Blood Road

by Amanda McCrina

  “I’d like to hear you explain to the Senate why you’re taking punitive measures against us without implicating your trafficking ring.”

  “I’m not taking punitive measures. I have sent reinforcements to put down an uprising among the tribes. They will arrive too late to save the garrison, but I will make sure your men are commended before the Senate for defending their post to the last.”

  “Your puppet at the mines is dead. I have guarantees of peace from both tribes, and I have made guarantees of my own. Disregard them and you’ll have a real uprising on your hands.”

  “My puppet at the mines is alive and well. The guarantees you gave him are not binding—fortunately for young Senna.”

  The fly had lost interest in the duck and moved on to the cucumbers. Pavo brushed it away with one hand. “So we are back to where we started. Tell me who helped you to the city.”

  Torien said, turning the wine cup in his hands without seeing it, “He’s alive?”

  “Aidar?”

  “Alluin.”

  “He is alive for now. Given your cooperation, he will be still alive in a month. It is not much of a threat, granted, considering your willingness to use him as a hostage. And you chide me for my lack of compunction.” Pavo’s lips twitched in a half-smile. “So I recognize you may require further persuasion—more immediate persuasion.” He spoke past Torien to the doorway. “Lieutenant.”

  Over Pavo’s shoulder, the Emperor was looking down at him sadly from the shelf. He sat rolling the wine cup numbly between his hands, swallowing the tightness in his throat, listening to the door creaking open and closed and the footsteps coming across the floor. There was one set of booted footsteps, Vigo’s, and one set of bare, shuffling footsteps. Vigo’s footsteps were long and slow and heavy, the others quick and light hurrying along beside, two steps to Vigo’s one. Both sets came up to the desk and stopped. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw small, dirty brown feet in front of Vigo’s booted feet. He looked up from the wine cup into Ædyn’s face.

  “He is uncommonly loyal,” Pavo said, “for a Cesino. In my experience, Cesino slaves can be difficult—particularly those of the mountain tribes.”

  Torien did not say anything. He sat looking at the boy’s face. In the back of his mind, he was aware that Pavo was watching him for a reaction. He made himself consider the boy detachedly. There was a cloth gag over the boy’s mouth and tear tracks on his cheeks above the gag, but he seemed unhurt. Torien did not look in the boy’s eyes. He looked back down at his wine cup. He lifted the cup and drank. His hands were numb but steady. Pavo, watching him, said, “He must have been raised in your household.”

  “Bought off a trade ship in Modigne two weeks ago. I meant to sell him again here in the city”—as carelessly as he could manage it. His heart was pounding.

  “Well, we can dispense at least with the fiction that you came alone from Modigne.” Pavo put an olive between his teeth and spat the pit into his cupped palm. “Has he a name? What’s his name?”

  “I haven’t given him a name.”

  “For two weeks I suppose it would not be necessary.” Pavo tore into another olive and pushed the pit out between his teeth. “He means nothing to you at all?”

  “Eighty eagles and the sale tax.”

  “I offered him citizenship—also the chance to kill you personally, if he wanted it. He wouldn’t take it. Uncommonly loyal for a Cesino, I thought, but perhaps he is simply dimwitted.” Pavo chewed, thoughtfully. He glanced up from the olive dish. “Very well, Lieutenant.”

  Vigo unsheathed his belt knife. Holding the boy tight against him with one arm, he took the boy’s right wrist between thumb and fingers of his knife hand, bracing the blade with his forefinger and slicing through the wrist as one might pare a turnip.

  Torien was up from the chair blindly, tripping over the chair legs and steadying himself against the desk, the wine cup clattering away across the floor tiles, the wine splashing over his feet. He drove a fist into Vigo’s face, jerking the boy from Vigo’s arm as Vigo staggered back. He shoved the boy away behind him. He slid an arm around Vigo’s neck and shouldered him to the wall, pinning his arm, pinning his knife hand wide. Vigo twisted beneath him and got his arm free and jabbed quick fingers into Torien’s ribs. Pain folded over him like wings. He doubled, gasping, his stomach sloshing up his throat. Vigo kicked his feet from under him, then kicked him flat to the floor. He lay breathing through his teeth and blinking against the tiles, holding on tightly as the room spun, looking across the floor at Ædyn sprawled at the foot of the desk.

  Far above him, he heard Pavo’s voice in mild rebuke: “I need him able to speak.”

  Vigo’s hands were on his shoulders, pulling him up to his knees. He sat under Vigo’s hands, looking at Ædyn below the desk, watching the boy’s ribs rise and fall, watching the bony legs twitch on the tiles as the boy came slowly up from blackness. The boy’s face was away from him. The severed hand was on the floor at the corner of the desk. It had been a quick, clean cut, and if it were treated directly there would be no complication. Shock would dull the pain. It went through his head methodically, like a memorized prayer.

  From the desk, Pavo said, “Tell me who helped you to the city.” He was writing again, and he did not look up. He wrote in long, smooth, unhurried strokes, the pen rustling comfortably across the papyrus. There was a fascination in watching him write. He formed his letters with the care and grace of a sculptor shaping marble. He was a freedman and had grown up unlettered, and he wrote as only one such could write—with an eye toward penmanship as a privilege.

  Torien shut his eyes. The pen went on steadily. There were footsteps beyond the office doorway, and he listened to them echo over the floor tiles and up and down the walls. He thought it was probably the slave girl waiting to see if she should come in and take away the dinner things. He swallowed. He was finding it difficult to think clearly through the pain and the wine. “The boy goes free,” he said.

  “Once I am satisfied we have reached the truth.”

  “And Alluin. I want your written word to Aidar that he is to be released to Modigne. He knows nothing against you. You’ve no need to consider him a threat.”

  Pavo, still writing, said, “Your signo as well?”

  “More than that. His full pardon, his citizenship restored. Legal recognition that he is under the patronage of the Risti.”

  “One could be forgiven for thinking I am presently at your mercy and not the other way around.”

  “You need as much of me as I need of you.”

  “Hold your tongue and give it a month’s time,” Pavo said. “We’ll see which of us has more to lose.”

  The footsteps were coming closer across the tiles, and he could tell now that the tread was too heavy to be the girl’s. The office door opened and closed. A gust of cool night air came in from the corridor. Someone shook out a cloak in the doorway. The newcomer said, languidly, “I am interrupting?” His voice was dry and just familiar enough to be unsettling. Torien opened his eyes and twisted his neck to look up to the doorway. Alvero Senna looked down at him blankly. He was tall and lean and sun-tanned, not yet forty, his olive-skinned, aristocratic face very much like Alluin’s face, his thin, harsh mouth very like Alluin’s mouth. He folded his cloak slowly over his arm. His eyes left Torien’s face and went to Ædyn still prone on the floor, then up to Pavo at the desk. He did not move from the doorway. “Anyone in this house can walk in just as I have done.”

  Pavo paused to re-ink his pen. “Most have the courtesy to knock.”

  “Ceno has been arrested.”

  Pavo tapped the nib on the rim of the ink pot. He glanced up. “Whose orders?”

  “Direct from His Highness. Raniere made the arrest.”

  “You are sure?”

  “I was at dinner with His Highness when the order was given.”

  “It would have been better,” Pavo said, returning his attention to his writing, �
�if you had remained at dinner with His Highness. I will clear this up in the morning.”

  “They are examining him tonight. His Highness is seeing to it personally.”

  “Ceno knows nothing of importance.”

  “His Highness knows you are holding Risto.”

  Pavo’s pen fell still for a moment, poised above the papyrus.

  “Raniere is coming to make inquiries,” Alvero said. “At present, it is all very procedural. They have the Ceno girl’s word that Risto is here. If he is not here, they will have nothing, provided your people hold their tongues. My carriage is ready at the gate. I can get him out of the city.”

  Pavo recommenced to write. His hand moved slowly and carefully across the papyrus. “If he is found in your hands,” he said, “it complicates matters.”

  Alvero’s lip curled. “I am above reproach, and he is a family friend.”

  Pavo was silent, writing. Ædyn was awake at the foot of the desk. He turned his head onto his right cheek. His face was pale. His eyes were bleary with tears, but he did not make any noise behind the gag. He did not look at Torien. He lay still and looked at the fingers of his left hand clenched in a fist against the floor tiles.

  From the doorway, Alvero said, “If it is going to be done, Commander, it must be done now. Raniere will be here in a quarter-hour with a detachment of the Household Guard.”

  Pavo did not look up. “Vigo.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Accompany the Senator.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alvero smiled a familiar swift, bitter smile. “I will pretend that is not a comment upon my loyalty.”

  “For your own protection,” Pavo said, blandly.

  He was being hauled to his feet, and Vigo was pulling his hands behind his back. He got his right hand free and found the knife at Vigo’s belt and tore it from its sheath, swinging his hand wide before Vigo could catch his wrist. Vigo hooked a foot around his ankle and shoved him forward. He tripped and fell and caught himself with his hands on the edge of the desktop. By the time he had pushed himself up, Vigo had dragged Ædyn away from him across the floor. Vigo pulled the boy up to his feet, sliding an arm over the boy’s throat. Torien flung the knife away, savagely. It hit one of the shelves and fell back clattering to the floor.

  Pavo laid down his pen and pushed back his chair and went to pick it up. “Take the boy, too,” he said to Alvero. “You may find him useful.”

  “I see,” said Alvero, very dryly.

  “I have business to finish with Risto in the morning,” Pavo said. “I will be at the river at dawn.”

  “I will be at home,” Alvero said. “If you have finished your business with Raniere, you may send for me there.”

  He did not know why or how the boy had come there, or what had become of the priests, and he did not really know why, now, he was climbing up into Alvero Senna’s private carriage, which was waiting dark and silent before the gate of Pavo’s villa. He had thought it would be finished with Pavo, one way or another, and he did not know what it meant that Alvero was there, except it seemed less and less likely that it was about salt mines in Tasso.

  There were four of Alvero’s personal guardsmen waiting with horses at the carriage. There was a mist lying over the street. The air was very still and humid. He felt his way along the bench in the dark and sat down in the corner below the driver’s seat. Vigo picked Ædyn up by the shoulders and knees and swung him up the steps and put him down on the carriage floor. He started up afterward, one hand on either side of the doorway.

  Alvero, behind him, put a hand on his shoulder almost companionably and drew a knife across his throat and eased him down face-first against the steps.

  It was done quickly and silently. Alvero wiped his blade and tucked the knife away into his tunic, under his cloak. He said something to his guardsmen. Two of the guardsmen lifted Vigo’s body into the carriage and laid it on the floor. Alvero came up into the carriage afterward, and the guardsmen shut the doors behind him.

  There was pitch darkness for a little while, and then the bright white flare of a flint spark as Alvero lit a lamp. The lamp hung from the carriage ceiling, swinging back and forth as the carriage started. Ædyn was holding his right arm tightly in his left hand and looking at Vigo’s body in a black heap on the floor. Torien took him by the arm and sat him down on the bench. It was easiest to focus on what was immediately necessary. He knelt at the boy’s knees and unknotted the gag from the boy’s mouth. He pried the boy’s fingers gently loose from the stump of the right hand and wrapped the stump with the cloth and tied it off. “Now hold it,” he said, “hold it up—we need to stop it bleeding.” He held the boy’s arms in his hands. The boy was shaking silently. Torien felt the tremors through his fingers. The boy was looking at the stump in his lap. His lips moved soundlessly. Torien squeezed the boy’s elbows. “Look at me, Ædyn,” he said, in Cesino. “Tell me if the priests live.”

  The boy shut his eyes. Tears spilled down his cheeks. The words came in a sudden burst. “I swear they live. Please, Lord, I swear I did not betray you. I swear that isn’t why.”

  Alvero, on the other bench, poured wine into a cup and held the cup out to Torien. He indicated Ædyn with a jerk of his wrist. In Vareno, he said, “Make him drink. It will be Hell when the shock has gone.”

  Torien took the cup, slowly, looking up over his shoulder into Alvero’s face. Alvero met his gaze expressionlessly, as he had done in Pavo’s office. Torien did not say anything. He took the cup in one hand and looked at it in the half-light. He bent his head and sipped the wine and washed it around his mouth. Alvero watched him. “If I wanted to be rid of the slave,” he said, “I would not trifle with poison.”

  Torien swallowed. He put the cup against Ædyn’s lips. “Drink this, Ædyn. It’ll ease the pain.”

  “I did not betray you,” Ædyn said. His clenched teeth clinked against the cup.

  “I know you didn’t. Drink, Ædyn.”

  “I would have warned you at the apartment. They took me before I could warn you.”

  “You followed me from the inn?”

  “I told Jovan I was going to see to the horses. Do not be angry with the priests, Lord. They didn’t know.”

  “I’m not angry with the priests. I’m angry enough without being angry at the priests. You were stupid to come, Ædyn.”

  “My lord was s-stupid to go alone.” The boy’s teeth were chattering.

  “You’d still have both your hands if I’d been alone. Drink.”

  The boy’s shoulders, braced tightly against the carriage wall, went slack. His head lolled onto his chest. Torien put the cup down. He held the boy by the arm and felt the pulse under the boy’s chin. He stretched the boy’s legs straight on the bench and folded the boy’s arms over his ribs. He sat down beside the boy on the bench, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, holding the wine cup between his hands, swallowing dryly. His head ached and spun. He could not tell if the rippling surface of the wine was from the movement of the carriage over paving stone or the shaking of his hands.

  Alvero was watching him from the other bench. He started to say something and then did not say it. He said, instead, “Are you hurt?”

  “I’ll last the night.”

  “I was not expecting to find you alive. Usually he is more—discreet.”

  “Usually I would be in the river already, you mean.”

  Alvero’s eyes were keen on his face. “What does he want?”

  “You’re his business partner, Senator. You tell me.”

  “Maris Pavo does not have partners. At certain times, certain of us are useful to him. I think you know that.” The bitter smile flicked across Alvero’s mouth. “It was the wrong question. Where is Alluin?”

  Torien looked up from the wine cup. There had to be a trick somewhere, and he was silent, looking at Alvero, trying to figure out whether the trick was on him or on Pavo or somehow on both.

 
; “I thought he would be with you,” Alvero said. “The girl could not tell me. She said only that you had been taken. I thought surely he must be with you.” He looked away. The muscles in his cheek fluttered. “At least tell me if he is alive. Tell me I have not come too late.”

  “He wasn’t with me. He didn’t come with me from Tasso. I left him wounded at the mines after a patrol gone wrong.”

  Alvero looked back. His shoulders were straight, his face like carved stone in the lamplight. “Then he is dead.”

  “He’s leverage, as long as I’m alive. Pavo gave me no promises for once I’m in the river.”

  Alvero looked at him blankly. “The mines fell to a joint force of Asani and Mayasi more than a fortnight past. The garrison was massacred, the slaves freed and armed. They are moving to besiege the fort. We heard it on the Senate floor.”

  “You heard what Pavo wanted you to hear.”

  “We sent out reinforcements from Vione.”

  “With orders from Pavo to silence my men at Tasso before they can spill what they know about your business in the mines.”

  Alvero was silent, studying him. His face was inscrutable. “Once you are in the river,” he said, finally, “Alluin is nothing but a liability.”

  “He has no reason to suspect Pavo’s involvement. Or yours. I swear he is no threat to you.”

  “He will make himself a threat when he learns you ended up down the Breche. He’ll have the truth out and justice done for it. You give him too little credit. Pavo will not.” Alvero leaned his head back against the wall. “It is foolish to think Pavo will leave him alive, alone of your command. He is by far the greatest threat. He will die with the rest, no matter what Pavo promised or did not promise.”

  “Does a confession from Ceno mean nothing?”

  Alvero smiled, sourly. “He made a cut of the profit for the use of his ships. He doesn’t know where the rest of the money went. He thinks he was smuggling slaves. Without you in Pavo’s hands, they’ll hang him and be done with it.”

  “Why?”