by Martha Wells
Khat stared at her, incredulous. "Run away? What gave you that idea?"
"Oh, come now." Elen made an exasperated gesture. "You can't wait to bolt. You'll be gone as soon as I turn my back."
"I'm not saying that's true, but if it was, why do you care?"
"You could help us," she said, real urgency in her voice. She really believed she was telling the truth. "We need the advice of someone who has experience with the relics. When I tell you what we're up against-"
"Don't tell me anything else," Khat interrupted. "Will you just climb down and go to your friends?"
"But what will you do?"
He was running out of time, that's what he was doing. "All right. I won't leave. But I want you to go down first and tell them what happened. I wouldn't want them to overreact before you could explain what I'm doing here. Make sense?"
"Yes, but..."
"Just do it, Elen."
Her expression said she didn't believe him, but she seemed to realize further argument was useless. She took the rope that he held steady for her and slipped over the edge. As soon as she reached the well chamber floor and let go he dragged it back up.
Khat went back for a last quick look over the outside edge. The group had almost reached the base of the Remnant. No leisurely walk back to Charisat today. He was going to have to go to ground somewhere out in the Waste.
He knotted his robe up, then found the pirate's broken painrod under the oilcloth and attached it to his belt. After a moment's thought he decided to leave the water bladder. It would be cumbersome to carry, and he could live without it.
The opposite side of the Remnant showed him an empty landscape without moving figures, Warder or otherwise. He flung the rope over and started down. They would have no reason to surround the Remnant, not knowing there was a second way out.
Khat reached the ground and crossed to the edge of the base. He halted abruptly as a figure stood up from the cover of a loose tumble of rock. Khat dodged sideways and bolted for the nearest sinkhole, more than forty yards away. He knew he was running for his life now. The lip of a narrow gorge was closer, but if he chanced it and found there were no openings into the midlevel from there he would be a sitting target for them. The sinkholes always led to more passages.
He saw two, no, three more moving forms in his peripheral vision, heard a confused shout off to the right. Then someone tackled him from behind. His elbow grated painfully on the rock as he fell. A punch and a kick freed him from his attacker, who had apparently knocked the wind out of himself already, and Khat rolled to his feet. Then something struck him hard, he lost his balance, and the ground slid abruptly away beneath his feet.
Stunned, he lay sprawled on warm stone, the rocky walls around him a blurred haze. Shooting pains through his skull momentarily crowded all the thoughts out of his head. Even trying to blink the sand out of his eyes hurt terribly. He tried to push himself up and saw darkness pouring in at the edges of his vision. The ground swayed alarmingly, and his arms gave out.
It was typical. He hadn't done anything to Elen, except take her painrod, and he might have given that back if the maniac hadn't stolen it from him last night. But in rushing to their young colleague's rescue, the Warders hadn't stopped to inquire about any of that. There were footsteps and the crunch of shifting pebbles somewhere behind him. He made another attempt to lever himself up, to move, anything, but he collapsed again onto the rock.
As the steps drew closer some sense returned, and he let himself slump down onto the stone, not breathing, not moving. Just let them leave him for dead. Maybe they would be satisfied with a bloody and apparently lifeless body. He could worry about surviving the Waste later.
Then a kick to the ribs surprised a yelp out of him, and he knew they wanted more than that.
Chapter Five
Gradually drifting back to awareness, Khat realized he lay on his side, on something soft, and he could smell sweat and a faint trace of blood. He remembered he was in trouble. Then someone touched the knot of pain at the back of his skull, and he flinched away from the contact and back into wide-awake.
Elen was leaning over him. "You look awful," she said helpfully. "Your eyes are so black I can't see the pupils. What does that mean?"
"It means I feel like hell." His voice was a dry rasp that startled him. They were in the central chamber of the Remnant, near the lip of the pit, and his own robe had been bundled up to make a pillow, somewhat easing the insistent pounding in his head. He tried to push himself up, and pain lanced down his back. He gasped, grimaced, and moved more carefully, easing away from Elen and just managing to sit up.
The door slab was open to the late morning sun and a warm wind, which had raised the normally bearable temperature of the chamber to a smothering heat. There were two men standing near the open doorway, veiled and robed in dingy white and brown, watching him suspiciously. They looked like ordinary travelers, except one had a particularly handsome air rifle slung over his shoulder. They weren't vigils; vigils didn't wear veils, even upper-tier vigils. They also usually wore leather cuirasses under their robes to guard against stabs in the back, and while some might be armed with air rifles, most had only metal staves, useful in breaking up fights outside wineshops. These men were probably lictors, like the dead man Jaq.
Moving had made Khat aware of all the other bruises and scrapes he had recently acquired. The ribs on his right side ached in a particularly painful way, and he lifted his shirt to see a large purple bruise. He had taken a kick there, he remembered. He looked warily at Elen. "I've never been beaten senseless by Warders before."
"It was the lictors Seul and the others brought. They said they thought you were one of the pirates." She had dark smudges of weariness under her eyes, and her makeshift cap was fraying apart. "I'm sorry."
It was hard to tell if she was really sorry or not; she was wearing her stone face again. Khat noted that his knife was gone, and there was nothing in the chamber around them to use as a weapon. Then what she had said penetrated, and he asked, "Seul's here? He's supposed to be dead."
"Yes. He was thrown clear in the explosion, and the pirates left him for dead. He was able to walk back along the road and reach the city. He brought the others." She turned to rummage in an oilcloth pack and pull out a pitch-coated leather water flask. "Here, try to drink some of this."
Khat accepted the water flask, sniffed it, then took a cautious sip. It was warm, but there was no taste of any of the number of opiates or essences that would have rendered him more amenable to persuasion. It reminded him that his stomach was mostly empty, but in his present condition that was probably a good thing.
Elen was watching him gravely. He touched his face carefully, investigating the swelling along his jaw, wondering how best to talk his way out. "Elen, what's the point of this? I know you have the relic. So? There are valuable relics all over the upper tiers. I don't know anything that can hurt you."
An unreadable expression crossed Elen's face. She put the stopper on the flask and set it aside. "When you said you expected me to have you killed just because I was a Warder, you weren't exaggerating, were you?"
He wasn't sure what to make of that, and fell back on an honest answer. "No, I wasn't."
Something flickered in her eyes, and with an air of weary resignation she said, "No one is going to kill you, or hand you over to the Trade Inspectors, or whatever else you're worried about. My master only wants to talk to you."
That was hardly reassuring, but it did explain why they simply hadn't put him out of his misery immediately. "Talk about what?"
"The relic, of course. What else? You've been going on about it as if it's the discovery of the age."
"Oh, that." If not the discovery of the age it was at least the discovery of the decade, or it would be to the Ancient scholars in the Academia. If they ever got to hear of it. Khat discounted Elen's reassurances automatically. If she hadn't been able to stop the lictors from indulging themselves during his capture, she wouldn'
t be able to stop her master from disposing of him once he had what he wanted. Whatever that is, Khat thought.
A shadow crossed the light as a man stepped through the entrance of the Remnant. As he came toward them Khat's shoulders stiffened with tension. Kythen Seul hadn't bothered to pull his veil into place, not out here where there were only lictors, other Warders, and people of no consequence to see. He wasn't dressed as a Warder, either, wearing a brown outer robe over white, but there was a pain-rod swinging from his belt. Seul said, "Elen, I told you not to get near him."
"It's a bit late for that, Kythen," Elen said without glancing up.
Seul looked at her sharply. Khat winced and wished he could knock Elen's thick little skull against the nearest wall. He wondered if she had any idea what the penalty for rape of a Patrician woman was, or that her overeager relatives might not believe her when she told them nothing had happened. Possibly she was so poor at lying that the possibility of the truth not being believed had never entered her mind. "He saved my life," Elen continued, oblivious. "I told you that."
The Warder didn't appear pleased to hear Elen defend Khat. Because there was no point in behaving as pathetically trapped as he felt, Khat smiled up at Seul and asked, "Jealous?"
This did not make Seul happy either. He gestured to the two lictors waiting across the room, and they came instantly to stand at his side. He said to Khat, "He will speak to you now, and you will keep your insolence to yourself."
Khat thought that what Seul wanted was exactly the opposite, so there would be an excuse for another beating. He stood up, and the edges of his vision went black, then gradually cleared. Seul watched his unsteadiness with a tight-lipped smile, then started back to the door. With the two lictors closing in around him, Khat went without further comment. He noticed that Elen's limp was better.
Outside on the base of the Remnant the sun was too bright, searing into the dark stone and making the lighter glow gold. The sky was burning blue and cloudless.
More lictors were waiting there, headcloths pulled forward to shield their eyes from the glare, air rifles held ready. There were more Warders standing with them, recognizable by the painrods at their belts.
Seul led the way through the lictors. Their stares were curious or hostile, as if they had never seen a live krismen before, and perhaps they hadn't. Khat had never seen this many representatives of Imperial justice at one time before, and being surrounded by them was not pleasant. As he and Elen passed through them Khat heard a low-voiced mutter, the one distinguishable word being "feral." He doubted the speaker was referring to Elen.
An old man stood at the fringe of the Waste rock, using a small brass distance-glass to look up at the top edge of the Remnant's outer wall. He wore plain robes, but no weapons, and no veil. His skin was a dark honey brown, lined and seamed, and grizzled white hair was tied back from his face. He lowered the glass as they approached; his eyes were a washed-out blue and hard to read.
Elen went up to him, pulling the relic out of her robe. The cloth wrapping slipped a little as she held it out to him, and the crystal sparked with color. She said simply, "You were right."
He reached out to touch the relic but hesitated, his fingers a few inches away. "Where?" he asked, eyes intent.
Elen looked back at Khat. "He knows."
There went any hope of pretending ignorance. Khat squinted up at the sky to accustom his eyes to the glare and said, "The antechamber, right wall from the ramp, third shape up and fourth from the corner."
"It fits precisely?" The old man was looking at him now. Khat did not feel reassured. He had seen buyers who were fanatical about relics, who worshiped the Ancients as gods almost, and it hadn't occurred to him that Elen's master might be such a man. He said, "As far as I could tell."
"Show me."
That was the signal to troop back inside, the old man leading the way. Khat was glad to see that most of the others remained behind, apparently to guard the Remnant's door. Only Elen, Kythen Seul, another young Warder, and three of the lictors followed. The lictors were right behind Khat on the way up the ramp, as if they were hoping he would take advantage of the comparatively cramped passageway to attack someone. The angle of the ramp seemed to make the krismen's headache worse, and he kept one hand on the smooth wall to steady himself.
In the antechamber the old man handed Elen the relic, and she found the correct shape and pressed the mythenin plaque into it. The old man stepped up and ran his fingers lightly over the metal where it met the stone, and said, "Yes, it's perfect." He looked back at Khat. "Well done."
Khat managed to keep his expression neutral. You're very welcome, he thought, but it's not as if I invented the damn thing.
"I am also grateful to you for saving Elen's life."
That he couldn't let go by. "You have an odd way of demonstrating it. If you were any more grateful, I'd be dead."
Startled, the old man smiled. "A mistake only. My men didn't know who you were."
The apology was too easy; it might be sincere, but the man obviously didn't think much of a kris getting knocked around, and he probably couldn't see why Khat should either. Before Khat could say anything else, Kythen Seul interrupted. "There's something you should know." He stepped forward and held out a painrod. "He also stole this from her."
Elen stared at the evidence in alarm, then blinked and took the weapon for a closer look. "This isn't mine. It's smaller, and the pattern on the metal is different, and look, the case is broken." Surprised, she glanced up at Khat, who raised an eyebrow at her. It was, of course, the wrong painrod; Elen's was long gone with the madman last night.
"Where did you get this?" the old man asked him, bemused.
"One of the pirates had it."
Seul did not appear happy with this revelation. With a faint smile the old Warder took the damaged weapon and handed it to one of the lictors. Then he popped the relic out of the wall and returned it to Elen. "I am Sonet Riathen, Master Warder. I have something else I would like you to look at for me."
Khat's throat was suddenly dry. This wasn't just any powerful Warder. The Master Warder was the one who sat at the Elector's right hand, who spoke for all Warders, who was leader of them all. You're dead and you just don't know to lie down for it yet, Khat told himself. But why is he bothering to play with me, as if he means to let me go? That thought felt suspiciously like hope, and he squelched it firmly. If the old man wanted to pretend both of them were going to walk away from this, it was probably from pure sadism.
Riathen was moving out into the well chamber and the better light, the others following him. One of the lictors gave Khat a not ungentle push to get him started, and he trailed after.
Riathen pulled his outer robe off one shoulder to free a satchel slung under it. Opening it, he took out a flat, thick leather case. He held it out to Khat, saying, "This book. It is purported to be almost a thousand years old, written by one of the Survivors only a few years after the Waste rose. Is it a forgery?"
Interested in spite of everything, Khat wiped his sweaty palms off on his shirt before taking the book. The leather case enclosing it had been softened to the texture of fragile human skin by time and much handling, but it was nowhere near a thousand years old. The bronze fastening had broken some time ago, and Khat eased it open and carefully drew the book out. The leather cover of the text itself was more promising; it was as brittle as badly mixed glass and cracked even under his careful touch. A design was cut into it, a circular pattern of lines burnished with faded gold leaf. That matched the few other Survivor texts Khat had seen, many of which were badly damaged or incomplete and were kept closely guarded by private collectors or the Academia. What little knowledge the scholars had of the Ancients had come from those texts. There were also hundreds, perhaps thousands of copies and forgeries of Survivor texts circulating through the markets of the Fringe Cities.
The design and the aging of the leather was the easiest part to counterfeit. The original ribbon-ties that had bound the
compact mass of yellowed paper had long ago crumbled away, and new ones had been added, probably at about the same time the outer case had been replaced. The new ones were red and not much faded, possibly a sign the book hadn't been removed from the case overmuch. That boded well for its condition and its authenticity. A forger would have felt compelled to add faded or broken ties. Khat felt for his flea glass for a moment and realized it was gone. The lictors had probably stolen it.
He undid the ties carefully, then sat on his heels to lay the book facedown on the smooth stone and unfold it from the back. Someone started to make an objection, was instantly silenced by someone else. Khat ignored both. The first page had completely captured his attention. The book was written in Ancient Script.
Most Survivor texts were written in Old Menian, which scholars knew had been the common language of the vast area where the Waste and the Fringes now lay. Each Fringe City had made it its own during the years of isolation in the Survivor Time, corrupting the original into entirely different dialects. Tradetongue was a mix and match of those new dialects, and if you could read it and didn't lack for imagination, you had more than a sporting chance of being able to read Old Menian, too. Khat had less trouble with it than most, because the Enclave's version of Old Menian was so close to the original as to make no difference at all. The areas of the Last Sea coast and the islands spoke several entirely different languages that had undergone little change since the Waste formed, though so few Survivor texts were found in them, they were scarcely worth learning. But Ancient Script was something else.
Robelin had believed it to be a language not in common use even in Ancient times, something for scholars and law courts and maybe for Mages. There was a passing resemblance to Old Menian, but it was there mainly to confuse the unwary. Each word had three to four different meanings, depending on the context, making it an economical script and difficult to decipher. The few texts that were written in it were the oldest ever found, and in such poor condition they were barely readable.