The Brazen Gambit Part 23

Swallowing hard and wishing for a torch or lamp, he went inside.

His hand found the shelf beside the door, the lamp, and a flint sparker: all as it should be, and light revealed the bolt-hole as he remembered it last-exactly the way he remembered it last, even to the slops bucket on its side a few steps from the rumpled bed. the way he remembered it last, even to the slops bucket on its side a few steps from the rumpled bed.

Before he had considered the implications, Yohan brushed past with Akashia, and the moment was gone.

They put her on the bed, where she sat, knotting the frayed linens through her fingers, but she wouldn't lie down. When Ruari asked if she was hungry and offered her a heel of bread from his belt pouch, she gave no sign she'd heard the question until he waved the bread directly in front of her eyes. Then she took it into her hands, tearing off crumbs, which she savored slowly. But she offered no conversation, no sign that she recognized them.

Just blue-green eyes staring past the lamp, seeing things Pavek was certain he didn't want to imagine.

"She'll be better in the morning, when she's had time to rest," Ruari said, as much a question as a statement.

Pavek and Yohan exchanged worried glances and otherwise ignored the half-elf's comment. There was an outside chance Ruari was right. Physically, Akashia seemed unharmed. Her face was drawn, with dark smudges beneath her eyes and hollows beneath her cheekbones, but there were no cuts or bruises that he could see. She wasn't starving, and her clothes were clean, as was her hair. In outward respects, Escrissar had cared well for his prisoner.

But Pavek knew how interrogators got their answers. He'd heard her moaning and, looking into her beautiful but vacant eyes, he feared that in her determination to keep Telhami's secret, she'd sacrificed everything that had made her human.

Most templars, in a final act of brutal mercy, would slash the throat of a prisoner when they were done questioning him, but though interrogators would question the dead without hesitation, they boasted that they themselves never killed.

There were those who would prefer her in this empty state: an especially vile breed of slavers traded in mind-blasted men and women, a breed scorned by their flesh-peddling peers-a sobering condemnation when he considered it. Other than keeping her from that fate, Pavek didn't know what manner of mercy he could give Akashia if her wits didn't come back. Right now, that wasn't his problem, and that was mercy enough for him.

"Grab some floor and get some sleep," he advised Ruari and Yohan. "I'll take the first watch."

He threw the latch-bolt and put a slip knot in the string dangling from it, to slow down anyone-the missing Zvain, included-who might try the door while they slept. Then he pinched the lamp wick, and except for a faint cast of moonlight through the isingla.s.s stone set in the ceiling, the bolt-hole became dark. Akashia made small, panicked noises that left him sick with anger toward the interrogator who'd imprisoned and tormented her, until Yohan-Pavek a.s.sumed it was the dwarf by the way the bed creaked-whispered soft a.s.surances that quieted her.

The sound of one person comforting another was strange to Pavek's ears. The act simply hadn't occurred to him. He wouldn't have known what to say or do. Kindness had played little part in an orphan-templar's life. It had never seemed a serious loss.

Until now.

Urik was quiet above them. An occasional foot fell across the isingla.s.s: a mercenary patrol, exempt from curfew and paid to guard the property of Gold Street. Templars weren't welcome here. Merchants didn't trust them. Pavek felt safe with his back against the door and the gentle rumblings of sleep all around him.

And through that quiet darkness, Dovanne came to haunt him. He'd expected mat, with the bitter grief burning deep in his throat and behind his eyes. He wondered what if anything would have changed if he'd known how to console her as Yohan consoled Akashia, those years at the orphanage. Probably they'd both be dead-too soft and sentimental to survive in the templarate.

The bed creaked. Pavek rose into a crouch on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, the sword he had never sheathed angled in front of him.

"Stand down," Yohan muttered, pushing the blade aside. He was a dwarf; he could see in the dark. "I'll take over."

"How is she?"

"Better, I think. She said my name, but I don't know if she knew I was beside her. I'm coming back, Pavek."

"So am I."

"Thought you might be. First, there's tomorrow. We're going to need a cart. She's not going to be able to walk. I could carry her to the Temple of the Sun. We're not poor-"

"Not if you got four gold pieces every time you delivered a load of zarneeka." Once again, Pavek heard himself speaking more harshly than he'd intended. Even a night-blind human could see-feel-the scowl suddenly creasing Yohan's face.

"For emergencies," the dwarf said, defensive and angry and shuffling away through the dark before adding: "Go to sleep."

And Pavek stretched out where he was, thinking that it was easier to master druid magic than life outside the templarate, where people cared about each other and mere words held an edge sharper than steel.

Curfew ended and the day began in Urik not with sunrise but with the orator's daily harangue from a palace balcony. Pavek was awake and listening as the first syllable of the morning laudatory prayer to Great and Mighty King Hamanu struck his ear. There were the usual admonitions and announcements, nothing at all about a death or an abduction in the templar quarter. But then, he hadn't truly expected to hear any. The templarate cleaned its house in private; his own denunciation had been unusual- Which reminded Pavek of the earth cleric, Oelus, who had called him 'friend' and who was a healer. He'd never known which aspect of earth the cleric venerated, which of the many earth temples in Urik he called his home: a large one where his talents and choices might be overlooked, or a small one where his word was law? Either way, Oelus would be worth the risks a.s.sociated with finding him-if Akashia still needed a healer.

The harangue was over. Pavek stood up and stretched the night-cramps out of a body that was getting too old for sleeping on the bare ground. His companions were awake and blocking his view of Akashia.

"How is she?" he asked.

"Better," Yohan answered with a disturbing lack of enthusiasm.

"How much better?"

He wedged his shoulder between the other two men and saw the answer for himself. Akashia reacted to the movement: looking up, staring at his face. The black pupils of her eyes grew large, then shrank to pinpoints in slow, unnerving cycles.

"Akashia?" He held out his hand.

Her gaze followed his fingers. Her hand rose toward his, then fell. And her eyes went flat and unchanging.

"She's coming back," Ruari insisted. "She sees us and hears us; she didn't before. She's coming. It's just a matter of time."

"Do we have the time?" Yohan asked. "I don't think it would be wise to carry her all the way to Modekan, not half-aware, the way she is. It's time or a cart. How safe is this place? Who's in charge? Templars?"

Pavek thought of the no-nonsense baker who'd collected the weekly ten-bit rent while he was here with Zvain. The woman might be willing to let them stay as long as they needed, as long as they paid in metal coins. She hadn't seemed the sentimental sort who'd hold a marketable room empty in the hope that an orphan boy would return to it, and since the room had obviously remained empty since he'd left, they obviously wouldn't have a lot of compet.i.tion for it. If he could find her... talk to her- Yohan's fist rapped his forearm and gave a gesture toward the door. The latch rose, struck the bolt, and fell. Pavek and Yohan scurried for their weapons; Ruari crouched beside the bed, one arm around Akashia. A hook-shaped device, not unlike Ruari's lockpick, slid through a hole in the door to snag the string, but the knots Pavek had tied after curfew meant that the string couldn't be withdrawn through the hole and that the bolt couldn't be moved from the other side of the door.

Pavek, standing beside the door, mimed sliding the bolt free; Yohan nodded agreement and Pavek pushed it loose and lifted the latch itself, then he retreated hastily as the door began to move. It had happened quickly enough that he hadn't given a thought to who might appear in the doorway and was speechless when it proved to be a hale and healthy Zvain.

"Pavek!" the youngster shouted through a gleeful smile. He spread his arms wide and, ignoring the sword, flung himself across the room. "Pavek!"

Wiry arms locked firmly around Pavek's ribs. Tousled hair and a still-downy cheek pressed against his chest. Stunned and vaguely perplexed by Zvain's affectionate explosions-it was hardly what he'd have expected after leaving the boy behind, hardly the way he would have reacted were their positions reversed-Pavek draped his free arm limply around the boy's shoulders, lowering the sword until it rested against his leg.

"Who's he?" Ruari and Yohan demanded together.

"Zvain. He-" Pavek began, but Zvain was quicker.

"Pavek saved my life after my father killed my mother and Laq killed my father. He stayed with me, right here. He had plans. We were going to put a stop to the poison. Then he disappeared, just vanished one afternoon." Zvain swiveled in Pavek's arms, fixing him with a wide-eyed stare that was far more open and trusting than anything Pavek remembered seeing while they dwelt together in the bolt-hole. "But I knew you'd come back. I knew it! And you have, haven't you? You've found a way to stop Laq, haven't you? And these people are going to help?"

"Zvain, that's not-" The truth, he wanted to say, but Ruari cut him off.

"What is he? Your son? Your son that you left here?"

Trust the half-wit sc.u.m-the oh-so-predictable oh-so-predictable half-wit sc.u.m to see everything with his own peculiar prejudice. "Zvain's half-wit sc.u.m to see everything with his own peculiar prejudice. "Zvain's not not my son-" my son-"

Zvain cut him off again. "More like a brother. Aren't you?"

Something was wrong, subtly but terribly wrong, though it would be harder to admit that the youngster was telling a pack full of lies than to go along with the glowing portrait he created of their p.r.i.c.kly weeks together. He was still seeking the words that would explain the contradictions he felt when Ruari seized his sleeve.

"You left him here. You were looking all around that afternoon. You said it was templars, but it wasn't. You left him here, all alone-"

"Can't blame him for that, Ruari," Yohan interrupted softly but urgently. "We weren't exactly gentle with Pavek here that day. He wanted to keep the boy clear of us. Can't blame him for that, you least of all."

To his credit, Ruari relaxed his hold on Pavek's shirt and stepped back to take Zvain's measure. By temperament, at least, they could have been brothers. Zvain released one half of his grip on Pavek's ribs and took Ruari's hand.

"Are you Pavek's friend now?"

"You should've told us, Pavek," Ruari said through clenched teeth and looking at Pavek, not Zvain. "Once you knew we were safe in-" He blinked and c.o.c.ked his head; Telhami had worked her mind-bending spellcraft on him, too, leaving that gray hole in his memory where the name of that safety should lie.

"Safe? Where?" Zvain asked, looking from Ruari to him. "Where've you been. You weren't in Urik. I know. I looked everywhere."

"Once we were safe at home," Ruari finished. The interruption gave Pavek a necessary half-moment to think. "Where have you been?" He looked down into the open, trusting face, which blinked once and returned to the wariness he remembered. "Not here. No one's been in this room since I left. And you've changed, Zvain-"

Ruari seized his shirt again. "Of course the boy's changed! You left him. He couldn't live here, not alone. You should rejoice that he survived and that he doesn't hate you for abandoning him. You should swear that you won't leave him behind ever again. Ever!" Ever!"

Pavek supposed Ruari was right, supposed he should swear the very oath Ruari was suggesting. He wanted to. Zvain's face was guileless again, offering him a new beginning, if he'd take it. And he wanted to take it. Wanted to believe the boyish candor.

"You won't leave me behind again, will you, Pavek? You'll take me with you, won't you? The way Ruari says you can?" Every muscle in Pavek's body tightened simultaneously: Zvain knew Ruari's name. It seemed a significant mote of knowledge, somehow, until he recalled that Yohan had used it. He'd learned their names the very same way. Of course, Ruari wasn't in charge, any more than he was. If anyone in the bolt-hole was authorized to make such a decision, it was Akashia.

Akashia. For the first time since Zvain had entered the room, he looked to the far side of the room where he'd last seen Akashia staring blank-eyed and listless.

But no longer.

She was crouched on the bed, flattened against the dirt wall, her mouth working silently, while her hands wrung the linen sheet that trailed down in front of her. Yohan and Ruari leapt past him to her a.s.sistance.

"What's wrong with her?" Zvain asked, and pressed tighter still against Pavek, forcing him to stand there, helpless. "Has she been eating Laq?"

It was a possibility Pavek hadn't considered. Escrissar was capable of feeding her poison with the meals that kept her strength up for his interrogations. But Laq was a poison that some people-Zvain's father among them-ate willingly until it killed them. Kashi would starve in the condition she was in, and he could see, as her mouth moved, that her tongue wasn't black.

"No," he answered Zvain distractedly, "but bad things have happened to her-"

"She's not a Laq-seller, is she?" The boy's voice shook ever-so-slightly.

Pavek glanced down into eyes wide with contained fear, and suddenly, his ingratiating affection no longer seemed inexplicable: the boy didn't didn't want to be left behind again. He'd turn himself inside-out to avoid that happening again. want to be left behind again. He'd turn himself inside-out to avoid that happening again.

Even the unchanged emptiness of the bolt-hole itself could be explained, along with Zvain's appearance this morning. There were, after all, other families living in the catacombs, families that had known Zvain's family and might have been willing to take him in.

"Is she?" Zvain repeated. "Is she someone you're trying to rescue?"

"In a way." Pavek found the tension sliding down his spine, found he could ruffle Zvain's hair and squeeze the narrow shoulders with a smile on his face-a sincere smile, not a templar's sneer that set the scar throbbing. "She's a friend-"

Keeping his arm around the boy's shoulders, he guided Zvain toward the bed where Yohan and Ruari had gotten Akashia calmed and sitting again. It seemed understandable to Pavek that, after what she'd been through among strangers, any strange face could push her to the edge of hysteria, but once she saw Zvain, learned to recognize him for the youth he was, he thought she'd be able to see him as a friend. She seemed to have ample patience for Ruari.

But before they reached her, Akashia's eyes locked onto Zvain's face, and she began to scream. Zvain shrugged free of Pavek's arm and got behind him instead, where Akashia couldn't see him.

"It is is Laq! It is!" he shouted into the din. "She's seeing things that aren't there-just like my father did when the light was in his eyes!" Laq! It is!" he shouted into the din. "She's seeing things that aren't there-just like my father did when the light was in his eyes!"

Things that aren't there. Perhaps Zvain was right. Perhaps it wasn't the boy at all. Sunlight beamed through the isingla.s.s in the ceiling and struck the bed like so many arrows, and Zvain was an appealing youth with a warm smile when he chose to use it. Perhaps Zvain was right. Perhaps it wasn't the boy at all. Sunlight beamed through the isingla.s.s in the ceiling and struck the bed like so many arrows, and Zvain was an appealing youth with a warm smile when he chose to use it.

"You should cover her eyes 'til she gets better," Zvain said with the confidence born of experience. "That's what we did with my father, when we could, until he couldn't see us at all."

And he proceeded to tear at the hem of his own shirt, a generous gesture Pavek interrupted by wrapping him in a hug. But the notion itself was sound, and he told Yohan: "Try it. The boy knows what he's talking about, and I wouldn't put it past Escrissar to put Laq in the food he fed her."

The idea momentarily overwhelmed Yohan, whose face froze in a raging grimace, while his arms shook. Ruari, however, closed Akashia's eyes with his hands. At first that made her more frantic, then slowly, as Ruari whispered softly into her ear, she relaxed, though tears seeped between the half-elfs fingers. He lowered his hands, and sheltered her face against his shirt. Her arm worked its way across his back, holding on to him as she sobbed his name repeatedly.

Zvain went to work on his shirt-seams again. "We've got to keep the light from her eyes," he insisted. "It's the light that makes her see things."

Yohan had recovered. "We can use this," he said, tearing off a strip from the linen bedding.

"No!" Zvain lunged forward and pulled the cloth from the dwarf's hands. "It's dirty! Filthy! Let me rinse it out."

And Pavek, suddenly remembering the slops bucket Zvain had once emptied on that linen, was inclined to agree. The boy darted past him and carried the linen out of the room-once again the clever, impulsive, and willful boy Pavek had remembered.

He sheathed the sword he'd been holding all this time. Yohan, who had dropped his obsidian knife when Akashia first screamed, retrieved it as well.

"Seems a good lad," the dwarf said for Pavek's ears alone. "You never mentioned saving his life."

"I didn't. He saved mine. I owed him."

"You owe him again."

"If we can trust him. If he's telling the truth."

"I ken nothing amiss in him. Do you?"

A wry smile made his scar twinge. "No. But then, he's fooled me before. Perhaps I want too badly to trust him."

"Trust yourself. What harm can a boy do?"

He shrugged, recalling a bruise that took a painfully long time to fade, but accepted the dwarf's a.s.sessment with some relief.

Akashia was still huddled in Ruari's arms when Zvain returned with the damp cloth, which he returned to Yohan.

"You put it over her eyes, please. She knows you; she doesn't know me. I think she's afraid of me."

And with Ruari's help, Yohan did. "We've got to find a healer," the dwarf said when they were done. "Got to get the poison drawn out of her."

"Healers can't help," Zvain said solemnly. "We tried tried healers. There's nothing they can do. They said to keep my father quiet, keep the sun from hurting his eyes. But when his eyes were burning, the only thing that would stop the pain was more Laq. We've got to get her away from Urik. You've got to take her home." healers. There's nothing they can do. They said to keep my father quiet, keep the sun from hurting his eyes. But when his eyes were burning, the only thing that would stop the pain was more Laq. We've got to get her away from Urik. You've got to take her home."

Pavek looked from Yohan to Ruari and back again. "Zvain knows more about Laq than any of us."

"We'll need a cart-" Yohan began.

"I can get a cart," Zvain said, moving close to Yohan and his visible coin purse again. He and the dwarf were about the same height and appraised each other evenly. "There's always carts left in the village market after the farmers sell their crops. I can get you one for a silver piece."

"What do you think, Pavek?"

"Hadn't thought about it, but I imagine he's right. You can go with him, or I can-"

"I can go myself! I've been doing everything for myself since you left."

...A thought that gave Pavek one more pause as the boy slipped silently out the door with a pair of Yohan's silver coins.