"You disappoint me, Jackal," said Quentin-Andrew, his scorn unshielded now. "I thought that you would be more clever than to allow a god-cursed man – a man who has already killed a boy – unlimited freedom to use his powers against you. Did you think I would not know that your own torture and death mean little to you? The pain of others is what hurts you, and because you hold the powers of the god of death, you will know when Dolan dies. You will lie hidden in this palace, bound not only by my bindings but also by your oath, and you will hear Dolan cry out to you for help. And you will do nothing. You will allow him to die in slow torment and anguish, the victim not of me, but of your foolish trust."
Slowly, like sunlight creeping across the ground, the movement finally came: the Jackal's hands, bound above him, curled into two fists. Quentin-Andrew stood a moment, savoring the move which he knew was sharper than the scream of an ordinary man, and then he cut the Jackal's bonds. He placed the dagger in the Jackal's hand and waited.
The Jackal said nothing as he removed his gag, wiped off the blood trickling down his leg, rose from his bed, and donned his breech-cloth and undertunic once more. He kept his eyes averted from Quentin-Andrew. Finally he handed the thigh-dagger to Quentin-Andrew and said quietly, "You did right to come to me."
Quentin-Andrew slid the dagger into his thigh-pocket and waited as the Jackal gently brushed the crumpled leaves off his bed. After a moment more, the ruler said, "I cannot take you under my care, for reasons that you know; nor can the Chara. You have been to Daxis, I take it?" Quentin-Andrew nodded, and the Jackal said slowly, "The young Queen is mild of heart and rarely visits her palace's dungeon; she gives freedom to her torturers to proceed as they wish. You were right not to take employment there."
He moved to the broad-ledged window and pulled the shutter back, allowing light to flood into the room. Quentin-Andrew stepped back into the shadows, which were beginning to grow cold again. The Jackal was now looking out toward the black border mountains, many miles away at the northern edge of Koretia. He said, "My thieves tell me that Emor's northern dominions are planning to rebel against the Chara."
He paused, and Quentin-Andrew, now emptied of the warmth he had felt before, said coolly, "That is of no surprise."
"Yes, the Chara has given his dominions just cause for such a rebellion; his hand is heavy upon them. If the rebellion comes, it will be led by the head of the army of the Marcadian dominion: a soldier who is a few years younger than yourself but who has already acquired a reputation in his trade. It is said that he is a man of honor and a firm disciplinarian. He allows his soldiers to create as much harm as is necessary to win their battles, but no more."
The Jackal turned. His face was now in shadow, but his silver hair glowed white against the moon. "My advice to you would be to place yourself under the care of this soldier. Make clear to him that you require boundaries in your work, and make clear that he must supervise you to be sure that those boundaries are kept. Within those boundaries, if the coming war follows the pattern of previous wars, you will have ample opportunity to use your talents, but you will do so under the watchful eye of a god-loving man. The rest will be up to you."
Quentin-Andrew nodded. He had finished placing the cords and spittle-soaked face-cloth into his thigh-pocket, and now he turned his face toward the dark door leading to the corridor.
"Quentin-Andrew."
Twenty years had passed since Quentin-Andrew had last heard his name, and it brought back the sting of his youth. As a young child he had been proud to hear his birth-name, since it evoked the father and grandfather for whom he had been named. His name had been the first thing he had discarded when he left the House of the Unknowable God.
Now he turned slowly, and only because the god-man had been released from his oath. But the Jackal's face remained human. The ruler said, "You have not asked me one question."
"Which is?" The words were spoken in a chill manner.
"Why the gods have done this to you."
A knife's edge of feeling, as thin and sharp as a thigh-dagger, touched the surface of Quentin-Andrew's spirit. It was immediately gone, and he watched without any great interest as the Jackal walked toward him. His thoughts, in fact, were on the tremor in the Jackal's body, and on the pleasure he would have received from increasing that tremor. He regretted that he had kept the Jackal bound for so short a time. As the ruler came closer, Quentin-Andrew made note of the blood tunnels standing out on his neck, the delicacy of his fingers, the gentleness of his eyes. Quentin-Andrew gave an inward sigh, like a bard who is deprived of making song.
"It is a question that all men ask," the Jackal said. "We all have some darkness that we must purge from our spirits, and purge again and again. Your darkness is greater than most. You must have asked yourself why the gods made you this way and why they have allowed you to remain this way. Surely, with just a touch of their powers, they could remove this demon that eats at you, destroying your spirit and forcing you to struggle with all your might to do what the average man can do with scarcely a thought. Why are you tortured with this burden? Why must you suffer this pain?"
"I suffer no pain," said Quentin-Andrew in the quiet voice of a man correcting a simple error. "Those who fall into my hands suffer pain."
The Jackal was silent a moment bore nodding. "Yes," he said, "it must seem that way to you. Even good has become evil to you now that evil has become good. But you would not have come to me tonight if the demon had entirely destroyed your spirit. You would not have sought my advice on how to contain your darkness. I will not tell you, as the priests of the Unknowable God did, that you can change yourself; the priests may have been wrong. Sometimes the gods lay burdens upon us that we must bear during our entire sojourn through the Land of the Living. But you must not forget that the Jackal's fire is able to turn evil to good. I think that you will have to suffer greatly before you recognize the full meaning of that teaching, but this much I can tell you now: the ability you possess, to read into the hearts of men and to break their spirits, can be used to serve the gods."
"I have no desire to serve the gods." Quentin-Andrew's voice was flat, uninterested. His mind was drifting away toward the north, where new work awaited him.
"Do you desire to serve your work?"
The Jackal's voice caught at him, pulling him back. Quentin-Andrew, who had been at the point of turning away, paused to look back at the Jackal, but the ruler said nothing more, so Quentin-Andrew replied finally, "I am skilled at my work."
A smile appeared on the Jackal's face suddenly, as though his intruder had made a statement that revealed much. Quentin-Andrew remembered, with some uneasiness, that the god-man of Koretia had a formidable reputation for breaking prisoners, though the methods he was said to use were highly unorthodox.
The Jackal did not seem concerned to press his advantage. All that he said was, "You didn't need to use your dagger on me, you know. Your skill goes beyond that."
A warm wind whistled into the room, scattering the remains of the leaves; it stung the drying blood on Quentin-Andrew's cheek. Quentin-Andrew said slowly, "Your powers give you the ability to question prisoners without use of instruments. Everyone knows that."
"It is a technique that is not dependent on my godly powers; all of my thieves are taught it. I could teach it to you."
Quentin-Andrew narrowed his eyes against the glare of the moonshine. "In exchange for what promise?" he asked.
The Jackal shook his head. "In exchange for no promise. It would be an answer to the question you failed to ask." He added more softly, "When a darkness lies within a man, sometimes the only way to let light shine within him is to break open that man's spirit. Once the spirit is broken, you can then bring light into the man and mend what you have broken. Those are the two skills I teach to my thieves: how to break a man's spirit with words only, and how to mend that spirit with more words. Once you have practiced the second skill, you will understand why you have been forced to undergo the torture that you live in,
the torture so deep that you have shielded yourself from its effects." The Jackal gestured toward the ledge of the unshuttered window. "Come sit with me; I will explain to you this form of questioning."
Quentin-Andrew walked forward, squinting his eyes against the light that the Jackal was walking through. He was thinking that this visit was twice worth the trouble he had taken to come here. Yet even as he sat at the Jackal's side and listened with obedient attention to what he was being told, he felt the contempt inside him grow to a peak.
Was the Jackal really fool enough to think that Quentin-Andrew would ever use the second part of what he was being taught?
CHAPTER THREE
"The subcommander wishes to know whether you have placed him on the table yet."
The voice drifted through the darkness, a darkness that had become more pronounced as the hours passed. Quentin-Andrew's spirit was focussed upon the sensations in his wrists and in his chest. He barely heard the words spoken at the door by the young orderly.
Randal's voice was cool in reply. "Tell the subcommander that if he is dissatisfied with my skills, he is welcome to take over the work himself."
The orderly was persistent. "The subcommander says that a full day ought to be enough time in which to extract the information. He says that the Northern Army may attack at any moment."
"Bern," said Randal with frigid politeness, "who am I questioning?"
During the pause that followed, Quentin-Andrew tried to twist his body into a new position and immediately regretted the action. Only by biting his lip was he able to prevent sound from being emitted.
"The Lieutenant," said the orderly finally. "The chief torturer of the Northern Army."
"And how long, Bern, do you think it takes to break a man like that?"
This time there was no reply. Quentin-Andrew felt moisture trail down his arms, and inwardly cursed Randal for his skill. It had taken Quentin-Andrew only an hour to discover why Randal used leather straps for his bindings: as the wrists grew wet, the moisture constricted the leather, causing the wrists to sweat and bleed all the more. It was a subtle touch, a refined touch, and Quentin-Andrew had grown to appreciate that Randal was adept at such niceties.
The door to the cell was closing. Quentin-Andrew waited until he heard the click of the latch falling before he let out his breath, along with the sound that had been suppressed inside. Nearby, one of Randal's assistants sighed in his sleep. It was past midnight now, and all four of the inhabitants of this room were weary from the proceedings.
Randal's hand touched the back of Quentin-Andrew's head, and a moment later the cloth that had bound Quentin-Andrew's eyes for the past day fell free. Knowing as he did the stages of questioning, Quentin-Andrew did not take this as a good sign.
"Gasps," said Randal abruptly, as though he had guessed Quentin-Andrew's thoughts. "Gasps, and then moans, followed by tears, sobs, curses, screams, pleas for the questioning to stop, more screams, protests that one doesn't know the information – and then the breaking." He leaned against the dungeon wall that was warm from the leaping fire nearby and added reflectively, "The protests were a mistake, of course. You know as well as I do that if a prisoner is going to claim he doesn't know the information, he needs to do so at the beginning of the questioning, while he can still craft a skillful lie. Waiting until the end never works."
Randal's eyes were blood-veined with sleeplessness, but he did not waver his gaze from his prisoner's face. Quentin-Andrew began to turn away his face, a movement which ended abruptly as the back of Randal's hand collided with his cheek. This time, the sound that Quentin-Andrew made caused Randal's other assistant to murmur in his sleep; then the cell fell into silence once more. Quentin-Andrew had heard the clatter earlier when the dungeon was emptied of its last inhabitants. He suspected that this had been done at Randal's request.
Acting as though the slap had not taken place, Randal said mildly, "But of course we can't allow anyone to know how easy it is to break the mighty Lieutenant. It would be harmful for the reputation of all of us in this profession if it were publicized how quickly men such as us can be broken. Though I must admit that you are a special case, Lieutenant. I don't believe that, in all the years I've been working at this trade, I've ever met a soldier who is as sensitive to pain as you are."
Quentin-Andrew had been waiting for these words for a day and a night – had been waiting for them, indeed, for many years. The anticipation of this moment did not seem to help. Quentin-Andrew closed his eyes against his torturer's look of frank pity. A moment later the blow of Randal's hand against his other cheek persuaded him that this was a poor decision. He jerked his eyes open and looked over at Randal, who was caressing in his left hand the instrument he had been using when they were interrupted.
"What I don't understand," Randal continued in a conversational manner, "is why you are holding out. You know what the end will be as well as I do, Lieutenant; you know that a man with your limitations is destined to break. So why, I have been asking myself, are you prolonging the pain?"
Quentin-Andrew had been asking himself that as well. For the first time in many hours, he dragged his spirit past the torment to a full awareness of Randal, sweat-soaked like Quentin-Andrew. Serious-faced now, his gaze one of painful concentration, the young man laid his instrument carefully aside on the disused table and said, "Is it out of loyalty to the Commander? But that would be foolish; you know that the Commander is not the sort of man who would have so much as spoken to you in peacetime. He finds you useful these days and seeks to protect you and keep your allegiance for that reason, but as for feeling affection for you – no, you are not that foolish." His statement was flat; he was reading what he wished to know in Quentin-Andrew's expression.
"Perhaps," Randal said slowly, "you are hoping that, if you show honor in this cell, the gods will forgive you for all that you have done over the years. But truly, Lieutenant, I cannot imagine that your wits have been destroyed to that degree. You know what fate awaits men like us – and you know that, if there was ever a moment when the gods could have forgiven you, it was lost eight years ago."
Quentin-Andrew, keeping his gaze carefully fixed on his torturer's blood-stained hands, thought to himself that Randal could not know the full truth of what he said. He could not know, though everyone in the Three Lands knew what the Lieutenant had done eight years before in the dungeon of the Chara's palace.
The only outward price which Quentin-Andrew had paid for that night was the loss of his patrol unit, since the Commander had quickly assessed the mood of Quentin-Andrew's men when all eleven of them had arrived at the Commander's quarters afterwards and stood in grim silence. Quentin-Andrew's second-in-command had been elevated to patrol lieutenant; Quentin-Andrew had been released from his patrol duties to take on work of greater importance to the Northern Army, as the Commander had tactfully expressed it.
That much the world knew. The world also knew the price that the Commander had paid for that night: the loss of his remaining supporters in Koretia, and the determination of the Koretians and Daxions from that night forward to fight the Commander to their deaths. Without that night, the Commander might have taken Koretia with little struggle. After that night, the Commander had been faced with the choice of denying his involvement in what had happened or subduing the southern peninsula by ruthless force.
To the Commander's credit, he had never denied what he had done. By contrast, Quentin-Andrew had added to his iniquity by suppressing one critical piece of information about that night. Not even the Commander knew how that night had ended; not even the Commander knew of the terrible, unforgivable act that had served as an immutable seal to the deeds of Quentin-Andrew's life.
Only Quentin-Andrew knew of that act and its consequences, and his knowledge of what he had done had cut into his spirit every day for the past eight years, like the precise stabs of a thigh-dagger. But Randal could not know that.
Indeed, Randal was now saying, "Oh, but the ways of the gods are mys
terious. If I were to tell you that I knew their judgment upon you, you would laugh in my face. Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps the Jackal will extend his hand to you—"
The soft breathing of Randal's assistants was the only sound in the cell. Quentin-Andrew felt Randal's hand lift his chin. His eyes met Randal's.
"That is why you are holding out, isn't it, Lieutenant?" the torturer said softly. "You are trying to postpone that moment. You imagine that what you experience here will be less than what awaits you there. But Lieutenant . . ." His voice grew softer still. "You have forgotten one important fact. You need not accept the fire."
So there, like a blade hidden in the palm of a hand, was the disclosure of the final temptation Quentin-Andrew had been awaiting – the temptation he had been awaiting all his life. There seemed no reason that he should hold out against that temptation.
"We owe the gods nothing," Randal said with quiet intensity. "Nothing. They made us what we are and abandoned us. They deserve nothing from us, and no gifts they might grant us will make up for what they have done to us. Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise."
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