings herself. Just because she'd never taken control of men didn't mean she wasn't complicit in their destruction.
Piking Empire. Piking Light.
“So you think he'll keep being drawn to you,” she said aloud. “That he'll eventually try to rescue you.”
Rallant spread his hands unknowingly. “It's possible. And I can't say I'm sad to see him when he shows up. I appreciate you allowing us to talk. But I don't know if I can trust him, and I'm sure you have your doubts too. I think it comes down to what he values more: lust or loyalty.”
“Lust? Not love?”
The senvraka smirked. “I truly doubt that.”
Frowning, Mako glanced to the captain, who wore a considering expression. “Sound-ward us three, please,” he said without looking, and Mako prodded Tanvolthene immediately through the gestalt. A moment, a hand-gesture, and the faint sounds from within the cell ceased, leaving them in their own little soundproof bubble.
“Opinions,” said Sarovy.
“He's been more or less honest the whole time,” said Mako, “and what omissions he's made are, I think, personal. He was truly surprised by the mindhook idea—which is still just an idea. I have to get in there to verify it. About Linciard… I think it matches my observations. Most of the time he has normal thought-patterns, but whenever he thinks about Rallant, he goes in this obsessive spiral.”
Sarovy turned a cool eye on her. “And yet you let them talk.”
Exasperation rose—and beneath it, anger. At Linciard for tripping face-first into this problem, and at Sarovy for being his stiff hidebound self. “Talking usually breaks it! I
know it's not ideal, and I'll start working on him again immediately, but for pike's sake, I've had a hundred and thirty other men to manage—not to mention training Zeli. The only person here who's not traumatized is Nachirovydry, because he's a bloodthirsty lunatic, and you're welcome to deal with him yourself.”
The captain's gaze flicked to a cell two doors down, where said lunatic was still being contained. Then he sighed. “Yes. I understand. But at this juncture, I do not think I can remove Linciard from his position without impacting morale. Sergeant Benson is not lieutenant material, and Sergeant Kenner is untested. So unless you can make him reliable...”
“I know, I know. I'll budget some time. And for you too,” she said pointedly. “You still haven't let me check you over.”
Though his face stayed calm, she felt his mind twinge in fear. It was so unlike him—but then he'd never let her peek before, even when he'd thought he was human. The only time she'd managed it was when he was going through the mind-storm that came with remembering his nature. It wouldn't surprise her if that mix of trauma and old avoidant conditioning had turned it into a phobia.
“Of course,” he said, though his mind swore Never.
She feigned a smile and glanced past him to the Enforcer. If not for Ardent's presence, she would have shouted at him over it, but she couldn't cut him down in front of the enemy leader.
Not that they were enemies anymore. She and Ardent had actually built a nascent friendship—or at least a respect-ship—out of shared annoyance toward the people they had to manage. So far, Mako quite liked her.
Ardent returned her look with a shrug. “How you manage your company is your own business, captain, scryer. But I appreciate you including me in the discussion.”
“Of course,” said Sarovy, as if it had been a foregone conclusion.
If only he'd think that way about his mental upkeep, Mako fumed.
“For now, I have more questions,” he said, and Mako reluctantly prodded Tanvolthene to raise the soundproofing. Rallant, who had waited patiently throughout, raised his brows and sat forward as the captain fixed on him. “The White Flame hierarchy in the Crimson Claw—do you know it?” said Sarovy. “Or their agents, their sympathizers.”
“I have some idea. Do you want a list?”
“Yes.”
As the names reeled forth, Mako sat back and plotted.
*****
Afterward, in Ardent's office, captain and Enforcer went over their notes.
“I don't recognize the name of the new Seething Colonel,” said Sarovy, leaning forward enough to rest his forearms on the desk. Taking command of his side of the room, Ardent thought with amusement. She didn't mind; she had no intention of keeping him under her boot-heel, so long as he didn't try to steal the reins.
“Since he was jumped up several ranks due to the specialist deaths, I suppose we can't expect to,” he continued, “but I doubt he's a distinguished leader. No Inquisitors means we won't have to worry about complex mind-tricks, but twenty mages...I don't like that count. No news from the wider Empire means communications have clearly been restricted.”
Ardent nodded. “That coincides with what we've seen of the Heartlands cities. Quite a lot of Watchtowers destroyed—I'm not sure why. We've never been able to get close to them. Too much residual magic.”
“And the Watchtowers held the nodes of the Weaves, our internal surveillance networks. If those have fallen, your Shadow Folk are in a far better position than the Imperials to see what's happening in the Heartlands.”
She smiled slightly, watching him. The way he flipped back and forth between 'us' and 'them' pricked her sympathy; turncoating was clearly difficult for him, no matter that he'd been overwhelmingly pushed. But he was trying to adapt, which meant including her in his business even though they both knew her agents were always listening. She appreciated the gesture.
“As for Rallant,” he said, tapping his logbook, “Mako says he told no lies here either. I wish we could interrogate Cortine, but until he awakens...”
“Which might be never,” she picked up with a nod. “Still, knowing this much about the White Flames helps. It tells us to shut them up quickly if they start raving about their god.”
Discomfort flashed across his face. “Probably wise,” he said tonelessly.
She managed not to wince. She hadn't meant to prod him like that; she was just used to being blunt about godly matters, whether with the Trifolders and Sun and Moon faiths or her own fellow Shadows. She couldn't imagine being abandoned by the Shadow Lord—her grandfather. They weren't close, but the whole of the Shadow Realm was the manifestation of his love for his descendants.
These Light-followers had the Palace for that.
“Well, yes,” she continued finally. “It's important information, since the Regency wants us to make diplomatic contact with your Field Marshal. They think this is the best time to apply some pressure to him.”
Sarovy's pale features went taut, serious. “No. It will not end well. He is the one who instigated the crush-event.”
“We know that. But he's also the one who holds the reins, so if we want to make another deal like we did with your Crown Prince—“
“Don't. I agree with Rallant. Field Marshal Rackmar wants all non-Lights either killed or converted. Any deal he makes will be with that goal in mind.”
“You have experience of him?”
“Only briefly. I do not wish more.”
“Yet you followed him.”
“I...” He looked away, unusual since he normally stared with a fascinating fixity. “I followed the chain of command. I disagreed with the Crown Prince while he was our General, particularly for the deals he made with you behind the Empire's back. I thought Field Marshal Rackmar would put us back on track. At the time, I was not aware that our track was so...” He ran out of words, making a small hand-gesture instead.
“Psychotic?” she supplied.
It drew a quirk of his lips. “Divorced from reality, yes.”
“So you accept our version of reality now.”
He met her eyes again, black brows slightly raised. “Within limits.”
She tamped down on the urge to laugh. It wasn't just his information that had gotten him through the door, it was the man himself, with his bone-dry humor and measured resistance and that stare. He was interesting. She almost regretted putting those crossbow bolts in him, for if he'd been human, she would have missed out on this.
“And you accept your role here,” she pressed.
“Again, within limits.”
“I'm told your men did well. Took the initiative.”
“I am told that yours did very little fighting.”
“Why should we, when that's why we're paying you? —But seriously, mine are not warriors. I'd think you'd recognize that after having scuffled with us personally.”
He didn't answer, just gave her that shade of expression that meant he expected something and was willing to wait forever to get it.
She could give that look right back, though. It was part of why she enjoyed this. They could stare all day, yet there was no anger—no sense of threat. Nothing to make her reach for the hilts of the kukris she wore across her back. It was rare to find someone she didn't instinctively clash with, male or female, and equally rare that he would not submit.
That reminded her.
“I have something for you,” she said, turning away just enough to reach to the side-table. His gaze slid there too, letting the charge out of the air between them. She took the cloth-wrapped bundle from its place with care, then leaned forward to set it on his side of the desk, by his retreating hands.
He tilted his head in that particular avian way, inspecting it visually as if anticipating a snake beneath the cloth. “I wanted to get this fixed,” she explained into his silence, “but Greymark saw some sort of spirit-bond on it. Said we might destroy it if we did. He wouldn't even try it, and he's the Forger's favorite. He sends his apologies—says it was a lovely piece.”
His eyes widened slightly, and he went very still.
For the first time, worry pricked at her. She'd planned this ever since she'd decided he could live, but had never found an opportunity. Now she realized that this might be wrong—either too late or too soon or just something that shouldn't be done. He wasn't exactly predictable.
And he wasn't human. Perhaps she shouldn't treat him like one.
His hand moved slowly to peel back the outermost layer. She couldn't decipher the look on his face—fear? regret? distress?—but it wasn't what she'd hoped. He and his men had performed flawlessly. This was meant as a gift, not a jab.
The first piece came visible: nearly two feet of blade, finely etched down the center and snapped clean at one end. He lifted it carefully aside, and she realized his hand was shaking. Was it supposed to do that?
Then came the other piece: the eagle-headed hilt with its remaining chunk of blade. He didn't touch it, just stared down at it with an expression so stricken that she was tempted to leave. Beg off with something about duties and flee into the shadows.
But she didn't, and slowly he mastered himself, schooling his face into its mask of professionalism. “Thank you,” he murmured finally, still not looking up. She managed a wordless sound of acknowledgment.
Silence fell again, a long stretch in which they stayed as fixed as statues. Then he forced himself to take up the hilt-piece and looked along its blade like he was staring up at a headsman.
“This is the Sarovingian blade,” he said softly. “I was the fifteenth of my line to wield it, after my father Virkus and my grandmother Ansary. It dates back to the end of the Old Empire, during the War of the Lion and Eagle—the last time my people held the Heartlands throne. We were confidantes of the Eagle Emperor, bodyguards and advisors. Few lineages can say so.”
She stayed quiet. Heartlands history was a scantily-known subject beyond its borders. The northeast had always been opaque to the rest of the world, and the Risen Phoenix Empire had turned its isolation into hostility. She knew of that disastrous old war, of course; everyone did. But she knew it more from the western side. The aggressors, and ultimately the conquerors: Altaera, now Jernizan.
The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4) Page 29