“Another Valisar heir gone,” he said, his tone satisfied. He looked down at Piven at his side and wondered if he should kill the halfwit too. And yet in just such a short time he’d grown rather fond of his shadow. The boy, strange and lost though he was, seemed to like Loethar. Freath had told him that Piven liked everyone because everyone was good to him. No one upset him—he was too hard to reach anyway—and the only time the child showed any emotion was in response to heat or cold, pain or hunger.
“And even that he seems to grow out of,” Freath had admitted. “These days you wouldn’t know if Piven was hungry unless you heard his belly grind. And pain no longer seems to register as it used to.”
The child was harmless and although he was aligned to the Valisars he was not blood and Loethar felt sure this orphan could be used to his own ends. Humiliation was a very strong weapon and to be seen befriending one of the precious—and easily the most vulnerable—members of the family, especially turning him into a dumb pet, might help reinforce his power over the people.
“What is your intention for the Set?” Freath had asked him only that morning.
He’d decided to be honest. “I have heard of a great tyrant from the far northwest many centuries back who overthrew a particularly powerful king. To help reinforce his image and to make his conquered peoples feel more kindly toward him he had opted to rule with as little oppression as possible, throwing festivals, building infirmaries, and encouraging the scholars and thinkers to come forward with their ideas. It was a far subtler means of manipulation. Erecting statues of him surrounded by children, or riding a dolphin, or walking with popular gods, had a far keener effect on the psyche of the people than aggression could ever have achieved.”
Freath had nodded. “I think you refer to Thorasius.”
“That’s him.” Loethar continued. “Suddenly the tyrant became benefactor, and within two decades he was a father of the nation.”
“And you have learned from this,” Freath finished for him.
“I have no quarrel with the people of the Set, only its rulers, and especially its leading family, the Valisar dynasty.”
Freath had made some inane remark but Loethar knew his candour had given the bitter aide pause for thought.
His mind came back to the present and he looked at Iselda, whom he noticed was quickly becoming a mere echo of the defiant woman he’d met. Pity. She’d impressed him with that disdain but seeing her husband’s roasted carcass had punched the final fight out of her. The burning of her daughter’s corpse, which she insisted on witnessing, and the loosing of the infant’s ashes just moments ago might have been the final nails in the coffin. He took in her absent gaze, her silence—not even tears any more—and the total lack of any interest in anything around her. Perhaps it was all over for Iselda. This woman’s death—if it occurred—would especially please Valya, he was sure, if not himself.
“We are done here,” he said to Stracker, who nodded.
“The Vested have arrived,” his Right said.
“Remember what I said,” Loethar said, a hard gaze at the man, who glanced briefly at Freath and nodded.
Stracker departed and Loethar looked toward Freath. He shrugged. “She’s all yours, now. Enjoy yourself.”
“Thank you, sire. Come, Iselda. I have long awaited this chance to be alone with you on very equal terms.”
“Leave Piven with me,” Loethar said, when he noticed Freath glance at the boy. “His new leash should be ready today.”
“As you wish, sire,” Freath said, bowing. “Do you need me for anything further?”
“Not right now, Freath. Go have some fun with the queen. Although it will be like lying with the dead.”
Freath’s lips pulled back over his small teeth. “It matters not to me, sire. Call me whenever you require me to attend you,” he said, before guiding the near catatonic woman from the top of the palace.
Alone at last. Loethar sighed. He was sure Valya would arrive soon and perhaps his mother might deign to enter Penraven. He hoped not, although he suspected a pride of mountain lions wouldn’t keep Negev from her chance to finally gloat over Iselda, or her corpse.
Stracker was waiting for them, and Clovis found him once again far more imposing at this closer distance; he no longer needed Kirin’s warning to give this man a wide berth. Even unarmed, the man was a mountain. Even with his fury of his family’s blood on this man’s hands, Clovis didn’t think he’d survive a duel against him.
He stole a glance at him now, though, because he felt relatively secure while the barbarian’s attention was fully riveted on the middle-aged man currently doing his utmost to impress his captor. Clovis looked at Kirin, who pursed his lips. They were both thinking the same thing. This man—Clovis couldn’t remember his name—was apparently able to make things disappear and he was selling his skill with great gusto.
“I saw him once,” Kirin mumbled in the queue. “He was nothing more than a charlatan in a travelling show.”
“Well, if they believe him, he’ll be Loethar’s Left before he knows it!” Clovis said sourly.
“That’s my point,” Kirin whispered. “He has no idea that in his grandiose efforts he’s probably signing his own death warrant. They’ll discover he’s a small time conjuror and probably slash his throat for wasting everyone’s time.”
Clovis shivered, even though death had sounded so attractive only the previous day. “So we stick to our plan.”
“Yes,” Kirin said, his tone firm. “Don’t deviate. I promise you it will save us but more importantly, it will give us a chance to help whatever rebellion force ever gets the courage to fight back.”
“What makes you think your apparent lack of magic means they won’t slash your throat this instant for being of no use to them at all?”
“Well, Clovis, this is where we musn’t fully undersell our talent,” Kirin urged, slightly more acid in his usual optimistic tone. “It’s a fine balance, I agree. Ah, he’s been put into that group. I wonder what that grouping means?”
Clovis shrugged. So far that group contained the fellow who claimed to make things disappear, a woman who apparently could understand the “mind of the sea,” another woman who was a healer—always handy, Clovis thought—a youth who claimed to control weather, a girl who used animal intestines to divine the future and a man who could talk to trees. He looked away, no longer interested. “I don’t know, Kirin,” he said, his voice heavy with weariness.
“Don’t let us down now that we’ve come this far.”
Clovis shuffled another few paces further, trying to ignore Kirin’s pulling his shirt to hurry him along. Finally it was his turn to face Stracker. He glanced at Kirin, but his friend’s expression was suddenly and deliberately blank. Perhaps he was trying to suggest they act as though they did not know one another.
“Name?” the guard asked, well and truly bored it seemed.
Clovis was impressed that all the barbarians of rank spoke Set. “Er, I am Clovis of Vorgaven.”
“Ah.” Stracker took over, making a mark near what must have been a name against a list. “We are told you read the future.”
Clovis felt this throat close. He gave a nod and after a nervous glance sideways at Kirin, added, “Er, well, that is what people want to believe. Who am I to turn down a chance for a living?”
Stracker looked up from his list, surprised, and then frowned at Clovis. He flicked the parchment. “Are you telling me this is a lie?”
Clovis shrugged, feeling himself beginning to perspire beneath the man’s hard look. He wanted to take the man by the throat and squeeze hard but wondered whether his hands would even fit around the bull-like neck. He knew Kirin was willing him to convince the barbarian but Stracker looked capable of immediate violence, as though he wouldn’t even wait for Clovis to form his argument. The dark green ink and its designs rippled over the ropey muscles and veins of the barbarian’s thick arms and shifted on his face as his puzzlement turned to a snarl. Clovis swallowed. “F
orgive me. I am not lying but I also don’t want to make any grand claims. It is true that I see things now and then. But they are unpredictable readings. I actually tend to be a good observer of people and those instincts combined with the little sentient skills I do possess seem to impress the wealthy community in which I used to live.”
“I see,” Stracker said, his eyes narrowing. “So you admit to some magic?”
“I don’t want to mislead anyone,” Clovis reiterated, “but if it prevents an untimely death, then yes, it would not be a lie to admit to some sentient skill,” he lied.
“Stand over there,” Stracker said, pointing to a lonely corner of the guardhouse.
“But no one else is there,” Clovis observed bleakly. He’d ruined it for himself.
“How clever of you. Yes, I can see that you have sound observation skills, Master Clovis,” Stracker said acidly. “Move!”
Clovis did so reluctantly and with the help of a shove from one of the guards. He let his mind go blank as he turned his attention to Kirin, who was pushed forward.
“Name?” the same bored guard asked in the same weary manner.
“Kirin. I’m from the Academy at Cremond.”
“A teacher,” Stracker snarled, striking off the name when he found it.
“No, not at all. I don’t know how best to describe my role other than someone who interviews students and divines their best study paths.”
“Divines?”
Kirin nodded. “That’s how it was described.”
“It is magical?”
“Low level. We call it ‘trickling,’” Kirin said. Clovis was astounded by the younger man’s composure and ability to lie with such confidence under this sort of scrutiny. Kirin’s voice wasn’t even shaking, whereas Clovis was still sweating from Stracker’s brief, angry attention. Kirin looked calm, almost jaunty.
“Tell me what trickling means,” Stracker growled.
“Well, although I don’t have a lot of power within me I can direct whatever I have toward someone and learn about…how can I put this?…um, his mood, you could say.”
Stracker frowned. “Mood?”
“Disposition. Is that a word you understand?”
Now Stracker’s expression darkened, his eyes hooded. “Be careful, teacher. I have the power to spill your blood right now.”
“Oh, I know that, sir,” Kirin said smoothly, censuring all cockiness. “My respect,” he added, bowing. “I meant no insult—I was just trying to find a word that was meaningful to both of us. My talent is unusual and I must say pretty useless in most situations, other than at the university. With its help I can place people into their right study area.”
“Any useful application at all that you can impress me with, teacher?”
Kirin puffed his cheeks, blew out the breath quickly. “Well, I suppose I can pick what might be the right tasks suited to people so they work efficiently; I can sense hidden talents, I can even get a good idea of whether a new marriage will be strong or weakened through discord. You see, quite odd and possibly pointless but there are practical benefits.” Kirin smiled easily.
Stracker considered him. “Why aren’t you scared like everyone else?”
“Another of my abilities is to hide my emotion, sir. I am terrified of you but I realize there is very little I can do should you decide to hurt me, torture me, injure me, kill me. I am, sir, as squashable, you could say, as an ant is to a mountain lion.”
Stracker gave a dark grin. “Mountain lion, eh?”
“You look as intimidating,” Kirin admitted.
“Over there, teacher, with the other useless one.”
Kirin nodded and moved to join Clovis.
“Well that makes two of us for the executioner’s blade,” Clovis said.
“Don’t be too hasty,” Kirin replied.
The majority who had made the journey were interrogated and were put into a third group that was herded off almost immediately. Clovis felt instantly alarmed when he heard the guard leading them away discussing which accommodations they were to be given; it seemed those people had impressed and their lives would be extended. His own group’s motley number had swelled to include a woman who apparently could talk with animals, another woman who was a healer—again, handy—a water diviner, a youth who claimed to dream the future, a girl about the same age who used blood to divine the future, a wizened man who could make things grow, a silent girl wrapped in a headscarf, and finally a youngster who could dislocate all his joints and fit into a small wine barrel.
“Hardly magical,” one of the Vested standing with them commented.
“Well, you try it,” the young contortionist replied. “It’s a unique skill. Almost as impressive as your ability to know which plants will yield good harvest.” The youngster was right, Clovis decided; each of them had talents that were unique but, to all intents, relatively useless. He hoped Kirin had made a wise choice in leading them down this path.
Another group, of which there were at least twenty, maybe more, were left standing opposite his small clan. They looked nervously around, probably muttering the same anxieties as his group, Clovis assumed.
Stracker sent the last person over to the other group, a young lad probably eleven summertides. “They’re all lying or of no aid to us. Kill them,” he announced casually, then added, “except the boy. Send him to my chambers.”
Collectively the larger group quailed. Some of the women began to scream; others who had clearly tried to protect family members through lies gathered their weeping children around them. One man stepped forward to protest and Clovis had to suck back a cry of shock when he saw Stracker slash his blade across the man’s face. The wound opened, spilling blood in a torrent before Stracker gutted the man in front of the horrified onlookers.
“Shut up!” he roared above the dying man’s guttural noises. “I had intended to go easy on you so don’t make this any more complicated for yourselves. Go quietly. You have no choice. You have tried to pretend you have skills, or your claim to sentient skills are of no use to us. Either way, we do not need you.”
“Turn us loose,” a woman begged, clutching the arm of a man next to her. “We can’t hurt anyone.”
Stracker smiled. “But you have insulted me. Did you think we from the Steppes are such imbeciles as to be taken in by your pathetic attempts to present yourselves as empowered?” He paced before them. “Each of you,” he said, “offered yourselves to us.” He pointed behind him. “The group over there, and the group that have gone, were all named by others as having powers that can’t be explained. You are all irrelevant but you have sold yourselves as important. You took the risk, you gave it a good go, but you have failed. I have no use for you and I certainly don’t want to feed your hungry bellies.”
“Please,” voices begged him.
Clovis was trying desperately not to look up from the ground where his gaze had been firmly directed but he glanced up helplessly and saw the fatally wounded man keel over, saw the desperate expressions on the doomed faces, and was reminded that this was how Leah and Corin must have sounded, pleading for their lives from the same brute. He gagged. Though he didn’t want to vomit, he couldn’t help himself retching and he raced to bend over in a corner, losing the pathetic bread and thin gruel they’d been given this morning.
The squeals intensified as the guards corralled the group into another courtyard and Clovis blocked his ears, unable to bear listening to their cries. He felt a steadying hand on his back.
“Be calm.” It was a woman’s voice. Clovis wiped his mouth on his sleeve and looked up. “You can do nothing but pray for a speedy despatch for them.”
“How can you be so heartless?”
“Heartless? My husband of nine years is with them,” she said, giving him a hard, unblinking look. “I can’t save him. I can’t even say goodbye to him. Do you think screaming, clawing at him, begging that animal will change anything?” Clovis shook his head dumbly as he straightened, glancing briefly at Kirin, who
was staying well out of this exchange. “So I’m using every ounce of my body to force myself to stay calm, as you must. We will only fight back if we keep our minds clear and on one goal only.”
Clovis closed his eyes. Another rebel!
“I am Reuth,” she said. “And I will have my revenge.” She looked up and he saw her convey a message with her eyes as the last of the group was finally shuffled away. He could see the deep sorrow in one man’s face; he had to be the husband.
Clovis turned back to the woman. “I’m sorry, please forgive me. I too lost my wife and child to the same brute. My wounds are still too raw. Are you the one with visions?”
She nodded and he saw her eyes were wet. Clovis couldn’t imagine what it was costing her to be so brave, knowing the man she loved was about to be slaughtered. He should console her, he thought, but he did nothing, said nothing, and she continued, “Not that they believe me and it’s a very contrary skill. It chooses when and where, how and why. But it may save my life. We must stay alive, as best we can.”
“I’m not as brave as you,” he said.
Kirin joined them. “Then we’ll all be brave for each other.” Everyone else could hear their discussion and murmured agreement although every face looked as pale and traumatized as the other.
Fresh screams began outside. Reuth visibly tensed and reached for someone, anyone. It was Kirin who hugged her, pressing her face close to his chest to stifle any sobs. Clovis felt sick for being unable to offer any comfort to this courageous woman.
“What will he do to the boy?” someone asked.
“He will use him to feed his perverted sexual appetite,” Kirin replied. “At least until he gets too bored with the boy.”
“How do you know?” Reuth asked, wincing at the shrieks.
Kirin shrugged hastily. “I have to get out of here,” he said, not answering her.
“It will stop soon,” Reuth said to him quietly. “And then we will know what they plan for us. Let us say a prayer for them.”
Royal Exile Page 14