The young king was holding back his emotions by sheer force of will. “They tell me Declan Hawkes is dead too. He died trying to free Stellan.”
“Tides, why would he do that?” Tryan asked. He looked at his sister with a frown. “That was really very inconsiderate of him to get himself killed. Who’s going to supervise the search for my fiancée now?”
Mathu turned on the man he believed was nothing more than a nobleman with his eye on the Caelish throne. “How dare you, sir! Have you no common decency? People have died down in that fire tonight, and all you can think of is your own troubles?” He turned to Kylia. “Come, my dear. Jaxyn thinks it would be a good idea for us to visit the hall where they’re laying out the bodies and treating the injured.”
“Of course,” she agreed. “I’ll join you in a moment, dear.”
The young king nodded to his wife, glared at the Caelish visitors for a moment and then left the balcony. Once they heard the door slamming behind him, Diala turned to the other immortals. “Don’t worry about your child bride. Hawkes was efficient enough and our intelligence service isn’t reliant on just one man. We’ll find your little princess for you and send her home when we do.” Without waiting for them to answer, she left the balcony to join her husband on his tour of the fire-damaged part of the city.
“Cecil!” she snapped on the way past. “Come.”
Warlock followed the queen outside into the corridor. Diala stopped and turned to look up at him. “Lord Jaxyn says you’re very loyal, Cecil.”
“To serve you and Lord Jaxyn is the reason I breathe, my lady.”
“Will that loyalty withstand a test, I wonder?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean, my lady.”
“If you were commanded by another…of our kind…whose orders would take precedence?”
Warlock had often wondered the same thing about true Crasii. If they were ordered to do conflicting things by two different Tide Lords, whose orders would be obeyed? The most recent orders? Or the first orders the Crasii received?
For the sake of this discussion, Warlock guessed the answer Diala wanted to hear. “The orders of my first master would be those I felt most compelled to follow, my lady.”
She smiled, patting his arm. “There’s a good boy, Cecil. I was hoping you would say that. Now go back and take care of our guests. I’ll call for you when I need you.”
Warlock bowed respectfully. “As you wish, my lady.”
She turned to leave, but halted as Warlock was turning to the door. “And Cecil?”
“Yes, my lady?
“You were a gift to me from Lady Ponting. I want you to remember that. You’re mine, which means you must follow my orders first, even before Lord Jaxyn. Do you understand?”
“I understand, my lady.”
She beamed at him. “Good boy. Off you go then.”
This time, Warlock waited until he was sure she wasn’t coming back, before returning to the visiting Caelish Tide Lords, wondering why she thought it was so important that he follow her orders first.
And what would happen to the plans of the Cabal of the Tarot now that Declan Hawkes was dead.
Because Boots’s time was drawing nearer every day, and unless the Cabal contacted him soon, and provided him with a compelling reason to stay, the first chance he had to escape, now that Hawkes wasn’t here to order him to do otherwise, Warlock was heading home.
Chapter 66
The trip from the Abbey of the Way of the Tide to Elvere was short, only three days compared to the fifteen-day trek the same trip had taken from Ramahn. Arkady spent most of it in a state of frantic despair, and trying to find a way to escape her fate. She debated fleeing the caravan, but knew she’d not survive in the desert long without food or water, even this close to a city. She made plans to flee as soon as they reached the outskirts of Elvere. To find the inn Tiji spoke of. If she unexpectedly jumped off Terailia (didn’t break an ankle as she landed) and fled into the slums, before they had time to find her, then maybe they wouldn’t pursue her…
Arkady’s planning usually stopped at that point. She had no idea where The Dog and Bone was, or the slave markets it was near, either. And she knew, better than anyone, how hard it was for a stranger to find sanctuary in the slums of a foreign city. She’d grown up in the Lebec slums and knew how they treated outsiders there. Her poor grasp of Torlenian, her lack of money, her lack of anything but her own body to offer in trade meant hiding in the slums would, more than likely, produce the same result as being sold into slavery. The only difference was, in slavery she would be fed regularly and quite possibly treated well if she was lucky enough to be purchased by a slaver with even a shred of humanity in him.
Brynden’s prediction she would be sold as a concubine was probably correct. Arkady knew, without vanity, that she was healthy, considered beautiful, and in the Elvere slave markets, would be thought of as exotically foreign. The only thing likely to go against her was her age. She was twenty-eight. If the slavers of Torlenia liked their meat young and tender, she may well be sold as a drudge, doomed to a life of hard labour on a date farm or olive plantation, or worse. Sold off before Tiji could find her and be sent…where?
Somewhere Jaxyn would never find her.
For a time, the idea almost seemed attractive. To disappear; to put her entire life behind her. To start afresh as someone else, someone with no ambition, no expectations, no desire to do anything but get through the day, and survive the night, only to repeat the whole process again on the morrow…
Somewhere Declan could never find her, either.
Arkady caught herself daydreaming like that once too often. She recognised the symptoms of despair and forced herself not to give in to them. She was alive, in one piece, and while ever she drew breath, she could fight. If she was sold as a concubine, so be it. It might not even be that bad. Many Torlenian men filled their seraglium with beautiful slaves just to impress their neighbours. Some were so large it wasn’t physically possible to sleep with every woman they owned and get any other work done. Then there were the other women in a seraglium to contend with, too. If she was bought by a man who already had several wives, the chances were good the current favourites would bend over backward to ensure Arkady never got the opportunity to take their place. Perhaps she’d never be allowed near the master of the house. On the other hand, she’d heard of women scarred with acid by their rivals in a seraglium for that very reason, but dismissed the rumours as nonsense.
No, if she was to be sold, unless she was bought by someone who took a particular fancy to her, the chances were good that after as little as one night in a stranger’s bed, she would be left alone.
Arkady could survive one night in a stranger’s bed. If she had to, she could survive much longer than that. She’d survived six years of Fillion Rybank, after all.
And maybe, if she was extraordinarily lucky, she would be purchased by a man with enough wealth and power—and perhaps the will—to help her. There was a chance, however slender, that she would be bought by someone prepared to offer the former Duchess of Lebec sanctuary, and maybe even freedom.
The latter was a pipedream, Arkady knew that, but as Elvere resolved out of the heat mirage on the horizon late on the third day after the caravan had left the abbey, it was all she had to cling to.
Arkady was delivered to the city slave markets almost as soon as they reached Elvere. Her grandiose plans to flee the moment they reached the edge of town proved worthless. There were no slums. The vast slave markets took up most of the city outskirts. If there were slum-dwellers anywhere in Elvere, they were nowhere Arkady Desean was likely to see.
As for the location of The Dog and Bone, it might as well be back in the desert at the abbey for all the chance Arkady had of finding it.
She was delivered to a slaver who was wealthy enough to have his own compound on the western edge of the city. The cameleers, acting under strict instructions from Brynden, had taken little interest in her on the jo
urney from the abbey, and seemed well rid of her when they finally handed her over to the slavers, taking Terailia with them when they left as payment for their services.
Still shrouded, trembling with anticipation and more than a little afraid of what the future might hold, Arkady was taken through a series of passageways, every one of which had bars along the sides and barred gates at each end. She was escorted by a large, intimidating bare-chested man with a Torlenian slave brand—the image of two joined links of a chain burned into his flesh—just below his breastbone. The man said nothing, just grunted at her, pointing in the direction he wanted her to go, every time they came to an intersection in the labyrinthine corridors of the slaver’s compound.
Finally, they reached a chamber with a wooden door, rather than a barred gate. Her escort knocked twice, opened the door without waiting for an answer, pushed her through, and then closed it behind her.
Arkady stumbled forward and then looked around. The candle-lit room was quite well furnished, with imported carpets and a polished rosewood desk against the far wall that looked suspiciously Glaeban in its design and craftsmanship.
There was a thin, well-dressed man sitting at the desk, writing in a ledger. He glanced up when he heard the door close. His face was pinched with worry and he seemed irritated by her arrival.
“Take it off,” he said.
Arkady guessed he meant the shroud. She pulled it over her head and dropped it on the floor beside her, glad to be rid of it.
The slaver looked up and studied her for a moment and then rose to his feet and walked closer, peering at her myopically. “You’re foreign. Caelish, are you?”
For no reason she could readily name, Arkady nodded. “Yes. I’m Caelish.”
He studied her for a time, walking a full circle to examine her from every angle. Then he stopped in front of her, rubbing his chin. “Take off your clothes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
The slaver backhanded her soundly across the face. “Take off your clothes.”
Arkady wasn’t fool enough to argue about it twice. Her cheek stinging from the blow, she slipped her shift from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. The slaver did another full circle of her with a thoughtful expression before he stopped in front of her, poking her in the belly with a sharp fingernail. “You’ve had a baby?”
“No.”
“You a virgin?”
“No.”
He frowned. “How old?”
“Twenty-four,” she lied.
He shook his head. “Pity.”
“A pity?” Even Arkady’s poor Torlenian was good enough to know that word.
The slaver shrugged. “The big money’s in virgins, these days. Young virgins. You’re pretty enough, woman, but too old and you’re used goods. You got a name?”
“Ah…Kady.”
“I’ll put you with the Senestran batch,” he said, returning to his ledger. “They’re not as fussy as the Torlenian buyers.”
“I have a friend here in the city,” she said, hoping her Torlenian was good enough to convince the slaver she was worth listening to. “If I can get a message to her, she’ll pay whatever you want for me.”
The man smiled. “They’ve all got someone.”
Arkady wasn’t sure she understood what he was saying. “Pardon?”
“Every third slave who walks through that door,” the slaver told her, “reckons there’s someone on the outside waiting to rescue them. The debtor slaves are the worst. All think there’s someone going to pay their debts for them, they do.” He shook his head. “There’s nobody out there for you, woman. Don’t go pining away imagining there is.”
Arkady opened her mouth to speak and then shut it abruptly. This man traded in human flesh for a living. It occurred to her that to give him any idea she might be valuable to her enemies could be a death sentence. Suppose she told him who she really was, and instead of looking for Tiji, the man found one of Jaxyn’s agents instead?
She shrugged. “I can dream, can’t I?”
The slaver shook his head. “Not around here you can’t. Not if you plan to survive.”
With that dire prediction, the slaver returned his attention to his ledger, after ringing a bell on his desk, presumably to summon another guard to take her away. Without waiting to be asked, Arkady bent down and picked up her shift, slipping her arms through the sleeves as she rose to her feet. The slaver seemed neither to notice, nor care, so completely inured to the spectre of naked human flesh that he no longer associated the lives in which he traded with anything more than his wretched ledger.
It was dark by the time Arkady was escorted from the slaver’s office to her cell, via a detour she didn’t anticipate. A different guard had come for her this time, and he led her through the torch-lit compound to another enclosure that looked like a smithy as much as anything. At almost the same time as she realised what was going on, the guard grabbed her arm and dragged her forward toward the forge.
The farrier was working on a set of shackles, but he put them aside when he spied the guard and his prisoner. Arkady began to struggle violently as they approached the stifling fires, truly afraid for the first time since embarking on this journey.
“New one?” the farrier asked, spitting uninterestedly onto the floor as he picked up a rag, wrapped it around his hand and then turned to the forge, where he withdrew a long metal handle that had been resting in the flames.
“No!” Arkady screamed, when she saw the brand. “Tides! You can’t be serious!”
But they were serious. Even the farrier wore the interlinked chain brand of slavery on his chest. They’d all suffered this and weren’t planning to let her off.
He turned toward her with the brand, as the guard grabbed Arkady from behind, pinning her arms back so she couldn’t escape. The glowing metal left a trail of sparks in the air as the farrier turned it toward her.
The farrier pulled aside her shift, exposing her right breast. Arkady struggled harder. The guard wrenched her arms back. She screamed, but it seemed he wasn’t trying to hurt her. Quite the reverse.
“Stop it!” he ordered impatiently. “If you move, he’ll miss and you’ll wind up wearing the brand on your face.”
He was right, of course, and if he’d done this before, probably speaking from experience. Sobbing uncontrollably, Arkady forced herself to stop struggling, forced her panic under control. Through eyes filled with tears, she watched the farrier come closer. So close she could count every pore on his sweaty brow, so close she could smell the stench of his un-washed body.
At the last minute, she turned her face away, terrified, unable to watch.
Arkady’s scream split the night as the brand bored into her. The stench of burning flesh made her stomach retch. Pain shot through her whole body like a lightning bolt. The guard held her tight, strangely sympathetic, whispering useless reassurances in her ear that did nothing to dull the pain.
After a moment—although it felt like a tormented lifetime—the farrier withdrew the brand, and then smeared a thick greasy paste over the burn, which seemed to sting even more than the burning metal, if that was possible.
Arkady collapsed into the arms of the guard, the pain stealing her will to fight.
With a gruff command to stand, the guard pulled her to her feet and half-dragged, half-carried the newly branded slave from the forge.
Chapter 67
Warlock’s fears about his future were not occupying only his thoughts, it seemed. Several days after it was confirmed that the former Duke of Lebec and the King’s Spymaster had been killed in the prison fire, Warlock was summoned to the office of the King’s Private Secretary.
The news of their deaths was the talk of the city. Bodies had been found in the tower which were assumed to be the duke and the spymaster, but they were so badly burned nobody was sure which body belonged to whom. Rumour had it they were to be buried in a mass grave, along with all the other victims from the fire, a stone put over the top to commemo
rate the event, and then the whole thing would quietly be forgotten.
When Warlock arrived at the King’s Private Secretary’s office, somewhat to his amazement he discovered Tilly Ponting enjoying afternoon tea with Jaxyn Aranville. Clearly the immortal had no inkling the woman he was entertaining was the Guardian of the Lore, head of the Pentangle of the Cabal of the Tarot, the organisation devoted to his eradication.
Hoping he didn’t look too surprised, Warlock bowed, first to Jaxyn and then to Lady Ponting.
“I can come back later if you’re busy, my lord,” he said, after greeting Lady Ponting.
“Not at all, Cecil,” Tilly said. “We were just talking about you, in fact, weren’t we, Jaxyn?”
“Yes, we were.”
“I trust I have done nothing to displease my lord? Or her highness?”
Tilly smiled at him encouragingly. “On the contrary, Cecil. Jaxyn was just saying he was surprised at how well you were working out.”
“To serve her majesty is the reason I breathe,” Warlock replied, certain Tilly would hear the irony in his tone, even if Jaxyn didn’t.
“Well, yes, I can see that. Which is why I was so concerned when I heard she was planning to send you away.”
This was news to Warlock. “I am not aware of any such plan, my lady.”
“That’s because we haven’t shared it with you,” Jaxyn said. “Hawkes gave us the idea, actually.”
“I’m still not aware of what the idea is, my lord.”
“Lord Jaxyn wants to recruit you as a spy, Cecil.”
It was impossible to tell if Tilly Ponting was joking. In this room where nobody was really who or what they were claiming to be, it was hard to be sure of anything.
“A spy?” he echoed stupidly, the question buying him time, if nothing else.
“He wants to send you back to Caelum with Lord Torfail and his sister. He seems to think you’ve won their confidence and that if we gifted you to them as a parting present, you’d be well placed to infiltrate their household for us.”
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