by Glenda Larke
Brand. It was Brand. One of the armed men held a blade to his neck.
Behind them, someone slammed the pothouse door shut.
Arrant stared, aghast. Any confidence he’d ever had melted into a childish need for comfort, but there was no one to give it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Pain shot up his arm but the foot pinning his fingers down did not budge.
Brand unwisely ignored the sword at his neck. He kicked out to dislodge whoever had been standing on Arrant’s hand. With his good arm, he hauled Arrant to his feet. The sword was chopped down in anger, slicing through his tunic to open a cut across his collarbone. Someone else seized his withered arm and twisted it up his back. With astonishing speed and strength, he bent double and heaved. His assailant went sailing through the air over his head, to crash into a table. He reached for his own weapon, yelling, ‘Run for it, Arrant!’
Arrant dived for the door, but it had been barred. He grabbed the bar and lifted. Behind him Brand was bellowing for help, so he started yelling as well.
Brand always goes out with guards. If we make enough noise—
Glancing over his shoulder as he heaved, he saw Brand had managed to draw his blade. A man was clutching a stomach wound. Arrant threw the bar aside, and tried to push open the door, only to realise it opened inwards. Someone slammed him against it. Eager hands grabbed him, holding him there, pinned like a banner to the boards. A muscled arm clamped his left palm flat to the planks. He winced; his hand was bruised and still paining him. He couldn’t move, so he yelled some more. The pothouse-keeper pinched his nose closed with dirty fingers until he opened his mouth. The moment he did, a cloth was stuffed in. It smelled of ale slops and tasted of sour vomit and yeast. The pothouse-keeper let go of his nose, chuckling.
He looked over his shoulder again, and his despair was a pain slicing into his ribcage. Brand was bent over a table, vanishing under attackers. He’d lost his sword, but was still struggling. Thracius leaped over a fallen chair, coming at Arrant. He had a knife in his hand and pressed the blade of it to the side of Arrant’s throat.
‘Hold it right there, Altani,’ he called. His voice was so thick with loathing Arrant didn’t recognise it. ‘Not a move out of you, or the boy dies.’
The men gradually stepped away from Brand where he lay on the tabletop. He sat up, dabbing at blood that ran down from a cut on his head into his eyes. More blood soaked the shoulder of his tunic. He looked at Thracius.
‘Well, well, well. Favonius Kyranon. Still threatening children, I see. I heard about what you did at Prianus.’
Arrant, trying to work the cloth out of his mouth with his tongue, stilled. Favonius? The Jackal who had tortured the children?
‘Prianus?’ Thracius blinked, sounding genuinely puzzled.
‘You don’t even remember the name,’ Brand said softly. ‘Maybe you never even knew it…’
Arrant’s mind didn’t seem to want to work. The thin man grabbed him, forced his hands together, palm to palm behind his back. He then tied them that way, using thin twine. He had a claw-like grip, that man, and he was rough. The ties were too tight. He turned Arrant to face the room and pulled the cloth out of his mouth. ‘Scream and this goes back in,’ he said. He smiled, showing yellowed teeth.
But Arrant was still dealing with what had preceded. He turned his head towards Thracius, disbelief and shock denying the information of his senses. ‘Prianus?’ he whispered. ‘You did that? Thracius—!’
‘Thracius?’ Brand asked, and gave a low laugh. ‘You poor fool, Arrant. He’s no one called Thracius. That’s Favonius Kyranon, one-time Stalwart, more lately legionnaire of the Brotherhood Jackals. Gevenan’s been chasing this fellow all over Tyrans for years.’ Brand’s gaze slid on to the thin man now standing beside Arrant, and the rage in his eyes glowed like coals in a brazier. ‘And that soulless strip of flesh and evil there, that’s Rathrox Ligatan, once Magister Officii, head of the Brotherhood.’
But it was to Thracius that Arrant’s gaze kept returning. ‘Prianus,’ he said. ‘How could you do that?’ Dark red lines, carved into a girl’s body with an artist’s eye for pattern. While she was alive.
‘Don’t worry, lad,’ Thracius said roughly. ‘You’ll come to no harm if you do as you’re told.’
But there was nothing he could have said that Arrant could believe. Not now. Not ever again. This was the man who’d ridden into a village and left a message for Ligea written in the blood of its children. Thracius, who’d told him stories, taken him fishing, taught him how to appreciate the beauty of a sculpture or a fine mosaic. Favonius Kyranon the Jackal, who had taken the heart out of a four-year-old boy and left it on the stoop for the child’s brother to find.
Arrant closed his eyes and turned his face away.
Thracius—no, Favonius, with steely fury, hissed in his ear. ‘Blame your bitch mother. She did this to me, she made me what you see.’
Anger swelled in Arrant, bursting through his veins into a roaring in his ears, a haziness in his vision, a pounding in his heart. He reached out to the power of his cabochon, not caring what it would do to his hands if it came. Not caring if it mutilated or killed them all: himself, Brand, everyone in the room. Not caring anything, except that he use it, that he have enough to kill this man who stood beside him and blamed Ligea for the evil he had done. He pulled, deep and sure and raging.
And nothing happened.
No light, no gold, no feeling of salvation. He shook, his whole body shook with his concentration—but found only a void. He knew then that he strove to draw something out of a pit of nothingness as deep as the ocean.
‘Goddess,’ Favonius was saying to Brand, ‘I wonder if you know how much I enjoy seeing you here like this, you bastard thrall. How much I’ve looked forward to this day. I haven’t forgotten the Mirage, you see. I haven’t forgotten the Stalwarts and how they suffered. Do you know how many of us returned, you shrivelled-arm helot? Do you?’
‘Get on with it, Favonius,’ Rathrox said quietly. His face seemed grey in the lamplight of the closed room. His eyelids drooped over a look that assessed them all, a look that absorbed or discarded what he needed with the ease of experience.
Favonius collected himself. He took a deep breath and began to speak, still addressing Brand. ‘Listen carefully,’ he said. ‘You are going to do something for us, and you are going to do it well, do you understand?’
Rathrox, who had left his side and gone to sit down, added, ‘And if you think there’s help waiting for you outside, forget it. We are aware that you are normally followed by guards when you leave the palace on foot, and we have taken precautions accordingly. They have been, um, redirected.’
Favonius continued, ‘In a moment you are going to go back to the palace with me, helot. The minute you and I leave this building, Arrant will be taken elsewhere. When we return, it will be to his new location. In the meantime, you will walk with me as if I am your best-loved crony from your past. You will get me into the palace, and you will get me in to see Ligea. Once there, you will ask her quietly to get rid of anyone else who happens to be with her. You will see that there is no fuss. Once us three are alone, you will tell her Rathrox here has her boy, and that Arrant will be killed if she doesn’t do all we ask.
‘And this is what we ask: she will leave her sword in the palace. She will keep her magic stone flat against her body, over her heart. She will ask to have her usual chariot and mounted guards brought around to the palace steps. She will act in every way completely normally. She will speak to nobody, not even you, unless I hear every word. Us three will leave the palace in the chariot. I will give directions. Be warned that outside the palace there will be other watchers to make sure that all goes well. When the chariot stops in front of the place we take her to, she will dismiss the driver, the guards, everyone. Understand? If she doesn’t, Arrant here will die.
‘We will enter that place. Once she does that, Arrant will be safe—unless Rathrox has the merest suspicion that a
nything is not the way it should be. If he has, then a knife goes into the boy’s throat. You must persuade Ligea not to think that she can torture the position of Arrant’s new location out of me and then come and rescue him. If I don’t get back on time, or if there is any unusual activity outside the building where Arrant is kept, the boy will die. As for you, thrall—’ He smiled an anticipatory smile that was edged with cruelty. ‘Your wellbeing will depend on your cooperation.’
‘No.’
The single word was said calmly and firmly. Brand looked across at Arrant. There was no condemnation there; no reproach. And no hope. ‘I’m sorry, Arrant. But if I do what they ask, all three of us will die. This way, at least one of us lives.’
Arrant knew what he was saying and felt an odd rush of relief. He was going to die. It was no more than he deserved, and if they could keep her safe—it was enough. He nodded his agreement.
‘Good lad,’ Brand said softly.
Rathrox rose to his feet and moved across to Arrant’s side once more. ‘I don’t think you’ve explained things all that well, Favonius.’ He turned to Brand. ‘I don’t give a damn about you one way or another myself, but Favonius here wants your head on a plate, so he’ll get it. But I have no intention of killing Arrant, quite the contrary—if we can get our hands on Ligea. Once she is dead, this lad is our new Exaltarch.’
He laid skinny fingers on Arrant’s arm, digging into the flesh. Laying claim to him, body and soul. ‘Who better? A lad we can manipulate, who can’t retaliate. The gullible will think he is some kind of god because he has a gemstone in his palm. We know he has no magic to use, but it’s a secret we will keep. He will be our figurehead.’
‘And you think I will go along with this?’ Arrant asked.
Rathrox was utterly contemptuous. ‘You won’t have any say in the matter, lad. Not if you want to stay alive. The merchants and trademasters and the highborn and the Cult of Melete will all support us because of what we can offer them. They know we will bring back slavery. Oh, doubtless the Senate and Advisory Council will jog along for a while. But we—we the Brotherhood and our Jackal Legion—will run the Exaltarchy.’ He ran his tongue over his thin lips. His discoloured teeth were displayed in an unpleasant smile as he looked back at Brand. ‘You will tell Ligea that her son will be safe if she comes to us without trouble. Favonius will tell her the same thing, and she will hear the truth in his promise.’
For the first time Brand showed some emotion. ‘You bastard. You want her to die knowing you have her son; that you will use him the way you once used her—’
He smiled. ‘That’s right. The perfect revenge for what she has done. I see you appreciate the exquisite irony of my plan. There is no greater pleasure than to have one’s enemies die despairing of all they have ever lived for.’
‘You can squirm whichever way you like, thrall,’ Favonius added, ‘but there’s no way out of this for you. Ligea will come because it’s the only way she can save her son. And she will know she can save him because she knows Rathrox. She knows how much he will enjoy raising the boy. And even as she knows the kind of life her son will lead, she will have to let it happen, because the alternative is worse. Death for him.’
Brand looked across at Arrant, the agony of his indecision in every line of his face. He could save Arrant or he could save Ligea. He couldn’t do both. Either way he was doomed and he knew it; but Arrant read compassion, not censure, in the glance Brand gave him.
Sweet cabochon. What have I done?
‘I’d rather die,’ Arrant told him, but his voice broke. ‘Don’t do it, Brand. Please, don’t do it.’ How could I live with myself, knowing it was my foolishness that ruined everything? How could he have ever hated this man?
‘Perhaps I can make the decision easier for you, helot,’ Rathrox said, the purr of his voice an obscenity. ‘If you don’t cooperate, if you don’t return with Favonius unhurt and with a compliant Ligea, Arrant will die slowly. I shall carve him up, piece by piece, and I’ll send the pieces to Ligea, one at a time. I know how to make a person die very slowly. It can take months…’ He raised a hand to Arrant’s face, and ran grey fingers down his cheek in a gesture of sensual pleasure that clenched Arrant’s heart with terror. He wrenched at his bonds and twisted his face away. Rathrox laughed.
Favonius refused to look at him but Arrant saw his hand shake on the knife he held. Perhaps there were still some things the ex-Stalwart found hard to stomach, after all. Arrant couldn’t be that wrong about him, could he? Thracius had called him the son he might have had…
But then there had been Prianus. Maybe there was nothing at all Favonius would not do.
Brand shrugged. ‘That will not be necessary. I will go with the—the jackal-hearted bastard.’
Rathrox nodded and smiled, Favonius let his blade drop away from Brand’s neck, the two men who had held Arrant released their hold. ‘Give him his cloak to cover that wound, someone, and let’s go,’ Favonius said simply.
‘Brand—’ Arrant said.
The Altani looked back at him from the doorway.
‘I’m sorry.’ Arrant was crying, unable to see him through the tears. ‘It’s my fault. All my fault. And I’d still rather die.’
Brand nodded. ‘Yes, but I have to be able to live with myself. Or rather, I have to die knowing how I have lived. And so does Ligea. Courage, lad. Courage. And never forget. That’s all I ask of you.’ And he turned and walked out of the door with Favonius.
Arrant was frozen with horror at what he had done. Brand was going to die. Ligea was going to die.
She is going to throw away all she has achieved to save me.
How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been such a baby—he who had lived with intrigue and deception and plotting all his life? Why hadn’t he seen the kind of man Thracius-Favonius was? How could he have ever believed no one would find out he sneaked out of the palace in disguise?
Unwanted fragments of memory crowded into his mind in illustration of his idiocy. The banquet. The way Antonia the High Priestess had stared at him. Perhaps she was the one who described him to Rathrox Ligatan’s spies. The beggar who had grabbed his hand, his left hand, that day he’d first met Favonius. The ‘stolen’ purse. Favonius’ careful approach. Never pushing himself forward. One slow step at a time. The talk of his nephew. Maybe they had intended to seize him that first day—except Brand had arrived, and Favonius, fearing he’d be recognised, had left.
Probably most of what he’d said at first had been the truth. He would have been scared of being caught out in a lie, until Arrant had obligingly told him there was no need, that he couldn’t read a lie. Even the way Favonius had said ‘I just go by the name of Thracius these days’ had been carefully worded to be the literal truth. They’d risked much, not knowing just what Magor capabilities he had. What a relief it must have been to Favonius to find out Arrant’s cabochon didn’t work as it should. Maybe they’d wanted to seize him then, only he’d obligingly informed Favonius that Ligea had left for the western borderlands. They’d had to bide their time until she returned.
Ligea is going to give herself up to her enemies to save me.
And how carefully they had planned their trap! The way Favonius had uncovered his cabochon, as though he hadn’t known it was there all along. His feigned shock. How he had played on Arrant’s dislike of Brand, fed his jealousy, stoked his fear of Rathrox Ligatan. That demonstration in front of the jail—they’d orchestrated that, just for his viewing. And he’d obliged them, as naively and as arrogantly stupid as a grasshopper trusting the friendship of a hawk. All because in his heart he’d wanted Brand dead.
Betrayer. Arrant the traitor.
Deep inside, Arrant had despised his grandfather, Mirager-solad, scorned him for his treachery. But at least the Mirager had done it for another. Arrant had done this for himself.
The guilt he felt was a corrosive acid in his stomach; the self-disgust a suffocating blanket that choked his breath.
Brand is going to die today.
Kardiastan could be threatened again, because of me. People could be enslaved again, because of me. The Exaltarchy could be racked by war again, because of me. Ligea is going to sacrifice herself to save me. They will torture her to death, of course. He’d seen the look in their eyes when they spoke of her.
He wanted to die. Oh, cabochon, how much he wanted to die.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Ligea left the audience hall through her own private door, glad the audience was over. The merchants and traders were a prickly bunch, always full of complaints because their profits were too low, or their taxes too high. They tried hard to make her feel she was a fraudulent interloper pretending to be the ruling emperor. It didn’t help that in that room she remembered all too clearly a time when she was the one kneeling at the foot of the Exaltarch, touching her fingers to the hem of his robe in submission.
‘Domina?’ Narbius, her scribe, approached. ‘General Gevenan has arrived back.’
She felt pleasure ripple through her, lifting her spirits. And that made her laugh. It was hard to say why someone who irritated her as much as Gevenan did could also make her feel suddenly happier because he was around. ‘Where is he?’
‘He went to see Ambassador Brand, Domina. I think they are probably still in the Ambassador’s quarters.’
‘Ask them both to join me in my apartments.’ She turned to walk that way, then stopped dead. ‘Narbius, wait!’
He came back obediently. She stood stock still, shock coursing through her body. ‘Tell—tell the General I want to see him on the double. Say Favonius is in the palace. Quickly.’
Narbius had no idea who Favonius was, but he heard the urgency in her voice. He ran.
So did Ligea. The first thing she needed to do was something completely practical. She wanted to change out of the ornate wrap she wore and into something she could fight in. As she ran, she assessed all she could sense of what was happening. Brand and Favonius were definitely together, side by side. That didn’t make sense. The two men hated one another. What possible reason could either of them have for this?