Hunt for Valamon

by Mok, DK

  “We’re looking for some information,” said Seris.

  “You can’t afford it.” Sulim took a clay tablet from a harried-looking merchant and ran her gaze over the numbers.

  “But you don’t know what we want,” said Seris.

  “I know what I want.” Sulim handed the tablet back to the merchant. “Your sort don’t carry coin. And I know better than to accept anything from her.”

  Sulim shot a meaningful look towards Elhan.

  She knows who we are, thought Seris. And I’ll bet she knows where Prince Valamon is, or near enough.

  “There must be something you want, aside from money,” said Seris.

  There actually wasn’t much that Sulim wanted, aside from money. Money was how you measured the world. Everything that existed, everything that was real, could be measured. Therefore, everything had its price.

  However, Sulim also recognised an opportunity, and a true mercenary would deal with anyone, even the Kali-Adelsa.

  “Four mercenaries were arrested by the Talgaran Guard last week,” said Sulim. “One of my best long-range scouts was among them. We were told they were released a few days ago, but no one saw them leave the prison. The captain of the guard has not proved amenable to monetary negotiation. If you can deliver all four back here, alive and unharmed, I’ll tell you what I can. And we’ll call it even about the tent.”

  Even Seris knew about the prison at Tigrath. What he hadn’t known was that it actually existed. Townsfolk gossiped about all kinds of things—giant carnivorous ducks that ravaged villages, ships sailing through the sky, mysterious gulags in the middle of the desert. You listened and nodded, and made sure you left your patients in better shape than when you found them, but you didn’t take what they said too seriously.

  However, he might have to re-evaluate those stories about the giant ducks. Seris lay on his stomach at the edge of the dune, like a piece of flotsam atop a huge, motionless tide. In the valley below, almost invisible against the glare of the desert, squatted a complex built of honey-coloured sandstone. Its rounded corners smoothed out any potential shadows, and the windows punched along the sides were covered with tan canvas, so unless you knew what to look for, you could quite easily miss the sprawling structure.

  The prison was several hours’ walk from the city and a good distance away from the caravan routes. The locals all knew it was there, but that didn’t matter—once in the prison, you might as well not exist.

  Seris looked at the flat, stone building, a scab on the skin of the desert. It reminded him of those rat traps with the one-way doors, the ones you only emptied once they were full. It had always disturbed him to imagine what it’d be like inside one, unable to escape, crammed alongside decaying bodies, waiting for death. Seris favoured sealing up gaps in the pantry and securing food in jars and earthenware. Failing that, there was always Morle and her quarterstaff.

  Seris understood the need for prisons, but he also understood the need for courts and trials and charges read in public. People shouldn’t just disappear—that happened often enough without the assistance of secret dungeons.

  He squinted at the defensively built complex, and words like “impenetrable” marched through his head.

  “We could set it on fire,” said Elhan.

  “You can’t solve everything by setting it on fire.”

  “Who said anything about solving things?” Elhan yawned, flicking at the sand and watching it plume into the breeze.

  Seris couldn’t tell if she was joking.

  “There’s a difference between freeing someone and setting them on fire,” said Seris.

  “A man of subtleties. I can see why His Highness likes you so much.”

  Seris ignored the comment. Using force was out of the question. There had to be hundreds of soldiers guarding the complex, and they’d be well-armed and well-stocked. It was a pretty confident captain who dared to get on the wrong side of the mercenaries, but with the full force of the Talgaran military to reckon with, even Sulim would think twice about doing something reckless.

  Elhan rose to her feet, shaking the sand from her clothes.

  “I never like doing this, but if there’s no other way…”

  She started walking back towards the city, and Seris scurried after her.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Elhan gave Seris an ominous smile.

  “What’s the easiest way into a prison?”

  Seris chased after Elhan as she strode through the main thoroughfare of the bazaar.

  “It’s a stupid idea!” said Seris.

  “And how many prison breaks have you orchestrated, temple boy?”

  “Probably about as many as you have.”

  “If by orchestrated you mean inadvertently caused, then thirty-two.”

  Seris paused.

  “All right, not as many. But it’s a deeply flawed plan with far too many volatile variables—”

  “It has to be an inside job.” Elhan didn’t slow her pace.

  “What makes you think they’re going to arrest you as opposed to just kill you?”

  “You’re talking to a pro,” said Elhan. “I mean, I haven’t been arrested that many times, but the number of times people have yelled, ‘You’re under arrest!’ and chased me—heaps.”

  “What if you can’t break out?”

  “I guess you’ve got to work on that part.”

  “Wait!”

  Seris reached to grab her arm, but Elhan had already climbed a small stack of crates, looking out over the milling crowd.

  “Yo, people!” Elhan’s voice carried through the marketplace. “Tired of being oppressed? Lacking the energy to fight back? Well, fear no more! Join the rebellion and bring down the empire! No commitments, no contracts, just raise your pitchfork if you hear me!”

  Seris was stunned by the speed of their reaction. Six Talgaran guards materialised from the crowd, dragging Elhan roughly from the crates. Elhan seemed surprised as well, downing only one soldier before the others swarmed over her.

  Seris felt an unbearable urge to go to her aid, and then he saw the king-hit swinging towards the back of her head. He froze, and his world went oddly silent as Elhan slumped into the grasp of the soldiers. As they dragged her body away, for the first time in a long while, Seris felt very alone.

  Everything hazed into focus. The hard stone floor, the smell of decomposing straw, the snuffling of too many people in not enough space. Elhan’s eyes opened, and she saw them all draw away, a familiar expression in their eyes.

  “Hello.” Elhan smiled.

  They drew away further. Elhan sat up and felt the strange sensation of colour returning to the world. It had taken some getting used to in the early days, when she’d wake covered in blood and cuts, in places she didn’t recognise, surrounded by people she didn’t remember…doing things to.

  After a while, she saw it as a sort of grey world, like dreaming, when some other part of you controlled your actions while you slept. She’d learned that, even when unconscious, the curse protected her—guiding some part of her to action if threatened, making sure nothing happened. The fact that she was in a prison cell and not surrounded by dead guards told her that the soldiers hadn’t tried to hurt her. Then again, they didn’t know what she was yet.

  She looked around at her cellmates, an odd collection of folk who certainly didn’t look like hardened criminals.

  “It has begun,” muttered an elderly woman with wild hair. “The ground will open and rivers of fire will consume the land…”

  “Machines that look just like us, with cogs and pulleys where their hearts should be…” murmured a freckled young man with wide eyes. “No heart, no heart…”

  “I think the king should be decided by a vote,” said a woman with long brown hair. “And they only get to be king for four years, and then we all vote for someone new.”

  Elhan scanned the faces for the least deranged-looking person, and settled on the elderly woman.

  �
�Hey, End of Days,” said Elhan.

  The woman’s eyes rolled around and fixed on Elhan.

  “Bringer of death, ye shall doom us all.”

  “No heart, no heart,” echoed the freckled man, rocking back and forth on the floor.

  “Um, yeah,” said Elhan. “So, where are the hardcore prisoners kept? You know, the ones who disappear permanently.”

  “The political prisoners, you mean?” said the long-haired woman. “The ones who dare speak out against a patriarchal, autocratic, nepotistic regime? They’re held on the secret levels under—”

  The prison door scraped open. Two guards stood in the doorway, and another six hulked in the shadows of the corridor. The front guard pulled his gaze over the huddled prisoners, then pointed a finger towards Elhan.

  “That one.”

  Captain Albaran was a patient man. You had to be patient to live in a barren, desolate outpost in the middle of the desert. You needed patience to clean up an empire one deviant at a time. It was like restoring a desert. You had to believe that beneath the arid dunes lay a fertile land that just needed to be gradually uncovered, one grain of sand at a time.

  Albaran scratched a tidy report into his ledger, the glare of the desert filtering through the heavy canvas curtains. There was a sharp knock at his door, and a lieutenant stepped nervously inside.

  “Ralor,” said Albaran mildly.

  “Captain,” said Ralor. “I’m not sure if this is significant…”

  That was usually enough to tell Albaran that it was.

  “Go on.”

  “We picked up a girl for seditious ranting in the bazaar today. We put her in with the crazies, but…”

  Ralor reached the part of his report that clearly comprised the “not sure” part of the equation.

  “There’s something odd about her,” said Ralor.

  “Can you define ‘odd’?”

  “She—she looks kind of wrong…”

  “Wrong like ‘she’ might be a ‘he’?”

  “No, sir. I’ve got that sorted out now. Just wrong like… Skinny thing, but it took six of us to bring her down. And she… Her skin… It felt like…a giant maggot…”

  Albaran put his quill down.

  “Sir, I’m sorry,” said Ralor. “I think maybe I’ve had a tad too much sun—”

  “What does she look like?” said Albaran calmly.

  “Sir? Young, I suppose, dressed in rags. Not a local, not a trader. No weapons except for a sharp stick.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “In with the loonies.”

  Albaran rose smoothly to his feet.

  “Move her to the inspection hold.”

  Good things came to those who waited.

  SIX

  Seris tried not to run down the last stretch of dune. He was already sticky with sweat, and if he lost his footing now, he’d look like a sugar-dusted gingerbread man by the time he got there. Not a great first impression.

  He hoped he wasn’t too late. He hoped he wasn’t too early. He hoped he wasn’t going to pass out from heat exhaustion.

  It had been a stupid plan, and although for Elhan it just might work, Seris didn’t have the luxury of supernatural luck. All he had was a sweaty piece of parchment that didn’t even get him discounts at the market.

  Seris struggled to focus his thoughts as the prison loomed closer. The gritty sandstone walls were heaped with drifting sand, and every surface had been scoured raw by the desert winds. There were no gates or trenches here. Even if you escaped, without camels and supplies, you wouldn’t get far.

  He drew to a halt before the prison door, a towering iron slab punched with hoof-sized rivets. It radiated an unpleasant one-way finality.

  Seris took a deep breath and knocked hard on the weathered iron. After a pause, a narrow grill slid back and suspicious eyes peered out.

  “State your business,” said the guard.

  Seris thrust the parchment towards the grill like a victory banner, the royal seal glistening.

  “I have a message for Captain Albaran.”

  Elhan had a particular aversion to chains. Rope, she could handle. But iron always gave her trouble.

  As she dangled from the ceiling by her wrists, she swung her legs experimentally and wished that she were just a few inches taller. And possibly somewhere else. She’d certainly gotten out of worse situations before, such as the time she’d been tied up in a locked chest on a burning ship that was being dragged into a whirlpool during a tropical monsoon. But still, she knew it was dangerous to get overconfident. She’d met a lot of that. Briefly.

  The cell was completely bare aside from Elhan and two guards standing by the iron door. One of the guards stared at her with a haunted expression, his eyes watering, while the other desperately looked at anything but her.

  The door swung open with a low creak, and a lean, muscular man in his thirties stepped inside. A dusty red cloak was draped over his shoulders, and he wore the red tunic and black trousers of the Talgaran Guard. A longsword hung at his side, and his epaulettes marked him as a captain.

  The two guards saluted sharply.

  “Captain Albaran,” said the watery-eyed guard.

  Albaran’s gaze locked on Elhan.

  “Dale, Belfry,” said Albaran. “Wait outside.”

  The two guards exchanged nervous glances before scurrying from the cell, the door clanging shut behind them.

  Albaran leaned his back gently against a wall, one arm crossed in front of him, his chin resting on a fist. His gaze seemed to be taking in every detail, from the badly frayed hems of Elhan’s clothes to the tattered sandals, which had probably been boots several continents ago.

  He finally pushed away from the wall and walked a slow circle around her.

  “Care to explain?” said Albaran.

  “It’s called satire,” said Elhan.

  Albaran circled out of her sight line.

  “It’s called treason.”

  “Only if you don’t have a sense of humour.” Elhan would have shrugged, but that might have popped her shoulders from their sockets.

  “You’re a transient, aren’t you?” said Albaran.

  “Aren’t we all?”

  Albaran continued his careful circle.

  “No family, no friends, no one to notice if you just vanished.”

  “Does it matter if people notice if no one cares? For instance, I’ll bet you’re the kind of guy where they’d write a lovely obituary, but secretly, they’d be saying, ‘Thank the gods; he was always a bit creepy’.”

  Albaran stopped behind Elhan, and she heard metal against leather.

  “And what will they say about you, Kali-Adelsa?”

  She felt a blade press into her back, against the hollow of her left shoulder.

  “A blade through the heart, that’s how the curse is broken, isn’t it?” said Albaran.

  “You can try,” said Elhan, keeping her voice even. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

  “It is a bit vague, isn’t it?” The blade remained perfectly steady. “Some say it means a blade through the heart. Others say you have to fall in love, or be seduced, and still others say you have to be slain by someone pure of heart.”

  “Been there. Done that. Still here,” said Elhan.

  “I’m sure I could think of other interpretations.” Albaran’s voice was just behind her ear. “I suspect that you spread a few of those theories yourself, and personally, I think a sword through the heart would be quite effective.”

  “Yep, I’d definitely be one of the people saying ‘Thank the gods; he was always a bit creepy.’ Actually, I’d probably make that the epitaph.”

  It took only a fraction of a second for Elhan to feel Albaran’s grip shift—anyone else would have felt it only after they found themselves staring at the bloody tip through their chest. Luckily, Elhan was good with split seconds and last minutes, and she tensed to swing up—

  There was an abrupt knock at the door, and Albaran’s sword pau
sed, the point hard against Elhan’s back.

  “Captain,” called Ralor through the door.

  Elhan felt the blade lower and heard it slide into its scabbard.

  “Lieutenant,” said Albaran as the door swung open.

  Ralor paused, aware that he was probably interrupting something, but desperate to pass on the responsibility of his current problem to someone else.

  “An envoy from Algaris Castle is here. He’s asking to see you.”

  “Tell him to come back tomorrow.” Albaran didn’t move from his position.

  “We tried. He’s—he’s got documents, and he’s being difficult. He, ahem, won’t let go of the table.”

  With considerable effort, Elhan kept her expression perfectly neutral. Albaran glanced at her with faint suspicion before turning back to Ralor.

  “Take her to the Subsidence Level.”

  Seris was still holding on to the table when Albaran arrived. Seris knew it was undignified, but he was discovering that politics was less about dignity and more about yelling louder than the other person. Or holding on to the table longer than the other person was willing to pull you.

  “You would be the royal envoy,” said Albaran icily.

  An embarrassed guard let go of Seris’s waist and sidled away quickly. After a wary pause, Seris released his stiff fingers from the table and withdrew the parchment from his robe. Albaran took the page with mild disdain.

  “Seris, cleric of Eliantora,” said Seris. “I’ve been entrusted by Queen Nalan to investigate the disappearance of Crown Prince Valamon, and I have reason to believe that several of your prisoners have information of value.”

  “Really.” Albaran handed the scroll back to Seris.

  “Four mercenaries, arrested last week.”

  “They were released three days ago.”

  “Of course they were. Nonetheless, I’d like to see them.”