“You have no principles at all.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“No, it’s true. You’re a contrarian. You have to have your own way, but you define it by what people tell you not to do.
The problem is that underneath all your macho crap there’s this sneaking suspicion that everybody else is right. It has nothing to do with principle—you reject authority because it’s fun to break rules. You’re like a little kid, being naughty with a grin on his face.”
“Do we have to talk about this now?”
“You’re not for anything, you’re just against everything.”
SERGEANT HABRAK HAD been in the Ankhanan Army for more than twenty years, so he instantly recognized the look in Berne’s eyes as the Count came to the steel bars of the gate; he’d seen it too many times on the faces of officers about to order suicidal charges, on foot soldiers who’d been pushed to the point of bloody mutiny, on peasants about to run screaming against ranks of armored Knights, scythes and pitchforks upraised to avenge rape and slaughter. The sergeant sprang to his feet, fumbling for the jingling hoop of keys at his belt.
Berne rasped, “Open this fucking gate before I cut it down.”
“Only a second, m’lord, only a second.” Habrak managed finally to shove the key into the lock, and he swung the gate back.
Berne stalked past him, and Habrak coughed wetly: the Count stank, reeked like a closed stable on a hot summer’s day—and what was this filth that caked the heavy strawberry serge he wore? He looked—and smelled—like he’d spent the night rolling in manure—!
At Habrak’s cough, Berne stopped and looked back over his left shoulder, his face bisected by the long diagonal hilt of his shoulder-slung sword.
“You got a problem?” Berne asked, his voice low and lethal. “Maybe you smell something?”
“Oh, oh, oh, oh no, no, my lord. Not at all.”
“That’s peculiar, considering I’m covered with shit.”
“Never mind. Open the fucking door.”
“Your, ah, your weapon, er Count . . .” Habrak said hesitantly.
“Don’t even think you’re going to disarm me, Habrak. Not tonight.”
Habrak, like any sane man, was bone-deep leery of Count Berne’s erratic temper and lightning blade, but he’d been sergeant of the guard here in the Imperial Donjon for five years, and he felt he was on firm ground. “This is, er, standard procedure, m’lord. Security.”
“You think one of your starving pukes down there is going to take this sword away from me?”
Either answer to a question like this was liable to hook more trouble, so Habrak sidestepped. “The Emperor hisself leaves his weapons here with me, before he goes through that door. It’s by his word that only the guards bear arms in the Donjon. If y’think he’s wrong, y’oughta take it up with him.”
Berne gave in with a snarl, unbuckling the sword belt and throwing it into Habrak’s hands as though daring the sergeant to drop it. Habrak, gratefully, clung to the scabbard like a leech and gingerly hung it on the rack behind his desk.
“And you’ll be wanting a lamp, if y’re going past the Pit. Patrol snuffs the last torch at midnight.”
Berne looked, if it were possible, more angry now than when he’d entered. He took a lamp in his white-knuckled hand and waited by the door. He stared downward as though he could see through the door, down through the living stone from which the Donjon had been carved, and there found the face of a man he despised.
Habrak unlocked the door and held it for him as Berne descended the long, narrow shaft of stairway, down deep into the darkness. The hot reek of fermenting shit and unwashed bodies, air that had been breathed too many times by men and women with rotting teeth and decaying lungs, boiled up out of the stairwell in Berne’s wake; Habrak was as glad as ever to shut that door and move away from it, back to his desk.
The Imperial Donjon of Ankhana lies in a series of tunnels cut into the limestone of Old Town beneath the courthouse, excavated over decades by teams of convict stonebenders. The central common room, known as the Pit, had been shaped from a natural cavern three stories high; twenty feet above the floor, it is girdled by a ledge that forms a natural balcony, which is patrolled by guards bearing crossbows and iron-bound clubs.
The Pit is always crowded with men and women awaiting trial—some for months, even years—and those convicts who have already been sentenced, who are awaiting transport to a frontier garrison or the eastern mines. It is the only area that is permanently lit, its ceiling blackened by decades of smoking lanterns. Sloping tunnels carved into the living rock radiate outward from the Pit’s balcony like spokes in a wheel, at intervals connected by narrow crossways. These tunnels lead to the private cells, which are inhabited by minor nobles and members of Warrengangs and any others who have the money or influence to bribe their way out of the Pit, and only those.
Solitary confinement is a luxury in the Imperial Donjon; prisoners who cause trouble are condemned to the Shaft.
The Donjon is a place of deep shadow and bad air; the bitter, bloody smells of despair and brutality thickly struggle with the reek of human shit and rotting flesh. The sole entrance or exit is the single flight of stairs down which Berne now strode, from the courthouse cellar to the Pit balcony; a prisoner in the Imperial Donjon has as much chance of escape as does a damned soul in Hell.
Suspicious, hard-eyed guards squinted at Berne as he stalked past them around the arc of the balcony; they trusted no one but each other. He spared them not even a passing glance.
The doors to the private cells carried two locks: heavy beams mounted on pivots, and smaller keyhole locks. The beams could be swung swiftly into place to bar the door against a prisoner’s rush; the keyhole locks were there against the occasional prisoner who did manage to get free of his cell, to prevent him from running along the corridors freeing others faster than the guards could put them away again.
Berne had his own key to the door he wanted. He turned it and slapped the beam to vertical, yanked the door open, and went inside.
This cell was well appointed; by the standards of the Donjon, it was sumptuous: a feather bed with clean sheets and a blanket, a small writing desk, a comfortable chair, even a rack of books to pass long hours of waiting. The cell was clean, and on the desk lay a tray covered with the remnants of a pork shank, some potato, and a bit of gravy-soaked bread. The prisoner on the bed stirred reluctantly out of sleep, drawn up toward consciousness by the noise of the door and the sudden light of the lamp that Berne now set on the desk.
The prisoner rolled over and shaded his bleary eyes. “Huh? Berne?”
“You haven’t been giving me the whole story, Lamorak,” Berne said. He shifted his Buckler to his feet, short-stepped, and kicked Lamorak’s bed to splinters.
Berne’s foot exploded through the mattress, and a blizzard of swirling chicken feathers filled the cell. The kick slapped Lamorak bodily into the air, his arms flailing helplessly. Berne’s hand struck with the speed of a stooping falcon and snatched Lamorak’s ankle.
He held Lamorak out, head down, at arm’s length and struggling. This strength, this power that Ma’elKoth granted him, he reveled in it. Being able to lift a bigger man, straight armed and one handed, and never feel the strain—it shortened his breath, and brought living heat to his crotch.
“Just imagine,” he said thickly, “what a kick like that will do to your head.”
“Berne, Berne don’t . . .” Lamorak said, arms crossed in front of his face in futile defense—those muscular golden arms would splinter more easily than the bedslats had.
“Berne . . . Berne, calm down . . .”
With a flick of his wrist, Berne battered Lamorak against the stone wall of the cell. Lamorak left skin and blood behind, smeared across the stone, and rose-white bone peeked through where the impact had split the flesh over his elbow. Lamorak grunted, but did not cry out. For a long count of ten the only sound within the cell was the drizzle of his blood pattering onto the floor.
Berne said, “Let’s try this again. Can you smell me?”
Lamorak nodded with difficulty, his face becoming puffy with blood. “What . . . what happened?” he asked hoarsely.
“What part does Pallas Ril play in this?”
Berne flicked him against the stone again, this time face first. Lamorak’s scalp split at the hairline, and blood slicked down into his long, golden hair.
Berne didn’t have time to play at this; the rock of the Donjon impedes Flow. Though Ma’elKoth had gifted him with the splinter of griffinstone that he carried on a chain about his neck to power his strength in situations like these, down here it would not do so for very long.
“How many times will you make me ask this question?”
Lamorak said something that Berne didn’t quite catch; his mind had drifted away to the humiliation of the beating his Cats had taken at the hands of Pallas Ril and her goatfucking beggars.
After the shocking indignity of having a building knocked down on his head, digging his way out had taken him only a minute; with his superhuman strength, he had shrugged aside foot-thick beams the way an ordinary man would handle bundles of straw. Raging, he’d led the Cats charging after her, through the streets of the Industrial Park and into the Warrens.
And the beggars had thrown shit at them.
There was no one to fight, no one to kill, just clods of flying shit spattering them from all directions. Soon the Cats were entirely disorganized, chasing after this beggar or that as they disappeared into the crowded maze of backstreets without a trace.
Ma’elKoth had refused Berne’s call for firebolts to scatter the crowds. “Wanton slaughter in the streets of the capital is counterproductive. Perhaps your attention would be more valuably spent ensuring that the Aktiri you located do not escape while you are chasing about the Warrens.”
Cursing, Berne had sprinted back to the abandoned warehouse and broken into the cellar, ready to kill them all on the spot—but the cellar was empty. They’d gone, somehow, in the bare quarter hour their bolt-hole had been unwatched. It was as though Pallas Ril had led the Cats away to accomplish exactly this. If, that is, the Aktiri had ever been there in the first place. But she was involved, here, somewhere, somehow, in with Simon Jester, and now so was Caine, and Berne was not fool enough to believe in coincidence.
Perhaps Simon Jester . . . perhaps he was Caine!
Berne’s mind boiled; Lamorak dangled forgotten from his fist. It was possible, he decided, all too possible. Never mind that he was no thaumaturge—he had Pallas Ril for that. It even made a certain hideous amount of sense; Caine was notorious for burrowing his wormy way into the confidence of his enemies—look at what he’d done to Khulan G’thar . . .
And Ma’elKoth had invited him into the palace, had fed and armed him, had seated him in Berne’s chair. . . !
“It’s useless,” Lamorak was saying miserably.
“Why won’t you understand me? Why can’t you hear what I’m saying to you?”
Berne’s mouth twisted with revulsion as he looked down. “The way you whine, it makes me sick. They weren’t there, you stupid goatfucker. The Aktiri were not in the warehouse cellar. Either you lied to me, or you truly don’t know, and either way you’re no fucking use anymore.”
“I’m telling you,” Lamorak said, clutching for Berne’s knee. “Berne, I swear to you, I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m telling you Pallas Ril . . .”
Berne lost the thread of his meaning again, imagining the smooth humming slide of Kosall into Caine’s body. Where would he cut Caine first? Sever a leg? Perhaps only take an ear? Maybe a low stab, into his groin—Berne felt stirrings in his own as he imagined this. Maybe he’d finish it off by jamming Kosall up Caine’s ass until the point came out his mouth . . .
“. . . our deal,” Lamorak was saying. “Berne, we have a deal.”
Berne shrugged and opened his hand. Lamorak barely got his arms around his head in time to avoid braining himself on the stone floor. Berne watched dispassionately while Lamorak slowly picked himself up.
“Tell you what,” Berne said. He held out the key to Lamorak’s cell. “I’ll give you a chance. Jump me, take this key, and I’ll let you go.”
Berne pivoted into a low-line roundhouse kick that brought his shin against Lamorak’s golden thigh with crushing force. Lamorak’s femur snapped with a wet, meaty pop and he fell to the floor, clutching his broken leg and biting his mouth to hold in a scream.
“Too late,” Berne said. “Had your chance. Sorry.”
He dropped to one knee and rolled Lamorak roughly onto his stomach; Lamorak groaned as Berne forced his legs apart, using his strength to spread the thigh muscle that cramped hard around his broken bone. Lamorak’s breeches tore like tissue beneath his fingers.
“Don’t,” Lamorak pleaded, hoarse with the strain of holding in a scream. “For the love of god . . .”
“Which god?” Berne asked, digging his fingers into Lamorak’s ass cheeks, but then he stopped, and he sighed. This wasn’t what he needed. This wasn’t even what he wanted.
And Pallas Ril. Together. Strapped to the tables in the Theater of Truth, their eyelids pinned back by Master Arkadeil’s silver needles, so that each must watch what he did to the other.
Sadly, this was not to be: he’d better kill Caine tonight. That slippery little goatfucker was just too dangerous to leave alive.
Berne left Lamorak lying there on the floor of the cell, his face white with pain and shock. He locked the door behind himself.
On his way up into the night-darkened courthouse, he stopped at the upper gate to retrieve his sword. He buckled it over his shoulder and said to the sergeant, “Habrak. Send a man to Master Arkadeil. I want Lamorak in the Theater of Truth tonight. If you hurry, Arkadeil can use him as the subject for his midnight instructional. Tell him to try to find out what he can about Simon Jester, but it’s not too important—I don’t think Lamorak really knows anything he hasn’t already told. Tell Arkadeil to take his time, enjoy himself, and there’s no need for Lamorak to live through it.”
Habrak saluted. “As the Count orders.”
“You’re a good man, Sergeant.”
He left, pausing only a moment in the courthouse above to dismiss the Cats who had accompanied him; he needed no entourage to protect him on these streets.
He left the courthouse and stopped in the street to inhale the night. A great breath of darkness filled his chest and teased his lips toward a curving grin.
He spread his arms, smiling up at the brilliant stars. This was his favorite time of day, this still emptiness of midnight; the sleepy hush that spread its blanket over the city, the crystal chill in the air, all the city folk behind their shutters, dreaming of the day. They slept secure in the knowledge that nothing of any importance in their lives could happen from midnight to dawn.
They were wrong, of course; especially tonight.
He hooked his thumbs behind his belt, ambled down the street, and thought about it.
He picked out windows as he went along, picturing the solid citizens that slept behind them. Those shutters there, with the patch of silvery weather stain—behind them, he decided, could be a young family, a serious-minded tinker from the smithy down the street, his lovely young wife who took in washing for a couple silver a week, and their precious daughter, now turned six. Maybe her birthday is tomorrow; maybe she lies in bed right now with her eyes open, breathless, praying to the gods for a real dress this year.
Getting in would be easy. With his enchanted strength, he could leap to that window from here; with Kosall he could slice away the hasp. A warm squirming began in his belly—he could see, as though they lay before him now, the restless stir of the tinker’s wife as Berne slipped into their bedroom; he could see the slow dawning of light in the tinker’s eyes, only a glimmer that would fade swiftly away as Kosall silently drank his life; he could feel the frail terror of the wife’s heart beating against his chest as she tried to pull her hips away from him, as he fucked her in the pool of her husband’s blood.
And the little girl, the daughter—orphaned at such a tender age, in such a brutal way. He could see the approval on the faces of the respectable townsfolk as he offered to adopt her. He was nobility, after all; no one would think to deny him. And she’d be his, all his, to raise and to train, to perfect her body and her mind, to bend her body beneath his, to enter her virginity with his power as he finally revealed to her how her parents had died . . . and her arms would snake around his back, and she’d whisper in his ear, “I know . . . I’ve always known . . . I’ve always loved you, Berne . . .”
Berne chuckled and shook his head. He would do no such thing, tonight.
The point was that if he wanted to, he could.
Tonight, he’d let them go. Another night, he might make another choice.
He felt good, now, really good, for the first time since, oh, since he’d killed those two gladiator brats in the Warrens. He felt free, and full of light.
It was because he’d finally made the decision: he’d decided to go ahead and kill Caine. Only now could he feel how much Ma’elKoth’s command to spare the life of that treacherous little snake had weighed upon his spirit; he recognized the weight by its absence.
Oh, Ma’elKoth would be angry, sure, at first—no one likes to be defied—but in the end, he’d forgive Berne, even thank him.
Ma’elKoth always forgave, always accepted, always valued Berne for precisely what he was. He asked only that Berne exercise restraint, never asked that he change. This was the difference between Ma’elKoth and every other living being that Berne had ever known.
Berne stretched like a cat, and his loosening joints shifted and popped beneath his skin. He grinned into the moonlight, measuring the towering black-shadowed wall that enclosed Old Town. In the next breath he burst into a sprint along Ten Street, the wind of his passing sizzling in his ears. Twenty paces from the garrison stables he bounded into the air, his enchanted strength sending him soaring up to the stables’ roof; then without even a pause he sprang upward again, to the rooftop of the officers’ barracks and from there to the top of the wall. A triple bound had taken him up ten times the height of a man.
Standing openly upon the battlement, he threw his arms wide and shouted, laughing, “Lord, my aching balls! I love being me!”
A pair of nervous sentries from Onetower, the massive keep that defended the downstream point of the island, came toward him hesitantly with leveled crossbows. “Don’t move!” one of them called. “Identify yourself!”
In answer, Berne unslung Kosall and laid it on the battlement. “I am Count Berne,” he said, “and this is my sword. Don’t touch it while I’m gone.”
With that he threw his arms wide once again and leaped high into the air, an arc of perfect grace as he dove toward the Great Chambaygen; he shifted his Buckler into his hands as he cut the water and slid into its depths with barely a ripple. The stones and mud at the river’s bottom bothered him not at all, and he passed a happy interval playing in the water, letting the river wash away the shit that had caked his clothes and the last of the knots of anger that had tied themselves in his back.
This was the great gift of Ma’elKoth. Nothing was denied him. He did as he chose, when he chose, and there was no one with the power to say him nay. Only Ma’elKoth himself could stop him—and he never did. He looked upon Berne’s excesses as a proud father looks upon the exuberant youth of his favorite son—with tolerance, and only occasional gentle correction.
Berne’s real father, a dour and ascetic Monastic official in a small southern town, had raised Berne with the kind of iron hand only a fanatic can wield. His father had been posted there, in a tiny backwater, at the behest of the moderate Jhanthite faction that had, in those days, largely controlled the Council of Brothers; they’d wanted him far enough away that his extremist views wouldn’t trouble their relations with the subhumans.
Berne had been raised to be his father’s weapon in the war against the subs, trained from birth to be the perfect warrior—but somehow, in all those years, his father had never bothered to ask what Berne wanted to do, if he wanted to be the ultimate weapon.
Berne had always known what he wanted to do.
He wanted to live, really live, to fight and screw and eat and drink and gamble and do every single thing he could cram into one lifetime. He knew well that this was the only life he’d ever get, and he was determined not to miss anything.
At the age of seventeen, he’d finally shown his father how well his training had worked. He beat the old bastard into unconsciousness, took the old man’s sword, all his gold, a jug of wine, and his best horse and headed for the city. He’d quickly discovered that there were few men who’d even care to stand against him with a blade, and nearly none that could survive to the count of ten; he’d never had any difficulty putting his hands on money.
It had been a good life for more than ten years, but the one he had now was better.
Now, as he splashed within the waters of the Great Chambaygen, he wondered idly if his father knew of his service to Ma’elKoth, wondered if his father appreciated the irony. After all, now that he served Ma’elKoth, he fulfilled his father’s dreams for him better than he ever could have if he’d followed his father’s path. Berne wondered if his father would think it funny; Berne surely did. He could raise a chuckle just thinking about it.
He went to the wall and pulled himself up out of the water, climbing the wall easily, fingers and boot toes finding the mortared joins between the stones. When he reached the battlement, both sentries still lingered, nervously standing watch over his sword. Berne thanked them with a grin for guarding it as he slung it on; then he shrugged and untied the purse that hung from the sword belt. Why not? He tossed a golden royal to each of them; as they fumbled eagerly for the coins—more than a week’s salary apiece—he gave them a lazy salute and jumped back off the wall, retracing his upward path from rooftop to rooftop and finally to the street.
He hummed happily, tunelessly, as he jogged toward the Colhari Palace. He played out the scenario in his mind:
I swear, Ma’elKoth, he just came at me. It was like the other day inside Alien Games. I went to his room to make peace, you know? That’s all. I even brought some brandy, a couple of cigars . . . And he berserked on me. I had to kill him—it was him or me, Ma’elKoth, I swear it!
Even as Berne was, himself, now—clean.
Still kinda horny, though—shame that there’s no way he could justify fucking Caine’s corpse. He rubbed the front of his breeches as he jogged along—mm, horny indeed, horny enough that maybe he should do something about it before he went after Caine. His story would become vastly less convincing if he stood before Ma’elKoth with an enormous erection.
And then the gods gave him a gift: as he paced past the mouth of an alley, he heard the familiar sucking hiss of a whore’s come-on. Standing within was a thin, frail-looking elvish girl clutching a tattered shawl around her translucent shoulders.
Berne gave her a friendly smile. “Missed the curfew, did you?”
She nodded submissively and looked up at him from beneath long silver lashes. “I must leave the street. Give me shelter for the night, and I will teach you—” She rotated her hips suggestively. “—primal secrets . . .”
“All right,” he murmured, “but show me some here, first.”
He joined her in the alley, and when he left, sated, only moments later, her broken corpse still twitched like the legs of a half-crushed spider on the cobbles behind him.
There was a curfew, after all, and as a Count of the Emperor, it was his duty to enforce the law.
Then to the palace, for a quick change into dry clothes; he sent a servant for a jug of good brandy and a box of cigars—these would be the peace offering that would buy his way into Caine’s room for the kill.
Humming to himself, he tripped cheerfully along the halls to the chambers that had been set aside for Caine. His hand was on the very grip of Caine’s door when Ma’elKoth Spoke to him.
Berne winced; this Speaking—Ma’elKoth’s ability to roar into the mind of any of his Children, anyone who’d gone through the Ritual of Rebirth—thundered inside his head like the voice of a god and made his skull feel as though it might burst at the next word. He barely managed to hang onto the jug of brandy.
“Nothing,” he said to the empty air. “I’m visiting Caine. You know, to make peace—”
WHY IS LAMORAK IN THE THEATER OF TRUTH?
Berne pressed the heel of a hand against his eyes, as though to keep them from popping out of his head. “I, ah, just wanted to get rid of him, you know? He’s no use to us anymore—why spend the money to feed him?”
THE MONEY IS NOT YOURS TO SPEND OR SAVE; NOR IS LAMORAK USELESS. EVEN AS WE CONVERSE, CAINE IS WITHIN THE DONJON TO PRETEND HIS RESCUE AND THAT OF THE WOMAN, AND THUS ENTER THE CONFIDENCE OF SIMON JESTER.
“Enter the confidence . . . ?” Berne stared at the closed door in front of him and thought as fast as his blade had ever moved. “Ma’elKoth, I can countermand the order—on horseback I’m only five minutes away.”
NO. LETHIM DIE. TO REVERSE YOURSELF WOULD CAUSE SUSPICION AMONG THE GUARD, AND POSSIBLY WITH LAMORAK HIMSELF. SIMON JESTER HAS SOURCES EVERYWHERE; NO ONE MUST SUSPECT OUR PLAN. THE WOMAN WILL BE SUFFICIENT—BUT BERNE, KNOW THAT I AM MOST DISPLEASED WITH YOU.
“Ma’elKoth, I’m sorry, please . . .” Berne murmured, but the Presence was gone from his mind.
Berne took a deep breath and carefully set the brandy and the cigars down at the threshold of Caine’s door; then he burst into a sprint and ran like the wind, leaping down stairs and skidding around corners, racing to the small stable where the Household Knights kept their steeds.
He couldn’t tell Ma’elKoth what he suspected, what he knew, about Caine—Ma’elKoth was obviously infatuated with the fucking little snake—but Berne could, right here and right now, save the Empire.
He could get Caine: get him killed without a drop of blood on his own hands.
That was the unfortunate part, that he’d have to leave Caine’s death to someone else, but in times like these, all true patriots must be prepared to make sacrifices.
He wasted no time saddling his horse, just buckled on his bridle. A golden royal apiece bought him the silence of the guards at the Dil-Phinnarthin Gate, and Berne galloped bareback off toward the courthouse.
So Caine dies at someone else’s hand, so what? With any luck at all, Berne would get to do Pallas Ril in a day or two—this would be a satisfying consolation prize, much more satisfying than that elvish whore.
With Pallas, he could take his time and really enjoy himself.
“ ’STRATOR? ’STRATOR!” A tentative hand on his shoulder prodded Arturo Kollberg awake. He batted at it gummily, smacking his lips against the ashtray taste in his mouth. “ ’Strator, Caine’s back on-line!”
“Whuh—?” With a buzzing, humming rush, the world flooded back into Kollberg’s brain. The 270-degree point-of-view screen that formed a wall of the techbooth spread before his eyes; he’d fallen asleep here, in the stage manager’s command chair, waiting for Caine to emerge from the Colhari Palace.
“Zhe hurt? H’longza been?” He shook his head sharply and massaged his face with both hands, trying to drive alertness in through the skin.
He was acutely, painfully aware of the diode-lit fist button of the active emergency transfer control, shining there on the console before him like a radioactive toadstool; he was painfully aware of the responsibility it implied.
“No, he doesn’t seem to be hurt,” one of the techs replied. “It’s been a few minutes short of twenty-seven hours. He’s on foot, heading west along the backstreets of Old Town. He is, ah, has apparently been rearmed, somehow, and he’s carrying a heavy coil of rope slung across one shoulder.”
“Get them up, then!” Kollberg barked. “We’ve got a hundred and fifty thousand first-handers in sendep all over the world! If something happens, and they all sleep through it—!”
There was no need to complete the implied threat; every man in the techbooth understood. For minutes, the only sound was the muted thuttering of fingertip keystrokes and the whispering rumble of Caine’s Soliloquy.
“For Christ’s sake, somebody get me some coffee.”
A tech bolted out of his chair and scrambled toward the urn while Kollberg scanned Caine’s telemetry with a critical eye: Caine’s adrenal production was soaring, and though his heart rate was barely above one hundred, it was climbing steadily. He clearly wasn’t injured—he moved smoothly through the backstreets, easily slipping into deep shadows to avoid the passing constable patrols.
The tech pressed a cup into his hand, and Kollberg sipped the scalding coffee expressionlessly. This coffee was hardly enough for his needs: he couldn’t take the chance of drifting off again. He scribbled a brief note on the armpad linked to the chair’s electronics and clicked send. In five minutes or so a Studio porter would arrive at the techbooth with the carton of amphetamine sulphate that he normally kept by the simichair in his private box.
Caine’s soliloquy ran continuously as he artfully filled in the story line for the missing twenty-seven hours. Kollberg nodded his admiration for Caine’s technique; the man really was brilliant at this. He knew he’d been off-line, and now he wove the story in images so vivid that the first-handers would almost believe they’d gone through those experiences themselves, while at the same time maintaining a sense of free-associating disorder to uphold the illusion that the Soliloquy was actual thought.
So . . . he’d massaged Ma’elKoth into hiring him to find Simon Jester; this was lovely irony. It would let Caine save Pallas and kill Ma’elKoth virtually simultaneously, provided Caine worked the plot with the sort of skill Kollberg knew he had.
Caine’s POV flickered dizzyingly as he scanned the street before gliding across Noble’s Way in the black moon-shadows under Knight’s Bridge. He still filled in back-story, with some babble about a giant statue and a blood oath, but he hadn’t yet breathed a word of why he was creeping into the west end of Old Town at two A.M.
It was a suspense technique, an old one, one that Caine would have learned at the Studio Conservatory, and it was certainly working on Kollberg. He chewed on a corner of his lower lip and wiped sweat from his palms onto the arms of the chair.
Caine’s POV crept toward a hulking structure that loomed as a barely blacker shadow against the thin, moon-silvered overcast, a blocky building taller than the sheer curtain wall that surrounded Old Town.
“What is that?” Kollberg murmured. “Where’s he going?”
One of the techs checked Caine’s telltale on the virtual map. “I’d have to say that’s the courthouse, ’Strator. God only knows what he thinks he’s going to do there.”
Even as Kollberg frowned his agreement, Caine reached a corner of the courthouse and slid along it into ink-painted shadow: his fingers and toes found the mortared cracks between the huge limestone fascia, and he climbed the wall with the ease and speed of a man going up a daylit stair. In slightly more than a minute he gained the guardwalk that surrounded the courthouse’s sloping roof and crouched there in the shadows while he caught his breath and counted chimneys in Soliloquy.
*One two three up, two over, there it is.*
The chimney Caine watched now belched a thick, white, steam-laced smoke that caught a reddish glow from the lantern of an approaching guard. *That puff of steam came from a cauldron of gruel being dumped on a cookfire about sixty meters straight down,* Caine monologued.
Sixty meters? Kollberg frowned, puzzled. The courthouse was barely half that tall.
The guard had no chance. He rounded the curve of the guardwalk and never saw Caine slip over the wall behind him and overtake him on cat feet. To Kollberg’s surprise, Caine didn’t cut the man’s throat; instead he unstrung the guard’s knees with a silent and efficient elbow to the neck, just below his helmet’s back rim. The guard pitched forward while Caine caught the lantern in one hand and the guard himself with the other; he lowered them both to the guardwalk in absolute silence. Before the guard could recover himself enough to so much as moan, Caine had looped his cord belt around the guard’s neck in a simple garrote; in seconds, he silently strangled the guard into deep unconsciousness.
Another twenty seconds were required to bind and gag him, then Caine padded up the slope of the roof toward the chimney he’d picked out.
*The King’s Eye who dumped that gruel is the only man down there who knows something’s up, and even he doesn’t know what it is. All he knows is that Toa-Sytell wants to question the prisoner who preps the morning meal, and that Toa-Sytell wants that gruel dumped on that fire. That’s all he knows; that’s all he needs to know.
*The rest of it, I’m handling myself.*
On reaching the chimney, Caine pulled from his belt a bar of blackened steel with a long, long hank of coiled rope tied to a notch in the middle. He laid the bar across the mouth of the chimney and let the rope uncoil into the choking smoke-filled darkness below. He pulled out a pair of thick rawhide gloves and slipped them on as he climbed into the chimney.
*Fifteen minutes until the trusties who do the morning cooking arrive. Fifteen minutes to get two friends out of durance vile. Longer than that, and I blow the game—which might cost me my life, but that’s not important. If I screw this up, Pallas dies down here.*
He leaned out from the chimney for one last good breath, inhaled, then held it and slid down the rope fast enough that the gloves smoked and began to burn the palms of his hands.
*I’ve gotta get this right the first time.*
Lamorak, Kollberg thought in sudden panic. Lamorak’s down there—he’s going for Lamorak and Pallas! But no, he wouldn’t waste his time on Lamorak, would he? He’d best not. Didn’t I warn him about that?
His fist twitched and raised unconsciously over the emergency recall switch; an effort of will was required to lower his fist without striking. He couldn’t do it, not yet, not without justification; his dealings with Lamorak were somewhat too delicate to bear the weight of an emergency recall—the Board of Governors might not approve.
As Caine slid down into the smoldering embers of the cookfire in the cramped, darkened kitchen of the Imperial Donjon, Kollberg’s eyes were fixed on the pulsing toadstool of the emergency recall switch.
This was no longer a matter of if, he realized—only a question of when.
TALANN STRUGGLED UP from twisting fever dreams, some of the clouds clearing from her mind, and returned to the world of darkness and pain.
She couldn’t recall how long it had been since her last interrogation; didn’t know how many days she’d been chained here, naked skin rubbing raw against the chill limestone floor. Iron shackles bolted to the floor encircled her ankles; a length of rusted chain joined her wrist manacles to the same floor bolt, too short a length to allow her to stand erect or lie flat. Wetness and soft slime beneath her told her that she’d again voided her bladder and bowels while she’d slept, curled fetally around her restraints; her sense of smell had long ago overloaded and could tell her nothing.
Gasping, she pulled herself into a sitting position. Her various pains announced themselves gleefully in ascending ranks: torn flesh where the iron manacles cut into her wrists and ankles, the oozing sores across her buttocks and flanks that lying in her own filth had opened, the carelessly stitched sword cuts she’d taken from the Cats, now swelling with angry infection, and the sledgehammer of fever that pounded dizziness into her brain. She suspected that the pulpy swelling over her right ear, souvenir of being clubbed into unconsciousness with a steel pommel, probably concealed a skull fracture.
Great Mother, she thought, half in prayer, don’t let me end like this.
The interrogations, she’d done right. She was sure of that. She’d held the line, held her tongue, kept to her ideals: they hadn’t been able to pry so much as her name out of her. They’d even dragged her away from the Flow-choking walls of the Donjon, to the palace, and the Emperor had interrogated her personally.
She had felt the prying fingers of his will struggling for a grip on the doors of her mind; but she’d resisted as the abbey school had taught her, concentrating her entire meditation-sharpened attention on her surroundings, counting wood grains in the molding of the door, the iron-grey hairs in Ma’elKoth’s beard, listening for the melody in the buzzing wings of a trapped housefly.
After Ma’elKoth understood her strategy, his own had shifted, and he had magickally dimmed her senses, leaving her blind, and deaf, without smell or taste or kinesthesia, floating in endless featureless nothingness, with only the pressure of his questions beating like surf upon the seawalls of her mind. Still she had resisted, filling her consciousness with nursery rhymes and scraps of song and half-remembered recitations of Monastic history.
After this had come again the easier task of resisting pain—once again to the Theater of Truth and Master Arkadeil’s silver needles. Even then, she might have broken and told them the truth, but the truth could not have helped her.
The truth was that she had no idea who Simon Jester might be, what he looked like, or what his plans were.
She had a vague sense that she had known these answers as recently as a few days ago, but now they had slipped from her mind like water through cupped fingers. All she remembered was sticking close to Pallas Ril, because she had been Caine’s woman, because her life was linked with Caine’s, because Talann knew, in her most passionate heart of hearts, that someday she herself would grip Caine’s hand, would catch his eye, would fight by his side and perhaps, in dreams so precious that she could only peer at them from a distance and then flick them aside, perhaps lie in his bed.
Now, lying in a pool of her own filth on the jagged floor of her cell, watching the colors in her eyes explode in fantastic geometries against the blank darkness, she struggled to believe that this would still happen, that this was still in her future.
She fought to believe that her story, the song of her life, wouldn’t end with a fading whimper in this endless night.
Eyes open, or eyes closed? She could no longer tell, and it no longer mattered. She summoned again her favorite memory: ten years ago, when she’d been an adolescent page running messages for Abbot Dartheln on Thorny Ridge above the great battlefield of Ceraeno, through those three days when the combined might of Ankhana and the Monasteries strove, outnumbered, against the infinite savage warriors of the Khulan Horde and was losing, had lost the battle, and desperately tried to organize a retreat in good order.
She would never forget the surge that had slammed up her spine when a shout of dismay had risen from the vast ranks of the Horde, and she had looked down to the battlefield to see the huge banner of the Khulan himself burn with smoking yellow flame.
Among Talann’s gifts was extraordinary vision; like an eagle, she could see—even from a mile or more away—the black clothes and fringe of beard on the man who held the burning banner up for a moment longer, then cast it down to the mud-churned earth at his feet. She had watched breathlessly, mesmerized, her duties forgotten, as the Bear Guard closed around him like the jaws of a dragon, and a tear had tracked through the dust of her cheeks for the death of this unknown hero—but an instant later, she saw him again, still alive, still fighting, cutting through the finest warriors of the Khulan Horde as the prow of a warship cuts through waves.
She’d seen him only once more, a month later, when she’d stood in the company of the Ankhanan Abbot to watch Caine make his formal refusal of the Barony offered him by King Tel-Alcontaur. He’d moved stiffly, still hampered by slow-healing wounds he’d taken in the battle, a splint on his left arm. Dartheln hadn’t missed the look on her face as she’d watched; he’d smilingly offered to introduce her, and later after the ceremony he’d made his offer good.
Caine had gravely gripped her hand as a comrade in battle, and had listened with solemn attention to her stammered words of admiration. But there were hundreds of folk more important than she was all waiting to do him honor, and as he walked away he’d dragged her heart along with him.
Since that day she’d lived her life in emulation, refusing the offers of Monastic posts, requesting her Release from Obedience, traveling in search of adventure, endlessly honing her skills so that someday, when she met him again, they could meet as equals; so that she would be worthy of the respect he had generously granted her so long ago.
She’d reached an age now to be embarrassed by the adolescent passion of this dream, but she’d never been able to bring herself to leave it behind—she summoned it to comfort her in her darkest hours.
She had never even approached an hour so dark as this one.
So lost was she in dreamlike contemplation of an impossible future that she only barely noticed the scrape of the bar to her cell being shifted. It was a series of scratching clicks that caught her attention: this was not the sound of a turnkey.
And she heard the door open, and in the dim and distant light that leaked all the way from the Pit, she saw the silhouette of a man as he slipped inside her cell; and after the scratch of flint on steel and a shower of sparks, a lantern was gently puffed to life.
Talann’s heart stopped, and her vision swam.
He wore the loose robe of a trusty instead of his customary black leathers, and his face was caked with soot, but the fringe of beard and the slight angle of the broken nose were exactly as she had seen them in ten years of dreams. And she knew that this was a dream, that this could only be a fantasy, that she’d finally lost her senses.
But if this had been a dream, he would have gathered her into his arms; he would have whispered her name as the shackles fell away. Instead, as the light grew in Talann’s tiny cell, Caine looked like he’d been clubbed.
He stared at her with shock and loathing, and some kind of stunned disappointment. Then he shook his head and covered his eyes with his hand, resting his forehead against the webbing between thumb and forefinger.
“You’re Talann,” he murmured hoarsely. “Of course. It would have been too easy.”
Her heart sang; these puzzling words and wounding expressions meant nothing beyond one simple, surging fact. She said, “Caine—you remember me . . .”
“Hah?” His head jerked up, and his eye fixed hers with a penetrating stare—an instant later he grimaced and began rummaging within the trusty’s robe that he wore.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he muttered. “I remember you.”
“And I’m not dreaming. I’m not. You’ve come to rescue me.”
Across his half-averted face flickered the shadowplay of a conflicted interior struggle; it came to some resolve when he found what he’d sought within his pockets. When he spoke to her again, he looked her full in the eye, and his face was grim and set.
“Yeah. Yeah, you better believe it. I’m gonna get you out of here.”
He held out a shallow ceramic pot only slightly larger than the circle of his thumb and forefinger, its wide mouth stoppered by a piece of cork. “Grease your wounds with this, and eat a little. It’ll take away the swelling and relieve some of the pain. Don’t use too much—Lamorak might be in worse shape than you are.”
She held the pot while he picked the simple locks of her manacles and shackles; then she swiftly followed his instructions. Whatever magick powered the ointment seemed to be a potent one: almost instantly the redness and swelling of the infected sword cuts began to recede, and she could literally feel the fading of her fever.
“This was,” she said, rubbing a last bit of the ointment onto the torn flesh of her wrists and ankles, “not exactly the way I’d imagined meeting you again. I’m not the kind of girl who needs to be rescued very often . . .”
This sounded bad, and the hollow laugh that she forced to follow it sounded worse, but thankfully Caine barely seemed to notice. He pulled the trusty’s robe off over his head, revealing his familiar knife-studded costume of leather, and tossed the robe to her.
“Dress. We have less than ten minutes to spring Lamorak and get out of here.”
For a bare instant she lost herself in the blessed feel of clothing once again covering her body. “Thank you. Mother’s Curse, Caine, I can’t even—”
“Save it. We’ll have time for speeches after we get out of here; shit, you can give me a testimonial dinner. Let’s go get Lamorak.”
“Lamorak,” she said slowly. “Do you know—” that he’s screwing Pallas Ril? her mind finished, but she couldn’t say it aloud, not to his face, not here.
“—where his cell is?” she amended hastily. “I haven’t seen anyone—did anyone get away? Pallas—did she make it? Is she well?”
“Yeah, I . . . ah, I guess so,” he said, looking like his stomach suddenly hurt him. “So far. Come on, let’s go.”
But instead of opening the door, Caine’s fingers opened, and the lantern clattered to the floor; an animal snarl scraped up his throat as his hands went to his head. His face twisted into a rictus of agony, and he doubled over an instant before he collapsed against the wall, clawing at it for support; his fingernails scraped across the limestone, and he crumpled to the floor.
KOLLBERG LEAPED BOLT upright from the stage manager’s chair, chins quivering. “What in Christ’s name was that?”
“I don’t know, sir,” said one of the frantic techs, “but it must hurt like hell. Look at this!”
Caine’s brain chemistry had gone berserk, and his pain-response telemetry was off the scale; it was incredible that he was even conscious. On Soliloquy there came only a low back-of-the-throat moan.
“Is it some kind of seizure?” Kollberg barked. “Somebody tell me what’s going on!”
Another tech looked up from his keypad screen, shaking his head. “For that, sir, we’re probably going to have to wait for Caine.”
And then Caine’s Soliloquy came back on-line with a phrase that shot ice into Kollberg’s chest.
*Everyone seems to want me to let Lamorak die.*
BERNE THUNDERED UP to the courthouse at a full gallop, and even as a young and nervous sentry unshouldered his pike and snapped at him to halt and declare himself, he swung from the saddle and stalked toward the sentry like a hunting wolf.
“Look at me. You know who I am, don’t you?”
The sentry nodded mutely, eyes wide.
“I’m giving you a gift, soldier. I’m handing you a promotion.”
“You haven’t seen me. We’ve never met. This is what happened here tonight. As you were pacing your post, you heard a sound—a muffled cry, the thud of a falling body, it doesn’t matter. Make something up. All you have to do is go to your watch commander and get him to send men to check every sentry. Understand?”
“One of your men is probably dead, now, as we speak. The man that killed him is in the Donjon.”
The sentry frowned. “I don’t understand. If he’s in the Donjon, how could he—”
Berne cuffed him on the side of the head hard enough to make him stagger. “He’s not a prisoner, you idiot. He’s helping a prisoner escape.”
“Only if you make it so, soldier. If this man is caught and killed, I’ll be your friend, you follow? You understand what it can mean for a common soldier to have, for a friend, a Count of the Emperor?”
Ambition seemed to light the sentry’s eyes from within, and again he nodded.
“But if anyone ever learns I was here tonight, I’ll be your enemy. You might understand what that means, too.”
“I wouldn’t know you if you bit me, m’lord.”
Berne patted him on his reddening cheek. “Good lad.”
The sentry clattered off, and Berne remounted his blowing horse. He wanted to be back at the palace before this particular kettle exploded.
THIS WAS THE thunder that threatened to burst Caine’s skull:
I APOLOGIZE FOR THE SHOUT, DEAR BOY; THE ROCK OF THE DONJON IMPEDES FLOW, AND SO I MUST ROAR.
FORGET LAMORAK. HE IS IN THE THEATER OF TRUTH, AND YOU CANNOT REACH HIM IN TIME. IF YOU CAN BRING OUT THE WOMAN, SHE MIGHT SUFFICE.
OTHERWISE, RETURN AND WE SHALL DEVISE A NEW AND BETTER STRATAGEM.
The Presence was gone from his mind as thunderously as it had appeared. Caine remembered what Kollberg had said in the greenroom before his transfer, remembered as clearly as if he was hearing it now for the first time. “And, ah, about Lamorak. If he’s not dead—if, for example, he was captured—you are under no circumstances to attempt a rescue.”
He couldn’t look at Talann, couldn’t stare into those deep violet pools of her eyes.
He coughed once, harshly, and monologued, *Everyone seems to want me to let Lamorak die.*
He thought, Kollberg, you cocksucker, though his Studio conditioning prevented him from bringing the words to his lips. If there’s any way, any way I can show people what you are, you just better fucking watch out.
Caine said, aloud, “How do we get from here to the Theater of Truth?”
TALANN’S EYES GO wide: violets blooming at twilight. “I, I, I’m not sure,” she stammers. “Ah, are you, are you well?”
I rest my aching head against the cool limestone behind me and try to look calm and confident—must have scared the shit out of her, when I collapsed like that. Sure as death scared the shit out of me.
“Have you been there? The Theater of Truth?”
She nods uncertainly and can’t meet my eyes. “That’s where Lamorak is?”
“Yeah, well, his cell was empty when I got there,” I lie smoothly. “Unless you think he’s having dinner with Ma’elKoth, the Theater of Truth is about the only choice.”
She runs grimy fingers into her matted, greasy hair. “I don’t, I don’t really know how to get there. When they took me, they tied a sack over my head. I couldn’t see.”
And we’ve only got about five minutes left.
So there it is, something snarls in the back of my mind. You win, Ma’elKoth. You win, you other, you grey-fleshed flabby maggot of a man whom I cannot name.
You win. Lamorak dies. Game over.
I don’t know how that spell works, I don’t know if anyone could hear Ma’elKoth’s voice roaring into my mind to say that Lamorak lies in the chamber of horrors, that he’s too far away and too well guarded. Not a medieval torture chamber, oh, no; a very modern, very clean and efficient torture chamber, run by a Lipkan expatriate whose very name has become a byword for conscienceless brutality.
And yet, something wet and sticky squirms in my chest, telling me it’s easy to leave him. Easy, simple.
Leave him, let him die. There’s no chance to save him. My hands are clean.
Even Pallas wouldn’t fault me for this.
I push up to my feet, swaying a little, my head still ringing from Ma’elKoth’s roar.
“How do you feel? Can you run? Can you climb? The rope out of here is a hundred and fifty feet. Can you do it?”
“Caine,” she says feelingly, “to get out of here, I can do anything.”
“Stay two strides behind my right shoulder, and keep up. You’re Monastic, right? You can friarpace?”
She nods. Within her filth-streaked face, her eyes shine with a hero-worshiping promise of a knight’s reward. This time it’s me that looks away.
I close the door behind us, swing the bar into place, and we run.
Friarpace is a form of meditation as well as a method for moving fast over uncertain terrain. We bend forward from the hips and hold our backs straight, running flat-footed while bringing our knees straight up toward our chests with each stride. The arms go limp at the sides, not pumped for balance, and the hands are kept curled in three-finger shape. I watch the floor three paces ahead in the muted gleam from a bare crack in my lantern’s cover. I breathe slowly and steadily—three steps in, three steps out—feeling the universal breath like a current that carries me along. A good pacer can run at marathon speed through a woodland and never tire, never stumble on uneven ground, never trip on a root hidden in underbrush, and make very little noise. In abbey school, we’d open each fighting day with a three-mile friarpace into the forest; the gouges and ridges of unevenly cut limestone down here are no danger, even in the dark.
Talann keeps up without difficulty. “Where are we going?”
I count side passages as we pace, chanting our path under my breath as a mantra. Straight straight right straight left straight straight right— as each leg or turn passes I cut it from my chant. None of the passages down here are quite straight, and some of them curve much more than is apparent as we move along them. I spend substantial concentration on this; if I miss one, we’re fucked. Even as it is, we’re cutting the timing too damned close.
When my chant reduces to straight, right, I stop and hold out an arm to catch Talann at my shoulder.
“Around that corner,” I say, low, “there’s a door with no bar on it. That’s the mess. We go in there; there’s a rope tucked up inside the flue. It’ll take us right up to the courthouse roof, but we have to hurry. If the day cooks show up and relight the fire, we’ll smother. Understand?”
She nods, frowning. “But . . . where’s the Theater of Truth? What about Lamorak?”
I shake my head grimly. “We can’t help him. There’s no time. If he’d been in his cell . . .”
She seems to shrink a little, to collapse in on herself, and she looks away. “So we have to leave him,” she says hollowly. “There’s nothing you can do?”
She wants me to tell her she’s wrong; she turns back to look at me with so much nakedly worshipful hope in her eyes it makes me want to belt her.
“That’s right—” A horrible thought leaks into my brain. “You, ah, you and Pallas, you have a meetpoint? You know, a place you can link up if you’ve been separated?”
She squints at me. “Of course we do. Why should you ask? Didn’t Pallas send you?”
“No. It’s a long story.” I breathe a little easier—it would have been too harshly ironic to leave Lamorak down here and later discover he was the only one who knew where to find Pallas.
But somewhere, deep in my guts, I feel an unexpected twinge. It’s not just that I know Lamorak, that I even kind of like the guy—it feels like, I don’t know, disappointment?
I see it now: I was hoping Lamorak was the only one who knew the rendezvous.
I’m looking for an excuse to rescue him.
We shouldn’t even be having this conversation. I should have taken her into the kitchen and up the chimney and worried about this shit once we were out of danger.
Ma’elKoth told me to let him die; that other maggot gave me the same order.
Everyone wants me to let Lamorak die.
A pretty smart guy said to me the other day: “They think they own you. They think you have to do what they say.”
And, y’know, there is one other way out of here . . .
I set the lantern on the floor and reach for Talann’s arms in the deep shadows. Her face seems to glow, faintly; back over my shoulder a hundred paces or so is the torchlight and the constant prisoner-mumble of the Pit. Her breath catches in her throat, and her eyes shine.
“You go up that rope,” I tell her. “You find Pallas Ril and say these words to her: Caine says you’ve been off-line for four days. She’ll know what to do.”
Her eyes narrow, and she gets a hardass set to her mouth. “Tell her yourself.”
She takes a step back and frees her arms from my grip with an efficient crossblock, her palms striking my wrists. It leaves her in balanced guard stance, from which she jabs a finger at my face. “Don’t even think you’re going to try this without me.”
“No. Lamorak is my companion—and my friend. If you say there’s no chance, I’ll go up that rope right behind you. If you’re making a try, I’ll be at your side.”
I study her for a long moment while I entertain a fantasy of beating that hardass look right off her face. Screw it. From the fierce confidence in her eyes, and the memory of the solid cables of muscle in her arms, I might not be able to do it. And, y’know, I can’t force her up that rope.
Besides, I might need the help.
She can read my decision in the shift of the curve of my silhouette.
“How do we find the Theater of Truth?”
“That’s the easy part. We grab a guard and hurt him till he gives us directions. Come on.”
“NOW, BEFORE CONSCIOUSNESS fully returns, we make a final check of our equipment. Any gaps in the cage or your suit can have devastating consequences, particularly as—as we are pretending in this case—we have no idea as to the specific abilities of the subject under the question.”
Awareness unfolded in geologic time, a coral island rising beneath a black ocean. Unfocused, undefined discomfort resolved into thirst—desert-parched mouth, mummified tongue, scurf like sandstone baked onto the teeth.
“Adepts—thaumaturges, whatever—present their own peculiar difficulties in interrogation. Many can partially or completely block the pain responses of their bodies; we are forced, therefore, to deal with them on an emotional level, a psychic level, if you will. Rushall, are you listening? Adepts are extremely difficult to acquire; you should pay attention. To continue: Revulsion and horror are potent tools, but alone they are rarely sufficient. Perhaps the most powerful tool in the process of progressive degradation is the subject’s own imagination. It is this which we must always seek to stimulate.”
Restraint—straps cutting cruelly into flesh of wrist and ankle and neck, further straps around knees and hips.
My neck, came the thought. I’m the one feeling this.
A slight shift toward a more comfortable position produced a searing shout of pain from the left thigh, and the instinctive mindview response to block the shuddering agony brought him up to full awareness.
Even as light returned to his eyes, Lamorak remembered who he was.
An instant later, he realized where he was.
His heart began to pound drumbeats that pulsed from his toes to his throat; it tossed him out of mindview, back into the sea of pain.
“Observe his eyes. See the focus return? This indicates that we may now make our first incision.”
The man who stood over him, dispassionately lecturing in Lipkan-accented Westerling, wore a curious costume over his long, gaunt frame: a one-piece suit of bulky, loose-fitting cloth—like a beekeeper’s—networked with fine-drawn silver wire. A large hood covered his head, leaving his features dimly visible through a fencer’s mask of silver mesh.
In one gloved hand, a tiny scalpel gleamed.
The apparatus to which Lamorak lay bound seemed to be some sort of table, or raised bed, covered with layers of cloth and cunningly jointed or hinged so that his back was supported in a position midway between reclining and sitting upright; he had an ideal view of the knife as its gentle stroke parted the cloth of his breeches above his uninjured right thigh.
“Hey,” he croaked, “hey, you don’t have to go to all this trouble, you know? I’m no hero—just ask, huh?” His jaw worked strangely, and his mouth stung—still swollen and pulpy from being slammed against the wall of his cell and from the kicking the guards gave his head when they came to carry him away.
The man in the beekeeper suit gave no sign that he’d heard. He sliced the cloth crosswise around Lamorak’s knee and again up near enough to his groin that Lamorak flinched involuntarily as his scrotum clenched around his testicles.
“Master Arkadeil?” came another voice. “Why isn’t he gagged?”
“A fine question,” replied the knife wielder dryly. “You must allow the subject to speak, even to scream, regardless that nothing he says will have any effect on the interrogation. This is to balance the essential helplessness of his position; this slightest ray of hope that something he may say will earn him mercy prevents withdrawal into despair, keeps his intellect present and active. This is vital, particularly to help counteract shock in the later stages of the questioning. In this way, you draw the subject into willing participation in the process: his hope becomes your ally. Understood? Fine. You may even ask him a question from time to time. For example—” He bent his hooded face toward Lamorak. “—are you thirsty? Do you need water?”
“Water this,” Lamorak croaked, and tried to spit on him, but his mouth was dry as dust. He assayed a weak smile. “How about a beer?”
“Fine, that’s fine.” Master Arkadeil turned back to his audience. “You see? Nothing more than this is required.”
A ring of tripods bearing lamps with white pottery reflectors surrounded the small circular stage on which the apparatus stood; they cast a strong yellow light and left the rest of the room in shadow. Beyond, he could vaguely see a double handful of seated men on raised benches around the stone floor; they all seemed intent on Arkadeil’s lecture. Behind them, more rows of benches climbed toward the shadowed ceiling.
A lecture hall, Lamorak thought; it reminded him of the classrooms at the Studio Conservatory. Halfway between a lecture hall and an operating theater.
He looked within himself next and was pleased to find no stirring of panic. He decided he was handling this pretty well, so far—but it could be that part of his confidence was his inability to believe that this was actually happening, that he really was strapped to a table in the Ankhanan Donjon, about to be used as a medical cadaver in a class for apprentice torturers. Unreality, a sense of dissociation, pervaded the scene for him, like he was second-handing somebody else’s Adventure.
He kept searching, down within his mind, for any hint of a belief that he would die here, and was again pleased to find none. He was persistently, endlessly aware of the recording device within his skull, and he had a morbid fear of looking like a coward—this had driven him to take greater and greater risks to prove himself throughout his career, and he’d done some spectacular things; if the Studio had only put the kind of cash into marketing him as they had, well, Caine . . .
“Remember,” Arkadeil said, “the key is progressive degradation; therefore, we begin with the smallest incision.” The knife descended onto Lamorak’s thigh just above the knee. “Please don’t move, Lamorak. Any movement of the treated areas will only make the cut ragged and more painful. All right? Very well.”
“You don’t want to do that,” Lamorak said confidently and shifted his awareness to mindview. He intended to enforce this suggestion with a substantial nudge at the torturer’s psyche; it’d play like nitro on the cube.
He saw none of the dangling strands of color that were his mind’s metaphor for Flow, but then, he hadn’t expected to: three days of futile experiments in his cell had vanquished that hope. This was part of what rendered the Donjon impenetrable, even to adepts: the minerals deposited in the limestone interfered with Flow, and what little that leaked through was diverted and consumed by the endless fantasies and prayers for freedom of the hundreds of prisoners. Thaumaturgy of any real power was impossible, down here. He knew, however, that the power he needed for such a little nudge he could generate in his own Shell.
The spiny flame-orange matrix of his Shell flared bright, and his vision faded as he fed what power he had into it; he held it prepared as he searched for the Shell that would delimit the outskirts of the torturer’s mind.
He found nothing there; Arkadeil’s hooded form was as blank as a marble statue’s.
He struck anyway, visualizing a thick-jointed insectile arm whipping out from his Shell and anchoring itself to the fencer’s mask that covered Arkadeil’s face. He tried to force it through the silver net, into the torturer’s brain, but some sort of shield appeared, a scarlet counterforce that glimmered along the mesh that covered the queer beekeeper’s suit.
Lamorak poured power into his assault, hoping to overcome this resistance with sudden effort. The scarlet field only flared brighter, matching his power, even as his spiked Shell leached color, fading like fallen leaves bleaching in the sun, going yellow, then grey, and finally shredding like cobwebs in the wind.
The curved edge of the scalpel bit into his flesh, not deeply, a shallow slice about halfway around his knee. Arkadeil used a fabric pad from his nearby tray to swab away the welling blood.
“That didn’t appear very painful,” one of the observers said.
“It isn’t,” Arkadeil replied. “The scalpel should be extremely sharp—obsidian is ideal, if quality steel is unavailable. This slows and sometimes eliminates the onset of shock.”
I’m still woozy from the kicks in the head, Lamorak told himself as Arkadeil brought the knife to the upper portion of his bared thigh. That’s all; I’ve just gotta keep trying. It’ll wear off.
He began again to gather power, but the icy steel of the scalpel sliding easily through his flesh gnawed at his concentration as Arkadeil made his second cut parallel to the first. The sensation—not very painful, as Arkadeil had said—made his skin crawl, and he spent some attention building a grey mist in mindview that fogged his perceptions, a filmy translucent wall behind which he could prepare his attack.
Arkadeil’s third cut was a long vertical slice that connected the centers of the other two. He set the scalpel down in his tray and took up a larger knife with a more pronounced curve, and another item that looked like a pair of fryer tongs.
He said, “It is at this point that you should allow the questioning to begin,” and Lamorak’s stomach plummeted, dragging him sickeningly down out of mindview.
That’s a flensing knife. He’s going to skin me.
Arkadeil used the tongs to lift a corner of skin at the intersection of the cuts and began to work the knife beneath it with long, slow strokes. The skin came up easily, exposing twitching red muscle fibers and the butter-colored globules of subcutaneous fat.
Lamorak fought down panic and slowed the sputter of his heart. Something came back to him, faintly and foggily, something about Shanna, and Konnos, and the silver nets he had his family wear over their heads. He should have paid more attention at the time, been less concerned with posing in the sun-glow and more interested in what Konnos was saying, but it was too late now.
He cast his eye toward the students, but knew this would be hopeless—even if his suggestion could be made strong enough to influence one or two of them against their teacher, the others would restrain them. I should have stuck with thaumaturgy, he thought bitterly.
He’d given up the study of magick in favor of swordplay shortly after his first transfer to Overworld, on the theory that the Adventures of swordsmen were more viscerally exciting and did very well in the long-term secondhand market; so now he was left with only a fading store of minor tricks and a lot of smooth bulging muscles that did him no good at all.
He wondered how long he could keep it up, this good front, this heroic face he showed; in the end, who would care? If he died here, the cube and graver in his head would be lost. The only people who’d know if he died well, or screaming and whining like a coward, were the people present now, here in this room, and none of them gave a shit one way or the other.
He tried to summon mindview for another assault on Arkadeil, but the easy slide of the flensing knife through his flesh shredded his concentration. And he knew, too, that it was hopeless—the torturer must have some Flow source inside that suit, powering the counterforce that resisted his attacks, and nothing he could do would affect Arkadeil in the slightest.
He couldn’t seem to breathe, couldn’t swallow past the panic that clawed at his throat, couldn’t even maintain the block that dulled the pain from his leg.
Arkadeil now had peeled back both flaps of skin, and he turned to his students. “Here, you are faced with a choice. If you are pressed for time, you may gradually slice away the muscle, being careful to avoid the major arteries and veins, of course. This requires a certain amount of expertise, and I recommend finding otherwise valueless individuals upon which to practice, as a mistake here can allow a subject to bleed to death with dismaying speed. Progressive crippling of this sort is crude, but the psychological effect can be potent. Given time for greater subtlety, there is a simpler technique that, in the end, can be extraordinarily effective.”
He lifted a piece of folded parchment, displaying it for their view. “Collect the eggs of any small, swarming insect—certain varieties of wasp are ideal, as are some spiders, and even flies or cockroaches will do in a pinch.”
Lamorak said thickly, “Oh, god,” and he hacked a convulsive retch that slammed agony through his broken leg again.
“Simply sprinkle these eggs directly onto the muscle, and sew the skin over them, thus,” he said, matching action to words. “In a few days, as the eggs begin to hatch, your subject will literally beg to tell you everything you want to know.” He swiftly finished sewing the flaps of skin with coarse black thread, then wiped his hands.
“Now,” he continued briskly, taking up the scalpel once again, “let us move to the consideration of similar techniques as they apply to the intestinal cavity.”
I SUCK ON the knuckle I’d split on the guard’s cheekbone, warm copperwire taste of blood on my tongue, while I peer around the corner at the two crossbow-armed guards lounging outside the door down the hall, and I try to remember why I decided to do this foolish, foolish thing.
Those guys have been here for a while; they’re not even chatting anymore. Now one of them slides down the wall to settle his butt on the floor. A single lamp hangs from a peg driven into the stone over the lintel.
Talann whispers at my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
Without looking back at her, I hold two fingers where she can see them.
“We can take them,” she tells me.
Which is true. The problem will be noise. The problem will be getting within arm’s reach of them without eating a couple pounds of steel.
L’audace, toujours l’audace. I think that’s Napoleon. Doesn’t matter—he could have been talking about me.
I take from her hand the iron-bound club, heavy as a mace, that we took off the guard we left gagged and tied within an empty cell. Neither of us had any use for his armor, which wouldn’t have fit anyway.
“What about your throwing knives?”
I shake my head. “It’s too far, and they’re in armor—I’d have to take them in the throat, and at this range I couldn’t be sure of dropping one even if I hit him.”
“I can do lots of impressive things,” Talann offers.
“Caine,” she says, taking my shoulder with a warm hand. “A couple of your knives. Please. If this doesn’t work—if we don’t make it—don’t leave me unarmed. I, I can’t go back to that cell . . .”
The image of her chained naked in her own shit rises vivid enough to make me wince; I can still smell it on her. I pull the pair of throwing knives from their thigh sheaths and offer them to her without a word. She takes them with both hands together like she’s accepting a communion cup. Her attitude has something of awe in it; taking my knives has a significance for her that I don’t understand, and I don’t have time to wonder about it.
“Now don’t move. The way you look, no offense, but if they see you it’ll blow the game.”
“I’m not an idiot,” she tells me.
May Tyshalle grant that this be truth.
I step out into the corridor and start for the two guards with a measured pace. As their heads swivel toward the sound of my boot heels clicking on the limestone, I say with just the right tone of predatory authority, “Is there a reason that a pair of posted guards are lounging on their fat butts?”
The one on the floor scrambles to his feet, and the other pushes off the wall; they both come to attention. They try sneaking looks at me as I approach, but the shadows are still too deep back here for them to see more than my general outline. I say silkily, “Don’t even think about eyeballing me, you lazy sacks of shit.”
I can see the door between them now: it’s closed, and solid, with no viewport. Good. Both guards are bareheaded: a man in armor can get uncomfortably hot, even in the cool of the Donjon. Their steel skullcaps are on the floor beside their feet. All I have to do is get close enough to swing this club, a quick horizontal forehand bash to the first guy’s head, continue the motion into a spin, peg the other guy before he realizes what’s happening—
One of the guards unslings his crossbow and cranks the crowsfoot back to cock it.
My throat clenches, but I never break stride. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The guard slides a quarrel into the groove. “General Order Three, sir,” he says apologetically. “You’re out of policy.”
I keep walking. The crossbow comes up. Now the other guard is toying uncertainly with his bow. Go with it: audacity, always audacity.
“And what’s your problem?” I snarl. “Why isn’t that weapon cocked, soldier? Where’s your quarrel?”
“Sorry, sir, sorry,” he mumbles, fumbling with the crowsfoot.
Ten more strides, that’s all I need.
It almost works—the fumbler stretches his crossbow out, but the other swings around and levels on me in a smooth motion that speaks of long practice.
“You’re out of uniform, sir. How are we to know you’re not an escaped prisoner?”
“What did I tell you about eyeballing me?”
Now the other guard levels as well. He sniggers. “Yeah. How was we to know?”
Fuck. This is a stupid way to die.
They expect me to bluster or back off: that’s my edge.
The guard is saying, “Step back or I’ll shoot,” even as I come up to him and slap his bow down and to the side with the palm of my left hand. The bow triggers at the motion, and the quarrel spannggs off stone as I quickstep to his left, to keep his armored body between me and the fumbler’s bow, and overhand the club to crunch down on the top of his head. I pivot on my left foot and kick his collapsing body toward the fumbler, but the fumbler skips back and keeps hold of his bow. I know with sickening certainty that it’s only a heartbeat until he shouts an alarm, and a heartbeat later that steel broadhead will leap from his bow and slam into my body. At this range it’ll go right through me, and I can’t get there before the shot.
I throw the club at him to spoil his shot, but he ducks it; I spring up into a leaping side kick, hoping to take the quarrel in the meat of a leg and praying that he’ll miss my balls, but even as I’m going up something whickers by my head, brushing my hair, and the hilt of a dagger blossoms from the notch of his collarbone.
His eyes go wide, and his brows draw together; he drops the bow, and my side kick nearly takes his head off before the bow hits the ground. The quarrel falls from its groove as the bow triggers harmlessly with a flat whack. The back of the guard’s skull makes a wet crunch on the stone floor.
And I pause for a moment’s astonished wonder that I’m alive.
I pull my knife from the guard’s throat and wipe it on his breeches as Talann runs lightly toward me. The lips of the wound bubble and shift ever so slightly in and out with his whistling breath, driving little rivulets of blood across the exposed cartilage. A little blood sprays up across my face and tickles as it drips into my beard. I turn him over on his face so most of the blood will drain onto the floor: he might not drown.
I silently hand the knife back to Talann when she arrives—she’s a lot better with it than I’ll ever be. She grins at me. “Told you I can do impressive things.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I tell her truthfully. Never mind that it almost took my ear off. “That was a spectacular throw. You saved my life.”
“We can call it even, then, shall we?”
I take her hand in a comrade’s grip, and her eyes glow. “Yeah. We can.”
She coughs and turns away, blushing a little, looking down at the guards. “Better cut their throats, huh?”
I shake my head. “I think they’ll sleep till we’re out of here. With those cracked skulls they might never wake up, anyway, but let’s give them the chance. They’re not badguys, y’know, just soldiers doing their jobs.”
She squints at me consideringly. “You’re a little different than I imagined you’d be.”
“You’re not the first person to tell me that. Can you shoot as well as you throw?”
“Grab those bows, then, and let’s get on with this.”
While she gathers up the crossbows, cocks and loads them, I can’t help but appreciate the very interesting streamlined curves that fill the trusty’s robe I gave her. I remember how she looked through Pallas’ eyes, but Pallas doesn’t have the hormonal responses to make that memory as compelling as this experience—and, y’know, there are few attitudes as seductive as uncritical adoration.
I turn away and pull the lamp down from its peg. “Ready?”
“Always.” She holds a crossbow in each hand like twin pistols of a gunslinger, and her grin reminds me of mine.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Would you believe me if I said this is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream?”
I hope the question’s rhetorical; silently I snuff the lamp and plunge the corridor into darkness. I set the lamp on the floor and ease the door open by feel, just a crack, and look down into the bowl-shaped Theater of Truth.
Down in the center of the bowl, Lamorak lies strapped to a table on a platform surrounded by what look like limelights. A tall man in some kind of weird coverall and mask is slicing into Lamorak’s belly with a scalpel; there’s another wound on his right thigh, an ugly I-shaped thing stitched shut with coarse black thread, and his left thigh is swollen up like a fucking blimp.
Ten men sit on benches down there, their backs to me, and hang on the masked guy’s—this must be Arkadeil—every word.
He says, “Now that we have exposed the abdominal wall, we again face several choices. Insect eggs are appropriate here, and are recommended, in fact, unless one has had substantial surgical experience. Opening the wall here is extremely tricky—a slight nick in the small intestine can release digestive acids into the abdominal cavity. While death of this sort is satisfyingly painful, it can come too swiftly for effective interrogation, and we are again faced with the specter of our greatest enemy: shock. On the other hand, if you do feel competent to open the abdominal wall, there is a variety of wasp whose larvae are particularly suited to this area. You will find details on collecting these in your notes. Please review them while I open the muscle.”
I grind my teeth together against the rising bile that scorches the back of my throat. “It’s a class. It’s a fucking torture seminar.”
“Lamorak’s in there?” Talann whispers at my shoulder. “How does he look?”
“Bad. That left thigh looks like trouble. Is there another door?”
“I didn’t see one—I don’t think so.”
“All right. I’m going in. You drag the guards inside and hold the door. Anyone comes up the corridor, shoot him.”
“With pleasure. What are you going to do?”
I take a deep breath, let it out slowly.
I slip through the door and stroll down the broad flight of steps carved into the limestone, past curving rows of benches, thumbs hooked behind my belt, ambling along as though I’ve got all the time in the world. The students down there seem to be wearing only fabric, no armor or even leather in evidence, and no weapons, by Tyshalle’s grace. Lamorak must have glimpsed my movement—with a gasp, he tears his eyes free of their hypnotic fixation on the glittering scalpel and meets mine, staring in blank wonder.
Arkadeil turns and follows his gaze, his face invisible behind the shimmer of silver mesh.
“May I help you?” he asks politely.
“Sure,” I say in a friendly tone. The students jump at the sound of my voice. “One second, all right?”
I stroll down the last couple of steps, down past the students, who still sit and wait obediently and expectantly for their master to explain this interruption.
It’d be swell if I could stroll right up to Lamorak’s side, but Arkadeil is smart and wary, and Lamorak himself blows the game: a tear leaks down his face and he croaks, “Caine—my god, Caine . . .”
Arkadeil puts the edge of the scalpel against the twitching flesh above Lamorak’s carotid artery. “Mmm. Caine, is it? An honor. I presume you’re here about this one?”
I stop and spread my empty hands. “We can negotiate, Arkadeil. I’ve heard you’re a reasonable man. A simple swap: your life for his.”
“I think not.” He waves a gloved hand at his students. “Restrain him.”
Fabric rustles behind me, and I turn to face the students at my back. They shift restlessly, looking at the floor, the walls, each other, anything but me, and you can read the strength of my legend in their downcast eyes.
Several of them have more guts than brains, and they force themselves to unsteady feet, tentatively, each trying to time his rush so that he won’t be the first one to reach me.
“Courage is admirable,” I tell them, smiling through the guard’s blood that still trickles down my face, “but it is not a survival trait.”
“Come on,” one of them says urgently, though he’s holding himself entirely still. “He can’t take us all at once . . .”
And he’s right, of course. A couple more stand up uncertainly.
I show them as many teeth as will fit in my widest wolf grin, my best Fuck with me, I dare you expression. “That’s what the boys outside thought,” I remind them. “They were in armor. With crossbows, and clubs. They were professional soldiers.”
I give them a moment to think this over.
The students’ eyes fix on me like jacklighted deer.
I open my arms as though I’m offering them a group hug.
They sink back onto the benches like sandbagged sailors. I turn back to Arkadeil, fold my arms, and wait.
“All right, then.” Arkadeil’s words are calm, but his voice is tight with tension. He stands on the far side of the table, and now a thin line of blood trickles down Lamorak’s neck from the scalpel’s pressure. “I don’t imagine that you can be persuaded to give yourself up, but if you do not leave immediately, you will be rescuing a corpse.”
“Caine . . .” Lamorak says hoarsely, his eyes rolling white, “make him kill me. For god’s sake make him kill me!”
“Oh, relax, you big baby. I’m the only one around here allowed to kill people.”
“I do not bluff, Caine,” Arkadeil says.
I shrug. “Cut his throat and there’s nothing to stop me from tearing your head off.”
“Then we are at an impasse. Time, however, is on my side.”
“You’re not the only one with an ally. Talann: in the shoulder.”
Whack! without hesitation; she must have been aiming already, clever girl. The students all jump and cry out as the quarrel pounds into Arkadeil’s shoulder joint and flattens him like a hammer blow. The scalpel chimes prettily as it skitters across the stone. Arkadeil writhes on the floor, clutching at the quarrel’s steel vanes and keening a high, disbelieving whine.
“I could,” I say generally toward the shadows above, “really get used to having you around.”
“Hey, likewise,” she replies softly, then shouts, “Move and you get the next one through the skull!”
Arkadeil slumps, surrendering. I step up to the operating table and start to unbuckle the restraining straps. As soon as he gets an arm free, Lamorak clutches at my hand with desperate strength, and his eyes overflow with tears.
“Caine, I can’t believe it . . .” he whispers. “They sent you for me, right? They found out I was down here and they sent you to get me out?”
He can’t say who they is, cannot speak the name, and neither can I; but I can still tell him the brutal truth. “No.”
“I was ordered to let you die. The only reason I’m down here is I need you to get me to Pallas Ril. Think about that the next time you put on that armor and sling your sword. Speaking of your sword, Berne has it, did you know that?”
He doesn’t seem to hear me; he’s still lost in the cold concept of our mutual employer having so little regard for him that they wanted him tortured to death.
“My god, my god, I’ve gotta get out of here . . .”
I free the last strap. “Let’s go, then.”
He looks at me blankly. “My leg—I can’t walk. My leg’s broken.”
“Broken?” I repeat stupidly. Lamorak is a big man, and I’m a small one—he outweighs me by maybe twenty-five kilos, and Talann’s smaller than I am.
How in the name of every bleeding god am I going to get him out of here?
KOLLBERG GNAWED ON a knuckle. He couldn’t believe Caine would be so stupid, couldn’t believe he would risk his precious, extraordinarily lucrative life for Lamorak, and especially couldn’t believe that Caine leaked out in dialogue what should have been a privileged backstage communication.
He was beginning to believe that the Board of Governors might have been right about Caine all along: the man might be actively dangerous. He was certainly behaving very strangely, taking unaccustomed risks, foolish chances, being uncharacteristically reluctant to exercise his primary talent—killing people—and now, leaking backstage orders to the public!
Kollberg’s fist had come very close to stroking the recall there, very close indeed; the last thing he wanted half a million first-handers to take away from this Adventure was some knowledge of how little an Actor’s life was actually worth.
Well, he decided, let it play out. Lamorak was crippled, and Caine was too pragmatic to give his own life for another’s; Lamorak would almost certainly die here, and the death of an Actor is a sure boost in the secondhand market.
And Caine’s references to him, personally, he merely noted with what he thought was admirable dispassion: Kollberg thought of himself as too professional to allow being called a flabby grey-fleshed maggot to affect his judgment. The amphetamines had something to do with this, perhaps; he was not unaware of the chemical elevation of his mood. This latest insult he simply, almost lovingly, filed on his growing mental tally sheet, every entry of which chewed away at the nether regions of his pride. Sometime soon, perhaps very shortly indeed, he and Caine would settle up.