“And when we have to give him back?” Stellan said, a little less shocked than Mathu. But then, he knew her better. “How do we explain away his missing fingers?”
“Why do we have to give him back?” Mathu asked.
“Because if he’s a spy, we can trade him for one of our spies the Caelish are holding.”
The prince’s eyes lit up. “We have spies in Caelum?”
“We have spies in a lot of places, Mathu,” Stellan assured him.
Arkady sighed when she realised what Stellan was telling her. Mathu was still looking a little confused, however. “I don’t understand.”
“What my husband is saying is that if this man really is a Caelish spy, whatever we do to him, the same, or worse, will be done to our prisoners in Caelum.”
“You mean, we beat their spy, they beat ours?”
“We amputate a few fingers, they do the same,” Stellan confirmed with a nod.
“I’m sure it won’t come to that, Stellan,” Arkady assured him with more hope than conviction. “Can I at least threaten to do it?”
“What purpose would it serve?”
“If he thinks he might lose a few fingers, I fancy the Immortal Prince’s story will change very smartly.”
“And if he calls your bluff?”
“Then he loses his fingers.” She shrugged.
“Which means you’re not really bluffing, are you, your grace,” Mathu pointed out with a grin. “I must say, I never realised how deliciously brutal you could be, Lady Desean. No wonder Stellan toes the line so diligently.”
Arkady glanced at Stellan with a puzzled look. He smiled. “Mathu is a little surprised I had the strength of will to refuse the offer of one of his ladies of the night in Herino.”
“I’m shocked you would even make such an offer, your highness,” she declared in mock dismay. “Stellan is a married man.”
“So I discovered, Lady Desean,” he chuckled, finding nothing amiss in the situation. “And a very faithful one, too, I’m happy to report.”
“Nonetheless, it was very naughty of you to suggest such a thing. Perhaps I should threaten to chop off a few of your fingers.”
“I believe you’d do it, too,” Mathu laughed. “But let’s get back to this immortal of yours. Why not have him prove he’s a magician by doing something magic?”
“Ah, now that’s the true genius of his deception. According to our immortal, it’s Low Tide.”
“And Tide magic was supposed to be tidal, wasn’t it?” Mathu said. “So until the Tide turns…”
“He’s helpless,” Arkady finished for him.
“Clever.”
“But surely you can trip him up in other ways?” Stellan asked. “Declan Hawkes asked you to speak with him because of your knowledge of the Tide Lords, Arkady.”
That news caught Mathu’s interest. “Declan Hawkes is involved in this?”
Stellan glanced over his shoulder at the prince. “There’s not much that goes on in Glaeba Declan Hawkes isn’t involved in, Mathu. It would serve you well to remember that the next time you feel like doing something foolish.”
“My knowledge is gleaned from Crasii legends,” she explained. “Their histories don’t relate to specifics about individual Tide Lords. It’s sad to think so, but Tilly Ponting’s wretched Tarot gives more detail about the Tide Lords themselves than anything in the Crasii legends I’ve been able to drag out of the few willing to share their oral histories with me.”
“Isn’t that where your Caelish Tide Lord would have learned it too?” Mathu asked.
Arkady nodded. “That’s what Tilly suggested.”
“Then perhaps you should check Cayal’s story against her Tarot first, Arkady,” her husband suggested, “before we start torturing and mutilating prisoners?”
“Chopping off his pinkie will be quicker, dear.”
Stellan smiled. “Mathu was right. You are a barbarian.”
Arkady wasn’t amused. “I’m more worried for my professional reputation. I find the notion of confronting our prisoner with a Tarot card I borrowed from an eccentric widow with purple hair more than a little disturbing, not to mention so scientifically unsound it doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“Nevertheless, Arkady, I’d rather you eliminated that option before you take to him with a scalpel.”
Stellan had that intransigent look about him that Arkady knew well. She had no chance of winning this argument. She sighed in defeat. “Then I shall drag this charade on for a little while longer, shall I? Quiz our immortal with that unimpeachable historical record, the Tide Lord Tarot, as my only resource? I’m certain to trip him up that way.”
“Sarcasm does not become you, my dear.”
“If it’s any consolation, I’m on your side, Lady Desean,” Mathu assured her cheerfully. “Chop off his filthy Caelish digits, I say!”
“Fortunately, you don’t have a say in this, Mathu,” Stellan remarked, frowning up at the young man.
“Pity,” Arkady said, rising to her feet. “I have to go, I’m afraid. If I’m going to rip our clever spy’s story to shreds using nothing but a deck of cards, I’m going to need to speak to Tilly on the way to the prison this morning.”
“And you won’t be amputating anything without my express permission, will you, dear?” Stellan said in a tone that displayed a disturbing lack of trust in her intentions.
Arkady hesitated before answering, and when she finally did agree, it was with a great deal of reluctance. “If you insist.”
“I do.”
She smiled at Mathu. “And you thought Reon Debalkor was a bore?”
“You can leave us now, Arkady,” Stellan suggested, his good humour starting to fade.
“Yes, dear.”
“Will you tell us all about it at dinner, your grace?” Mathu asked.
“Every riveting word of his confession, your highness,” she promised. She glared at Stellan. “The confession I plan to scare out of our devilish Caelish spy with the judicious use of a Tarot card.”
“Goodbye, Arkady.”
“Stellan,” she said with an elegant curtsey. “Your highness.”
Her husband made no further comment as she left the room, slamming the door ever so slightly on the way out, the only outward expression of her irritation.
Chapter 18
Warlock had discovered that, among the less obvious drawbacks of incarceration, he wasn’t allowed—for obvious reasons—a file with which to trim his nails. Left unattended they would grow and curl until his fingers became all but unusable. Out in the wider world, he’d always been able to file his nails down whenever they began to grow too long. Lacking a rasp, however, he was left with no choice but to use the rough granite wall to keep his nails trimmed. It was a slow and laborious process and he spent hours at it every other day, slowly wearing down his claws against the stone in a rhythmic, hypnotic motion that left his mind free to wander. And wander it did, usually outside these dreary prison walls to a place and time much happier than here.
“Tides, how long can you keep up that infernal scraping!” Cayal complained from across the corridor.
That was the other advantage of filing his nails against the stone. It drove the suzerain to distraction.
He glanced across the hall and bared his teeth in the gloom. “Long as I have to.”
The suzerain was sitting on his pallet, leaning against the wall. He glared balefully at Warlock. “Come High Tide, I intend to do something about you, gemang.”
“Would that be before or after I’ve licked your arse?” Warlock enquired.
“If you don’t do what I command,” Cayal warned, “I’ll have your filthy Scard corpse fed to the ravens.”
“You think I’m a Scard?” Warlock asked, abandoning his nail filing to squint at the suzerain curiously. The word was slang, short for “discard.” The discarded Crasii who didn’t work out the way the Tide Lords planned, their foremost fault being the lack of any compulsion the suzerain had instilled in
all their magically wrought slaves to obey their masters blindly and without hesitation. Of course, they’d killed any Scards they found without mercy, but there were some who’d escaped, smart enough not to let on that their obedience was merely a way of disguising their true natures until they had a chance to break free.
He was planning to ask Cayal more, ask why the suzerain thought he was a Scard, when he caught a whiff of perfume. Long before they heard her footsteps on the flagstones, Warlock knew Lady Desean was coming for her daily interrogation of Cayal. He could smell the strange human scent of her—jasmine soap mixed with clean sweat mixed with a hint of musky perfume mixed with a whisper of fear.
And desire.
The duchess probably wasn’t even aware of that emotion, but Warlock could tell. On some level, certainly not a conscious one, something about the suzerain called to the baser side of Arkady Desean. Cayal is a mystery and perhaps she finds that enticing? Or maybe it was simply human weakness. The Tide Lords were very good at manipulating people. Even without Tide Magic to aid him, Cayal had had eight thousand years to polish his seduction technique.
“Your visitor is here.”
Cayal sat up straighter. “How can you tell?”
“I can smell her.”
“What does she smell like to you?” the suzerain asked as he climbed to his feet.
“A human,” Warlock replied unhelpfully.
Cayal smiled. “A canine with a sense of humour, eh? There’s something they didn’t plan to breed into your line, I’ll wager. What’s your pedigree, anyway?”
“Why do you care?”
“I’m curious.” Cayal shrugged, leaning on the bars to stare at him across the hall. “Besides, if you turn out to be a Scard, once the Tide turns, I’ll be rooting out every pitiful bastard pup in your line and destroying him.”
“I am Warlock, out of Bella, by Segura,” he informed him proudly. “And there aren’t enough of you to destroy my line, suzerain.”
“Don’t be too sure about that,” Cayal warned. “It could take some time, granted, but we suzerain are quite fond of ventures that take a lot of time. Helps alleviate the boredom, you see.”
Warlock couldn’t help himself—he smiled. “Is that why you’re here rotting in a Glaeban gaol? To alleviate the boredom?”
“I’ve done stranger things for lesser reason.” Cayal shrugged.
Their visitor’s footsteps were audible now, even to someone without the benefit of canine hearing. Cayal and Warlock waited for a few moments and then she appeared, bringing with her the only bright spot in the day of both the Tide Lord and the Crasii.
Arkady was wearing much the same as always, a long grey skirt and matching jacket, cinched at the waist and trimmed in velvet, over a high-collared white blouse adorned with delicate pintucking and small pearl buttons down the front. She was—as usual—carrying the battered leather satchel where she kept her notebook.
This woman dresses to hide her beauty, he thought.
Warlock knew quite a lot about women’s fashion. His mother had been a seamstress of some note in the service of Lady Bellobrina when he was a pup. He knew what women—particularly human women—wore when they were trying to attract a mate. The Duchess of Lebec dressed as if she was trying to drive them away. And yet he could smell the latent lust on her and it didn’t match her outward appearance at all. She was a puzzle, this duchess who knew about the histories of the Crasii; this well-educated noble-woman who seemed to care about his kind far more than the average human. He wished, sometimes, that she were here to interrogate him and not that arrogant suzerain across the way.
“Good morning, Cayal. Warlock.”
“Your grace,” the Crasii replied politely. “Is it raining again?”
“Yes, it is,” she informed him. “Can you hear it in here?”
“I can smell it.”
She nodded and turned to look at Cayal. The suzerain was still leaning against the bars, watching her like a cat watches its prey while it debates the most entertaining way to torment it.
“Lady Desean.”
“Cayal.”
“What trick questions do you have for me today?” he asked. “Did you want to know what we do for fun? What immortals eat? Why we even bother to eat, given we’re never going to die of starvation? Or thirst.”
“Do you know that for certain?” Arkady asked, curiously.
Cayal nodded. “Even tried it once. I got hungry and I got thirsty, but nothing much else happened. Didn’t even lose weight. Did you know there are no fat immortals?” he added. “There’re no skinny ones, either. Arryl speculates it’s because immortality forces one’s body into its optimum configuration and keeps it there. More efficient, that way, you see, and if nature is anything, it’s efficient.”
“Arryl,” Arkady said, opening her satchel. “Arryl, the Sorceress. She’s the one who convinced you to become immortal, isn’t she?”
“Convinced?” Cayal repeated. “Don’t know that I needed much convincing. Immortality seemed like a rather attractive prospect once, but no, she wasn’t instrumental in my transition from mere mortality to this…higher plane of existence.”
“You’d think,” Warlock remarked from the gloomy depths of his cell, “that your higher plane of existence might have come better equipped than this.”
Arkady glanced at him with a smile. “I was thinking much the same thing, Warlock.”
Cayal’s expression soured. “Oh, the world is just full of jesters this morning, isn’t it?”
“If you think that’s funny, wait until I show you this.” She put down the satchel and moved the chair a little closer to Cayal’s bars, before taking a seat. She had something in her hands that at first glance, Warlock thought was a small book. Then she began to fan the pages out and he realised it wasn’t a book, but a deck of cards.
“We’re going to play cards?” Cayal asked, obviously as puzzled as Warlock.
Arkady shook her head. “These aren’t playing cards.”
“What are they, then?”
“The Tide Lord Tarot.”
Cayal burst out laughing. “You’re kidding!”
“This is all that’s left of you and your kind, Cayal,” she mocked. “This is it. The historical record of the immortals. Quite pitiful, don’t you think, to realise how the mighty have fallen so low?”
“Those cards are a load of superstitious old twaddle,” the suzerain scoffed.
“You’re familiar with them, then?”
“I’ve been around for a long time, Arkady. There’s not a lot I haven’t seen.”
“My friend…the one who’s expert in such things, says these cards tell the true story of the immortals.”
“Your expert friend is an idiot, if he thinks that.”
Arkady held up one of the cards for Cayal to see. “The first card of the Tarot, I’m led to believe. This is Cayal, the Immortal Prince. Here he is dressed in his colourful but ragged clothes, carrying a magnifying glass, a cat at his heels, a palace on a mountain in the background, a sun…”
“None of it is true,” Cayal objected.
The duchess was undeterred by his scorn. “According to Tarot legend, Cayal, the Immortal Prince, travelled the world endlessly in search of happiness and fulfilment. What was the magnifying glass for by the way? Tilly couldn’t answer that.”
“It’s all nonsense,” Cayal insisted.
“The second card is the Sorceress,” Arkady continued. She seemed amused by Cayal’s reaction, rather than discouraged by it. “According to the Tarot, the next person you meet on your journey is Arryl.” The duchess consulted her notebook in her lap and began to read from it. “Possessed by the spirit of the Tide Star, Arryl raises one hand to the sun, and pointing the other at the ground, the Sorceress calls upon the power of the Tide Star. Magically, the ground opens up at Cayal’s feet. In front of the Immortal Prince are all the possibilities in the universe laid out before him; all the directions he can take, every alternate reality…”
“That you’re immortal,” Arkady replied pleasantly. “I thought you’d be glad to help.”
“This is ridiculous!”
“And claiming you’re immortal isn’t?” she countered with a raised brow. “Let’s look at the third card, shall we. Diala. The High Priestess.”
“Spare me!” Cayal groaned, turning his back on her.
“Continuing his journey,” Arkady read from her notes, “the Immortal Prince comes upon a mysterious veiled lady lying on a bed set between two pillars and illuminated by the Tide Star. She is the soul sister of the Sorceress…”
“She’s a slut,” Cayal corrected sourly.
“…seductive rather than persuasive, enticing rather than convincing. She uses her body where the Sorceress uses her mind to entrap the unwary…”
“As I said: a slut.”
Arkady kept on reading. Warlock was certain she was doing it to aggravate him. What strange games these humans play.
“She is the High Priestess,” the duchess read on, “and she amazes Cayal by knowing everything there is to know about him: his thoughts, his hopes, his dreams, and his sins. ‘Since you know all my innermost secrets, my lady, perhaps you can guide me?’ he asks, sitting beside her on the bed. ‘The Sorceress showed me the myriad paths to infinite possibilities, but I don’t know which road to take.’ In answer, the High Priestess produces an ancient scroll. ‘Everything you need to know is contained in this scroll, but you must give me something in return.’ ‘What do you want?’ Cayal asks. ‘Your undivided attention.’ So, seating himself at her feet, the Immortal Prince listens to the High Priestess as she reads to him by the light of the Tide Star. When she is done, Cayal understands which path he must take—”
The Immortal Prince Page 15