by Tim Jones
I'll never get to sleep like this, he thought, and turned so that his view was of a rough-hewn rock wall, black, damp, and cold. This deep into the night, the cacophony of noises near and far which dominated every waking moment was subsiding, though he could still hear sobbing, arguments, a cry of pain floating through the fetid air.
It was no use. Trying not to wake Anarya and Atlan, Kendik rose to his feet, stepped around the sleeping bodies, and relieved himself into the chamber pot that squatted there. The chamber pot was a luxury item provided for their comfort by Sezhina, who seemed to have adopted them as her personal project, bringing them food and various items to make their stay at Lord Tesek's pleasure at a little easier. Kendik had not asked Sezhina why she was taking such care on their behalf. He did not want the supply line to dry up, and besides, he knew what was going on.
It was Anarya that Sezhina was really interested in. She would stand outside the cell, watching the young woman's every movement, until Qualia came, clucking and pecking, to drag Sezhina away to her other duties—although, when Sezhina entered the cell, she seemed oddly cautious of Anarya. In Kendik's home village, there had been two women, Imatia and Rassarine, who had lived together in the fashion of man and wife; Kendik had found this curious, and asked his mother to explain. When she had, Kendik had been even more curious, and a little wiser in the many ways of the world.
Anarya and Sezhina, Sezhina and Anarya—this, too, was distracting. It took Kendik a long time to go to sleep that night, as it had taken every night since he was thrust into the cell. At last, he drifted off to the sound of Anarya's rhythmic breathing and Atlan's guttering snores.
Morning came early in Lord Tesek's prison. There was no organized system of bells or alarms, but the clatter of the guards on their morning inspections was enough to wake up some inmates, and their cries for bread, water, or justice soon woke others; and so the whole span of the prison, laid out like the spokes of a wheel, groaned and grumbled into life. And death: the main duty of the morning guards was to drag out the corpses of those who had died in the night.
About an hour after the morning inspections, the door to the prison was opened, and the representatives of the outside world descended the stairs and brought their own brand of chaos. Every kind of transaction was conducted then: loving partners bringing food and warm clothing to husbands or wives incarcerated inside; shrewd merchants bargaining with better-off prisoners who had, in whatever unmentionable hiding place, secreted the means to buy little luxuries; guards being bribed to perform favors; prostitutes providing the limited but essential range of services they could offer to a customer hemmed in by iron bars.
At the hub of the wheel, the din was unimaginable. At the end of a spoke, it wasn't quite so bad. The cell opposite theirs was empty. The cell to their left was occupied by an old man who had been brought in two nights ago. He had come over to the bars between their cells a couple of times and watched them, but had so far rebuffed Kendik's and Anarya's brief attempts at conversation.
Atlan was in a bad way. His visible wounds were healing, but Kendik feared that the beating he had received had done something permanent to his brain, or perhaps his spirit. He still slept most of the time, and when he was awake, he said nothing, looking straight ahead. He would eat food given to him, drink water held up to his mouth, and permit himself to be led to the chamber pot, but there seemed nothing left of the old Atlan.
He was certainly in no state to receive visitors, but this morning, he got one. A woman, lushly bodied, richly furred, stepping with evident distaste along the corridor, stopped outside their cell.
"So this is what you've come to," she said, looking at Atlan, who stared back at her blankly.
"Who might you be?" asked Kendik.
"I don't need to answer to you," said the woman, "but I will tell you, for his sake. I am Uthaia. This fool got himself a skinful of liquor and came looking for an afternoon of love. I gave him a flea in his ear and sent him packing, but he didn't take the hint. He stood there in the middle of the street bawling at me, until the guards came."
"Is this how the guards usually deal with foolish drunks?" asked Anarya.
"No," said Uthaia thoughtfully. "At first, the regular guards turned up. They popped him a couple of times, just to slow him down, but nothing serious. Then the Falcons turned up and dragged him away. They do not usually arrive to deter drunken suitors."
"Who are the Falcons?" asked Kendik.
"Lord Tesek's elite guards, and the less we speak of them, the better."
She paused for a moment. "Atlan is a fool, and I am a respectable married woman now, not the trollop with a long sword and a short skirt he used to know. But they had no call to treat him this way. When he comes to his senses, tell him that Uthaia brought these for him. If he is assailed again, he can call on them. I will send a man with food from time to time."
She thrust two stones through the bars to Kendik, turned on her heels, and left.
Kendik and Anarya examined the stones closely. They were dark blue, each a little larger than an arrowhead, with one ended rounded and one sharp.
"Magic?" asked Anarya.
"No idea," said Kendik. He rubbed the stones against his cloak, then against each other. Nothing happened.
"What have you got there, then?" asked a voice from their left.
Kendik's first instinct was to cover the stones with his cloak. When he turned, he saw the old man from the neighboring cell peering through the bars at him.
"Nothing," said Kendik shortly.
"No, laddie, nothing is what I've got. Seems like you've got plenty: food, a pretty girl to keep you company, rich ladies who bring you gifts. Can you spare any food for a hungry old man?"
Kendik was on the point of refusing the old man when he became aware of Anarya's gaze. Without speaking, he went over to their dwindling stash of food—hidden at the back of the cell in the cleanest rags they had been able to find—and gave the old man an apple, two carrots, and a hunk of bread. He caught Anarya's smile, and felt as all young men do when they have shown generosity to impress their lady—though his rumbling stomach already regretted the gesture.
"Thank you," said the old man. "If only you nobles could behave like that in your everyday lives, this might be a better place."
"'Course," he added around a mouthful of bread, "I don't believe in nobility. What are you—a baron, an earl?"
"I'm a duke," said Kendik, silencing Anarya with a glance. She had reacted with a fit of giggles the first time he had told her of his exalted rank.
"A duke, eh? And in with us commoners. Maybe there's a vestige of democracy left in this place yet."
"Democracy? What is that?" asked Anarya.
"People deciding for themselves," said the old man. "There was a time"—he had finished off the bread and was embarking on a carrot— "when this town was run by the people who lived in it. We used to get together of an evening and thrash out what we'd do next, how we'd protect the place from marauders, what we'd grow in the fields."
"So you didn't have a lord in those days?"
"This town was founded by Name-givers who'd had enough of lords. We came here to get away from them. I was just a lad then, but when I was a young man, I fought for this town, fought to keep it the way it was. But we failed, because too many people would rather let someone else tell them what to do. They wanted lords, and they got them. Nikranth, and Invar, and now this Tesek, the worst of the lot. He wasn't so bad when he started off, mind—cared for his people, or at least pretended to. But he got delusions of grandeur, like they all do. As soon as he had that statue in the square erected, I knew the power had gone to his head. Eight years that statue has stood there, and I hate it more every time I see it."
"It is a little ugly," allowed Kendik.
"Whoa, duke whatever-your-Name-is! He'll have your head on a pike for that! Not planning to foment a rebellion, are you? Is that why you're here?"
"I'm just planning to get out of here," said Kendik
.
"It's a long way to the exit, unless you plan to dig a tunnel."
"Do you know a woman called Medzhina?" asked Anarya. "She was—is—my aunt. She lived in the Street of Apothecaries, but I cannot find her."
"Medzhina? No, can't say I do. Respectable folk don't want to associate with me, because I speak my mind. Speak my mind, whatever it costs me. A foolish habit, but I'm too old to change now."
"She was the sister of my protector, Dinazhe the Wizard."
At the mention of the Name Dinazhe, a remarkable change came over the old man. He shrank away from them as if they were contaminated, retreated to the furthest corner of his cell (almost, but not quite, within reach of his neighbor on the other side, an ork with a short fuse and an inventive line in curses), and turned his face away from them—though, Kendik noted, he did not return either the apple or the other carrot, which had disappeared into his ancient, much-darned cloak. He retreated into the same indifference he had shown when they first arrived, and would have nothing more to do with them.
"Perhaps," said Anarya, looking downcast, "he does not know the true nature of my protector."
Perhaps, Kendik thought, he does. But he did not utter the thought. The encounter with the old man had saddened Anarya. Kendik sat down, put his arm around her, and tried without much success to comfort her.
"My memories are all fading." said Anarya. " Everything I remember of this town, all the memories of Medzhina, of my life as a child—vanishing. It is as though this place sucks the life out of them. I will die in here."
"No, you won't," said Kendik, holding her as she cried. He thought back to the Anarya he had seen emerge from the depths of Kaer Volost. Where had all that self-assurance gone?
Later that day, Atlan woke up. He did not talk, but he reacted to sounds and looked at their faces with a semblance of recognition. Kendik told him of Uthaia's visit, and showed him the stones. Atlan reached out for them, took them, held them. Tears began to roll down his weather-beaten face, and this time it was Anarya who comforted him. In the room of the tearful, they huddled together and waited for the day to wind to its long and ragged end.
Kendik woke to the sound of the cell being unlocked. Strong arms seized him and hauled him to his feet. Anarya cried out, and a third black-clad man pointed his sword at her. "You, we'll deal with later," the man told her. "Now shut up and go back to sleep."
Left arm twisted behind his back, Kendik was propelled down the corridor towards the hub of the prison, then maneuvered into another passageway. The men did not speak. Kendik looked around for a chance to escape. This passageway was much like the others, but the last five cells on either side had been replaced by sealed rooms; and the passageway ended, not in bare rock, but in a door. A scream came from the nearest of the rooms just as Kendik passed it. It left him in little doubt what lay in store for him.
One of the three men moved ahead of him and took a torch from a sconce in the wall. Only his eyes and mouth were visible; the rest of him was clad entirely in black. A second man produced a key and bent down to unlock the door to the chosen torture chamber.
As the man put the key in the lock, the door to the room was thrown open from the inside, and a sword plunged into the man's heart. The man with the torch died a moment later, blood spurting from a deep slash across his neck. The pressure on Kendik's arm eased. Without giving himself time to think, Kendik turned and put all the force he could into a punch which caught the third, retreating man on the side of the head. It was hardly a knockout blow, but the man staggered, and that sealed his fate. A bloody sword cut him down.
"Help me get the bodies into the room," said Sezhina.
Numbly, Kendik obliged. Sezhina produced cloths from inside the room and ordered him to wipe the corridor clean, and hurry up about it. Their luck held: no one emerged to investigate, and they were far enough from the regular cells that any prisoner who was awake would have difficulty seeing what was going on. In two minutes, the corridor was clear again.
"In here," said Sezhina, "and shut the door."
Unsure whether to be impressed or horrified, Kendik did as he was told. He followed Sezhina into the room, now lit by the torch the second victim had been carrying. Sezhina was in her undergarments, changing from the bloodied clothes she had been wearing into her guard uniform. "Get your clothes off," she said, "and put this other lot on. There's two swords over there, yours and Anarya's. Hide them under this cloak, and don't let them clash together."
On the floor, bodies. All around, the implements of torture: racks and thumbscrews, chains spiked with barbs, whips with studded metal barbs at the tip. Quickly, methodically, Kendik changed. His sword needed oiling, he noted as he arranged it under his cloak. He picked up Anarya's sword, looked at it, then looked over at Se-zhina's sword, now belted at her side. Except for a slight patina of age on Sezhina's sword, they were identical.
If Sezhina caught his gaze, she gave no sign. "All right," she said. "Here's what we'll do. It turns out our black-clad friends here made a little mistake, picked up the wrong prisoner for interrogation. When they realized that, they handed you over to me, a humble guard. I've been ordered to take you back to your cell. Did they twist your arm behind your back?"
Kendik nodded.
"So will I. When you get back to your cell, you're going to wake Anarya, tell her to be quiet, and get her up and moving. Then we're going to get out of there."
"What about Atlan?"
Sezhina shook her head. "He's dead weight. We leave him behind."
"He goes, or none of us do," said Kendik.
Sezhina looked at him for a moment, then shrugged. "Your funeral," she said. "But if he slows us down, I'll kill him myself."
"Why are you—?"
"Later. Let's get out of here first."
From that room of fear and blood, a prisoner and a guard emerged. The guard paused to lock the door, then pushed the shuffling prisoner before her. His arm was twisted behind his back so hard that he gave off small cries of pain. They passed from the end of one passageway, through the central hub, and along another passageway, till they came at last to a cell in which a man lay still and a woman paced restlessly. The guard unlocked the cell and thrust the prisoner inside, then followed him in herself. There was a short, whispered conversation, then the cell was vacated, two of the prisoners supporting the third, who was able to walk but seemed to have little awareness of where he was going. In the cell, only a chamber pot and a few tattered rags were left as reminders of their presence, and though the old man in the next cell watched with great interest, he did not raise the alarm.
It was unusual for one guard to be escorting three prisoners; unusual, but not unheard of. In any case, none of the prisoners who watched them pass by was in any mood to object. Kendik tensed as they passed through the central hub, where two guards were dragging one prisoner down another passageway, but the guards did no more than nod to Sezhina. They started down the passageway that led to the stairs up to the guardhouse. Two more guards approached them.
"This lot don't know anything," Sezhina told her fellow guards. The guards nodded and passed them by. They reached the end of the corridor. They started up the steps. Then the door at the top was flung open, and a short, stout, bustling figure started down.
It was Qualia. "There you are, dearie!" she said, catching sight of Sezhina. Then she looked again, and realized what her fellow guard was doing.
"Oh," she said, and drew her sword.
Chapter 11
"Don't," said Sezhina. "And don't start shouting, either."
"But you're allowing prisoners to escape!"
"That's right. And I—now just shut up and listen—I killed three Falcons who were about to torture the skinny one here. So they'll be after me, but they'll also be after you, because there's no way they'll believe you weren't involved. You've got a choice. Come with us now, or get ready for the rack."
"But my Viknis—"
"Is in trouble either way. This way, you ge
t a chance to warn him."
Qualia looked from one face to the other. "I thought I was your friend," she said to Sezhina.
'You are. Now prove it by coming with us. Two guards escorting prisoners will look much better than one."
Qualia looked at Sezhina for a moment more. Kendik could see the play of feelings move across her face: fear, doubt, regret ... resignation. Qualia shrugged, sheathed her sword, and moved to join Sezhina. No sooner had she done so than the door at the top of the steps opened again and a group of guards came clattering down.
"Where are you taking them?" one of them asked.
"Prisoner release," Qualia replied. "No one's got any further use for them."
"One less cell to dig out," said the man, and carried on down the stairs.
Kendik soon learned that "prisoner release" was a mantra that opened all doors and answered all questions. The fact that one of the prisoners had to be half dragged, half pushed between the other two merely added a bracing note of realism. "Prisoner release" took them towards the main doors, and through those doors, and out into the weak morning sunlight.
"Keep moving," said Sezhina. "We have to look as though we know where we're going."
"You promised to let me warn Viknis," said Qualia.
"He lives near the West Gate, doesn't he?"
"If you could call it living, yes."
"Then that's the way we'll go. Lord Tesek doesn't want riff-raff in his town. We have orders to take these foreigners to the West Gate and expel them. Let's get on with it."
They passed out of the square and along the street that led to the West Gate in the rising heat and clamor of the morning. The surface of the street had turned to dust that swirled around their feet in eddies as they walked, coating their legs in a thin film of dirt. They passed the entrance to the street in which the pimp Mettik maintained his establishment, and Anarya looked away, fearful that she would be seen, though in truth she was so bedraggled from her time in prison that Mettik would have struggled to recognize her.