Sun Wolf 1 - The Ladies Of Mandrigyn (27 page)

Across the room, a man was moaning and retching where he lay in the unspeakable straw—the opening symptoms to full-scale drug withdrawal. Sun Wolf shut his eyes wearily and wondered how long it would be before someone got word to Sheera of where he was.

Drypettis would do that much, he told himself. She had been in the wrong to call him by his title rather than by his name; but much as she might hate to admit she’d made a mistake, and much as she hated him for supplanting her as Sheera’s right hand in the conspiracy, she wouldn’t endanger Sheera’s cause for the sake of her own pride—at least he hoped not.

The far-off tramp of feet came to him. Iron grated. He heard Derroug’s rather shrill voice again, coldly syrupy. The Wolf remembered the jealous, bitter glare the little man had given him as the guards had dragged him down here. The footsteps came clearer now, the clack of the cane emphasizing the uneven drag of the crippled foot.

Sun Wolf sighed and braced himself. The fetid air was like warm glue in his lungs. Across the room, the drug addict had begun to whimper and pick at the insects, both visible and invisible, that swarmed over his sweating flesh.

There was a smart slap of saluting arms and the grate of a key in the lock. Sun Wolf opened his eyes as torchlight and a sigh of cooler air belched through the open door; he saw figures silhouetted in the doorway at the top of the short flight of steps. Derroug stood there, one white hand emerging like a stamen from a flower of lace to rest on the weighted gold knob of his cane. Sun Wolf remembered the cane, too—the bruise from it was livid on his jaw.

Beside Derroug was Sheera, topping him by half a head.

“Yes, that’s him,” she said disinterestedly.

He thought he saw the little man’s eyes glitter greedily.

A guard in the blue and gold livery of the city came down the steps with the keys, followed by another with a torch. They unlocked his neck chain from the wall, but left his hands manacled behind him, and pushed him forward down the long room, the torchlight flashing darkly from the scummy puddles on the floor. At the bottom of the steps, they stopped, and he looked up at Sheera, haughty and exquisite in heliotrope satin, amethysts sparkling like trapped stars in the black handfuls of her hair.

She was shaking, like a too tightly tensioned wire before it snapped.

“You insulted my sister,” Derroug purred, still looking down at the taller man, though Sun Wolf had the odd feeling that it was not he who was being spoken to, but Sheera. “For that I could confiscate you and have you cut and put to work cleaning out latrines for the rest of your life, boy.”

I’d kill you first,
Sun Wolf thought, but he could feel Sheera’s eyes on him, desperately willing him to be humble. He swallowed and kept his attention fixed on the pearl-sewn insets of lace around the flounced hem of her gown. “I know that, my lord. I am truly sorry—it was never my intention to do so.” He knew if he looked up and met those smug eyes, something of his own desire to ram those little white teeth through the back of that oily head might show.

“But after consulting with your—mistress—” The cool voice laid a double meaning upon the term of ownership, and Sun Wolf glanced up in time to see Derroug run his eyes appraisingly over Sheera’s body. “—my sister has agreed to forget the incident. You are, after all, a barbarian, and I am sure that my lady Sheera could ill spare your—services.”

He saw Sheera’s cheeks darken in the torchlight and Derroug’s insinuating smile.

He made himself say, “Thank you, my lord.”

“And since you are a barbarian,” Derroug continued primly, “I am positive that your education has been so far neglected that you are not aware that it is customary to kneel when a slave addresses the governor of this city.”

Sun Wolf, who was perfectly conversant with the laws of servitude, knew that the custom was nothing of the kind—that this little man merely wished to see a bigger one on his knees before the governor. Awkwardly, because his hands were still bound behind him, he knelt and touched his forehead to the stinking clay of the dirty steps. “I am sorry, my lord,” he murmured through clenched teeth.

Sheera’s voice said, “Get up.”

He obeyed her, schooling his face to show nothing of the rage that went through him like the burning of fever, wishing that he had Starhawk’s cool impassivity of countenance. He saw Derroug watching him intently, saw the little pointed tip of a pink tongue steal out to lick his lips.

“But I’m afraid, Sheera darling, that you are partly at fault for not having schooled him better. I know these barbarians—the lash is all they understand. But as it happens, I have—something better.” The governor’s glinting brown eyes slid sideways at her, his gaze traveling slowly over her, like a lingering hand. “Would you object to my dispensing a salutary lesson?”

Sheera shrugged and did not look in Sun Wolf’s direction. Her voice was carefully unconcerned. “If you think it would benefit anyone.”

“Oh, I’m sure it would.” Derroug Dni smiled. “I think it will be of great benefit to you both. Lessons in the consequences of willful disobedience are always worth watching.”

As the guards conducted them down the narrow corridors under the Records Office, Sun Wolf felt the sweat making tracks in the grime of his face. A lesson in the consequences of disobedience could mean anything, and Sheera was evidently quite prepared to let him take it. Not, he reflected in that grimly calm corner of his mind, that there was anything she could do about it. Like him, she had the choice of trying to fight her way out of it now and very likely implicating and destroying all the others in the troop in the resulting furor or going along and gambling on her bluff. Among the lurching shadows of the ever-narrowing halls, her back was straight and uncommunicative. The gleam of the torch flame spilled down the satin of her dress as she held it clear of the filthy flagstones; Derroug’s hand, straying to touch her hip, was like a flaccid white spider on the shining fabric.

“Our Lord Altiokis has recently sent me—ah—assurances that can be used to punish those who are disobedient or disloyal to me as his governor,” he was saying. “In view of the recent upheavals, such measures are quite necessary. There must be no doubt in my mind of the loyalty of our citizens.”

“No,” Sheera murmured. “Of course not.”

Behind her, Sun Wolf could see she was trembling, either with rage or with fear.

A guard opened a door, the second to the last along the narrow hall. Torchlight gleamed on something smooth and reflective in the darkness. As he stepped aside to let Sheera precede him into the room, Derroug asked the sergeant of the guards, “Has one of them been let loose?”

“Yes, my lord,” the man muttered and wiped his beaded face under the gold helmet rim.

The little man smiled and followed Sheera into the room. Other guards pushed Sun Wolf down the two little steps after them. The door closed, shutting out the torchlight from the hall.

The only light in the room came from candles that flickered behind a thick pane of glass set in the wall that faced the door. It showed Sun Wolf a narrow cell, such as commonly contained prisoners important enough to be singly confined, its bricks scarred by the bored scrapings of former inmates. The room was small, some five feet by five; it hid nothing, even from that diffuse gleam. The reflections of the candles showed him Sheera’s face, impassive but wary, and the greedy gleam in the governor’s eyes as he looked at her.

“Observe,” Derroug purred, his hand moving toward the window. “I have been privileged to see Altiokis’ cell like this, built in the oldest part of his Citadel; I have been more than privileged that he has—ah—sent me the wherewithal to establish one of my own. It is most effective for—disloyalty.”

The room beyond the glass was clearly another solitary cell. It was only a little larger than the first, and utterly bare of furniture. Candles burned in niches close to the ceiling, higher than a man could reach. It contained four or five small lead boxes; one of them had been opened. The cell door, clearly the last door along the hall down which they had passed, was shut, but the Wolf could hear more guards approaching along the corridor. Mixed with their surer tread, he could distinguish the unwilling, shuffling step of a prisoner’s feet.

Something moved in the semi-dark of the room beyond the window. For a moment, he thought it was only a chance reflection in the glass, but he saw Sheera’s head jerk to catch the motion as well. In a moment there was another flicker, bright and elusive. There was something there, something like a whirling flake of fire, drifting and eddying near the ceiling with a restless motion that was almost like life.

Sun Wolf frowned, following it with his eyes through the protective window. Whether it was bright in itself or merely reflective of chance flames, he could not tell. It was difficult to track its motions, for it skittered here and there, almost randomly, like a housefly on a hot day or a dragonfly skimming on the warm air over the marshes; it was a single, moving point of bright flame in the murk beyond the glass.

There was a fumbling noise in the corridor. With astonishing quickness, the door visible in the other room opened and slammed shut again behind the man who had been thrust inside—the red-haired young slave who had stood opposite Sun Wolf in the jail. The prisoner stumbled, throwing his unbound hands wide for balance; for an instant he stood in the center of the room, gaping about him, baby-blue eyes wide and staring with fear.

The boy swung around with a startled cry.

Like an elongating needle of light, the flake of fire—or whatever it was—struck, an instantaneous vision of incredible quickness. The young man staggered, his hands going to cover one of his eyes as if something had stung it. The next instant, his screaming could be heard through the stone and glass of the wall.

What followed was sickening, horrifying even to a mercenary inured to all the terrible fashions in which men slew one another. The boy bent double; clutching his eye, his screams rising to a frenzied pitch. He began to run, clawing blindly, ineffectually, at his face, falling into walls. The Wolf saw the thread of blood begin to drip from between the grabbing fingers as the boy’s knees buckled. He registered, with clinical awareness, the progress of the pain by the twisting jerks of the boy’s body on the floor and by the rising agony and terror of the shrieks. Sun Wolf noted how the frantic fingers dug and picked, how the helpless limbs threshed about, and how the back writhed into an arch.

It seemed to take forever. The boy was rolling on the floor, screaming . . . screaming . . . 

Sun Wolf could tell—he thought they all could tell—when the screams changed, when the fire—poison—insect—whatever it was—ate its way through to the brain. Something broke in the boy’s cries; a deafening, animal howl replaced the human voice. The body jerked, as if every muscle had spasmed together, and began to roll and hop around the cell in a grotesque and filthy parody of life. Glancing at Sheera, Sun Wolf saw that she had closed her eyes. Had she been able to, she would have brought up her hands to cover her ears as well. Beyond her, Derroug’s face wore a tight, satisfied smile; through his flared nostrils, his breathing dragged, as if he had drunk wine. Sun Wolf looked back to the window, feeling his own face, his own hands, bathed in icy sweat. If there were ever a suspicion, ever a question, about the troop, the governor had only to show the suspect what he himself had just seen. There was no doubt that person would tell everything—the Wolf knew that he would.

The screaming continued, a gross, bestial ululation; the body was still moving, blood-splotched hands fumbling at the stones on the floor.

Derroug’s voice was a soft, almost dreamy murmur. “So you see, my dear,” he was saying, “it is best that we ascertain, once and for all, who can—demonstrate—their loyalty to me.” And his little white hand stole around her waist, “Send your boy home.”

“Apologize to Drypettis?” Sun Wolf paused in the act of pouring; the golden brandy slopped over the rim of the cup and onto his hand. The pine table of the potting room was pooled with red wine and amber spirits; the laden air reeked of them, heavy over the thick aromas of dirt and potting clay. His eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot, and unnaturally steady. He had been drinking methodically and comprehensively since he had returned home that morning. It was now an hour short of sunset, and Sheera had just returned. His voice was only slightly thickened as he said, “That haughty little snirp should never have called me captain in public and she knows it.”

Sheera’s mouth looked rather white, her lips pressed tight together, her dark hair still sticking to her cheeks with the dampness of her bath. The Wolf was half tempted to pull up a chair for her and pour her a glass—not that there was much left in any of the bottles by this time. He had never seen a woman who looked as if she needed it more.

But Sheera said, “She says she never called you captain.”

He stared at her, wondering if the brandy had affected his perception. “She what?”

“She never called you captain. She told me she called out to you and told you to take a message to me, and you refused and told her you were no one’s errand boy . . . ”

“That’s a lie.” He straight-armed the brandy at one shot and let the glass slide from his fingers. Then rage hit him, stronger than any drink, stronger than what he had felt for Derroug while on his knees before the governor in the prison.

“Captain,” Sheera said tightly, “Dru spoke to me just before I left the palace. She would never have called you by your title in public. She knows better than that.”

“She may know better than that,” Sun Wolf said levelly, “but it’s possible to forget. All right. But that’s what she called me, and that’s why—”

The controlled voice cracked suddenly. “You’re saying Dru lied to me.”

“Yes,” the Wolf said, “that’s what I’m saying. Rather than admit that she was in the wrong.” It crossed his mind fleetingly that he should not be arguing—not drunk as he was, not this afternoon, not after the kind of scene he was fairly certain had taken place with Drypettis immediately after what amounted to rape. He could see the lines of tension digging themselves tighter and tighter into Sheera’s face, like the print of ugly memories in her tired flesh, and the sudden, uncontrollable trembling of her bruised lips. But her next words drove any thought from his mind.