Prisoner (13 page)

"I see."

*~*~*

Sol smiled faintly, pleased for no good reason, content not to question it too closely.

Though his work was unsettling—indeed this time he wondered, more than ever, if he would live to see it through to the end—being in Kria was more relaxing than the strains of Salhara, living constantly under the shadow of the Brotherhood that ruled his country while the king behaved like a good puppet. Here the games were open and easy to play. And he was a minor player, so far as all others were concerned.

His rooms were simple and well appointed, but not overdone. The rooms of a minor noble who could afford to play at real nobility and had no aspirations, so was considered safe by those who would otherwise cut him down as a threat. The room was soft, brown and black and gold. And warm, because he never would get how anyone could stand the merciless cold that seemed to plague both Kria and Illussor.

All that aside, the company did not hurt. It was nice not to be alone, and despite everything, Iah was hardly a chore. So many men would break in Iah's situation, but here Iah sat—learning, asking, persevering.

"Who killed his parents?" Iah asked, continuing the conversation which had momentarily lapsed.

"A question never answered, or at least I could never find the answer." Which, he liked to think, meant that no one knew. "Many say it was a robbery gone afoul. For peasants, they were rather affluent. As I said, his father was highly regarded as a sword smith. The fond like to say he was the best one in history. Rumors abound, of course. The only thing more interesting than a terrible and frightening general are the stories that theorize what made him so."

Iah began to move his head in that peculiar fashion which meant he was thinking. Like a bird, bobbing on a branch as it contemplated what song it wanted to sing. "So what are you planning?" he asked finally. Sol wondered what he'd really been thinking.

He took a deep swallow of wine then set his goblet down and strode over to the window, moving aside the tapestry to peer down at the people below. It was a massive crush as the lower classes mixed and melded, celebrated and jostled as they prepared for the long winter months ahead. To leave after the really heavy snows fell was nothing less than suicide. Within the palace walls, most of the snow could be kept out or to a minimum, and inside the palace was a vast network of interconnected hallways and tunnels.

Very little drove the Krians outside once winter set in.

Sound exploded in the courtyard, and whereas before people had looked busy, now they looked frenzied. Sol dropped the tapestry and returned to the table, though he remained standing. "What's wrong?" Iah asked.

"Soldiers are returning; it looks like the last of them. Minus the Scarlet." Sol poured another glass of wine and sat down. "There is something about the Krians I have not yet told you."

Iah took a healthy swallow of his own wine. "Because I'm not going to like it."

"No. I still don't like it. In this, it is a blessing you cannot see." He picked up his goblet then set it down again, rubbing a thumb over one of the small green jewels set below the rim. "The soldiers are dragging several prisoners along with them, all Salharan. The Illussor are lucky they're considered too dangerous to be taken prisoner."

"What?"

Sol sighed. "The winter festivities here are begun in the Coliseum, where every prisoner, every major criminal and whosoever else the Kaiser sees fit, is made to fight until there are no more left. It can last for days."

"That's awful. Don't they do enough killing every time the weather warms?"

"It is the way Krians do it. And what do the civilians know of war? They see only that their men die every year because two other countries are trying to steal Krian land. To them, the Coliseum is a way to see prisoners and criminals get what they deserve. I'm sure the nobility find it useful for their own reasons."

"How do you endure it?" Iah asked.

Sol drank deeply from his goblet. "I don't have a choice." He sat through it and acted as though he wanted to be there. But forever he would hear the screams for help, the pleas and desperate cries. All in a language which Lord Grau did not understand, but which Sol heard clearly every time he went to sleep.

He stood up again. "There is a case on the table. Large, square, and covered and lined in velvet. It contains all my inks, and I wanted to show you how they worked.

"Very well."

Sol retrieved the case and brought it to the table. He flipped it open, revealing two neat rows of small, fat bottles of dark blue glass. Around the middle of each was a band of silver. He carefully picked one up and pressed it into Iah's hands. "Feel the band?"

"Yes."

"Hold it tight, then twist hard on the bottom half of the glass." Iah obeyed, and the bottle in his hand became two. "The one with the band," Sol said and touched it, "is just ink. The other one—"

"Arcen," Iah whispered.

Sol nodded then rolled his eyes at himself. "Yes." He took the bottle back and reassembled and replaced it. Taking Iah's hand, he guided it over each of the fourteen bottles. "Five yellow, two orange, two red, one white, and the rest are green—to be used if I must because such weak arcen will not affect me visibly." He left unsaid that green was only weak to someone well and truly addicted, someone who used yellow as though it were nothing.

At least he'd never had to progress to orange.
That
was a fate he would leave to his Brothers. He wanted no part of it. "Hopefully I won't need this for anything other than ink."

Returning the case to the desk, Sol wandered back to the window. Outside the crowd had calmed again, but eager tension was still thick in the air. Another week and the bloodshed would begin.

"Would you like to go downstairs for dinner or remain up here?"

Iah shrugged. "I suppose I should go downstairs, yes? But—"

"Why not stay up here? Too much at once will not help anything. I doubt much will be occurring tonight. I'll poke around and make our excuses, and we can dine up here. Don't drink too much wine; I'll be back in a short while."

Sol slipped out of the room, absently smoothing his hair down. He severely disliked Krian court wear. There were so many layers and folds. At least he could get away with not wearing the hose that seemed all the rage. His own clothes were predominantly gray, with a green tunic stitched with the snowflakes of the winter princess, though not the same as those that made up the crest of the Cobalt General.

Around him people milled. The halls of the palace were packed. In a few days everything would settle down, but for now there was little in the way of calm or quiet. All buzzed with excitement, dressed in rainbows of color that would severely confuse most Salharans, who were used to the somber blacks of the army broken only by the red and blue of the two Sacred Armies they encountered.

Women, noting his arrival, began to beckon to him. They smiled in welcome and drew him into their fold, murmuring and chatting and feeding Sol all the gossip and information he could want. Of course the greatest rumor was that of the Scarlet. Scouts had apparently found all of the returning forces dead, killed by an Illussor Scream.

No one knew what had become of the Wolf, whose body had been noticeably missing amongst the dead. That didn't keep them from making all manner of guesses, most of them bloody and in no small way vindictive. Sol shook his head, wondering how a man could excel at being so universally disliked. Didn't it make more sense to be a well-liked general? But, the same could be said of all the generals.

There was much about Krian politics did not make sense to him. The Kaiser held all the power, and below him were his council and the generals. There were some who said the generals would hold the power if not for the fact that the Kaiser had purposely chosen men who the people would never accept.

The Kaiser was not a stupid man. Not entirely.

"Hale! Is that Lord Grau I see?"

Sol looked up. "Hale, Burkhard. You are looking well."

Burkhard smiled and grabbed Sol's hands, shaking them enthusiastically. "And you, my friend. I am glad you're back."

"It is good to be back," Sol said as he made his farewells to the women and led Burkhard away to a quieter corner. "Tell me all that I've missed. Life in the mountains is so very dull."

"Dull is something I should like to experience sometime." Burkhard was large. At one point in time he had no doubt been as strong and muscular as so many Krian men were, but time had taken his strength. It had also taken his sword after his right hand had been too badly damaged to ever hold one again. Rather than despair, as would have been expected, however, Burkhard had taken up the robes of a monk and given over to dwelling at the fringes of court life.

Like Grau, he was eccentric enough to be tolerated, and as a wounded soldier, he'd earned a degree of respect. "You've not missed much. The fun doesn't start until everyone is around to watch. What good is being a spectacle if there is no one about to see it? They say Heilwig is finding it harder and harder to hold the Kaiser's attention."

"She is getting on in years," Sol replied levelly. "General von Dresden is beautiful, but there are younger women nearly as beautiful and much more easily manipulated."

Burkhard bobbed his head in a quick nod. "Yes. But he's put himself in rather an awkward position by making his mistress a general. One cannot simply fire the leader of the Saffron. Anyway, they say she hasn't quite lost his attention yet."

"He is likely to wake up dead if he tries to invite another woman into his bed. The Saffron General would never tolerate that." Burkhard laughed. "Now there is a Coliseum battle I should like to see!"

Sol laughed with him. "I'm sure many would be right there with you."

"Yes," Burkhard agreed. "Speaking of the generals, they say Egon has not left his rooms since arriving."

"Well, it is not as though he ever does much when he is out of them. That man is as invisible as the Wolf is hard to miss."

Burkhard frowned, his good humor vanishing like the sun behind a cloud. "Yes, the Wolf…"

"Presumed dead, yes?" Sol asked quietly.

"Yes."

Sol looked past Burkhard's shoulder at the crowded room. People were smiling, laughing, joking, and playing— happy. There was no sign anywhere, save in Burkhard's unhappy face, that one of the four generals was dead. He wondered if that would be his fate the day he finally died. Would anyone notice or care? General Sol deVry was seldom seen on the battlefield; most believed his position to be largely for show. Something to keep the traitor's son out of trouble.

What they didn't know wouldn't hurt him.

"Is there no chance he lived?"

Burkhard shrugged. "It was a Scream that did it. How does one survive that? Even the Illussor bastards themselves cannot escape it. Which only goes to prove just how mad they all are. I was going to light a candle for him on the Winter Eve. Would you like to attend? I won't take much of your time."

Sol nodded. No man, even the Wolf, should be treated so ignominiously. "I will attend. It is the least the Lord General von Adolwulf deserves. Why is there no ceremony being set for him?"

"That is a question for the Kaiser, isn't it?"

"I suppose it is," Sol replied quietly. "Perhaps he is awaiting proof of the general's demise. Did I mishear that someone had said his body was not among the fallen?"

"There is that," Burkhard conceded, "but still, it would take a miracle to survive a Scream."

Sol agreed, keeping his amusement to himself. Screams were not impossible to survive. The trick for which the Illussor had been named was a spell that allowed the caster to trick his opponent for a certain length of time. That length varied according to skill and circumstances of the caster as well as what exactly he wanted the victim to see. When the Illussor focused all their ability together, they could do a great deal of damage.

The worst of this was an illusion of death. All the power was focused by one person, who literally made everyone in the vicinity believe they had died. The illusion was real enough that everyone died, including the caster and all the men whose power he'd drawn. The spell's only give away was the strange, thin cry made by the caster which was brought on by the agony of the spell. It was the Krians who had first dubbed it a scream of death; 'Scream' had stuck.

A Salharan could survive it if he had enough warning and sufficient arcen in his system. The only other ones who survived were those who were unconscious before the Scream was cast. According to Tawn, nameless had likely survived, no doubt having burned off all his arcen to do so. Sol doubted von Adolwulf had been unconscious in the middle of a battle.

Where was Tawn anyway? It shouldn't be taking him
this
long to find a lone, arcen-less soldier in Krian land. If he didn't move it, nameless would die from the elements. How hard could it really be, especially for Tawn?

Sol could not wait to be rid of him. If it cost him his own place, he would ensure Tawn never became a star in the sky. Not that he believed either of them stood a chance, but for his sister he would make triply sure.

"Is there anything of interest going on tonight?"