The Edur commander led his troop away, down off the summit of the hill. Sirryn stared after them for a moment, until he was certain they would not return. He then withdrew a second scroll and approached the Preda of the Imperial Brigade. ‘These, too,’ he said, ‘are the Chancellor’s orders.’
The Preda was a veteran, not just of battle, but of the ways of the palace. He simply nodded as he accepted the scroll. ‘Finadd,’ he asked, ‘will the Chancellor be commanding us in person when the time comes?’
‘I imagine not, sir.’
That could make things awkward.’
‘In some matters, I will speak for him, sir. As for the rest, you will find, once you have examined that scroll, that you are given considerable freedom for the battle itself.’
And if I find myself at odds with Hanradi?’
‘I doubt that will be a problem,’ Sirryn said.
He watched the Preda mull that over, and thought he saw a slight widening of the man’s eyes.
‘Finadd,’ the Preda said.
‘Sir?’
‘How fares the Chancellor, at the moment?’
‘Well indeed, sir.’
‘And… in the future?’
‘He is most optimistic, sir.’
‘Very good. Thank you, Finadd.’
Sirryn saluted. ‘Begging your leave, sir, I wish to oversee the establishment of my camp.’
‘Make it close to this hill, Finadd-this is where we will command the battle-and I will want you close.’
‘Sir, there is scant room left-’
‘You have my leave to move people out at your discretion, Finadd.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Oh, he would enjoy that. Grubby soldiers with dust on their boots-they always imagined themselves superior to their counterparts in the palace. Well, a few cracked skulls would change that quick enough. By leave of their very own Preda. He saluted again and led his troops back down the hill.
The man looked familiar. Had he been a student of hers? Son of a neighbour, son of another scholar? These were the questions in Janath’s mind as the troop dragged them from Tehol’s home. Of the journey to the compound of the Patriotists, she now recalled very little. But that man, with the familiar face-a face that stirred oddly intimate feelings within her-would not leave her.
Chained in her cell, chained in the darkness that crawled with vermin, she had been left alone for some time now. Days, perhaps even a week. A single plate of watery stew slid through the trap at the foot of the door at what seemed irregular intervals-it would not be pushed into her cell if she did not leave the empty plate from the last meal within easy reach of the guard. The ritual had not been explained to her, but she had come to admire its precision, its eloquence. Disobedience meant hunger; or, rather, starvation-hunger was always there, something that she had not experienced in the household of Bugg and Tehol. There had been a time, back then, when she had come to loathe the taste of chicken. Now she dreamed of those damned hens.
The man, Tanal Yathvanar, had visited but once, apparently to gloat. She’d no idea she had been wanted for sedition, although in truth that did not surprise her much. When thugs were in power, educated people were the first to feel their fists. It was so pathetic, really, how so much violence came from someone feeling small. Small of mind, and it did not matter how big the sword in hand, that essential smallness remained, gnawing with very sharp teeth.
Both Bugg and Tehol had hinted, occasionally, that things would not go well if the Patriotists found her. Well, them, as it turned out. Tehol Beddict, her most frustrating student, who had only attended her lectures out of adolescent lust, now revealed as the empire’s greatest traitor-so Tanal Yathvanar had said to her, the glee in his voice matched by the lurid reflections in his eyes as he stood with his lantern in one hand and the other touching his private parts whenever he thought she wasn’t looking. She had been sitting with her back to the stone wall, head tilted down chin to chest, with her filthy hair hanging ragged over her face.
Tehol Beddict, masterminding the empire’s economic ruin-well, that was still a little hard to believe. Oh, he had the talent, yes. And maybe even the inclination. But for such universal collapse as was now occurring, there was a legion of co-conspirators. Unwitting for the most part, of course, barring that niggling in their guts that what they were doing was, ultimately, destructive beyond measure. But greed won out, as it always did. So, Tehol Beddict had paved the road, but hundreds-thousands?-had freely chosen to walk it. And now they cried out, indignant and appalled, even as they scurried for cover lest blame spread its crimson pool.
As things stood at the moment, the entire crime now rested at Tehol’s feet-and Bugg’s, the still elusive manservant.
‘But we will find him, janath,’ Tanal Yathvanar had said. ‘We find everyone, eventually.’
Everyone but yourselves, she had thought to reply, for that search leads you onto a far too frightening path. Instead, she had said nothing, given him nothing at all. And watched as the sword got ever smaller in his hand-yes, that sword, too.
‘Just as we found you. Just as I found you. Oh, it’s well known now. I was the one to arrest Tehol Beddict and Scholar Janath. Me. Not Karos Invictad, who sits day and night drooling over his box and that blessed two-headed insect. It has driven him mad, you know. He does nothing else.’ He then laughed. ‘Did you know he is now the richest man in the empire? At least, he thinks he is. But I did the work for him. I made the transactions. I have copies of everything. But the real glory is this-1 am his beneficiary, and he doesn’t even know it!’
Yes, the two-headed insect. One drooling, the other nattering.
Tanal Yathvanar. She knew him-that was now a certainty. She knew him, because he had done all this to her before. There had been no dissembling when he had talked about that-it was the source for his gloating over her, after all, so it could not be a lie.
And now her memories-of the time between the end of the semester at the academy, and her awakening in the care of Tehol and Bugg-memories that had been so fragmented, images blurred beyond all understanding, began to coalesce, began to draw into focus.
She was wanted, because she had escaped. Which meant that she had been arrested-her first arrest-and her tormentor had been none other than Tanal Yathvanar.
Logical. Reasonable intuitions from the available facts and her list of observations. Cogent argument and standing before her-some time ago now-the one man who offered the most poignant proof as he babbled on, driven by her lack of reaction. ‘Dear]anath, we must resume where we left off. 1 don’t know how you got away. 1 don’t even know how you ended up with Tehol Beddict. But once more you are mine, to do with as I please. And what I will do with you will not, alas, please you, but your pleasure is not what interests me. This time, you will beg me, you will promise anything, you will come to worship me. And that is what I will leave you with, today. To give you things to think about, until my return.’
Her silence, it had turned out, had been a weak defence.
She was beginning to remember-past those ordered details arranged with clinical detachment-and with those memories there was… pain.
Pain beyond comprehension.
I was driven mad. That is why I could not remember anything. Entirely mad-I don’t know how Bugg and Tehol healed me, but they must have. And Tehol’s consideration, his very uncharacteristic gentleness with me-not once did he seek to take advantage of me, although he must have known that he could have, that I would have welcomed it. That should have awakened suspicion in me, it should have, but I was too happy, too strangely content, even as 1 waited and waited for Tehol to find himself in my arms.
Ah, now isn’t that an odd way of putting it?