“Have Rohanna and Cal got horses?”
“We don’t think so.”
Kim nodded. “Okay. You’re right. There’s no point charging back in the dark and breaking a horse’s leg. And we need to find the other two. Perhaps they’d like to join our little chat with Jess. I can’t see it taking long to catch a pair of Guards in the wildlands. We can wait until first light tomorrow. It will be easier to see what we’re doing then. Stable the horses, and get everyone inside. If Rohanna and Cal are close by, they’ll have seen you arrive, but if not, they’ll be in for a surprise when they try sneaking in here tonight, which will save us the trouble of hunting them down.”
The Rangers were moving as soon as Kim finished speaking. Before long, the area around the outpost was empty and silent. The two Guards had not moved since the riders had appeared, but now they edged slowly back through the vegetation, keeping to the thickest shadows. They did not speak until they had left the hollow.
“So what now?” Cal asked.
Rohanna pursed her lips. “For starters, I think it would be a good idea if we make use of your Ranger training to get ourselves away from here and make sure we can’t be tracked.”
“And then?”
“And then, we stop and think.”
*
The cell beneath the Admin offices was not quite wide enough for Natasha to stretch her arms out straight and not quite long enough for her to lie flat. The straw-stuffed pallet she had been given took up well over half the floor space. The only light had come through a ten-centimeter gap under the door, which also let in an icy draft. The time was long after sunset, and the cell was in complete darkness. However, the draft was still there.
The absence of light did not bother Natasha. She had no wish to see her surroundings. After more than a day in the cell, she was totally familiar with every square centimeter of it, although she had not yet counted the bricks in the walls. She was saving that for when she got really bored. Mealtimes had formed the high points of her captivity, along with the brief interview from Mirle and Lieutenant Horte of the Rangers. They had not asked her much and told her even less. She guessed that they were waiting for news from the outpost, which they should have received by now.
Natasha pulled a blanket around her shoulders and huddled in a corner of the cell. She was desperate to know whether Rohanna and Cal had died from her betrayal and whether her warning had saved Kim and Chip. What she most wanted was for all four women to still be alive, although it would not be the easiest option on herself.
Kim Ramon would want information to help capture the two Guards. Natasha could tell her little enough, but it might make all the difference. If the hunters did not know about the stolen map and Cal’s experience as a Ranger, they would assume that the Guards must return the same way as they came and would not waste time checking other routes to Landfall. If they did not know the importance Rohanna placed on the news about Ginasberg, they might assume that the Guards would stay around and make another attempt to carry out the executions. The more Rangers kept patrolling Westernfort, the fewer there would be for the pursuit.
Natasha remembered Rohanna’s remarks concerning ways to make a woman talk and Shelly’s story of the burns inflicted on her grandmother. She tried not to dwell on the thought. If she let herself become frightened, the battle would be lost before it started. She wanted to bow her head and pray to the Goddess for strength, but she did not think Celaeno would pay heed to one who had broken an oath sworn in the light of Himoti’s eternal flame.
In the end, she prayed anyway. Rohanna and Cal were surely still in the grace of the Goddess, and it was their well-being she was pleading for. She could not bear to betray them again.
Footsteps interrupted her prayers. Raising her head, she saw a light beneath the door, getting steadily brighter. A key scraped in the lock, and the door swung open. Natasha got to her feet as two grim-faced Rangers entered the cell. One held a torch; the other, a loop of cord. From the noises in the corridor beyond, Natasha could tell that at least two more women were there.
“Turn around, and put your hands behind you,” the Ranger with the cord ordered. The voice belonged to Ash. In the flickering light, Natasha had not recognized her.
Natasha obeyed, and her wrists were bound securely. With no other words, the four Rangers escorted her up the stairs to the ground floor and into a small room. The only furnishings visible were a table and chairs, which had been pushed against the far wall to clear the floor space. A shelf with ledgers hung at one side. The window shutters were closed and barred.
Two women were waiting in the room, leaning against the table: Kim Ramon and Chip Coppelli. The sight of them answered half of Natasha’s questions, but there was no sign of either Rohanna or Cal.
One of the Rangers pushed her into the center of the floor. Natasha did not look back over her shoulder, but from the sounds of feet, the escort had taken up positions around the edges of the room behind her. The silence dragged on for a full thirty seconds. Then Kim pushed away from the table and stepped forward.
“Shall we start at the beginning? Perhaps you could introduce yourself properly,” Kim said calmly.
Natasha focused on the wall. “I am Corporal Natasha Ionadis of the 3rd Company of Temple Guards.”
“The 3rd Company? Not the Intelligence Corps?”
“I was assigned...temporarily before leaving Landfall, just for this mission, but...” Natasha floundered. She had never seen the transfer as being permanent, unlike her promotion to corporal. But both changes in her status had been made on the same day, and of course, both had been expected to last the rest of her life.
“Are you Intelligence Corps or not?” Kim snapped.
“Yes.”
“And how about the women we knew as Rohanna Korski and Calinda Rowse?”
“Are they still alive?” Natasha asked eagerly.
Kim paused. “The game we’re playing at the moment is you answer my questions, not the other way around.”
“But are...” Natasha stopped. She was not going to get an answer, but surely if Rohanna and Cal were dead or captured, Kim would not be asking about them.
“Were Rohanna and Cal from the Intelligence Corps?”
Natasha clamped her jaw shut.
Kim took three slow steps across the room until she was standing so close that the open flap of her jacket brushed Natasha’s arm. Natasha kept her gaze fixed on the wall, but she could feel Kim’s eyes boring into her.
When Kim spoke, her voice was quiet, but there was a savage edge to it. “You came here as a spy, to murder me and Lynn. My lover. You drew a sword on her and threatened to kill her. I’ve never yet mistreated a prisoner, but at the moment, you’re looking like a very good candidate to become the first one. You say you weren’t in the Intelligence Corps for long. But did you ever get the chance to see the way interviews are conducted in the cells below the Corps headquarters?”
Natasha did not answer, but she felt her heart was pounding so hard that everyone in the room must be hearing it.
Kim went on. “The Intelligence Corps has some nasty interrogation techniques. Removing toenails with pliers; things like that. If you’ve ever witnessed one of these sessions, you’ll know that sooner or later, you’ll tell us what we want to know. It will be much nicer for everyone if you make it sooner.”
Natasha turned her head and met Kim’s stare. “Haven’t I betrayed my comrades enough for you already?”
“No.”
Kim’s eyes seemed to be seeing straight through her. Natasha felt as if she were naked. At last, her head fell. “I don’t want their deaths on my conscience.”
“And you think you know something that might help us kill them?” Kim sighed and walked back to the table. “Okay. Let’s talk it through. You’re quite happy to admit you were transferred from the 3rd Company to the Intelligence Corps for this mission. It would be strange if the same hadn’t happened to Rohanna and Cal. So your unwillingness to discuss their ori
gins must be because of where they were before.
“With hindsight, Rohanna was obviously the team leader. I can’t imagine the Intelligence Corps letting control of a mission like this out of their hands, so she must be one of their senior officers. Whereas Cal was from the Rangers. It was obvious to Sergeant O’Neil from the way she conducted herself on the journey here. You think if we don’t know about Cal’s background, we might underestimate her ability to elude us.”
“If you already know, why bother asking me?”
Kim smiled without humor. “Because I want my guesses confirmed. Which you just did.”
Natasha knew that her dismay showed on her face. Her eyes dropped to the floor as she stood, feeling stupid.
“Where were you going to meet up with the other two after murdering Lynn?” Kim’s voice interrupted her self-reproach.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were going to try to get back to Landfall alone?” Kim asked sarcastically.
“No.”
“So what were your plans?”
“I was going to kill myself.”
“I think I prefer sullen silence to out-and-out lies.”
Natasha’s head shot up. “I don’t...” Lie. The word died on her lips. She had lost the right to have her word believed.
“What were you planning to do after you murdered Lynn?”
“I was going to kill myself,” Natasha repeated doggedly.
“Why?”
“So you couldn’t capture me and force me to tell you anything.”
Kim gave a bark of derisive laughter. “So you’re telling me you’ve failed twice over?”
“Yes.” Natasha hung her head, waiting for everyone else to laugh. It was a good enough joke.
“And you were quite happy when Rohanna ordered you to stay behind and kill yourself, while she and Cal escaped?”
“I’ve never been frightened to give my life for the Goddess.”
“But Rohanna and Cal were?”
“No!” Natasha asserted angrily.
“That’s a very touching faith you show in your comrades, given that they were planning on saving their own skins while abandoning you.”
“They were as willing to die as me.”
“You believed them when they said that?” Kim was scornful.
“We all volunteered for the mission.”
“Volunteering for a dangerous mission is not quite the same as slitting your own throat.”
“This mission was. When we volunteered, none of us expected to...” Natasha swallowed her words. She had said too much.
“None of you expected to go back?” Kim finished the sentence for her. “A suicide mission?”
Natasha swallowed but did not speak.
Kim smiled. “You know, it’s really helpful the way you clam up when you think I’m about to find something out.”
“You’re wrong. It wasn’t a sui...” Natasha’s voice dried up.
Kim moved to stand directly in front of Natasha. “Okay. Look me in the eye and tell me that you all set out from Landfall with some hope of getting back to tell the tale.”
Natasha tried to force the words out, but her throat and tongue would not obey her. The fact that Ash was standing there, witnessing the mess she was making of things, only made it worse. She could not help thinking of Ash as a friend, although the feeling was undoubtedly not reciprocated.
“So what made you change your plans?” Kim asked “And you must have changed your plans. Otherwise, you could have murdered us months ago. The only reason I can see for waiting until now was so those two could take our horses and head back to the Sisters.”
Natasha bit her lip and hung her head.
“You’re not going to say?” Kim said lightly. “Well, before we go and trouble the blacksmith for her pliers, perhaps I could try a bit more guessing. It must have been something you found out after leaving Landfall, and I can’t see that you’d have discovered anything significant before you met with Sergeant O’Neil...possibly not until you got here. So what might it be? You would have learned that Gina died of natural causes, but I don’t...” Kim paused, glancing over Natasha’s shoulder. “Have you thought of something, Sergeant?”
Ash cleared her throat. “Ma’am, only that Rohanna has been asking an awful lot of questions about Ginasberg—where it was, and so on. And it’s the only news I can think of that would be important enough for the Guards to delay killing you and Lynn.”
“Oh, of course,” Kim said. She reached out her hand and lifted Natasha’s chin so that their eyes met again. “Much as the Chief Consultant would like to see Chip, Lynn, and me dead, Ginasberg is far more strategically important. Rohanna and Cal won’t hang around for a second try at murdering us, but will go flat-out to get word back to Landfall. You want to give them the best head start you can. Even with Cal’s experience, they’ve got an awfully long way to go through the wilderness on foot.”
Natasha tried to keep her expression impassive, but she failed, and she knew it. Everyone in the room would be able to see the confirmation of Kim’s words on her face. Natasha closed her eyes, but tears squeezed out under her lids. Kim had her completely outclassed in the game of question-and-answer and would keep on going until she had learned everything she wanted to know.
Natasha half wished Kim would get the blacksmith’s pliers or a hot iron—something to leave a mark she could point to as proof that she had tried to keep faith with her comrades, proof that the information had been torn from her physically. But there was no need for Kim to resort to such measures. Natasha knew she was going to betray Rohanna and Cal again and again. And there was nothing she could do about it. The betrayal would be due to nothing more than her own incompetence.
*
It was much later when Kim returned to her house. Midnight was not far off, but Lynn was waiting in the large central room of their home, dozing in a chair in front of the hearth. The fire had burned down low. One small candle was the only other light source in the room.
At the sound of the door closing, Lynn woke and looked up. “How did it go?”
Kim sighed and slumped down in a chair opposite. “Hard work, but don’t worry; I didn’t get rough with her.”
“I never thought you would.”
Kim pulled a wry pout. “I don’t know. When Katryn brought us the news, I was ready to flay her alive. And if she’d laid a finger on you, right now they’d be scraping bits of her off the walls.” She looked at Lynn, slightly apologetically. “Sorry. I don’t mean to sound...” Kim broke off, waving her hand vaguely.
Lynn got to her feet and went to sit on the arm of Kim’s chair. She wrapped her arms around Kim’s shoulders and hugged her tightly, burying her face in Kim’s hair. After a few seconds, Lynn turned her head and stared into the fire. “If Katryn had been too late getting to you, I guess I wouldn’t be feeling so charitable toward her myself.”
“It was close. Chip and I had just dropped off to sleep, and they were only...” Kim groaned. “That’s partly it. I’m fuming at myself. Rohanna and Cal were within spitting distance of us, and I let them escape. I was too confident that I could track down any Guard, but there had been enough clues that Cal was a Ranger. If I’d just ordered a quick search of the hollow, we’d have had them. In fact, we should have spotted them as the Chief Consultant’s spies months ago. If only we hadn’t been so focused on them as thieves. We were so busy wondering what they were going to steal that we never thought to look for any other explanation for all the discrepancies.”
“So what do you do now?” Lynn asked.
“We try to stop them before they get back to Landfall with news about Ginasberg.”
“Is that where they’re heading?”
“So Je...Natasha says.”
“Will we have to abandon Ginasberg if we don’t catch them?”
Kim nodded “It couldn’t withstand an attack, and it won’t for another few years.”
Lynn mulled over the implications for a while before ask
ing, “What will you do with Natasha?”
“I can’t let her go back with news about Ginasberg.”
“You’ll keep her prisoner here until Ginasberg is secure?”
Kim sighed. “We don’t have the resources. Currently, she’s in one of the storerooms under the Admin offices. It’s not really secure. She could probably break out with a determined effort. We’ve got a jailer on duty outside, but it’s only a short-term measure. Apart from anything else, Mirle wants the storeroom back to put things in.”
“So what will you do?”
Rather than reply, Kim stared into the fire. Her stern expression spoke for her.
“You can’t execute her,” Lynn said quietly.
“I don’t want to, but I don’t see that I have a choice.”
“She doesn’t deserve it.”
“Maybe not. But I won’t risk the lives of everybody in Westernfort for the sake of one self-confessed assassin.”
“The stakes aren’t that high. I know we’ve put a lot of work into Ginasberg, but—”
“It’s more a gamble with time, and we don’t know how long we have. Strategically, we need a second settlement. The Chief Consultant isn’t going to give up on us. Someday, she’ll send a new, better-prepared force here. If we waste more years while we start from scratch at a new site, there’s more chance that the attack will come before we’re ready for it.” Kim ran her hand through her hair. “Of course, if we don’t catch the other two, they’ll tell the Chief Consultant all about Ginasberg, so there’d be no harm in sending Natasha back as well. If we haven’t found them in…say, three months, mid-June, we could let her go. We can probably keep her in the storeroom until then.”
“I’ve got another idea.”
“What?”
Lynn hesitated before going on. “Would you agree that Natasha is honorable? Trustworthy?”
“You mean for an attempted murderer?” Kim asked wryly.
“Kim.” Lynn’s tone was disapproving. She wanted a serious answer.
Kim took a deep breath and considered the question for a few seconds. “Yes. I’d probably throw in a few words like naïve and idealistic as well. And if you’re trying to make me feel guilty at the thought of hanging her, you needn’t bother. I already do.”
The Walls of Westernfort Page 22