“Is he filthy?” the guard asked. “I thought he was just brown naturally. Like her.”
“Well, right at this moment, he is both,” Ylfing snarled. “What a horrible thing to say about a person.” Despite the venom of his tone, his hands hadn’t gotten any less gentle. “Feel his hands, though, Consanza.” He let go and Consanza’s own nut-brown fingers wrapped around mine.
“Goodness. Ylfing’s right, this isn’t good for you. Guard, listen. Have you had to do paperwork for documenting the death of a prisoner on your watch? I’ve never had to, not having your job, but I’ve seen the damn stuff before, and it’s at least a hand span high. Now, you can take a gamble that he’ll die on somebody else’s watch, but you can’t count on them looking in on him to check—or reporting his death even if they did. They might just figure some other sucker could take the credit for it and pretend like they never noticed. Or you could give this man a few creature comforts in the last weeks of his life, and severely lessen your chances of having to navigate all the red tape. Not to mention,” she said in tones of dripping sarcasm, “I’m sure the gods would smile upon such generosity.”
“I don’t know where they put it.”
“The brazier? Just bring him a pot of embers. Enough to warm his hands at the very least.”
The guard sighed. “Karina Harnos,” he called. “You’ll watch them while I go downstairs, won’t you?”
Karina Harnos, whoever that was, must have replied. The guard grumbled something and stomped off.
“Oh, well done,” Ylfing said brightly. “Beautifully done.”
“Heh. You only have to know how to manage them,” Consanza said.
“That’s what I keep telling him,” I hissed. This assistant arrangement they’d worked out might not be so bad after all—he’d know more about Nuryevens than I did, by the end of it. And Consanza was a good Nuryeven to learn from, with a sneaky mind for figuring out people. “Listen, though, um . . . I need to ask you something,” I whispered.
“Me?” Ylfing asked.
In Hrefni, I said, “You need to tell me—did you confess to Ivo about what you told me?”
After a long hesitation: “Yes,” he mumbled.
“And?”
“He was upset. I’m not allowed to come with him to meet with his friends anymore.”
Shit. “Could you bring him here?”
“What for?”
“I just want to talk to him.” And then I realized—I couldn’t talk to him. Even if he came, I couldn’t. There was a guard standing right there in the hall. There would be one right by my door. “You said he’d been teaching you how to write beautifully like a scribe. Haven’t you been teaching him anything?”
“Um . . . Stories and things. He likes stories.” I made a note to find out which stories he liked, which his favorite was—that says a lot about a person, I think.
“Nothing else?”
“Like what?”
“Like Hrefni?” I said, ridiculously hopeful.
“Why would I teach him Hrefni?”
I swore and, finding the Hrefni oaths too vague and circuitous to really express the depth of my frustration, switched briefly to Tashaz. “Fine,” I said, returning to Ylfing’s native tongue. “Here is what you do. Ivo’s a good scribe; teach him the Hrefni runes so he can read them, at least, and bring him here. Tell him I have something to talk to him about, and that we’re going to pretend like I’m giving both of you language lessons. I can’t talk freely in Nuryeven with the guards here.”
“I don’t know if he’ll want to see you. . . .”
“Tell him that if he loves his country and he wants to make things better, he’ll come.”
I think Consanza was a little disgruntled to be left out of the conversation, but it wasn’t anything she needed to know, and a few minutes into the discussion, I smelled her tobacco smoke and figured that she’d settled in to wait us out.
“That sounded awfully suspicious,” she said when we were done. “Good job you waited until the guard was gone. Did I hear Ivo’s name a few times?”
“I was only dictating my will to Ylfing for when I’m dead, since my advocate doesn’t think she can save me from the noose. Gods above, I have to do all of the work around here, don’t I?”
“Chant,” Ylfing scolded. “She just got the guard to get some heat for you. Don’t speak so rudely to her. You’ve hurt her feelings.”
“He hasn’t,” Consanza said sharply. “I don’t care whether he thinks I’m doing my job or not. I don’t give a fuck either way.”
“She really doesn’t,” I said. “I’m just some wandering beggar who has probably done something wrong, so why shouldn’t I be drawn and quartered, or buried alive, or hacked to pieces with a wooden ax, or wrapped in sails and burned, or whatever barbarian punishment the courts decree will be my fate?”
“Exactly,” Consanza said coldly. “Why not?”
“I wish you two wouldn’t fight,” said Ylfing. “I don’t like it. It’s upsetting.”
“Just do as I asked and come back on your day off from being a famous advocate’s assistant. Does she ask you to polish her boots, or was that your idea?” I pointed to Consanza’s boots as I spoke. They were extremely shiny, and that was about all I could see of her.
“Her husband does it,” Ylfing said. “He finds it relaxing.”
“How would you know?”
“I met them the other day.”
“Oh gods,” I said. “You’re going native.”
“I know you’re frustrated and lonely,” he said, “but you needn’t take it out on me like this. I’ve only been trying to help you.”
There was a clank. “Here,” the guard grunted. “Pot of coals, just like you said.”
“And now some hot water,” I said, enunciating carefully.
“Fat chance,” said the guard.
“We’re going,” Consanza said, rising to her feet. “Come on, Ylfing.” He got up slowly.
“Wait,” I said, “why are you leaving?”
“Because I have things to do today, and because even though I don’t give a fuck what you think of me, Ylfing gives one about what you think of him.”
“Bye, Chant,” he said. He sounded . . . gods, I don’t even have a word for it, but it shot arrows into my heart. “I’ll be back in a couple days, I guess. I’ll . . . The thing you asked, I’ll do it.”
I should have said sorry right then. Found my tongue in knots, and by the time I untangled it, they were gone already. I didn’t tell stories to the guards that day. I was too busy kicking myself.
Ylfing seemed to have forgotten it when he came back two days later. There was news, and that was all he wanted to talk about for the first half hour, alternating between yammering at me and to the guard, as if the guard had any desire to be invited into the conversation. He ignored Ylfing with fair success.
I had gotten no news since being isolated in this cell, beyond what Vihra Kylliat had told me—the guards in this area of the prison were rather more tight-lipped than the ones down below had been. Ylfing filled in the holes of what I had missed.
“And then yesterday the investigators presented evidence that it was Rostik Palos Taidalat Krekshin, the Duke of Law, Casimir’s second in command, who killed him! He had been poisoning him for weeks, the doctors said! So he’s been arrested, and Zorya Miroslavat was set free, and now Justice is back up and running, and people have been saying that they might start processing other trials before Taishineya Tarmos is sentenced. So—” His voice faltered here. “So that could be a good thing or a bad thing, you know. Depending on Consanza.”
“Yes,” I said. “Depending on Consanza.”
He’d brought me a few more pieces of clothing—two shirts and a threadbare pair of trousers, and he said that was all he had, because Ivo had had a lean month, what with the trials being frozen, and had needed Ylfing to pay him back some of the money, and of course Ylfing had, and Ivo had been very sweet and apologetic about it, and—
“Did you talk to him?” I asked, when I could bear it no longer.
“I said I would.”
“And?”
“He has a day off soon. We’ll come then. I taught him the alphabet in an evening and he’s already good at it.”
Eventually the kid settled down and we got to work. I was a little heartened to see him more upbeat and energetic than he had been the other day, and by the end of our session, he was aggressively optimistic about Consanza’s ability to win the appeal. I was less sure, but . . . Well, it doesn’t matter either way, does it?
Towards the end of our session, Ylfing told me more of what had happened, sort of by accident.
“Oh, what time is it?” he asked the guard. It was about fifteen minutes past the fourth hour of the afternoon, the guard said, and Ylfing scrambled to his feet. “I’d better go. I need to be back at Ivo’s flat by sundown, and it’s getting dark so early these days, just like home, really—”
“What? Why do you need to be back?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “it’s not that safe on the streets at night, and there’s the curfew to mind, you know, it wouldn’t do to have both of us in jail, ha ha,” as if he were trying to make a joke, but it fell flat on both our ears.
“It was safe a few weeks ago. You and Ivo and Consanza stayed quite late that one night.”
“Yeees,” Ylfing said. “Well. That was a few weeks ago, wasn’t it?”
“Why isn’t it safe now?”
“Um,” he said, and I could almost hear him wringing his hands. “Well. You know. The riots.”
“I knew they were rioting when—well, before, but I thought they would have stopped by now.”
“Nope. Um. Nope. They have . . . gotten worse. What with Coin being in shambles, you know. Money’s just a little tight right now, and people aren’t very happy about it! And there were supposed to be some shipments of coal from the country, but they got mislaid. . . . Anyway, I always get home by sundown, and Ivo and I keep the windows covered and we double-check all the locks, and Ivo sometimes puts a chair in front of the door.”
“Smart boy,” the guard muttered.
“He’s so smart,” Ylfing said, but I cut him off before he could waste any time explaining Ivo’s many charms to the guard.
“I didn’t know things were that bad,” I said.
“Yes. Very much.”
“House down the street from mine was torn to the ground,” the guard said. “I wouldn’t be out at night if I could help it either.”
“Does your shift go late?” Ylfing asked.
“Until nine.”
Ylfing sucked air through his teeth in a disgusting Hrefni noise of sympathy and concern.
The guard must have understood what he meant. “There’s a wagon that takes us all home when we work the shifts that end in the night,” he said. “Since not everyone is too fond of an Order guard walking alone by themselves in the dark.”
“Oh, good,” Ylfing said. “I would have worried about you.” I rolled my eyes. What did I tell you? The boy will go for any man who so much as blinks at him—all right, that was a little rude of me. Ylfing was smitten with Ivo; he only ever has eyes for one person at a time, but they come in such a cascade sometimes. You know when we were in Sharingol, he had a new crush twice a week? I’m not exaggerating. I kept a calendar and marked down all their names: Darsha, then Neric, then Tistin, then Ham, then Willet, then Pol. . . . The rest escape me. “Chant, I’ll come back tomorrow, all right? I can’t bring you any more clothes, but—sir, what’s your name?”
“Private Vidar,” said the guard. “Yours?”
“Call me Ylfing. I don’t have any of those other names. Can you maybe get a few more coals for his firepot? Please? It’d be ever so kind, and I think it’s going to be a little colder than usual tonight.”
Vidar sighed. “All right.”
“Thank you,” Ylfing said, and for a moment I reconsidered whether or not the boy was flirting. Perhaps he was just pretending to flirt—which is a good skill if you can pull it off. I used to use it myself, back when I was a young man—
Excuse me, what was that look for? I’ll have you know I used to turn heads every now and then. You know, back before my jawline started melting practically off my face. They used to say I was chiseled, and I used to keep my hair slicked back with fragrant oils when I was in the cities and had a whimsy for it. . . . Yes, I didn’t do too badly for myself back in the day.
Hmph! I’m allowed a little nostalgic vanity.
Ylfing cleared out soon after that, and the guard put a few more coals into my little brass firepot and pushed it up close to the door. It made a nice warm spot that was quite soothing when I pressed myself up against it.
I didn’t have long to enjoy it, because Vihra Kylliat came by within the hour, staggering drunk and dragging her chair again. The guards in the hall snapped to attention, and I had enough time to scuttle away from the lovely warm door and make myself as comfortable as possible—not very—on my cold, hard bench.
Her eyes were bloodshot and she all but collapsed into her chair. She had an entire large jug of some clear alcohol hooked on one finger by the little handle on the neck of the bottle. It was half-empty, and I assumed the missing half was what she had already consumed. “Chant,” she said. “Good evening.”
“Evening,” I said.
“I set Zorya Miroslavat free today.”
“So I heard.”
“Guards been gossiping? How do you do that? They’re trained never to speak to any of the prisoners. Ugh.” She settled the jug of liquor in her lap. “Who do I have to fire now?”
“No, it was my apprentice. He visited today, told me the news.”
“Oh.” She wrestled with the cork for a moment and eventually worked it free. “Don’t see what point there is in apprentices for your . . . alleged profession. Is he a spy too?”
“He’s not, and neither am I,” I said, which at that point wasn’t strictly true anymore. Gave me a bit of a vindictive thrill to think about it—as long as I was being sentenced to death for a crime, why not go ahead and commit that crime? The only reason not to would be to take the moral high ground, and, frankly, fuck that.
“Hmm.” She pulled a small cup out of one of her tunic pockets and poured herself a hefty tot of liquor.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Menovka. Local delicacy. It’s made of potatoes and whatever grain is lying around. Flavored with tarberry. Aged in stone jars—granite, usually. Always, for the good stuff. This is the good stuff. Then it’s whatsits. Distilled.”
“Strong, is it?”
“Could topple an ox.” She offered me the cup and I took a tiny sip of it. It burned four times as badly as the stuff she’d offered me a few days before, and I couldn’t feel my lips or tongue for a few minutes afterwards. Strangely, it didn’t much taste of anything, but when it was done burning it left a cold feeling in my mouth, though the actual liquor itself was room temperature. Needless to say, I didn’t have any more of it. I think she was amused by the coughing and choking, though. She drank it as if it were beer.
“I was thinking about my general,” she said suddenly. She plonked the bottle and the cup on the ground beside her, pulled her artificial leg up to rest across her other knee, and started fumbling at the button of her collar.
“Your general?”
“The one. You know. That you were telling me about before. I keep thinking about her. I almost didn’t let Zorya Miroslavat out. I could have kept her in custody—’cause of the assassins, and the riots, I could have done that. Martial law and all, that was her idea too, she knew I could do it if I’d wanted to. But I thought about the general, and I thought about what she would have done in my position, and then I did th
at. Dunno why that was important. Just was.” She finally got the button undone and pulled the chain of her not-a-necklace over her head and peered at it.
“Why don’t you tell me something?”
“Tell you what?”
“What is that if it isn’t a necklace?”
“Key. To wind up my leg, not that it’s any of your business.” She turned it over and scratched at part of the calf of the leg until a little panel popped open. She fit the key into it, after two or three tries, and . . . wound it up. Just like a child might wind up a clockwork toy.
“It’s a beautiful piece of work,” I said. “The artificer must have been a real master.”
“Aye, it came very dear, and from very far away. But it’s better than a peg.” She clicked the panel closed, looped the chain around her neck, and picked up the menovka again. “And worse in some ways.”
I wasn’t quite sure whether she wanted me to inquire or leave off entirely, so I just made a thoughtful humming noise and fussed with my blankets.
“I spend a lot of time counting,” she said suddenly. I hadn’t expected her to say anything else. “The clockwork, see. I can take about a thousand steps before I absolutely need to wind it again. Around eight hundred, it starts jamming or seizing up at random, and then sometimes I stumble. So I count, all the time I count. Sometimes I find myself counting even when I’m not walking.” She picked up her cup, gulped menovka, and stared hard at the floor. “That’s why it’s worse. All things have a price. I miss the peg because I didn’t have to count for that, I didn’t have to be aware in the same way, but then it didn’t let me do as much as this thing does. I couldn’t fight with the peg, couldn’t run. So I endure, and I count and count and count. If I forget to count, I embarrass myself at best, hurt myself at worst. So it’s better than the peg, and it’s worse.”
When she volunteered no further information, I said, “Tell me something else. Anything. One of your campaigns? Something funny or sad that happened during a siege?”
“Never done a siege,” she mused. “I heard other people do it. We don’t fight that way. I’ve always wanted to try.”
A Conspiracy of Truths Page 24