Poor World

by Sherwood Smith

  He stared straight back at me, saying nothing. Danger burned through me, making my pulse hammer.

  “I’m tired,” I said, before he could try to get me to sit down. “Big day tomorrow, and I was out in the sun all day.” Big fake yawn. “Gotta get my sleep.”

  “No.” He grabbed at my wrist, and I evaded by lifting my hand to sling back my hair, hoping none of my knives would drop. Alarm made my heart thump wildly. I knew something was wrong. At the time — and immediately afterward — I thought it was the storm.

  Thunder crashed again.

  I said, “I don’t have to stay, do I?”

  “No,” he said. “Go.” And he watched me leave, still in that weird, blinkless stare.

  It wasn’t until later, much later, that I recognized what I ought to have seen at once — and I would have, had I been with a true friend, someone I knew and cared about.

  The man who trusted his allies was battling disbelief.

  And suspicion.

  Thirteen

  It was the eve of his greatest risk, everything he’d worked for — everything that had meaning for him.

  It was also the night of my greatest risk, for none of my adventures so far had been this scary, this impossible to solve. Not even our encounters with Shnit, though there was one time nearly as bad. Rel had been there, too, when Shnit made me go as hostage rather than attack Colend. He’d come to the rescue that time.

  Well, Rel was here now, but this time he was the prisoner, and the rescue was up to me.

  I went to my room. My strongest wish was to get rid of the knives, but my strongest fear was that Kessler would come looking for me. Better to keep them on me. If heroes in stories can do it, I thought grimly (and how do they, anyway?) I could. So I lay carefully down, keeping myself flat, the knife hilts poking my ribs when I breathed. I didn’t even reach for the diamond, which lay underneath the mattress, because I was so afraid that I’d lose one of those knives and it might clatter to the floor in the dark.

  And I had to stay in the dark — if I lit the glowglobe, the light would shine under my door.

  I lay and listened to the intermittent roar of rain washing away all the residual heat. Lightning flared blue, sometimes a weird light purple, and thunder shook the wooden building. Presently my room was cold, and my clothes were just damp enough to make me shiver.

  Terror made the trembling worse.

  Time stretched.

  After an immeasurable wait I saw a faint change in the light, and got up carefully to ease my door open a crack. Kessler’s office was now dark.

  That meant it had to be about eleven, the time he often went to that nightmare place by magic.

  Clutching at the knives to keep them in place, I tiptoed down the hall and looked out. The guards were still inside. Rain slanted steadily down, but it no longer mattered if I got wet. This was the next stage of commitment. I had no excuse to be out, not when I’d told Kessler that I was going to sleep.

  So I splashed down the street toward Dejain’s, hoping the heavy rain would keep me from being seen in case anyone would look out. As I snuck along I made and discarded excuses for being there if she came in. I really did not want to see her at all. I knew she had to be angry with me about that business with the poison-knife and Christoph.

  I have to make it work.

  I ran. Lumbered, really, because of all those knives. Sweet rainwater pelted my face, and I stuck out my tongue, pausing for one brief moment to enjoy the rain — a reminder of home, and sanity — before I remembered that if I didn’t get moving, I’d be home again tomorrow, all right. With Kessler.

  I turned away and tried Dejain’s door.

  When I’d seen the place on my previous two visits, there had been no sign of a bedroom, just the two rooms full of nice furnishings and work related stuff.

  Scraping my wet hair off my face, I hustled inside. A glowglobe started to flicker to life, but I clapped and it went out again. Then I felt my way to the bookcase, and to the place where I knew that she kept the jail-spell book, the thin black one.

  While Rasmusan overpowered the guards I could find the spell; I did not want to risk myself further by staying in Dejain’s building. Better use the jail light, even if a fight was going on, than try a light here. No, better, go back to my room. Yeah.

  Tucking the book between my arm and body (where it served to keep a couple knife hilts steadied) I reflected that at least it had few pages. I just hoped I could find the spell before Kessler saw the light under my door and came nosing around. Argh, argh. Well, I’d just have to chance it, I thought, as blue-white lightning briefly lit up the chamber.

  My thoughts darted hither and thither like frenzied fireflies as I oozed out Dejain’s door again.

  And I began to run, the heavy, clodding steps of a person loaded with hardware she wasn’t used to.

  Ah, what a mess.

  Where exactly did I slip up? I’ll probably never know for sure, though it was probably in several places and ways.

  I ran straight up the street, scanning as best as I could through the rain, but about fifty steps short of Kessler’s building (which was still dark) a man’s voice ripped out, clear even over the hissing downpour:

  “Get her! Now!”

  It was Alsaes.

  Lightning zapped, starkly illuminating the street, the buildings, the half-dozen armed guards who converged efficiently, ringing me in a circle from which I could not escape. Three of them held torches — lit by magic. Still, I dashed this way and that, desperate for an opening, for escape, for a miracle, but none came.

  “Drop those knives.”

  No doubt about it. Alsaes was thoroughly enjoying every moment of my defeat.

  A sword point poked me in the throat. Terrified, I dropped the book with a splat, yanked at my waistband and the knives splashed onto the ground under my skirt, the girls’ notes with them.

  “All of ’em.”

  My numb fingers fumbled at the ones in my sleeves, and they dropped as well.

  Lightning flashed.

  Alsaes stood before me, grinning in triumph, his hair plastered on his forehead, his jaunty hat soggy, the feather bent and straggly.

  While someone kept a sword pointed at my heart, he grabbed my arm, yanked me around, and then he tied my hands together — as if I could suddenly turn into Rel, and defeat them all with some amazing feat of grappling expertise and brute strength. As if I were any kind of threat at all.

  I suspect that Alsaes just wanted to make me as uncomfortable as possible. He’d caught Kessler’s pet in treachery, and he was going to wrest every bit of fun he could from it.

  He didn’t know — never would know — that my own horror, that sickening sense of double betrayal, was much worse inside my own mind than any of his bullying or ropes or weapon-brandishing.

  Once my hands were tied he shoved me in the back and I lurched, stumbling forward. Only quick steps — avoiding the knives still lying on the ground — kept me from falling face first into the muddy street.

  “Kessler!” Alsaes bellowed, pushing me the last few steps until we were between the jail and the office building. “Kessler! Come out here!”

  Kessler was visible in the lit window.

  He passed out of the glowing window-frame and then reappeared in the doorway, his face tense and still in the brief glare of more lightning.

  Alsaes jumped up onto the porch, triumph evident in his brisk movements, in his voice. He started gabbling accusations, a rapid succession that Kessler, at first, did not respond to by a look or word.

  “The prisoners all know your name,” Alsaes finished, in a toadying voice of fake horror. “And they’re part of her plot. She’d got one of Dejain’s books right here! Knives from the Halian-group’s weapons stores! These notes, probably more treason — ” He held up the girls’ notes, but they were soggy and shredded, and they had to be totally unreadable. So he brandished Dejain’s book instead, mud dripping off it in glops. “It has to be obvious even to
you that she was planning to kill you!”

  Kessler looked at me at last, his expression unreadable in the faint light reflected from his window.

  “Is he speaking the truth?”

  I opened my mouth to deny the last accusation, for of all of them that one at least wasn’t true.

  Or was it? I thought desolately. To be honest I assumed that the prisoners would do the dirty deed — or Rasmusan. But I wouldn’t have stopped them, that’s for sure. So that made me just as responsible as whoever would have wielded the knife.

  The time for lies was over. A tiny spurt of relief, just enough to make me defiant, prompted me to say, “Yes.”

  Kessler stared down at me for a long, terrible moment. Then, suddenly, moving with that swiftness characteristic of his family, he hit me across the face.

  I would have gone headlong, too, had not Alsaes viciously shoved me more-or-less upright from behind, in case Kessler wanted another crack at me. But he was done.

  “Shall I throw her in the prison?” Alsaes gloated.

  Kessler turned around and went back inside his office, without another glance at any of us.

  Alsaes dug his fingers into my shoulder and muscled me across the street and into the jail. He was chuckling under his breath, the happy chuckle of fun and games ahead. Hoo boy, this was his night, and he was gonna have soooo much fun. You could just feel it stenching off him in fumes.

  Torchlight from the guards flared wildly, clashing with the blue of lightning and the weak glowglobe light, but I couldn’t see well because of the curtain of wet hair in my eyes, and the rain — and the tears of pain from that slap. Stumbling, I managed to get down the steps without falling, then I was thrust into a cell, the door clanged shut with reverberating firmness, and I collapsed onto the hard packed dirt.

  “Suffer!” Alsaes snarled, his gloating enjoyment so intense it was like another slap — not that his opinion mattered, because it didn’t. It was my complete inability to respond in the manner in which he deserved that galled me.

  Tromp, tromp, tromp. The sound of their retreat diminished, and with it the last red-gold flicker of the torches, leaving me in darkness total, inside and outside.

  The dirt was fast turning into mud beneath my cheek. I hauled myself upright and crunched into a corner against the bars, my head on my cold, soggy knees. My clothes felt like ice, and my face throbbed where Kessler had hit me.

  Presently faint rustling sounds half-roused me from my funk.

  “CJ! Hey — ” Puddlenose whispered.

  “Puddlenose, Christoph. Rest of you, I’m sorry I let you down.” It took some effort to get that out.

  “Now that’s a dumb thing to say,” Christoph replied briskly. “Because we’d — ”

  “Oh, shaddup,” I yelled, repressed tears making my voice ragged.

  Except for the occasional rustlings of people, and the muted roar of the thunder, silence descended. Self-pity (well-earned and richly deserved!) sought refuge in tears, but sheer rage kept me from giving in.

  My clammy, wet clothes began to make me ache, so to fight it, I got to my feet and started pacing the length of the cell. Back and forth, back and forth, while I relived every nasty moment of the plan, and the hours leading up to the plan, in a vain attempt to figure out where I’d gone wrong and what I could have done differently.

  Useless. Maddening. But I couldn’t stop myself, not until I realized that my eyes had adjusted, and I could barely make out the outline of the two sleeping figures next cell over, and one tall one sitting up, watching.

  Unable to sleep because of my restless walking, I thought dismally.

  “Uh, sorry about that,” I muttered, and withdrew to the opposite corner, curled in a shivering ball, and tried to sleep.

  When I did, the nightmares were worse than being awake.

  I slept, despite the acute discomfort in my wrists and arms. I think it was because I’d been overwhelmed.

  At any rate, I woke abruptly, snorting as if I’d fallen into a pool, and at first I was bewildered to find myself in darkness. For a moment I was afraid I’d been cast back into Shnit’s dungeon — then memory slugged me. I wasn’t far wrong.

  I sat up, stiff and sore, but I ignored it and wrestled my arms underneath me. This was a slow, frustrating, painful operation, but what a relief when I finally yanked my numb wrists past my feet and collapsed back.

  The knots took a while longer, but my teeth were strong, and it wasn’t as if I had any other demands on my time. Again relief washed through me when the last knot gave, and I flung away the rope. (Which incidentally was the roughest, scratchiest kind ever made. I wondered if that spacklebrain Alsaes had searched all over the world in order to find it.)

  Anyway, I resettled myself more comfortably. My clothes were rapidly drying out, and the air wasn’t so cold any more. Again my mind insisted on worrying at my flubbed plans, just like my teeth had at those knots. This time I worried about things outside myself, which was worse.

  About the only thing that kept me from yodeling and bounding in a crazy fit was the fact that the girls hadn’t been thrown in the jail as well. This meant — I hoped this meant — that Alsaes had not been able to read anything on those notes, or had seen the girls meeting me, so that they were still safe.

  I couldn’t trust this assumption, unfortunately. That creep of an Alsaes had made it clear that he could pull some kind of horrible trick, just for the sake of his own malicious pleasure.

  Even worse, Kessler’s Plan had not been halted.

  Clair and Mearsies Heili were still in danger.

  At least if I’d shown up with Kessler looming next to me, she could have taken one look at my face and known something was wrong. Maybe even — somehow — averted the disaster.

  I’d managed to smash even that faint chance.

  I rubbed my eyes. They were gritty from mud.

  Got to sleep, I thought. Sleep, don’t think. What’s the use of that? You’ve already proven you’re worthless at it.

  I wrestled with misery and anger for a while, my head on my knees, until a whisper came from the next cell over. “Psst! CJ.”

  I ignored it, my heart flooding with bitterness. All I could think of was Rel’s emphatic statement that my plan wouldn’t work.

  “CJ!” Puddlenose whispered louder.

  “Oh, lay off,” I snarled. “I know I barfed up the plan, so there’s no use in prunepie-ing the past and the moral-to-be-learned-from-this on me, because it’s all over, and hopeless. I just got Clair killed. I just got us all killed.”

  Self-pity closed my throat then, but I was too disgusted with myself to actually cry.

  Puddlenose said, “Cherene Jennet, listen!”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “You shut up.” He sighed, and I heard scrunchings as he shifted near to the bars. “Kessler was just down here a little while ago, while you were asleep — ”

  “What didya have to tell me that for?”

  “ — which he’s never done before, and when he was leaving he said something about having you moved upstairs. So we better solve your riddle, fast. We got a world to save!” He said this last in a fake heroic voice.

  “Give us the riddle again,” Christoph said.

  Though Kessler had taken the paper, I still remembered it — but I hesitated, wondering if Kessler had read the words. If, in fact, that paper had been his first proof of Dejain’s and Alsaes’s warnings about me being true.

  I repeated tonelessly, “‘When there is darkness outside and within, to dispel it there seems no way to begin. All appears lost but you must fight, then place your writer in the broken light.’”

  “Riddle ... secret place ...” Puddlenose mused.

  “Maybe there is no hidden meaning,” Rel said quietly.

  “That two-headed person made it sound like there was some rule behind the supposed ‘help’,” I said. “Of course that might have been a fake as well.”

  “We don’t know anything about where that was, m
uch less what kind of rules they might have,” Puddlenose said. “Broken light sounds like some kind o’ weird reference to, well, Norsunder.”

  “Whole thing reeks of Norsunder and its variants,” Christoph said, with conviction. “Put a writer there — would that be CJ? She’s the only one of us who keeps records. Sounds to me like some kind of recruitment attempt.”

  “Sure,” I gorbanzoed. “They need me to write their records. I guess this is proof that mine are as rotten as I’ve always suspected.”

  “Naw,” Puddlenose snarkled. “For your truly rotten, I think Faline would have to be assigned to the case. As she’d be the first to admit.”

  “Proudly,” Christoph added.

  “Beginning with all the head splatbrains’ names mangled with her weird spelling, followed by strings of stinkacious puns — ”

  “And that’s just the introduction,” Christoph said.

  I realized they were trying, in a roundabout way, to cheer me — to convince me, without having to refer to the mess, that they didn’t blame me for flubbing.

  As soon as I realized it, my emotions wheeled again. Still didn’t feel good (of course!) but not quite as rotten. However, all the humor had leached away.

  “Okay, Rel,” I said. “Explain what you said by no meaning. Or do you mean there’s no point to it at all?”

  “I didn’t mean to imply that there is no point — though what you say is entirely possible,” he began. “Just that the meaning might be more obvious than we’re assuming, just expressed as misleadingly as the speaker could contrive.”

  “That certainly sounds like someone forced to follow some rule,” Puddlenose said. “Or an order. Go on.”

  “So you break it down to the three points and find the obvious meaning,” Rel said calmly.

  “Darkness outside you and in,” Christoph said. “That first one is easy, or we’re all wearing wool blinkers and forgot to notice.”

  “It’s inside as well,” I said grimly.

  “Check,” Christoph went on with his characteristic cheer. As if our situation wasn’t so bad after all — as if, surely, we could do something about it. “And the second is true because we don’t know how to dispel it.”