Under the Crimson Sun (the abyssal plague)

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Picking up his goblet, Jago muttered, “part-owner,” into it before gulping down more wine.

  “And I will not tolerate being told what to do by some idiot thri-kreen guard whom I only just hired yesterday. Now tell me what’s going on or I’ll-urkkklggggg.”

  While Jago was in mid-sip, the thri-kreen suddenly slashed at Calbit’s throat with a bone knife. Blood spurted everywhere, splattering onto the obsidian walls. Jago choked on his wine and started coughing like crazy.

  “What the-”

  “Shut up,” the thri-kreen said.

  Dimly, Jago registered the sound of breaking glass, only then realizing that he’d dropped the goblet. Wine spilled, pooling in the uneven cracks on the floor. Some of it ran toward the wall, mixing with Calbit’s blood.

  Slowly, Jago backed toward the wall. He could feel his heart pounding against his ribs. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on, or what you want, but I can-”

  “Do nothing,” said another, deeper voice.

  The mul walked into the office, past the thri-kreen.

  “Sorry for taking your kill, Zabaj.” The thri-kreen pointed with one of her pincers at Calbit, who was lying on the floor, gurgling and dying as blood poured from the cut in his neck. “He wouldn’t come.”

  “No matter,” the mul-whose name was apparently Zabaj, even though the paperwork Wimma had provided called him Harkoum-said. “I can still kill this one.”

  Jago held up both hands, as if to ward the mul off. “Wait-wait, please. I don’t know what you want, but-”

  “Oh, that’s simple,” Zabaj said. “We want you dead.”

  “But I haven’t done anything.” Jago’s voice broke, and he sounded squeaky, like a young girl. It rather distressed him.

  The thri-kreen made a chittering noise. “You enslave people in your arena, you force them to fight for your own profit, and you say you haven’t done anything?”

  “I don’t do anything more than what thousands of other people in Athas do. Why don’t you kill them?”

  The mul moved closer to Jago, looming over him. Jago could smell the food they fed him on Zabaj’s breath. Jago made a mental note that, in the unlikely event that he lived through the next seven seconds, he should improve the quality of the food given to the fighters.

  “Because they didn’t kidnap my friends.”

  “Kidnap?” Calbit didn’t kidnap anyone, they were all purchased fair and square, except for-

  Suddenly, it came clear to Jago.

  “You’re friends of Mandred and Storvis, aren’t you? Look, that wasn’t me.” He was getting frantic, waving his arms back and forth. “That was Calbit. You already killed him.” Sparing a glance over at the floor, he saw that Calbit was no longer moving, thus proving his statement true. “I had nothing to do with that. I didn’t even want those two in the arena.” That was only half true-he liked Storvis, he was a good fighter without being insane like Mandred-but he wasn’t about to say that.

  Zabaj shook his head, the topknot waving back and forth. “You might-might-have convinced me that you weren’t worth killing. But you participated as much as your partner did, and your attempts to distance yourself from the blood on your hands sickens me.”

  Jago swallowed down the bile that was building up in the back of his throat. “What are you going to do?”

  Zabaj smiled. It was the most frightening thing that Jago-who had spent the last several years of his life managing life-or-death fights in the greatest arena in the world-had ever seen in his life.

  “Kill you quickly,” was the mul’s reply.

  When Zabaj returned to the carriage, Feena hugged and kissed him repeatedly.

  “I’m so sorry, my love, truly.”

  Zabaj let her molest him for several seconds before grabbing her arms. “We will talk later.”

  “I know I made you go back on your word, and I’m sorry we couldn’t mount the rescue until after you had to fight, but-”

  Gan winced as he watched Zabaj grip Feena’s arms even tighter, so much so that she grimaced. “We will talk later,” he repeated.

  Staring at him with his one good eye, Gan said, “Zabaj, I never got the chance to thank you for helping get me out of there.”

  “You may do so again,” Zabaj said. “Between us, Tricht’tha and I killed Tirana, Calbit, and Jago. They all died wondering where their guards were.”

  Tricht’tha chittered. “They were very easily swayed by the lure of Yaramuke wine.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t be?” Komir said with a chuckle. “Especially with all the feresh you put in it.”

  Sitting next to him, Karalith said, “Our next goal is to find a way to make ourselves the new caretakers of the arena.”

  “I can help there,” Tricht’tha said. “One of the guards was talking about a party that the king is throwing.”

  Zabaj added: “And one of the fighters said that it wasn’t the king who wanted Rol.”

  “What?” Gan thought that was absurd. “It was the Imperial Guard who took him. They report straight to Hamanu.”

  “The fighter was a dwarf named Barglin.”

  Gan frowned. “Bald, thick mustache?”

  “Yes,” Zabaj said.

  “Okay, yeah, I knew him-didn’t know his name. Even fought him once. I’d trust him.”

  “You never learned his name?” Feena asked.

  “Wasn’t really focused on making friends, Sis.”

  “In any case,” Zabaj said, “he was watching the royal box. The king wasn’t there, it was his chamberlain and the commander of the Guard who were watching Rol.”

  Tricht’tha rubbed her pincers together in a manner that Gan had always found just a little nauseating. “One of the other guards said the same thing as that dwarf. He was posted near the royal box. Chamberlain Drahar was the one who noticed Rol, and it was after he talked to Templar Tharson that Rol was ordered to be taken to the palace.”

  “Perfect!” Komir leaped to his feet. “That’s our way in. We set Hamanu against Drahar and Tharson.”

  Gan felt his stomach churn. “Uh, wait a minute. Look, I’m grateful for what you’ve done-honestly, if I lived to be as old as Hamanu, I wouldn’t be able to pay you guys back. But now you’re talking about gaming the King of the World. Isn’t that just a little insane?”

  Feena looked at him. “No crazier than playing frolik against Hamno Sennit and expecting to win.”

  Glaring at his sister, Gan said, “We’re talking about a slightly different scale here, Sis. Now, look, I want Rol back more than any of you. But-taking on the king?”

  Komir sat back down, facing Gan directly. “See, that’s the wrong way to think. The way to play the game is to never, under any circumstances, think of any player in the game as different from any other player. The victim is the victim, regardless of whether it’s a miner or a king. You play the game the same way.”

  “But the consequences if you fail …”

  That got a grin out of Komir. “That’s why we try very hard not to fail.”

  Gan shuddered. He’d seen that grin before-on Rol before he went after a woman. And the last time he did that …

  Meanwhile, Komir got back up and went over to the shelves on the right. “Now where did Mother and Father put those letters of introduction from that dead sirdar?”

  Karalith uttered a long-suffering sigh and also rose. “They’re not there, idiot.”

  While the siblings dug around for what they needed, Gan watched as Zabaj rebuffed every attempt Feena made to talk to him. Finally, he left the carriage, and she did as well.

  Tricht’tha sat down on all sixes next to him. “How are you feeling?”

  “Miserable-but also grateful. I never expected you guys to come after us. Hell, I never expected you guys to find us. So many things had to go right …”

  “Feena was the one who wanted to get you. So did Komir. And Zabaj.”

  Gan chuckled. “But not the rest of you?”

  “No.” Tricht’tha pulled som
e jerky out of a pouch and offered Gan some.

  He held up a hand. “Thanks, no. I’ve had enough jerky to do me the rest of my days. Anyway, I am truly grateful. I just hope we can rescue Rol-and cure him.”

  “Do you have any idea what happened to him?”

  “No.” Gan shook his head and blew out a breath. “The more I see, the more it’s something magical, but beyond that …” He shrugged. “I got nothing.”

  Tricht’tha was masticating her jerky. “Did you have to fight him?”

  “Mercifully, no. I was the second-best fighter they had left after him, so they used me as the lead-in to him. Sooner or later, though …” He shivered, then looked at the thri-kreen’s compound eyes. “Thanks for deciding to help.”

  “Feena argued that you were part of our clutch. I suppose you are, in a way.”

  Gan frowned. “I thought you didn’t like your clutch.”

  “You thought wrong,” she snapped. “I simply am happier with the clutch I have found than the one I was born to.”

  With that, she moved away to clamber up to her hammock and sleep.

  Feena came back into the carriage alone. She sat down next to Gan, who wrapped an arm around her.

  “You okay, Sis?”

  “Zabaj may never forgive me. I all but forced him to do this because I made the offer to trade him for you without consulting him first.”

  “If you were just going to send Tricht’tha in anyway, why do the trade at all?”

  “Because we needed to get you out of there, and we needed Zabaj in place in order to properly game the arena. There was no way to get you the plan in time.”

  Gan nodded. Feena could send sentences into Gan’s mind without much effort, but anything more complicated than that-like, say, a plan-would require her to focus and concentrate, and also be proximate to Gan. She couldn’t do that if she was at the Pit and still in her “Wimma” persona.

  “Also,” she continued, “Zabaj is stronger than you and would be in better shape for the violent part of the plan.”

  “Yeah. I guess I was just hoping I’d get to be the one to slit Calbit’s throat. And Tirana’s. Jago, I might’ve let live.” He chuckled. “Though I can take some solace in the fact that Tirana wasn’t really interested in Rol. A welcome change, that.”

  Feena, he noticed, wasn’t laughing. Instead, a tear rolled down her cheek.

  “I may have lost him, Gan,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Gan whispered.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Well, it kinda is, yeah.”

  Feena sat up straight and looked him in the eyes with those ice blue eyes she’d inherited from their mother. “No, Gan, it isn’t. You were kidnapped-that’s not your fault.”

  “Yes, actually, it is. If I hadn’t lost that frolik game-”

  She interrupted him. “If you hadn’t played the frolik game, you likely would have done something else impulsive and thoughtless.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I speak the truth.”

  Gan sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  She lay back down against him. It was good to see his sister again.

  They stayed that way, the sounds of Serthlara and Shira snoring in the background, along with Komir and Karalith bickering over which clothes to wear.

  He just hoped that they could rescue Rol as easily as they rescued him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  King Hamanu hated parties.

  For a time during his reign, he had banned parties from Urik altogether. He was younger then-only in his first century-and he figured that he was the king so he could do what he wanted.

  Eventually, though, as he matured, he realized that he needed-to some extent-to cater to the wishes of his people. Even an absolute monarch as powerful as Hamanu needed his people to be happy. They didn’t have to like everything he did-indeed, they didn’t have to know everything he did-but they were less likely to complain if they had sufficient distraction.

  For the upper classes, it was parties such as the one he was attending. In that case, it was less a distraction than a general attempt to keep the sirdars happy. Happy sirdars made for non-complaining sirdars. Hamanu had had his share of complaining sirdars over the years, and he’d grown weary of having to kill them.

  For the lower classes, there were the vulgar attractions, most notably the Pit of Black Death. He had been grateful that the Pit had once again become a popular venue, as the arena was a good way to distract the poor from their miserable state.

  Which made it that much more annoying that Calbit and Jago had gotten themselves killed. Their fighters had all escaped, and while a few of them wound up captured or imprisoned, most were in the wind.

  He wasn’t sure what the occasion was for the party-he had a social secretary whose job it was to find appropriate reasons for the parties and space them out in such a manner that the sirdars were kept happy by their frequency, and that Hamanu wasn’t driven crazy by the same thing. It was being held in a large function room that was often used for state dinners.

  Hamanu hated them too.

  Currently, he sat in one of his thrones. When his reign began, he had had ornate, ostentatious thrones all over Destiny’s Kingdom. But after several centuries, the desire for showing off his station grew tiresome. He referred to himself as the King of the World-a bit of hyperbole that seemed reasonable in his (relative) youth, and which he was well and truly stuck with-and for many decades, he thought that required a level of finery.

  But being so self-consciously royal proved exhausting after a while. Not to mention annoying. So the royal finery became more streamlined, the patterns faded, the colors darkened.

  As the king went, so went the people, since he was King of the World, so the people of Urik over the years started wearing more neutral colors as well.

  Hamanu’s younger self, he knew, would be appalled. But the simplicity appealed to him now. No one in his court now knew of Hamanu as anything other than a king of uncomplicated tastes.

  It also meant that at parties such as this, he wasn’t blinded by the brocade. Meeting with people from Nibenay often gave him a headache, their clothing was so covered in brightly colored stitching.

  Plus, as an added bonus, he could easily pick out the people who were not from Urik. There were always several-visiting dignitaries, wealthy travelers, and so on-and he noted two in particular. Both appeared to be half-elves, and they were dressed in wraparound linens that bespoke recent times in Tyr. The woman had several bracelets on each arm.

  Their race made them stand out. It was the rare half-elf who could manage to be invited to such a gathering-and indeed, many of the humans and elves in the room were giving the pair odd looks.

  One of the sirdars came by with a drink for Hamanu-often the nobility would do so in order to speak with the king-and the king asked him who they were.

  “They bore a letter of introduction from Lord Porsich, magnificence.”

  Hamanu nodded, sipping his drink absently. Porsich was an ancient dray sirdar who’d died of old age a year earlier. He was only a few years older than the king.

  “Do they have business in Urik?”

  The sirdar’s face was overcome with disgust. Hamanu almost smiled. “I sincerely hope not, magnificence, but I only know what I have told you-and I’m afraid I only knew that because I happened to be standing near the entryway when they were announced, and they showed the doorman the letter.”

  Again, Hamanu nodded, then dismissed the sirdar with a wave.

  Sighing audibly, the sirdar ran off.

  He supposed the woman was attractive and the man handsome-it was hard for Hamanu to tell anymore. They seemed to be working the crowd.

  The woman had found Drahar and was talking with him, though the chamberlain seemed a bit distracted. Seeing that the man was alone, Hamanu instructed a page boy to encourage the man to bring the king a drink.

  Minutes later, the half-elf gentleman was on one knee holding out a drink
to the king on his throne.

  “On your feet,” Hamanu said. “You’ll rumple your linen.”

  The young man rose. “Of course, sir. You honor me with your presence.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Sir” was a standard honorific. Generally, Hamanu preferred “magnificence,” but strictly speaking, he wasn’t Hamanu’s subject, so that particular title didn’t make sense. “What brings a half-breed from Tyr to my city-state?”

  “Actually, sir, my sister and I were born here in Urik. However, we were raised in Tyr. Forgive me-I am called Dalon, and my sister is Wrena. We were disowned by both of our parents, and were taken in by a dwarf nobleman of Tyr who took pity on us. He raised us as if we were his own. But he died a few years ago, and we came into an impressive inheritance.”

  “And you knew Lord Porsich?”

  Dalon winced. “I’m afraid not, sir. Our patron did-but I never met the man. We were sorry to hear of his death.”

  “Not nearly as sorry as he was.”

  Hamanu noted that Dalon’s laugh sounded genuine, not the nervous laughter that often accompanied the king’s witticisms. It was, he’d found, a good way to judge people, by how they laughed.

  “We actually came here on some family business, but we were also hoping to observe the running of a gladiatorial arena. The Pit of Black Death is, in many ways, the metal standard for how to run such a place. Unfortunately …” Dalon trailed off.

  “Yes, well, given how things ended, I don’t think the Pit was quite the model of efficiency its reputation indicated.” In fact, Hamanu wondered if Calbit and Jago had gotten so complacent, thanks to the constant winning of Gorbin, that they let other concerns grow lax. Once they lost Gorbin, they lost their ability to run things-if indeed they ever had it.

  The king then asked: “Are you thinking of running an arena in Tyr?”

  “Possibly,” Dalon said cautiously. “We’d invested in the Stadium of Tyr, but since the revolution …”

  Hamanu nodded. “Yes, I can see how that would devalue your investment somewhat.”

  “Indeed. Honestly, at this point, we feel we could run things ourselves given the opportunity. Since we had that family business here, we thought we’d see how the best did it.” Dalon took a sip of his own drink. “It’s just a pity that such a great source of bouts is no more.”