Antiphon (46 page)

They wanted him to stay nearby, but they also knew he wouldn’t. The visitors intrigued him. They were a constant tickle in the back of his mind as he started his day. He spent the first three hours listening to the reports his children and grandchildren brought back, adding his counsel and questions where it was appropriate, just as he had the two days before. His children had been diligent, too. They’d stolen what supplies they needed. They’d noted the uniforms and the scars that covered the bodies of their unwitting hosts. They’d named most of the crew and identified their shifts and now sought to learn the patterns they followed. And they’d inventoried nearly every space they could gain access to. Anything they learned, he scribbled onto tattered scraps of paper they’d liberated from one of their patrols. Then, they each took turns with the pages, committing the information to memory.

When Myr Li Tam came back from her patrol she went to him first.

He could hear the weariness in her voice. “Something is happening,” she said. “The ship is being decorated, and the shifts are being reduced to minimum complement. The cooks are in preparation for some kind of feast—a day away, by the looks of it.”

Some kind of holy day?
It might explain the priest. He noted it as an option and then spent the next several minutes interviewing Myr about everything she’d seen on her last patrol. When he finished, he put down the stub of pencil. “I want to see these visitors,” he said.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea,” she said. “It adds little value, and you are indispensable here.” He could hear concern in his daughter’s voice and could also hear the words she wasn’t saying.
I cannot let you be captured again.

He forced brevity in his voice. “Still,” he said, “I want to see them.”

Five minutes later, she led him by a silk string as they moved through the underbelly of the ship. Twice, they stopped while sailors moved
quickly past, fetching various items from the hold. Then they were up narrow stairs and into the corridor that marked the passenger deck. Vlad heard bits of conversation and raucous laughter from behind the doors, and they stopped yet again as a door opened and a young officer moved away toward the stairs leading to the deck. Myr Li Tam got in behind him, taking advantage of his passage through the double doors, catching them easily as the officer pushed them closed behind him without looking back.

When Vlad reached the doors, she pressed words quickly into his shoulder.
We must take great care.

He found her shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Then, they slipped out into sunlight and the smell of warm salt winds.

Vlad blinked at light so strong it brought tears to his eyes. Then, gradually, his surroundings took shape, but even as they did, his daughter tugged at the silk thread that connected them as they slipped quietly onto the deck. They made their way aft toward a red door that marked the captain’s quarters, pausing and crouching in the shadow the sails made. The ship moved over the water slowly, and Vlad saw that other ships had indeed joined them—the beginnings of a sizeable fleet spread out in a broad formation that maximized their coverage of the waters within the circle of pillars.

They are searching for something,
he thought.
Or perhaps waiting.

Once more, Myr tugged at the string and they were scampering, breaking from one patch of shadows to find another. When they reached the red door, Vlad’s chest felt like it had a wall of bricks stacked upon it, and he struggled to keep his breathing quiet.

Myr’s hand found his shoulder again.
We can’t afford to stay long.

But he knew this already. The deck was too crowded, and the chances of them being stepped on or noticed as they passed through those inevitable patches of sunlight were simply too high. Sending out one at a time was risky enough, but two threatened their odds considerably.

And I am too old for this now,
he realized. The powders gave him a strength and speed and stamina that his body could no longer control. And the constant focus on the pains in his chest robbed him of the focus a scout needed.

He gripped her forearm and pressed his own message into it.
We will not stay long.
But he did want a glimpse of this priest. He remembered the long dark robes of the cutters who had butchered his family before his eyes, and he had memorized the features of each during
those weeks that he’d intended to build his pain into an army. Some part of his brain assured him that it was highly unlikely that one of those men would be the priest now behind the door they crouched near. But still, the line and trim of the ships and the uniforms of the men were familiar to him. And it could not be coincidence that these that had pursued and captured his family last year were once more pursuing House Li Tam.

He pressed his ear to the door and listened. He heard muffled voices and strained to pick out the words. A woman was talking now, her voice rising with frustration or impatience or both. When she finished, another woman’s voice chimed in, this one quiet and measured. She talked for a while, and when she stopped there was silence for a full minute.

Then, the man spoke, and Vlad knew the voice instantly despite the unfamiliar language. His breath caught in his throat, and he squeezed Myr’s arm harder than he meant to. He felt a rage building and very nearly missed the one recognizable word in a sea of gibberish.

Still, it registered.

Behemoth.

And the unmistakable voice that uttered it was that of someone he’d hoped was dead, though at some deep level he’d known he could not be so fortunate.

Still, he thought, if Mal Li Tam lived, it would give Vlad the pleasure of righting that great wrong.

After, of course, Vlad cut from his first grandson everything he knew about the Behemoth his love had sent him here to find.

The stink of sweat and blood and urine overpowered the cold smell of snow and wood smoke as Rudolfo pushed through the gate to join Lysias and his men in the crude stockade they’d built.

Barring the gate behind him, he went to his stool in the corner and sat without a word.

His head pounded still, though it had been days now since he’d taken a drink, and he found himself breaking sweat every time he considered the bottles he’d had his men remove from his quarters. His eyes wandered every tent, every table for a drink that he knew he could
no longer afford to take. The cost of it combined with his strong desire for it enraged him, the tingling in his scalp accentuating the hammers that pummeled his temples.

He quietly regarded the girl that Lysias stood over, listening to the general’s quiet voice. Her lip bled where either he or one of his men had struck her, but her eyes held defiant resolve. Her tattered silks had been replaced with the oversized tunic and trousers of a Forest soldier, but now even these clothes showed the wear of her confinement.

Lysias glanced to Rudolfo and inclined his head. Rudolfo returned the gesture. Then, the general continued his quiet questioning, and the Gypsy King listened to the one-sided conversation and tried to keep his focus.

Three times, he found himself flinching at the sound of Lysias’s fist as it lashed out. Once, his men had to step in and right her overturned chair from the force of the general’s blow. And still, as always, the woman remained silent.

Finally, after two hours, Rudolfo looked up from rubbing his eyes. “This is not working,” he said in a quiet voice.

Lysias looked to him, his eyes betraying his frustration at the tone of defeat in Rudolfo’s voice. His hands moved in a subtle way, just out of the girl’s sight.
Perhaps it is time for more extreme measures.

Rudolfo looked at the woman. “I have considered this a great deal,” he said slowly. And he had; he’d lain awake these last several nights considering both this and everything else that had transpired. The brutality of the sudden ambush by this Blood Guard, the reports of similar scouts running the Wastes. And it was obvious that someone was helping the Machtvolk build their own army and radically militarize and evangelize their territories while at the same time sowing discord in the nations to the south.

He sighed. “We cannot win here.”

Lysias’s face turned red with rage at Rudolfo’s words, and when the girl chuckled, his fist lashed out, catching her jaw and overturning her once more in her chair. When the men moved in to pick her up, he waved them off and turned on Rudolfo. “Perhaps we should speak outside, Lord Rudolfo.”

He dared his eyes to meet Lysias’s and found a wall of gray steel there. “No,” he said. He hoped his eyes were clear and strong, but he suspected strongly they were moist and red. “I will speak to her alone now.”

“Lord Rudolfo, I cannot—”

Rudolfo let anger leak into his voice. “General, you are dismissed. Have your men fetch me this woman’s kit. Find Philemus and instruct him to meet me in my quarters in one hour.”

Rudolfo watched the older man force the anger from his face, but his eyes told him the anger would merely be banked for a later time. Lysias looked to his men, and with one last glare over his shoulder, he left with them and pulled the gate shut behind him.

Rudolfo regarded the girl where she lay, and when Lysias’s man knocked, he stood and opened the gate, taking the pack before replacing the bar.

He walked to the girl and crouched before her. “We cannot win here,” he said again. Then, he stood and wrestled her and the chair she was tied to back into an upright position.

Rudolfo returned to his stool and opened her pack. He’d been through its contents before. He’d spent many nights thumbing through her battered leather-bound gospel, testing the edge of her knives, smelling the contents of the small tin of cutting salts. He set these aside and then dug through her clothing and personal effects for the tiny kin-raven. When he drew it out and held it up to the lamplight, her eyes followed it and he saw hunger in them.

He smiled. “This interests you.”

He watched as she forced that interest away. Dropping the stone into the pack, he held up one of the ceremonial knives. “Judging from your scars,” he said, “this interests you as well.”

Their earlier examinations had revealed that her entire body was a latticework of symbols cut into her by either this knife or one similar to it, all flowing out from the largest marking her skin bore—the mark of Y’Zir over her heart.

“I think,” he said in a calm and measured voice, “that I understand this about you the most.”

Something in her eyes changed for the briefest moment. He read curiosity there and continued. “I think these symbols are words—words about you or perhaps words about your faith. Prayers etched by sharp pain, salted that you not forget what you long for.”

Because suffering teaches us how to remember.

He opened the tin and held it beneath his nose, suddenly transported back to the screams of Fontayne upon the cutting table as the Physicians labored for his redemption and the boy Rudolfo watched from his observation lounge.

He stood, placed the opened tin on the small table and lifted one of her knives. “I spent hours watching my father’s Physicians at their work,” he said. “I know most of the cuts that redeem.” He brought the knife to his mouth and ran his tongue lightly along the blade, wetting it. “I know what parts of you that you can live without and just how long you can bleed.” The memory was stronger now, his nose full of the smell of blood. She regarded him coolly as he dipped the blade into the finely ground salt. He continued. “I’ve watched them peel men and women like apples over the course of weeks, and I’ve watched them break from it, repentant and eventually atoned for.”

He sat in Lysias’s chair now, feeling the balance of the blade in his hand as he leaned close to her. His eyes held hers now, and he read nothing in them but mild curiosity. She was not afraid of the knife, but he’d known this the moment he’d seen her scars.

“Still,” he said, “this does not frighten you.”

He sat back and waited, raising his eyebrows as he toyed with the knife. He gave first one and then another minute of silence, listening to the ease of her breathing and keeping his eyes locked upon hers.

Finally, he leaned forward again. “I could let my men try other means—darker approaches—to loosen your tongue, but I’m not certain they would break you.” Her eyes remained steady on his. “I think the only thing that you fear is disappointing your empress. Even if we broke your mind, broke your body, I don’t think you’d ever give us anything useful under such coercion.” He paused and watched her face. “Neither,” he added, “would a gentler sowing produce a better crop, I’ll wager.”

When she spoke, her voice was raspy in the closed room. “You are correct, Lord. I will not answer your questions. I answer to a higher authority.”

“Then why,” Rudolfo asked, “am I keeping you alive?”

She smiled now. “Because you do not have the will to kill me nor the strength to break my faith.”

When he moved, his own speed surprised him, as did the utter lack of any emotion in the act. He heard the whistle of her sudden exhalation and the slightest gasp as he pushed the knife into her heart. And when he twisted the blade, she cried out and her eyes went wide.

“You underestimate me,” he said as she slumped forward in the
chair, her mouth opening and closing as her legs and arms twitched and jumped against the rope that held her in place. He leaned closer still and placed his mouth near her ear. “Let us hope that your Crimson Empress does the same.”