“Good morning, my Lord, Commandant,” Tarja said pleasantly. “Lovely morning for a hanging, don’t you think?”
“Tarjanian, don’t you think you could act just a little repentant?” Lord Draco asked.
“And disappoint all these lovely ladies?” he asked, glancing up at the crowded balconies. “I think not. How is Mother, by the way? I thought she might be here to welcome her wanton son home.”
“The First Sister is probably signing the warrant for your hanging as we speak. Escort the criminal to the cells,” the Lord Defender ordered Garet. “And search him.”
“I have searched him already, my Lord,” Draco said.
“Do it again,” Jenga told Garet, making R’shiel wonder at the exchange. Jenga didn’t look pleased that it was Draco who had brought Tarja home.
“My Lord,” the commandant replied with a salute. A brisk wave of his hand brought more guards rushing forward, but Tarja shook them off and marched past the Lords towards the huge bronze doors of Francil’s Hall. Just before he disappeared into the shadows, he turned and bowed mockingly to the assembled crowd, then vanished inside.
As R’shiel watched him go, she decided it no longer mattered if she confronted Joyhinia or not. Six weeks of silently rehearsed conversations were suddenly unimportant. Her anger no longer seemed important. The energy it took to sustain it could be better directed elsewhere. That odd child by the river had been right. It was time to get over it. She had much more important things to do.
And the first thing was finding a way to rescue Tarja.
CHAPTER 25
Pain was an interesting area of study, Tarja decided. He was close to becoming an expert in the field. He’d had plenty of opportunity to reflect on the matter over the past few days. To experiment on how much the human body could withstand, how much it could take before blessed unconsciousness pulled him down into the blackness where the pain no longer existed. The annoying part was that he kept waking up again and the pain was always there, waiting for him.
He’d stopped trying to count his injuries. His fingers were broken on both hands and burns scarred his forearms. He had several loose teeth and so many bruises he must look like a chimney sweep. His right shoulder felt as if it had been dislocated and the soles of his feet were blistered and weeping. There was not a single pore on his skin that didn’t cry out when he moved, not a hair on his head that did not hurt. The cold cell made him shiver, and even that slight movement was agony.
But despite the pain, Tarja found himself in surprisingly good spirits. Perhaps it was the unimaginative torture of his interrogators that gave him something to focus on. Perhaps it was the fact that he had not uttered a word about the rebellion. He had betrayed nobody, said nothing. Mostly, Tarja suspected, it was because he knew that Joyhinia had ordered this punishment. It made everything he had done seem right, somehow.
He shifted gingerly on the low pallet that served as his bed and listened to the sounds of the night, wondering how long it would be before Joyhinia decided to hang him. There would be a trial of course, a farcical affair to satisfy the forms of law, with a gallows waiting at the end of it. The thought was oddly reassuring. It gave him comfort to know that when news of his hanging reached Mandah, Padric, Ghari and the others, they would know that Draco had lied. Tarja knew they had escaped in Testra. He had heard it from Nheal during the voyage upriver.
Of course, he did have one regret. He was sorry he wouldn’t have the chance to find Brak. Words were insufficient to describe what Tarja would like to have done to the sailor for deserting him in the River’s Rest. He had watched him enter the tavern, certain of his support, but when he arrived only moments later, Brak was nowhere to be seen. What had the miserable bastard done? Simply walked out through another door? Tarja cursed himself for not trusting his instincts more. For not insisting on some sort of proof that Brak was truly on their side. That he could think of nothing that would have satisfied him did little to appease his anger. Tarja hoped the pagans were right about reincarnation. Maybe one’s spirit did get an opportunity to return to this world again and again. If that was the case, he very much wanted to come back as a flea so that he could find Brak and keep biting him until he went mad with the itching and killed himself.
His images of Brak writhing insanely in agony were disturbed by a noise in the guardroom outside his cell. Tarja wondered vaguely at the noise, but it didn’t concern him unduly. His world was defined by pain now and the noises from the other room were not part of that world.
He passed out for a time, though he had no way of determining how long. It was night, he thought. He was unsure what had woken him, or if it was merely the pain that had dragged him back. He turned his head fractionally and discovered a silhouetted shape moving toward him, small enough to be a child.
“Tarja?” the voice was hesitant, female and very young.
“Who are you?” It took a moment for him to realise that the rasping voice was his.
“Oh my! What have they done to you?” she asked as she glided to his side. “You don’t look very well, at all. Does it hurt?”
“You could say that.” His mind was sluggish, but Tarja could not imagine who the child was, or how she had found her way into his cell. She moved closer and he tried to push her away, to warn her not to touch him, but the words wouldn’t come. Every movement sent black waves of agony through him.
“Shall I make you better?” the child asked.
“By all means,” he gasped.
The little girl studied him thoughtfully. “I’ll get in trouble if I do. Healing people is Cheltaran’s job. He gets really annoyed when anybody else does it. I suppose I could ask him, though. I mean, I can’t have you dying on me. Not now.”
Tarja realised that he must be dreaming. He didn’t know who the child was, but the name Cheltaran was familiar. He was the pagan’s God of Healing. Mandah had prayed to him often, so often that she placed more faith in his power than more practical healing methods. Tarja thought it much more useful to actually do something to stop a wounded man bleeding to death than to pray over him and beg divine intervention. His mind wandered for a moment, the blackness beckoning him down with welcoming arms, but he fought to stay conscious, even though he knew he was asleep. Perhaps the pain had unhinged his mind. Why else would he try to remain awake inside a dream filled with pagan gods who were a figment of someone else’s imagination?
The child reached out gently and pushed the hair back from his forehead. He wondered how bad he looked. He knew one eye was swollen shut because he couldn’t see out of it and his lips felt twice their normal size. Every muscle he owned ached, every joint creaked with pain when he moved. The worst of it was that he knew none of his injuries were fatal. His interrogators wanted him alive for the gallows. They were too smart to hurt him seriously. But you could cause an amazing amount of pain without taking a life. Tarja knew that for a fact.
“Who are you?” he groaned as her cool fingers brushed his forehead.
“I’m your friend,” she said. “And you have to love me.”
“Whatever,” he said.
“Say it properly! Say ‘I love you, Kalianah’ and you’d better mean it or I won’t help you!”
“I love you, Kalianah and you’d better mean it or I won’t help you,” he repeated dutifully.
The child slapped him for his temerity and he cried out with the pain. He could never remember a dream with such clarity, such detail. “You are the most impossible human! I should just leave you there to suffer! I should let you die!”
“The sooner the better. I’ll never hold a sword again. If I live, I’ll be unemployed.”
“You’re not taking this seriously!”
“I don’t have to take it seriously, I’m only dreaming,” he told her.
“Cheltaran!”
Tarja was not certain what happened next. Out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw another figure suddenly appear. A cool hand was laid on his forehead and pain seared his wh
ole body. A bolt of agony ripped through him, worse than anything he had suffered before. It was as if all his days of torture had been condensed into one moment of blinding torment. He cried out as he lost consciousness, falling into a blackness that seemed deeper and blacker than ever before.
He plunged into it helplessly, wondering if he had finally died.
CHAPTER 26
The Blue Bull Tavern was located near the western side of the amphitheatre, along with several other taverns and the licensed brothels where the Citadel’s prostitutes plied their trade for an amount set and strictly taxed by the Sisterhood. Although they frequented the Blue Bull often enough, R’shiel had little to do with the prostitutes, or as they preferred to be known, the court’esa. The word was a Fardohnyan one—in that country court’esa were men and women trained from early youth to provide pleasure for the Fardohnyan nobility. They were educated, elegant, highly sought after professionals who, R’shiel had heard whispered among the Probates, knew six hundred and forty seven different ways to make love. The idea fascinated R’shiel. She had been raised to believe the Sisterhood’s view of prostitution. Men were carnal creatures who had no control over their lust. Better to regulate the industry and make them pay for something they would take by force if it were not readily available. But to choose a life as a court’esa, even a pampered, Fardohnyan one, struck R’shiel as being a desperate way to make a living. Particularly in Medalon, where court’esa were mostly illiterate young men and women, for whom the trade was one of necessity rather than choice.
There was little love lost between the court’esa and the Probates. The prostitutes considered Probates annoying amateurs. They robbed them of their hard-earned income every time one had a dalliance with a Defender who, by rights, should be paying a court’esa for their services, not getting it free from some uppity tart in a grey tunic.
R’shiel pushed open the door to the tavern and was met by a hot wave of ale-flavoured smoke. The tavern was doing a brisk trade, although this late at night the customers were only off-duty Defenders and the working court’esa. The Novices and Probates were well abed, or should have been. R’shiel received a curious glance from a number of the painted women as she stood at the door looking around. She spied Davydd Tailorson across the room, drinking with several other officers. A plump court’esa with big brown eyes was leaning forward suggestively toward Davydd, her ample bosom threatening to escape her low-cut gown at any moment. Whatever she was saying had all the officers at the table laughing uproariously. R’shiel took a deep breath and crossed the taproom, trying to ignore the curious stares of both the court’esa and the Defenders who thought a young female stranger in the tavern this late in the night was bound to be looking for trouble. She was half-way across the room when Davydd glanced up and caught sight of her. He frowned, made some comment to his companions and then left the table. His expression grim, he walked across the taproom, took her arm and steered her back out onto the verandah into the bitter cold.
“What are you doing here?” he hissed, surprising her with his annoyance. “Don’t you know how much trouble you could get into?”
“Of course I know,” she said, shaking her arm free of his grasp. “But I need your help.”
“Can’t it wait until morning?” he asked impatiently, glancing back towards the taproom. The court’esa who had been thrusting her bosom at him was watching them curiously through the open door. She wiggled her fingers in a small wave and blew Davydd an inviting kiss.
“Well, I’m sorry. Don’t let me keep you from your whore,” she snapped, annoyed by the court’esa and more than a little hurt by his attitude. “You obviously have plans this evening. Your little friend in there seems very accommodating.” She turned and ran down the steps into the street.
“R’shiel! Wait!” He ran after her, caught her in a few steps, grabbed her by the arm and turned her to face him. He glanced around, and, realising they were standing in the middle of the street, he steered her over to the awning in front of the shuttered bakery. The street was still deserted, and the only noise came from the Blue Bull and the other taverns farther up the cobbled street, the only illumination the spill of yellow light from the taverns’ windows.
“Don’t you know there’s a price on your head? If you’re recognised—”
“I don’t care,” she snapped, regretting her decision to seek him out.
“That’s plain enough. What do you want?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter,” he disagreed, “or you wouldn’t have come looking for me. What is it?”
R’shiel took a deep breath of the cold air. “I want to free Tarja.”
Davydd swore under his breath. “Are you crazy?”
“Yes, I am,” she said stiffly, “so forget I asked.”
“R’shiel, if word got back to Lord Jenga that I’d helped Tarja escape, I’d be in the cell he vacated before morning.”
“I said forget it,” she assured him, disappointed. This was the young man who had helped her climb the outside of the Great Hall to spy on the Gathering. She had thought him more daring than the average Defender. She had thought him Tarja’s friend.
He sighed and shook his head. “Don’t you know how dangerous this is?”
“Well, I’m certainly not going to just stand around and watch Joyhinia hang him!” she declared.
Davydd glanced up the deserted street for a moment before looking at her closely. “R’shiel, don’t you think you should stay out of this? Your mother would kill you if you’re caught. She’d kill me too.”
“She’s not my mother.”
“Maybe not,” Davydd said, lowering his voice, “but she’s bound to react like one.”
“I have to free him, Davydd,” she pleaded. “I need your help.”
“R’shiel, Tarja has more friends in the Citadel than you realise,” he told her cautiously. “Take my advice and leave well enough alone.”
“Please, Davydd?”
Davydd studied her in the darkness for a moment, weighing his decision. Then he sighed again. “I just know I’m going to regret this.”
R’shiel leaned forward, meaning to kiss his cheek to thank him, but he moved at the last minute and she found herself meeting his lips. He pulled her closer and let the kiss linger far longer then she ever intended it to. With some reluctance, he let her go and shook his head.
“Now she gets romantic,” he joked as he let her go. “Come on, then. I know someone who might agree to this insanity. I never did plan to live long at any rate.”
The stables that housed the Defenders cavalry mounts were vast, stretching from the eastern side of the amphitheatre to the outer wall of the Citadel. They were warm and pungent with so many animals stabled in such close confines, but their soft snores comforted R’shiel. Davydd had left her here and told her to wait. He had been gone more than an hour; plenty of time for R’shiel to imagine any number of unfortunate fates had befallen him. It was also more than sufficient time for R’shiel to wonder if she had misjudged him. He could be reporting her presence at this very moment; gathering a squad to arrest her while she waited here like a trusting fool…
“R’shiel!”
She spun toward the whispered call. “Davydd?”
A uniformed figure appeared in the gloom.
“R’shiel.” Nheal Alcarnen moved towards her, his expression unreadable in the dim light of the stable. She didn’t know him well, but he was an old friend of Tarja’s. He was also the captain who had been hunting them in Reddingdale. She glanced over his shoulder but he was alone. “Davydd says you need my help.”
“I…I want to free Tarja.”
Nheal looked at her for a long moment. “Why?”
“Why? Why do you think! They’re torturing him and in a few days they’re going to hang him! Founders, Nheal! What a stupid question!”
He nodded, as if her answer had satisfied some other, unvoiced doubt. “Aye, it was a stupid question. I don’t agree with wha
t he’s done, mind you, and I don’t hold with any of that pagan nonsense, but this has gone beyond the simple punishment of an oathbreaker.” Nheal took a deep breath before he continued. “I was there when Draco arrested him. The Spear of the First Sister held a blade to an innocent man’s throat and threatened to kill him and his entire family. If Lord Draco can betray his Defender’s oath so readily and be honoured for it, I see no reason why Tarja should be hanged for the same offence.”
The news did not surprise R’shiel. She had suspected something of the kind. Tarja would never have surrendered willingly.
“You’ll help me then?”
He nodded. “The guard changes at dawn. If I call a snap inspection I can delay them for a time. We don’t waste good men on cell duty. The night watch will be half asleep, or drunk if they’ve managed to smuggle in a jug when their officer wasn’t looking.”
“I don’t know how to thank you, Nheal.”
“Don’t kill anyone,” he told her. “And if you’re caught, keep my name out of it. I’m doing this because Tarja was my friend. But he’s not so good a friend that I want to be hanged alongside him.”
She nodded. “I understand.”
“I doubt it,” he said, then he turned on his heel and walked away. Within a few steps the darkness had swallowed him completely and she was alone.
CHAPTER 27
Tarja woke at first light. Grey tentacles of light felt their way into his cell from the small barred window as he swam toward consciousness. He opened his eyes and lay there for a while, trying to work out what was wrong, what was different. The smell of his own body disgusted him. It stank of sweat and blood and stale urine.
It took him a while, but eventually he worked out that both his eyes were open. It took him even longer to realise he could move. He sat up gingerly, waiting for the pain to return, but it was gone. Completely gone.
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