Zae shifted her wrists, checking for leeway in the bindings. She could feel the braiding and knew that she was in rope, not steel. That was something, anyway.
When she curled her fingers, trying to scrunch them under one of the coarse loops, she felt a sharp jab of pain. She’d forgotten all about her injury with the milling machine; it had been eclipsed by the explosion and all the injuries she had helped to heal. It hadn’t taken much effort to keep her finger straight through all of that, so only now did she recall the shard she had left in at the other tinker’s request. She was reluctant to disturb it now, but it was almost certain to be the only tool she had on her. Maybe Brigh had even caused the accident in the first place so that Zae would have the piece of metal available to her now.
Not that it was readily available. She had healed the skin over it. Even if it wasn’t far beneath the surface, it would take some getting to. She could feel the outline of it with the fingers of her other hand. Working behind her back would make an even greater challenge, but if Brigh had provided then it was up to Zae to take the opportunity she’d been given; it wasn’t as if she had anything else to do with her time now.
Her fingernails weren’t sharp enough to pierce the skin of her pinky, so she would have to work the metal up from the bottom. Shifting the shard inside her finger felt strange, sort of tingly in an unpleasant way, but was proof that she was able to move it. After some experimentation, she decided that a single hard push was what it would take to break the surface. She took a deep breath, recalling young Darrin in her treatment room back in Lastwall. She would do it on the count of three. One … two …
And push.
* * *
Zae couldn’t recall ever having passed out from pain before. She blamed the earlier blow to the back of her head for weakening her sensibilities, but a detached part of her was taking notes on the experience. Queasy … I see. Interesting. And can you recall today’s date, your own name, and what you ate for breakfast? Good, good. Still held captive, no change there. Do you feel excitement? Hopelessness?
Captivity led her to think of the metal shard in her finger, which led her to—very gingerly—feel across her fingertip for it. Ah, there it was. Jostling it brought a welcome shock of pain that helped her regain her senses, even as it made tears sting her eyes. Just the tiny tip of it was sticking out, but it was enough for her to grasp onto with her short nails and pull it out the rest of the way. She did it all at once, and the searing through her nerves left her gasping. She muttered insensible apologies to the tinker, Glivia, whose experiment she had just ruined. She may even have cried out, but she couldn’t have sworn to it. Nothing in the room stirred in response.
Zae pressed her pinky tightly to the small of her back, applying what pressure she could by twisting it in the fabric of her dress. She would have to get loose in order to heal it with magic, so she hoped that she wouldn’t have to heal it with magic in order to get loose. Fingers bled a lot—it was just their nature to do so—but it didn’t feel as if she’d nicked anything vital in there.
Fortunately, the metal was sharp. Twisting it, closing her eyes and biting her lip in concentration, she found a single strand of the braided rope, wedged in the shard, and pulled. The pop of snapping threads was loud to her ears, as was her heartbeat.
It would work. Slowly, tediously, but it would. She felt for another single strand and manipulated it with a surgeon’s careful touch. And then on to the next. Zae was so focused on finding and snapping each strand that when the door opened and light flooded the room, she was sure for a moment that they had heard her rope threads breaking. She went still, barely daring to breathe.
Heavy boots clomped across the floor directly past Zae’s face, without stopping. They halted at the third body, where a large person bent down and peeled back the weighted net. The captor’s voice was rough and deep. “Up you go, Turis. Time for another chat.”
Turis was a person! He had been stolen from the Clockwork Cathedral, and the rest of his cognate slaughtered to cover up his kidnapping. The gears in Zae’s head felt grainy, but she forced them to work. This meant their captors were the same people who had been trailing them, the same people who had sabotaged the machines.
Rowan’s net, which they had been assembling when the machines were sabotaged, had been made for the same people who had sabotaged the machines.
No. Zae desperately wanted to believe that Rowan had no part in this. Maybe he hadn’t known who he was really making the net for. Maybe the net had been stolen in the chaos that followed the explosion. Maybe the sabotage hadn’t happened to get to the plans for the giant construct, but to have a way to steal Rowan’s net. There were a hundred implausible things about that possibility, but Zae clung to it anyway.
Turis staggered, too groggy to stand unaided, but their captor was not impressed. Zae watched through nearly closed eyes as the tinker was hauled up over the captor’s shoulder and carried from the room. Before the door closed behind them, Zae could see at least one other captor in the room beyond.
“Harnsen Turis!” This was a new voice, muffled by the partition but higher of pitch and with knife-sharp diction. She heard the soft slap of flesh on flesh; most likely, Turis was being roused with a few pats on the cheek. A few incoherent moans and mumbles followed. “That’s a good lad. Come on back to us, Turis. Would you like a drink of this? Oh, you would, very much, I see. Well, tell us what we need to know.”
“I’ve told you everything I—”
“Yes, yes, you’ve told us much. You’re being very cooperative. Just a little more, now. You have something that belongs to our queen, and she very much wants it back. You and your friends in the other room will surely be rewarded if those things which were stolen from her find their way back to her possession with your help.”
That was it, then: it was indeed Arazni’s people who had captured them.
“What are they using to power the construct, Turis?”
“Electrical energy, harnessed and captured in a jar. I know—I know how mad it sounds. But it works. It’s been done before.”
“I think you’re using divine energy, and I want to know where you’re keeping it.”
“I’m only the chronicler. I work with the cognates to document their inventions, but I don’t do the actual planning or the work. I don’t know where they keep anything!”
The questioning and accusing went on, and Zae noticed that when she was busy listening she wasn’t busy breaking rope. With effort, she partially tuned the conversation out. She kept an awareness only for sounds of pain or coercion, but there were none. The main focus of her attention was the rope bound around her wrists. One by one, she snapped the little threads that made up the larger braids. It was tedious, but she could do nothing else until her hands were free. Pop, went one. Then another. Soon she was playing games with herself, to see if she could break them in specific rhythms or within a given time count. During all this time, Keren barely shifted. Knowing now how clearly sounds carried between the rooms, she was hesitant to make noise for Keren’s attention again.
“We grow weary of you and your books, old man. Either you’re somehow evading our truth spell, or you’re skilled at dodging it with half-statements. We should have expected no less, since scriveners like yourself are merely scribblers of lies. Perhaps you’ve told so many false tales that you’ve come to believe them.” The accent, now that Zae could hear a substantial bit of it at a stretch, seemed slightly guttural and foreign. The speaker sounded alive, but the woman who had pretended to be Kala the priestess had also sounded alive.
Turis muttered something. He sounded weak and hoarse now, and Zae wondered how much time had passed while she’d been meditatively snapping rope strands. She unwound her finger from her shirt and found it no longer actively bleeding. That was good, at least.
A chair scraped against the floor in the other room, and the pitch of Turis’s voice raised to a keening, pleading tone. With concentration, Zae could discern that he was begg
ing for something to drink. Thus it was no surprise that, after the pleading stopped and was replaced by effusive thanks, the scribe was glassy-eyed and weaving on his feet when the door opened and the captors escorted him back to his net. He was all too eager to stretch out with his cheek to the cool floor, muttering to himself as the webbing was replaced over him.
Without more than a glance toward Zae, Arazni’s servants halted by Keren. One kept her shoulders pinned to the ground while the other pulled the weighted edge of the net up with a grunt of effort. Then they yanked her to her bound feet and took her away. Zae’s heart pounded in her throat. Keren didn’t struggle; she had taken a page from Turis’s interrogation, Zae was relieved to see. Her fancy tunic and her chainmail were gone, leaving her in her long undershirt and leather trousers. The white cloth made her glow like a beacon for a moment, and then the door closed and returned the cell to its semi-darkness. Zae was left to her thoughts and her bindings; both felt equally frayed, and she wasn’t certain which would snap first.
19
SUBJECTIVE TRUTHS
KEREN
The interrogation room held a chair, an oddly shaped stool, and a small round table upon which a thick pillar candle burned brightly. There were no windows along the rough plaster walls, and the few furnishings did little to fill the space. Keren managed to notice all of this while her captors led her to the odd stool and sat her upon it, affixing her ankles to the junction of a leg and the horizontal rung. A sharp wedge rose upward across the seat, not quite centered, and she was settled on it so that the ridge protruded across the spot where her bottom met the top of her thighs. No matter how she tried to adjust herself, it dug uncomfortably. For now it was a small annoyance through the leather pants she wore, but she knew it would turn painful in short order. One of the stool’s legs was unbalanced from the other two, so that every time she shifted her weight, the seat would rock and betray her unease.
Her captor had wide-set eyes in a face that was pockmarked and rimed with dirt. The rest of his skin held an odd texture; after a few moments of trying not to stare, she realized his chest and arms, and even his bald head, were crisscrossed with scars overlaying other scars. She wondered if he was undead, like Tezryn who had met them in the park.
“You’ll forgive my haggard appearance, my lady.” He sketched a mocking bow as the other captor loosened her gag. “You haven’t given us much chance for rest.”
“I’m sor—” The sarcasm stuck in her throat and she winced, reminded of the truth spell she had heard them mention earlier. She could feel its compulsion on her, as if a blanket of honesty had settled around her shoulders.
“Sore? Yes. You will be. We know the Knights of Ozem sent you to Absalom to hunt the Bloodstone. Our associate confronted you about it and you killed her.” The voice came from behind her; she had no idea who might be back there, or indeed how many of them. It was meant to put her off balance, just like the uncomfortable stool. It was also just as annoying.
“No. I came to Absalom to train. Your associates tried to kill me because I didn’t know about the Bloodstone. I only defended my life.”
“But apparently you know about the Bloodstone now.”
Frustration boiled at the base of Keren’s spine. She took a slow breath, refusing to let it show. “Yes, I know now. When I got to the Seventh Church with all that was left of their priestess, they were kind enough to tell me what I’d nearly been killed over. It’s still not why I came to Absalom.”
“You killed Tezryn.”
“Because she was going to kill me!”
The tsk the man made behind his teeth sounded like the chitter of a bug. He leaned in close, holding a blade that vanished into her peripheral vision where she couldn’t follow it. “She was only going to question you. Arazni gets the honor of killing you. But you struck her down, and now I have to mark you up to avenge her. Tezryn was my ticket, you see. ‘Do what I ask, Del, and I’ll guarantee a good word for you to Her Majesty. I’ll get you and your family exalted when you die.’ But now there’s no Tezryn to vouch for me. Now I have only an eternity as a shambling, drooling clod ahead of me, unless I gain favor some other way … like by bringing Her Majesty one of Ozem’s own. And for that, you get to stay alive and squirming a while longer.”
The blade was sharp enough that Keren only felt cold against her face until after he had straightened and paced away a few steps. Then she felt the sting that meant he’d done more than threaten the skin of her cheek. Keren said nothing. At least now she knew he was living. She wasn’t sure what good that knowledge might do her, but it was something to slip up her sleeve in the hope that she might be able to make use of it as a weapon later.
“So. I’ve done you a courtesy and told you why you’re here. I don’t owe you that. I could just take it out in your blood. Now it’s your turn to be forthcoming. Shall we resume? You sent your squire to the Clockwork Cathedral to spy on a particular workroom. Why? What information led you to believe that they had the Bloodstone?”
“She—” … isn’t my squire, Keren had started to say, but stopped herself. She couldn’t lie, but she didn’t have to be forthcoming about the truth. Best not to direct his questions down that path. If they thought Zae held less value to her, so much the better. If they thought they could use her affection for Zae against her, to coerce her, they already would have. The power of omission was another weapon for her mental armory. “She’s studying there, of her own volition, just the way I’m studying at the Tempering Hall.”
“She entered the cathedral late at night and investigated a particular workroom—on your orders, no doubt. What information led you to believe that they had the Bloodstone?”
A chill ran down Keren’s spine. “You caused the explosions—you slaughtered the engineers in that workroom—because someone associated with me poked around in there?”
Her questioner’s grimy face barely showed a reaction. “You are here to hunt the Bloodstone, the pair of you, and you hunted there. What information led you to believe they had the Bloodstone?”
Keren said nothing. That those injuries, the destruction, and the deaths were the result of Zae’s curiosity and Yenna Quoros’s encouragement weighed heavily on her conscience. There was no justice in it; she hoped Iomedae forgave her.
Del was not content with her silence, and prompted her again. This time it was a caress of sharp steel along her jaw. It stung for a few moments; warm wetness dripped down her neck, and she wasn’t sure if it was sweat or blood. “Perhaps some whisper you heard at the God’s Market, before our brother got himself dragged off in chains for you?”
“That was your—” The young man who’d played the role of caught thief had said his brother put him up to it, but she had assumed that had only been part of his act.
“My own little brother, wanting his piece of immortality. Well, he got it. Managed to martyr himself and take a Graycloak with him to the afterlife. I pray the queen rewards him for his deeds. Meanwhile, I will ask you again: what information led you to believe that the workers in that room had the Bloodstone? Someone at the God’s Market?”
“Evandor took me to the God’s Market to put Iomedae’s ascension into context.” The cut on her face started stinging again when she moved her mouth to speak, but she was braced for it and gave him no reaction.
“How clever of him to have given you a secondary goal, so that your denial of the truth is not quite a lie. The timing of all of this is just a coincidence, is what you’ll tell me next? Maybe those merchants you spoke with will share a different story.”
Keren fidgeted, shifting her wrists in their bindings behind her back. Staying balanced on the stool and pretending that the cuts on her face weren’t drawing her entire focus to two stinging lines—these tasks stole away more of her concentration than she would have expected them to. She knew her best course was to not even try to speak in suppositions, and she would have to be very careful if she tried to skew the truth, but did he have the power he said he did? Could
he threaten the safety of others if he believed her to be less than forthcoming?
The incident at the Clockwork Cathedral had been dramatic, but it was overdone and not the work of tactical thinkers. He’d put his own brother up to approaching her at the God’s Market. And all for a chance to be raised to a better social position after death. She didn’t have to wonder whether his behavior was rational. She knew it wasn’t.
But Keren also knew that overdone, irrational violence wasn’t beyond him. It was true that Veena was protective of Keren; if she knew that Arazni’s agents were swarming to Absalom, she wouldn’t have wanted a group of them to overtake Keren and Zae on their travels. But it was also true that Veena knew of the situation in Absalom and had sent them here deliberately. That made it hard for even Keren to believe that Veena had done so for any other purpose than to have Keren assist with the search for the Bloodstone. Still, that didn’t mean it had been Keren’s intent. She could use another reason as a supposition and have it still ring as truth.
She let the words pour out. “The timing is a coincidence. You’re overestimating my importance in all of this. Look, I’m sure the precentor knew about the Bloodstone, and that’s why she teleported us; she probably thought it would be unsafe for a lone Knight of Ozem on the roads. But this is just my guess, in hindsight. She kept her reasons to herself.”
“More likely, they wanted you here to investigate.”
“We’re only here for training!”
“All right. We’ll leave off with that for now. It was kind of them to send more Knights of Ozem along. The Harlot Queen does have an affinity for your flavor of holy servant, doesn’t she?”
Pathfinder Tales--Gears of Faith Page 17
