Distantly he heard the rattle of wheels out in the street. He wondered if the siesta were over, and if so how long for someone to call out a detachment from the fort on account of the bodies; then much closer he heard footsteps and a voice he recognized as the girl’s, though he did not recognize the words. There were other voices. He heard a voice in Vareno all at once, heavily accented but intelligible: “Lift him—carefully now.”
An arm went around his shoulders, pulling him up. Someone knelt before him on the mat. Torien opened his eyes. A figure hovered indistinct in front of his face. He flinched. The arm tightened around his shoulders. A voice at his ear said, “Easy.”
He tried to speak. Nothing came out. He licked his lips and tried again and managed only a whimpering groan.
“Quiet, yes?” The man who had spoken first was holding Torien’s ribs under his hands, looking at the wound. “You save your strength.”
Torien held his tongue between his teeth and sat very still while the wound was washed and dressed. The voice at his ear, a younger man’s voice, said, “Can he walk or do we carry him?”
“Carry him, but gently. You think he walks with this?”
The girl said something. The man who had done the bandaging replied in the same tongue. The younger man, his arm still around Torien’s shoulders, said, “What is she saying?”
“She says she has his horses. I tell her we take them. Hold him, now. I take his legs.”
He was lifted suddenly from the mat, the younger man’s hands under his arms, the elder’s around his knees and under his ankles. They carried him out through the shop and up into the street. He turned his head against the supporting arm. The bodies were gone, the blood washed from the paving stones. They carried him up into a large closed carriage waiting before the doorway. Inside the carriage, they deposited him carefully onto a long, low bench. “Stay with him,” the older man said. “I see to the horses.”
In the light coming through the carriage doorway, Torien had a glimpse of him as he climbed down to the street. He was wearing a tunic of plain black wool, ankle-length and belted at the waist with a leather cord. Torien recognized it as a priest’s robe. He tilted his head back against the bench and saw the younger man robed likewise. While he was arranging this in his head, the girl climbed up into the carriage. She put his sword belt and tunic on the bench at his feet. She touched his hand with two fingers, tracing the line of his thumb inward to his palm. She looked over to where the young priest sat at the far end of the bench with his hands on Torien’s shoulders. She said something in Modigno. The priest said, “She wishes to apologize. It is not customary that her patrons are knifed.”
Torien could not push the words off his tongue. She must have seen his frustration in his face. She let go his hand and covered his mouth gently with her fingers. She smiled at him. When she looked back at the young priest, the ends of her coarse black hair brushed across his face. He closed his eyes. He heard the hint of laughter in her voice as she spoke. The young priest said, “She says to tell you there are better ways to avoid attention than to wander about during the siesta.”
The girl said something else, and the priest was silent for a moment, struggling with the translation. He asked the girl a question. Then he said to Torien, “If you are ever not a fugitive, she hopes she will have your patronage again.”
The old priest was tying up Briule’s horses at the back of the carriage. The girl took her hand from Torien’s mouth. He watched through half-closed eyes, tight-throated, while she climbed back down into the street. The old priest came in, carrying Torien’s kit. He pulled the door shut. Darkness fell. The carriage started with a lurch, and Torien drew a hissing breath through his teeth and gripped the rim of the bench in his fingers.
“Keep him still,” said the old priest, from somewhere in the darkness.
The young priest bent over Torien, his hands tightening on Torien’s shoulders. “It’s not far,” he said apologetically.
The carriage lumbered on. Through the walls, Torien could hear voices and the tramp of feet and clatter of hooves along the quay, and he knew the siesta was over. It was three hours past noon. The carriage walls trapped the heat like an oven. The pain had started, and he lay sweating and biting his tongue against the jolting of the wheels over the paving stones. Somehow—out of the gnarl of his thoughts—it occurred to him that the boy was waiting at the smithy and had been waiting more than five hours now. He unclenched his teeth and said, with concentrated effort, “Ædyn.”
Above him, the young priest said, “Don’t speak.”
“Waiting for me. The smithy. Told him only an hour or two.”
The old priest observed, over the rumble of the wheels, “He kills himself trying to talk.”
“There is someone waiting for him on the quay.”
“Another deserter, is it?”
“However he has crossed the jente, it isn’t for that. Brevade doesn’t send knifemen after deserters.” The young priest bent down close to Torien’s ear. “I will find your friend,” he said. “You needn’t worry. Rest now.”
He must have passed out in the carriage, because he woke anticipating the lurch and clatter of the wheels beneath him and felt instead solid stone and heard only murmured voices. In the glow of lamp flame, he saw white adobe walls under a tall, wood-braced vaulted ceiling; and a long, empty floor of flagged tile; and arched windows open to blue twilight and a cool breath of wind. His kit and sandals were beside him against the wall; his tunic, he imagined, had been taken for washing and mending.
He ached all through, and the ache blossomed into throbbing pain when he tried to move. He lay very still, listening to the snatches of conversation which drifted to him in echoes off the ceiling. He recognized the voices of the old priest and the young priest. There was an unfamiliar third voice which he heard very clearly: “—give him to the fort and let them have it out of him, since he can’t seem to find his tongue any other way.”
“It’s possible he simply doesn’t know.” That was the young priest.
“He knows more than he lets on. You—slave. Where was he traveling from—your master?”
There was a stretch of silence.
“You see he chooses not to speak. He would have no reason to remain silent if there were nothing to hide.”
“Ædyn.” The young priest spoke quietly and patiently. “He’ll come to no harm, Ædyn, I promise, but—”
“Unless he is, in fact, a fugitive from justice.”
“They were Brevade’s men,” the young priest said.
“And the girl is Sagrado’s. The point is, he wishes to avoid the attention of the garrison. It is to me very obvious—”
Torien pushed himself up on his left elbow. Pain burst against his rib-cage from the inside out. The room swam around him. “Let the boy go.”
Four faces turned toward him from the doorway down the room. The young priest had been holding Ædyn by the shoulders, but he lifted his hands away now as though in surrender. The old priest said, “I tell you it is better we do this elsewhere. I tell you he needs rest, and what is it you do but wake him?”
The third man ignored that. He was the chapel father, judging by the gold-thread stripe on the seams of his robe. He reached and took Ædyn by an elbow and hauled the boy across the room and flung him down to the floor beside Torien’s mat. “You’ve trained the dog well, Lord Risto.”
Torien considered first the father and then the boy, wondering whether they had forced the name from the boy or whether Ædyn had volunteered it, not knowing any better. Then he remembered that he had paid in bronze to have it etched on the boy’s collar. It had not seemed so profoundly stupid then as it did now.
He said, in Cesino, “Have they hurt you, Ædyn?” The thought was his, but the voice was distant and unfamiliar.
The boy had caught himself on his hands and knees. He pushed himself up and sat back on his heels. His eyes ran the raw line across Torien’s cheek.
He averted his gaze quickly. He said to the floor, “No, Lord.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come back for you.”
The boy said nothing. The father said, in Vareno, “Since your slave refuses to speak, Lord Risto, I must ask you to explain your business in Modigne.”
“It waits,” the old priest said, “unless it is that you want to kill him.”
“It cannot wait. The Church does not harbor criminals, whatever their name or blood.”
Torien laughed. Pain swelled against his ribs. He choked. He collapsed against the mat and lay writhing like an overturned beetle. He was aware of the old priest at his side muttering in Modigno, and of fingers prying apart his clenched teeth, and of something wet and warm and bitter sliding down his throat—then of hands holding him flat and still against the mat. The pain subsided very slowly. He lay still. The room went far away and came back blurred and distorted, as though he were looking at it through fogged glass.
The father’s voice drifted down lazily from somewhere above him. “I see no cause for amusement, Lord Risto.”
Torien squeezed his eyes shut. His mind wanted very much to float away from his body on the mat, and it was exhausting effort to hold it back. “You think I’m a criminal, Father?”
“It is not dependent on what I think. It is dependent on fact. You run afoul of the jente yet refuse the protection of the fort; your slave refuses to speak when asked why. Put together, these facts are cause at least for suspicion.”
“You’ve no right to ask my business of the boy. To press him for information without my consent, when I am uncondemned, is against the law. So the Church harbors at least one criminal that we know.”
“You were incapable of giving your consent, at the moment.”
“How inconvenient for you.”
“If your business is innocuous, it should not matter whether I ask it of the slave. Nor should it matter if we transfer you into the care of the fort in the morning.”
The young priest said, “Father—”
“Of course, you may speak now, if you wish,” the father said.
Torien did not say anything. He was finding it difficult to focus and in consequence difficult to care. More than anything else, he wanted not to have to think.
“Very well,” the father said. “I will listen, Lord Risto, if you change your mind.”
His footsteps echoed down the flagstones. When the echoes had rolled away across the vaulted ceiling, the old priest said something in Modigno, low and quick and by the sound of it unflattering. The young priest cleared his throat and said, “Come, Ædyn, we’ll find you a place to sleep.”
“He stays with me,” Torien said.
“It is better if he is elsewhere, Lord Risto.” The young priest’s voice was quiet.
“You’ll forgive me if I hesitate to trust you. The boy stays with me.”
There was a pause in which he imagined the young priest and old priest were exchanging glances. Then the young priest said, “As you wish, Lord Risto. I will bring another mat.”
The old priest knelt beside him to unwind the bandage from his ribs. “You lie very still now, Lord. It continues to bleed.”
“Can you not stitch it?”—chokily, as the priest peeled the dressing away.
“I have fear of infection to close it so soon. In the fort, they do this for you.”
“How long for it to heal?”
“A month, if there is no infection and it rests properly.”
He wondered at the thought process which led them to treat his wounds and speak of a month’s rest and the risk of infection when they suspected he was fleeing Imperial justice and had every intention to hand him over for it tomorrow; but it seemed childishly petulant to say that aloud. He lay in silence, blinking at the ceiling, holding himself tightly together against the pain, while the old priest changed the dressing and wrapped it. By the time the old priest had finished, and was gathering his things together beside the mat, the young priest had returned with a mat for Ædyn. “If there is anything else I can do, Lord Risto,” the young priest said. It did not sound like a platitude. His voice was serious.
“You can listen to me when I tell you the girl had no part in it. She saw me in the street, she went for the nearest help. I want this made plain should there be an investigation.”
The priest inclined his head. Torien suspected this was to hide the smile which cracked the corners of his mouth, suddenly. “I will tell her, Lord, that this was your concern. It will amuse her.”
“It is a real concern. If there is an investigation—”
“She is in Sagrado’s pay. It is better protection than anything you are presently in a position to offer her, Lord, if you will forgive my saying so.”
“Sagrado is one of the jentes?”
“One of the more powerful, and not worth crossing for the sake of two hired knives. Brevade knows this.” The young priest hesitated. This time, Torien saw him glance sidelong to the old priest. “The governor knows it as well,” the young priest said.
“What I know,” said the old priest, “is that you rest now, Lord.”
He lay awake, watching the shadows move on the ceiling, listening to the tramp of feet out in the corridor and the low chanting of a hymn which came in on the night air through the open doorway and windows. Not quite twelve hours ago, he had been in Briule’s office arranging Maris Pavo’s death as one arranges the pieces on a draughts board. It did not matter, he thought, how carefully one arranged the pieces if the opposing strategy was simply to reach over and upset the board.
Much later, when there had been silence for a long time in the corridor, he said into the darkness, “Ædyn.”
“Lord.” So the boy had not been sleeping, either.
“Quietly, Ædyn, and in your own tongue. Does the chapel open to the street?”
“There is a yard and a gate, Lord.”
“Stables?”
“Yes, Lord.”
The horses would be there. That was unexpected good luck. “The gate is guarded?”
“Barred, Lord, but not guarded.”
“And the chapel. You think you can move about without being seen?”
“Yes, Lord.”
“Good. I will need some things from the dispensary: bandage cloth and salve, acetum if you can find it. Gut thread and a needle, most importantly. And a light.”
He knew only by the whispered breath of air that the boy had gone. He spent the next little while summoning the will to sit up. He pulled himself up against the wall, keeping his right arm curled against his ribs. His stomach jumped with the movement. He leaned his cheek against the cool adobe wall and waited with his eyes shut for the nausea to settle. He heard the rattle of the latch as the boy came back in, shutting the door behind him.
The boy crossed the room noiselessly and knelt beside the mat. Torien heard the rasp of flint as he brought a lamp flame to life. He opened his eyes. The boy set the lamp carefully on the floor. He sat back on his ankles, holding the other things on his lap. Torien unwrapped the old priest’s dressing from his ribs and said, with a hand over the wound, “Acetum.”
He rinsed the wound with antiseptic, sucking his breath softly through his teeth at the sting. He wiped his fingers and unspooled the thread and dipped it in the antiseptic. His hands were unsteady, and it took him a while to thread the needle in the dim light. He held the lips of the wound together under his left hand and stitched with his right, slowly, pausing every now and then to flex his aching fingers and wipe off the blood. He finished and tied off the thread. “Salve,” he said—calmly, though his stomach was fluttering. The boy opened the jar and handed it to him.
Torien spread salve with two fingers over the row of stitches and wrapped the ribs with the fresh cloth. The boy brought his kit over and handed him the spare tunic, then the jerkin. The tunic presented no difficulty, but Torien’s fingers stumbled over the laces of the jerkin. His arms felt as though they were mad
e of lead. His heart was beating in his ears. He finished with the jerkin, wiped the sweat from his face with the back of one hand, and shrugged his arms into the cuirass while the boy held it. He leaned against the wall, head tilted back, hands clenched to fists, while the boy buckled the straps. He hissed a breath when the boy pulled at the strap under his arm. Ædyn looked up, white-faced. Torien smiled but did not speak. He was holding the pain behind shut teeth.
The boy pinned his cloak and moved down to put his feet into the hobnailed boots. Torien shook his head. “Bring them,” he said. He stood with his right hand on Ædyn’s shoulder, his left on the wall. He braced his shoulder on the wall and buckled the sword belt on his hip while the boy gathered the rest of the kit and put out the lamp. They went out in darkness to the corridor. He kept his hand on Ædyn’s shoulder. It was conscious effort to move his feet. They went out from the corridor onto a columned portico. From the portico, they went down into the yard.
The stable was a single row of open-faced stalls built into the northern wall of the chapel yard, empty except for Briule’s saddle-horses and the priests’ placid carriage-horses. He leaned into the rail while the boy knelt to lace the boots for him. Then he nodded across the yard to the gate. “Open it and wait in the street. I’ll bring the horses.”
He found the tack at the end of the stall row. He brought the saddles back down the row, one on either arm. He set them down on the floor while he lifted the rail. Someone put a hand beside his hand on the rail. He froze. He had not heard anyone over the pounding of blood in his ears, and he had not seen anyone in the darkness. He looked up into the young priest’s face.
The young priest took the rail from him and leaned it upright against the wall. “They close the gates at nightfall, Lord Risto,” he said, quietly. “The watchmen will be looking for you. Most of them belong to Brevade.”
Blood Road Page 18
