The Lion of Senet

by Jennifer Fallon

  Through a red haze of pain, grief and guilt, Tia began to comprehend. She glanced across at Reithan before she answered. He seemed to understand what was going on better than she did. He was on his hands and knees on the terrace, blood dripping from a cut over his right eye, but he looked up and nodded imperceptibly.

  “My name is ... Catalin ... Arrowsmith,” she stammered, hanging her head. She was trying to avoid looking Antonov in the eye, certain he would know she was lying. She unwittingly gave the impression she was hanging her head in shame.

  “I knew she wasn’t my child,” Ella announced stiffly. She appeared to feel vindicated, as if Tia’s admission proved that it wasn’t lack of maternal feeling that had kept her immobile while Barin Welacin tortured her.

  Dirk still held her. He shook her roughly and she cried out. “Come on. Tell us the rest of it!”

  “We’ve seen her before in the taverns on Kalarada,” Alexin Seranov added, stepping forward. “We thought she was one of Barin’s spies, actually.”

  Barin Welacin nodded in agreement. “Aye, there was some trouble about it down near the stables. That’s how we caught these three.”

  “I ... I come from Kalarada,” she continued, glancing at Alexin, hoping she’d read his intentions correctly. She could understand what Alexin was trying to do—throw doubt on her identity. But she couldn’t begin to imagine what Dirk Provin was playing at.

  “See how cooperative she is,” Dirk said. “Now that she knows we mean business. So what can you tell us about the Baenlands, girl?”

  “I ... I met Reithan in a tavern in Kalarada and he asked me if I wanted to see Avacas. When we got here, he told me to get a job in the palace so I could find out what was happening to Johan Thorn. All I had to do was tell people my name was Tia Veran. I’ve never even been to Mil.”

  Antonov turned on Reithan furiously. “What did you hope to gain by this deception?”

  “They’re trying to make you think Neris Veran lives, your highness,” Dirk answered before the drug runner could say a word. “They probably hoped that you’d become so distracted by your search for Neris that you’d lose interest in Johan Thorn.”

  Antonov stared at Dirk suspiciously. “And how is it that you worked this out, Dirk, when nobody else did?”

  Dirk Provin met the Lion of Senet’s gaze without wavering. “It’s what I would have done, your highness.”

  Antonov looked around him, at Johan’s body, at Queen Rainan who was pale with shock, being held upright by one of her guardsmen. He looked at Ella, standing there with her icy composure, and at Barin Welacin, who seemed annoyed that he had been robbed of his chance at further sport with his pliers. He took in Reithan, kneeling on the terrace with a guard standing over him, a sword at his throat. He glanced down at young Eryk, who was curled up in a ball, tears streaming down his face. Last, he turned to Dirk, who held Tia in a viselike grip. Dirk appeared calm but he was trembling. Tia could feel it in the hands that held her.

  “Dirk.”

  “Your highness?”

  “Clean this mess up.”

  Without another word, Antonov turned on his heel and walked away.

  The silence lasted a few moments longer. Everyone on the terrace seemed frozen in shock, by Antonov’s sudden departure as much as anything else that had happened in the past few minutes. It was Barin Welacin who recovered first. He glanced around the gathering, then turned to Dirk. The Prefect had apparently read the situation and come to the conclusion that the power here now lay with the Provin boy.

  “What are your orders, Lord Provin?”

  Dirk seemed a little taken aback by the question. “What?”

  “Your orders, Lord Provin?”

  “Ah ... yes ... I ... get rid of the body,” Dirk ordered, taking a deep breath. “I want my servant released, too. And have someone clean the blood off those tiles.”

  “Is that all you care about?” Rainan asked, her voice choked with emotion. “The blood on Antonov’s precious tiles? What about the blood on your hands, you—”

  “Your majesty, I believe you were planning to leave tomorrow. Might I suggest that you do it now, tonight, in fact. It would be better for everyone, I think.”

  Dirk was speaking to Rainan, but he was looking at Alexin, not the queen, as he spoke. Some sort of unspoken communication happened between the guardsman and Dirk Provin that Tia did not understand.

  “Her majesty will be leaving on the next tide,” Alexin assured Dirk. When Rainan made to object, Alexin cut her off. “If you would be so kind as to make a ship available?”

  “The Calliope is at your disposal, Captain.”

  Even Barin raised an eyebrow over that command. “And the prisoners, my lord?”

  Tia felt as if she was trapped in a nightmare; the sort of surreal landscape where nothing was as it seemed and everything changed so rapidly that it was little more than a blur.

  “I’ll take them to my rooms for now,” Dirk announced. Tia swallowed back an instinctive wave of panic. Isn’t anybody going to object to this?

  “Your rooms, my lord?”

  “I’d like to question both of them some more before I recommend to Prince Antonov what should be done with them.”

  “With all due respect, my lord,” Barin ventured with a frown, “I believe I’m more ... experienced than you, in these matters.”

  “Your experience didn’t help us much this evening,” Dirk pointed out coldly. “I got more out of the girl than you did.”

  “Yes, my lord, you did,” Barin conceded. “But I hadn’t killed anyone yet.”

  Dirk faced the Prefect with an icy stare. “You have your orders, Prefect Welacin.”

  Barin seemed to debate the matter for a few moments longer, before bowing in acquiescence. “As my lord commands.”

  Even the Prefect is afraid of him, Tia thought. She shuddered as Dirk pushed her ahead of him toward the palace, resolved that if nothing else, before the night was out, she at least would do something about Dirk Provin.

  Chapter 67

  When they reached Dirk’s rooms on the fourth floor Dirk thrust Tia inside roughly and let her go. Reithan followed a few moments later. Her hand was still pounding in agony, although the bleeding had stopped. Almost tripping on the chains around her ankles, she spun around to face Dirk Provin, determined to go down fighting, but he ignored them completely. With an abrupt command, he dismissed the guards then pushed past them into the bathroom. The next thing she heard was the sound of the dreaded Butcher of Elcast heaving his guts up like a girl.

  She glanced at Reithan, then waited a few moments after the sound of Dirk’s vomiting ceased. Finally, curiosity got the better of her. Holding her throbbing hand against her chest, Tia hobbled across the room with a metallic clatter to the bathroom and cautiously poked her head inside the door. Red light flooded the room from the skylight in the ceiling. Dirk had sunk down on to the floor beside the washstand. His knees were drawn up, his head resting on his arms.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He looked up at her. His eyes were tormented and Tia was astounded to find his face streaked with tears. Dirk leaned his head back against the tiled wall and closed his eyes. “I’m just wonderful,” he said bitterly. “Rape, torture, patricide... all in a day’s work for the Butcher of Elcast.”

  Tia had no answer for that. She was still reeling over the fact that Dirk was so obviously upset. He’d seemed carved from ice out on the terrace.

  “You’d better let me look at that hand,” he added tonelessly. “It’ll turn septic otherwise.”

  “What would you care?”

  With his eyes still closed, his head tilted back against the tiles, he was so exposed, his throat so bare and open to attack ...

  One slash with a knife, one thrust with a blade and you’re dead, Dirk Provin. Just as you killed Johan, you cold-blooded bastard.

  She looked around for a weapon. On the washstand beside the water jug lay his shaving paraphernalia, including his r
azor. It was no more than three steps away. But she was wearing chains. And Dirk was sitting on the floor between her and the washstand. She took one small step forward. The chains rattled loudly. Dirk looked up, then wiped his eyes impatiently. She froze midstep. He studied her for a moment before climbing to his feet, then glanced at the washstand, as if he knew what she was planning.

  “For the Goddess’s sake, I’m not going to hurt you!”

  “What are you going to do then?” she asked belligerently.

  “I meant it about dressing that hand.”

  “I don’t need any help from you, Dirk Provin. In fact, I’d say you’ve done quite enough for one evening.”

  He stared at her, then pushed past her and walked back into the other room. “Are you all right, Eryk?”

  The servant nodded silently. Dirk studied the boy for a moment, to reassure himself, perhaps, that the boy was unharmed.

  “He was your father,” she accused, following him with her eyes, determined not to turn her back on him. “He was the true King of Dhevyn. Not only are you a callous, cold-blooded cur, but a traitor as well.”

  “Shut up, Tia,” Reithan warned.

  Dirk paid no attention to either of them. He ruffled Eryk’s tousled head with a comforting hand, then turned to Reithan. “What about you? Are you all right?”

  He nodded. “I’ll live. See to Tia.”

  She glared at Reithan for a moment and then turned on Dirk. “You murdered Johan.”

  “I did what he asked of me.”

  “And you couldn’t wait to do it, could you? You didn’t even flinch!”

  “Goddess! I should have let Barin have you. Don’t you ever let up?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because he’s trying to help us,” Reithan said. He wiped away the blood that was obscuring his vision and sat down on the arm of the expensively upholstered settee.

  “You call murdering his own father helping?” she asked incredulously. “If that’s his idea of helping, I’d rather he didn’t do us any more favors.”

  “Johan was a heartbeat away from revealing the truth about your father,” Dirk tried to explain.

  “Johan would never betray—”

  “Yes, he would, Tia,” Reithan cut in impatiently. “He wasn’t going to stand there and watch Barin Welacin tear you apart a finger at a time. He might have been able to ignore Antonov executing a score of innocent strangers. He probably wouldn’t have broken if it were Eryk or me that was being threatened. But he couldn’t take watching you being tortured.”

  “But how could Dirk Provin possibly know that?”

  “Because he told me about you,” Dirk said. He walked to the window and glanced down at the gardens. Without taking his eyes from the view, he added, “He loved you, Tia. I knew that, just by the way he smiled when he spoke of you.”

  “Dirk is right, Tia. Once Antonov realized what you meant to him, Johan knew he had no defense against the Lion of Senet.”

  Tia stared at him in surprise. The last thing she was expecting was Reithan to side with Johan’s killer. “Why are you defending him?”

  “Because he’s on our side,” Reithan said, looking at Dirk evenly.

  Dirk didn’t deny Reithan’s claim. But he didn’t agree, either.

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “And I don’t care,” Dirk retorted. He turned his back on them and walked across the sitting room to the bedroom door. He stopped with his hand on the latch and looked back at her. “My life was just fine until your precious Johan Thorn came along. I was happy. I knew who I was. I had a home and I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I found out Johan was my father just before I left Elcast, and I’ve spent every waking moment since that day terrified that the Lion of Senet would learn the truth and try to use it against the people I loved.

  “The truth is, Tia, I don’t care that you hate me. I don’t care that you think I’m a monster. Right now, all I care about is that I was able to do the only thing Johan ever asked of me and, even if only temporarily, I beat Antonov at his own game. In the process, I saved your life, in case you didn’t notice.”

  Although she was reluctant to admit it, Tia knew there was more than a grain of truth in his words. He had saved her and Reithan. And he had spared them the necessity of carrying out Johan’s orders. But she still wasn’t ready to trust him.

  “That’s all this is to you, isn’t it? A game. You’ll forgive me for not tripping over myself with gratitude.”

  He shook his head, but didn’t answer her, then opened the door to the bedroom. Tia could hear him moving about in the other room. Clutching her throbbing hand to her chest, she glanced over her shoulder at Reithan.

  “It might be worth trying to make a break for it!” she hissed.

  “You won’t get far in chains,” Eryk pointed out, before Reithan could answer.

  With a guilty jump that made her hand throb in protest, Tia turned back to find Dirk emerging from the bedroom. He was carrying a small knapsack and a vial of purple liquid. He’d changed out of his bloodied shirt, too, but hadn’t bothered to tuck in the clean one.

  “What’s that?” she asked suspiciously.

  “It’s poison,” he told her. “I thought I might tip it into the palace cisterns. I’ve only killed one person today. I’m a bit below my quota.”

  It took her a moment to realize he was teasing her. “You’re sick!” she accused.

  “It’s antiseptic, that’s all. Did you want me to dress those fingers, or were you planning to wait until gangrene sets in and you lose your whole hand?”

  “Let him look at it, Tia,” Reithan ordered.

  Tia suffered him leading her to the settee near the fireplace. Dirk dragged a small side table over and placed it in front of her, then took her hands and pulled the locking pins out of the metal cuffs. He didn’t remove the shackles around her ankles, though. Nor had he yet freed Reithan. Once her wrists were free, he tossed the chains aside and ordered her to rest her wounded hand on the table. Then he sent Eryk to the bathroom for a towel and a bowl of clean water.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked as he knelt in front of the table to examine her hand.

  “Does it matter?” He took the bowl and towel from Eryk and placed them on the table. “Eryk, are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, Lord Dirk, I promith,” Eryk said in a small voice.

  “I need you to do something very important for me. I want you to find Princess Alenor for me and get her to come to my room. Do you think you can do that?” His voice was gentle, almost soothing, as if he were talking to a frightened animal.

  “What will I tell her, my lord?”

  “Tell her I need to see her. Urgently.”

  Eryk nodded, then looked at Tia with concern. “Will you make Tia better?”

  “I’ll try. Now off you go and fetch Alenor for me.”

  Eryk nodded and smiled wanly at Tia before he left the room. Dirk turned back to his patient, lifted Tia’s hand with surprising gentleness and lowered it into the water. The bowl immediately turned red, as the drying blood soaked away from her ruined fingers. She gasped at the pain, but refused to let him know how much it was hurting her.

  “Do you think we’ll change our minds about you just because you’re helping us?”

  “That would imply I actually cared about your opinion of me,” he replied.

  “I’m not a fool,” she informed him through gritted teeth. “I know what you are, and I saw who Barin Welacin turned to for his orders after the Lion of Senet left.”

  Dirk sat back on his heels and looked at Reithan. “Is she always this irritating?”

  “Yes,” Reithan replied with a thin smile.

  “Reithan!”

  “Don’t worry about Tia,” Reithan told Dirk, ignoring her protest. “She’ll come around when she’s had time to think about it. But what are you going to do next?”

  “I’ll try to find a way to get you out of the palace. After that, you’re
on your own, I’m afraid.”

  Reithan nodded in understanding.

  Tia turned to Reithan in surprise. “You’re not going to trust this murderer, are you?”

  “Right now, you don’t have much choice but to trust me,” Dirk pointed out. “Of course, if you’d rather I gave you back to the Prefect...” He let the sentence hang. When she didn’t answer him, Dirk patted her hand dry and studied it closely for a moment. Tia couldn’t look at it. She fixed her eyes firmly on the richly patterned wallpaper and tried to quell her increasing nausea.

  “How much pain can you take?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “I can splint your fourth finger, although I don’t know if you’ll ever have the full use of it again, but the little finger is a mess. I need to trim away the bone fragments and then stitch it closed. I don’t have any poppy-dust to kill the pain.”

  She stared at him, aghast. “Are you serious?”

  “Do I sound like I’m joking?”

  Tia glanced at her hand and gagged. Tears filled her eyes as she looked down at it. The fourth finger was purple and swollen to twice its normal size around the top joint. Her little finger was a bloody mess and missing completely above the first knuckle. He was right, she realized. If it wasn’t cleaned and stitched, she’d end up losing her whole hand.

  “Do you actually know what you’re doing?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Yes.”

  She thought about it for a moment and then nodded reluctantly. “I can stand it.”

  Chapter 68

  Marqel wished she knew what to expect as she neared the broad hall that culminated in two massive, impressively decorated doors. This part of the Hall of Shadows was usually out of bounds, but the summons from the High Priestess had left her no choice but to attend her mistress in this most hallowed sanctuary.

  She approached the doors cautiously, still amazed that she had survived the day, following the episode with the Milk of the Goddess. That slip had almost cost her the chance to stay in the Hall of Shadows.