The Fox (83 page)

“Do you need a drink?” Wafri asked.

“No. Hel dancers?”

“Oh, that’s the one bearable part of their endless ritual. They do everything in nines, did you know that? Yes, for someone told me you also group your warriors in nines. I cannot imagine why. You shall demonstrate for me, one day. Anyway, these dancers, men and women, are chosen very young, and they train for eighteen years. But only nine of a hundred are taken at the end of their eighteen years, can you imagine? What happens to those who train seventeen years and then are passed by? I should think they slit their own throats.” Wafri chuckled. “But those who do become dancers, they are amazing to watch. The Venn hold their formal celebrations in what they call a Venn Hel—a vast hall, always with their tree banner—and there the skalts and the hel dancers perform. Nowhere else. At least, sometimes, I’m told, the skalts sing at private celebrations, but I broke Rajnir of that habit, and Durasnir and Erkric have never invited me.”

He paused, smiling down at Inda, who forced his eyes open, forced his lips apart. “Dancers?”

“There’s very little music. Sometimes nothing but a tapping drum. Yet when you watch them, you’d think there is a full set of strings and winds, and a herald-poet as well. They dance the tales the skalts drone so tediously. But when the dancers do them, well, you can see what the Venn consider their past glory. Perhaps, after we defeat the others, we can keep some of their dancers so I can show you. I already promised Erkric’s papers to Penros. Why not keep some of their artists, even if we do not want their art?” He leaned close. “Bring the day for me, Indevan. Bring me that day.”

Inda closed his eyes, trying not to stiffen, to alter his breathing. But hatred was so strong, his bones and blood rang like heated metal under the hammer. The shift of Wafri’s rich fabrics, his breathing—which could become so passionate when the pain was the worst—the scent he wore, which was a subtle combination of pepper-tree leaves and orange blossom, these things had begun to invade Inda’s dreams, turning mental escape to horror.

Fingers caressed his brow, the lightest touch. Inda flinched. Revulsion, hatred, irritation with himself for letting time pass. For revealing his reaction.

Wafri chuckled softly as Inda’s cool, faintly damp flesh twitched under his hand. “Shall I tell you the truth?” he said, his tone intimate and tender. Inda’s lashes lay on his cheek, only the tiniest quiver betraying his effort to control himself. A sweet flutter of elation caused Wafri to laugh again. “In truth I love this battle of wills. I am entranced enough to almost wish to prolong it, except I am not entirely free. There is the matter of my own masters, specifically one of those accursed dags questioning one of my men.” His voice was now plaintive. “It could have been a gesture of consolation, but then, only this morning, one of Rajnir’s Yaga Krona—in fact, not just any dag, but Ulaffa, second only to Erkric himself—asked one of my men how the wounded guard was recovering. Why this interest in a nameless guard?”

Inda said nothing. At first he had answered questions, though he knew he was trying to temporize, to postpone the beatings. That had made perfect sense. You did what you could to survive.

Until the night Wafri was rising from the cushioned chair his servants always placed beside Inda’s bed, then took away again. As he got to his feet, Wafri said, “My single sea battle was so distant. Next time, tell me more about what it’s like to be in land battle.” And the next time he came, as soon as Wafri laced his fingers around his knees, rocking back and forth on his chair, Inda had begun with a long description he’d thought out earlier, which had pleased Wafri enormously. There had been only the briefest beating that night, after Wafri asked his usual question: “Will you be my war leader now?”

The following day Inda discovered himself thinking ahead to prolong Wafri’s interest; how, in fact, he’d thought all day about how to please him.

So he’d shut up. Questions, he permitted himself. But no part of his own life: no memories, or plans, or feelings. Questions only, to get information, not to give it. Wafri held the reins controlling his body, but he would get no halter on his mind.

Wafri sighed, recalling Inda’s attention to the present. “What I do know is that I cannot bear to lose you to Rajnir’s grabby hands.”

Inda said, pain flaring through his jaw, “So kill me.”

Wafri grinned, then fingered a lock of Inda’s hair. He’d had Penros dunk Inda’s hair into an ensorcelled bucket earlier that day, as the smell of old blood, sweat, and the mold from the garrison prison had begun to offend him.

He did not know that Inda had felt far more degraded having his hair combed out than he had lying there in his own stink.

Inda’s eyes snapped shut again, and Wafri laughed, thrilled at the flinches that his prisoner fought so hard to hide.

“Never,” he said, tasting the word. “No, I amend that. You are far too valuable alive, but if I think they will find you, I’d be forced to do it because I cannot bear for you to fall into their hands.” He sighed. “Your hair is so coarse, probably from so many years of sun and sea. Would you like it cut? I assure you, short hair is the very latest fashion in Colend.”

Inda said nothing. From the evenness of his breathing, Wafri suspected he did not care what happened to his hair. Few men did, he’d discovered. Not true with most women.

“I want you to remember that my admiration for you has never faltered, though you have often made me angry. But that is at the waste of precious time. We could have accomplished so much by now.”

Inda did not answer.

Wafri gave Inda’s hair a gentle tug, then let it go. “If anything, ” he whispered in that ardent, intimate voice, leaning forward, his entire concentration on Inda’s face, his breath smelling of sweet wine, “your resistance enhances the prospective gratification of your consent.” He leaned back, and spoke to be heard, with laughter roughening the edges of his words. “But you must talk again. I think next time we will use the kinthus. I discover in me a desire to know everything about your life, every detail. Everything you think. Your mind will close no door to me; perhaps your will may follow the sooner.”

Then came the sound Inda had longed for: Wafri got to his feet. But Inda had learned not to relax or betray any reaction beyond what he couldn’t help.

And his reward was the quick wisp of Wafri’s slippers as he crossed to the door. “Penros! Good. I want you to do a general healing. I don’t like how little response I’m getting.”

Penros spoke in that detached voice of academic inquiry. “It’s hard to do much about nerve centers when your men hit them so hard.”

Wafri uttered his soft laugh. “Is that an oblique remonstrance for coming here too often? But you must know how time is against us.”

Penros said, “I, too, am losing strength.”

Wafri sighed. “I know the cost, my loyal mage, I know. Do your best now, and then I command you to drink a sleep-herb. Sleep through the night, and tomorrow as well. Tonight I must go to Rajnir; tomorrow I will have my time with Prince Indevan, but it will only be kinthus, and that I can manage with the help of the men. I wish for him to share his past with me, his most cherished moments, his dreams. Such conversations we will have! Do your best, and then to your well-earned slumber.”

He left. Inda heard the quick steps recede despite the closer clutter of noises: the chair being taken away, the approach of the mage. He did not relax until that familiar
wisp-wisp
had receded out of hearing.

The mage’s murmured spells sounded like Old Sartoran but the cadences and speed muffled distinct words. Inda had given up trying to pick out magic words; like those old taerans Tdor and Joret used to read, there was a context that was impossible to guess at by a few words here and there. That and the gestures. Often Inda’s sight was too blurred to make them out. Now he listened to the gentle flow of words, the occasional rustle of cloth as the mage made his ritual gestures, and treasured his very small triumph.

He and Wafri had become a distortion of new lovers: each unfamiliar with the other’s ways but watching hungrily to learn. Wafri because he wished to, and Inda because he had to.

Wafri had gotten very good at intuiting most of the motivations and reactions Inda strove to hide. But he had made one mistake, probably the most important one: he thought Inda’s strength in resisting was a result of the healing sessions, and so he withheld them as long as he could.

He was wrong. Pain made Inda more angry, and anger gave him strength. It wasn’t physical strength, but it was a strength that might, in the end, make it possible for him to choose the moment of his own death.

Tau sensed he was being followed.

He never ignored instinct, so even though he’d taken painstaking precautions, he took more. He loitered along passages that had reflecting surfaces, seeing nothing. He risked angering or missing his royal patron by being late, and doubled back via roof and drainpipe. Once he entered a house by using an open window, tiptoeing down a hallway past the oblivious family inside, and exited the front door as if he lived there.

He saw nothing, so he continued on, using the short route to Prince Kavna’s appointed rendezvous at the back house beyond the Drapers Guild building. He sensed a shadow, so he opened the tall gate and passed silently through the quiet garden, watching and listening.

The only sounds were the rustling patter of raindrops on the flowers and leaves and the musical plink of drops in the wide, shallow fountain that magically stopped when rainwater fell into its pool.

The air was cool; for the first time in months the sense of impending winter could be smelled in the air, felt in the chill on wet skin.

Tau stopped in the shadow of a drooping fern and descried nothing untoward, so he ducked under the branch and rapped twice on the low door to the garden house.

The door opened a crack, then wider.

Tau slipped inside the room, which smelled of the mold and damp of neglect. Someone had made a brave attempt to make the room more habitable: nuts roasted on the hearth, wine freshly mulled with tart spices, and a twig of herb lay on the Fire Stick to spread a fresher scent through the warming air.

Kavna was alone, a stout young man dressed in well-made but unobtrusive clothing in a style favored by merchants. He had been reading while seated in one of two overstuffed chairs that seemed to represent fashions at either end of a century; between the chairs sat a sturdy table. The stone flooring had been covered with a worn carpet of dark blue with stars.

“The final word,” Kavna said wryly as he set aside his letters, “seems to be that Ramis of the
Knife
does not exist.

My sister is tired of the subject, and has made that as close to a Royal Decree as she can without risking ridicule.”

Tau had discovered that the prince was far more subtle than he seemed. “Unacceptable,” he said as he approached the fire and stretched his hands out to its welcome warmth. “I saw him. More important, I saw what he did.”

“My sister will have everyone know that if she has not seen such things as holes ripped in the universe, they are dreams and delusions for the simple. Unfortunately, I cannot, try as I have, and pay what I probably wasted far too much on, prove different: his land of origin seems to be at least twenty places, and everything else about him is mere rumor—”

The door slammed open. Tau had his knives out—Kavna stared, tensing as in walked the Comet, bedraggled and angry as a wet cat.

“Is
this
what you’re doing?” she demanded, dismissing the prince with one imperious flick of her hand.

“This?” Tau retorted, mimicking her gesture. “How many reprehensible scenarios do you imagine that word includes?”

“None of which are true,” the prince said, inviting her with a gesture to the other armchair. “Sit down, please, Mistress Arrad.”

The Comet plunked down. She frowned, her outrage— which had been mostly theatrical—giving way to curiosity, though the real hurt remained.

The prince tipped his head, giving Tau a wry glance that invited him to speak.

“It’s politics, not sex,” Tau said.

As usual, he had uncovered what she wanted hidden. And that meant he knew of her jealousy, which she had worked hard to hide.

So she rose, tripped to the other side of the fire, and as Tau withdrew to stand behind the armchair she’d vacated, she held out her dainty shoes to the flames.

When no one spoke she sent a practiced glance back over her shoulder through dripping curls. “You could have said something. You know I am discreet.”

“The matter we meet here to discuss is not mine to share,” Tau returned.

“Nor is it mine,” the prince added, unexpectedly. “It transcends us both.”

The prince’s civility almost ushered her into guilt, but she caught the edges of the metaphorical door and turned to stand at bay. “How many are in on this secret that isn’t yours?”

Tau and the prince were both practiced at masking emotions, yet no one can completely rein instinct, and when they sent an interrogative glance toward one another, brief as it was, she crossed her arms. “Shall I step outside again so you can get your story straight?”

Tau flushed. “That’s not ours to tell either,” he said. “In fact, neither of us know.”

“Either you trust me, or you don’t. Tell me who is at the top of this supposed ladder of scheme and intrigue.”

The prince tented his fingers, sending Tau a look that signaled,
It is yours to answer if you wish
.

Tau said, “Elgar the Fox.”

Her eyes widened with disbelief, then narrowed. “Did that come to you as the most unlikely name, or the most impossible?”

Tau lifted his palms. “Believe what you will. And now that you know, to spare you the necessity of dictating terms for your silence, I will withdraw from your life, your service, your house. And the kingdom.”