by Col Buchanan
The old farlander tossed down a purse of coins. It clinked mutedly in the foulness next to him.
'Farewell, my boy.'
'Master Ash!'
But Ash was gone. Nico could hear him slithering out through the window, and then footsteps scraped by the entrance, and someone shouted, and they were after him.
Others remained behind. Lamplight flickered through the holes overhead; shadows passed by, the scuff of heavy boots and the closeness of shouted commands echoing in the reeking space immediately overhead. Nico closed his eyes and tried to breathe in without gagging. He tried, with all his will, not to think of what they would do to him if he was caught.
Light flickered against his eyelids, but by the time he had gathered enough courage to look upwards it was already fading.
The chase moved on. The room overhead became dark and silent.
He waited. He heard more shots in the distance. A scream. People shouting.
Nico lost track of time. He found that not moving at all was the best way to minimize the sensation of the ordure against his skin. He lay in perfect stillness, trying to breathe without actually breathing.
He wondered how Ash fared, and was certain, despite the sheer scale of the trap set around them, that his master would find a way clear of it. That at least gave Nico some hope.
Dogs barked. Again voices. Nico's heart stopped in mid-beat as footsteps returned to the entrance.
'They searched in there already,' came a woman's voice.
'Those idiots? They might be good at waving their swords around, but I doubt their skills at observation.'
Boots scraped overhead once more. A lamp flickered, casting shadows.
'Where is Stano? Did you see him?' The woman's voice sounded worried.
'Aye, the Rshun ran him through in the fog. Bad luck, that.'
'Dead?'
'He looked it.'
The woman seemed displeased at that. 'When we catch these bastards, I will have first crack at them.'
'Be my guest.'
The voice was directly overhead now. Lamplight shone through the hole. Nico cringed away from it.
A face appeared. Its eyes met his.
Suddenly, teeth shone bright.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Waiting by Mokabi The fog had barely thinned by dawn.
It blanketed the streets like a layer of vaporous snow, obscuring everything within it and everything without, even the rising sun itself, which was just a vague glow without heat. Daylight, for those unfortunate enough to be up and about at this early hour, was nothing but a thin luminescence that added form to the morning chill. Pedestrians collided awkwardly on the pavements. Carts ran across the paths of other carts, while draft mules snapped teeth at each other in their nervousness. The fog reeked: it clung to the backs of throats, stung the eyes. It coated every surface with moisture, so that even the sagging flags of the district dripped wetly.
Ash hurried along the street. His cloak was sodden through, as were his clothes beneath it. He carried his sword with him still, though he kept it hidden from sight. Dried blood stained his hand where it had trickled from his reopened wound. The old farlander walked with a slight limp.
Ahead, the monument reared up through the fog, a huge spike rising into the murk. Struggling figures were spitted along its vertical length, their death throes frozen in skilfully cast bronze. Ash stopped beneath it: General Mokabi, three times larger than life, stood at the base of the spike, looking outwards. His expression was fixed in a victor's triumph, though it was a hard-won victory as seen in the weary lines of his flesh. He held arms akimbo, his head slightly thrown back: as though relishing the admiration of others at this his greatest achievement.
Nico was nowhere to be seen.
Ash released a breath and sat down heavily upon the parapet encircling the monument. He winced as he took the weight from his feet.
Dawn was turning to early morning. He wrapped the cloak tighter around himself, though the damp wool held little warmth. He did not stir again. After a while it was as though he became part of the monument itself, so that, as the traffic increased across the surrounding square, no one noticed him sitting there, waiting.
Mid-morning passed into late morning. Still no sign of Nico.
The old farlander stood up, and walked for a time around the base of the monument, to work some heat back into his legs. He scanned the surrounding fog as he went. In the distance, a clock chimed out the hour.
By early afternoon, Ash sat down again with his sword in his lap, courting trouble – it was against the law to openly bear arms within the city. His thumb stroked the leather scabbard, his gaze darting out from the folds of his hood. A breeze stirred from the sea, which lay somewhere off to his right. Autumn leaves scuttled dry and brittle along the ground, shed from trees he could not see. The fog stirred, creating spaces within itself, though it still refused to lift.
The clock chimed again. Slowly, Ash rose. 'Nico!' he cried out.
The sound of his voice was muted, lost in the wrapping of fog.
Around his ankles the dead leaves swirled. The old man hung his head.
*
'Tell me, precisely now, what happened?'
It was Baracha, and he was losing patience with his comrade.
Ash sat for some moments in silence.
The boulders they all sat upon were slick with dampness, giving the appearance of black, volcanic rock. Here and there, within depressions on the rock surfaces, minute pools of brackish water reflected bands of twilight, breaking occasionally into free-running rivulets that ended in slow monotonous drips. Nearby, a gull pecked halfheartedly at a dead crab.
'I hid him away, and tried to lead them on a chase. It was a mistake.'
'You think so?' remarked Baracha, sarcastically.
'Father,' Serese interrupted sharply.
Ash stared down at the wavelets lapping against the stones at his feet. The sea was out there somewhere, hidden and silent save for these fringes of itself.
Aleas tried to speak, but it emerged as a croak. He tried again. 'It's hardly Master Ash's fault. It's a miracle he got out at all.' Baracha glowered at his young apprentice, but Aleas spoke on. 'We would have been captured ourselves if not for Serese's sharp eyes.'
He was the first to state aloud what they all knew must have happened to Nico. Captured.
'What happened to you?' inquired Ash, looking up from the water's edge.
'Serese thought we were being watched when she returned to the hostalio, so we slipped out before they could make a move against us. If not,' and he met his master's eyes before he said it, 'we would have all been as geese in a bag.'
They were quiet for a time. It was not a comfortable silence shared amongst comrades; instead it was an individual isolation, each wrapped in their own concerns. The wavelets washed against the shore. Behind, the city murmured on, its sounds subdued and ghostly.
Baracha studied the old farlander perched on his rock. He shook his head again. 'You're pondering something. Out with it.'
'In the morning, we should proceed with the plan.'
'We should, should we? That would leave us little time to prepare, Ash.'
'These fogs tend to last for a few days. Tomorrow should continue the same as today. After that, who knows?'
Baracha stroked his beard, beads of water dripping from its frazzled ends.
'Plan?' inquired Serese. 'What plan?'
'I have made some arrangements,' replied Ash, 'which might gain us entrance to the tower.'
'But what of Nico?' she demanded. 'Are we simply going to leave him in their hands? Sweet Ers, what must he be going through even now, while we sit here glum and bickering between ourselves?'
Gently, Ash replied: 'I am well aware of what he will be going through, Serese. We will not be forsaking him. By now he will be held within the Temple of Whispers, for that is where the Regulators work from. So. If we wish to save Nico, that is where we must go anyway.'
'S
ave him?' snapped Baracha, standing tall. 'We'll do no such thing! The boy is lost to us, and we all know it. We can risk no more lives on fools' errands. If we storm the temple, we do so to take down Kirkus. That is our mission here, nothing else.'
'And we shall stay true to our mission. But before we finish with Kirkus, he will tell us where to find Nico. You may do what you like then. I will go and find my apprentice.'
'And I, too,' agreed Aleas.
'You'll do as you're told, boy,' snapped the Alhazii. 'As soon as we finish our task, you'll be leaving along with me. For if you're even still alive by then it will be a miracle in itself, and I will risk you no further.' His bluntness stunned Aleas to silence. 'And you, daughter, all fired up and spirited, I know what you're intending, but I tell you right now, you will not be coming with us. I will not risk you at all.'
'You can't stop me, father.'
Baracha took a step towards her, his big fists clenched. He restrained himself with a visible effort. 'I can stop you,' he told her – and none doubted it.
Serese flung herself to her feet, her own fists clenched, and glared up at his towering bulk. 'If it was your own apprentice, father, would you not attempt to rescue him?'
'Perhaps,' he admitted, while avoiding Aleas's gazes 'if there was any chance of success. But since when did I owe that boy anything? Ash should have taken better care at looking out for him. It's hardly my fault he has fallen into their hands.'
Serese turned away in disgust.
'He is right, Serese,' said Ash, raising a palm. 'You cannot come with us. We will need someone to remain outside, to provide a means for our escape. Getting in is one thing, but your father speaks the plain truth. It will be a miracle if any of us survive. If we do, then getting away will require yet another. We will need you for that most of all.'
His words placated her a little, and she slumped back against the rock.
'We must be quick,' continued Ash, 'if we are to procure everything we will need. I fear it will require most of our remaining funds.'
Serese studied the old man's face. 'Do you really think you can save him?'
Before he could reply, Baracha spat on the shingle between them. 'We're not doing this to save the boy – will you get that into your skulls, all of you? For all we know he is dead already.'
They all turned away from each other once more. Ash stared out to sea again, studying it not by his eyes but by his ears. Baracha picked up a pebble, threw it clattering into the rocks nearby.
A flap of wings caught Ash's attention. He was in time to turn and catch the after-image of a startled gull, flying off; it was the emptiness mostly that he saw, the space it had just occupied. He looked up and saw the white gull gliding into whiteness.
A simple smile crept over his features. He threw his hood back, took a deep breath.
'He lives,' he declared.
Baracha frowned. Aleas and Serese turned to him, expectant.
'How could you know that?' Baracha demanded.
'An intuition,' he said. 'The boy lives. And he is in need.'
*
Nico had no idea where he was.
Upon his capture, they had manacled his wrists together and shoved a hood over his head. It had been a terrifying experience – the dislocation of sight, the heavy cloth pressing against his face as he panted and struggled to breathe, the rough hands digging into his flesh, shoving and pushing him one way and the other, the slaps, the shouts, the disorientation. Voices had risen in excitement all around him. A rider had been dispatched, bearing the message that a Rshun had been caught, the clatter of hooves fading away down the unseen street. Nico had been thrown into a cart of some sort, the smell of his own filth-smeared clothes gagging him as it rocked along over the cobbles. They had crossed a bridge, or else some other structure made of wood. After the iron-rimmed wheels of the cart trundled across it, the vehicle stopped for a heavy gate to be opened, and then it passed through a stone entranceway, and halted again. Nico had been hauled out and shoved roughly along a stone-flagged floor, up some steps, through another door.
He stood now in a room of some sort. He could tell it was large by the echoes heard through the heavy cloth of the hood. A woman shouted somewhere in the distance, the sound of her tirade terminated by a loud clanging impact.
The scent of hazii smoke filled the air. People were conversing in low voices somewhere off to his left.
'Keys,' the male Regulator demanded, by Nico's side.
'I'll need the contract if you still have it.' It was another male voice, a new one, breathy as from the lungs of a heavy smoker.
There was a rustle of crumpled paper being unfolded next to Nico's ear.
'You only lifted the one, huh?'
'One more than you ever caught, Malsh,' quipped the female Regulator.
The smoker chuckled like a cat hacking up a fur ball, as he approached the prisoner. Nico heard the metal rasp of scissors opening, and then someone was cutting the clothes from his body without further fuss.
'I'll need a name, too, for processing,'
The woman's voice was heavy with intent. 'Forthcoming,' she drawled.
*
Nico was led naked and still hooded through a series of iron doors that were opened in turn before him, and closed again behind, a collection of keys jangling each time. The stone floor felt gritty underfoot.
A man was talking loudly, directly ahead, his voice rebounding along the narrow passageway. He was reciting a verse or a poem of some kind, in a language only half Trade and half something else, and as Nico was manhandled onwards, the same voice neared until it seemed to be right next to his face, and then it was passing behind him, and fading faster than seemed right.
The passage veered in a gradual curve to the right. Soon it was sloping downwards, too, so that Nico stumbled along near falling each time his feet trod on air.
The Regulators stopped him with a crunch of halting feet, then turned him around.
The noise of an iron door opening on its hinges sounded like the panicked shriek of a young girl.
Nico was shoved through a doorway, his manacled hands flailing ahead of his tottering feet. The door closed with a crash, changing the sound of the confined space.
At first he thought he was alone, but then he heard the scuff of a boot, and then another from a different direction. He sensed the two Regulators breathing on either side of him.
'Lie on the floor,' ordered the man.
'What?'
'Lie on the floor,' repeated the woman.
Nico was trembling. He could hear, absurdly, his own teeth chatter.
His knees began to fold beneath him, and then he was getting down on the floor, his chin resting on the stone, his ribs pressing sharp against its hardness.
He heard the squeak of leather, as fingers flexed. He heard this sound four times in all.
The first kick was enough to loosen his bladder. His body clenched around itself, and he gasped at the howl of white pain deep inside him.
'He's pissed himself already,' observed the woman.
And then they laid into him properly.
Nico tried to crawl away from their blows. He could hear his own voice screaming out for them to stop. He would have told them anything at that point, for he could find no courage in this situation, stripped not only of clothes but of dignity, of spirit.
But they asked him nothing. They merely took turns at stamping on his legs, or smashing his head against the floor, or kicking his ribs; not in a frenzied way, but slowly, methodically, as though this was everday work to them, and they wanted to make a thorough job of it.
They were going to kill him eventually; he was sure of it. But as his head began to swim in a fog of darkness, the door squealed open, and the blows ceased without warning.
'Holy Matriarch,' panted the man with obvious surprise.
Footsteps and a swirling of robes.
'Let me see him,' came a different woman's voice.
The hood was pulled free of
his face. Nico lay gasping for air and squinting at the brilliance of a single lantern set on the floor.
He opened one bloody eye just wide enough to take in the newcomers. The two Regulators were bowing low at the waist as they faced a tall woman of middle years. She wore the familiar white robes of the Mannian order. At her side stood a youth, even taller, trim and athletic, clad also in white robes.
'Have you administered the witspice yet?' inquired the Matriarch.
They all looked down at Nico, bleeding on to the cool stone floor.
'No, we've been softening him up first.'
'Very well. You may administer it now.'
Orders were quickly given to someone outside the cell. An old priest appeared, holding a twist of white paper in one palm. He knelt beside Nico. Gently, he touched the boy's face until Nico looked up into his eyes. A healer perhaps, Nico thought. The old man unfolded the paper. As he blew across it, a fine white dust caught Nico full in the face.
He coughed, rubbed at his burning eyes. Then weariness seized hold of him, spread him out across the floor. His thoughts began to swim through a thick haze as though he was midway to sleep. Dreams surfaced occasionally, only to disappear again without trace.
Nico experienced only fragments after that.
*
Leave us, commanded a woman's voice.
Matriarch? said another.
I would speak with him.
As you command.
Nico was walking along a narrow mountain path. Goats chewed on the sparse grasses above him, watching him from the corners of their eyes as he passed.
Baa! he cried out, letting them know that he was aware of their attention.
Why does he make such a noise?
It's the spice. He's partly in his dreams now.
Nico was thirsty, and he could scent water ahead. He crested a rise and looked down into a ravine. A river gushed along the rocks at its bottom. He grinned.
Boy! a voice commanded, from somewhere high.
Nico looked up into a woman's face. It was a plain face, but made ugly by the emotions shining through from behind. He was reminded of a bird, something black and malicious.
She was asking him questions, and he was talking… talking about his master and the city and what they were doing here. A young man stood by her side, staring down at him. His expression grew meaner as Nico talked, the lips curling back. A wolf making ready to attack.
