The Rebellion (34 page)

T
HE GIANT
, L
ILL
, abandoned his post several hours short of daylight after a sudden downpour. Drenched to the skin, I hurried into the warehouse to tell Brydda what had happened. The cloudburst had ended by the time we came out, and Gahltha emerged from his own hiding place to carry us to where Brydda’s people were still waiting for me in an abandoned house. The rebel leader gave them instructions to scour the area where I had lost contact with Matthew.

I went back and forth in the area, riding Gahltha farther than a carriage could have traveled in any direction. I farsought Matthew until the heavens opened up again, the season showing its claws. I stopped only when torrential rain fell so heavily that it obscured the surrounding streets like a gauze curtain, and the storm rendered me all but mindbound.

There was nothing to do but return to the safe house and break the news about Matthew. Brydda and Reuvan had come with me, leaving their people to continue searching.

We huddled over a fire lit hastily by Kella. The noise of rain on the tin roof was thunderous, and water ran in a gurgling torrent along the roof guttering.

“Maybe you couldn’t farseek Matthew because he is asleep,” Kella offered timidly.

I coughed and pulled a blanket closer about me. “I was inside his mind when he saw that soldierguard captain, Kella.
Matthew recognized him just as I did. There would be no way he could just drop off to sleep after that. Not in such a short time. I was out of touch for a couple of minutes at most.”

“I meant he might have been
put
to sleep,” the healer persisted. “If he was drugged or knocked unconscious …”

“I would not be able to communicate with him, but if I was close, I would have felt his presence when Gahltha and I combed the area.”

“Maybe you made a mistake about where they were when you lost touch.”

I shook my head.

“All right,” Brydda said. “Then maybe more time passed than you reckoned. The Suggredoon is not far from where you lost them. If they put him on a boat while you were out of contact, you could not have reached him, because, as you said, the water has been tainted.”

Reuvan disagreed. “A boat could not have come up to the river wharf, because it would have been low tide and there is a barrier of exposed mudflats.”

I said nothing, numbed by so much catastrophe. My throat ached with despair. I looked down at my hands clasped together in my lap, feeling a strong urge to weep.

Matthew’s image floated before my eyes, alternating eerily with the thin limping boy I had first met and the young man he had become.

“It is as if he was just snuffed out of existence,” I murmured, then was aghast at what I had said.

The slavers had killed Idris. Why not Matthew as well? I blinked away a horrid vision of the farseeker’s body washed up on the tide.

“What if the soldierguard captain recognized Matthew from the market? He would know straightaway something
was wrong. Maybe he suspected a trap and just … just …” I could not speak my worst fear.

I found I was weeping after all.

Brydda clasped me in his big arms. “If this soldierguard had known the lad, killing him outright would be the last thing he would do. Salamander would want to question him, wouldn’t he?”

My eyes widened as an incredible thought occurred to me. “Brydda … what if the soldierguard
was
Salamander!”

I broke off in a savage fit of coughing that scratched my throat and made Kella eye me sternly. But she was distracted by Domick’s arrival. As the coercer divested himself of his sodden cloak, Brydda told him what had been happening.

Domick maintained his calm. “I think you are right in guessing he is not far from where you lost contact with him. Salamander would not risk the wagon being stopped and searched by soldierguards, even with some of them in his employ. He would have instructed his people to get the slaves somewhere safe until he was ready to take them by boat.”

Brydda nodded. “Domick is right. Salamander does nothing in haste, and he never exposes himself or trusts anyone. He would have the slaves taken somewhere so he can watch and make sure it is not a trap. That’s the way he works. Slave ships depart from Morganna, so Matthew and the others will have to be taken over the Suggredoon. That means they must travel by the ferry or by a hired riverboat. Since we cannot find where they have been hidden, we will set a watch on the Suggredoon.”

“It might be wise to watch all the city gates,” Reuvan said. “They might be taken inland first and across the river at the Ford of Rangorn. Salamander will have to figure out the least dangerous way to get five drugged and bound men out of
Sutrium. That rules out the ferry, since the slaves would have to walk on board if they were to journey that way. Drugged slaves would be obvious at once.”

“Not necessarily,” Domick said. “With some drugs, the five slaves would simply obey instructions to walk onto a ferry or out of Sutrium and be rounded up outside by their masters later.”

Reuvan and Brydda looked thoughtful.

“I have never heard of such drugs,” I said.

“They are brought in from Sador,” Brydda said. “They are a by-product of the spice groves.”

“I have not had the chance to make a report about them to Rushton yet,” Domick said. “They enable you to function normally in every way except that you are utterly docile and suggestible. It is much simpler to deal with obedient puppets than with unconscious bodies or men and women who have been drugged into a shambling idiocy. This soldierguard captain would certainly know of them well enough, since the Council have them using it on prisoners.”

“But it doesn’t make sense that he would drug them,” Kella objected. “You said the other four slaves were already drugged and that Matthew was pretending. Why would the soldierguard bother doing it again?”

“How would this soldierguard know they had been drugged?” Reuvan demanded. “You said there was no conversation between the man Salamander had hired and the carriage driver when the slaves were transferred from the warehouse to the wagon. And there would be no way of telling, with the slaves gagged and bound, who was drugged.”

“A drug would not stop me from sensing Matthew,” I insisted.

“Would you have even recognized him?” Domick asked. “If Matthew was given such a drug, even if your probe touched his mind, it would read it as the mind of a stranger.”

“All right,” Brydda said, sitting forward in his seat. “Now we are getting somewhere. If we assume the carriage driver was instructed to take them to a certain place and then this soldierguard, who might or might not be Salamander, met him and administered a Sadorian drug, what then?”

“They were moved indoors?” Kella suggested.

Brydda nodded his head slowly. “Salamander has done everything in a roundabout way. That is part of the secret of his success. The obvious thing would be to have the carriage brought to its destination, but maybe they are kept here for some time, drugged as a further safeguard. But no matter where they are or how they got there, the slaves will have to be moved from the city to Morganna. I think we ought to concentrate on that and forget trying to find them in the city.”

I felt hope stir in me. “But if Matthew is drugged, as soon as it wears off, I’ll be able to farseek him.”

Domick sighed heavily. “I am sorry to be a doomcrow, but whoever has them might not let the drug wear off. And even if they give it a break, which they would be wise to do if they do not want to damage their slaves, then you would need to be farseeking at the right moment to reach Matthew. Even you cannot farseek indefinitely.”

“It will not hurt to try. How soon before a single dose of this Sadorian drug wears off?” Brydda asked him.

“Several hours, more or less,” the coercer said after some thought. “It might have worn off already. The drugs react differently with each person. Weight and how much has been eaten and drunk need to be taken into account for even an
approximation. But the other thing we have to consider is that the soldierguard may have got a good look at Matthew—his dark skin would stand out in the daylight—and if he did not recognize him before, he might have done so now.”

Brydda thumped the table in excitement. “But don’t you see, that will work for us! If this soldierguard recognized him from the market, he would definitely let the drug wear off so that he can be questioned.”

For the first time, Domick looked convinced. “You are right. They would be fools not to interrogate him.” A darkness flickered in his eyes.

“How frequently can you farseek in a day?” Brydda demanded, looking at me.

“If I was fresh, every hour or so.” I turned to Kella. “Can you drain the fatigue from me?”

The healer stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Are you mad?”

“I am not planning to scan the whole of Sutrium,” I snapped. “I will be using an attuned probe, and it will only take a few minutes to send it out. Either it will find Matthew or it won’t. It may be our only chance to save him.”

Kella’s ire faded. “I can only drain your fatigue the once. You have not eaten all night, and it would be better if you slept a little. Later—”

“Later may be too late,” I interrupted her grimly.

The healer sighed and held out her hand. I gave her mine and relaxed completely as her Talent hummed through my body. Gradually, the night’s tensions drained from me into the healer, and with them the chilly stiffness from all the hours of waiting motionless on the roof and the queer light-headedness I had begun to feel.

When I opened my eyes, I felt as if I had just woken from a sound night’s slumber. Kella’s eyes were closed as she dissipated the fatigue poisons she had drained from me.

I closed my own eyes again and concentrated on shaping a probe tuned to Matthew’s mental signature. Sending it out, I kept my fingers crossed, but before long it was obvious I would not locate him that way.

On impulse, I sent out a farsense searcher probe. Starting at the place where I had lost touch with Matthew, I let my mind fly out in ever-widening circles, dipping fleetingly into every mind I encountered just in case I happened upon a mind or group of minds that were oddly distorted. If that happened, Brydda could check to see if it was Matthew and the four slaves.

I moved gracefully in a spiraling mental dance, because awkwardness would waste energy. I kept fanning out until I felt my little store of energy fading; then I withdrew into my own mind and opened my eyes.

The others were all staring at me hopefully. I shook my head, not trusting the steadiness of my voice. Brydda began to pluck agitatedly and absently at the beard hairs beneath his jutting chin as I described the many tainted areas in Sutrium.

“That is only your first try,” Reuvan said. “It is quite likely this drug has not even had a chance to wear off yet. And we can search the areas you can’t farseek in.”

“That is true,” Domick said, getting to his feet and pulling on his coat. “I must go back to the Councilcourt,” he added, in answer to our questioning glances.

“But you’ve been there all night,” Kella protested. “And you have eaten nothing.”

He glanced about and took up one of the loaves Matthew
and Kella had baked together. “This will do. I have no time for more.”

The healer stared at the loaf as if she wanted to cry.

“Is something happening at the Councilcourt?” Brydda asked. “Surely you do not always work such long hours.”

Domick shrugged on his sodden cloak. “The Council is shifting us about at random to see who moves easily and who resists. It is a thing they do occasionally. A security measure. In fact, I have been thinking I might stay at an inn for the next few nights, just in case I am under investigation. That is what I came to tell you.”

He did not look at Kella when he spoke, and her expression told me this was the first she had heard of it.

Reuvan rose, saying he must leave, too. Kella stood up swiftly, saying she would walk them both out. Her face was pale and set.

26

“H
E IS SO
cold,” I said to Brydda when we were alone.

The rebel gave me a stern look. “Do not blame Domick for being good at what you and your people have asked him to do, Elspeth.”