The Prince of Shadow (13 page)

He'd let his guard down too soon, Llesho realized, setting his chair down on its four legs with a thump. He knew, without being told, that the story of his choice of arms in the weapons room must remain secret. Llesho had never again seen the woman who watched him there, nor, since that day, had he seen a knife like the one she had slipped up her sleeve. But he remembered the tension that had clenched in his stomach, and it was doing a return appearance under the curious eyes of his companions. Better to offer a lesser truth, he decided.

“The food the pearls like best tends to settle to the bottom. You use a long-handled rake to stir it up.” He twitched a shoulder to acknowledge that they would surely find his story foolish.

“My quarter-shift mates and I would imagine our rakes were tridents, and would wage mock battles in the water. We stirred up the bottom enough with our scrabbling feet, and had more fun than applying the rake head to the muck. When Master Jaks told me to choose my weapon, I felt awkward with a sword, but the weight of the trident isn't much different from a muck rake, and it didn't feel all that different to my hand, after I got used to being on dry land.”

“I'm sure Master Jaks can find you a muck rake if you really want one,” Stipes suggested.

The gladiators laughed companionably at the story and Llesho wondered if they each had an equally harmless tale to tell—a sword that reminded one of a cooking knife, or a stave that felt to the hand like a drover's prod. Llesho's explanation quickly turned into the story of how his friends saved his life, though he didn't mention the spirit of his old mentor—

“And I came out of the water dangling from my ankles like a pig on its way to slaughter. Foreman Shen-shu took one look at me and said, ‘Where's your rake, boy?' and down I went again, sputtering with water up my nose to look for the damned rake.”

“I'd think after that you would avoid the trident like it had a pox on it,” Stipes remarked.

Radimus laughed. “Master Jaks probably assigned him the trident because he knew it was the one weapon that Llesho wouldn't ever lose.”

Llesho expected the joke when he told the story, but this was close enough to the truth that Llesho flushed when he heard it—not because the rake was the reason he chose the trident, but because Jaks had directed him to the weapon and away from the knife that went to his hand like an extension of his body. He laughed quickly enough that his companions took the blush for embarrassment, except for Stipes, whose sharp gaze seemed to be looking for a chink in the face Llesho wore. He wouldn't find one, Llesho determined. The trick to keeping secrets, he had learned from Master Den himself, was in not appearing to have secrets at all. So Llesho smiled blandly at the gladiator and greeted Bixei when he joined them on the porch.

“ 'Lo, Bixei,” he said. “You just missed the story of my heroic rescue from the briny deep.”

Stipes kicked a chair over to where his partner stood, but Bixei rejected the offer, while giving Llesho a warning about his tale: “Don't tell Master Den, or he will start having practice in the bay,” he said, rubbing at a bruise the size of a coconut on his backside. Finding a support post to lean on, he grumbled his complaint, “That would make as much sense as hand-to-hand combat practice.”

Madon, who still worked with the novices at weapons exercises, heard the complaint as he passed on his way to a group of senior gladiators spending their rest time with similar stories on the other side of the porch. “We can all see that you have a deep-seated aversion to unarmed combat, Bixei,” he drawled. “Something Master Den really should get to the bottom of, before it interferes with your training.”

Llesho tried to keep a straight face, but even Stipes was snickering, and Bixei's face turned so red it seemed to glow of its own light.

“I don't mind taking an injury in practice if it teaches me something useful,” he complained heatedly, and Llesho wondered which injury angered Bixei more: the one to his fundament, or the one to his pride. Since he was the only person on the porch who was smaller in build than Bixei, and had also been present when Master Den dumped Bixei in the dust, he decided not to ask. Bixei wasn't giving anyone a chance to interrupt him, however.

“Weapons practice makes sense, even equipment I don't plan to compete with. A gladiator has to understand his opposition and use that experience to devise a counterattack. If a fighter should lose his own weapon during a battle, he has to be able to pick up his enemy's and take the day with it. But an unarmed man cannot compete against a trident or a pike, or a sword. So why does he waste our time with something that will never serve us in the arena?”

“You think you cannot save your life with your own hands?” Madon rolled up the right sleeve of his shirt to reveal a jagged scar that tore across his biceps. “The shaft of my pike had a flaw in the wood and broke with the first thrust of my opponent's sword. His second thrust did this.”

“See—” Bixei tried to interrupt, but Madon silenced him with a look.

“I lured him inside my guard, and when he was committed to the strike, I did this—” with his left hand Madon lashed out in the “striking snake” move, stopping with the curved knuckles a whisper of air away from Bixei's throat—“I suffered a wound, but the swordsman died.”

Llesho stared at the man in wonder. Madon
looked
like a hero out of legend, so he didn't know why it surprised him to discover that the gladiator was a hero in fact. Bixei, however,had turned deathly pale in contrast to the recent angry blush.

“Of course, that was pure luck.” Madon relaxed his striking hand and examined his knuckles as a warrior checks his weapons for nicks or damage from the damp. “Master Den teaches hand-to-hand as an exercise in concentration and control; I wouldn't depend on it to save my life against a trident. Unless, of course—” he gave the younger group a sly smirk—“Llesho here was holding the trident!” Laughing, he left them to return to his own bench where more laughter soon rippled out from the senior warriors.

Bixei was seething, but Llesho gave him a smug grin. “We'll get him,” he said. “Just give it time.”

Bixei didn't want to listen, but with Stipes to tease him out of his brooding, he soon entered into the outrageous plans for taking down the hero. Mud featured in many of their plans, as did pig slop. The night ended in laughter. Llesho would not hear that sound again for a very long time.

Chapter Eight

THE new assignment worried Llesho. Bixei had run errands to Lord Chin-shi's house, fetched and carried about the compound, and he'd even been sent to bring Llesho himself from the pearl fishery, all tasks for someone who had earned Master Markko's trust. In the first week of his new service, the overseer hadn't said anything about Kwan-ti, or witchcraft, but he hadn't sent Llesho out of the compound with messages either. Instead, Llesho swept out the workroom and the front office, then, up the narrow staircase, he scrubbed the loft room under the steeply sloping roof where Master Markko slept.

The sleeping chamber held a single bed and two chests. The larger held the robes and breeches that Llesho was forbidden to touch; a servant came daily to tend Master Markko's personal needs, and disappeared again to whence he came before the minor sun had joined its fellow in the sky. The second, smaller chest, was covered in a thick layer of grime and stuffed in a dark corner under the slanted eaves, as if forgotten. But when Llesho had tried to explore it, he found the chest bound with straps and locked with a complex mechanism he had never seen before and could not open.

Llesho brought his master breakfast and a midday meal from the cookhouse, and sat in a corner when he wasn't needed, trying to fight the boredom that pulled at his eyelids. With an occasional bland smile that didn't help at all to hide the calculation in his eyes, Master Markko watched for Llesho to slip up and reveal himself as a witch. Since he knew nothing of magic, he couldn't very well slip up there, which was almost a relief after his trial in the weapons room. So he wasn't prepared for the day when everything changed.

The overseer was not in his office when Llesho arrived, so he called out, “Master Markko, sir?” as humbly as he could.

“In here, boy.”

Llesho followed the answering summons to the back room, where he found Master Markko setting tightly lidded jars on a shelf over the worktable, marking each one off on a list in front of him. Llesho recognized some of the herbs hanging in bunches from the beamed ceiling, but others were foreign to him. He remembered Kwan-ti's warning about touching the unknown plants in her healer's pouch—the cure for one person might prove to be a poison to another—so he kept his hands clasped behind his back.

“You have finally honored us with your presence,” Markko said, his voice dripping sarcasm.

They spent the day mixing compounds that Llesho did not recognize. While Master Markko had his midday meal, Llesho cleaned the noxious herbs and powders from the worktable with a basin of pure water and a soft cloth. After weapons practice, Llesho took instruction from Master Markko in the storing of the various potions they had prepared that day, and then learned how to bury the cloths they had used in a patch of dead weeds behind the privy. Poisons, then, and likely no use for healing any sickness but that of life itself. When he had carefully cleaned his hands, Llesho returned to the workroom and presented himself to the overseer, his head bent in due humility.

“I am finished, Master, if there is nothing more?” He sincerely hoped the overseer would find no late tasks for him to do before he left for his dinner and a well earned bed. On this day, however, Master Markko measured Llesho from top to toe with his cold, cold eyes.

“Your predecessor in the post was born of slaves, and knows nothing but Pearl Island,” Markko said. “And, of course, he does not consort with witches. He valued the small freedoms his work with me afforded, and his gratitude made us friends as well as slave and master.”

The overseer gestured at the shelves crowded with jars full of potions and herbs. “I had hoped that if I revealed to you our mutual interest, we would likewise become friends. But that hasn't happened, has it?”

Llesho said nothing, but he had begun to tremble, fine tremors that shook him from his heart to his fingertips. He knew the identity of Lord Chin-shi's witch now: Master Markko could kill him for that knowledge at any time.

“I
am
sorry, but if you are going to be of any use to my real work, I will have to be more cautious with you.” As he said this, Markko set an iron collar around Llesho's neck, and clipped a chain to a link at the throat. Then he took the other end of the chain and snapped it into a ring newly set into the floor in the corner of his workroom.

“I have informed Master Jaks that I will need more of your time than I found necessary when Bixei worked for me. I did not accuse you of malingering at your tasks, of course. But it must be understood that one so new to my needs would not work as quickly or as efficiently as another more experienced in the ways of this compound. You will, therefore, make your bed here.”

Llesho felt the protest well up in his throat, but he clamped his jaw and refused to let the words escape. He was, after all, in the power of a master poisoner and a witch. And so he waited to see what Master Markko had in store for him.

“Good.” The overseer noted the wary question in his eyes and smiled. “You are learning already.

“I have sent word to the washerman that you have withdrawn from unarmed combat training to spend more time learning your duties.” He sneered when he mentioned Master Den. “You may, of course, continue weapons training for the arena, provided you keep silent about all that passes in this house. If you say a single word that does not relate to the weapon in your hand, however, you will remain here, tethered like a dog the day and night together, until you have given me what I want from you.”

Llesho didn't have what Markko wanted—the whereabouts of Kwan-ti and the secrets of her witchcraft—but he could die of Markko's efforts to extract them, and he had truths of his own he could not share with this man. So he obediently dropped his gaze, letting none of his terror show. The overseer gave him a cold, cold smile, and abandoned him to his chains and the darkness that would become his whole existence.

 

 

 

As days passed into weeks, Llesho's silence deepened. When Markko grew tired of his stubborn refusal to speak, he would beat Llesho with the chains that bound him to the workroom. The beatings grew less insistent as he learned to perform each task to the overseer's satisfaction, however, and Llesho began to hope that Markko was tiring of him. Then he woke drenched in sweat from a terrifying dream he could not remember, his muscles in knots and his guts heaving.