Gil Trilogy 1: Lady in Gil

by Rebecca Bradley

  "Stop her!" That was Kekashr's roar, and the troopers closed in, but they were obviously unsure how to proceed. She was a Sherkint and the daughter of a great warlord, and she was not cooperating. I stepped forward, forgetting myself, tugging at my own sword—no matter whose daughter she was, whatever her treachery, she was Calla, and in that insane moment I knew that I still loved her—but the flat of her sword thwacked into the side of my helmet and tumbled it off my head, and then she went down under a tide of rather apologetic troopers, and I returned abruptly to my senses.

  Fervently blessing the confusion, I scrabbled around for the helmet—it had rolled into and partly under the writhing knot of bodies that represented Calla and her retinue. With horror, I watched it disappear. I dropped to my knees and shouldered into the mêlée, feeling blindly for the helmet in its last known position while somebody stuck a boot in my nose. Then my hand found a face, actually a mouth, which bit down hard on my fingers and shook them like a shull shaking a chicken. I was too desperate even to cry out, being drawn well into the scramble by then, with my cloak twisted around my neck and threatening slow strangulation or a quick snap of the vertebrae, and someone grinding a knee down on to my other hand—and then the struggle just stopped, and muttering troopers were picking themselves up and dusting off their armour, and Calla was lying panting on the stairs, her face a few inches from mine, her eyes looking directly into mine, her teeth still clamped on my fingers. I truly believe my heart stopped for a long few seconds.

  Then she opened her jaws to release my fingers, closed her eyes, and rolled away from me on to her side, as if exhausted. Hopelessly, I knelt beside her waiting for the denunciation, for the second betrayal—and when it didn't come, I reached out for the helmet lying beside her and pulled it over my head. As I staggered to my feet, I caught a small flicker of her fingers. Goodbye. The forever variety.

  I hung over her like a slack-jawed imbecile until Lord Kekashr himself pushed me aside. Somebody, perhaps Angel, hauled me backwards into line by the scruff of my cloak. Kekashr whispered to one of his attendants, who ran into the vestibule. Minutes later the Koroskan healer who had tended me rustled out and bent over Calla, kneading and prodding her where he was able through the obdurate gown, while she lay passively at her father's feet.

  "The lady is not injured, Lord Kekashr," the healer said at last. He looked up for instructions.

  "Make her sleep," Kekashr murmured, "I've had more than enough excitement from my poor misguided daughter."

  Calla rolled on to her back to look up at him, and laughed. "Misguided, Father? By Oballef, you've just spoken a true word."

  "A slip, daughter," Kekashr grinned. Calla did not resist as the healer lifted her head and poured something into her mouth from a bottle. She drank obediently. Her eyes passed along the line of helmets, stopping at each one, but with no flicker of recognition, not even when they rested briefly on mine. Then they closed. Kekashr himself unfastened the shapeless mess of wires and gems that used to be her headdress and picked her up, not ungently, and carried her down the stairs towards the waiting carriage.

  I stood beside Angel, stiff with shock. Gratitude? Not really. Grief? Not yet—that was for later. The carriage door slammed shut, the horses clattered off through the gate in the west arcade, and Calla was gone, leaving nothing behind her but the broken headdress, a few dishevelled troopers, and the toothmarks on my hand. It was disbelief that paralysed me. It had happened too fast. I shot a quick glance down the row of troopers, noting the signs of Calla's passing—and ran full into the intent, level gaze of Lord Shree.

  His face was blank, but he was staring straight at me. There was no mistake about it. Disbelief gave way to a form of controlled panic—how long had he been watching? I gulped and snapped my head around to the regulation position. Had he, alone among the Sherank, recognized me while the helmet was off, or caught Calla's fleeting reaction? Of course not, I told myself, or he'd be doing more than just staring at me, he'd have me in fetters by now and on my way to confer with the hot irons.

  Maybe. A memory stirred: eons ago, standing miserably beside Calla in the marketplace, waiting for Gil's butchers to notice that a wretch in the Pleasure was dead—and all the time, Shree knew, Shree saw and did nothing. Slowly, I turned my head and met his eyes. He was still watching me.

  "Well, that's done, Nephew."

  A muscle twitched in Shree's cheek—no other reaction. Lord Kekashr preceded him slowly up the stairs, inspecting the damage to the line of troopers as he passed.

  "What a little firecat I sired, eh, Shree? Almost a pity they'll knock it out of her in Iklankish."

  "If they're able."

  "Come now, she won't be the first vixen they've tamed. Look how they broke your mother."

  "True." Shree dropped a gauntlet on the stair by my feet, and stooped to retrieve it. When he straightened, he looked me full in the eyes and slammed my helmet so hard with the mailed glove that my ears rang. "You," he snapped, "your boots are a disgrace."

  I stared straight ahead. "Yes, sir," I said. It was plausible—certainly, I had not stopped to clean Karesh's boots. This could have been the reason he was staring at me, but somehow I didn't think so.

  Lord Kekashr called irritably from the doorway. "What are you doing, Shree? Leave discipline to the officers."

  "We need a few extra hands, Uncle—I'm going to teach this one a lesson with some punitive duty."

  "Fine, just come along. I want to get started."

  Shree was still standing in front of me. I stared at him. A hundred factors balanced themselves in my mind, fifty risks versus fifty reasons to hope, and I made my decision. Keeping my eyes fixed on Shree's, I jerked my head the thickness of a fingernail in Angel's direction.

  Shree's jaw tightened. "You too," he snapped to Angel, "fall in with the others—and next time," he shoved Angel back a pace, "polish your boots!" He strode on up the stairs.

  Numb, almost breathless, I motioned to Angel and we joined the tail of Kekashr's retinue. I was still not sure what I had done.

  * * *

  37

  IRONICALLY, LORDS KEKASHR and Shree took us exactly where we needed to go. Left to ourselves, we'd have made the disastrous assumption that the Lady was in Kekashr's own chamber or in the sanctuary, and wasted valuable time and run unthinkable risks nosing around the Temple Palace. Instead, Lord Kekashr turned left from the Queen's Vestibule and took the long bare corridor that led towards the south dungeon. In my ignorance, I was dismayed.

  The broad staircase Kekashr led us down was twisted around a central shaft where, in better days, a great cage on a woven-iron cable was used to lower wine amphorae and casks of honey for storage. Naturally, there was no dungeon in the old Gilgard—no crime in Gil, and no war, and therefore no prisoners. The north dungeon used to be a mushroom plantation. The south dungeon was the old wine-cellar, adapted by the ever-ingenious Sherank once the Vintage of Gil was exhausted or shipped off to Sher. This happened rather quickly, the news reaching the Flamens-in-Exile only a few months after the catastrophe.

  I knew what the cellar used to look like, from a painting by a long-dead Flamen-in-Exile who remembered the wine of Gil with special fondness. The painting was superb, range upon range of silver-braced amphorae, each with a polished silver label that twinkled in the torchlight until the cellar resembled the night sky, strewn with constellations of fine rare vintages—his words, not mine. Quite irrelevant anyway; the wine racks were long gone, the amphorae long since emptied and smashed, the silver melted down and sent as ingots to Iklankish. The dignified silence of aging wine had been given over to a low, continuous roar, which I thought at first was the sea echoing through some trick chamber of the mountain until I rounded the last turn of the stairs and the cellar lay open before us. It was voices, perhaps a thousand of them, blending into one terrible massed moan of anguish and despair.

  The chicken market at Sathelforn is rebuilt daily out of little openwork wicker cages, stacked two deep to
a height of six feet or more, each holding three doomed but cheerful fowl. The south dungeon was superficially similar, but the cages were made of iron bars and were hideously more crowded, and the inmates may likewise have been doomed but they were certainly not cheerful. Four tiers of cages within a clearance of about twenty feet; long rows of cages separated at floor level by narrow aisles, linked at higher levels by catwalks paced by silent guards. Faces crowded the bars, dirty stubbled glazed faces; claws reached out towards us, cracked voices begged for water. The guards, perhaps anxious to impress Kekashr, sliced at the bars with short lengths of chain, driving the miserables back and eliciting more than one shriek of agony, more than one crack of bone and spurt of blood. It was Hell by torchlight, as conceived by the bloody-minded Lucians with their doctrine of divine judgement.

  I tried to stare straight ahead, as the other troopers were doing—these horrors held no novelty for them. We marched along the central aisle just out of range of the imploring hands on either side, and I felt my shock turn to a terrible pity, the pity harden to a rage like a jagged lump of metal in my throat. It was too late to save, for example, that wretched woman whose remains were pulled from an upper cage while we were passing and tossed down like a bag of slops to be loaded on the body-cart in the corner, a sodden thud behind me to be remembered sometimes in nightmares—but there could be a chance for the rest, and for Gil, and vengeance for her.

  I fixed my eyes on the enemy himself, striding along at the head of the column beside the cloaked enigma that was Lord Shree; it seemed incredible that Kekashr could not sense the heat of my anger, that my radiant hatred did not pull him up and force him to look over his shoulder at the sure approach of his doom. I, Tigrallef the short and cautious, was outraged enough to feel that I couldn't fail.

  "Raksh take you, Karesh, get off my heels." The trooper ahead of me poked rearwards with his mailed elbow. I fell back a pace, back into step with Angel, who glanced sideways at me but held his tongue.

  A wall of rough masonry marked the end of the dungeon proper—a Sherkin innovation, since it was not in the archive plans. Lord Kekashr swept through the doorway with us in his train. The enclosure beyond was perhaps fifty feet by thirty, with a large table and several torture frames set up near the entrance. There were troopers there already, formed up and ready to be relieved.

  There were also prisoners, but they were harder to see at first, since the cages that held them were set against the far wall. As my eyes adjusted to the light, their battered faces emerged out of the gloom. Some were faces I knew: Corri, Namis, Farano, Sorvi, all Flamens of the Council-in-Gil, and also Calvo the scullery-master, bruised and bloody and minus the comfortable paunch. And isolated in a small cage at the end was another familiar face: Jebri, alias the little spider. It seemed the Sherank were repaying his treachery with more of the same. His eyes were closed. There was blood on his forehead, and in a wide stripe from the corner of his mouth to his chin. He looked dead at first, but he shifted and groaned while my eyes were on him, and one of his plump hands pushed at the air as if repelling something in his dreams. There was no sign of Bekri.

  While the first lot of troopers marched smartly out and my lot took their places, Kekashr inspected an impressive array of torture tools laid out on the table. Angel and I were left standing awkwardly on our own until Lord Shree barked at us to stand on either side of the door. We jumped to obey.

  Kekashr studied a paper taken from the table. "So the old one's still alive?" he said to Shree.

  "Yes—very much so. The healer came in to look at him."

  "Well?"

  "He's tough. Xilo says he could survive another questioning, if it were carefully done."

  Kekashr grunted. "Well, well—and most Gilmen die so easily. We'll make him the first."

  "Why, Uncle?" Shree made no move. "He's too valuable to waste in such a chancy experiment. Anyway, even if it did work, he'd be the last to cooperate."

  Kekashr's face darkened, but cleared after a moment. He laughed without warmth and clapped Shree's shoulder. "I'll overlook your impertinence, Shree, since you may be right. We'll need the old man when Tigrallef's back in our hands. The spider said there was a bond between them."

  I realized then that they were talking about Bekri. Relief that he was alive mixed with a sick realization of what he had suffered, and what Kekashr planned for him. Loyalty to friends. Those were Kekashr's words, and the tool he intended to use—not my agony but Bekri's. If he caught me, that is. Uncomfortably, I wondered about Shree's intentions—if he were planning a dramatic exposure, this moment would be ideal. I peered at him, half expecting him to stride over and pull the helmet triumphantly off my head, but he was watching his uncle.

  "And what of our star prisoner, Nephew?"

  Shree sorted through the papers on the table, pulled one out. "Xilo's report. The man's mind is quite gone and he's still unable to form words. Xilo's been working on him, but he holds out little hope. He's bringing him down just after dawn, whatever state he's in."

  Kekashr suddenly slammed the table. Everybody in the room jumped, even Shree. "It's damnable, Nephew. For years we have a Scion in our hands and no Lady, now we have the Lady and no Scion, or not a usable one."

  "Damnable," Shree echoed flatly. For my part, I was rocked on my heels; Angel was right. There was another Scion in Gil.

  "And that scrawny whelp-of-a-shull that poor Krisht was so weak about," Kekashr went on, "he'll suffer, Shree, he'll suffer for this before he conjures the Lady for me, make no mistake."

  "I make no mistake, Uncle."

  Kekashr gave his nephew another of those thoughtful stares. "Well," he said at last, "we've wasted enough time. Bring the first subject—but not the old man. I think we'll have that young firebrand who made so much trouble in the city. He owes us a few favours."

  The cage door clanged open and Shree motioned to a couple of troopers. They parted the prisoners roughly before them as they pushed to the back of the cage, emerging a moment later with a limp half-naked Gilman hanging between them. It was Hawelli, though it took me a horrified moment to be sure of this, so gaunt he'd become, so bent and torn and pitiful, all the pride and strength beaten out of him. He could not walk; one leg looked to be broken and was glistening black under the tatters of his britches. He moved his head feebly and blinked at the torchlight as the troopers half-carried him towards Kekashr. Miserably, I steeled myself for the torture that was to follow.

  Except that it didn't. Hawelli was not strapped into a torture frame—he was brought before Kekashr, sagging between his supporters while the warlord studied his face.

  "Yes, he'll do for a start," Kekashr said. He reached under his cloak and pulled out a long cylinder of dark cloth, which he proceeded to unroll.

  Even before the radiance came, I knew what the cloth held. I stepped forward a pace, caught Shree's eye on me and stepped back again, but my veins were pounding with heated blood. As the last fold of cloth fell away, a dazzling light burst in the dim chamber, the torches paled.

  Kekashr chuckled. "Beautiful, isn't it, Nephew?" He held the coruscating brilliance, the Lady, high in one hand and shouted across to the cages, "Is this what you were looking for, old man?"

  The cages were well illuminated now. I saw a stir among the Flamens, Corri reaching behind him to help a hunched figure from the back of the cell to the bars. Bekri straightened himself painfully; his face was golden with the Lady's light.

  "You have not won yet, Lord Kekashr," he said in a strong voice. It may have been a trick of the shifting light, but I felt sure he was smiling.

  The warlord strolled to the cages. "By Raksh, you are a tough old rooster," he said in Gillish. "I suppose in the end we'll have to put you in the Pleasure, just to see if its spikes can pierce your thick hide. As for winning, I have the Lady in Gil, haven't I? It's only a matter of time before a Scion comes my way."

  "I'm sure one will," said Bekri. "Even in this place, we hear whispers. The Scion Tigrallef slipped rig
ht through your fingers."

  "Just temporarily—and my daughter tells me he's a simpleton." I could not see Kekashr's face, but his voice was like a saw-blade labouring on granite.

  "A simpleton? And he's eluded you for ten days? What does that make you, my great Sherkin lord?" Bekri laughed, quietly, but with real amusement. He turned his back on Kekashr, still chuckling.

  Kekashr stood for a moment and then turned back to poor Hawelli. His face was dark with rage, his gauntlet clenched around the Lady. I honestly wondered if Bekri was trying to get himself killed.

  Shree was watching me again and I asked myself: what was I to him? A prisoner? An ally? A trooper with dirty boots? Had I imagined that glance of silent conspiracy in the courtyard? Inscrutability was all very well, but it gave me a poor basis for planning. And if he knew who I was, what in Oballef's name did he expect me to do? I could, I suppose, have jumped through the torture frames, scrambled across the table, made a dash for Kekashr and grabbed the Lady—but I'd have been cut to dogmeat before I was halfway there, and conjuring the Lady is no instant matter anyway. So I stayed where I was and watched Shree, and Shree watched me, and both of us bided our time. The dangerous game, whatever it was, went on.

  Kekashr wrapped Hawelli's hand around the Lady. Their faces were washed almost to invisibility by the glare and I had to squint to see. Hawelli sagged and his hand dropped, and Kekashr snapped at one of the guards holding him, to steady the Lady. Then Kekashr stepped back—well back.