Law of the Broken Earth (12 page)

T
an, smiling, pulled the bed table nearer to hand and riffled through the stack of paper a servant had brought, along with a very good supper and a passable wine. The supper was now crumbs and the wine was gone, and he had even slept for a while, which he had not expected after so long unconscious. But then, unconsciousness was not quite the same as sleep, he thought, amused. Now, despite so recently wearing himself out with his gift, he found himself rather drawn to the paper and quills that had been provided. The lamplight would be adequate, if he happened to wish to write a little.

It was good paper, thick and heavily textured. Well-made paper like this was a pleasure to work with; it wouldn’t let ink smudge or fade. The array of inks was also impressive. The blue was a good, deep color like distilled Casmantian sapphires, the green fresh and bright as springtime, the purple dusky and rich.

He thought that a young woman of the Delta was
unlikely to know, but would probably like, Anariddthen’s newest cycle, all sweet love and desperate loss and brave heroism, and an ending that was, contrary to most romantic epics, at least ambiguous rather than tragic. It would please pretty little Mienthe, he decided. He was clear already that anyone who wished Lord Bertaud’s goodwill might well give some thought to pleasing his cousin.

The Anariddthen—yes, Tan decided. Not only would young Mienthe probably like it, it also could be taken in pieces of a sensible size. There wasn’t much chance he’d fall into the legist’s trance and wear his fingers to the bone trying to reach the end in one session. Yes. The Anariddthen would do very well. Green ink, Tan thought, for the beginning. He picked up a green quill—made from a parrot’s feather, he presumed, and very handsome it was, if not the sort of quill a professional would care to be seen using for serious work. But perfect for a light romance. He dipped it into the matching ink, and found himself standing alone, chilled half to death, in a cavernous building filled with dim shadows and dusty cobwebs.

There had been no sense of transition at all. Tan’s shocked gasp and sharp twitch backward were natural, but ill-advised: He discovered that his ankles were chained together and his wrists chained to his ankles by coming too hard against the limits of the chains, losing his balance, and falling. And then he discovered that another chain was around his neck, this one running high aloft to the distant ceiling of the building. With his hands chained, Tan could not catch himself: The chain about his neck slipped through a steel ring and he was suddenly strangling. It took a terrifying moment of breathless, off-balance struggle to regain his feet, and even then he had
to toss his head sharply to get the strangling chain to run back through the slip-ring so he could catch his breath.

His throat felt bruised where the chain had closed around it. For an instant he could not help but picture what would have happened if he’d fallen with a little more force and crushed his windpipe, or if he hadn’t been able to get back to his feet and had simply hung there, strangling—The images went beyond vivid to visceral, and he shut his eyes for a long moment and devoted himself to breathing. Slow, steady breaths. He was not going to panic and give himself to his enemies… to Istierinan, to be plain, and what was Istierinan doing with a pet mage running his errands? What mage would it even be? None of the court mages at Teramondian served or worked with or even liked Istierinan, so far as Tan knew. Obviously he had missed something. Evidently something important.

Tan knew very little about magecraft, but obviously Istierinan couldn’t have stolen him out of the Delta’s great house and tumbled him into this place through a blank moment of time unless he had a Linularinan mage working with him. But, earth and iron, why had the Linularinan spymaster gone to such trouble to do it? Istierinan risked offending not just Feierabiand but
the Lord of the Delta
by stealing Tan out of
his own house
? Even when it was patently too late to stop the stolen information from getting out? It was incredible.

Although, on the other hand, Tan had to credit that Istierinan had clearly managed the trick. Perhaps so silently that Lord Bertaud would not be able to take official offense? At least, so silently that Istierinan could
tell
himself that the Lord of the Delta wouldn’t be able to take offense? Tan ran that question backward and
forward in his mind even while he turned most of his attention toward examining his situation and his prison. He wasn’t injured. Not even bruised, save where the chain had closed across his throat when he’d fallen. Istierinan and his people had taken some care, then, that he not be harmed. Yet. But his shirt was gone, and his boots. No wonder he was cold. His skin prickled with the chill. Or maybe with fear.

He tried to bury the fear beneath rational thought and a practical attention toward possible escape. The building seemed to be a warehouse. Or a barn. A barn, yes. That loft had probably held bales of hay or straw, and those rot-riddled boards over there had probably once outlined neat stalls. Though the table near at hand was new, obviously brought in recently. Like the chains and their bolts. An old disused barn, then, freshly tricked out for its new and far more questionable role. Too far from the city, he was certain, for passersby to hear shouts.

Well, and come to that, why was Istierinan not already standing at that nice new table, with all the tools he might require laid out for use? Was he simply waiting for fear and cold and exhaustion to wear Tan down? The scene, one had to admit, was quite adequately set for the purpose. The slip-chain was a nice touch. How long could a man stay on his feet when collapse would mean strangling? A long time, Tan thought, but not forever, and when he died, his death would be, in a way, something he’d done to himself. Yes, that was the kind of subtlety that would appeal to Istierinan.

Tan had spent nearly seven years making a place for himself, or for the man he had pretended to be, in the old Fox’s court in Teramondian. Even before that, he
had spent other, earlier, years living out other false lives in one part or another of Linularinum. He had done it because he loved Feierabiand, and because… well, for many reasons that had seemed good at the time. He had resented Linularinan arrogance and high-handedness; that had been part of it. He had feared what might eventually come about if the Linularinan king and court were allowed to disdain Feierabiand. And he had enjoyed the game of spycraft and his own skill at it. An agent operating in deep cover lived a life of slow, tedious deception that flashed with lightning-lit moments of brilliant terror, and Tan would not have traded those moments for a lifetime of secure prosperity.

Thus, for years Tan had walked the knife’s edge of deception, as they said. The knife in that saying was understood to be laid as a bridge across disownment—for spies, if caught, were very seldom owned by their masters—and death. And he had done it even though, in those years, he had learned to love Linularinum as well as Feierabiand.

Every confidential agent struggled with questions about loyalty and treachery. These were questions with which Tan had years ago made his peace. It had helped that he never felt any love for the old Fox, Mariddeier Kohorrian, who paid far too much attention to cleverness and the strictest possible interpretation of the law and not nearly enough to justice. But it had helped even more that in those last years, as he’d gained Istierinan’s trust, he’d also learned to hate him. The Linularinan spymaster had seemed to Tan to embody everything he disliked about the Linularinan people while specifically eschewing all their admirable qualities. He was not merely deceitful
but falsehearted, not merely justifiably proud of his own skills but contemptuous of those owned by others, and slyly cruel even when he seemed overtly kind.

Maybe silence and cold was exactly the vengeance Istierinan had in mind. Maybe no one would come to question Tan, not even to watch or gloat. An uncomfortable idea, in its way worse than, well, other ideas. Maybe Istierinan was employing time itself as a subtle weapon as well, forcing Tan to suffer from the contradictory fears that someone would come and that no one would. Time to try to escape and fail, to wear out his strength to no avail, with the strangling chain waiting all the while to tighten when he could no longer keep his feet…

At the moment, however, Tan definitely was not desperate enough to wish for the arrival of his enemies. He turned his head, shuffled as far around as the chains would allow, inspecting the warehouse more closely. No windows, no visible door. The slanted golden light of late afternoon filtered in through missing boards high in the roof. The building was not, then, in good shape. He should be able to break a way out, if he could get out of the chains.

Which did not seem likely. The barn might be decrepit, but the chains were new and well-made, and they’d been bolted to a floor that seemed depressingly sturdy. No signs of wood-rot underfoot, no. Above… when Tan tensed the muscles of his neck and cautiously put pressure on the chain around his throat, he could feel no give to the boards above. Nor, when he tried standing on his toes and ducking, could he loosen the slip-chain enough to get his head through. He thought, briefly, about trying to jerk the neck-chain loose. But it would be unfortunate if he accidentally crushed his own windpipe instead of breaking
the chain. Istierinan would laugh himself stupid when he finally arrived.

Tan stood quietly for some time, thinking and letting his eyes roam aimlessly about the barn, hoping for inspiration. None came. He found himself shivering and, as he had no other protection, tried to pretend that he wasn’t cold. Far too many little breezes and gusts could make their way through the cracks and gaps and the spaces left by missing boards. Spring it might be, but only just, and even in the Delta, it was too cold to go without boots or shirt. The light dimmed… overcast? Tan doubted the roof of this barn would prove tight against wind and rain. A chilly rain would be perfect to complete this situation. Though, as he had no water, he might soon be grateful for even the most bone-chilling rain. Or was it dusk? It seemed too early. But he did not, after all, know how long ago he had been captured. Hours? Days? He surely should be thirstier, if it had been so long.

He tried again to break loose the bolts that held him chained—he’d already decided the chains themselves were hopeless. Nothing. He then tried, briefly, to work his hands out of their shackles. His hands were long, his wrists not overthick. But the steel shackles were too tight. Even if Tan broke the bones of his hands and fingers, there would still be the shackles on his ankles. Hard to deal with those if his fingers were broken. Though if he could only get the slip-chain off, he might count that a net gain. If he was sufficiently desperate. Not yet.

He could try shouting. He knew very well no decent, uninvolved person would be near enough to hear him. On the other hand, if enemies were nearby,
they
would hear him. They might even come. That was an uncomfortable
uncertainty. So not yet for shouting, either, then. Though possibly soon…

Then, somewhere out of sight, a door creaked open and thudded closed. Enemies were coming, after all. It was a mark of Istierinan’s cleverness that Tan was almost glad to hear them. He straightened his shoulders and turned his head. Boots thumped hollowly across the floor, more than one pair. Dust rose into the air. Someone coughed. Torchlight wavered, red as death.

The Istierinan whom Tan had known, Istierinan Hamoddian, son of Lord Iskiriadde Hamoddian, had passed himself off as a careless court dandy, a man with wit and wealth, but no interest in or connection with serious matters. Dissolute and reckless, though undoubtedly clever. The sort of man admired by younger sons who admired profligacy for its own sake and were likely to die young in some foolish stunt or quarrel.

But Istierinan Hamoddian was showing Tan a very different face now. Not only was he dressed as plainly as any ordinary traveler, but his long, bony face, usually expressive, was blank and still. Very little remained to suggest the self-indulgent courtier Tan remembered. Here, for this role he was playing now, he had not troubled to color the gray out of his hair. No wonder, Tan thought, that he had customarily done so, for the silver at his temples made him look not only older but far more serious. Istierinan’s mouth, always ready to crook in ironic humor, was set in a thin line. His wit wasn’t hidden, but altered out of all recognition to a kind of grim acuity. His deep-set eyes, though shadowed with weariness, held a cold resolution. Tan wondered, distantly, how many of Istierinan’s young admirers would even recognize him now.

Istierinan was carrying nothing. But the two burly men he’d brought with him held cudgels as well as torches, and one of them carried a leather satchel that might contain anything. Tan tried, unsuccessfully, not to imagine the sort of tools it probably held.

Istierinan stopped perhaps six feet from Tan, looking at him without speaking.

Tan stared back, equally wordless. He considered, briefly, pretending innocence and demanding what Istierinan meant by this abduction. But the spymaster did not look in the mood for such pretense, thoroughly ruined in any case by Tan’s convoluted flight out of Linularinum to the Delta. No innocent man could have made it, or would have known how to even try, and no clever repartee could possibly disguise the fact.

Nor did Istierinan seem inclined toward any sort of game or indirection. He simply looked at Tan for a moment longer and then asked abruptly, “Where is it? Do you still have it yourself? If you’ve passed it on, to whom?”

These all seemed odd questions, when Tan had stolen information rather than any object. He said cautiously, “What, it?” Not altogether to his surprise, Istierinan merely glanced impatiently at one of his thugs. The man lifted a muscled arm. Tan kept his gaze on Istierinan, not the thug. He said quickly and sharply, “Well, here we are, very like Redrierre and Moddrisian, and just as unlikely to come to a satisfactory conclusion, do you think? Be sensible, man! I’ll answer any question you ask, but if you want answers, you’ll have to ask clearly! I swear I don’t know what you mean.”