Land of the Burning Sands (17 page)

All of Tehre’s formidable attention was now fixed on Gereint. She said nothing.

“It’s a plausible tale. Fellesteden’s remaining men will hardly object—they may even believe that tale
themselves
, if you tell it properly. You’d need to write immediately to your father and brother so neither of them contradicts this, um, adjusted version of events. And of course,” he gestured awkwardly down toward his own feet, “you will need to cut those cords.”

The woman began to speak, clearly a protest, from the rigid shake of her head.

Gereint interrupted her. “No, listen, Tehre. They can’t do anything to me that hasn’t already been done, do you see? But if I was bound under your control when I killed them, then
you
are responsible and I merely your weapon. If a judge finds against you—if he
does
, Tehre, and the precedent is all against you, believe me that I know—if you are found to have done murder, Tehre,
you
could be
geas
bound. Nothing would be worse, do you understand? And there is
no reason
for you to risk it!”

“My father removed your brand. Isn’t that true?”

Gereint shook his head emphatically. “I will never say so. If anyone makes that suggestion, I will deny it. Tehre, the patrol will surely come very soon. Your cords—there’s no time to hesitate—cut them, Tehre!”

“I can’t leave you to take all the blame on yourself!”

“You can. Don’t be foolish. Of course you can! You must! Do you want everyone asking about your father? They won’t stop with you, Tehre! They’ll ask why your father sent you a
geas
-bound slave with an unmarked face, and you won’t like the answers they think of—”

A man’s deep voice rang out somewhere in the house, barely audible. It might be one of Fellesteden’s men. But Gereint thought it was probably the patrol.

Tehre’s eyes widened with alarm. “I—” she began.

“Let me take the blame! It doesn’t make any difference to me! I can’t get away now anyway!” It occurred to Gereint that he might have earlier, if he’d managed to persuade Tehre to cut the binding cords quickly enough. Grab his boots and out the window right after Fareine—too late, too late, the opportunity had been fleeting and was gone. He tried not to think about it, but said urgently, “Cut me loose, Tehre! Hurry!”

Her eyes were wide and shocked, but her small mouth firmed with decision. She said quickly, “I’ll petition—whom does one petition? Never mind: I’ll find out and I’ll buy your bond properly. I won’t abandon you, Gereint, do you hear?”

“I would… I would be very grateful,” Gereint admitted. He tried not to depend on the promise: Maybe Tehre would find herself or her family coming under too much suspicion if she tried to buy his bond. Maybe she would simply change her mind. He would have no recourse if she did. He gazed down at her for a moment. Those bronze-green eyes met his with utter conviction and he thought, surprising himself,
No, she will keep any promise she makes
.

He was surprised by his own confidence: no one was bound by a promise made to a
geas
slave. But even so, he thought
Tehre
would be. And was even more deeply surprised at how important that seemed—that he should trust her, that even when he would not dare approach anyone he’d once known, neither family nor friend, there should still be someone he trusted in the world. And it had happened so quickly, and he had hardly even noticed—not really allowed himself to notice.

But everything he’d argued was still true. He stepped toward the woman, turning so she could reach the
geas
rings.

Tehre didn’t need a knife to cut the cords she’d made herself. She’d woven strength and resilience into them, but when she touched them, the knots she’d tied in them came undone and all the braiding unraveled. The cords simply fell to pieces. Gereint stared down at the unidentifiable wisps of hair, feeling the
geas
once more release its grip and subside to the back of his awareness. This time, he had no hope that this freedom would last.

Boots rang authoritatively in the hall outside the library.

Gereint stepped quickly away from Tehre and tried to look like the sort of desperate criminal who might have killed three men in a wild fit of terror and rage. This was not very difficult. It was harder to imagine why he would still be here in this room—maybe he had been struck insensible in the struggle and had only just recovered—he caught up the sword, tossed it on the floor by a chair, went quickly to one knee and braced one hand on the chair’s carved seat as though trying just this moment to haul himself to his feet.

Tehre stared at him, then sank back into her own chair. She looked tiny, young, feminine, fragile, and perfectly helpless. Putting a hand to her face as though dazed, she stared vaguely at the door.

The next moment a big man in the livery of the Breidechboden patrol flung the door wide. He stood a moment in the doorway, filling it: as broad in the shoulder as Gereint, though nothing like so tall. His eyes went quickly from Gereint to the sword discarded on the floor nearby, to Perech Fellesteden’s body, and at last to Tehre Amnachudran. His mouth tightened. He stepped into the room, gesturing to his men.

Gereint flung himself to his feet, staggering, just in time for two more men of the city patrol to rush forward and grab his arms. Fareine, who had followed the men into the room, started to protest; Tehre said, cutting the older woman off before she could manage even one word, “Patrol captain! Please send your men to secure my house and ensure that my people are safe. I had better accompany them. I’m afraid there has been a great deal of confusion.”

“Honored lady, I see there has,” said the captain, shaking his head—not doubt, Gereint saw, but simply amazement. He gestured to his men, and they led Gereint toward the door. He did not fight them. Nor did he try to turn for a last glance at Tehre. He simply bowed his head and went where the men took him.

* * *

Six days in a windowless stone cell provided plenty of time to think of fifty better ways he might have handled a sudden confrontation with his previous
geas
master. The best of them involved avoiding the confrontation altogether. Gereint reviewed in painful detail his decision to come south at all, his decision to stay on the southern road from Dachsichten rather than turn west, his fatal acquiescence when Tehre had suggested he meet her new patron.

If he had chosen differently at any of those moments, he might have gone to Feierabiand as planned. He might even be in Feierabiand right this moment, rather than sitting here on the cold stone floor, watching occasional slivers of light creep across the floor as guards carried lanterns past in the hall.

Gereint spent some of his time chipping carefully at the stone of the door with the buckle of his belt. He thought about what Tehre had said about cracks and masonry, and he thought of how she had made Fellesteden’s sword shatter—an astonishing act of unmaking, the very antithesis of making. If he could do that… he would do more than break the door: He would shatter this whole prison, pull all its walls down around him. But no matter how he tried, he could not find any way to coax the scratches he made to run through the stone and break it to pieces.

In moments of hope, Gereint thought he might eventually be brought out of the cell and led up into the light to find that Tehre Amnachudran had indeed purchased his bond. He remembered thinking,
She will keep any promise she makes
, and though the original conviction of that thought was lacking, he still hoped, sometimes, that it might prove true.

But in other moments, Gereint was certain Tehre would be furious that he had deceived her, furious with her father, too. Though she had not seemed angry. But she might find herself and her family endangered by too close interest—she would realize that she had to avoid, by whatever means, any suggestion that her father had sent Gereint to her house, or that her father might have been the one to interfere with the
geas
brand. Either way, she would not want to further any connection between herself and Gereint. She would not intervene for him.

He could learn nothing from his guards about any legal proceedings against Tehre—or any legal proceedings she might have initiated herself—or anything having to do with his own eventual disposition. The door was heavy and always shut; the guards slid plates through a gap below the door twice a day. Gereint could hear them outside his cell. But they hardly spoke to one another; they never answered him when he called to them through the door. Anything might be happening. Tehre’s family might be ruined; he would not know. His own auction might be underway and he would not know.

At first, Gereint expected to be brought before a judge and questioned about Fellesteden’s death, about his own presence in Tehre’s house, about his unmarked face and his reason for coming to Breidechboden. That might still happen. But it had not happened yet. He no longer knew whether to expect it. More than likely, some judge had already heard the evidence and made some decision without finding any need to question Gereint. He wondered what it might have been.

And at first he waited every day for men to come with the hot iron and restore his
geas
brand. He could imagine the iron vividly: He knew exactly the path it would trace across his face, the fiery agony of the branding. The angry scar it would leave, impossible to obscure, setting him aside once more from the world of free men.

This dread intensified over the first days and then ebbed as no iron appeared. In some ways, that surprised him more than the silence and the waiting.

On the afternoon of the sixth day, he heard the guards in the hall early—far too early for supper. So he was not surprised when he heard the bolts draw back and the door was hauled effortfully open.

He got to his feet and stood facing the door, thinking of the hot iron. He knew he would fight if they brought that in—though fighting could win him nothing, he would fight anyway—he knew exactly how it would be to be pinned down and held still while the iron came down against his face. Swallowing hard, he stared at the open door.

But no iron appeared, no pot of glowing coals. The guards brought only chains.

If he was chained, he would not be able to fight, whatever they did to him. He submitted to the chains anyway, seeing no immediate threat and, after all, no choice.

They brought him out of the cell and into a hall that, dim as it was, seemed bright after the more profound darkness of the cell. They brought him up a flight of stairs and along a hall, to a lantern-lit room with a basin of cold water and a bar of coarse soap. So his bond had been sold, Gereint surmised. Someone wealthy and important had bought him, and the director of the prison did not want to offend this person by handing over a filthy prisoner. The only question that concerned Gereint was—was that person Tehre Amnachudran? He set his teeth against the desire to ask; the guards probably did not know and certainly would not answer.

The guards took the chains off and waited while Gereint washed. They offered neither abuse nor even comment; they were utterly indifferent and did not even speak to each other. Gereint put on the new clothing they gave him. It was plain, but not as rough or cheap as he had expected. Gereint took the quality of the clothing as another sign, if he had needed one, that whoever had bought Gereint’s bond was important or wealthy. Or most likely both. There were no boots, of course, but the guards gave him sandals. Gereint put them on and waited to see where the guards would bring him next.

The guards put the chains back on and led him again into the hallway, then up another flight of stairs to a better part of the prison. Here there were, at last, windows set in the walls. The golden light of late afternoon slanted through the windows and lay in long bars across the floors. Gereint’s eyes watered in the brilliance. He blinked, bowing his head, and went without protest or question where the guards took him.

They took him to a richly appointed room that hardly seemed to belong in the same building as the windowless cell. Here there was at last a man wearing the heavy gold chain of a judge, and a clerk with a large book open before him and a quill in his hand, and a third man who was less easy to place. This was a small man. Small all through: not much taller than a child. But he was not young. It was hard to guess his age: He might have been fifty or sixty, or seventy, or older still. His hair was white as frost, worn long, caught back at the nape of his neck in a style almost aggressively nonmilitary. He had ice-gray eyes and fine, straight bones, elegant hands and an inscrutable smile.

It was easier to guess the small man’s rank than his age, for he was well and expensively dressed; the workmanship of his sapphire rings was very fine. This was not merely a gentleman, Gereint thought, nor merely some petty lord. He was more than likely a court noble. He wondered if he’d ever known this man before… before, but certainly he was memorable, and Gereint could not remember ever having met a man like this one.

He looked at Gereint as a man might look at a horse he had purchased; as a captain might look at a man who had been transferred into his company; as an appointed judge might look at a prisoner. With that kind of deliberate detachment. Gereint met his eyes for just an instant and then, allowing sense to beat down pride, bowed his head. He watched the lord covertly through lowered lashes. So this man had purchased his bond—and where, then, was Tehre? The depth of his anger and sense of betrayal at her absence shook him. He discovered only at that moment how deeply he had depended on Tehre Amnachudran to keep her promise and buy his bond. He made himself stand quietly, with a slave’s practiced passivity, showing nothing of the rage that shook him.