by Victor Poole
"I mean Wall," Ajalia said. "Where has Wall run to?" Coren gave a start, and tried to sit up. He rocked a little to the side, and then fell back to the floor.
"Wall is going to be the Thief Lord," Coren said angrily. "He didn't run away. My mother said—"
"Your mother is dead," Ajalia said. "I told you that." Coren glared up at her with hatred in his eyes.
"I don't think she's dead," Coren said mulishly. He sat up clumsily. "I don't feel as though she were dead," he added, as though his feelings were likely to be an accurate measure of his mother's state of health. "And you know where Wall is, I bet," Coren added. Isacar was standing near the boy, and he looked very much like a man who wants to twist at a boy's ear.
"You stole some papers," Ajalia said, crouching down near the boy. Coren looked stubbornly at the far wall. The light outside was falling quickly into twilight; soon, the night would spread into the dragon temple. Ajalia watched Coren. She studied his eyes, and the muscles just around his lips and nose. She was sure that the papers Coren had taken were not quite as mundane as they appeared. She had spent enough time dealing with Delmar's willful, and his accidental obtuseness, to see through the convincing ignorance that was spread all over Coren's face.
"I think that you can read, very well," Ajalia said softly. "I think that you know exactly why these papers are important, and if you would like to stay alive," she added, "I think you're going to tell me all about the secret messages to Talbos."
Ajalia was guessing, but she was nearly sure that she was right. The king of Talbos had planted, and had been planting, figures throughout the city of Slavithe for many years, as evidenced by Denai, by Rane, by Leed, by the now-dead Beryl, and by the other men and boys that she was sure were seeded throughout the white city, like benign and searching weeds. Simon, she thought, had been a great fool, but he had known enough to keep his position for as long as Delmar had been alive, and he had kept the peace with his father, the king of Talbos, through his whole reign as the Thief Lord. Ajalia had heard of the wars between Talbos and Slavithe, but she was sure that these wars were many generations past. The language that was used to reference these wars was not, in her estimation, the language of a people whose grandfathers had killed each other in battle. She watched Coren, and she saw the infinitesimal flaring of his nostrils.
Ajalia congratulated herself; she had guessed right. Coren was regarding her with the same innocent face, but she saw now, just beneath the surface, a kind of malignant watching. She told herself that the boy was rotten, through and through. Coren, she thought, would have to be gotten rid of, after she had gotten what she needed from him. She had no intention of hurting the boy, but she would not let him stay in Slavithe, or in Talbos.
"I don't know anything about Talbos," Coren said, his eyes wide and stupid-looking. "And I can't read," he threw in.
"Your father taught you to read these old letters," Ajalia said in a low voice; Isacar was listening to what she said, but Leed was examining the pieces as he laid them into the long sack, and he was out of earshot. "You carried messages between your father and the old man, Tree," Ajalia told Coren.
"You had better send for Tree," Coren said quickly, his eyes flashing. A spark of hope came up into his eyes. "I told that servant," he said angrily, "to take me to my grandfather, but he's a traitor."
"Tree is dead," Ajalia said. Coren's face went through an awful revolution; the boy looked suddenly exposed, and terrified.
"No, he's not," Coren said in a blank voice.
"He blew himself up with the powder you got for him," Isacar said to the boy. "I saw the blood everywhere," he added, "and the pieces of his bones."
Coren's breath became shallow and forced. Genuine tears began to swim up into his eyes, and his mouth tightened.
"You're saying that," Coren said hoarsely. "You're trying to frighten me."
"Tell me where your father kept the codes, to translate these letters," Ajalia said softly. Coren looked up, and met her eyes. He looked so desperate, and so frightened, that if she had not known his mother, and seen an echo of Lilleth's cunning in the curve of his cheeks and mouth, she might have pitied him.
"No, I won't tell you," Coren said weakly. Ajalia stood up sharply. She looked down at the boy, and then over at Isacar.
"We'll have to torture him," she remarked to Isacar, who met her eye steadily. Isacar's lips made the tiniest fragment of a twitch. "Go and get the instruments," she told Isacar, and Isacar turned, and walked away, out of Coren's line of sight. Ajalia watched Isacar go; when he had gone far enough, and glanced back at her, she tilted her chin up, and Isacar stopped. Leed had replaced the items in the long sack, and he was sitting down on the floor near the bag, and watching the proceedings with great interest. Coren glanced up at Ajalia, and then over at Leed.
"You're bluffing," Coren said, but he sounded scared.
"You should see what she did to Sharo," Leed said loudly. Coren, who evidently knew this girl's name, gave an awful startle. His shoulders began to creep slowly up towards his ears.
"You didn't do anything to Sharo," Coren said, trying to keep his voice strong. Coren looked up at Ajalia, who was still standing and watching Isacar. Isacar stood still, and waited. "What did you do to Sharo?" Coren asked her weakly. Ajalia looked down at Coren, and her expression was so devoid of emotion, and so utterly sober, that the boy began to shake. Ajalia thought she could hear his teeth rattling.
"Ajalia's from the East," Leed told Coren, calling over to him from near the bag on the floor. Isacar was standing in the shadow of a great pillar, partway along the hall. "She knows how to hurt people," Leed added, raising his eyebrows.
"Where's Delmar?" Coren asked, his voice trembling. Isacar stepped briskly out of the shadow, and came near to Ajalia. Coren watched the young man approach her; Ajalia saw that the boy was staring avidly at Isacar's empty hands. Coren's mouth was stretched wide. Ajalia was sure that he did not know how frightened his eyes looked.
"I haven't had time to clean up the blood on the instruments," Isacar murmured respectfully to Ajalia, who cocked her head patiently. "I didn't know if you would like to wait, while I clean them," he said.
"A little blood is fine," Ajalia said calmly. "You can bring them as they are. Bring a few rags," Ajalia told Leed, "to clean up the floor, when we're finished."
Coren's eyes had grown until they seemed to swallow up all of his face. The blood had drained all out of his cheeks, and his eyes, which had jittered between Ajalia and Isacar through this exchange, came to rest at last on Ajalia's hands, which still held the dead falcon's knife, and the white stone flecked with purple.
"I could tell you a little bit, maybe," Coren said in a voice that rasped over his throat. He tried to clear his throat, and a wheeze came out. "If my father and mother are dead," Coren added, "and my grandfather."
"Go on," Ajalia said to Isacar, and Isacar bowed efficiently, and strode away again.
"No, wait!" Coren shrieked. Blubbering tears were beginning to seep down his face, and his upper lip was suddenly slick with snot. Coren had gone from pale terror to outright panicking tears in seconds. "Please don't hurt me," he begged Ajalia. "I'll tell you everything."
Ajalia nodded to Leed, who stood up, and went towards the back stairs. Leed, she thought, did not know the layout of anything in the temple, but she valued Leed for his quickness, and Leed was quick enough now to catch Coren's eye as he stood. Coren watched the boy walk away, and muffled sobs began to come out of his body, as though shaken loose with a great wind. When Leed was out of sight, and Isacar had resumed his post of readiness in the shadow of the pillar, Ajalia got down on one knee. She laid down the stone and the falcon's dagger, and her own knife, which glimmered still with magic in the growing darkness, was quickly in her hand.
"I cut your mother here," Ajalia said, her eyes dry, and her voice brisk. She pressed the tip of the knife against the boy's cheek, just below his eye, and the sharp edge of the blade made a soft indent in Coren's skin.
The
boy's tears vanished as quickly as they had come.
"You wouldn't dare," he said.
"Wouldn't dare cut your mother, or wouldn't dare cut you?" Ajalia asked. Coren eyed her, his face very still, and she saw him swallow.
"My brothers will rescue me," Coren told her in a cold voice, "and then Wall will destroy you."
"Wall has run away with Yelin," Ajalia told the child. "Ocher informs me that he is nowhere to be found."
Coren's gaze faltered; Ajalia saw that he had been putting on a show, with his tears.
"If you were hoping that Isacar or Leed would pity you," Ajalia told the child, "you were mistaken."
"Obviously," Coren said drily. He was regarding her now scornfully. Ajalia put her knife away. "Coward," Coren said.
"I don't mind killing," Ajalia told him, "but you have something that I want, and most people don't feel kindly around the dead body of a boy." Coren snorted.
"Then you won't hurt me at all," he said.
"Oh," Ajalia said, and she leaned in close to Coren. Coren looked suspiciously at Ajalia, and she smiled a little. He looked disconcerted.
"What?" Coren asked, frowning at her. "You won't hurt me," he said again, as though trying to convince himself.
"Do any of those letters deal with Bain?" Ajalia asked. She drew out a few of the documents, and she saw Coren's eyes go at once to them; she was sure that he could read. She smiled again. "I am sure that Delmar will be less protective than you expect" she told Coren, "when he finds out what you did."
Ajalia was guessing again, but she had a tickle at the bottom of her skull, and she trusted it. She was sure that Coren was deep, and ugly inside, like his mother. She had learned in her life as a slave that children often ran quite as dark as adults, and she had no compunctious feelings about Coren's possible innocence. She could, she thought, have sent cords of magic into the boy, to find the slabs of his mother that might have lurked there, but she felt wary of magic, and of the way the lights changed people. She wanted to deal with Coren the old way, and to prove to herself that she could beat the boy without resorting to her new powers. She had felt oddly in the dark lately, as her involvement with, and knowledge of the lights beneath the earth and in the air had grown, and just now, on the temple floor near Coren, she wanted to break him open in her old way, with words.
Coren's nostrils had tightened a little, when she had spoken her last words, and now he looked at her darkly.
"Who told you about that?" he asked suspiciously. "They lied," he added quickly. "It was another boy, not me."
"Oh, I know it was you," Ajalia said. She leaned a little bit closer, and smiled again. "Bain told me," Ajalia said.
Coren looked swiftly around, as though he expected to see Bain appear. Ajalia saw a small movement of Coren's lips, as though he were about to whistle.
"If you're trying to call to him," Ajalia said, her eyes very near to Coren's, "it won't work anymore. He's dead."
Coren looked sharply at her, his eyebrows drawn together.
"Only the witches can kill Bain," Coren said. Ajalia saw Leed appear at the end of the hall, but she saw him without moving her eyes, and when Leed saw how close she was to Coren, and how still her body was, he stopped far away, and made no sound. Ajalia thought briefly of how much she liked Leed; he was, she told herself, an excellent boy, and a great help to have around the house. Isacar was still standing, his arms folded, behind the shadow of the pillar, his eyes fixed steadily on Ajalia, and on Coren.
"You're bluffing," Coren told Ajalia. "I'm the son of the Thief Lord. You won't hurt me."
Ajalia stepped back, and looked at Coren. She lifted a hand, and waved to Isacar, and to Leed. Coren looked around, and saw the other two approaching.
"She tried to hurt me," Coren shouted at them, when he saw them. "She pulled a knife on me," he added.
"Take him upstairs," Ajalia told Isacar, "to the girl named Ossa. Tell her I said to do whatever she likes to the boy. I'll come up to see her later tonight." Isacar reached down, and grabbed the rope that twisted tightly around Coren's wrists and ankles. Coren sneered at Ajalia.
"Why do you think I'd be afraid of some girl?" Coren said spitefully, "I'm not afraid of anyone."
"Ossa is learning to be a witch," Ajalia told Coren, and she had the satisfaction of seeing his mouth drop open, and his eyes fill with genuine shock, before Isacar dragged him away by his bound limbs. Coren's back and hips made a muffled scraping against the stone floor as Isacar pulled him towards the stairs.
"You can't keep a witch!" Coren shouted back at her, and Ajalia thought that he sounded just like his father had done, before Delmar had killed him. "That's against the law!" Coren shrieked. "You can't do that!" he repeated, blistering rage coming out of his voice. Ajalia smiled, because she could see that she had finally gotten under Coren's skin. The boy, it appeared, was deathly afraid of witches.
Ossa, who had, it seemed, been lurking silently in the chamber where Ajalia had left her, appeared at the doorway, and watched Isacar drag Coren, like an unwieldy bundle, towards the stairs at the end of the hall. Ajalia waved at the thickset girl, and shouted across to her.
"I've brought you a plaything!" Ajalia called through the wide, echoing hall. Ossa frowned at Ajalia, and stepped forward a little, as though she did not understand. Ajalia did not normally shout; she found it undignified, and inefficient. Coren however, Ajalia told herself, merited all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. "Go to Ossa," Ajalia told Leed, "and tell her that I will buy the secret codes from her, if she can get them from Coren. And I want to know where Wall is hiding," she added. Leed nodded, and ran away.
Isacar was pulling Coren up the stairs, one at a time, and the boy's body was thumping loudly over each step. He had twisted his head up, to keep it from hitting the stone stairs, and the expression on his face was like that of a dying man.
"You can't do this to me!" Coren roared, and as he disappeared up the stairs, Ajalia heard him bellowing like an angry wolf. "I'll kill you! I'll get you for this!" Coren screamed, and his words echoed strangely down the stairs. Ajalia replaced the documents in her bag, and drew out the falcon's dagger. She examined the curved blade. Shimmers of light, like those that clung to her own knife's blade, showed faintly in the dim light. The dagger, she told herself, had been imbued with mixed magic from the earth and sky. When Leed had conveyed his message to Ossa, he dashed back to Ajalia, his eyes bright.
"Ossa wants to know if she can buy herself free," he said with a gasp. Ossa followed after the shrieks of Coren up the stairs.
"Listen," Ajalia told the boy, "I want Coren to stay here. Ossa I do not trust," she said, "and Sun is a fool. I want you to stay within sight of Coren at all times, until I have what I need." Leed watched her, and his mouth was still and quiet. She saw that he did not like the idea of guard duty, but that he was not sure of protesting. She thought that Leed was thinking of Isacar, and wanting to say that that young man could watch Coren just as well as he could.
"Leed," Ajalia said. Leed watched her, his lips working a little.
"What?" he asked. He sounded miffed.
"Tell me what you want in exchange for this," Ajalia told him. Leed watched her suspiciously.
"You would not give it to me if I asked," Leed said darkly.
"Ask me, and I will say yes or no," Ajalia said. Faint echoes of Coren's cries and shouts were falling down from the floor above; he went quiet very suddenly, and Ajalia thought that Ossa had approached the boy. Leed's eyes were darting quickly around Ajalia's face; he looked as though he was trying to follow the movement of a small flying insect.
"You would not say yes," Leed muttered again. Ajalia reached out; Leed flinched at the movement, and she stopped before she touched him.
"I'm sorry," she said, and put her hand down at once. Leed was looking down at the floor.
"I want you to teach me to fight better," Leed said. He looked up swiftly. Now that he had said what he wanted, words tumbled from him in a rush. "I want a weapon,
" he said, "and I want to know how to protect myself. I thought I was all right, but then I found out that I wasn't as strong as I thought." Leed watched Ajalia anxiously, a defensive frown on his face. "I know you will say no to this," he snapped.
"Go and watch Coren," Ajalia told him. "It will take me a little time to find you a proper blade." Leed's eyes flashed; he looked as though he thought that she was fooling him.
"Why?" he asked guardedly. Ajalia drew her knife in a fluid motion. She took her knife by the blade, and held the hilt towards Leed. Leed hesitated, and then reached out, and took it.
"My knife is balanced, here," Ajalia told him. "Many knives are not made as nicely as this. If your people here are as clumsy about weapons as I think they might be," she said, and she was thinking of the awful, ugly knife that Lim had carried with him in the forest, "then I will have something made for you in Talbos." Leed's fingers had closed around the hilt of the blade with the grip of a drowning man hanging onto a thread. He still looked unsure. "I cannot let you keep my knife," Ajalia told him, "but I will show you something now."
ISACAR'S WOMAN
Leed relinquished the knife reluctantly, and Ajalia led the boy to the place in the hall where the very last rays of light were falling. She put away her knife, and took the boy by the hand. Leed did not draw away when she touched him, but he watched her warily.
"Where did your uncle hit you first?" Ajalia asked. She kept her voice low, and level. She was sure that Leed could not suspect the fury that was bubbling in her chest. Leed watched her carefully, and then raised his fingers to his right temple.
"He struck me here," Leed told her.
"Violence begins as stillness," Ajalia told him. "If you can see the idea that comes before a blow, you can avoid it. Watch me now." She raised her hand slowly, and let it hang in the air over Leed's head. Leed flinched, but remained where he was. "If you can move," she told him, "and get behind the man who threatens you, you can make him fall. If he is too quick to fight, or too strong, you can run away."
