Time's Children

by D. B. Jackson

  “Do you hate him?”

  Tobias blinked, his vision blurred by tears. “Why would I?”

  “Why wouldn’t you? Fourteen years he cost you. That’s time enough to create a life for yourself. To live and love–” His voice caught, but then he went on. “And work and build something that could last into your dotage.” He narrowed his glance. “I would guess fourteen years represents half your life. Or rather half your age as you appear now. You couldn’t have been much more than fourteen when you Walked. Isn’t that right?”

  He answered with a tentative nod.

  “So why don’t you hate him?”

  Tobias glanced at the other man, the one who could hurt him with a turn of that iron handle.

  “I ask out of curiosity,” the assassin said, pulling his gaze back. “This once, if you don’t wish to tell me, you don’t have to. But I truly would like to know.”

  He would have shrugged if he could. “He didn’t make me Walk. He couldn’t. There are contracts. Any Walk of over a year is proscribed. I chose to do this for him. He explained what he wanted and why, and I agreed to help him.”

  “And look where it landed you. A boy in a man’s body, held for torture in Mearlan’s own dungeon. There’s a bit of justice there, don’t you think?”

  Tobias refused to respond, even knowing it might result in another turn.

  It didn’t.

  “Very well,” the assassin said. “There remains the matter of the princess. Where is she?”

  Even having prepared for this, he couldn’t keep himself from going cold at the question. The assassin must have sensed his panic. His grin put Tobias in mind of a jackal.

  “You mean the sovereign princess? Mearlan’s–”

  The man lifted the torch and held it at the base of Tobias’s neck. The heat of the flame scorched his chin and cheeks.

  He gritted his teeth, willing himself not to scream.

  “You know damn well who I mean,” the assassin said, lowering the torch, though, Tobias knew, not for long. “Where is she?”

  “Isn’t she dead?”

  The man thrust the torch so hard that it hit Tobias’s skin, again at the hollow of his neck. He couldn’t help but wail, and the assassin held it there for so long that Tobias was certain his flesh must have blackened and peeled back.

  When the man finally pulled the flame away, Tobias sagged, the strain on his shoulder making him whimper. His throat was raw and his heart labored. He didn’t know how much of this he could endure. He hoped not a lot. Death would be a welcome escape. Better that than betrayal of Sofya, Jivv, and Elinor.

  “You’re not fooling me. And you’re not saving her, not really. Eventually you’ll break. Everyone does. At which point, I will know what I want to know, and you will have surrendered, and all that you endure here will be for nothing. Spare yourself. Answer my questions, and I’ll lower you from those chains. I’ll put this torch back where it belongs. Your suffering will end.”

  Tobias forced his eyes open to stare down at the man. And he made himself smile. “What was the question again?” he asked, managing no more than a hoarse whisper.

  Flame and agony and screams torn from his gut.

  “You are a fool,” the assassin said. “You’re not brave, and you’re not winning.” He handed the torch to the man standing at the winch.

  “Do what you like. Just don’t kill him. When I come back, I want him so eager to speak he can’t contain himself.”

  The man wearing black nodded, exchanged glances with the other two dressed like him, and said something to the assassin in Oaqamaran. They didn’t smile or leer at him or give any indication that they relished the thought of torture. Their stoicism only served to chill Tobias more. He didn’t doubt that they would prove all too adept at their task.

  The assassin left the chamber without so much as a glance at Tobias. The echo of his tread on the stairway faded until it vanished.

  The three men clustered near the winch, speaking in low tones. Tobias heard little of what they said, and could decipher even less. Not that he needed to in order to get the gist.

  They took their time gathering tools. Blades, additional torches, pikes, ball hammers, chains. Tobias tried to fix his eyes on the wall in front of him, but he couldn’t help but glance down with each clatter of a new implement. Anticipation of what was to come left him shuddering with every drawn breath, his throat so thick he could hardly swallow without choking. No matter what they did to him, he thought, it couldn’t be as bad as what he imagined in those endless moments of dread.

  He had never been more wrong.

  They started with blades. Honed to a razor’s edge and heated over torches, they bit and burned with every touch. In short order, they had sliced him open in so many places that blood pooled on the floor beneath him. Yet only when they began to rub lye in the wounds did he surrender to tears and howls. Again he writhed against his restraints, further abusing his shoulder, but unable to stop himself.

  After that, they took up the ball hammers, and the true horror began. Blows to his knees and elbows, his aching shoulders and ribs, the bones just below his thumb and at his wrist.

  At some point, mercifully, he lost consciousness.

  When next he was aware, he lay on the stone floor, manacles still holding his feet, but his arms free. Not that he could do anything with them.

  “Drink this.”

  He forced his eyes open. The assassin knelt beside him holding a metal cup. Tobias flinched away. The man’s breath stank of wine.

  “It’s just water. You have my word. I’m not yet ready to kill you.”

  Odd that this should reassure him, but it did. He allowed the man to raise the cup to his mouth and he sipped the water, which was cool and sweet, though it stung his cracked lips.

  He lay back on the floor, not caring that his head rested on stone.

  “My men will return before long. Tonight maybe, or tomorrow. And they’ll resume their… their work.”

  Tobias’s lips quivered and tears leaked from his eyes. Perhaps he should have shown more courage in the face of the torture. Maybe he would have had he been as old as he appeared, but he was a boy still, on the inside. He had never endured anything remotely like this. The one gap in his Windhome training.

  “Or,” the man went on, his voice as gentle as a spring rain, “you can tell me what I wish to know, and all this will be over.”

  “Is that what you would do?” Tobias asked. The words came out as mangled as his body, but the assassin seemed to understand.

  “To escape torture? Of course.”

  Tobias eyed him. Even on his knees in the filthy dungeon, the man appeared elegant, impressive.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  The assassin regarded him in turn, his expression thoughtful.

  “What I would do is irrelevant,” he said. “This is your decision. And you’ve all but admitted now that you know where she is.”

  Maybe he should have been dismayed by this. He hadn’t thought through the question when he asked it. The miasma of pain had robbed him of his judgment. But it didn’t matter. The assassin assumed he knew, and nothing Tobias told him would have convinced him otherwise.

  “You’ll kill her,” Tobias said.

  “Yes. She’s dangerous. Mearlan’s lone heir. Already there’s unrest in the city. If these people were to learn that she lives, they’d rally around her. She’d become a symbol of hope. We can’t allow that.”

  “Can’t stop it. Whoever has her has eluded you so far.”

  “Days.” He said it so dismissively, Tobias wanted to hit him. “Anyone could do that.”

  “Who do you work for? Don’t tell me Sheraigh. I know better. Who really?”

  The assassin shook his head. “I have secrets, too. The difference is, yours are poorly hidden.”

  He allowed Tobias to drink more water. Again Tobias smelled the wine on him.

  “Your name?” Tobias asked, croaking the words.

 
“You wish to know my name? Why?”

  “Want to know who is killing me.”

  “You’re killing yourself.” A pause and then. “I believe to you I’m ‘minister.’”

  No, you’re the assassin. Tobias didn’t say this. He didn’t say anything. He waited.

  Eventually a dry huff of a laugh escaped him. “All right. I’m Quinnel Orzili. I come from the Sisters, as you do, from a tiny fishing village on Safsi. I was taken to Windhome as a boy. I was trained and tutored there.” His gaze strayed over Tobias’s form, taking in the damage his men had done. “We’re not all that different, you and I. That’s a cliché, of course, something that men in my position say to men in yours in an attempt to win their favor. In this case, however, there’s more than a little truth to it. The fact is,” he went on after a fivecount, “I could use a Walker. Another one.”

  “Offering me a job?” Tobias asked, exhaling the words.

  “Hardly. I’m lamenting the waste.”

  Tobias thought of the lad he’d killed, and of a similar remark the Tirribin had made. It seemed like days ago.

  “You’re not the first.”

  Orzili frowned. “Meaning?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it does.” He allowed Tobias to drink a bit more. Then he climbed unsteadily to his feet, looming over him. “Where is she, Tobias? Where is the princess?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Orzili shook his head and dashed the contents of the water cup onto Tobias’s torso. It splashed onto several lye-burned gashes. Tobias cried out, a spasm of anguish contorting his body.

  “As I said before, you’re a fool.”

  He kicked Tobias in the knee, and another wave of agony pulsed through him. His stomach heaved and he vomited the water he’d just swallowed.

  “I’m trying to keep you alive, but you’re making this very difficult.”

  Orzili left him, climbed the stairs, and let himself out of the dungeon. Tobias lay still, too sore to move, too frightened and dispirited to consider how he might escape this place.

  But pride, it seemed, could be a balm, and as Chancellor Shaan had observed long ago, in a future destroyed by all that had happened since Tobias’s Walk back through the years, arrogance had long been the most obvious of his flaws. He made himself sit up, this most simple of motions bringing waves of torment.

  His breeches were in tatters, stained and rigid with blood. His discarded shirt lay beyond reach.

  The iron cuffs clamped around his ankles had no locks on them. Under other circumstances, it would have been but a small matter to unfasten them, but his hands were swollen and stiff. He could barely bend his fingers, much less use them for anything so intricate and difficult.

  He didn’t bother trying to stand. The pain in his knees was unbearable. Putting weight on them was out of the question. He scanned the chamber in which they’d left him, searching for a way out. If he could remove the manacles. If he could walk, or even crawl.

  His torturers had left their blades and other tools on a table near the entrance to the chamber. Apparently they didn’t believe him capable of freeing himself.

  Which made him want to try. Pride again. A balm and a spur both.

  He fumbled with the clasps at his ankles. An iron pin, with an eye and hook at one end, had been pushed through a set of alternating curls. If he could remove the hook, and push out the pin, the cuff would fall open.

  And if he could grow wings, he might fly like a Belvora.

  He was still trying when Orzili’s men returned.

  Try as he might, Tobias couldn’t stop himself from cowering at their approach. When they reached once more for the blades and lye, he started to sob.

  Chapter 26

  24th Day of Sipar’s Settling, Year 633

  Sleep eluded her. Elinor remained suspicious of the dark-skinned man the God had brought into their lives. She thought it likely that he would bring the wrath of Hayncalde’s new masters down on their small household. Perhaps tonight.

  That, she told herself, was why she feared for him. She dreaded the mischief he’d get into, and the consequences for Jivv and her. And for the wee one the lad had carried with him. The babe – the sovereign princess – who had stolen into their lives, and into Elinor’s heart.

  The man was trouble. For all she knew, his tale of what happened the night of Mearlan IV’s assassination was some elaborate fabrication he’d dreamed up for reasons Sipar himself couldn’t fathom. Maybe he’d stolen the child.

  At a cost.

  There could be no disputing the seriousness of his injuries. He had come through a fight. At least one. Jivv remained worried about that wound on his back. Clearly it still pained the man. Yet he’d gone out into the night. Far from finding excuses to remain with them and live off their charity, like vermin on a dog, he seemed determined to leave, to unburden them and spirit the girl away. Maybe, just maybe, he was what he claimed.

  In truth, Elinor desperately hoped this was so, and she worried for him with a fervor she usually reserved for her own sons.

  The wee one cried out in her sleep and began to fuss. Jivv stirred.

  “I’ll get her,” Elinor said, throwing off her blanket. “I’m awake anyway.”

  “So am I.”

  She glanced at him, found him staring back at her, eyes clear in the faint glow of moonlight seeping in at the corners of the shuttered windows. A moment’s shared look. After all their years together, that was all she needed to know he was concerned as well, wondering, like her, what they would do with the princess if Tobias didn’t return.

  Elinor crossed to the cradle, where the wee one cried and beat her tiny legs. Her swaddling smelled.

  “All right,” Elinor whispered, lifting her from the blankets. “Let’s get you dry and maybe see if you’re hungry. How does that sound?”

  The princess quieted, but continued to snuffle.

  “He should have been back long ago,” Jivv said, eyeing the door.

  Elinor retrieved fresh swaddling from a pile by the cradle, and untied the corner knots on the damp cloth the wee one wore.

  “It will have taken him some time to get there and back,” she answered. “Avoiding patrols and all. And who knows what questions the priests and priestesses might have for him? Besides, I have the sense he can take care of himself.”

  “Do you now? Is that why you’ve been lying awake for the better part of two bells?”

  She cast another glance his way.

  “He’s odd,” she said, turning her attention back to the wee one. “He’s strong one moment and utterly lost the next. I don’t know what to make of him.”

  “Nor do I. But I trust he cares about her, and I’ve been trying to tell myself that if he managed to escape Mearlan’s assassins, he should be able to find his way past Sheraigh blue.”

  She wanted to believe this.

  Once changed, the princess was wide awake. Elinor carried her to the kitchen, retrieved some bread and goat’s milk, and sat. As she soaked morsels of bread for the babe, she watched the door, aware that Jivv watched her. Crow padded over, hoping for a bite of his own, but she shooed him away.

  Eventually Jivv returned to their bed, wordless, his steps light. Crow settled near the hearth, chin on his paws, eyes on Elinor. The princess lost interest in food and her eyes drooped. Soon she was asleep, but still Elinor held her, watching the door, her ears tuned to the lane. At one point she thought she heard furtive steps on the cobblestone, and relief flooded her heart. The sound drifted off, and the door never opened. Her fears returned, redoubled.

  She kept herself up for another two bells before setting the wee one in the cradle and slipping into bed.

  “I’ll search for him come morning,” Jivv said, sounding very much awake.

  “How?”

  “Quietly, carefully. If he can be found, I’ll find him.”

  He’d been like this since the day she met him. Never boastful, but reassuring, competent, c
onfident. She harried him at times, and teased him every day, but she wouldn’t have known how to live without him. She laid a hand on his shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  She did slumber, but only in fits and starts. Each time she woke, she raised her head to peer at Tobias’s blankets. They remained as they had been, empty and undisturbed.

  In the morning, as Elinor fed the babe again, Jivv donned an overshirt and called Crow to his side. But during the course of the night, she had come to a decision.

  “Don’t go to the temple,” she said.

  He scowled. “Why not?”

  “Because I should go.”

  “This is not–”

  “When was the last time you darkened the sanctuary gate?”

  His scowl deepened, but he didn’t answer.

  “You and that mutt are liable to draw the attention of every soldier in Hayncalde if you go within three lanes of those spires. Best I go. The temple guards know my face. If he’s not with the priests, they won’t think twice of having me come and go. And if he is, they’ll know me well enough to trust me.”

  Jivv shook his head. “I don’t like this.”

  “Of course not. You never liked being left alone with the wee ones.”

  “That’s not… I did fine by our boys.”

  She nodded. “Yes, you did. And you’ll do fine by this lovely lass.”

  The first hint of panic widened his eyes.

  “I’ve never cared for a girl,” he said, his voice dropping nearly to a whisper.

  “Now you sound like Tobias. It’s not all that different, and a man your age ought to be familiar enough with the differences there are.”

  His cheeks reddened, which usually would have made her laugh. At her mention of the lad’s name, though, both of them had sobered.

  “Aye, all right,” he said. He pulled off his overshirt and took the princess from her. “Have a care,” he said, his brown eyes locked on hers.

  “I will.”

  He bent and kissed her on the lips, something he hadn’t done in some time. She caressed his cheek. Then she pivoted, stepped to the door, and left the house.

  Her hands shook, and she couldn’t help but pause on the footpath to scan the lane, like a thief scenting trouble.