by Sam Hawke
And all of a sudden, something made sense to me.
“Honor-down,” I said. “Stop. Stop!” My voice rose to a yell, and the litter carriers slowed and lowered us down.
“Credola?” one of them asked, but I barely heard. Dee was staring at me, her mouth in an o of surprise. Now it was my hands that were shaking. “Let me out here,” I said. “Please take my niece straight to the Oromani apartments, as quickly as possible.”
“Auntie?”
“Go straight to Jov. You’re to stay there, and don’t leave the apartments.”
“But what do I tell him?”
“Tell him they’ve infiltrated the Guard and he has to stop Tain going tonight, at all costs. Tell him not to talk to anyone but Tain.”
Her eyes were very wide. “And where are you going?”
I closed my eyes, but there was no peace there. The same images that had haunted my dreams for two years, the ones that made me sweat and gasp for breath, from which I woke unrested and fearful, were brought into such sudden painful relief I felt I might never breathe easily again. “I’m going to the jail.”
* * *
“I know it will be reported. I don’t care if you report it straight to the Chancellor himself,” I told the slightly indignant Guard. “I’ll be going right to him after this anyway. There’s no law preventing me from visiting anyone in this prison, is there?”
“No, Credola, but—”
“Then you can just put anything you like in the report, mark me down in the log. It’s not a secret. But I am in a hurry, so I need to see her now. And alone.”
“Alone?” The man’s mouth worked silently for a moment. “Credola, no, that is in the prison code. No one sees that prisoner without a Guard. The Guild sets the code and the Council signs off on it, Credola. You can’t just—”
“We have a matter of utmost secrecy to discuss. It must be alone.”
“The code is for everyone’s safety,” he protested. “I can’t let you go without a Guard.”
“She’s at the far end of the central corridor, isn’t she?”
“Yes, but—”
“If the Guard stands at the corridor entrance, they’ll be able to see me in front of her cell, won’t they?”
“I suppose, but—”
“You can search me,” I said, applying my sweetest smile. “I’m not carrying a weapon.”
“Credola, I didn’t say … I mean to say, that’s not necessary, I know who you are.” The man rubbed a hand over his shorn head, looking troubled. “It’s for your safety more than the prisoner’s. The Guard’s there to stop any trouble.”
“She’s safe in the cell,” I said. “The Guard will be able to see us and I can call out if I need help. But I need to talk to her, right away. It’s a matter of utmost importance.” I took a step closer. “I know it’s not fair to ask you to bend rules, but I know you wouldn’t be sitting here if you were just a windup doll, following the rules without any judgment. You’re a thinking man, you’re here because you’ve been trusted with a position that calls for intelligence and common sense.”
The faintest hint of a flattered smile teased the edge of his mustache. “I can’t fault you there, Credola.”
“So what does your judgment say? You know who I am—and I don’t mean my family name or any of that rubbish, I mean you know I would do anything to protect this city. I share that with your Guild, don’t I?”
“Aye, you do at that,” he admitted. He rubbed his head again. “Look, you can have a short conversation but you have to stay back from the cell. A short conversation, mind. And you call out if she tries any funny business, eh? She isn’t cowed, not one bit, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”
“I didn’t think she would be,” I murmured. Who could even imagine that? Aven hadn’t been cowed when she’d been caught and surrounded, or when she’d been tried and sentenced. I’d watched, from a distance, when she’d ridden out of the city south to the mines for the first time. I thought seeing her off would make me feel something, some sense of closure. But she’d been as straight-backed and proud as ever, like a political prisoner rather than the heartless butcher I knew her to be.
I approached down the corridor, leaving the Guard at the other end. The cells down this quiet, lonely corridor were reserved for the most dangerous prisoners, of which we had few. It wasn’t a long-term solution, but no one wanted to sponsor the absolute worst of society, so the prisoners in her category were moved between supervised jobs and here in the jail in stretches, depending on whether they were willing to continue to contribute or not. Most of the cells I passed were empty, and the occupied few were silent, though eyes watched me curiously as I passed.
The silence was heavy and my footsteps loud as I approached. Plenty of time for the prisoner to know someone was approaching, and perhaps my footfalls sounded sufficiently different to the Guard’s, or the timing of the visit did not correspond to regular Guard visits, because when I came into view the former Warrior-Guilder, my attempted murderer, was sitting in the center of her cell, and registered not even the mildest surprise at the sight of me.
“Kalina Oromani,” she purred. “Oh, I so hoped it would be you.” She uncoiled herself from her position on the floor, rising with more grace than should have been possible considering the circumstances. The cell was clean, but for the lamp marks on the walls; not uncomfortable, but depressing in a way only a locked room under the ground could ever be. She is not cowed, the Guard had said, and that was obvious. She looked—had I thought she would look different?—she looked just the same, really, as she had the day she’d driven her knife into my stomach. Her hair was still long, still scraped back from her face in a plait, albeit a bit neater than it had been on the battlefield. She had not lost muscle, though the ugly cluster scar on her hand where Tain had pinned her with a blade was visible. Her face was still strong, beautiful, charismatic, her bearing still that of a person looking upon creatures of some lesser species; a bird to an insect.
For all my supposed bravery, the sight of her robbed me of speech. How could I be afraid of someone locked up, likely forever, who could not harm me?
But I was. Maybe I always would be.
She cracked her neck and took a deep breath, a small smile of satisfaction playing across her face. I thought she would have been surprised to see me. It had been two years, I thought, anger tingeing the edge of my nerves. Why would she have expected this? Suddenly I was certain it was all an act. She had perfected this image of the confident commander, never surprised by anything, to try to keep others off balance. It wouldn’t work on me.
“You don’t look well, little bird,” she said, with mock concern. “Still sickly? What are all those bandages for?”
“I’m fine. Thanks for the concern. How’s life as a mine worker?”
She yawned. “Keeps me strong, you know. Wouldn’t want to lose my edge.” She smiled, a predator’s smile, the same one that haunted my dreams. Fortunes, I hated her. I seized on that hatred, riding the wave of it over my fear.
“Hard to keep an edge when you’re never going to be allowed to hold a sword again,” I said coolly. That one bit in, and she regarded me with a curl of her lip, her own anger showing this time.
“Don’t worry about me, little bird. I keep the practice up.” She lunged forward suddenly, driving her hand toward me with a knife that wasn’t there, and in that moment my brain forgot she wasn’t armed, forgot she was safe behind bars. I leapt back instinctively, almost tripping, and heat flooded my face as she laughed in response. I glared back, heart racing, furious. She pretended to clean her fingernails. “Still. Stabbing isn’t always as effective as you’d like, is it? I’d definitely slit a throat next time, if I got the chance.”
Again, I remembered the feeling of the knife going in, the terrible pain, the wrongness of splitting flesh, but I battled to keep that memory from my face. I was here, I was alive and well, and she was in jail. Two years of nightmares, two years of her as a demon hauntin
g my steps. I’d paid the price and tenfold. She’d taken something from me, and it was high time to take something back.
I tried to force my voice to calm. “It’s boring in there, isn’t it? Is this the best you can do to break the monotony—weak threats from your cage?”
“Oh, I’m doing more than you’d like,” she purred. “I knew you’d come, you know. I thought it might be your dear brother. It’d make a nice change from that pathetic little creature you’ve got in charge of the Council.” She gave a disparaging laugh. “Fortunes, that boy was as eager to please as a starving street animal when I fucked him, and he’s no different now.”
Her words opened a horrible tear inside my chest.
“Oh. Didn’t you know your beloved Chancellor’s been coming to see me, then? He can’t stay away, whenever I’m here. Wants my advice. Wants my respect.”
She is trying to throw you off balance, I told myself. She’s saying whatever she wants to get a reaction. I ignored her jibe. “But you said you hoped it’d be me? Why? I thought seeing me might…” Now it was my own turn to examine my fingernails. “… upset you.”
“There’s the smugness,” she breathed. “There’s the attitude. All of you have it, even the ones who pretend they don’t. You think you have the world figured out.” She laughed suddenly, loudly, crudely. “But now here you are, realizing once again you’ve screwed it all up, haven’t you. And what is this little visit about—begging me for help?”
“We know about your connections to the Hands,” I said stonily, ignoring the heat creeping up my neck. “We’ve already found your pet Order Guard. Was he always one of yours? Can’t imagine this”—I gestured vaguely to her and her cell—“winning anyone over.”
“One of mine?” Her laugh sounded genuinely merry this time, and it turned my stomach to ice. “Honor-down, little bird, you’ve only found one? How fucking disappointing. You’ve left this very late to figure out what’s going on, haven’t you.” She leaned forward and dropped her voice to a dramatic whisper. I had to resist the urge to step closer, knowing she would want that. “You’re only just now noticing how much is already in motion, aren’t you? You thought one grand gesture would be the end of it? Rebellion isn’t some single event you can just squash in one hit, you know. It’s thousands of little moments, little voices, little actions. A few seats on your bloated Council aren’t going to stop them. All those young people, kicking around your city, still dreaming about unseating the fat families, they aren’t going to stop just because you’ve elected some token commoners to help oppress them.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, are you pretending you ever cared about the rebellion?” The mere idea of it was laughable. She hadn’t wanted to overturn our society because she’d been worried about how the lower classes were treated; she’d been concerned with how she was treated, and how much influence she had over our society. “You didn’t give a damn about the people you tricked into going to war, and they know that now. Do you think anyone’s going to bust you out of here? You think your military empire or whatever ridiculous dream you had was going to make the poorest people in the country happy? They’re not dreaming of you as their lost leader, I promise.” My turn to laugh coldly. “It’s been two years. No one’s coming for you.”
Aven threw aside the splinter she had been using to clean her nails, smiling again. “Of course I don’t care. Means to an end, and all that. But you really are being terribly naive, or is it arrogant? So hard to tell with you coddled little egg yolks. If you think some creative accounting and fifty thousand broke peasants funded the last strike against you, you’re stupider than even your bland little faces look. I told your brother two years ago I had friends, and you all still sat back and worried about the little peasants and not at all about the players behind them.”
“You don’t look much like someone with friends,” I said. “Sitting here alone in the dark, reduced to trying to taunt people who’ve long moved on from worrying about you.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, stretching and yawning theatrically. “I’m doing all right in here. I mean, some little pissant threatened to poison me, a long time ago, but he doesn’t seem to have had the guts to go through with it.”
In his darker moments, Jov certainly had thought about it, he’d told me. While I had been hovering, fighting infections, hanging on to life, he had dreamed of giving her the death she’d given so many he cared about. But over time the heat of his anger and desire for revenge had faded away. Better to leave her here, rotting, he had told me, and I’d agreed. “Maybe he just thinks it’s funnier seeing you completely impotent than dead.”
She didn’t even bother to reply. “You’re not here because you think I’m impotent,” she said. “You’re here because you know I’m not, even if you haven’t yet grasped the scale of it.”
“I’m here to give you a chance,” I said, my tone level. “You know you’ll never be offered a spot with a rehabilitation sponsor. If you give us information now, help us stop the next attack, I’d personally speak on your behalf to the determination council. You aren’t stupid enough to think nothing could be done to improve your lot in here.”
“Oh, you’ll ‘speak on my behalf’? Very generous.”
“Credola!” the Guard at the end of the corridor called down. “That’s time now.”
I ignored him. “I gave the key testimony against you, remember. My word in your favor will go a long way.”
“Hmm, a very tempting offer, but I rather think not, little bird. You see, I don’t need to make any deals with you fucking Oromani snakes. I already have deals, and friends, and I have no intention of being in this hole forever, believe me.”
“Tell me about the Hands,” I went on doggedly. “Tell me what you know about the attack at the closing ceremony.”
“Has that happened already?” She looked surprised, but delighted. “It is hard to keep track of the days down here. Is that what all those bandages are from? Did I miss all the fun?”
My heart pounded in my ears. I didn’t know if she was genuine or just playing with me. Could she really have lost track of times and daylight hours so far? Was that why she hadn’t been surprised to see me, because she thought something big had already happened? But she was already shaking her head as her eyes traveled all over me. “No, no, I’m just teasing you, Credola. We wouldn’t be having such a lovely relaxed conversation if I’d missed it. Come see me tomorrow, why don’t you?” She paused, her smile cold. “If you can.”
The Guard was striding down the corridor now, his footsteps tap-tapping as he approached. I stepped closer. “Tell me what’s going to happen at the ceremony.”
“Oh, you’d love to know, wouldn’t you? Maybe it’ll be a second rebellion, maybe someone will take off your little Chancellor’s head for him. It’ll be a lovely surprise.”
“Credola! Please step back from the bars.”
I took one step back. Aven correspondingly lowered her voice so it was difficult to hear. “It’s killing you, wondering, isn’t it. What have my friends been doing? They didn’t pack up and go home when the plans didn’t go right. Believe me, they will never pack up and go home. Not ever. And this city will go down one way or the other, because you’re all too sure of yourselves to bother to heed the threat. It’s funny, really.”
“Who are they?” I asked, aware I was sounding desperate. Fortunes, she was so confident, so completely unfazed by my questions. “Who are these friends?”
“No friends of yours, that’s for sure,” she replied. She settled herself back down on the floor, serene as a butterfly landing, and rolled her neck in a lazy circle. “I’m glad you came, Kalina Oromani. It’s given me so much pleasure to know exactly how little you understand. You did interfere last time, so I did wonder whether you were clever enough to be a problem, but I needn’t have bothered. It was just luck—good luck on your part, bad on mine. Still. This gives me a chance to tell you personally that you and your brother are going to lose it all. And I’m g
oing to be watching and enjoying it.” Her laughter echoed until, escorted by the Guard, muttering a string of complaints under his breath, we were almost out of the jail.
INCIDENT: Attempted poisoning of Chancellor Hana Iliri
POISON: Manita fungus
INCIDENT NOTES: This proofer detected manita fungus (likely powder form) mixed in with vegetable paste to be served to Chancellor. Proofed in kitchen and detected early. Meal replaced, Oromani family to conduct surveillance of kitchen workers. Update: kitchen worker with ties to C. Senydred Brook followed and payment confirmed. (Note: C. Senydred and Chancellor Hana had personal history suggesting this is not a Family-driven attack.) Kitchen worker arrested, C. Senydred sent a bottle of kori dosed with (non-fatal) quantity of Esto’s revenge. Update: message appears to have been received and no further attacks forthcoming. C. Senydred accepted Guild position in Moncasta (approx. 1 mth post incident).
(from proofing notes of Credo Travi Oromani)
13
Jovan
“I don’t know where he is, Credo Jovan, and I’ll remind you not to raise your voice in my presence. I may be old, but I’m not deaf.” Argo straightened his glasses and glared at me. His gaze didn’t even soften for my sister, which was proof enough we’d really annoyed him. “He’s got a lot of things on this afternoon. I’ve not seen him for hours.”
“I’m sorry, Argo,” Kalina said, leaning across the desk and taking both the old man’s hands in hers, swift enough that he didn’t have time to pull away. “We didn’t mean to be short. But Tain’s in danger and we need to talk to him.”
“Sorry,” I echoed. “We’re just worried, Argo.”
“All right,” he said. He glared at us each one more time for good measure, but he didn’t pull his hands out of Kalina’s. “If this is about the Chancellor’s safety, you could speak to the Captain of the blackstripes. She’s still here.”
