The writer sounded sickeningly professional. His life and my cover are as vines ... Arkan tradecraft talk: it meant this person was sending a sign back to his accomplices putting a stop order on enacting the threat at regular times, to preserve himself; if he died, the stop order wouldn’t go through, and the kidnappers would ... Lixand-mi. Sworn upon my poison tooth ... Arkan operatives usually had them—Mahid operatives, always—and would use them if captured. That meant if she tried to haul him off to Ikal for truth-drugging, he’d die, the stop order wouldn’t go through, and ... Lixand-mi ...
Her mind ran through possibilities. Did I ever mention to anyone, his moles? There was no one she could remember. A bluff? Even if it is, the rokatzk knows damn well I have to assume it isn’t, just in case.
The old feeling of chains came, so far and no further, slamming against bounds someone else set. Invisible chains of being poor, oak links and cuffs stapled to a solid plank floor, tight-pack on a Fehinnan slaver ... Her eyes clenched shut as she tried to deny memories, feelings ... No, she thought. I’d left those behind, I’d almost forgotten them. Her eyes snapped open at the next thought.
Whoever left the note might be watching. Her gaze flicked from one nearby lounger to the next. I won’t give him satisfaction. Him. It has to be a him, if it’s an Arkan. She shook herself, as if shaking off all she was feeling, ran a smooth hand over her hair. Calm. Be calm. Be ice. I’ve been that before. Lady Koru, hear me, help me. She leaned back stretching, and got up to saunter casually over to the fire for another cup of chai, then back to the tent.
Some part of her, the old, fearful Megan, longed to shriek and run straight into Shkai’ra’s arms, wanted desperately to leave this all to someone else. She held onto the tentpole to steady herself. Calm. That part of me I know too well. I’ll cry myself out when I have the luxury to, once Lixand is safe. Shkai’ra would be back before midnight, since the army would march tomorrow, no need to go running out to tell her.
She sat down and forced her breathing calm, trying to reach for some of the manrauq exercises, cold, formal, comfortingly empty of the emotions rushing through her ...
“Kh’eeredo? Megan, what’s the matter?” Shkai’ra, far earlier than she should have been here. Brought by a hunch, or what was left of the linking of minds they’d had on the ice last year, triggered by the Blue Mage’s manrauq-blast? Sometimes it came back, like the memory-residue of a hallucinogen taken years before; usually in moments of strong emotion. “I’m here, kh’eeredo.”
“Someone left me this note, pinned on the tent.” She translated in a whisper, looking up as the firelight painted the planes of Shkai’ra’s face, trying to be calm. “Somehow I don’t think he wants to talk about the new taxes in Brahvniki.”
Shkai’ra’s face didn’t change. “Probably not,” she said drily. “So, we’ll have a little diversion. Glitch visits again ... Oh, well. This war was getting too easy anyway.”
A smile forced itself onto Megan’s lips.”You obviously haven’t been sacrificing enough sheep.”
Shkai’ra shrugged. “So. You get all the information you can from this ... gentleman, and we go from there.”
Megan didn’t answer immediately, listening to the fire crackle, the sound of a lap-harp drifting from the next campfire over. “Would you ...” She hesitated. “I’m feeling very cowardly about this.” She flipped a hand, almost casually, claws flashing. “I feel as if I shouldn’t be able to move this easily. It’s almost obscene being this tied but free at the same time.” She sighed, looking down at her spread fingers. “I’m not explaining this very well.”
Shkai’ra’s arms closed around her, pulled her in close. Megan resisted for a heartbeat, then let herself be drawn in. “I didn’t get where I am by panicking,” the Zak said quietly into Shkai’ra’s shoulder.
“We’ve been in worse scrapes, love. Remember the alligators? To be eaten in such small bites ...” The Kommanza rubbed a knuckle along Megan’s cheekbone.
“I know. I’ll do what I have to.” She looked up. “Careful: People will stop calling you a barbarian if you get this soft.”
Shkai’ra chuckled. “But I am a barbarian—to anyone who deserves that shit.”
Megan nodded. “So, I can’t tear this pig-sucker into shreds ... yet.”
It’s you I smell, she thought, not the latrine. A tricky place for a clandestine meeting; no one would expect anyone to meet there. The copse was just far enough away from the privy itself to quietly talk without its many users hearing. Beeches, smooth-trunked with even branches; good climbing trees. She looked up, but saw no telltale dark shape. Wind pattered the leaves.
“As scheduled,” a precise male voice said quietly, from low, in Arkan. The accent ... Aitzas? Hardly, doing this work. He’s faking it. Unless he’s Mahid. The robed figure had been sitting in the underbrush; now it rose, and leaned casually against a trunk. “You know, you’re one person who is unmistakable, even in silhouette. Who else so short, with those curves ... Well, never mind, we have business.”
No. Not Mahid. They don’t have a sense of humor. “I prefer to deal in Enchian,” Megan said, in that language. “A more suitable tongue for business of any sort.” His face is in shadow, even if the moon came out clearer I wouldn’t see it, here. He made sure of that. If I got truth-drugged again ...
“Indulge me, don’t insult my nationality,” the man said, still in Arkan, the inflection superior-to-inferior. The voice didn’t even take on an edge. “I considered sending you one of the boy’s fingers, but forbore, thinking you a subtle enough person that such brutality was unnecessary. Am I wrong? Are we communicating?”
“Quite,” Megan said in Arkan, equal-to-equal. “And quite useless, since the last time I saw one of my son’s fingers was eight years ago.”
“Are you a fool? You couldn’t know for sure it wasn’t his. Not until you saw him again at any rate. Which is my intent.”
The more I get him to say, the better chance I’ll have of getting some scrap of information I can use. She took a step closer, sensed him tensing. “Having a poison tooth is one thing,” she said. “Using it is quite another. I’m not sure you sound brave enough to do it.”
“Eternal ecstasy in Celestialis receives the agent who gives himself in the moment he must,” the voice answered without hesitation or apparent fear. “Eternal smothering in Hayel takes the one who fails to. Which would you choose?”
“You don’t sound like a fanatic to me.”
“Part pragmatic, part fanatic, that’s what I’ve had to learn to be. Though I must admit nothing could impel me to be brave enough to do it more than the suggestion that I’m not ... perhaps I’m not. And yet I might be. Rather a great uncertainty, I think, on which to stake the life of the only child you’ll ever have, hmm?”
“Indeed.” I can’t risk it. He’s right. It’s too much. You pig-sucker. You corpse-spawn ... She bit down on her rage, a teacher’s voice echoing from a classroom in her memory: Your emotions are cards to play, in negotiation; don’t show your hand. She forced calm out into trembling limbs.
“Not to be crass,” she said. “But such a favor often calls for recompense, usually of similar worth.”
“So crass ... as usual with those who follow the merchant’s profession.” She detected a relaxing; natural, whether he had a poison tooth or not. “Actually, it’s quite a bargain I offer you. How can it not be? Is there anything as important to you as your son’s life? And freedom? I understand not ... so how can it but be a sweet deal for you? You understand I offer not just his life but his freedom, and his delivery to yourself, too. It’s all arranged, waiting only for a certain action from you.”
“A certain action? Perhaps you’d deign to be more precise.”
“You’ve been snippy,” the Arkan said, a smile audible in his voice. “And got me in a contrary mood. Guess.”
Megan clenched her teeth. “Who do you want me to kill? There’s no one I’m close to, I can think of, who Arko would want dead. Or is it just
information?”
A quiet snicker cut the night air. “Perceptive ... at least at first. You don’t have and can’t easily get information. But you have those claws, and those skills. And that determination; I’ve heard Megan Whitlock always finds a way.”
“I’m out of practice murdering,” she said, pretending boredom.
“Better brush up, then; a great shame it would be if you failed. I’ll give you a hint, whom. One to whom you are not particularly attached. One to whom you are close enough to do it. One who trusts you.” I bet he enjoyed pulling the wings off flies when he was a boy, thought Megan. Who trusts me? They all do. I don’t know that many ... ohhhhhh shit.
“... and who absolutely must die.”
As she breathed the name, she thought absurdly, I’m pronouncing it right. “Chevenga.”
“Shefen-kas,” he repeated. “Of course. Who else?” With the same amiable superior smoothness he’d affected all through, he added, “I’m not bothered about the difficulty of it. That’s your problem. And one I have faith in your competence to solve. But I am not without patience, of course not. Consider it. I will get back to you.”
I’m too old for this shit, Matthas thought. A good half-bead later, safe in his tent, in the section set apart for sellers, his hands were still shaking.
Once he had carried a poison tooth, in his early days in the field. When I was young, fearless and expendable. Now he had only a cavity filled with porcelain, de-venomed and fixed when he’d acquired too much experience to easily be thrown away, and a desk job. He remembered the first day without, the weight lifted of his shoulders bigger than he’d known, getting drunk, chewing nuts on both sides of his mouth ...
But Megan Whitlock need not know he was no longer young, fearless and expendable. Well, I am expendable, again. At least to Eforas. That was all that counted. Forget the humiliation, he told himself, hard. Forget that you don’t deserve this, that you’re only here through someone else’s idiocy, against your own better judgment. Forget that it shouldn’t be happening; that doesn’t matter now. It is.
As she had suspected, he wasn’t sure he would be brave enough to use a poison tooth anymore. Twenty years ago, it seemed so simple; I didn’t fake my conviction, I didn’t have to. Twenty years ago, before I knew all I know now. Or was it just that as one got older, one got more attached to life since one had less of it left? He felt a certain relief that the matter was moot; all that was needful was that Whitlock believe him for long enough.
Which only means, he thought, watching his fingers tremble, and feeling the wet stickiness of his own armpit-sweat, meeting in a place where she won’t smell my fear, keeping my voice steady and my laugh light, never missing a comeback. He laughed sickly. Easy.
“An Arkan looking to grow his hair down to his butt,” Shkai’ra said drily. “Well, do you think he really does have a poison tooth? Or would use it?”
“Dammit, Shkai’ra, how the hell can I know? You think I wouldn’t have told you if I had any inkling? Maybe he doesn’t, I can’t fish-gutted tell!” Megan bit back tears, took a deep breath, forced her voice down. “Love, I’m sorry.” Shkai’ra squeezed her hand in wordless understanding. “He might not, but if he does ... it’s too much to risk.” If after everything I find out somehow he doesn’t, I’ll pull his testicles out through his mouth ... over ten days ...
“So ambushing him and hauling him off to Gold-Dipped is out,” said Shkai’ra. “And ... well, oath or not, I’m somewhat disinclined to just go to him with it, too.”
My thought again, love. She was thankful Shkai’ra had said it. If the Arkan’s scheme were sophisticated enough that Chevenga’s people—however many of them he was willing to call away from war missions—couldn’t unravel it, he would sacrifice Lixand, whatever she said. His country and himself, versus one child. He’d have no real choice. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I agree.”
Shkai’ra sat with her back to the low-trimmed lantern at the inner end of the tent, eyes slitted in thought and her long fingers playing with the hilt of the sword across her lap. They had told Sova to absent herself for the night, which Megan had taken to suggesting now and then; she found the presence in the pup-tent an arm’s length from theirs somewhat inhibiting. That and talking in Fehinnan, which nobody within a thousand kilometers knew, gave them fair security.
“I can’t kill him, I can’t capture him, I can’t even bloody well follow him,” Megan snarled, working her claws into the tentpost and making shavings of wood that patterned down on the canvas floor. “If I kill ... if I do what he’s asking me to ... I can’t trust him not to kill Lixand anyway, Lady Koru!”
We can’t even be sure he hasn’t already, Shkai’ra thought, but kept to herself; it would be throwing oil on the fire, pointlessly. If he has ... Matthas might have been a little apprehensive if he could have seen their face then.
“Well, we have to proceed on the assumption that he will do as he promises,” Megan said. “From what I’ve heard of Irefas, they generally do stick to their word for this kind of thing, so that they can keep doing it; he’s got no particular reason not to. That we know of.” She slammed a fist into the tent floor. “If he knows his business, there’ll be watchers in hiding around the meeting place. What we need is a spy that can follow him invisibly. Or flying,” she said ironically. “And even the most powerful witch I know can’t fly ...” She trailed off, looking into the air over Shkai’ra’s head as if she could see straight through the canvas, smiling. “Fishhook can.”
The Kommanza’s fierce concentration slackened in bewilderment for a moment, and then she smiled cruelly. “Who no Arkan would suspect of anything but being out looking for dinner. Can you control her that well?”
“Control her—a cat? No; I’d have to convince her he was worth following.”
Megan pressed one hand to her middle, then pushed her fingers carefully through her loose hair. “I’m nervous. I want to be moving ... I’ll sit. We’ll think this out.” She sat down cross-legged and put her hands flat on her knees.
Shkai’ra leaned forward eagerly. “If you could get Fishhook to follow him—say, convince her he’s got food—she’d lurk around there of her own will. We’ll have to be very careful, one suspicion,”—she made a gesture across her throat. “But with luck, we could at least find his base.”
Megan covered her eyes with the heels of her hands and sat still for a while. “All right. If Fishhook comes up with something. If not, then I’ll have to consider ...”
“Killing Gold-Arse. For your child. Ia. If you stalled long enough before you did it, it wouldn’t matter to the war; it’ll have enough of its own power without him, and the world won’t lose so much. I know things like that bother you. Of course ...” Her light-hearted grin faded some.”It would mean breaking your strength-oath. Well, we are anyway, by not telling.”
It doesn’t even cross her mind that he’s a friend. She shook off the feeling of Chevenga’s face and shoulders under her studying hands. Only two iron-cycles ago, we swore, Megan thought. Lady Koru, forgive me. I would only do this for kin. “We’ll see what Fishhook finds.”
The next note appeared on Megan’s saddle-bags just before the march began, two days later.
She crumpled it in her fist and thrust it into her pouch to destroy later. Why am I not surprised that he has an affinity for meeting near latrines, she thought sourly, and swung the bags across her pony.
“Fishhook!” She offered her folded cloak as a saddlepad in front of her. “Here, puss puss, here!” Orange tabby bat-wings flipped and folded primly as the cat settled and started to wash. Megan yawned, wishing her night forays left her with a bit more sleeping time.
“Form u-u-u-up!” The pony ambled over to its place, rolling an eye. Megan stroked the wing-cat until she was a sprawled bundle of purring fur, wing-tips bobbing gently to the pony’s walk.
Playlater? She thought at Fishhook. The cat’s mind was fuzzy, half snoozing. Finehunt, follow. Sneaky. Fishhook shook her head, waking
up from her snooze, blinked. Megan desisted then, but took time several more times during the day to repeat the thought-threads to the wing-cat. Have to get her to think it’s her own idea.
They camped. Shkai’ra asked no questions. Not that Megan showed anything but a closed face; but in the years that the Kommanza had lived with the Zak, she’d watched, with hope, Megan’s habitual expression change from closed-in suspicion, a mask, to a more serene, open look. When this sort of thing happened, the mask came back. Megan kept Fishhook on her shoulder, one wing draped over her shoulder and tail wrapped firmly around one wrist, primarily through slipping her slivers of boneless pork.
“Meoew?” Fishhook pawed at Megan’s cheek, more-good nobonessmacklick
Later. A hard concept for the cat, future; she meowed peevishly. Megan refused wine, drinking only a swallow or two of the cider, her stomach knotting against food. She’d only taken meat to bribe the cat. She pressed a hand flat to her stomach. I’ll eat later, too, after I get back.
When it was dark, she put on her full cloak and hid the wing-cat cradled in her arms. Fishhook was content enough to travel that way.
When she got close to the latrine, before she stepped out of shadow, she thought at the cat: followman, good-meat. She could feel Fishhook sniffing. The cat sneezed—I don’t blame you, in this stink, beast—and crawled out of the cloak, swooping in a low arc into the bushes. I hope you want to follow. Koru, Goddess, make her want to follow him.
She stepped out into a patch of starlight.
“So.” The smooth whisper came from her left and in front of her. “Well?”
She sighed. “You leave me little choice.”
“Who has choices in the face of duty? I must serve my Empire, you must retrieve your child. War makes barbarians of us all, and someone’s life is always lost, ground between its wheels; this way we may ensure it is neither yours nor your child’s nor mine. Hah! It should have been his sooner; it would have been far fewer others’.”
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