The Eternal Dungeon: a Turn-of-the-Century Toughs omnibus

by Dusk Peterson

CHAPTER THREE

  He slept in his uniform that night, but even so, it took three shakes for his senior night guard to wake him.

  Once awake, Weldon shot up to a sitting position. “The prisoner has tried to kill himself?”

  “No, sir, but he is having trouble sleeping.” His senior night guard had brought a lit candle into Weldon’s bedroom, but his eyes were quite properly turned away as Weldon fumbled around his night-stand for his hood. “He keeps having dreams that cause him to wake up screaming, and then he’ll sob for a while and finally fall asleep and reawaken a short time later, screaming again. It has happened three times now. I thought you would want to know.”

  “I do. Thank you.” His hood now hiding his face, he swung his legs out of bed and began to grope the dark floor for his boots. “I would appreciate it if you would fetch Mr. Bergsen—”

  But his senior night guard was holding under his nose a piece of stiff card, folded and bound. “This arrived from the Codifier’s office a short while ago, sir. I was to give it to you when you came on duty.”

  Weldon took the card, borrowed his guard’s dagger momentarily to break the string, and unfolded the message under the candlelight.

  After a moment, he said, “Thank you. You may fetch the healer now.”

  He waited until his guard was gone before he let out his breath in relief. He recognized the hand of the High Seeker in this matter, but this message was needed proof that Mr. Daniels continued to consider him a trustworthy member of the inner dungeon.

  When Weldon arrived at the door to Zenas’s cell a few minutes later, he was not particularly surprised to find Mr. Crofford there, uniformed and holding quiet conversation with Weldon’s junior night guard, who remained at the watch-hole. Weldon could easily remember his own early days as a guard-in-training, and how every drama in the dungeon seemed too exciting to miss.

  “You understand what this is?” He handed the note to Mr. Crofford, who read aloud the contents to the other guard.

  “Yes, sir.” It was his junior night guard who replied. “It’s a note from the Codifier, granting you exemption from the Code’s rule against Seekers touching prisoners, should you consider it in this prisoner’s best interests.”

  “Make sure the other guards see this.” He waited until Mr. Crofford had nodded agreement, and then gave the order for the door to be opened. He was startled to realize that he was as tense as he had been during his earliest days in the inner dungeon.

  The junior night guard was not as practiced as Mr. Boyd in opening a door quietly. By the time Weldon slipped inside the cell and heard the door close behind him, Zenas had raised his tear-drenched face and was staring up at him. The boy had positioned himself, not at the warm end of the cell where the fire continued to dance as gaily as it had in the daytime, but at the near end, in the dimmest light. He made a movement as though to rise.

  Weldon shook his head and motioned him to stay where he was. Zenas watched with wide eyes as Weldon came over and sat on the floor beside him. The boy did not resist as the Seeker placed his arm around him, but he kept his gaze fixed on Weldon. Weldon wondered suddenly what the boy saw, staring at the black-hooded figure. Weldon could well imagine; he had seen himself in the mirror when he was in uniform.

  He hesitated. It was one of the oldest tenets of the Code, and though it had been broken numerous times over the decades, Weldon knew that the High Seeker had especially strong feelings about this portion of the Code. Weldon had heard Layle explain at length why it was in the prisoners’ best interests for the Seekers to remain hooded.

  But this was a twelve-year-old boy, who had not heard the High Seeker deliver his speech about the benefits of formality in a Seeker. Sighing, Weldon repositioned himself so that his back was to the cell door. He raised the face-cloth of his hood.

  The boy looked startled, and then thoughtful. For a moment, he scrutinized Weldon’s face. Then his hand slowly reached out toward Weldon’s lap. It hovered in the air.

  “Just relax,” said Weldon in a soft voice, placing his arm round Zenas and pressing the boy’s head gently onto his shoulder. He took the boy’s hovering hand into his own and laid it upon Zenas’s lap. “Just try to relax.”

  Once again, the boy did not resist his actions; he lay limp within Weldon’s arm, like a prisoner newly removed from the rack. Weldon could feel the stiff bandage under the back of the boy’s shirt, where the healer had dressed his wounds.

  Weldon took care to remain still. He badly wanted to kiss the boy, but even without the presence of the junior night guard at the watch-hole, that would be a bad idea.

  He had gone over in his mind a dozen times the events of his earlier searching, and certain parts of it bothered him a great deal. If he had been functioning with even a small part of his usual acuity, those parts of the searching would have caused him to immediately halt the proceedings and leave to consult with the High Seeker. It was not as though this problem was new; it was especially common among female prisoners. It was one of the reasons why the Code forbade Seekers from touching prisoners. Even with the Codifier’s implicit permission for him to hold Zenas like this, Weldon was uneasy, wondering whether he was making a grave matter yet worse.

  The boy had begun to cry onto the Seeker’s shirt. Weldon prayed that the cause was the boy’s dreams rather than himself. He fished out his handkerchief and handed it to Zenas, who appeared not to know what do with it. Weldon carefully wiped the tears off Zenas’s face, and then demonstrated to the boy how to use the cloth on one’s nose. This fascinated the boy so much that no further tears were forthcoming. After a while, Zenas relaxed back against Weldon once more.

  Weldon was feeling, as he so often did, the tremendous burden of a Seeker whose prisoner has demonstrated trust in him. Struggling to find words to evoke his thoughts, he said, “You look like my son.”

  Those were not the words he had intended to say. Zenas lifted his head from where it lay in the crook of Weldon’s arm; he seemed more curious than alarmed at the sound of Weldon’s voice. Weldon forced himself to smile at the boy.

  “Well, not entirely like him,” he clarified. “You’re a bit older. He was only born a month ago. . . . He died.”

  He felt his throat close in upon the words. Zenas continued to stare at him, his brow folded in concentration at the words.

  Weldon heard himself say, “It happened only a few days after he was born. He struggled for life from the beginning. Afterwards, our healer here sought out my parents’ medical records. He discovered that it was my fault the boy died. There is a disease, transferred down from father to son . . . All of my brothers died in infancy; I nearly did as well. When the healer saw that my father’s and grandfather’s brothers had died as babies, he knew I must have inherited the disease. He has advised me not to beget any more children.”

  Zenas continued to look up at him, as though he were following every word of this tale. His hand still lay enfolded within Weldon’s. Weldon cleared his throat and said, “My wife . . . She is a Seeker as well, but she’s in training. She hasn’t yet taken her oath of eternal confinement. She was estranged from her family when she first came here, but when her parents learned of their grandchild’s death, they begged her to come home so that she could bury the child’s ashes in the family crematorium. It seemed a good opportunity to make her peace with her family, so she obtained leave from the Codifier to go. . . . I’m not sure whether she’s coming back.”

  The words he had never spoken before, even to himself, seemed to ring throughout the cell. Zenas’s hand slipped from his. The boy raised his hand until it hovered a few inches from Weldon’s face. It was then that Weldon became aware that he was crying.

  Embarrassed at this unprofessional conduct, he hastily wiped his face dry on the sleeve of his uniform. Zenas’s hand dropped, and the boy looked at Weldon uncertainly.

  The cell door opened and slammed shut again.

  Weldon only had time enough to pull his hood hastily down; then he looked to the s
ide in order to see who the intruder was. Mr. Bergsen stood near the door, bag in hand, staring down at the two of them. “Well, well,” he said softly. “What do we have here?”

  Suddenly it was fourteen years before, and Weldon’s junior day guard had walked into the cell to discover his Seeker holding a prisoner who had begun to cry. Weldon felt the old panic pummel him once more. “I have the Codifier’s permission to touch this prisoner,” he said quickly.

  “Tush, man, do you think I care about those Seekerly rules of yours?” The healer knelt down and began rummaging through his bag. “I want to know your prisoner’s health, not those fiddling regulations you Seekers worry about. I understand the boy is having trouble sleeping?”

  He was still keeping his voice soft, Weldon noticed. The quietness was effective. Though Zenas had gone rigid upon the healer’s entrance, now he was relaxed again within Weldon’s arm, staring at the Seeker in apparent hopes that Weldon would find a way to convey the meaning of this visit.

  Thus it was that Zenas missed the moment when Mr. Bergsen raised something briefly out of his bag, gave a grunt of satisfaction, and then returned it to the bag and began rummaging again.

  Weldon stared at the healer in horror. “By all that is sacred, Mr. Bergsen, what is that? An instrument of torture?”

  The healer chuckled, unoffended. “It looks like one, doesn’t it? No, it’s a new invention – it comes out of Vovim, actually. Your prisoner will most likely have seen it before. It’s an underskin needle, used to insert drugs deep into the body so that they will work quickly. It works much faster than a sleeping drug taken by the mouth. Now, then, get the boy up onto his bench, please. He’s likely to be fast asleep within a couple of minutes of the time I give him this.”

  Zenas was continuing to watch Weldon rather than the healer. Weldon pocketed his handkerchief, carefully helped the boy to his feet, and led him over to the sleeping bench. Weldon had always intensely disliked the cell benches. He had been told by prisoners who knew such things that the benches were far more comfortable to sleep upon than the floors provided at most of the lesser prisons, but Weldon looked with distaste at the stone slab with only the thinnest of mattresses.

  Zenas scrambled onto the bench as though it were a comfortable armchair. He flicked a glance at the healer who was walking toward them, and then suddenly he was clutching at Weldon’s arm, babbling in a high-pitched voice.

  Weldon, caught off-balance, stumbled and ended up sitting next to Zenas on the bench. The boy was dragging at his shirt now, as though Weldon were a log that kept him afloat in drowning waters. His voice had gone even higher; his words tumbled over one another. Weldon knew that the old tongue must have some relation to Vovim’s Common Speech, but he could not recognize a single word of what the boy said. He suspected that even a native speaker of the old tongue would have been able to make little sense of the hysterical babble.

  “Odd.” Pausing to test the needle’s output of liquid, the healer raised his voice to be heard over Zenas. “I’d have thought the boy would have seen a needle before. Hold him still, please. I don’t have much practice with this.”

  Warning alarms were going off in Weldon’s mind, but he had no time in which to decipher their meaning. Zenas was now clutching at his collar, in a manner likely to strangle him. Weldon firmly broke the boy’s grasp; during his years in the lighted world, he had learned certain maneuvers that occasionally came in handy with dangerous prisoners. “It’s all right,” he said in a voice that was gentler than his grip. “It’s all right. This will help you to sleep.”

  The boy went suddenly still. Encouraged, Weldon said softly, “It’s all right. There’s nothing to fear.” He reached out and brushed the boy’s hair lightly.

  Mr. Bergsen leaned over the bench. “This will take but a second,” he said cheerfully. He turned over Zenas’s arm, now gone limp. Zenas made a small sound and looked again at Weldon. Weldon smiled at him and put his arm round the boy’s back. He could feel the boy shaking.

  “Done,” said the healer triumphantly. Looking down, Weldon saw a small spot of blood near the crook of the arm, where the needle had gone in. Zenas stared down at the blood. He raised his arm and held it out for Weldon’s inspection, as though with pride.

  Then his expression crumpled. Weldon pulled Zenas’s head to his shoulder as the boy began to sob convulsively.

  “Children,” said the healer with a sigh. “Always fearing the worst, and then recovering from their tears without a sign of what came before. I wish I still had that ability. Stay with him, please, till he has fallen asleep – it won’t be long. I’ve given him only a small dose, as I gather from what your guard said that you intend to search the boy tomorrow.” His voice turned dry.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bergsen,” Weldon replied as he pulled Zenas back from his shoulder and coaxed him to lie down on the bench.

  “Not at all. I wish I could help you further with this case, but without any of the boy’s medical records, there’s not much I can say. Except that somebody has been treating him very ill – but you’ll have noticed that when you beat him.”

  The healer’s voice had turned from dry to dark. Weldon met his gaze steadily; he knew he deserved the rebuke. After a minute during which the healer’s lips pressed hard against one another, Mr. Bergsen gave an abrupt nod of farewell and left the cell, whistling a popular ditty about the Eternal Dungeon’s heartless torturers.

  Zenas was still sobbing, but his crying had become more breathy and subdued. Weldon, who was now kneeling beside the bench, put his hand in Zenas’s and murmured incoherent assurances, as he had to his son during the five days that the baby had screamed from the pain of its life. He felt Zenas tug at his hand, and he let the boy draw his hand closer. Zenas’s lips had no sooner touched the back of his hand than the boy’s eyes closed, and the cell became silent.

  In an automatic manner prompted by too many years of finding motionless prisoners in their cells, Weldon checked to make sure that the boy was still breathing. Then he brought out his handkerchief again and did his best to clean the boy’s face. When he was finished, he sat a while, contemplating what lay before him. It was a sight, he thought, that he ought to have recognized before.

  He knew well enough that the main reason he was assigned underage prisoners was that he was the only man in the inner dungeon whom the High Seeker could be absolutely sure was not attracted to children. It had been a century since this dungeon adopted the Code of Seeking and put an end to the old abuses, but certain aspects of the dungeon’s old reputation continued to linger in the public mind. The High Seeker could not afford the possibility of another child-rape.

  Weldon was not erotically attracted to children – nor to adults, for that matter – but he knew beauty when he saw it. His eye travelled slowly over the sleeping boy, gathering in what lay there: the slender, delicate figure; the smooth skin the color of mahogany; the tight black curls framing the face; the full, violet-brown lips; the dusky lids, with their long lashes, hiding the enormous eyes. It had all been there before him, from the first moment, and if he had allowed himself to look at the boy with the scrutiny that a Seeker should give to his prisoner, he would have known that this was a boy whose appearance could raise men’s desires.

  But he had not looked properly at Zenas. He could not blame Mr. Crofford for that fact. Weldon knew that he had failed to give Zenas his full attention because he had feared that he would develop affection for the boy and end up feeling once more the pain of his son’s death.

  And now the anticipation of death had returned, despite all his best efforts. “I have been a fool,” he murmured to Zenas, “but if I can, I will find a way to save you.”

  He leaned forward and kissed the sleeping boy on his cheek. He knew that his junior night guard must be watching, and that the guard would report his act to Mr. Daniels. He found that he did not care.

  o—o—o

  The Vovimian translator was unimpressed by Weldon. That was what Weldon noticed mo
st. He had become used to immediate awe or fear from any new person he met, including the Eternal Dungeon’s guards. Mr. Draper, however, had spent a year in the Vovimian army, serving as a translator for Yclau prisoners who were questioned.

  “You have no idea,” said Mr. Draper, “how difficult it is to translate the words of men who are having their toes cut off.”

  “Indeed?” Weldon attempted to sound professionally detached as he glanced over at the small man beside him, who wore wire-rimmed glasses and looked very much like what he was, namely an employee of one of the city’s international banks.

  “Yes, they had usually screamed their throats raw by the time they gave their information. My job was particularly difficult if boiling oil had been poured into their mouths. Thank the gods that the Yclau usually know how to write.”

  Weldon tried to think of a reply to this and failed. They were walking down the somber corridor leading to Zenas’s cell, accompanied on all sides by glares from the guards who overheard the translator’s words. In theory, Vovim and Yclau were in everlasting peace with one another. In reality, only three years had passed since the latest truce had begun, and even the youngest guard here would have seen mutilated ex-soldiers on the streets, begging their living as a result of their time of imprisonment with the Vovimians.

  Weldon did his best to steer the conversation in another direction. “So you are familiar with the old tongue.”

  “Oh, certainly,” replied Mr. Draper, who appeared to be taking no notice of the hostile looks around him. “I spent my youth in southern Vovim, attending school there. My parents thought I should learn what Vovim was like at its purest, at its stainless foundation, untainted by foreign influences—”

  “And you learned the old tongue there?” Weldon discreetly put up a finger in warning to a guard they were passing, who was stroking his dagger hilt as he listened to the Vovimian.

  “It would have been as much as my life was worth not to. The southern Vovimians, you understand, are greatly insulted if you do not make at least an effort to learn their language.” He winced, as though at some memory, then added, “It is next to impossible for an Yclau to learn the old tongue, but it is not so hard for a Vovimian. Your High Seeker, for example—”

  “Here we are,” said Weldon, though in fact they were several yards short of their destination: the door where his day guards stood.

  “How is the prisoner?” Weldon asked when they had reached the door. He spoke in Vovimian out of courtesy to their guest, though Mr. Draper had been speaking fluently in Yclau.

  “He woke an hour ago, sir, when Mr. Crofford brought him his lunch,” Mr. Boyd replied in the same tongue. “He seemed surprised to see Mr. Crofford. After Mr. Crofford left, he explored the entire cell, as though he was not sure he was in the same place.” Mr. Boyd glanced at Mr. Crofford for confirmation of this wording, but the junior guard did not notice him; his eye was firmly fixed upon the watch-hole. Mr. Boyd concluded, “He sat down in the corner finally and has remained quietly there ever since.”

  “No tears?” asked Weldon.

  “No, sir. He appears simply to be waiting. Do you wish me to accompany you into the cell today?” His gaze slid briefly over the Vovimian.

  “Yes,” replied Weldon. “The prisoner may give us a confession today.”

  Mr. Boyd was already pulling from the inside of his jacket the pencil and memorandum book that was kept there for such an occasion. Weldon gave his attention over to the younger guard. He could see Mr. Crofford’s hand resting upon the door latch, and it was shaking. The guard had risen before dawn the previous day, Weldon remembered, and had been up late giving his witness to the Codifier, and then had risen early this morning.

  “Mr. Crofford.”

  “Sir?” The junior guard did not move from his post.

  “I was very much impressed by the witness you gave to the Codifier yesterday. It showed the proper objectivity of a dungeon guard, making no attempt to bend the evidence in one direction or the other.”

  Mr. Crofford’s neck had turned pink. “Thank you, sir.”

  Weldon put his hand briefly on the junior guard’s shoulder. “You may take a break for the next three hours, Mr. Crofford. Mr. Boyd will be inside the cell to help if any problems occur, and Mr. Draper will be a witness to our behavior.”

  “Yes, sir.” The guard’s reply was so prompt that Weldon guessed the young man was ready to drop from exhaustion. Weldon waited until Mr. Crofford was headed toward the exit that would take him back to his living quarters in the outer dungeon; then Weldon nodded to Mr. Boyd.

  Mr. Boyd’s opening of the door was as quiet as usual, but somehow Zenas heard him anyway. By the time Weldon stepped through the door, Zenas was on his feet, running. Mr. Boyd quickly closed the door behind them, but Zenas made no attempt to go near it. He skidded to a halt in front of Weldon and said something quickly in the old tongue, his face eager.

  “Mr. Draper?” Weldon turned his head toward the translator as Mr. Boyd locked the door.

  The translator shrugged. “A simple greeting, with the proper degree of deference.”

  Weldon nodded, glanced over to make sure that Mr. Boyd was ready with pencil and paper, and told Mr. Draper, “Please introduce yourself to Mr. Zenas and explain that you will serve as translator for this conversation.”

  Mr. Draper did so, in words that Weldon would have sworn could not be spoken by any human tongue. Mr. Boyd, carefully writing the prisoner’s name at the top of a page, winced, as he might have done had a playful young guard drawn his fingernails across the Record-keeper’s slateboard.

  The boy’s face grew yet more eager; there was almost the suggestion of a smile on his face now. He jabbered something back quickly, and then waited, his eye on Weldon. He had taken no notice of Mr. Boyd, standing nearby with his pencil poised.

  “Your prisoner once again greets you, this time with a yet greater degree of deference,” Mr. Draper reported. “He says that it gives him great joy to finally have the opportunity to speak with his new master.”

  Mr. Boyd’s pencil-point, scribbling all this down, suddenly broke. With a muttered apology, the guard fished in his pocket for a replacement. Weldon stared from Mr. Draper to the young prisoner watching him with anticipation.

  “Does he believe I’m his workmaster?” Weldon asked slowly. “Or his schoolmaster?”

  The translator snorted with amusement at these suggestions.

  “But . . .” Weldon stared again at Zenas, confusion clawing at him. “But Mr. Hallam’s eldest son, Mr. Grove, said that this boy was his father’s adopted son, his – his chau.”

  Zenas had begun to turn his eyes toward Mr. Draper, awaiting the translation, but his gaze suddenly snapped back to Weldon, as though something of great importance had been said. The hint of a smile disappeared from his face.

  Mr. Draper snorted again. “Who did the translation for you, one of the palace translators? . . . I thought so. The Yclau will never understand the subtleties of Vovimian languages.” He spoke without hostility, as though reciting a simple fact. “Chau is the old tongue’s word for ‘beloved’; whatever other meanings it acquires are determined by the context. In this particular context, Mr. Grove could only have been saying that this boy was—”

  “His father’s bed-slave,” Weldon concluded in a low voice. He turned his gaze back to Zenas, feeling as though he had just been gifted with spectacles that allowed him to see through the murky darkness surrounding his prisoner. All was clear now.

  The High Seeker had known, of course. Having owned a sexual slave himself, he had recognized from Weldon’s description what the boy was. No wonder he had been determined to stay as far away from Zenas as possible; this boy must evoke some of Layle’s darkest memories of his time in Vovim’s dungeon.

  Except that it seemed such practices were not confined to the Hidden Dungeon.

  Zenas, having heard Weldon speak the word denoting his duties to his former master, remained still, watching Weldon’s f
ace and awaiting his instructions. Weldon felt a sickness enter him as he remembered Layle’s advice concerning this prisoner. He tried to settle his mind in order. He had been wrong; Zenas had not been sexually molested by a man who served as his father. Weldon suspected, though, that the tale he was about to hear would prove just as foul as the one he had anticipated.

  He was wrong again. The tale was worse.

  o—o—o

  Zenas’s earliest memories were happy ones. As a very young child, his duties as a slave were light, and though he missed the mother he had never known, he enjoyed tagging at the heels of his father as his father attended to his duties. A strong affection grew between Zenas and his father, one that kept Zenas from worrying about the hard life he knew he would take on as he grew older.

  At the age of seven, all that changed, because Zenas, in a moment of carelessness, decided to join some of the younger boys in bathing at one of the estate water-holes.

  As he had done when he was younger, he pulled off all of his clothes in order to swim. Unhappily, at that moment his master chanced to walk by. Something about the way that Mr. Hallam looked at Zenas made the boy quickly reclothe himself and hurry to where his father was helping to uproot a tree that their master had decided was no longer of interest to him. Zenas had no sooner finished stammering out his tale when one of the house-slaves came up to them with the news that Mr. Hallam wished to speak with Zenas.

  Zenas’s father dropped his spade and stared hard at the house-slave who, for some reason, appeared embarrassed. Zenas started to move forward, but his father grabbed him. “Stay here,” Zenas’s father said. “I will speak to the master.”

  That was the last time Zenas saw his father. He believed his master when Mr. Hallam informed him gravely that he had not meant to strike Zenas’s father so hard; Mr. Hallam had simply been furious that one of his slaves would defy his orders. It might well have been true. Mr. Hallam was known for his temper, but he was not ordinarily one to permanently injure his slaves, much less kill them.

  Zenas, grieving for the sudden loss of his father, accepted Mr. Hallam’s comfort and his promise of protection. Even when he learned what form that protection would take, he considered himself lucky. He knew that Mr. Hallam kept bed-slaves – what slave on the estate did not know this? He also knew that bed-slaves were given light duties during the daytime. Unlike his father, Zenas would not be condemned to spend his days doing back-breaking work in the fields.

  Remembering the lesson of his father’s death, Zenas always took great pains to try to please his master and to show that he properly appreciated his master’s care of him. This grew more difficult when, in the year Zenas turned ten, Mr. Hallam grew bored with his old bedtime entertainments and decided to try something new.

  It was an ordinary whip at first. Zenas, sobbing into his pillow after each encounter, told himself that he was still lucky. Mr. Hallam had a dozen bed-slaves and was often away on business. Sometimes Mr. Hallam even slept with his wife. The master rarely called for Zenas’s services more than once or twice a month, giving Zenas full time to recover for his next trial. So matters continued for the next two years.

  Five months before Zenas’s arrival the Eternal Dungeon, Mr. Hallam announced that he would be serving as an ambassador in Yclau during the coming year. Zenas was delighted, and strangely enough his delight did not diminish when he learned that he was to accompany Mr. Hallam on this trip. As a slave, Zenas ordinarily would not have been permitted to leave the borders of the estate during his lifetime. He welcomed this opportunity to see more of Vovim and to visit a foreign country. It seemed worth a little pain.

  What he had not realized was that Mr. Hallam would be taking only him. The master’s wife and the other bed-slaves were left behind. The implications of this decision took some time to arrive.

  The first part of the journey, made through Vovim, was by carriage over bad roads. This section of the journey was boring for Mr. Hallam and exhausting for both of them. On the few occasions that they slept in inns, Mr. Hallam made no attempt to touch Zenas. Once they reached the border, however, they switched to a train. Zenas, excited at being permitted to travel in an iron cage that whizzed through the countryside, did not immediately notice that his master’s boredom had reached a dangerous peak. His only warning came on the first night of their travel, when Mr. Hallam entered his cabin, holding a long box.

  “I have something new for us,” Mr. Hallam announced, and with a gleam in his eye he proceeded to unwrap the leaded whip.

  Zenas could not have said what the Yclau countryside looked like. The trip should have taken no more than a day or two, but the Yclau, fiends of cleverness at inventing machinery, had not yet learned how to control the weather. Spring floods washed out several sections of the railroad track, and the trip extended to two weeks, then three. Zenas spent that time moaning in his bed, visited only by his master, who appeared to take no interest in any sight other than that of Zenas’s body. Zenas began to wonder whether he would survive to reach the capital.

  He wished the other slaves had come on this trip so that he could ask them what to do. But there was nobody he could consult; no one entered the cabin, and everyone who passed by the cabin spoke in Yclau. Zenas could not even figure out which of the passers-by were slaves.

  Mr. Hallam must have begun to be concerned himself. Six days before they reached their destination, he put away the whip and turned his attention to nursing Zenas back to health, murmuring explanations similar to those he had given upon the death of Zenas’s father. Zenas was too numb to do anything except accept his master’s ministrations, and he could see that this displeased his master. Fearing the consequences of such displeasure, Zenas made a greater effort to return to his old self, smiling at his master and reaching out to take his hand.

  By the time they arrived at the capital, Zenas was well enough to walk again. His master had made clear that he would have no time for Zenas once they reached the palace, and he had even given Zenas permission to explore his new surroundings, provided he did not leave the palace grounds. Zenas looked forward to that time, as a boy dying of thirst looks forward to water.

  They were kept waiting for the first two weeks by various bureaucratic procedures that appeared designed to drive palace guests to impatience. Seeing his master’s lips thin after each trial, Zenas desperately strove to keep Mr. Hallam happy. Mr. Hallam called for his services each night, but he used neither the leaded whip nor any other implement on his slave. Zenas began to hope that matters had returned to normal.

  They supped one night in the Queen’s own dining hall. Zenas was awed at this opportunity to accompany his master into a place of great richness and refinement. He knew that only the most favored bed-slaves were allowed such gifts. At one point, an Yclau man came up and spoke briefly to Mr. Hallam in the language that estate visitors from the King’s capital sometimes used. In his reply, Mr. Hallam said the word chau and smiled at Zenas. Zenas smiled back, pleased at having his service openly acknowledged.

  He grew uneasy, though, as the dinner continued. Something was wrong. His master made no attempt to sit with other diners, as he had on previous nights, and he kept shooting dark looks at the Queen of Yclau. Fearing the worst, Zenas put all of his best efforts into pleasing his master, and he felt relief when his master finally turned to him with a smile. Mr. Hallam placed his hand over Zenas’s.

  “I have learned that the Queen will not be able to meet with me for another fortnight,” he told his slave, stroking Zenas’s hand. “No matter. It will give us time to be together.” A familiar gleam entered his eye.

  Zenas was not sure afterwards how it happened. It was as though his soul had been taken from his body and hovered above, watching his body move with independence. It watched as he picked up the knife; it watched as he plunged the knife into Mr. Hallam’s throat; it watched as he stabbed over and over and over. It did not return to the body until the very end, when guards dragged Zenas up from the floor and began jabberin
g questions at him in the Yclau tongue. It was then that Zenas realized, with coldness spreading through his body, that he had committed the crime for which there could be no forgiveness.

  o—o—o

  “I understand that I have done the most terrible of deeds,” the boy said in a choked voice. “I know that hell awaits my body and that I shall dwell in Hell’s cell forever.”

  He did not move his eyes from Weldon as he spoke. He had been told by now that Weldon was not his new master but simply a man appointed by the Queen to learn why Zenas had killed Mr. Hallam. Nonetheless, Zenas kept his gaze fixed on the Seeker, as though awaiting orders.

  Weldon’s thoughts were on linguistics. He had finally recognized a word that was the same in both the old tongue and the Common Speech of Vovim: hell. He was remembering the moment in this cell when he had invoked that terrible word in a careless manner, though he had known that no Vovimian spoke the word hell except with great seriousness. It was the name of the Vovimian place of afterdeath, where criminals were punished. But when said with a certain accent, it was also the name of the Vovimian torture-god, never spoken except in the presence of the damned. It was hardly surprising that, upon hearing that name spoken, Zenas had gone into hysterics.

  “I know I deserve a most terrible death,” Zenas repeated in a low voice. “I was surprised this morning that you did not complete the death. I understand now, though, that you needed to learn first all that I had done.”

  Weldon snapped his gaze over to Mr. Draper, who was continuing to supply the translation. “‘Complete the death’? What does he mean by that?”

  An exchange followed between the two Vovimians. Finally, Mr. Draper raised his eyebrows and turned to Weldon. “Did you give this boy the needle last night?” he asked, his voice accusatory.

  “Yes, certainly,” Weldon replied. “Our healer injected him with a sleeping drug. I’m told that such a procedure is common in Vovim.”

  Mr. Draper raised his eyes toward the ceiling, as though praying to his gods for patience in dealing with the Yclau. “Mr. Chapman,” he said carefully, as if educating a small child, “your healers may, in their whimsy, decide to put sleeping potions in their needles. But in Vovim, the needle is used for only one purpose: to execute slaves. It is used to inject marblak, a powerful poison that takes many hours to work and causes great agony in the victim during those hours.”

  Zenas continued to stand motionless during the discussion of his execution. Weldon thought to himself, with a sinking heart, that he would have to make another trip to the Codifier’s office.

  It was not as though he had received no warning. I think you should take great care henceforth as to what orders you give Mr. Zenas. Sweet blood, he might as well hand in his hood after today’s searching. He had evidently lost whatever powers he had once possessed as a Seeker.

  “Tell him—” Weldon stopped. Mr. Boyd had raised his eyes from the paper he was still scribbling upon; the motion alerted Weldon to the fact that his voice was quavering. He tried again. “Tell Mr. Zenas that the poison you speak of is never used in Yclau. Tell him that no one will try to kill him in such a manner or give him any other sort of prolonged death.”

  The boy’s breath went out of his body at this news. He too raised his eyes to the ceiling. Then he murmured something, which Mr. Draper translated. “He says that he blames himself for not recognizing that a man of such powerful mercy as yourself would give him only a quick death. With shame filling him, he pleads your pardon for misjudging you.”

  Weldon opened his mouth, and then bit his tongue to keep himself from speaking. Very early in his career as a Seeker, he had learned the stupidity of raising false hopes in his prisoners by telling them that they would not be executed. He could not make such promises; he did not have final say over the prisoners’ fates, and many a prisoner whom he believed should live he had watched dangle from the hangman’s noose.

  Zenas murmured something more. For the first time, his eyes were cast down. Mr. Draper reported, “He begs to be forgiven for being so bold as to make a request of you, knowing as he does that he deserves the worst treatment. But you have shown him great kindness so far: when he misunderstood your orders, you gave him only a short beating, and you comforted him when he dreamt of his death, and you even held his hand after giving him the needle. And so, with deep trepidation, he asks to know whether it is possible for you to stay with him when the time comes for his execution, and whether it is possible for you to hold his hand then, for he is very much afraid of dying.”

  Mr. Boyd had stopped writing, though he was taking care to keep his eyes fixed upon the paper, as though his attention was focussed purely on secretarial matters. Mr. Draper maintained no such fiction; he was staring openly at Weldon, awaiting his answer. Weldon scarcely saw either of them. His gaze was reserved for the youth before him, who was peeking up at him through shy lashes.

  “Tell him,” said Weldon, in a voice now gone firm, “that I will stay with him. Tell him that, no matter what happens, I will stay with him and I will hold him.”

  Even before Mr. Draper finished his translation, the boy had begun to move. He knelt down, his face now tilted up to look at Weldon, and he took Weldon’s hand. He kissed the Seeker’s hand but did not speak.

  Weldon’s heart was drumming so loud that he feared the boy could hear it. He gently drew the boy back onto his feet, and then said in as brisk a manner as he could manage, “Mr. Draper, now that the prisoner has given his statement, it is likely that his trial will be scheduled for tomorrow morning. Is it possible for you to be present in the appointed judging room at that time, in order to provide a translation?”

  Mr. Draper had taken his pocket-watch out of his waistcoat and was peering down at it, as though it might provide him with the answer. “If the trial does not take too long,” he replied. “The Queen is scheduled to give a speech on business law at noontime, and I am to provide the translation for the Vovimian delegates from my bank.”

  “Thank you,” Weldon said. “Mr. Boyd, you are ready?” He looked over at his senior guard, who had been quickly flipping through his notes, checking what was written there. Mr. Boyd nodded, and Weldon added, “Then I will just ask you to stay a few more minutes today, Mr. Draper, in order to translate as my guard reads aloud the prisoner’s statement, so that Mr. Zenas can confirm whether Mr. Boyd has correctly rendered his words.”

  When Weldon reached the door of the cell, he turned. Mr. Boyd was repeating the tale of the water-hole, and Mr. Draper was translating. Zenas was nodding his acknowledgment, but he did not look at either of the men. His gaze remained on Weldon.

  o—o—o

  Layle’s reply was mercifully brief. “Yes, of course. I’ll need to speak with the Codifier about this, but I’m sure his answer will be the same as mine. Who is the magistrate assigned to this case?”

  “Mr. Jones,” said Weldon. He kept his voice low, so as not to disturb Elsdon Taylor, who was in the next room, sitting at his desk as he frowned over documentwork. “He’s in semi-retirement, I’ve heard, so I’ve not worked with him before. Do you know him?”

  Layle did not stir from where he sat in his bed, propped up by pillows and surrounded by books, food, and similar gifts from Elsdon. “Quite well,” the High Seeker replied quietly. “He’s the man who sentenced Elsdon to be hanged after Elsdon testified that his father had abused him.”

  Weldon took in a deep breath and held it. For a moment, he and Layle looked at one another. Then they both looked away.