Shadowheart (52 page)

Vash would not have seen greater suspicion in the Favored’s face if he had announced he planned to put the scotarch in a sack and take him for a walk in the sun. “Great one, I do not understand,” was all the body servant came up with.

“No, you don’t. Come back after a short while, as I said. You shall find your master quite unharmed.”

The smooth-faced man looked very undecided, but at last bowed again and went into the larger part of the tent, which had been separated from the rest by screens showing silk pictures of sand larks guarding their nests at the base of some of desert shrub Vash could not identify. No one in his family had actually seen the deep desert for several generations. Of course he hadn’t ever wanted to be deep beneath the earth either, yet here he was.

The eunuch pulled back one of the inner screens and gestured him through with an appropriate amount of bowing, then ostentatiously let himself out of the tent, making enough noise that even if blindfolded Vash still could not have missed him leaving.

Vash walked to where Prusus sat, or rather leaned, in his traveling throne. It was a mark of how bizarre the autarch’s choice had been that Prusus had no attendants beyond the single eunuch, and only a handful of guards. Previous scotarchs had commanded retinues only outstripped by those of the autarch himself.

But previous scotarchs, even the worst of them, had been able to talk and had possessed at least a little wit. Their heads had not lolled on their shoulders like overcooked mushrooms. Still, if poor crippled Prusus was like a mushroom, then he must feel comfortable here, down in the depths where such things thrived.

“Good afternoon, Chosen One, if it is indeed still afternoon.” Vash bowed. “Please do not let me disturb you. I have come only to look for something.” He gazed at the empty, rolling eyes, wondering if he would see any recognition there. “King Olin said I should listen to you.” He could not help smiling and, in fact, almost laughed. “Which is, of course, a sort of code, since you don’t actually speak. But I believe I may have underestimated you—as have many others. I believe you are not as addled as we thought. So tell me with your eyes, if you understand me. Did he leave something for me? Did Olin leave something for me?”

For a moment, as if his task could be accomplished only with a supreme effort of will, Prusus stopped shaking. He stretched forward his head as though trying to fall out of his chair—as though terror had gripped him and he sought escape. Vash fought back anger of his own. Why should he be forced to sully himself treating with a mismade creature like this? Then he realized that Prusus was looking fixedly in one direction, toward his own lap, and that he might have been trying to use his head to point the way.

Vash leaned in. There, clutched in the scotarch’s bony fist, was a wisp of white—a piece of parchment.

“Ah,” said Vash. “ ‘Look to the scotarch for help,’ he said. Very clever.” He reached out and fastidiously wiggled loose the folded scrap of parchment without touching the skin of the scotarch’s hand. “And what treason against our beloved Golden One does the enemy king propose?” He said this for the benefit of any listeners, who always had to be assumed in the court of Sulepis, as in the courts of the autarch’s father and grandfathers.

The parchment was unsigned, and from the clumsiness of the letters been written in a hurry.

 

 

Just looking at such a thing made Vash feel as if he stood in an icy wind, that he held a restless, angry viper in his hand. He knew he must destroy it, and quickly. Whether he remembered the words written in it or not, whether he let himself think about them or not, he would have to make sure nobody ever saw this piece of paper. Avin Brone indeed! Pinimmon Vash looked around, suddenly feeling like a thief forced to walk slowly down the street with stolen goods bulging in his pocket. Did he dare carry it all the way back to his own tent where he could burn it in his brazier?

Something made a bubbly, sighing noise nearby. Vash, his thoughts racing so fast he could barely move, looked absently at the scotarch, whose mouth was already moving again. This time Vash realized that the eerie noise, a nasal moan punctuated by wet sloshes of consonants, was actually somebody speaking words, and that with a little concentration he could even understand what was being said.

“Parsshhhmen isssh . . . shmalll . . .” Prusus repeated, his hand clenching and wriggling in the air as though it had its own life, its own secret joys and sorrows. “Jushh eaddd iddd . . .”

The parchment is small
, he was saying.
Just eat it.

Astonished, Vash did. It almost stuck in his throat, but he got it down at last.

—from “A Child’s Book of the Orphan, and His Life and Death and Reward in Heaven”

 

 

 

T
HE SUN HAD BURNED THE FOG off the bay and Southmarch Castle’s tall towers glinted in the sun from behind the great outer walls as they stretched toward heaven, each a different color, each with its own peculiarities of design. In ordinary circumstances it would have been an impressive sight, but to Qinnitan, a prisoner being taken to the one man on earth she was most terrified of seeing again, the sight meant nothing except failure and horror and the power of inescapable Fate: the gods were clearly bent on humbling her for trying to avoid the destiny they had assigned her.

As Qinnitan watched the approaching castle, she suddenly felt something she hadn’t experienced for months, the sensation that had swept through her when the high priest Panhyssir had force-fed her his terrible potions: the world was not solid. It was as fragile as a bubble, and
things
waited beneath it. She could feel one of those things this moment. It was alive to her presence and unfazed by distance, because even though it lay more than a mile away across the cold waters of Brenn’s Bay and buried beneath hundreds of feet of stone, it was also beside her, even
inside
her. Qinnitan could sense its interest—it felt her just as strongly as she felt it. Couldn’t any of the other people on the deck of the troop ship feel its ghastly, intrusive presence as she did?

But it was pointless to mourn. Wherever he was, Barrick was only a mortal. In fact, like Qinnitan herself he was little more than a child: he couldn’t do anything to save her from Sulepis, let alone from the gods themselves.

The sun was far too bright. Daikonas Vo knew it must be Hexamene now, almost summer, but the light still seemed too strong, a glare all around him as though he walked over a bank of blazing, white-hot coals.

“
First rays, Nushash praise,”
he said out loud. When he was a child, his mother had always said that when she got out of bed in the morning, although she didn’t say it much as he got older. Strange—he hadn’t thought about the bitch in what seemed like years. Fitting that excruciating pain should bring his memories of her back.

As they rode a light tide into the docks in mainland Southmarch, the little cog stuffed with traders and their goods slipped between half a dozen Xixian warships lying at anchor or being escorted into harbor. The sailors on these other ships, unless they were in the middle of some task, watched Daikonas Vo and the others crowded on the cog’s deck. He was still the object of much attention from the crew—a ragged beggar who had somehow commanded a place on a vessel the autarch had commandeered—but Vo did not intend stealth. If the girl from the Seclusion was being taken to Sulepis, perhaps had reached him already, it was far too late for stealth.

The deeper Vo walked into the camp the more eyes followed him. Men began calling to him, shouting at him to stop and tell who he was, did he think beggars could simply walk in among the tents of the famous White Hounds? Vo knew a few of his old comrades were following him. Ordinarily, he would have thought nothing of turning and confronting them. None of the White Hounds were cowards, but Vo had a way of looking at people, even very strong, very fierce people, that seemed to remind them that there were still things they wanted to do in life. But he dared not waste time.

He grunted and had to stop for a moment, bending double with his arms clutching hard across his belly, trying to keep his jaws clenched, to keep in the scream fighting so hard to get out. It was like a hot coal with legs crawling back and forth in his guts.

None of his old troop had recognized him yet; he must look like a beggar indeed. He finally managed to fight down the pain and straightened up before any of the soldiers confronted him. His goal was only a few dozen paces away, so he set off toward it, trying not to stagger, trying not to show any weakness that would make them hurry after him again, that might prompt them to pull him down like jackals on a wounded lion. Or to try, at any rate: Daikonas Vo knew he would kill them all first if he had to—fingers in eyes, kicking even as he heard bones snapping, all his weight pushing his hard forearm down until the other man’s throat collapsed....

Vo could taste blood in his mouth. He spun around, arms up, ready to protect himself, but the soldiers who had been watching him had not followed. They were laughing among themselves, watching him stagger and twitch and talk to himself. Vo was full of shame. How bad was he? Had he pissed himself, too?

Shuddering, his guts like knotted, burning rags, he turned back and stumbled toward the quartermaster’s tent.

Vasil Zeru looked up as he entered but clearly did not recognize his face: he curled his lip at Vo’s appearance and turned back to scolding one of his underlings.

“Zeru, it’s me, Vo,” he said, leaning in the doorway. “Daikonas Vo.”

It still took a moment more for the look of recognition to come. “By the fiery boots of the Lord, is that truly you? You look like you caught fire and someone put you out with a Thunderman’s saber.”

“I am . . .” he clenched his teeth again, waited for the spasm to pass, “I am in need of your help. And your private counsel.”

The quartermaster understood. He sent the underlings away. “We have all wondered about . . . about your mission.”

“Yes. I am in the Golden One’s service,” Vo told him, “on a special mission. I must reach him as quickly as I can. But there are enemies, traitorous, high-ranking enemies who wish to stop me. . . . I have information the autarch must see!” He swayed, and that was entirely genuine, but it seemed to impress the quartermaster as well. Vasil Zeru was a hard man, but unlike most of the other officers his cruelty was impartial and meant as discipline. He had no wife, no son. The White Hounds were the closest he had to family, and he took his responsibilities very seriously. Vo, who had always made the other White Hounds uneasy, was exactly what Zeru liked in his unit—a clean-living, quiet and able professional soldier. So he believed, at least; Daikonas Vo’s other pastimes were unknown to him.

“I will help you, of course,” Vasil Zeru told him. “God’s blazing blood, of course I will! Is it that old pantaloon, Vash? There is a devil who never lifted a blade or a bow himself, but would be quick to have someone else done in.” He shook his head. “The kind that thinks nothing of sending soldiers to do every filthy task. . . .”

“May Nushash bless you!” Vo was able to make it sound convincing because of the relief he was feeling; the pain in his gut had suddenly lessened. “I will tell the autarch of your service to him, of how you helped when others would not.”

Old Zeru actually looked a little flushed with sentiment. “It is nothing,” he said, but he seemed pleased. “What any good soldier would do for our great Falcon!”

“Do you have some water?” Vo asked suddenly. The retreating agony had left his throat ash-dry and his head as light as smoke. “To drink? ” His voice sounded far away.

Then he fainted.