Treason's Shore (47 page)

Let’s see how brave you are alone with my Biddan. He will wrench Brit Valda’s secrets from you, one cracked joint and bloody strip of skin at a time
.

Chapter Twenty-nine

D
AG Agel had not mistaken the old, old signs, almost unnoticed on the lintel above the archive door: a tiny white stone. When they were all young magic students, they used to arrange meetings in the archive by those stones. One above the emerald-eyed dragon meant dragon hour, when the twelve-hour glass was turned: midnight. A stone above the carved and gilt sun meant midday, and one above the moon meant the nine-glass hour, or nightwatch.

Her heartbeat sounded loud in her ears as she passed into the stillness of the old archive. Four levels up, a storm pounded the coast, evidenced only by a faint quickening of the channeled air vents in the public corridors. Here in the oldest archive the air slowly changed every decade. Longer.

She carried her candle, causing it to stream and waver, making the gilt scrolls worked into the mosaic patterns appear to leap and jiggle. She did not clap on the glowglobes, for those were too often bespelled to capture evidence of who trespassed these spaces these days.

She had checked for wards herself.

In the oldest chamber, where the fragments from their long ago past were preserved, there was a stir of blue robe, a glimpse of silver, grizzled hair, and Fulk Ulaffa came forward, holding his hands out wide.

Dag Agel set the candle down on a scribe’s high writing table and held out her own empty hands.

“Thank you for meeting me.” Ulaffa’s voice was husky with exhaustion and defeat.

Agel’s lips tightened. “Is this trial the end of our way of life? Do you not see how the distrust engendered in us as dags is going to shadow us far beyond the problems we are facing now?”

“At this moment,” Ulaffa said, “I do not see myself surviving the problems we face now.”

Agel raised her hand in the hearken signal, a silent reproach.

Ulaffa said, “Yes. I know I sound facetious. Agel, maybe it is time for our purpose to be examined, and not just by us, but also by those we swear to protect. You and I both remember Abyarn Erkric as an earnest and dedicated dag. Perhaps you still see him that way, yet.”

“I did, but the more I ponder how life has changed by incremental degrees over the past fifteen years, the more I perceive his hand causing these changes. We were not so afraid of one another then, so wary in our daily steps. We did not distrust what we were told. We accepted one another’s dedication to Drenskar, we recognized one another on the golden path, even if our branches diverged.”

Ulaffa breathed out slowly. “Yes. Yes.”

“So. There are two items that you and I must resolve.”

“You investigated the kinthus in the king’s chamber?”

“I did. The records all matched everyone’s testimony. But then I brought the king’s healer down to the clean room. He cooperated willingly. We went through all the events. When we got to the night of the king’s death, his account was just a little too smooth, too devoid of . . .” She groped for words. “I hardly know how to explain what I heard. It was as if he repeated someone else’s experience, not his own. So I tested for traces. And found one. The merest hint of magic, so subtle I would not have found it had we not been in the space where no magic at all is performed, vigilant as I was.”

Ulaffa leaned forward.

Dag Agel’s aged face furrowed with distaste, and fear. These words were difficult to say. “Fulk, his mind had been tampered with. He had no actual memory of that night, and was not aware of this lack of memory. All his previous memories of eventless days had taken its place, and he did not know it. How is that even possible?”

“Have you visited the prince, as I requested?”

“I have not. There is no getting near him: his own guards have strict orders from him not to permit access. They insist it is for his safety. But . . .” Dag Agel looked away, ashamed. “I summoned the laundry thrall and had him submit to kinthus.”

Ulaffa nodded; thralls had few rights.

“And what he told me about the prince during private times is profoundly disturbing. He no longer reads or debates. He is not even lying with women. He just sits in the dark, as if dreaming.” She drew in a steadying breath, but it did nothing for the churn of her insides. “We hold to tradition, because it gives us order and meaning. When our traditions are twisted to an end we cannot see . . . well, the House Dags have fractured even worse than the House Hyarls. Oh, I need time to think.”

“We do not have that time. We must rescue Dag Signi. Dag Erkric did not obtain what he really wanted, which is the whereabouts of Dag Valda. I think—I believe—Erkric will contrive a way to send the Biddan to her.”

“He can’t.” Agel’s body tightened, almost a flinch. “It’s the law . . .”

“You and I both know that the moment Rajnir becomes king, Erkric will
be
the law,” Ulaffa said. “Further. If he can submit a dag to torture, then where can he stop? Will you be next if you cross his will publicly? Will I?”

Agel made the sign of Rainorec. “Nowhere, yes, and yes. But Ulaffa, if she vanishes, there will be riots.”

“There will be riots if he executes her. Too many people who have no cause with any of us saw her sustain a vision the other day. No dag created that light, though we all saw it. It takes no discernment to descry that most from high to low degree believe her testimony now.”

“I know,” Agel said, and let her breath out slowly. It did nothing to relieve her tension. “Dag Egal thinks that if this gathering had not been
a
Frasadeng the riot would have happened then. And of course the Erama Krona were out in force, so everyone stayed peaceful. But they were all talking.”

“They do not know the truth. I do,” Ulaffa stated. “Those accusations he made against Dag Signi were mostly his own actions.
He
taught Dag Mekki death magic. We know that we cannot bring someone out of a stone spell, but I can take you to the mountain height where Mekki is going to move with the slowness of ice over the next century and a half; you will sense Valda’s signature in the trace magic.”

Dag Agel knew that Valda would not put a stone spell of that magnitude on a fellow dag without just cause. And by acknowledging that she knew it, she had to take the next step, and acknowledge that she had crossed the bridge between Erkric’s side with its semblance of order and law and Ulaffa’s cause, which seemed to overthrow the rule of law.

Ulaffa said, “We are agreed that Dag Erkric has twisted the laws to his own ends politically. He is not going to stop working to gain control of
us
.”

Agel dropped her hand, and rubbed her fingers. “Then you must act. And I will cooperate.”

In the darkness of her cell Signi struggled to reconcile herself to a terrible death, light and love and sense ripped away by pain and humiliation until the death birds picked her bones clean.

She was startled by sounds outside the door. Before the rattle of the lock had come at dragon hour and first watch—after supper and before breakfast—when they came in with the bucket of plate scrapings soaked with spoiled vinegar to be poured into her face.

But the man who entered did not carry a bucket. He bore a tray with a glowglobe set on it, next to rust-streaked metal rods and probes and pincers.

Terror closed Signi’s throat. She closed her eyes, and forced herself into hel dancer breathing.

The man said, “The pain will cease as soon as you tell me where Brit Valda is, and what you know of her plans.”

Signi closed her eyes as cold fingers gripped her wrist. She recoiled, then frantically tried to resume the protection and control of hel dancer breathing. But she was so very cold, so tired.

Chains rattled as the man chuckled. His breath stirred her hair as he leaned close. “I’ve always liked locks and puzzles. People are puzzle-locks. You take them apart piece by piece. And you find the secret inside.”

A pricking poke at a fingertip, then hot, searing pain through her entire body, radiating from her fingernail.

“Just the outer locks first. Everyone always needs to be convinced of my truth, before they unlock theirs for me.” He did not sound angry, or even passionate; at first his complete lack of emotion was more frightening than what he did.

That rapidly changed.

Another thrust, endless, deep, remorseless: the high keening from somewhere matched the rhythm of the burn in her throat. And now she had to learn about pain, how very many shades and intensities it encompassed. Pain came in colors, in burning, rusty, acid tastes: it distorted sound, even when one was not screaming one’s throat raw.

The instructive voice went on with the lecture. “With so many women it is the face. Young ones, usually. With men, it is what cannot be seen. For you? The agent of doing, not of being, we begin with the hands . . .

“Just give me a location . . .”

Her senses billowed with red clouds and clashing metal and voices that made no sense as Biddan finally broke her tenuous mental hold, and discovered in her babble that she knew far more than anyone might have guessed.

Secrets are power. Now his passions kindled at last, to possess secrets that even Erkric had not guessed. In probing and twisting and wrenching for more, more, Biddan failed to grant her the mercy he’d promised. Intent on his acquisition of power, his questions blended with her shrieks so that he failed to notice the opening of the door.

A hand on his shoulder caused him to start. He whirled, the tool shedding drops of blood. Fulla Durasnir picked up one of the waiting tendon-slicing knives and wielded it to knock aside Biddan’s slow, late blocks. With his other hand he seized the torturer by his hair, then ripped the blade across Biddan’s throat.

Body and knife dropped at Signi’s feet, a lifetime of pain-bought secrets bleeding out.

Durasnir gazed in horror at Signi. The other part of their plan would not work. She would grip no knife today, maybe never again. But he could, and did, catch some of her blood on his fingers and smear it over the knife for those who would investigate.

His two most trusted ensigns had undone the manacles by then.

Signi fell forward into someone’s arms. Her inflamed, crusted eyes blurred with odd lights and shadows.

Then a familiar voice whispered, “Phew! What a wretched stench! No, lean on me.”

“Brun?”
Signi whispered, then gasped. New colors of lightning ripped through her as Brun gently shifted her in order to take all her weight.

“Is he dead?” Brun asked, her voice orange with hatred.

Signi peered wearily down at an empty, lifeless hand. “He had once a mother,” she breathed.

“More shame to her if she’d grieve over such a son,” Brun stated, and kicked the dead man in repudiation. “Now, I’m going to pick you up. It’s time to leave.”

Signi’s hands fell to either side of her, throbbing with glowing-coal red heat. Steel blue shards of agony jabbed her shoulder joints and her knees buckled.

“She’s got to touch the key.” Durasnir’s words were burned mint.

“I can’t. Lift my hands.”

Durasnir pressed the key against Signi’s manacle-galled wrist, then dropped it to the ground.

“There. I don’t know how mages can tell who touched a key last, but these were my instructions.” Durasnir’s voice buzzed.

Brun tightened her grip on Signi. “Now let’s go.” Her voice vibrated with a beehive hum.

“We’ll run point.” Durasnir had moved, his voice shading to willow-bite. “Can you manage?”

“Yes. Halvir is heavier. She’s nothing more than bone and cloth.”

“And skin and blood.” Signi breathed a laugh, or almost a laugh. It tasted of rust and mold, and her words buzzed, too. “Brun. Is there danger to you and to others in my being taken away?”

“No,” was the brisk answer, with only the faintest betraying tremor. “There is right now a . . . hole in the guard. Erkric did not want the Erama Krona hearing what the Biddan did to you, so they have been posted elsewhere this night. Fulla and Ulaffa will make certain no one else sees any of us. Erkric’s own precautions will work against him. And I very much fear that you are going to be accused of the murder of this pig-midden in your escape.” Brun spat on the dead man as she passed.