The Science of Power

by Emerson, Ru

  “Hell,” he mumbled into his cup, “I wish they’d get in here, get it over with.” Ariadne reached across the little table and gripped his fingers. Her eyes were very dark.

  “This is—how he did always with me, to make worse the punishment. The extra hours to think.”

  Chris finished his tea, grimaced. The stuff had an odd aftertaste. “Yeah, well, he’s doing a great job.”

  It was nearly midday before the door opened again; Chris, who had been pacing the floor for more than an hour, stopped in the middle of the room; dread sent his pulse pounding. Ariadne looked up from the book she had been pretending to read—Chris hadn’t seen her turn a page yet. Her face was expressionless; Chris hoped his was. Maurice stepped aside to let Dupret and Lucette enter, then closed the door behind him.

  Dupret held a small pistol where they could see it and understand the threat it represented, then let the arm fall casually to his side. He touched Lucette’s shoulder, gestured with his head; Lucette carried another pistol, rather as though she feared it might bite her, then crossed the room and stood, arms folded, at Ariadne’s side. Ariadne ignored her, closed the book, and let it drop to her lap. Silence; no one moved. Maurice broke the moment by fetching one of the straight-backed chairs and setting it with a clatter in the middle of the room. “You might save us a small amount of trouble,” Dupret remarked, “by telling me where your friend and the woman are.” Chris shook his head; he didn’t trust his voice at the moment. Maurice gripped his arm and shoved him onto the chair. “Your friend and the woman,” Dupret said again, very softly. There was tension in the words.

  “Like I’d tell you anything,” Chris said flatly. He didn’t sound anywhere as scared as he felt at the moment. Swell. Small blessing, he thought sourly.

  Dupret laughed. “Oh? I should say, you will eventually. Whether you wish it or not.” Chris shook his head once again. Maurice smacked him across the face with an enormous, open hand, knocking him from the chair; lights exploded behind his eyes. The bodyguard picked him up with no effort at all and shoved him back onto the chair; this time one hard hand held him there. Dupret’s breath ruffled the hair against his ear. “Your friend. And the woman.” Chris didn’t even bother to shake his head this time. Maurice hit him again, several swift, open-handed blows. His lip was swelling rapidly; there was blood on his tongue and he couldn’t see clearly.

  Question, silence, more hard slaps; his ears rang. “Your friend,” Maurice said flatly. His voice was low, gravelly, his French so oddly accented that Chris didn’t realize at first what he’d said. “And the woman. Where?”

  He drew a deep breath, shook his head. Maurice let go of his shoulder, took a short step back, and slammed an enormous fist into his body, brought another up under his jaw when the first blow doubled him over. His neck snapped; everything went blue-white.

  “Wait a little, Maurice.” Dupret’s voice reached him from what seemed a very great, echoing distance. “Until he can talk again—if he chooses, of course. But, if not—”

  He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think: Not yet. Nothing yet. Just—stall him. Maurice hauled him upright; his lower ribs protested sharply and he let out a shrill squawk, nothing like his own voice. A rapid exchange of French, much too fast for him to follow in the best of circumstances—Lucette and Dupret, and then something from Ariadne. “Silence!” Lucette snarled at her.

  He forced his eyes to open; everything swam. Dupret leaned over him. “The woman, your friend. Tell me now.”

  Chris swallowed. “You—go to Hell.” Dupret backhanded him; not hard at all, compared to what Maurice had done. The Frenchman smiled then; his eyes were all pupil and very bright.

  “No doubt I shall go there, but in my own time, not yours. Do you wish to be there first to await me? You and she both? Ariadne,” he said evenly. “You might save him a little discomfort—”

  “Gimme a break,” Chris growled. “You think I’d’ve trusted her with anything important?”

  “Ariadne?” Dupret asked. Silence. “You will answer your father when he speaks to you, Ariadne!” he snapped furiously.

  “Canaille!” she spat at him. “What would you? You put me in his lap, part of his baggage, and you think that now I am his wife and now he adores me? I am the child of Henri Dupret! Stupid Papa! The entire journey, he tells me nothing, but that we go here, then we go there, finally we go to New Lisbon. We leave the train and suddenly there are only we two, him and I, but when I ask where is my maid, where my baggage—he swears filthy words in my face, then says to me, ‘Be still, you fool of a woman!’”

  Dupret laughed very quietly. “Ah. M. Cray, do you not like my daughter? She is young and beauteous, like her mama, have you no taste? Or—is it that you truly do not trust her? You think—what? That I set her to spy upon you, for me?” He laughed. “My poor, misunderstood Ariadne. What a pity you will never have the opportunity to straighten that matter; I weep for you.” Silence, a long one. Dupret finally stepped back, motioned Maurice forward. Chris set his teeth together and closed his eyes as Maurice smiled and brought his fist up.

  He lost track of time, of how many times and where the huge bodyguard struck him. Somehow, he was flat on the floor again, with no recollection of landing there. His ears whined shrilly; his whole body hurt. Maurice grabbed his collar and threw him back into the chair; ribs, his stomach—half a dozen things shrieked protest. Dupret pinched his ear. “Where?” he whispered.

  “Not—no.” He couldn’t manage anything else.

  “Where? Wait, Maurice—your hands are clearly of no more use, he plans you beat him until he has no more wit to respond, or you kill him. Besides, I grow bored with this.” He grabbed the long tail of hair and yanked Chris’s head back, slamming the back of his skull against the chair. His eyes flew open. Two of Dupret, hovering over him; two of Maurice, looming behind the nobleman. “One—final—time.”

  “Can’t—”

  “You can. Maurice.” Dupret kept his grip on Chris’s hair, stepped to the side; Ariadne’s voice spiraled as the bodyguard brought up a long-bladed dagger. Maurice was laughing; he drew the blade down Chris’s arm, pulled it away with a flourish. A line of blood followed.

  Chris stared at the slash that ran from elbow to wrist, at the blood-tipped dagger Maurice held, ready to cut him again. It slashed down, hard, across his knuckles. The room spun; he caught at his bleeding arm with his right hand, but Maurice slapped the fingers aside with no effort at all. He was smiling, intent clear in his eyes. Oh, God; he’s gonna cut me to ribbons. He wants to cut me to ribbons. Chris suddenly couldn’t even breathe; if he’d been able to speak, he was no longer sure what words might come out. New Lisbon, then went north from there, Madrone, the Camroon Inn Spider, they’re waiting to hear from me—He didn’t dare say that, couldn’t, they’d all die! He couldn’t; he caught his breath harshly as the dagger came up, hilt wrapped in Maurice’s steady, capable, huge hand; the bloodied point neared his face. My—blood. I’m gonna bleed to death, right—right, oh, God, right here. Ariadne was screaming at her father; Lucette shouting furiously at her to shut up. Blood ran the length of his arm, across his hand; his knuckles throbbed and burned but he couldn’t feel his fingers at all. Blood soaking into his pants leg…

  Ariadne was still shrieking, swearing furiously; Dupret turned and shouted back at her, and one hand clutched Maurice’s dagger arm. Momentary respite—all that hysteria on Ariadne’s part, just enough time for him to remember what was important. What he’d planned, what he must say. Word—for—word. He swallowed bile, licked puffy, bleeding lips. “Oh, God, all—all right. Tell you, don’t—don’t cut me again.” He caught his breath harshly; his whole body sagged.

  Dupret couldn’t have understood the words, even if he’d been able to hear over the two women. He surely knew defeat when he saw it, though. “Ariadne!” he bellowed. “Be still or I shall let Maurice make a study of your face with that blade, so this man will never again look upon you with anything but horror! If I
allow him to live beyond this hour! Or you!” Sudden, blessed silence. Dupret let it spin out for some moments, then demanded, very softly, “Where?”

  “They—stayed behind. San Philippe.”

  “No. A lie; they were not at any hotel, my man checked.”

  He could barely understand his own words, his mouth was so swollen. “No—no, swear, no hotel. Stayed—with a man, we do business with his brother. Outside of—of town.”

  “Outside of town?” Chris nodded carefully. “Explain this to me—why?”

  “We do—that. Travel separately, most times. ‘Specially this last year. So—if my ship was—stopped or”—he swallowed—“or wrecked, or if you—well, anyway, one of us would be all right. Could report where the—the other was.” He shivered back into the chair as Maurice fingered the edge of his knife.

  Dupret chuckled softly, maliciously. “It did not work so well, did it? This—this plan. The man Edrith has made report about you and her to no one; surely he has run, and still runs, to be away from me, and my agents. Perhaps all the way back to his native Rhadaz. He has sense for his own skin, though clearly none for yours. All the same, we will find him. Even in Rhadaz, if we must.” Silence. Dupret’s fingers dug into his shoulder. “Where—what place in San Philippe?”

  Chris shook his head cautiously, but as Maurice loomed over him once more, he swallowed and said hastily, “Wait, no! P-please. All—right. After—after we left on the Maborre, they came into town, to—to the Coq d’Or. They’re—ah, hell.” His voice cracked, tears blurred his vision; he was breaking down totally and sickened by the whimpering wreck that was himself. I broke. I couldn’t take it. “They’re—they were going to take the next ship to New Lisbon, after ours, from San Philippe. Meet us there.”

  “Where in New Lisbon?” Dupret prodded.

  Chris sagged; he shook his head. His voice trembled. “The—I can’t remember—the name of the inn—”

  “You remember it. Where?” Dupret’s voice slammed into him, the man’s fingers dug into his shoulder. Chris caught his breath painfully, nodded.

  “That, there’s a British inn, just up—the main road from—from the docks.”

  “The Lion?”

  “I—yeah,” Chris mumbled. “That’s it.” He opened his eyes. Dupret’s face, uncomfortably close to his own face, was blurred by the tears in his eyes. The man’s breath—garlic and brandy scented—threatened to make him ill.

  “You might have said all this before and saved yourself some discomfort.” Dupret smiled, a most unpleasant smile. His eyes were dangerously black. “How strange, M. Cray: a man of your size and strength, and yet you turn pale as a woman and weep at the sight of so little of your own blood.” The smile broadened; he patted Chris’s cheek in a travesty of compassion. “I will remember this; if you have told me anything not the truth, I will know before very long, and you will pay for the waste of time and the lie. I can see a man spin his life out, a drop of his own blood at a time; it takes a very long time to die so.” He waited. Chris stared back at him, finally shook his head. “There is nothing you would alter about your story? Remembering Maurice has the knife, and does not like it at all if he must wait a day or so between the second cut and the third?”

  “Yeah,” Chris mumbled; his face felt flushed. “I’d keep my mouth shut.”

  “I doubt that, M. Cray. Very much, I doubt it.” Chris doubted it, too. Dupret straightened, leveled a long arm at Ariadne, and his eyes held that flat, half-crazy black stare. “You, Ariadne! Remember what has passed here this morning; remember particularly that Maurice does not like you, and why this is! What he does to injure those he does not like. And then, consider if you can perhaps recall two so small things for your beloved papa: where is the silver box with the Incan emeralds, and what particular lies did you write to your Uncle Philippe in France, to cause trouble for me?” He didn’t wait for an answer, merely snapped his fingers imperiously as he let go of Chris’s arm, turned, and strode away. Maurice was already at the door, holding it open; a pale Lucette went out rather quickly, followed by Dupret. Somehow, Chris braced his feet against the small carpet, kept himself in the chair until the door closed and the outside bar fell into place. He sagged then, his eyes closed. He was blessedly unconscious before he hit the floor.

  He was awake in what could only have been a few moments later; Ariadne had dragged his body around so that his head was in her lap and she was both weeping and cursing as she tried to tie one of her handkerchiefs around his fingers. He hissed sharply; pressure made the cut almost unbearable. His ribs hurt, sharp stabbing pain when he tried to take a breath; his stomach suddenly lurched, and the room was much too warm. “Don’t—Ari, don’t, wait a minute, let me—” He swallowed hard; there was an awful taste in his mouth and he was sweating freely now. “Gotta—oh, hell.”

  “Wait.” She couldn’t have understood much of what he was trying to say, but his intent was clear. “Not here, the balcony.” She got to her feet, hooked her arms under his, and pulled urgently; the small rug slid with him but in jolts as whatever normally held the rug in place tried to grip the slick floor. Chris briefly scrabbled with his feet but it wouldn’t move. No time. He desperately tapped her arm and shook his head. She let go of his arms at once but quickly bent down to help him onto his hands and knees as he fought himself up that way, then steadied him as best she could so he could crawl the last few feet to the small balcony. He barely made it into open air before everything came up. Someone down in the courtyard shouted, a man’s wordless yelp of disgust and surprise; Ariadne snarled something back at Dupret’s guard, then steadied Chris’s shoulders as he tried to get his heaving stomach under control. Without any success.

  Silence. Chris concentrated on breathing for some long moments. Ariadne finally scrambled to her feet, touched his jaw very lightly. “Wait, do not move, I bring you a little water.”

  Never gonna move again, Chris thought dazedly; the reaction had him trembling so hard he didn’t dare try to move. His stomach was threatening to let go yet again. The cut on his arm—it was nearly the length of his forearm, and sweat made it sting worse than ever, but it wasn’t bleeding quite as much, or so he hoped. Not like the slice across his upper knuckles: Ariadne’s handkerchief had soaked through. Dizzy. How much blood have I actually lost, I wonder? Ariadne was back at his side, one arm around his shoulders, a cool, wet cloth blotting his bruised lips; she dropped it, held a cup for him. “Only a swallow,” she warned softly against his ear. He nodded very cautiously, rolled liquid around his mouth, then spit it out. He averted his eyes at once; it came out very red.

  Someone below them in the courtyard was grumbling in furious gutter French. “Ah, die of it, you bastard!” Ariadne snarled. Chris leaned gratefully against her, cradled the cup between shaking hands, then took another mouthful, swallowed it, and let his eyes close. “Think—it’s gonna stay put. But—sit here,” he whispered. “Just—a minute, okay?”

  “I will gut him for this!” Ariadne sounded very near tears all at once. He held up a hand, she fell silent. After a few moments, the world around him settled a little; his stomach churned and his lower ribs hurt in sharp, nasty little bursts. But the nausea had eased—enough.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “Let’s—get back inside. No,” he added as she tried to help him up. “I got—no pride left, sweetheart, I’ll stay down here, just don’t—let me fall over, huh? I think my—my ribs are shot.”

  It took what felt like forever to get as far as her bed, and then he simply couldn’t pull himself onto it. Ariadne stripped the lightweight down coverlet off, dropped a pillow on the small carpet and eased him onto it, then drew the coverlet to his shoulders, covering him as completely as possible. She sat down next to him, cloth in hand. “I—I do not know what to do to help you,” she said desperately.

  “I—yeah.” He freed a hand, gripped her fingers. “Look, it’s okay, everything’s gonna be fine. I—I wasn’t yelling at you, just now, honestly—”

  �
��If that mattered—”

  “So’s—you know. I’m just—” He couldn’t get any more words out; he was chilled, his body was wracked with shudders of cold despite both the thick, silky thing she’d wrapped around him and the warmth of the afternoon. That’s shock, he realized dully. Hard to care. You have to, though. You don’t dare sleep. If they come back, if Ariadne’s alone, and you out cold—Whatever. Impossible to get excited about any of it; he just wanted to be warm, to sleep—his eyes sagged closed; his whole body ached like he’d just come down with a flu.

  Her lips brushed his forehead. “Sleep, my Chris,” she whispered against his ear. “I will watch. They won’t come again today, it is—is all right. Sleep, and I watch over you.” She repeated the words; meaningless, soothing words. He nodded and, between one word and another, fell asleep.

  It was quiet, and moistly warm in the large room when he woke; Ariadne had fallen asleep on the floor next to him. He lay very still for a long moment, eyes half-open, watching her sleep. It wasn’t fair: Dupret was probably going to kill him as soon as he found no Eddie in San Philippe, and he’d either kill Ariadne, too, or sell her to one of his rich-pig buddies. Which was infinitely worse. He swallowed past a suddenly tight throat. Some way to get her out of this.

  He must have been speaking aloud, unaware he was. Ariadne’s eyelashes fluttered. She gazed at him, eyes searching his face; her mouth, which had been full and soft in sleep, hardened. “No. Both of us away from this place, or neither. I do not leave without you.” He opened his mouth; she laid soft fingers against bruised lips. “No. Has anything you said so far to send me away, proven of use? And that was—was before—” She kissed her fingertips, touched his lips again, glanced at the window, then sat up in one fluid movement. “Can you move at all, get from the floor to the chair, or my bed?” she asked.