The Fox (76 page)

He sank down at the wall; the others did not address him as the next was taken out.

He did not come back, nor the next, nor the ones after that.

Inda was left alone in the cell.

When the guards passed on to the next cell, Inda put his hands over his face, resolving:
Next time, I fight
.

The Comet faced Tau.

They were alone in her house, because he refused to take her to his room. She had a spectacular mansion—a gift from a duke—on the hill, the lower rooms of which had been decorated sumptuously and were used frequently for her entertainments. But the third floor was her own private space, and there they were now, not even a servant in sight.

She sighed, throwing her gloves down onto a table inlaid with pearlescent stars and comets. She dropped onto the satin couch, leaned her head back, and watched him as he walked slowly around, not touching anything, but examining the furnishings as if evaluating them. “You really are an angel face,” she said, draping her skirts so that the folds outlined her form. “You are the only man I cannot construe.”

“Construe.” He bowed, Colendi style, his hand flourishing up in a satirical salute. “Am I an old language or a verb?”

“Everyone is a verb,” she said. “When we dwindle to a mere noun, we die. Do stop hiding from me. Take off the mask. You already see through mine. I am grateful for your goodwill,” she went on, raising a hand before he could speak. “Yes, it’s a pretense about my hating Colend, and yes, it’s because I steal freely from the best of their old plays for my wit. Why not? It’s wit, free for the taking. So what if I claim it? If I were able to be witty on my own I would write all my own songs and plays. Anyway, all the minds who thought those lines are long dead, so they can hardly complain of my theft. I want to know how you knew. Are you in truth an actor, then?”

Tau shook his head, smiling. “No. I really was raised in a pleasure house, just as I said. Except my mother read to me from the greatest plays and made me recite them back as a way of training my diction. She said once that current Sartoran plays had all the taste of yeastless bread, because the queen feels that no play ought to be performed that has not a useful lesson to teach. And current Colendi plays were too full of private innuendo—trying to out-clever the clever—so she used the older ones, which are as airy as pastry and as full of the complexity of good taste. But unlike pastry they are ageless.”

Comet laughed and clapped her hands. “I should love to meet your mother.”

Tau’s smile vanished. “Perhaps,” was all he said. “But let us discuss ourselves.”

“Oh, don’t tell me there’s some horrid reason you won’t sleep with me,” she said, tucking her feet under her bottom and patting the place beside her invitingly. “Don’t let it be something dreary that I will hate.”

Tau smiled again. “Nothing dreary. Shall we negotiate a deal, you and I?”

She sat upright, eyes narrowed. “Oh, Angel, you’re going to be like all the rest? I am not rich—everything is gifts, and if you don’t know the nobility, you had better learn this: they can take back the things they give so easily, and all on a whim. There’s no recourse. No argument. If for some reason you cease to entertain them, they snap their fingers, and hordes of muscular minions appear, and your appearance of wealth disappears. So don’t name some hideous price. I won’t listen.” She laid her dainty fingers lightly over her ears, taking care not to disarray her charmingly arranged hair.

Tau waved a hand to and fro. “I don’t want your money. I have enough of my own. More than you do, as it happens. ” He strolled toward her, bent, and kissed her fingers.

She took hold of his wrists and tried to pull him down beside her. She had longed to kiss that mocking mouth for days and days, a longing that had intensified to hunger. “You’re rich?”

“Very. But not in this kingdom.” He gave her that lazy smile, then turned his wrists slightly, breaking her grip.

She sighed again, saying with undisguised desire, “No one else shall wear white and black. I am determined on that much.”

He shrugged expressively, and she loved it even when she was exasperated at his deflections. He was every bit as beautiful as she was herself, but he never looked in mirrors, never responded to compliments, never gave in to desire. “Tell me your deal,” she said.

“It’s simple, and I don’t think you will suffer by it. I want you to introduce me into court circles,” he said. “Especially Prince Kavna’s.”

Disappointed, she groaned. “Oh, you
are
like everyone else after all. Court!”

“Yes.” He bowed.

“And Prince Kavna! He’s fat, did you not know?” She threw her arms wide. “Fat, and obsessed with the sea, of all things. That and government and justice. He’s as enticing as your Sartoran yeastless bread.”

“Nevertheless.”

She sighed again. He regarded her with that ironic smile. Giving in to impulse, she got to what really mattered: “In return I get you?”

He threw his hands wide, mocking her gesture.

When they came next for Inda, he was ready.

He listened to the lock click, positioned himself. As soon as he was outside the door, he’d strike. He knew where they stood. If he could just get hold of one of their weapons—

But this time they entered the cell two by two. He backed up a step, off balance, out of practice. How many days had it been since he’d drilled?

He launched himself forward, twisting between the first pair.

The Venn were good. He’d hardly exchanged three blows when he felt threat from behind, whirled, faced the second two—

And the first one clubbed him efficiently behind the ear. He dropped to his knees, his vision splintering into flickering stars. A foot on his back slammed him facedown onto the stone. Someone wrenched his hands behind him.

He thrashed violently, but they were too many and too experienced. His wrists were tightly bound, and a hobble put around his ankles, which would prevent him from taking a step larger than his forearm.

They pulled him to his feet and pushed him out. Shuffling awkwardly, he was herded in a new direction. The room this time had no window. That same fair-haired dag in the blue robe was there with a Venn officer as well as one of the yellow-clad ones. This latter sat at a side table, with pen and paper.

“Fought, did you?” The dag said in Fer Sartoran, his mouth derisive; Inda realized then that this man was not a Venn dag, he was an Ymaran mage.

Inda did not know which was more dangerous.

He hesitated, and the mage said with heavy irony, “It will seem even more suspicious at this point in the proceedings if you pretend not to understand Sartoran.”

“I did nothing wrong,” Inda said, striving to match that accent. “Don’t know why I’m here.”

“We are here to determine that,” the mage responded. “Since, as you say, no crime is involved, you could be on your way more speedily if you answer my questions fully and completely.” He gestured to the chair before the desk. “Sit down.”

Inda shrugged his shoulders and wiggled his fingers behind him. “Rather stand.”

Two of the guards behind him gripped his arms, wrenched his elbows out, and thrust Inda into the chair so his hands were behind the back. The chair back cut excruciatingly into Inda’s arms; he could not move.

“Now then,” the mage said. “First item. Tell me where you learned court Sartoran of the last generation?”

Inda grimaced. “Dunno what it was called. That’s what I learned when I was small.”

“In an Idayagan village? Son of a rope-maker?”

Inda said doggedly, “We all learned it.”

The mage addressed the Venn officer. This time Inda caught more words: “Satisfied? . . . Drink.”

And the Venn waved a hand.

The mage sat behind the desk. No one spoke. Inda twitched uneasily, trying without success to ease the strain on his arms. A short time later the door opened and someone entered. The air he stirred brought a familiar smell: kinthus.

He tried not to swallow, but one man jerked his head back by his sailor’s queue, another pinched his nose. When his mouth opened on a gasp they poured in the liquid. And though he choked and gagged on at least as much as he swallowed, they kept pouring until the mage said, “I think that’s enough.”

Inda felt the effects almost at once, as he hadn’t been given a morning meal. The familiar cloud of unfocused detachment settled around his thoughts as he fought his own mind, saying over and over,
I am Fassun, I am Fassun.

But when the mage asked next, “What is your name?” Inda heard himself murmur, “I have to say I am Fassun, I have to say I am Fassun. Have to say Fassun, and a little village, because I don’t remember any of the town names on the map—”

“Tell me your name when you were born,” the mage ordered in Sartoran.

“Indevan-Dal Algara-Vayir of Choraed Elgaer,” Inda said, and smiled at the Venn’s intake of breath, the sudden alertness in the guard at the table, and the way he jerked around to face the mage.

Who said, “This is a province in Iasca Leror?”

“Principality,” Inda corrected gently.

“So you are a Marlovan.”

“Yes.”

The mage made a slight gesture at the guard in yellow— a twitch of two fingers—then said, “Tell me how you ended up at sea?”

Out it all came. Under the mage’s patient questioning, Inda told them about the academy, Dogpiss, his exile, the
Pim Ryala,
the mutiny, the marines, his days on Gaffer Walic’s ship. That mutiny. The attack on Boruin. The preparations for the attack on the Brotherhood.

He talked until his throat was hoarse, but the mage listened closely, and the guard in yellow wrote swiftly at the desk.

The attack on the Brotherhood took the longest, because the mage wanted every detail about Ramis that he could dredge from Inda’s memory. When he’d answered exactly the same way three times, the mage breathed deeply, wiped his forehead, then said, “And you never saw him before?”

"No.”

“So you did not take his commands?”

“No.”

“Nor he yours?”

“No.”

“Yet he desired you to meet him at Ghost Island? Tell me what you did with him there.”

“We walked to the house. He told me to come to the balcony, and when I did, he said I am used to loyalty—”

“Did you and he talk about the Venn?”

“Yes. He told me there are splits in the Venn government. He said the system of kingship is at stake. He told me the three most dangerous Venn to me are Hyarl Durasnir, Commander of the Oneli; Prince Rajnir; and Dag Erkric.”

This time the intake of breath was from the Venn observer; the mage and the guard met each other’s eyes briefly, their expressions indicative of intent.

“Go on,” the mage said, after a questioning glace at the Venn.

“He told me that the Guild Fleet has no leader. He took me aboard his ship by magic transfer, which felt like—”

“Just tell me what he said on board his ship. Did he give you orders, or a future meeting place?”

“No. He said he would be dead within a year. We would not meet again. He showed me ghosts. He asked me what I want.”

“And you said?”

“To go home.”

The mage sighed. “You did not see Ramis again?”

“No.”

“So you left Ghost Island and sailed down the strait?”

“Yes.”

“Looking for information about the Venn? About Prince Rajnir, say?”

“Anything I could find, though mostly I wanted charts—”

“Did you get any information, or charts, when you stopped in Bren?”

“No. They had nothing. Their charts of the northern side of the strait are as blank as ours.” Inda’s voice was a mumble by now. “So I wanted to come here and chart the north coast myself. Count Venn ships. See them maneuver, and—”

The mage said, “So the storm drove you through The Fangs and you came here to spy?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you spying on the Venn?”

“To gather information. Chart the co—”

“For what purpose?”

“So I can free the strait for southern trade.”

Another intake of breath.

Inda’s mind had drifted into the kinthus dream state that left emotion behind. So he watched with detachment as the mage glanced at the Venn, then—longer—at the guard in yellow. And said, “I believe we are done.”

The officer dressed in yellow got to his feet, drew his knife, and in a swift move gripped the surprised Venn officer with a forearm under the chin; the man was off balance for the heartbeat it took for the other to rip a knife across his throat from ear to ear. The man jerked—slumped as blood flowed—the mage motioned to the ground in front of Inda.

The two yellow-clad guards at the door sprang forward and helped the officer bring the Venn around the desk. They dropped him at Inda’s feet, where he flopped, blood pooling on the stone floor.

“Get the other,” the mage ordered.

The door guards left. The mage stooped, drawing his blue robe carefully aside, and checked the dead Venn. Then he moved to the officer’s table. He tidied the papers scattered there, and began to read.

Time measured itself by the quiet hiss of papers being turned over as the mage read through them all.

Presently he said, “Get your pen. Rewrite this last page. I want the same handwriting, the same sense of his words, but under the that list of his three most dangerous enemies you will say that at Ghost Island Ramis commanded him to assassinate Rajnir.”

The scratching of the guard’s pen was the only sound, and then he looked up. “Do you think that’s true, about Ramis dying?”

The mage shrugged briefly, more of a twitch. “The only safe observation is that nothing Ramis ever says or does is what it seems. Even death. That much we can surmise from the very little we’ve learned about him. But for our purposes, this will do.”