The Red Wolf Conspiracy (43 page)

But from this day forward the greatest danger is His Nastiness. What a creature, sir! He has scars on his face as if mauled by a jungle cat. He is ancient, but muscled like Drellarek the Throatcutter, and his voice belongs to a crocodile. Now I will tell you how he came aboard
.

His Nastiness has lain these forty years on the prison isle of Licherog, halfway from Uturphe to the Quezans. Imperial law bars any ship from nearing the isle unless in danger of sinking outright, so I was forced to invent such a condition. Swellows did it, with Uskins standing guard
—
sawed the portside tiller-shaft down to a nub. To make things sweeter I let the blame fall on Fiffengurt. The old pest had the wheel at two bells past midnight, when the wind turned of a sudden. He gave her a sharp spin, the shaft broke and
Chathrand
heeled over like a cart kicked by a mule. Twelve hundred men, women and brats went sprawling. The men's breakfast fell off the stove. Now Fiffengurt is less well loved than before
.

For two days we limped north. The men feared we were lost, drifting, and cheered when the lookout cried, “Land! Two points off the starboard!” But they shuddered and made the sign of the Tree when that great black rock loomed out of the waves
.

A cruel wall encircles Licherog, pierced only by gunnery and a solid iron gate like the door of a furnace. Birds in the thousands wheeled overhead. Miles out, the men saw sharks, big
monsters gliding in our wake. Hundreds swarm those waters, and never starve: on Licherog there is no graveyard but the sea
.

A skjff came out and led us through the reefs. We passed the wreck of a four-masted Blodmel, sunk half a century ago in the harbor mouth. The day was so clear I glimpsed skeletons on her deck: Sizzy men, drowned in their armor, shreds of calcified rigging in their hands
.

I left Fiffengurt in charge of repairs and went ashore with Ott and Drellarek. The warden of Licherog, a gaunt old spook in a robe fashionable thirty years ago in Etherhorde, greeted us at landfall. The man is a duke from an ancient family, exiled there after selling his own niece to the Flikkermen. He knew the real purpose of our visit: I could see that in the way he sweated and squirmed. He was terribly excited at the prospect of getting rid of His Nastiness
.

“Come, sirs!” he said. “You've traveled far, you'll want food and wine and a place to sit down! This port is a foul sty, but the wind is fresh up in the citadel. Follow me!”

He marched us up the bird-filthy stairs from the water. The furnace door swung open, and we entered Licherog
.

We all hear ghastly tales of that prison, Father, but the reality is worse. Most of the condemned live underground, in meandering catacombs untouched by sun or rain. They have nothing. They drink from their hands, eat off the stone floor or from plates beaten together from the mud tracked in by the guards. I saw a man who had fashioned a bed from his own hair, so long had he lain in one room. The halls go on forever. Whole floors have been abandoned to anarchy: food is piled up at a master door, and bodies removed there, but no guards enter and no prisoner even dreams of escape. One level the warden calls
the Faceless Floor,
comprised of those whose identities are lost or cast into doubt, or whom the Empire wishes the world to forget
.

We were a long time in reaching that fresh wind, but finally another door was unchained and we stumbled out on the top of the island itself. East to west it is perhaps six miles long, all dust and naked rock. We saw quarries where men labored under the withering sun, the gallows where some fresh troublemaker dangled like a rag. And at the far end of the island, upon a rise, stood a fortress with an ornate little tower
.

“That is your residence?” asked Drellarek
.

“Oh no!” The warden laughed nervously. “That is the … Forbidden Place. It was built as the warden's home, but since the war
—
since the sinking of the
Lythra—
you understand that I rarely speak of the place, or its special purpose? But soon enough I shall take you there. Come, friends, the meal is served.”

“Take us now,” said Ott. “We will dine better if we know that we have not sailed all this way in vain.”

“I can assure you
—
”

“Do no such thing,” Ott interrupted. “Show us the S——
.
^2*

A little carriage was brought round. We thumped along wordlessly, guards on horseback ahead and behind. An army of near-naked prisoners gaped all around us
.

The fortress was embellished with stone vultures and murths and skulls and cobras, every symbol of death one could think of. The warden pointed to a dead man sprawled on the ground and bristling with arrows. “The guards would even shoot one another, if one strayed too close without permission,” he said proudly. “We leave the bodies in plain view until the birds tire of them. Here we are, gentlemen.”

The guards here were Turachs like Drellarek (he had trained some of them in Etherhorde) with crossbows primed, and slavering hounds at their feet. When they had searched us thoroughly and taken all our weapons, the carriage was ushered in through the gate
.

Inside that fortress
—
paradise. A green yard led to a stand of lemon trees in pungent bloom. Beyond that, frangipani and cedars, a spice garden, peacocks strutting at liberty. There was a slate terrace and a cobalt pool, where a slave girl sat bathing her feet. She fled like a doe at the sight of us, and we trailed in past a bowling court with silver pins, a glass table heaped with pomegranates, a statue of the Babqri Child. Somewhere a fiddle played. Across the yard I saw two cooks roasting a hog
.

“All this … is for him?” I asked, disbelieving
.

“Certainly not!” replied the warden. “You forget he has two sons.”

We came to the tower stair, but before we could climb them the door flew open and a man of about twenty, wearing a dirty yellow robe, burst out, pointing at the warden
.

“Rabbits!” he shrieked, in a voice like an old woman. “You promised, Warden!”

The warden cringed. “Your Majesty, I promised to try. My men are hunting rabbits across Licherog even now. But I fear we have eaten them all.”

The man looked at us for support. “Always lying, this one! Variety! That's all I ask! How are we to put up with the same five cuts of meat, year after year? And any fool can see the island is full of rabbit holes!”

“The island is a rock, Your Majesty And now I must change the subject. We have important guests. Would you be so very obliging as to tell your royal father
—
”

“Divine!”

“
—
that the captain of the Great Ship requests an audience?”

The man hesitated, mouth agape. Then, slow and important, he crossed his arms. “No audience,” he said. “Take them away, Warden. I am not pleased with you.”

“But these travelers
—
”

“Is not my father a God?”

The warden looked as if he had dreaded this moment from birth. He glanced at me as if hoping I knew the answer to the man's question. But then Ott leaped onto the stairs. The man screamed: Ott knocked him aside like a broom and vanished through the door. We heard him running up the inner staircase
.

The tower has four levels. On the first we saw a half-eaten roast upon a table, a shattered plate, and the slave girl peering at us from beneath the tablecloth. The second was a kind of playroom, with frightfully bad paintings on easels, some knobs of stone that might have been intended for sculpture, a grand piano and a second man in yellow sitting on the floor holding his forehead, a broken fiddle beside him. Ott had needed but half a minute to tame the S's terrible sons
.

“You see how young they are?” said the warden softly. “That is the work of Arunis, the King's old sorcerer. When
they irritated him he would cast spells to make them sleep for days, weeks, even. Once they slept for three years
—
then ran about like mad puppies for a month. But it is an enchanted sleep, for they age not when they slumber. They should be nearing fifty, but they are half that.”

“Is there no means of waking them?” I asked
.

“Their father discovered one. He sets their clothes on fire.”

“Rin's teeth!”

“That is why they refuse to wear anything but those robes. They can be thrown off in an instant.”

The third floor held a library full of moldering books in Mzithrini script. We pressed on to the next floor, which was the highest. An elegant bedroom met our eyes, with large windows open to the breeze. Sandor Ott stood to our left, stock-still, fingering a sharp little piece of the broken plate, his face glowing with some unspeakable fervor. And across from him was the S——
.

He stood empty-handed by the window, gazing fixedly at the spymaster. I wrote already of his visage, his monstrous scars, but did I mention his eyes? They are red-tinted, as if he stares always through that curtain of blood he came so near to drawing over all the world. I knew he would be here, and yet I stood in awe. Those hands had strangled princes. That mouth had talked whole countries into joining his lunatic war. This prodigy of murder was now become a tool, but whose exactly? The Emperor's? Sandor Ott's? My own?

You see, Father, the S——saw everything backward. He thought we were his
.

“You are late,” he rumbled, breaking the silence. “Midwinter I began to call you, bending my will across the Nelu Peren. Now at last you come, with the year half spent and the White Fleet moving again. Why do you make your lord wait?”

I have known Sandor Ott for decades, Father, but never before had I seen him afraid. He was breathing hard, and not from the exertion of the stairs. Nonetheless he stepped forward and spoke through his teeth
.

“Creature!” he said. “If some part of you is untouched by madness, hear me well: in my hands you are no God. You are a maggot. And I am the fisherman who baits his hook with
you! If you wriggle, you do so for my sake. If you live it is because I wish it. Displease me in the smallest matter and I shall prove your mortality by casting you into the sea!”

“Will you?” said the S——. “After forty years?”

No one answered Ott and the S——looked like two old wolves, each waiting for the other to spring. Then His Nastiness glanced at the rest of us for the first time, his face indifferent. We were beneath his notice
.

“Warden,” he said, “I choose to leave on this man's ship, for the hour foretold at the world's making is come round at last, and soon I shall possess my kingdom. But you must not think of leaving Licherog. You will stay and guard my library, and my stallions, and my goat.”

The warden sniveled, like a child used to spankings. “Of course, Majesty! Where else would I go? What other task could I aspire to?”

“Do not lie!” the S——suddenly roared, lifting his hands. “When I return I shall bear the Nilstone in my left hand, Sathek's Scepter in my right! Master of all Alifros shall I be, and whosoever lies to the Master shall know his wrath!”

“I do not lie, Majesty
—
”

“Where are my sons? You spawn of a tick! Bring them! I swear on the Casket you shall die in the bowels of this prison, wailing, the fires of the Nine Pits licking your mind. Your mouth shall fill with ashes, your eyes
—
”

Ott and Drellarek moved as one. Drellarek struck His Nastiness a blow to the stomach that stopped his ranting. Ott did something with his hand, too quick for the eye to follow. There was a splash of blood: for a moment I thought he had murdered the fiend. Then I saw him hold up a bit of flesh between his thumb and forefinger. It was one of the S's ear-lobes
.

The monster-king staggered, groaning. Ott threw him a handkerchief “Stanch your wound, maggot,” he said. “And never forget this: Sandor Ott draws blood once as a warning. Once.”

I had little appetite for dinner. That night I tried to sleep ashore, but the spirits on Licherog outnumber the prisoners as the dead outnumber the living, and no chains kept them from my room, where they moaned, begged for sweets, accused me
of ridiculous crimes. I went back to my ship. And before dawn I rose and found Uskins on the forecastle as planned. We sent the whole night watch below, and when we stood alone Drellarek and his thugs brought His Nastiness and sons aboard, wrapped up like babes in swaddling cloths. They are hidden now in a deep part of the ship, as carefully as I hid the Emperor's gold
.

Before we cast off from Licherog the warden came to shake my hand. “Will the Emperor let you retire now?” I asked. The man was a simpering wretch, but he had done his job
.

“Oh!” said he. “The Emperor promised years ago that my banishment would end when those three departed Licherog. But I do not know. Every kingdom needs its jailors, and this place is not so very awful, sometimes.”

“It's a swillhole! And festering with ghosts besides! Get out of here, man!”

“There's the S——'s warning to think of, Captain.”

By the Pits, Father, that was the strangest moment of our landfall. This man knew the scheme: how we were throwing the S——at our enemies as one might throw a dog at a marauding bear, not because the dog can survive, but because it can weaken and distract the bear. And yet he feared
—
the dog! Not the Emperor or the White Fleet, not disease, nor being strangled some night by any one of the ten thousand killers on that rock. Only his ex-prisoner: and so much so that he planned to stay on Licherog through his declining years, feeding that madman's goat
.