The Rebellion (24 page)

The old cat gave me a sly look, then curled to sleep.

I tried reading his subconscious thoughts but could not penetrate the drifting mists of distortion.

I sat back on my heels and stared into the fire.

Could it be true that Atthis has sent Maryon’s visions? If so, then the need to return the gypsy to her people must be somehow connected to my secret quest to find and destroy the weaponmachines. Or perhaps the return of the gypsy had been nothing more than an excuse to get me to Sutrium. Yet the deadline Maryon had given fitted with the Twentyfamilies’ departure, and I had learned, at least in part, what
Swallow
meant.

But why even bother to send messages through the futureteller instead of speaking to my mind directly? I had sworn to heed Atthis’s direction, so it could not be through fear that I would refuse to obey.

Yet there was a precedent. The first time Atthis summoned me had been through Maruman’s mind. In any case, if Maruman spoke the truth, I had no more cause to fret at leaving Obernewtyn or fear I would somehow miss a summons.

It struck me suddenly that rather than spending my time worrying about my destined quest, I should simply live and trust in the fates to bring me where I was needed.

I stared into the flames with a feeling of having perceived a tremendous truth.

For a moment, in spite of weariness and concern over Idris and the rebel alliance, I felt a sense of clarity and purpose such as I had not experienced since standing on the high peaks of the Agyllian Ken. It seemed that simply by existing, I fulfilled the purpose of my life.

“There is blood on your shirt,” Kella said, sounding startled.

“Some louts in the market whipped me,” I said.

“Let me see,” she commanded.

I flapped my hand for her to leave me be. “It has already been cleaned and treated—by a gypsy herb lorist.”

In a tired way, I enjoyed the amazement on their faces. I let them speculate a moment before telling them what had happened—leaving out the gypsy’s kiss. It shamed me to think of it. Nor did I complicate matters by telling them about the triple Guanette bird design or the mysterious Swallow.

But what I did tell them was enough to have them all agog.

“When will ye take her to them?” Matthew asked.

“When Kella says it is safe for her to travel. After that business with Dragon in the market, all the eyes in every rat hole and cranny of the city will be peeled for gypsies, so even if she was able to move now, I’d wait a day or so. Unfortunately, neither of us will be able to move about too easily, Matthew, and certainly not together.”

“Iriny,” Kella said. “Strange to give her a name after so long. She is sleeping naturally now, and her wounds have begun to knit nicely.”

I nodded and looked around. “Where is Dragon?”

“Sleeping still,” Kella said. “It’s not surprising. You must have had to hit her hard to knock her out right through her shield. I didn’t even know that was possible.”

The stair door slammed and Domick came in. Kella recounted the day’s events to him, but the coercer seemed more concerned about Idris than anything else.

“When did Reuvan say he was seen last?” he demanded.

“Last night. Or mayhap yestermorn,” Matthew said.

“He has only been missing a day and a half,” I pointed out as the coercer began to pace back and forth. “Surely this is a little soon for everyone to be panicking.”

“Did ye try farseekin’ him?” Domick demanded.

“I did, but I could not find him. It was an unfocused probe, though, and there’s a lot of static in the city; he could be in a blank spot. Or he might just be sleeping. You know it is much harder to find a sleeping mind even with an attuned probe.”

“He might also be dead,” Domick murmured.

I glared at him. “Do you take pleasure in being so miserable and hopeless?”

His hard eyes met mine. “In suggesting Idris is dead, I offer hope. If he is not, he may very well wish he were.”

“Wh-what?” Kella gasped faintly.

“None of you seems to have grasped what Idris’s disappearance may mean,” Domick said. “If someone has him and questions him, he will be made to tell all he knows.…”

“The safe house,” Kella whispered, lifting a hand to her lips. “He knows where it is and all about us.”

“He knows everything about Brydda and the rebels, too,” Domick reminded us brusquely.

I groaned, seeing more than that. “Lud save us. He knows about Obernewtyn!”

“He’d nivver give us away,” Matthew said stoutly.

Domick turned a bleak look on the Farseeker ward, and suddenly they seemed decades apart in age.

“You don’t have any idea, do you? Faced with a skilled torturer, you or I, even Rushton, would tell all. And Idris is a boy. Make no mistakes—if those who have him want information, he will tell them everything he knows.”

18

A
FTER A HEATED
discussion, we decided not to abandon the safe house immediately but to wait until first light in the hope that Idris would be found. At the coercer’s urging, we spent the night packing Kella’s precious store of herbs and her healing implements into woven boxes.

When we were almost finished, Kella went to wake Dragon so that she could apply the skin dye. After the incident at the market, we dared not let her remain undisguised.

Domick took out a city map, which showed the location of the nearest green.

“I wish you would reconsider,” he said.

“I wish you would stop suggesting it,” I snapped.

The coercer wanted us to go directly to Obernewtyn to alert Rushton and evacuate the valley. I had argued against doing anything so drastic before we had clarified exactly what the rebels knew of Idris’s disappearance. After all, Reuvan had not suggested there was any danger to us or to the safe house.

Kella pointed out that he might have been too distraught to think of warning us. “He seemed almost dazed when he left the safe house.”

I was sure that Brydda would have sent someone to warn us if there was any need and had said so, arguing that we could lose ourselves quickly and easily in the morning bustle of traders moving into their places at the markets. If we stole
away in the night, someone was certain to report it. We had agreed to go to the nearest green, where we would wait and watch. If there was no raid on the safe house, we would return to it after a while; if there was a raid or any suspicious activity at all, Matthew would ride at once to warn Obernewtyn, and the rest of us would follow in the rig.

“You must go back to Obernewtyn, too, if the safe house is lost to us,” Domick told Kella as she rinsed dye from her fingers.

“What about you?”

“I will stay at an inn as Mika.”

“I will stay with you,” she said stubbornly.

“Mika has no bondmate, and I don’t want you connected with him in case something goes wrong and he has to disappear.”

Kella blinked hard at his peremptory tone, then turned away to pull the last of her dried herbs down from the wall racks. His words reminded me of something else.

“Domick, didn’t your last report mention people just vanishing without a trace in Sutrium?”

The coercer nodded.

“Maybe, whatever happened to those other people is what happened to Idris. And since those disappearances have nothing to do with the Council, then surely we need not fear—”

“We don’t know that the Council has anything to do with them,” Domick interrupted.

“But your report—”

“Contained conjecture as well as facts. I simply said that I had heard nothing to make me think the Council was behind the disappearances. But I don’t hear everything that goes on, and sometimes the very fact that I have not means only that
people have been warned to hold their tongues.” He shrugged. “There are so many factions within the Council and the soldierguard ranks, all with their own plots, and if I have learned one thing in the time I have spent here, it is that sooner or later, everything is linked to everything else.”

There was something profound in his words, which struck a note of response in me, but it was swamped by a wrenching weariness.

“You remember when we went to see Brydda the first night you got here?” Domick went on. “Reuvan came in and spoke of Salamander.”

I nodded. “You said he has something to do with the slave trade.”

“He is its leader. Salamander buys the people who disappear, and the increase in disappearances corresponds with an increase in the demand for slaves.”

“Buying them from whom?”

“The rumor is that the disappearances are the work of an organization that specializes in kidnapping or removing people for a price. I think it is likely that Salamander set it up to ensure his supply. No one in the slave trade knows what he looks like, because he is fanatical about keeping his face and identity secret. He delegates like a king to a whole herd of people and rarely appears in person. When he does, there is almost no prior warning. It has long been rumored that he is a Councilman or some other high official. No doubt he is well aware that the mystery surrounding his identity creates an atmosphere of terror and suspicion and keeps his people silent and obedient.”

“I dinna know th’ slave trade had a leader,” Matthew said.

“It did not—until Salamander came on the scene. Once, it was only the odd ship that stole people from the Land and
sold them to lands over the seas, which were supposed not to exist. Then a ship with a flag showing a flaming salamander began to attack and sink any vessel known to trade in slaves. Invariably, one crewmember would be kept alive, tortured, then cast ashore to tell the story of a ship with Beforetime weapons that spat fire. In no time, the trade virtually ceased, for no one wanted to make themselves a target for such a nemesis. It had seemed for a while that someone wanted to end the practice completely, but instead he was only ensuring he would have no competition.”

I had a sudden vision of the hatred that had flared so unexpectedly in Idris’s mild eyes when Reuvan had said Salamander was in Sutrium.

“Idris’s family was taken by slavers, weren’t they?”

“His father and his sisters,” Kella said. Her shoulders were hunched forward, and there were dark shadows under her eyes. Whenever she looked at her bondmate, there was pain in her eyes.

Domick was oblivious. “If Idris has been taken by the slavers, he will be tortured for information that could be used, before he is sold. Blackmail is another of Salamander’s specialties, and you can be sure he knows the value of a seditioner with inside knowledge of the rebel organization. He would sell it dearly to the Council. Perhaps he would even sell Idris himself. So we are back where we started.”

It was a grim prospect, for Idris and for Obernewtyn, and we fell into a weary, staring sort of silence contemplating it. This was broken when Domick slammed a hand on the arm of his chair.

“Look at us sitting here and yawping into the fire like a herd of defectives! Don’t you see that it doesn’t matter who has Idris? If I am right, someone may be on their way here
now! How will we escape with Dragon, and the gypsy unable to walk?”

He was right. I stood up and flung the dregs of the fement onto the fire. It gave a vicious hiss and belched a sullen cloud of smoke.

“All right,” I said shortly. “Let’s get everything down to the wagon.”

Kella continued the last bit of packing while Domick and I transferred the boxes downstairs. Matthew took them from us and packed them into the cramped interior of the gypsy rig, sweating freely in spite of the chill air.

“If Idris is made to talk, won’t he mention this room you keep?” I asked.

Domick shook his head and motioned for Matthew to take the other end of the box he carried. “He knows nothing about it.”

“But he knows about you.”

“He knows about Domick,” the coercer corrected. “Not about the Council worker Mika. Even a physical description of me will fit a number of others. And if he does tell them of a spy in the Councilcourt, I will know they are seeking me long before they realize which one I am and will vanish.”

He had it all worked out, and no doubt he was correct, but part of me wondered if this new Domick was not pleased for an excuse to hurry us all out of Sutrium.