Broken Devices

by Karen Myers

  Penrys was in the process of describing her warning to the wizards on the street, where she had showed them images of the leipum and Gen Jongto, when they were interrupted.

  A querulous old man’s voice demanding access brought her head up. What, out here in the open? It couldn’t be… could it?

  Two brown-robes escorted Char Nojuk and his daughter into the hall. They stopped, appalled, at the bloody mess, and then zeroed in on Penrys seated in the corner, ignoring Tun Jeju and the others with her.

  “Where is he, minochi? Where? I heard he was seen down here, before the riot.”

  Penrys cleared her throat. “Tun Jeju, this is the samkatju Char Nojuk, someone you should meet, and his daughter, Char Dami. Samkatju-chi, this is the notju I mentioned to you. There’s been a …”

  “A disaster is what there’s been. Where is my nephew?” Every syllable was forcefully stressed, as if clarity could make the answer any more palatable.

  She held up her hand. “I believe he’s been taken captive, with several of the foreign wizards. Including my husband, whom you met last night.”

  “I’m so sorry, Penrys-chi,” Char Dami said. “Are they hurt?”

  “Najud is.” Her throat closed up, and she swallowed. “I don’t know about Char Dazu. He stepped in front of the foreigners to claim protection for them, I think. It didn’t work.”

  The old man’s mouth worked. “You mean they knew there was a Char here and they attacked anyway?”

  Penrys nodded. “That’s what it looked like to me. I told them he was here to witness before we entered the compound. By name.”

  She could see this took the wind out of his sails. Tun Jeju gestured to one of his men, and chairs appeared for both of them. Char Nojuk sat down abruptly as if his knees had stopped working, and Char Dami settled herself more gracefully.

  Tun Jeju pinned Penrys with an “I’ll be coming back to you in a moment” look, and spoke to the samkatju. “Do I have the honor of addressing one of our esteemed Kigali lupjuwen?”

  Char Nojuk blinked at him. “Did she tell you nothing?” He cocked his head scornfully at Penrys. “Yes, of course—the wizards of the Char family have been advisors and councilors for generations. And we’d be hidden still if my nephew hadn’t been so imprudent as to join her this morning on a fool’s errand.”

  “I’m sorry, samkatju-chi, but that’s not quite true,” Tun Jeju said in his even tones. “That news cannot be returned to the earth, as if the ore were never mined. Like it or not, we are all now in a new era.”

  He sent Penrys an unreadable look. “Please, samkatju-chi, join us while Penrys continues her story. One of my men will fetch us something to drink.” A wave of his hand to his staff started the process of turning that command into reality.

  Penrys summarized the story so far and then continued with the details for Tun Jeju.

  By the time her hoarse voice had finished the tale, cups had appeared, with both water and a pot of bunnas. Tun Jeju assumed the role of host, and offered refreshment to the Char family. Penrys and Chosmod were left to fend for themselves, and they passed cups along to Dar Datsu and Lai Tsumai, who were trying to look inconspicuous—not easy to achieve when they couldn’t get very close to Penrys or each other without complaints from their chains. Mpeowake was still being tended to, near the wall where they’d ended up when whatever device had been used had done its damage.

  “I don’t understand why they didn’t just finish us off once we were down,” Penrys muttered to Chosmod when she stared at the dead bodies where they’d been standing.

  Tun Jeju turned his head in her direction. “You haven’t seen the bodies in the courtyard yet. No betting man one who got out would have been tempted to go back in to see if you were actually dead or not. And I doubt there was anyone left alive in here to check.”

  She swallowed. And even so, they managed to capture Najud, and Vylkar, and I couldn’t stop them. And where is Munraz?

  Two of the brown-robes approached Tun Jeju and waited for his attention.

  “Well?” he said.

  The senior woman reported first. “We found three different openings into the sewers, with obvious traces of passage. They’ve had three hours—if they don’t return here, we won’t be finding them. There may be other exits that weren’t used, perhaps blocked by the attackers. I would expect they have plans for how to reassemble somewhere else and maintain contact but unless one of these two here…”

  Tun Jeju raised his hand to stop her and turned to the man. “What’s the status of the injured?”

  The man’s robes were bloodstained, and he had an air of weariness. “The Ndanwe woman will recover, but she’ll have difficulty moving about until her ribs heal. She’s awake and asking questions. We’ve told her about the death of her young female companion, and she’s asked to speak with you.”

  “Can you bring her here?” Tun Jeju asked.

  The doctor shrugged. “We have to get her on a pallet anyway—we can start by moving her over here. We were too late for many of the others.”

  He spared a casual glance for Penrys and the other survivors. “Nothing needed for these, though I expect they’ll be sore for a while. Now, unless there’s something else, I’d like to see to the body counts.”

  Tun Jeju dismissed them both.

  “And how do you plan on finding the captives, notju-chi?” Char Nojuk was single-minded about what he expected from the apparatus of Imperial Security.

  “Who attacked here, samkatju-chi?” Tun Jeju shot back. “Who ignores the authority and custom of the Char family, as they ignore the leipum and assault my representative and the guests of the emperor?”

  An uneasy look crossed Char Nojuk’s face. “Now, that I can’t say, not for sure. We have disagreements among ourselves, I’ll not deny it, but we know better than to start a war we can’t win. We just wanted to be left alone.”

  “That’s not what these wizards wanted,” Penrys said. “They were told what we planned, they knew we wanted to normalize their position. That’s clearly what they don’t want. There’s going to be some kind of demand, based on their hostages—where will they send it? What do they want?”

  “How should I know what these motherless scum want?” Char Nojuk responded hotly.

  “Don’t you think you should find out?” Tun Jeju asked, quietly. Char Dami nodded silently from her seat beside her father.

  “Come, wo-chi, we should go home and give them the news. There’s nothing we can do here. And you need to talk to people.”

  He jerked his head in reluctant agreement, and glared at Penrys. “I expect to hear from you every day until this is over. This is your fault, you and that feckless Zannib husband of yours.”

  Penrys held her face expressionless until he’d stalked off with his daughter, and then slumped in her seat. She hoped Tun Jeju would delay his own admonition until the pounding in her head subsided.

  Movement caught her eye, and she watched some of the brown-robes carry Mpeowake on a pallet over to their cluster of tables. She was alert but pale, and winced when her bearers jolted to a halt.

  “Notju-chi,” she said, to Tun Jeju, her tone of displeasure unimpaired by addressing him while flat on her back. “Chosmod has told me of the death of Toawe and the capture of Ijumo. This is not the hospitality we expect from great Kigali, and our embassy will be most displeased. We must insist on a prompt pursuit of the captives before greater harm comes to them.”

  “As you say, Mpeowake-chi. Please be assured that we are giving this our fullest attention.” Tun Jeju’s voice was calm, but Penrys could feel the steel in his mind.

  “And you…” Mpeowake turned her head to Penrys. “There is something you should know. One of the missing wizards from Ndant is my sister’s son, Kalavo. He vanished almost four years ago, en route to the north. We assumed his ship was lost—it happens—but we never saw his body and so he is on our list of the missing.”

  She took as deep a breath as her broken ribs permitted. “I
saw him here tonight, in the audience, with a chain. And he didn’t recognize me.”

  She lifted her head. “They tell me there’s no dead Ndanwo here that could be him, so presumably he got away. I’d like him back, please.”

  Letting her head fall back to the pallet, she spoke to no one in particular. “And now I’d like to return to my embassy, if you don’t mind, and give them the news.”

  CHAPTER 15

  The walk back to the Imperial Security building, under guard from a squad of brown-robes, seemed endless to Penrys, every step matched by the throbbing in her head. She walked with her eyes on the ground, sunk into her own fog. At least she’d stopped throwing up after the first half hour.

  Every few blocks she scanned the area, looking for a buildup of wizards again, but found only a few, in ones and twos, and no chained ones at all. And none of the captives. Tun Jeju was with them and the guards were vigilant against physical attack, but she was worried about a second strike.

  Tun Jeju had offered to shelter all the wounded, but both Mpeowake, from her litter, and Chosmod declared they would be more comfortable in their own embassies.

  Penrys couldn’t decide what to do. She was sure the wizards who’d attacked them could identify her as the one who’d killed so many of them. How could she return to the Zannib embassy and make them all a target there? She was uneasy about letting Tun Jeju take charge again of the two recently released prisoners, but she couldn’t think of an alternative.

  Chosmod had matched steps with Penrys for half a block before she really noticed and looked up at him inquisitively.

  “What are you going to do, brudigna?” he said, in Rasesni.

  Was she still in charge, in Tun Jeju’s mind, or had today’s fiasco changed that? She remembered her reading in the Collegium in Ellech. Never show weakness as a leader.

  “We have to find out what they want, and we have to get the captives back.”

  “Yes, that goes without saying,” Chosmod said, impatiently. “What are you going to do, right now, to seize the initiative.”

  She spoke without hesitation. “Search the city for the captives.” She tapped her forehead. “If I can find Najud or Munraz, I can find the others.”

  Chosmod nodded. “Good. I can help with that, and so can Mpeowake, if she will. Maybe even the chained ones, or that Char family.”

  He searched her face. “And if they’ve been moved out of range?”

  Her stomach clenched again. “Search first, adjust if not found.” She took a breath. “You have suggestions?”

  The man was fifteen or twenty years older than she was, and remembered more than three years of it, unlike her. She’d take whatever advice she could get.

  “I don’t think they would go to all that trouble to take captives if they just intended to kill them,” he said, judiciously. “But they might move them.”

  “Can they do that and not have other wizards notice? I’m beginning to think a significant fraction of the city is involved.”

  “But your Char Nojuk didn’t recognize the existence of this group, and I gather he’s part of the established underground community.”

  Penrys paused in mid-step. “You’re right. That implies they’ve come out of hiding today for the first time.”

  “So we’ve got allies, I should think, at least potentially, in the wizard community here.”

  “And enemies. They’re not going to talk to me, after today’s…” She wanted to say “slaughter” but couldn’t bring herself to utter the word.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Chosmod said reflectively. “How tempted they might be to force you into a vulnerable position in exchange for the captives, don’t you think?”

  She stared at him.

  He shook his head. “You have something of value now, brudigna, don’t you see? Something they want—you. This morning, they only wanted captives. Now they’re going to want something else. We can use that.”

  She stirred herself and started walking again. Chosmod swung along beside her, comfortably silent while she turned the notion over.

  “Thank you, Modo—may I call you that?” He nodded.

  “It’s good to have leverage,” she added. She could feel her mind starting to work again. “I’ve got to keep them from taking what they want before I’m ready to offer it to them, and I’ve got to keep those other chained ones out of their reach.”

  “Are you sure they care about them?”

  Penrys swept her hand through the air. “Certain. Nothing stopped them from attacking us on the street, once we were gathered as a group. Why invade that compound and make it harder on themselves, unless they wanted to eliminate the chained wizards, too, and decided to strike when both targets were together?”

  “Speculation, but reasonable.” It was Chosmod’s turn for ruminating silently for a while.

  “Ask your new allies for protection—that Char family,” he suggested. “You have value to them, too— a channel to Tun Jeju, a link to these chained wizards, and a proven fighter against the rogues.”

  “I’ve thought about that,” Penrys said. “But I don’t know that they can stand up to fighting physically this way. What we saw in the compound today, not just weapons but devices—can the established hidden wizards defend against that? And will they?”

  She waved her hands to illustrate. “Char Nojuk lives in his family compound. There are wizards in his family, a few, but others, too. I can’t go there for shelter any more than I can make the Zannib ambassador and his family into targets. They probably all live like that, hiding within their families.”

  Her voice rose. “Whoever attacked us today had more than a hundred wizards. It wasn’t spontaneous, a ‘riot’ like Char Notju suggested—I don’t believe that for a moment. Who leads them? How many are there? They very nearly overran us all, and we were a lot stronger than the Char family resources. No one family could stand up to that.

  “So that’ll have to change, too,” Chosmod said, with a shrug.

  She laughed. “You don’t ask much, do you? Is that before or after I cower in the Imperial Security building with my handful of unwilling minions?”

  “I can think of worse places to go. At least you’ll have disciplined fighters on your side. And wizards will join you, if you work it right.”

  When they finally reached the Imperial Security building, Tun Jeju paused on the steps to hear their decisions. The guards with Mpeowake continued in the direction of the Ndant embassy, and Chosmod walked off alone to his own embassy, waving off the guards offered by Tun Jeju.

  Penrys turned to the chained wizards. “Dar Datsu, I’ll be returning here tonight, after I make a couple of necessary visits while things are in flux and it’s relatively safe. I strongly recommend that both of you take advantage of the notju’s hospitality this evening, and we can discuss it further in the morning.”

  The two wizards exchanged weary glances with each other. Lai Tsumai shrugged. They filed up the steps, and several of the guards went with them.

  She looked for a moment up the steps at Tun Jeju. “I have an idea,” she told him. “Will you still be here in a couple of hours? I’d like to discuss it with you.”

  He nodded. “Where will you be in the meantime?”

  “I want to pick up a few things from the Zannib embassy and explain what’s going on to them. And clean up, I suppose.” She surveyed the rags of her lovely formal robes. She couldn’t imagine what her face looked like, but her hands were bloody and filthy.

  “And then…” She took a breath. “What’ll be done with the bodies?”

  “We’ll take those eight bodies into our care and embalm them, pending our reestablishing contact with the leader of the chained wizards, that Rin Tsugo. If he claims them, we’ll release them to him.

  “The attackers?” she asked.

  “Men will be there all night sketching faces and searching them. When we’re done, they’ll be buried, like any other enemy of Kigali.”

  Penrys could hear the anger
in his voice.

  “Our guests… the three of them will be cleaned up decently and presented to their embassies, this evening.”

  “I’d hoped so,” she said. “Mpeowake will explain what’s happened to the Ndanum, but what about the Ellech embassy? Two dead and Vylkar missing.” She cleared her throat. “I’m as much Ellech as those chained wizards from wherever are Kigaliwen. I should go there myself and talk to them. I’m not sure I’ll be welcome, but I have to try.”

  Tun Jeju nodded. “I’ll have an honor guard waiting here for you when they’re ready, and you can escort the bodies yourself. We’ll talk when you return.”

  He gestured to four of the remaining guard to go with her. No more nonsense about Zep Pangwit as a guide apparently—seemed she rated more serious protection now.

  The guard at the Zannib embassy hesitated when he saw Penrys’s bloody face, but he opened the gate to her nonetheless. Mir Tojit was waiting alone in the courtyard. He exchanged an enigmatic look with the guards that had accompanied her, and the squad leader nodded to him and took position outside the gate.

  “This may take a little while,” Penrys warned him.

  “We’ll be here, minochi.”

  The gates were shut behind her and she focused on the katsom. “You’ve heard?” she said.

  “A message was sent,” he acknowledged, dropping any pretense that he didn’t work for Imperial Security. “Will you be staying?”

  “No, I can’t bring this down on the head of Talqatin and his household. I’m just here to clean up and gather a few things, and then I’ll leave.”

  Talqatin appeared at the top of the steps. He looked her over, and then called to Mir Tojit, “Send someone to her room to help her.”

  He came partway down the steps and beckoned her in. “It was only yesterday that you mentioned ‘a lively week.’ I think you underestimated things.”

  She trudged slowly up to join him, and they climbed the rest of the steps side by side. “Najud and Munraz?” he asked her, quietly.