Sword and Verse (21 page)

Gyotia, furious at Sotia's silent insolence, pulled a branding rod out of the air and handed it to Aqil. Its end smoked with unseen fire. “Mark this traitor, and we shall have done with her.”

Aqil pressed the rod to his mother's cheek without hesitation. She stiffened, silent tears pouring down her face.

The high cry of an asoti echoed in the valley below.

I HAD ONE
moment of agonizing dread, and then there was just agony. The first lash sliced through my thin dress like a knife through pudding, leaving a slash of fire across my back. I gasped and choked back a cry, forming a deluded resolution not to scream.

That resolution held until perhaps the fourth lash—or was it the fifth? I lost count as I clutched the cold stone and my world narrowed to the endless cycle of a whoosh, then pain, a whoosh, then more pain.

I am certain I screamed and begged for mercy. My vision darkened and I sagged against the pillar, the only thing anchoring me to reality as pain exploded around me, unending and inescapable. I wished for death—anything to stop the relentless rending of my body.

In the distance, between the whistles that brought more
agony, and more, I now heard a voice, angry and loud. Then more voices, and then—it seemed years later, but it couldn't have been—I was being dragged and jostled. I screamed as something pressed my shredded back, and finally I fell into darkness.

Once or twice the darkness lifted and I was aware of something soft under me, a distant scent of willow bark, someone holding water to my lips. I drank, but the effort sent pain like shards of glass scraping down my body, and I groped for unconsciousness. In the darkness I tumbled through hazy images—fire flaring in the dark Library, stones on the shore, a timid girl raising a blank tablet with a gouged center. A dark-haired woman, her heart-shaped face sad, her whispered words incomprehensible but her eyes begging me to understand.

Gradually I came to awareness, but the woman's face, so familiar, lingered in my mind. It was a kind face—was it my mother? I took a deep breath, trying to think, and coughed hard, the movement sending excruciating spasms through my body. I groaned, and became aware that my face was mashed into a soft pillow, a puddle of drool chilling my cheek. A sudden pressure caused one of the raw, throbbing places on my back to blossom with pain. I whimpered, wincing away.

I turned to see who my tormenter was. My heart rose and then immediately fell when I realized that the face was not the one I'd been hoping for, and I closed my eyes again in despair.

“She's awake, sire,” said a quiet voice.

Footsteps approached the bed. “Wait outside,” said another voice, one that sent a flock of emotions skittering through me. Mati.

“But I need to apply—”

“I'll do it,” said Mati.

A door opened and closed, and someone settled into a chair nearby. Something cool touched my back, so gently that I only winced the tiniest bit at the contact on my tattered skin.

I forced my eyes open and focused on Mati. His hair was messy, his face haggard.

Mati met my eyes. “How do you feel?”

“Like . . .” I lifted my head and pushed the sodden pillow away, and wished I hadn't moved. I gritted my teeth through bolts of pain, pressing my face into the bed.

A cool hand touched my forehead. “The fever's gone,” said Mati. “You've been delirious for two days.”

I took this in. “I don't understand . . . why I wasn't executed.”

Mati stayed silent for so long that I had to open my eyes to see his face. He was still looking at me neutrally, but I saw something break in his eyes. “Rale had no proof of anything.”

He was still trying to believe in me, even now. It was almost too much to bear. “But I did help the Resistance,” I croaked. “You know I did.”

Mati only slumped back in the chair, looking exhausted. I pressed my forehead into the bed. Only when I felt the cold, damp sheet below my face did I realize that I was crying.

Mati didn't say anything, only took up a tub of ointment and began to apply it gently to my wounds. For some time the only sound was my pathetic shuddering sobs.

“How long?” Mati finally said, when I had subsided into
sniffles. I looked up at him, but his attention was on his hands at my back. “The whole time we—does that mean you were—” His fingers pressed too hard into a gash near my spine, and I cried out.

Mati pulled back and put down the pot of ointment as if it had burned him, then wiped his hands on a rag.

“No,” I said, once my breathing had calmed. “I told you the truth before, just not . . . all of it. I turned them down at the pantomime, but they didn't leave me alone after. They sent me that quill, and then they cornered me at the Festival of Qora earlier this year. They said they needed my help to save Arnath children. I . . . couldn't say no.”

Mati sat back and folded his arms. “You're not sorry.” The words were an accusation.

“I'm Arnath, Mati. I
was
one of those children.” I met his eyes. “But I am sorry that I lied to you. And about . . . your father . . .” The image of King Tyno, lying in the carriage with a hole in his chest, flashed through my mind, and I stifled another sob.

Mati's face went stony. Fear and guilt and pain swirled through me so violently that I thought I might vomit, but I owed him the truth. I started to explain about destroying Ris ko Karmik's record to clear the way for his mission.

But my words trailed off as I saw it: the exact moment when his ability to believe the best about me ran out. How hard had he worked, while I'd been unconscious, to convince himself that the things he knew didn't add up to what he thought they did? It took me back to the council chamber, when he'd turned so cold and wouldn't look at me, only this was a thousand times worse,
because now he looked right at me and knew exactly how I had betrayed him.

Abruptly he went to the door. “I'll send the doctor in.”

I pushed myself up onto my elbows. “Mati, wait, I—”

“Be quiet, Raisa,” he said, his back to me. I couldn't see his face, only his hand gripping the doorknob. “I can't stand another word from you right now. How can I know which ones are true?”

He pulled the door open and went out. I sank down onto the bed, my eyes and nose streaming. When the door opened again, I lifted my head hopefully, but it was only the doctor, returning to finish applying the ointment. I flinched and cried so much that he insisted I drink some foul-smelling black medication to make me sleep. I gulped it, and welcomed the sensation of my eyelids drooping and conscious thought leaving me.

The gods locked Sotia behind walls of stone, even as the ships carried Iano and his followers into their banishment. The other gods drifted away from the mountaintop, until only Lanea and Suna were left gazing at the roiling sea in the distance.

“Wisdom is gone,” murmured Lanea.

“Wisdom is but imprisoned,” said Suna dreamily. “And every prison must have a key.”

Lanea looked at her quickly. Had Suna guessed how much Lanea had known of her husband's plans, and what she had done in the guise of serving him? She clutched the object in her pocket. “That matters little,” she whispered, “if no one is brave enough to turn it.”

EACH TIME I
woke, I looked for Mati, but he was never there. Sometimes the doctor or one of his assistants was nearby, torturing my back with their rags or ointments. I was afraid to ask how much time had passed or whether Mati had come again, and I gladly took their horrible-tasting medicine and fell back to sleep.

And then one evening I woke with my head clear enough to think, clear enough to remember exactly the way Mati's shoulders had hunched when he had walked out, exactly how I had lied to him at every turn and earned that reaction. My neck ached from
the way I'd been positioned on my stomach, so I rolled up onto my side. I caught sight of the gilt-edged side table, and realized for the first time that I was in the king's suite, in the very four-posted bed that I'd glimpsed so long ago when Mati first showed me the secret passage to the Library of the Gods.

The door opened, and I turned to ask the doctor for more medicine, to drown this newest wave of pain in forgetfulness—but it was Mati who had stopped just inside the room. He was properly groomed and dressed now, as though he had just returned from a council meeting.

“You came back,” I said softly. “I wasn't sure you would. You were so angry. . . .”

His cheek twitched, and I rethought my use of the past tense. He closed the door, slowly, deliberately, and stayed facing it, as if he couldn't bear to look at me.

I spoke quickly; he might not give me another chance. “I never meant to hurt you. I didn't know what the Resistance was really doing. They told me—they always told me—that it was to help Arnath children.”

There was a long silence, and then finally he approached the bed. A chair waited there, but he did not sit, only rested one hand on the back of it and looked at me. “Jera?” he said evenly. “Was that why you selected her even though—”

I flinched. “Yes, I agreed to take her and keep her safe, and I haven't had contact with them since. But she doesn't know anything. She's just a little girl.” I gasped, suddenly fearful. “Where is she?”

“Laiyonea's got her. She's taking over Jera's training.”

Because I was no longer a Tutor. My chest tightened, and I groaned and rolled onto my stomach. “Laiyonea hates me. She said she would have turned me in herself if she'd known.”

“She probably would have,” he said matter-of-factly. “She despises the Resistance, because of Tyasha. Laiyonea has many opinions about both of our acts of stupidity, but she's keeping her mouth shut and focusing on the current problems instead.”

“Current . . . problems?” I asked.

He didn't answer, and I turned to find him measuring me with his eyes, assessing whether he could trust me all over again. I deserved that, but it still hurt.

“Please tell me what's going on,” I pleaded.

“Rale,” he said at last. “He and the other priests have been stirring up anti-Arnath sentiments ever since my father's death. All except Tishe.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I'm surprised, actually, that Rale didn't accuse the Resistance of assassinating my father. He probably thought one of his own conspirators was behind it, and didn't want to raise suspicions. But now . . . the story of my torrid affair with an Arnath Tutor is on the lips of every Scholar and peasant from the city to the western sea, as proof that I am unfit to rule, just as my father always said.”

I looked up at him, but he was focused on the door, as if contemplating walking out again. “They know about us?”

“Rale already suspected,” Mati answered flatly. “That's why he arranged for the . . . spectacle in the courtyard so quickly, and didn't stop Kirol from coming to get me. Rale
wanted
me to stop it, to make a scene and reveal how I felt about you.”

Felt
. Mati was using the past tense.

But . . . if he had intervened . . .

“You made them stop,” I said weakly.

“Yes. The sentence was one hundred lashes. When I arrived, Rale was counting the fifty-sixth.”

One hundred lashes—that was a moderate punishment for slaves in the city. Fifty was light, meted out for minor offenses. Yet here I was, days later, still barely able to move. How many slaves had endured this agony again and again? How many times had Jonis and Jera been whipped? I shuddered.

“I should have seen it coming,” Mati went on, his voice unsteady. “The council agreed to a lesser punishment, as long as I made some concessions on . . .” He paused, as if reminding himself that he couldn't trust me with more than the barest details. “. . . on some other issues. The fact that it was a whipping was a message to me, because I'd been trying to outlaw it. Laiyonea told me it was stupid to try to push it through now, but I didn't think . . .” He sighed. “I had no intention of letting them do it. Rale must have guessed that, because as soon as I went to deal with . . . something else . . . he went off and—”

“So you stopped them, even though you knew they would use it against you?” Something large and unwieldy seemed to be making its way through my chest.

My words hung there, accompanied only by the rasp of my breath.

“Soraya left two days ago,” Mati said at last. “She wanted the betrothal dissolved, but her father refuses to relinquish his claim. He knows I need his money, and I know he's in league with Rale. Rale had hoped my father would name him regent,
I think—Father hinted that he would appoint one, me being so unsatisfactory, but he died before he had a chance. So now, I think . . . Rale is working up a coup.”

Even now, Mati was too good to come out and say it, but this was the answer to my question. He had effectively thrown away his crown when he'd stepped between me and Captain Dimmin's whip.

The lump in my throat seemed to be made of stone, and I had to fight to speak. “You should have let them finish, pretended you didn't care—”

“That was never going to happen,” he said, his voice steely.

I looked up at him, tears pricking my eyes, but he was already turning away, muttering about calling the doctor in. I couldn't let him leave; there were still more truths I owed him. “Mati, there's . . . something else I need to tell you.”

He turned back, his eyes cautious, as if he were bracing himself. He hovered behind the chair, his knuckles white as he gripped the top of it. I wished that he would sit, but I didn't have the right to ask him to.

“The page . . . that the guards found in my shift,” I said. “I didn't write that. My father did.” I waited, but Mati didn't speak, so I went on. “He gave it to me when I was six. It was a special message, my heart-verse. That was the tradition on the Nath Tarin, at least among the families of . . . the Learned Ones.”

He stared at me. “But . . . if you're . . . how did you survive?”

“My mother sent me to her friend when the raiders came. Margara told them that I was her daughter.” I took a deep breath. “My real name is Raisa ke Comun.” I hadn't said those words
out loud in nearly twelve years, and my skin tingled at the sound. “My heart-verse was all I had left of my father. I've been trying for years to decode it. That's what the pages in the Adytum were, me trying to figure out the Arnath writing. And when Jera found one, I panicked. I burned those, but I couldn't bear to burn my heart-verse, so I . . . hid it in my shift.”

“What did it say?”

“I don't know,” I said, my voice a thin, anguished cry. “I was never able to read it.”

“I'm . . . sorry,” whispered Mati.

“It's not your fault.”

“Why didn't you just hide it in the Library?” he said with an edge of anger. “It would have been safe there.”

I gaped at him. Why hadn't I thought of that? Only Mati and I ever went in there—except for the guards and children on cleaning day, and I knew firsthand what happened when one of them disturbed anything.

But I knew the answer at once, and I was ashamed. It hadn't occurred to me to hide my heart-verse in the Library for the same reason it never occurred to half the slaves in the city that they could run from their masters. Were we all like the asotis in the courtyard, bound by imagined bars?

“I didn't . . . think of that,” I said weakly. If I'd trusted Mati with this secret sooner, maybe I wouldn't have brought us both to ruin. I turned to look him full in the face. “I know that you're still angry with me. But . . .” I took a deep breath, and my next words took more bravery than any trip into the scribe rooms ever had. “Can you ever forgive me?”

He inclined his head in something that was nearly a nod. But then he cleared his throat and moved toward the door again. “I have to go,” he said briskly. “I'll send the doctor in to check on you.”

The next few days passed in a haze; they must have put sleep herbs in the broth they fed me. Once I lay half awake listening to Mati, out in the anteroom, talking with a woman whose voice made my stomach clench with guilt, though I couldn't quite place it.

“Is a stricter curfew really necessary?” she said.

“The council felt it a necessary precaution,” said Mati's voice woodenly. “After the raid yesterday.”

“Those executions were aimed at you. They will press you until you respond.”

“How am I to respond?” Mati snapped. “I've already given them enough to damage me.”

“You'll be vulnerable as long as they can use her against you,” said the other voice. “That's why they didn't execute her, you know. You should send her away, immediately.”

“Where shall I send her? She won't be safe anywhere.”

The woman sighed. “But keeping her here puts you both in danger.”

The silence stretched out, and I fell back to sleep listening for his response.

The next time I woke, morning sun slanted through the windows. I stretched, working my stiff neck back and forth, then luxuriated in a face-splitting yawn.

The sound drew pattering feet from the next room, and then Mati was framed in the doorway, shirtless, a brown tunic in one hand.

“Feeling better?” he said. I searched his face for clues about what he was thinking, but he'd kept his expression and his voice both carefully even.

“Yes,” I said. My body was far less achy than it had been, but I frowned at how grimy I was. “How long have I been here?”

“Six days,” he replied, his tone still businesslike. “The physician said the wounds would start to scab over and the pain would be less now. Are you hungry?”

I nodded, aware of a ferocious emptiness in my stomach. Then his words hit me.
Six days.
“Where is . . . are you still . . . ?”

He slipped his tunic over his head, and his voice came to me slightly muffled. “Still king, for the moment, though Rale is doing his best to change that. I'll send for some food, and arrange for a bath, in here. It's best if you stay here for now.”

He disappeared into the adjoining room and came back with a pair of boots, which he sat to put on.

I had a thousand questions, but as I was trying to figure out how to frame them so that they wouldn't make him angry, there was a sharp knock at the door. I did not miss the way Mati tensed at the sound. I pulled the blanket up to my chin as he opened the door.

Laiyonea stepped into the room. I fought a childish urge to dive under the blanket, but her cold gaze only swept over me and returned to Mati.

“Jin's man intercepted a message from Pira,” she said. “Gamo's
coachman arrived there last night on foot, reporting an attack on the western road. Armed men in green. He claimed he was the only one to escape.”

Mati sat down hard in the chair and rested his forehead on the heel of his hand.

“I don't understand,” I said timidly.

“It means,” said Laiyonea frostily, “that your
friends
in the Resistance have kidnapped, and possibly killed, Soraya Gamo.”