by K. C. May
Jora glanced at the princess’s wrist. Her silver bracelet was in place, the one that protected her from the curious eyes of the Truth Sayers. “Yes. That’s Captain Kyear. He’s the one who receives the money and takes it to the barbery where Behrendt picks it up.”
“With the captain missing and removed from the chain, they put someone else in his place, though I don’t know who. Papa wouldn’t tell me.”
All that effort to disrupt the delivery was wasted. Jora wouldn’t find out who replaced Kyear until the sergeant delivered next week’s payment. She let her face fall into her palms.
“Is he alive?”
Jora looked up and nodded. “Yes, he’s safe.”
Rivva’s shoulders relaxed with a hard exhale. “Good. Would any Truth Sayers be able to Observe you with him?”
“No, they can’t…” Jora remembered the sergeant. If the Truth Sayers Observed the sergeant, they would see her. “They can’t Observe Kyear until I release him, but there is someone else—the sergeant who brought the coins to Jolver. He saw me in Kyear’s office, but I was wearing a hat and street clothes. Unless someone looks at my face, they might assume I was the bereaved wife of a fallen soldier.”
Rivva nodded. “If you were planning anything else to disrupt the smuggling, please stop now.”
“Are we supposed to sit back and let it continue?”
Rivva stood and came to the bed, sitting on its edge. “As much as it pains me to say it, the smuggling doesn’t stop with Minister Quirza.”
Jora slumped her shoulders. Something in the back of her mind had told her the king knew about the smuggling, but she’d tried to ignore it, hoping she was wrong. She couldn’t deny it any longer. “He never asked me to investigate the smuggling,did he?”
Rivva took one of Jora’s hands. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I thought that by having you report to me what you learned, I could use the information to pressure Quirza to stop. I never meant to put you in danger. He didn’t say as much, but I’m certain my father feels trapped in this whole thing. The smuggling money helps pay for food and supplies for the soldiers. When I asked why he didn’t start selling the godfruit openly, establish trade agreements with our enemies, he said everything has reached a sort of equilibrium. Barad Selegal has fairly well dropped out of the conflict, but they allow Arynd Ban to launch boats from their shores or send ground forces across their northern border. Mangend and Arynd Ban don’t attack up our coast, don’t try to take Jolver, don’t send too many soldiers at once… It’s like he’s worked out an agreement of sorts with the leaders of the other countries to keep the war going without anyone winning.”
“An agreement?” Jora couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“Not a formal one, perhaps, but one they’ve settled into. One that’s perpetuated by us smuggling just enough godfruit to keep them coming back but not so much that they’re overconfident of victory. I don’t understand the nuances of war. To be honest, I’d hoped the war would end before I inherited the throne.” She snorted with a twist of irony in her lips. “I actually thought my father was working toward that end.” She looked like she was about to say something else when someone knocked on the door, interrupting the conversation.
Jora realized that not only was she late for her lesson, but she’d not read the last assignment.
“Who—oh! I’m so sorry,” Bastin said. “I didn’t realize you were here, Princess Rivva. Please forgive my intrusion.”
Rivva stood. “It’s quite all right. I believe our business here is finished for now.” She looked questioningly at Jora. “I think we need to consider our options and meet in a day or two.”
“I agree,” Jora said, standing. “Thank you for coming by, Rivva.”
Bastin bowed as the princess swept past. “Good day, Princess.”
Rivva paused in the hallway. “You are?”
“Bastin, Your Highness.”
“Good day, Bastin.”
Once Rivva had left, Bastin fanned herself with one hand. “You’re friends with the princess? God’s challenger! Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have barged in like that if I’d known she might be visiting.”
“You couldn’t tell by the royal guard standing outside my door?” Jora asked with a dim smile.
“There were no guards in the hallway, though there were four waiting at the bottom of the stairs. I figured whichever royal was here would be talking to an elder.”
“Surprise.”
Bastin smacked her tongue in dismissive contempt. “Let’s go to the library. Get your book.”
“Um, I’m sorry, Bastin. I haven’t read my last assignment yet.”
The disciple gave her an annoyed look. “What have you been doing all this time?”
“Working on a project for Princess Rivva,” she said.
“What project?”
“If you must know, you’re welcome to ask her. I’ve been instructed to keep the details to myself.”
Bastin smacked her tongue again. “Well, aren’t you important?”
“I’m the Gatekeeper. Now, did you want to go over my reading assignment together, or leave me to read on my own?”
Bastin pressed her lips together so hard, they turned white. “Fine,” she blurted. “Read. And be sure you do this time, else I’ll report you to Adept Fer.” With that, Bastin left her to pace alone in her room and think.
Arc had been right. Her plan to disrupt the smuggling by removing the money was ill-conceived, but she couldn’t accept that the answer was letting the war rage on. The vision of her brother Tosh, dying to a sword through the back, would forever haunt her. She’d lost two cousins, three uncles, and a grandfather to the war, not to mention countless more distant relatives, friends, and neighbors. The first boy she’d ever kissed had died earlier in the year. Her best friend, Tearna, lost two brothers and a cousin in the past five years. And what of the men still fighting whose loved ones waited fearfully for news of their deaths? There had to be a way to stop the war with or without the king’s help.
Now that Rivva knew, maybe she could convince her father to at least consider alternatives. If King Yaphet needed Jora to go as Gatekeeper to foreign lands and negotiate a truce, she would. True, she knew nothing about being a diplomat, but she had a responsibility to use the power entrusted to her for good. She could travel through enemy lands unseen, even kidnap a king or queen if necessary to force the laying down of arms for a time.
As much as she wanted to seek an audience with King Yaphet and offer her aid, she had to give Rivva time to do things her way. For now, she needed to sit tight and let a solution present itself, and if she came up with an idea, she would take action then. In the meantime, she had a brother to worry about.
She settled on her reclining chair, opened the Mindstream, and found Finn’s thread. He was in a cell at the jail, a dank and smelly cage not unlike the one she’d waited in for ten days before her trial. Moving backward through his stream, she discovered that he’d had his court-martial the day before. Milad hadn’t lied; Finn had been found guilty and sentenced to fimbling and ten lashes. How long he would sit in jail before Milad would get around to issuing his punishment was still a question, but for now he was safe.
She breathed her relief and closed the Mindstream, then let her mind drift back to the larger problem: how to stop a hundred-year-old war.
At first Jora paced, then she sat on the reclining chair, chewing and picking at the ragged cuticles on her fingers while she thought. There had to be a way to stop the war without starving the soldiers. Why were the soldiers on the Isle of Shess if not to guard the Tree of the Fallen God? And if they only needed to guard the Tree, Jora could manage with a few more allies and the rest of the Colossus. The soldiers could go home. Then nobody would get the godfruit or everyone would. It was as simple as that.
There had to be a drawback to that idea, though. Why hadn’t the king himself proposed it to her when they met? Instead, he tried to pretend he wasn’t involved in the smu
ggling and vowed to investigate it. Did he expect her to wait year after year for some resolution? How long did he think he could continue to put her off, saying his people were no closer to uncovering the smugglers than they were on the first day?
The war had gone on for so long, that many men only knew fighting. Some of them knew how to repair weapons or patch wounds, but most men didn’t learn the skills that women did for making and repairing goods and equipment, mining metals or gems, treating illnesses and wounds, tending crops or animals, making wines and ales, or even governing cities and towns. They would learn, of course, and for the first few months communities might struggle to feed, clothe, and house the returning men. They would adapt. Society would become stronger with more people finding ways to contribute.
For years, she’d put her own life in a neat, little box on the assumption that she would be a leatherworker, wife, and mother and little else. Now she was neither. She’d adapted. It’d been a struggle at times to think outside the boundaries she’d built for herself, but she was a stronger person now. If she could magically reverse everything that had happened since she’d left Kaild to become a Truth Sayer, knowing what she knew now, she wasn’t sure she would be satisfied with that old life. As much as she missed her family and friends and the opportunity to marry Gunnar and bear his children, she was a stronger person now. The hardship had forged her like a blade.
She sat through supper, eating without enthusiasm, not listening to the conversation. Even the drone of voices and clack of spoons against bowls were drowned out by the thoughts in her head. She didn’t understand how The First Godly Redeemer, the largest Iskori temple in Jolver, could be so wealthy that the dominee ran out of body parts to hang jewels on, while the king had to smuggle godfruit to his enemies in order to feed the soldiers protecting the Tree. The Temple was part of the kingdom, not a separate entity, and as such, the king had control of its purse strings. Why did he not simply funnel some of its money toward the war effort?
“Jora?” Adriel asked, disturbing her train of thought. “Are you coming?”
The dining hall had quieted considerably. Most everyone had left, Jora realized, and the enforcers were lining up outside the door, waiting for the third bell. And her bowl was still half full of cold food. “Yah,” she said, standing.
Adriel joined the line of novices and disciples filing out of the room and soon disappeared from view into the hallway.
Jora shoveled a few more spoonfuls of food into her mouth as she carried the tray and bowl to the table of dirties.
She’d never paid much attention to the enforcers before, nor they to her, but now that her robe was red, she couldn’t help but notice the hard look in their faces as they stared at her like hungry wolves eyeing a lamb. Korlan, standing at the front of the line, offered a dim smile as she shuffled forward behind the last of the novices to leave. He looked different from his peers. His eyes weren’t yet feral, his smile not yet a snarl. He might still be saved from their fate, but it would first take her forgiveness, something she wasn’t sure she could manage.
She squeezed through the doorway past them with her shoulders square, trying not to let them see the nervous twitch in her hands.
“Gatekeeper,” one whispered. Others echoed. “Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper.” It became a chant, their whispers haunting her like ghosts along the hallway to the stairs. She fled, running upstairs as fast as her legs would carry her, bumping shoulders with her oblivious peers as she raced past them to escape those whispers.
Inside her room, she leaned against the closed door and let loose a shudder. They were justice officials. Why they would persecute her that way was beyond her comprehension. Knaves and bastards, all, she supposed. Except for Korlan. How alone he must have felt, a tool for Milad to use against her.
She pulled her stool to the window and sat. The shadow of the tree in the courtyard was long, its dark fingers still against the justice building’s rear wall.
Gatekeeper. The enforcers’ whispered chant still echoed in her mind. Did they know something she didn’t?
She sat up straight. Finn.
A feeling of panic squeezed her chest. She shut her eyes and opened the Mindstream, desperate to assure herself he was all right.
His thread was gone.
No. Her mind clamped down on the idea, rejecting it. No. It’s here. It has to be here. She searched for it, certain her own fear was making her overlook it.
His thread was gone. Simply gone.
“No,” she heard herself say. The word came out as a pitiful wail, a plea for it not to be true. They wouldn’t have slain him. They wouldn’t be that stupid.
She slid backward along her own thread to the moment earlier in the day when she’d found him in the jail cell. While Mindstreaming to her own past, she searched for Finn’s thread, riding her own stream. It was there, solid as ever. That she could see his thread in the past meant that he had to be dead. No, she thought, pushing the idea aside. He couldn’t be. She clung to it as she swung her perspective around to see his face.
His resemblance to their father took her aback. How had she never noticed how much Finn looked like Papa? They shared their big, gentle eyes, like hers except not so close together. They had the same sharp nose, smaller than her own and more baronial. Finn had their papa’s strong chin and wide mouth, now turned into a frown.
She so wanted to reach out in the Mindstream and stroke his cheek, to offer a measure of comfort that she was there, that he wasn’t alone.
She advanced his stream, slowly at first, afraid of reaching the sudden end the way she’d reached Tosh’s—on the blade of a sword.
Finn sat in the cell for an hour or two before a pair of enforcers came to get him. They marched him, shackled and gagged, down the corridor and loaded him into a wagon the way they’d done Jora. They took him to the Justice Bureau, not to a courtroom but downstairs to one of the thick-walled, soundproof rooms where the enforcers conducted their duties.
Finn’s eyes widened when he saw the iron tools of torture hanging from pegs on the walls. He struggled at first, tried to get away, but the enforcers caught him and wrestled him into the heavy chair whose arms and seat were stained with old blood. They strapped him into it with a leather belt around his chest, another across his thighs, and two more for his forearms.
He kicked at them, then tried to push the chair away from the black stone table. The enforcers hollered at him to stop, and one of them, the bigger of the two, took a leather strap from a peg, about an inch wide, and struck Finn across the face, leaving a welt on his cheek. “Do it again,” he said, holding the strap in his cocked arm as if hoping for a chance to strike him again. Finn quieted, breathing like a bull through his nose but not daring to take another chance.
The other enforcer knelt down and buckled Finn’s ankles to the chair legs.
Jora’s mouth watered, and her stomach churned. Though she had to know what happened to her brother, she needed a minute to get a hold of herself first. She dabbed at the sweat on her brow, took a long drink of water, and continued.
The two enforcers left the room. Finn struggled to get free, but it was no use. The straps were secure. After a few minutes, the big enforcer they called Gruesome entered, dressed in an apron stained with blood. Finn’s face contorted into an expression of fearful disgust. He tried to say something, but the gag muffled his words beyond recognition.
“Afternoon,” Gruesome said with a smile. He was missing the first two molars behind his long eyeteeth on the top, and the two center teeth were chipped and ragged. “I’m Gruesome, but you can call me Grue if you want.” He checked the tightness of the straps holding Finn into the chair. “I’ll try to make this as painless as possible. I’m told your sister threatened my boss with bodily harm if I hurt you too badly.”
“Jora?” Finn seemed to ask.
“Around here, she’s called the Gatekeeper. So sensitive, like a delicate flower. We have to tiptoe around her til we figure out how to harness her like
a draft horse. You might just be the bit in her mouth, the yoke on her shoulders, the whip on her ass.” Gruesome chuckled as he sauntered around behind the chair. “For that reason, we’ll keep you alive as long as possible. Watch your fingers.” He pushed the chair up to the table so that Finn’s fingers touched the top, but his palms didn’t quite reach. “There we are. Which is your dominant hand?”
Finn wiggled the fingers of his left hand, though Jora knew that to be wrong. He was trying to spare his dominant hand from injury.
“All right, then we’ll use the right. Don’t want to render you completely useless now, do we?”
Finn tried to object, wiggling the fingers of his right hand. “No.”
“No? You want me to use the left one instead?” Gruesome asked. He narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t lie to me about your dominant hand, did you? Lying to a justice officer carries additional penalties, you know.”
Finn nodded fervently. “Left hand,” he managed to say.
Gruesome sat one butt cheek on the table and leaned a forearm casually across his thigh. “Let’s make sure. Nod your head if you want me to use your left hand.”
Finn nodded. Tears filled his bloodshot eyes.
“Because you’re actually right handed?”
Again, Finn nodded.
“Then you lied to me.”
Finn hung his head and gave a small nod.
Gruesome let out a sigh as he stood. “All right. Left hand it is. Last chance to change your mind.” He went to the wall and picked out a thick, iron-headed mallet. Twice he slapped its head into his left palm.
Finn watched him silently. A tear broke lose and trailed down his cheek.
“Want something to bite down on?” Gruesome asked. “I’ve seen men break teeth trying to grit through the pain. I’ll bet your wife would prefer you don’t mess up your pretty smile, eh? Oh, wait. Fists, I forgot,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Never mind.”
