“You don’t know anything about Zezili.”
Natanial narrowed his eyes. “That’s being remedied,” he said. He stepped away from the table. “We’ll start training in the morning with a friend of mine. Get you some fresh air. If you don’t eat, you’ll be hungry. I’m not bringing some palanquin out here to haul you out into the woods.”
“I’d rather write more poetry,” Anavha said.
“Yes, well, wouldn’t we all? But that’s not the world we’re living in. So eat up, and prepare yourself.”
Anavha stared at the plate a few minutes more after Natanial left. Then he picked up the tray and dumped its contents in his refuse bucket.
For eight days, Natanial led Anavha out into the woods, a two hour walk from the main keep, to meet with his friend Coryana. Natanial seemed to have a great many women friends in many countries. Anavha would not have thought that odd except that they never seemed to visit any men, and in Tordin, the population of men and women was far more equal than in Dorinah. Anavha saw men everywhere – tall, fat, thin, short, lanky, muscular, and hairy – very hairy. But they never stayed with any of them.
When Anavha asked him about that after the first day as they walked home, Natanial shrugged. “Never thought about it,” he said. “I suppose I just feel more comfortable with women, and they with me. They don’t mind my… peculiarities.”
“Like being an assassin?”
“Oh, that too,” he said, and did not elaborate.
The third day, Anavha didn’t want to get out of bed. Natanial dragged him half the length of the hall outside his cell until he relented.
His friend Coryana was no better. However much Anavha insisted he was of no use to anyone – that someone had played a cruel joke on them and he wasn’t gifted – they carried on. For hours. Their patience grated. He didn’t understand it.
On the eighth day, hungry and exhausted, unable to remember the bit of poetry Coryana had been trying to get him to use to focus his thoughts, he threw himself to the warm spring ground among the wildflowers and sobbed.
“Get up, Anavha,” Natanial said. “We go again.”
Anavha curled up next to a stump, huffing in the smell of the fresh everpine shavings. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“I can outlast you,” Natanial said. “You get up and do as Coryana tells you. Then we get to have a rest. It’s your choice. Make good choices.”
Anavha keened. He could not say why his whole body rebelled, why he wanted to scream and seethe with every fiber of his body; fear and sobbing were his only tools, the only ones that didn’t get him beaten. If he showed anger or violence he would be harmed. Crying was the only emotion his world ever allowed him. If he had any power, it was in his tears, and he was well versed in using them.
But Natanial remained unmoved.
Anavha lay crying until his face felt puffy and his eyes hurt. He cried until there were no more tears to squeeze out.
An hour later, Anavha was standing again, concentrating on the susurrus of Tordinian words Coryana whispered to him. Listen, repeat. Pull.
“Like breathing, a second breath,” she said. “A breaking apart. A release.”
Release.
Anavha saw the blood welling from the cuts in his arms, the bloody knife, the parting of the world.
Release.
He gasped.
A threading needle of power rippled beneath his skin. It felt like hot liquid seeping into his organs. He wanted to vomit it out like some vile poison.
Release.
The poetry. He repeated the poem again, sharpening his focus, and the liquid poured from his body, a bloody burst of light that tangled together like a misty ball of yarn. But instead of blowing apart the tree, or starting some fire, the misty red ball of threads dissipated in the warm air.
Anavha let out his breath.
Natanial came up beside him, arms folded, and shared a long look with Coryana.
She pressed her hand to Anavha’s shoulder. “There it is. You see?”
“And you didn’t even have to bleed on anything,” Natanial said.
“This is enough for today,” Coryana said. She was smiling for the first time, her voice full of warmth. “A controlled, first-time draw is the most difficult,” she said. “The rest will come easily, in comparison.”
Anavha started crying. He wasn’t even sure why this time.
“Hush now,” Coryana said.
“It was well done, Anavha,” Natanial said. “We’ll go home now, all right?”
But far from being proud, Anavha felt sick, and powerless.
Natanial hauled him back into his room – not ungently – but because Anavha refused to stand, he had to be dragged by the arm the whole way down the hall outside his cell. He was screaming the whole way, shrieking like he was dying, because it felt like dying, being pushed to do something, to be something, he did not want to be. And he was so tired.
Natanial dumped him in his room and closed the door.
Anavha lay on the floor in the dark for at least ten minutes more, sobbing until there were no tears, just huffing, choking anger.
Clouds roiled in the world beyond his little window, revealing the moons. A well-appointed prison was still a prison.
Anavha pulled off all his clothes and grabbed the empty wooden tray on the table. He smashed it against the table again and again until it splintered to pieces. He took the biggest piece and began sharpening it against the rough stone until he had a good point on it. Then he pressed it to his arm, sawing at flesh. When that didn’t work, he stabbed, and the tears came again. He was completely out of control. He had no control over his life. They had taken this too, his ability to decide what he ate, and what he did to his own body.
Slivers of wood embedded themselves into his flesh. He threw the stake away. It thunked on the far wall. He sagged to his knees and bowed in front of his wall of Aaldian poetry. He pressed his hands to the words and wiped them all out, smearing his hands in char.
When it was gone, he lay still on the floor, staring at the window.
The door opened.
Natanial came in, illuminated by the bold white light of the moons. Tall and lean, his beak of a nose made bolder by the shadows, he was like some bird of prey – powerful, beautiful.
“Oh, Anavha,” he said. He picked Anavha up and brought him to the bed and lay him down.
Anavha wrapped his arms around him and pressed his face to his warm chest. He was out of tears, but he trembled just the same.
“The world is mad,” Anavha said.
“Yes.” Natanial stroked his hair, pressed his rough hand against the nape of Anavha’s neck.
Anavha pulled away, so their faces were a breath apart. What he saw in Natanial’s gaze was the same unnamable thing he felt.
“Take me from here,” Anavha said.
Natanial traced the line of Anavha’s mouth. The desire his touch inspired coursed through Anavha’s body, hot and breathtaking. For a moment he felt a terrible shame, but who was here to see them? Not Zezili. Not the priestesses. He was aware of his nakedness, and the obviousness of his desire.
“If I take you, my own captive,” Natanial said softly, “a young man adrift in a strange land, then I’m no better than Zezili, am I? Power can be monstrous, can make men monstrous. I’m an artist, not a monster.”
“But I…” What? Anavha thought. What did he want, really? Did he know? “I want you,” he said, and it felt rebellious, impossible, like saying bears could dance in the clouds.
“You don’t know what you want.” Natanial released him. “We’ll take a day or two to rest, then start again. I know this is difficult, and difficult things can be painful, but it will make you stronger, more in control of your own life, do you understand?”
Anavha did not, but he nodded.
Natanial shut the door, leaving Anavha alone in the darkness.
Anavha sat a moment more before he realized how cool the room was. He pulled on his night gown and noticed s
omeone had put out his dinner earlier, before he returned to the room. He hadn’t even noticed.
Anavha pulled up a chair. The plate was heavy with thick hunks of rye bread piled in rice and meat gravy. They left no utensils. He wasn’t permitted eating sticks or the pronged implements that Tordinians used, but they usually left a spoon. Not this time. The smell of the cold food made him salivate. How long since he cared to notice hunger?
He ate with his fingers, smearing gravy on his chin, until the food was gone.
The next morning, he dressed and washed first thing, and sat waiting for Natanial at the table. He ate his breakfast, most of it, because he really was overfull.
While he waited he murmured the words of the poetry Coryana had been intoning all week. He wrote it onto the smeared charcoal wall with his charred stick. He concentrated on calling the breath of power, until he felt it crawling under his skin, a whisper, a whiff–
The door opened, and he lost the thread of power. The mist dissipated.
He stood, smiling, but it was not Natanial. It was Mays, looking apologetic.
“You’re cleaned up already?” he asked.
“Yes,” Anavha said. “I’m training with Natanial today.”
“Not today,” Mays said, “King Saradyn wants me to bring you downstairs. He wanted to make sure you were made up and presentable.”
Anavha smoothed his tunic. “I am.”
“Good, all right.” Nodding.
“What’s wrong?”
“No one’s told you, have they?”
“I’ve been training with Natanial.”
“So he didn’t say anything about it?”
“About what?”
Mays chewed his lip. “Maybe you can just–”
“What, Mays?”
“King Saradyn wants to present you to your wife,” he said. “Zezili Hasaria has been our captive for weeks, and he thinks she’s softened up enough to see you. They’re in the dining hall. I’ll–”
Anavha threw up his breakfast.
Mays rushed in. Just as he reached Anavha, Anavha bolted past him, still dry heaving. Mays slipped in the vomit, swore.
Anavha knew where the dining hall was.
33
Saradyn, the big fat man, came to her when the stump of her left hand was nearly healed. The white-frocked shit face of a “doctor” was happy to care for her wounds now that he had inflicted them. She gleefully bit off the tip of his nose during one of his checkups. He sent a younger man the next time, who wore a helmet with a face guard, as if he had come to do battle with her.
But when Saradyn finally came to see her – after how many weeks? – he brought only his dogs, two ugly runty dogs that stank terribly.
The room they put her in was something like a dining hall, a piss-poor place for an interrogation, if that’s what this was.
Saradyn pulled up a chair at the table across from her. It was a vast table, and could seat over thirty people. They sat at the middle, leaving a broad length of the knotty table between them. One of the dogs came up and sniffed at her. She kicked it. It whined.
Saradyn called the dog back.
“You speak real Dorinah?” Zezili asked, “Or are you too fucking stupid for it? Everyone in this country is a fucking stupid butcher. Is that all you can do? Shit in buckets and–”
Saradyn gestured to one of his men, some little one that Zezili hadn’t seen before. He held a large book. He dipped his head at Saradyn a few times, then once at her, as if he wasn’t sure how to greet her. It felt like some absurd parody. She flexed the phantom of her left hand.
“King Saradyn of Lind,” the man said, in passable Dorinah, “Laine’s Fist of–”
“Oh, get the fuck on with it,” Zezili said.
The man said something to Saradyn in Tordinian.
Saradyn spoke, not to him, but to her. He had a deep voice and odd eyes, hazel, maybe, yellow-brown. His thick, black hair fell into his face. He paused once to push it aside and stroke at his beard, as if from long habit.
His translator said, “King Saradyn wants to know why you brought a force into Tordin, and whether or not this is the Empress’s command, or yours.”
“I’m a rogue,” Zezili said. “Look at my face.” She leaned forward, sneering at him.
The translator prattled on.
Zezili leaned back, watching Saradyn’s face. Hard to believe this was the King the Empress once fucked. They said it’s why he thought so highly of himself. She had come down for Penelodyn’s body. He was nothing back then, just some petty lord that amused her, but he took the fucking to mean something it hadn’t. A lot of people around him had, too, and this is what it made him. Some mad, petty tyrant thinking he had tamed a woman who fucked anyone she fancied because she could.
“I heard you gave up your own family after she fucked you,” Zezili said. “I heard you murdered them in your bed because you heard voices, saw things, after she touched you. Women drive you mad? Is that why you had them cut my hand off? Because if that’s the worst you can think of, you’re a fucking fool.”
Saradyn glanced at the translator, whose expression was pained. They argued for a few minutes before Saradyn appeared to peel the translation out of him. Zezili could tell it was mostly accurate because Saradyn’s expression darkened. He made a retort.
“You forget that we have your husband,” the translator said.
“I’ve heard that, but I haven’t seen him. You chop something off him too? You can’t break me, you old fool. I’ve survived worse than you.”
Call and response. He said, “We’ll be happy to bring him in here and cut strips off him for every further question you refuse to answer.”
She grimaced, sat back. “Why should one more dead man matter to me?”
“Because you have come a good long distance to find him, have you not?”
“I don’t go mad over a good fuck the way you do.”
A pause. Smattering of words. Then, “Perhaps we can come to a more amicable agreement.”
“We can,” Zezili said, and for the first time in weeks she found the long thread of her advantage. She was not a clever person. She preferred brute force. But she had not come here to do the Empress’s bidding. She had come here to thwart her. And if she was killed here in this little dining hall, then she was dead for nothing, and the Empress would get away with what she’d done to her, and the dajians, and the whole bloody country. It went on and on. Death without revenge was just death.
“If I tell you what she’s here to do,” Zezili said, “you release me and Anavha. You can wait until you verify the story, that’s fine. But you release us.”
“Of course.”
His warm, bright eyes met hers as he said the equivalent in Tordinian. He even smiled, like a playful predator. A lie, she knew. She had been on the other side of the table enough times to know it was a lie. She and Anavha would both die, tortured and buried in some anonymous grave, because they were too uncivilized to burn their dead. She hoped only he would bury them together.
“She’s sent us to uncover some secret of hers, some weapon she buried out here,” Zezili said. “I came here because I fucking hate her. You understand what that’s like, don’t you? I could have said no, fucked off into my little life. But Anavha was gone, and half the dajians in the country were dead, and I knew I was going to be next, people like me. She was powerful as ever. I don’t know the exact location or what it is, but it’s north east of here, hidden in some anomaly on the map. A ring of mountains? Something like that. That’s where Storm, the other legion commander, is taking them.”
“So there’s no other army coming?”
“Not that I know about.”
“And there is another legion commander. Your force still has a leader?”
“The Empress doesn’t mind redundancies. She needs them, with the kind of place this is.”
Saradyn watched her in silence for some time. He steepled his fingers. It took a great deal of will not to look away, but sh
e refused to be first. Fuck him.
“You’ll go back to your army,” the translator said once Saradyn broke his silence. “But you’ll take two of our people. We want you embedded with the army again.”
Zezili thought a long moment. “What’s to keep me from killing your two men?”
Saradyn laughed, and the translator interpreted his next words, “You have one useless hand. We have the other. You could bite them to death, of course. I’ll be sure to tell them to cover their faces, like Saiduan children.” Saradyn laughed the whole time the translator said this, as if the entire idea was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
Heat bloomed on Zezili’s face. Is that what they thought of her now? They thought her impotent. She wanted to tell them she wasn’t so easily hobbled, but thought better of it. This was her only way to leave this shithole instead of being buried in it. Buried in the dirt, like refuse.
“I want to see my husband,” Zezili said.
Saradyn stood, said something to the translator, and whistled at the dogs.
The translator bowed his head. “We will return with your husband, of course,” he said. He left her there in the massive room with only two men at the doors on the other side of it for company.
She wanted to seethe, but she had been testing her bonds during the interview, and already worked her stump loose. It was difficult to secure someone with just one hand. She twisted her other hand free, but kept both behind her, looking for some kind of weapon.
Directly across from her was a huge hearth, big enough to stand in. Inside were two iron prongs for setting a roasting hunk of meat, and a skewer at the center fixed with curved metal tongs to hold the meat. Beside it was a metal container and what looked like a couple of fire pokers. She glanced again at the guards. Flexed her bad right hand. The remaining fingers barely curled into her fist. How to pick it up, and once she held it, keep hold of it while bashing someone in the face?
She yelled at the guards. “Hey! Hey!”
They ignored her, and it occurred to her that they wouldn’t be able to speak Dorinah. She could yell at them a lot, make a fuss, but they weren’t going to come over. She assessed their weapons. Swords and daggers. No ranged weapons.
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 81
