by Shannon Page
“My Lady Consort,” he replied, struggling in vain to match her calm now, “no one has greater cause than I to wish for your son’s swift recovery.”
“I would agree,” she said almost too softly to be heard by anyone but him.
“But … why, my lady?” he blurted awkwardly. “What can merely seeing him accomplish?”
The expression on his face just then was fleeting, but unmistakable, and caught her utterly by surprise. In all the years she had spent dealing with this man, she’d never seen it there before. Not the cunning or calculation, the anger or condescension or arrogance she had come prepared for, but, for one unguarded instant, unadulterated desperation.
She almost stepped back in dismay as the implications started to sink in. Until that moment, she had assumed with complete confidence that Duon was withholding access to some great new healer in retaliation for her slights during their earlier argument, or, more likely, in a calculated gambit for control of Viktor and herself. All her own calculations since leaving her husband in the breakfast room this morning had been based on those assumptions. Not until this moment had it ever crossed her mind that Duon might actually …
“Tell me, Father Duon,” she said, struggling to conceal her alarm and incredulity until she knew if she was right, “does this healer you’ve been dangling before us exist at all, or have you simply been too proud to admit that you have nothing left to offer?”
“My lady jests?” he sputtered, clearly trying to sound offended. But the truth was written on his face too plainly now for even her innocent young son to have mistaken.
“By all the gods you claim to serve, Duon,” she gasped, “what can you possibly have hoped to achieve with such a … moronic ruse?”
“My lady, you misapprehend the entire situation! I have invented nothing! The healer of which we speak is as real as you and I are — and every bit as talented as I have claimed!”
“Then show him to me! Now!” she snapped, abandoning all pretense of restraint.
“I … cannot,” he said, plainly struggling to think of some further explanation where all others had failed.
Wasted! This entire spectacle. This ridiculous, horrifically costly charade! All wasted on a phantom. A mirage! She turned in fury to the entourage behind her. “We are leaving!”
“My Lady Consort, wait!” Duon called out as she stormed past her own attendants toward the boat. “None of this is as it seems! I swear to you!”
“Have you still not tired of toying with a grieving mother?” she shouted over her shoulder without slowing down. “Betraying your Factor’s good faith? Defrauding your entire country in its time of crisis?” Breathing fire — or wishing to, at least — she stopped at last, halfway up the gangway, and turned to glare back down at him. “There are alternatives to your spiritual carnival, Duon. And I’ll waste not another moment in pursuit of them. As for this … travesty you’ve perpetrated against us, rest assured that, just as soon as my son’s illness is resolved, one way or the other, my husband’s government will take whatever measures may be necessary to ensure that your unthinkable lapse of judgment in this matter is revisited. With a vengeance.”
Reikos blinked awake, staring up at a low ceiling crudely hewn of natural stone. There was a hard, narrow pallet underneath his back. Ah yes. The Census Taker’s ‘guest quarters’. Even after so much time, it still took a while sometimes to remember where he was. A week now? Two, perhaps? He was no longer sure, though Pino had started scratching marks into their cell wall some days back, each time the guard brought them what passed for dinner here. What must his crew think by now? That he had abandoned them — or died somewhere? Was Kyrios keeping their port fees paid? Was his ship even there still? He sighed, and sat up to rub his eyes, dearly hoping that Sian was doing better than himself, wherever she’d been taken.
“You awake?” Pino asked him from the other corner of their little cavern. The boy held up a wooden trencher and an even cruder wooden spoon. “He brought our meal about half an hour ago, but I figured you’d want the sleep.”
“Did you save me any?” Reikos asked. It was too old a joke by now to wrest even a grin from the lad. Since Sian had healed him, Pino’s already youthful energy had become unnaturally manic, and his appetite seemingly inexhaustible. It must be dreadful, Reikos imagined, to have so much hunger and be forced to settle, day after day, for nothing but stale bread and half an onion every morning, more stale bread and a wooden trencher slopped with thin, cold broth and a few half-rotten vegetables each evening. If evenings they were. Without windows, such distinctions had become purely academic some time back. They had nothing now but the unsteady light of a single torch outside their cell, lit each ‘morning’ and doused at bedtime every ‘night’ — not that the boy seemed to need much sleep now.
Pino came and handed him a stale biscuit. Reikos shook his head and gave it back. His own stomach had shrunken pretty thoroughly by now, not that he didn’t still lie awake at times, suffering fantasies of the bouillabaisse he had so often shared with Sian back on Meander Way.
“Are you sure?” asked Pino, looking at the extra food with naked desire.
“I am fine. If I’m hungry later, I’ll just get up and club a rat.”
The boy gave him a brief, uncertain chuckle. They might both have laughed a little harder if the joke had been less plausible. There was no scarcity of rats here, appearing with greatest frequency just after meals to sniff and gnaw at their empty trencher, no matter how thoroughly licked clean it might already seem. Still, he’d eat rats before he’d eat the giant cockroaches this nation seemed to have in such flagrant numbers.
As Pino ate, Reikos listened to the slow but endless drip of water somewhere in their cell block. This part of the Census Hall was clearly lower than the water table. He wondered yet again if the dungeon was well drained, or whether it had just not rained that hard yet since they’d been locked up. He knew how hard it rained here in the islands sometimes, and hoped they wouldn’t have to add flooding to their list of woes before this whole ordeal was ended … somehow.
Such were the perils of entanglement in foreign politics, he supposed.
Pino sighed and sat down on the floor, his back against Reikos’s pallet. “Do you think they’re ever going to let us out of here?” he asked. “Or just kill us, even? Dying wasn’t all that bad. Compared to this.”
“I know as much as you do, lad,” said Reikos, wondering if the boy’s remark was just another joke, or … “Were you dead then? Truly?”
Pino shrugged. “I can’t remember. But as good as, I suppose.” He tossed his head and shifted his legs restlessly. “Isn’t there supposed to be a trial, or something?”
“I’m not sure this is that kind of prison,” Reikos said, still wondering just how far Sian had reached to bring this boy back into the world. “The Census Taker, from what I’ve gleaned of your land’s politics, is something of a power unto himself.”
A silence fell between them, filled only with the drip, drip, drip of water in the distance.
“Do you miss her?” Pino asked at last, his voice strange and melancholy.
“Miss who?” asked Reikos. “Domina Kattë?” Yes, he did. With surprising intensity. Not that he meant to tell that to the boy.
“I miss her,” Pino said, ignoring his attempt at subterfuge.
The silence stretched again.
“Were you two lovers?” Pino asked, even more quietly.
Reikos stared down at him, mouth open in surprise. “That’s none of … What an impertinent question. Which I will not even dignify by answering.”
“I thought so,” Pino hardly more than whispered. He sighed deeply without looking up, and shook his head.
By all the gods … thought Reikos, stunned not to have seen it earlier. “Are you in love with her?”
Pino nodded, still not looking up. “Desperately. … Stupidly.” He shook his head again. “What does it matter now? I’m locked up here, and … she’s married. And what ch
ance did I have anyway, against a man like you?”
“Good Anselm’s anchor,” Reikos exclaimed softly. The boy was more than young enough to be her son. “Did she … Surely she did not return your —”
“No,” Pino cut him off petulantly. “Of course not. She doesn’t even know.”
“Well … I’m sorry. Truly. Love unreturned is no laughing matter.”
“You would know?” asked Pino.
“Oh, I’ve been sent packing by more women than you would imagine, lad. That’s just part of the game, I fear. Domina Kattë fired me as well, you know. Have I not told you that?”
“So you were lovers then!” Pino slapped the dirt floor with his open hand, scattering a few barely-seen crawly things. “I knew it!”
“But you just said you knew already!” Reikos protested.
“I had hoped you just meant fired,” Pino said gruffly. “As in business partners.”
Well, that was poorly done, thought Reikos. Sian would surely skin him to the last eyelash now. If she ever got the chance.
“So she was just a game to you?” asked Pino, dripping with disgust.
“Well — of course not!” Reikos exclaimed. “What makes you ask such —?”
“You just said that getting fired is ‘part of the game.’” Pino stood and stalked off to the farthest corner of their cell, turning there, his back against the wall, to glare at Reikos. “I suppose you’ve got all kinds of women. One in every port, eh? Do you actually care for any of them?”
“Pino, you’re bending this all out of shape.”
“’Cause I do care,” Pino said, his expression fierce. “I think the world of her.”
“As do I,” said Reikos quietly. “I love that woman dearly. More dearly than even I knew. Until very recently.” He hung his head, ashamed to face this boy whose passions, however innocent and doomed, were so much purer than his own. He thought again about Celia, the first girl he had ever loved — until her father had forbidden them to marry. “Oh, lad, you’re right. I’ve been as big a fool as any man alive.” He forced himself to look up, straight into Pino’s eyes. “I think you’d have stood every chance against a man like me.” He dropped his gaze again. “But we’re both run out of luck now, aren’t we.”
They remained that way in silence for a while, until Pino said, “I’m sorry I got us into all this trouble.”
“You?” asked Reikos. “How are you at fault in this?”
“If I hadn’t tried to stab that soldier, maybe neither of us would be locked up in here.”
“If I hadn’t pulled out the damned hand-cannon, well … I don’t think you can blame yourself for my presence here, at least. And I’d not have had a single stitch of respect left for you if you hadn’t rushed that bunch of leather-scaled flatfish trying to abduct our Sian.”
“To be honest, nor would I,” said a quiet voice from outside the bars of their cell door.
Reikos and Pino spun about together to find Sergeant Ennias gazing in at them. Reikos had been too absorbed in his conversation with Pino to notice the man’s arrival in the dimly torch-lit passage. “Well,” he said, “the dog returns to its vomit, does it?”
“I’ve never thought of you as vomit, Captain Reikos,” Ennias said levelly. “I just wanted to come see how you’re being treated down here.”
“How do you suppose?” growled Reikos.
“Are they feeding you anything?”
“Do you take pleasure in asking starving men such questions, you sadistic son of a bitch?” Reikos replied.
“I suspected as much.” The sergeant loosened a mid-sized leather satchel hung underneath his cloak, and tossed it to them through the bars.
With an untrusting glance at Ennias, Pino bent down and grabbed the satchel off the floor, then opened it and looked inside. Reikos saw the boy’s nostrils flare. “It’s meat,” he moaned, reaching inside to draw out a link of peppered sausage. “And cheese.”
“Your jailer is a friend of mine,” said Ennias. “He knows I’m doing this, but if you value your own hides, much less mine, please do not tell Alkattha I was here, should you ever talk with him.”
“Oh, you’re our friend now, are you?” Reikos said, salivating as the scent of sausage reached him. “Our secret protector?” Pino shoved the link into his mouth, then tossed the bag to Reikos.
“Your presence here brings me no joy,” said Ennias. “It’s nothing I intended.”
“What’s happened to Domina Kattë?” Pino demanded.
“She is safe and well, living as the Census Taker’s honored guest.”
“And she doesn’t mind that we are here?” asked Reikos. “I do not believe you.”
“She doesn’t know that you are here,” said Ennias. “And I am not allowed to tell her. The Census Taker tells her lies. She seems under the impression that you’ve both been sent on some important mission for him. She’s been asking about you both, though.” He really did sound troubled by what he was telling them.
“What is going on here?” Reikos asked. “How have we offended your employer so?”
“By seeing something he did not want seen, I think.” Ennias glanced upward, as if hearing something through the rock-hewn ceiling. “I will see if there is some way to improve your situation, gentlemen, but right now, I’d best be going.”
“You’ve been too kind,” said Reikos. “By all means, do not let us keep you.”
The officer gave him a grudging nod, as if taking his words seriously, then turned and left as quietly as he had come.
After wolfing down a bit of Ennias’s largess, Reikos returned the bag to Pino. “Finish it,” he told the boy unnecessarily. “Leave any for the rats or roaches, and they’ll just become unmanageable.”
Reikos went back to lie down on his pallet. He stared up at the water-stained ceiling and thought about the free and easy life of a sea captain. Sailing wherever he liked at a moment’s notice. Slave to no one. A woman in every port. Yes, that had been the life for him. Once.
No more, though. Whether he got out of here some day or not. No more.
By the time the Alkattha Swan was docked at Home’s commercial port again, Arian’s fury with Duon had been overtaken by apprehension about what she would say to Viktor. That the Mishrah-Khote’s top priest had been stringing them along was something he must know. That she had responded to this discovery with yet another clear, and this time very public, promise of overt war against the Father Superior himself was something she wished he need never know at all. As she and her entourage disembarked, she was so absorbed in wondering how to frame this news that she failed to see her brother waiting on the dock until she’d practically run into him.
“What an extraordinary costume, sister,” he said. “Wherever have you been?”
She rolled her eyes, trying to brush past him. “I haven’t time for this right now, Aros.”
“No, Arian. I didn’t mean it that way. Just, please, tell me what is going on.”
She drew breath to rebuff him more sternly, then realized that there was none of the usual mockery on his face, or even in his voice.
“I came up after lunch,” he said, “and was greeted with the news that you’d run off in high dudgeon with half the family fleet, though no one seemed to know where to, exactly. Is … everything all right?”
Still no hint of his usual sarcasm or smug amusement. His worry seemed sincere. How odd. “I appreciate your concern, Aros, but I really must go speak with Viktor right away. I’ve barely time to change out of these horrid clothes first. Might we discuss this later?”
“Yes. Of course.” He sounded genuinely chastened. “But if there’s anything I can do to help, I really do hope you’ll let me.”
Had that been an apologetic tone? From Aros? She studied him more closely. “Is everything all right with you, brother?”
“You mean, besides the fact that it’s been weeks now since you completely cut me off? Arian, I know I’ve been … well, quite an ass, I guess. But I am still your
brother, and … if you’re in any kind of trouble …”
Would wonders never cease. Family feeling from Aros? Better late than never, she supposed, and it was not as if any reduction in the growing bog of conflict she was suddenly entangled in would be unwelcomed. “I appreciate that, Aros. More than you can know. I really must go straight to Viktor now, but let’s talk this evening. Over dinner perhaps, in my chambers, say, an hour after dark. Just the two of us.” Viktor would likely welcome her absence anyway for a while, once he’d heard what she must tell him. “I would like that, if it is acceptable to you.”
“Thank you, sister.” He offered her an almost bashful smile. “I look forward to it.”
“Until tonight, then.”
They exchanged respectful nods, and Arian turned to find most of her party gone on well ahead of her, except for Maronne and Lucia, awaiting their mistress at a respectful distance. “Well, that’s an unexpected mercy,” she told them as they continued toward the curtained litter waiting beyond the dock to return them to the Factorate House.
“He has pestered me to let him visit Konrad several times this week,” Maronne said. “But not half so discourteously as he used to. Perhaps he’s finally gotten the message.”
“That would be very welcome news indeed,” said Arian. “Now, if I can just escape this dress before it crushes me, I’ll go see if I can work some miracle with Viktor too.”
When they arrived at Arian’s chambers, however, they found Viktor there already, gazing out a window at the distant harbor. He turned as they came in, responding to their startled silence with a sanguine smile. “Would you ladies kindly permit me and the Factora-Consort a private moment?”