Ison of the Isles

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  He spent the rest of the day in a delirium of pain. He had a fever, which the doctor tried to bring down with cold drinks and compresses. Toward sunset, he was roused by the arrival in the infirmary of one of the Inning officers from the panel of judges. The surgeon helped him sit up while the captain stood looking down at him with an expression of angry frustration.

  “For God’s sake, what do you think you’re proving?” the man said.

  Nathaway’s throat was parched, and his voice was barely a croak. “Someone’s got to check him. What he does here today, he’ll do back home tomorrow. He’s proving that.”

  “You don’t understand,” the man said. “His authority is absolute here. There is nothing anyone else can do to help you. You’ve got to give in.”

  “He has no authority over me,” Nathaway said. “My sovereign is the law.”

  “You’re insane, the both of you,” the captain said in frustration. “Take it from me, he’s not going to blink first. I know him. He’s the stubbornest man alive.”

  “No, he’s not,” Nathaway said.

  That night was sleepless. Nathaway floated on a lake of pain as the slow moments passed. When dawn was drawing near, he reached a strange state of acquiescence. The individual will inside him relaxed into the embrace of the suffering that was coming with the daylight. In that dark moment he abandoned himself into its power, its inevitability.

  There was a serene madness about him when he faced the judges the next morning. Their faces were full of horror and pity; they couldn’t meet his eyes. Only Corbin still looked untouched.

  “Prisoner, how do you plead?” he asked.

  “I deny your jurisdiction,” Nathaway said.

  The scene before him was disappearing in black spots as they led him to the foremast, and he lost track of his feet once and stumbled. Implacably, they fastened his wrists to the framework once again. The Adainas were watching in something close to reverence. When Corbin gave the signal, the whip struck him, and all the external world disappeared into the pain. Once again he was trapped inside his mutilated body. All he could do was surrender.

  He became aware of cessation. His wrists were still bound, he was still before the foremast, but someone had called a halt. Booted footsteps were approaching. He turned his head to see his brother standing next to him, looking into his face.

  “For God’s sake,” Corbin said in a low, intense voice. “Are you prepared to die just to make your point?”

  “Are you prepared to kill me just to make yours?” Nathaway said.

  Their eyes met for several seconds then, and Nathaway had a hallucinatory vision that he wasn’t even the true target of Corbin’s anger. He was a substitute for someone else, someone very like Corbin himself. They were so alike.

  And then Corbin said, “Take him below.”

  When they unfastened his wrists, Nathaway’s legs collapsed under him. He could no longer stand up, and they had to fetch a stretcher to carry him away.

  But he had won.

  13

  The Lashnura Solution

  The women had all been crowded onto a single prison ship by the time they came looking for Spaeth. It was the third ship she had been on. The captives in the hold had staked out territories that they defended against interlopers—little spots of deck that they controlled. Spaeth had been one of the last to arrive, so hers was a cramped spot amidship, yielded to her by two Adaina women in deference to her race.

  The first time the Tornas came searching through the hold with a lantern, asking for any Lashnura females aboard, the other women helped her cover her hair and smudge her face with dirt to hide her identity. But the second time, the searchers were more thorough. One of them spat on his thumb and rubbed it on her cheek to uncover the colour of her skin. They seized her by the arm then, and propelled her up the gangway till they reached an upper deck. One of the Tornas knocked on a door, then looked in. “We found one, sir,” he reported.

  They pushed her into the cabin then. Two men were inside, chatting. One of them rose when he saw her. “Yes, that’s her,” he said with satisfaction. “At last.”

  It was Tiarch’s man, Joffrey, but dressed in an Inning uniform. “Joffrey, have you defected?” she said.

  He gave a small, tight smile. “No. I’ve always been on the same side.”

  Whatever side was winning, she thought.

  He turned to the ship’s captain. “Have her delivered to me in the Redoubt by sunset.”

  “Very well.”

  They carried her through Harbourdown in an open cart with her wrists and ankles chained, so the people would see her and know their subjugation. But the only emotion she saw in the streets was fury at the Innings’ disrespect. She met the onlookers’ eyes to encourage them, and to show that she was neither humiliated nor intimidated.

  In the courtyard of the Redoubt, they unchained her ankles to walk her into the building where the commandant’s office lay, the door guarded by a marine. Joffrey met them on the doorstep, buttoning his uniform coat. He asked the guard, “What mood is he in?” The man shrugged and made a teetering balance motion with his hand. “Well, this will cheer him up,” Joffrey said. Briskly, he knocked on the door, and after a second, opened it and went in. The guard gestured Spaeth to follow.

  The room inside was one of worn luxury: a badly trampled red carpet, faded drapes, and once-elegant furniture now scarred by hard use. A lean, grey-haired Inning sat alone in one of the chairs, staring into the empty fireplace. He was not wearing a uniform, but was dressed in unassuming civilian clothes covered with a knee-length brocade jacket. When Joffrey cleared his throat and said, “Sir?” he looked up with an indifferent expression.

  “Admiral, I told you I found the woman we had been searching for, Onan Spaeth,” Joffrey said. “I thought you would like to see her.”

  Spaeth realized that she was in the presence of a monster. For that was who this man must be—the commander who had instigated such unspeakable slaughter in the South Chain. Her first reaction was shock at the striking resemblance to Nathaway. But when he looked at her, that impression faded. Nathaway’s eyes were always expressive, always engaged in what they saw. This man’s were remote, detached, and weary. Weary of conquest, weary of dominion, weary even of himself. The evils they had seen were still there, still with him, but as mere data, without moral weight.

  Then, as she watched, his shoulders straightened with self-discipline, and it was like a metal door closed between her and his mind.

  “Bring her here,” he said.

  Spaeth didn’t want to get any closer, and Joffrey had to push her forward with a hand on the small of her back. The Admiral noticed her reluctance. “Do you fear me?” he asked mildly.

  It wasn’t fear she felt. It was more like revulsion. But all she said was, “No.”

  “Perhaps you ought to,” he said. “I have a great many reasons to use you harshly.”

  Despite his words, there was no animosity in his voice. She said, “You don’t hate me.”

  “No.”

  “How could you harm someone you don’t hate?”

  He gave her a slight, ironic smile. “It’s my job.”

  She realized she had been thinking as a Lashnura, as if she were in a righteous world, a world of mora. But she was dealing with an Inning no one could touch, not even the Mundua. He was accountable to nothing.

  He continued to watch her from behind his gold-rimmed spectacles, his chin resting on his fingers. At last he said to Joffrey, “She is quite lovely, isn’t she? He wasn’t lying about that.” He had the detached tone of a connoisseur appraising an artwork. “What do you make of her, Joffrey?”

  “Make of her, sir?” Joffrey said cautiously.

  “Have you questioned her?”

  “No, not yet. What would you like to know?”

 
With a slight, restless frown, Talley said, “How she did it. No, why she did it. I had expected a schemer, a seductress, someone with the wiles to manoeuvre her way into the beds of the most powerful men of two nations. She seems remarkably young and artless for what she’s achieved.”

  Spaeth pressed her lips together, determined not to react.

  “My brother was here looking for you, did you know that?” Talley said.

  For a moment she felt a stab of alarm. But surely Nathaway would have nothing to fear; he was Inning, and the Admiral’s brother. “No,” she said, “I didn’t know.”

  “I’m curious why you fastened onto him. Was it for power? Hedging your bets, perhaps, like Joffrey here? Or was he just an irresistible target because he would succumb so easily?”

  Her true feelings were too tender to expose before this evil man. With dignity, she said, “We are bandhotai. I love him. He loves me. We always will. Nothing you can do will change that.”

  He looked unaccountably annoyed at this answer. “You disappoint me,” he said. “I had hoped you were more than just an innocent dupe of this ritual whoredom they call dhota.”

  In spite of herself, Spaeth felt stung. “Dhota has nothing to do with whoredom,” she said. “It has to do with love.”

  “So I have been told,” he said. “It’s all about love. The great weakness of the Lashnura.”

  “Love is not our weakness. It is our strength. You can never understand us till you understand that.”

  “I know the Grey Folk rather better than you think,” he said, watching her critically. “You’ve convinced yourselves you are above common morality. You hide your appetites under a veil of holy compulsion.”

  “You’re wrong,” Spaeth said. “We hide nothing.”

  “It’s not sanctity, it’s hypocrisy—an excuse to indulge yourselves in weakness. To destroy yourselves, even.”

  She saw the pain in him then, flashing out bright and brief as a lighthouse beacon. Its intensity took her breath away. She took a step backward, suddenly afraid—not of him, but of herself, of the way her heart was throbbing, her fingers tingling to touch him. She clenched her fists.

  He also appeared to have felt something, because he rose from his chair and turned his back to her. When he turned back, his voice was controlled again. “Well, it will all end soon,” he said. “Your peculiar morality will give way to Inning law.”

  Looking to Joffrey, he said, “How do you propose we should use her?”

  “Display her,” Joffrey said ruthlessly. “Make her captivity public. The Isles must know we hold the Onan, and rule her. Just think, sir, you hold in your hands the thing your two greatest enemies value and desire more than anything in the world. Think how that thought will torment them.”

  Talley was watching Joffrey with a morbid fascination. There was a short silence, in which the Admiral looked down at his hands, then pensively up and away from them both. “You enjoy being yourself, do you, Joffrey?” he said, as if it were merely a conversation opener.

  Joffrey appeared to be trying to guess the right answer. Talley shook his head and said, “Never mind. Put her somewhere safe till I’ve decided what I want from her. For God’s sake clean her up, and give her some decent clothes. Give her the room next to the other Lashnura captive.”

  “Yes, sir.” Joffrey took Spaeth by the arm and started to pull her toward the door. She refused to move.

  “Is Goth here?” she said.

  The Admiral looked at her reluctantly. “Yes, for the time being,” he said.

  “May I see him?”

  “You want that?”

  “Yes. Please. It is important.”

  “I will consider it,” he said.

  It was all she was going to get from him now. She allowed Joffrey to lead her out. When they were on the doorstep again, he looked at her appraisingly, as if he had learned more from the interview than he had expected. She looked away, unwilling to see her own reflection in his mind.

  He took her into one of the stone buildings that ringed the fort’s parade ground, and up to the second floor. They walked down a long hall, past a door with a ribbon and medal hung on it like a marker—the Admiral’s bedroom, Spaeth guessed—then past another door and around a corner. At last Joffrey ushered her into a room, then closed and locked the door.

  The room was chilly and threadbare in a no-nonsense, military way—just a rope bed, table, and fireplace. There was a window looking out onto the parade ground, and Spaeth crossed to look out of it. It was not barred, but was directly above a door where a guard was stationed.

  Over the next day, the room was transformed by the regular arrival of deliveries—first a tin bathtub and firewood, then towels, bedding, toiletries, rugs, clothes, and a dozen other amenities to improve her confinement. She saw nothing of whoever was directing it all.

  All the while she was being pampered by unseen hands, the forced inactivity brought back the ache of unhealed wounds inside her, which danger and discomfort had allowed her to ignore. The thought that Goth was close by tantalized her. More than ever now she longed to see him, and ask him what to do. She even harboured a secret hope that he could help her. How gladly he would take on some of this pain.

  In the meantime, all she could do to distract herself was watch the constant activity in the yard below. All day long soldiers drilled and crates of supplies were stacked onto wagons for transport down to the ships. There was a sense of gathering power in the Redoubt, as if a huge spring were being wound tight, ratchet tooth by ratchet tooth. The realization came to her that Admiral Talley was done with playing at war. Now he was preparing to end it all with a brutal blow.

  It was late afternoon on the third day when she heard a door closing down the hallway, followed by a low-toned conversation. She went to the door to overhear, but could make out no words. At last the exchange ended, and footsteps approached her door. She stepped away as a key rattled in the lock.

  When Admiral Talley entered the room, she took another instinctive step back. He closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it, arms crossed. He had seen her recoil, and was nettled by it.

  “Have they made you comfortable?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered warily.

  “Is there anything you require?”

  “Freedom,” she said.

  “I’ll take that to mean no.”

  She was silent.

  He glanced around the room, but his eyes were drawn back to her. For a while he studied her, and she studied him back. There was something restless about him, distracted.

  “We’re going to be leaving this place in three days,” he said at last. “You will be travelling on the Pragmatic.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He hesitated a moment, then said, “Lashnish. It’s where I always intended to go, and I’m not inclined to change just because Harg Ismol wants to draw me away.”

  She felt a flare of interest. Harg’s name seemed to burn bright and vivid on the air. “Do you have news? What has he done?”

  “Captured Tornabay.” He said it dismissively, but she knew better. She felt a slow glow of pride. Once again, Harg had humiliated the mighty Inning Navy.

  “That pleases you, does it?” Talley said. “Actually, it has very little tactical significance, as long as we don’t overreact. The main consequence is that it puts me under some time pressure to end this, before the cutting of our supply line becomes important.”

  For a moment he was preoccupied with other thoughts and calculations. Half to himself, he said, “I rarely misjudge an opponent as badly as I have misjudged him. I felt so sure he would act out of loyalty and passion, and come after me. Instead, he did just as I would have done. He saw the strategic weakness and acted on it, like an Inning.”

  He looked up at her. Despit
e his relaxed tone, his body was tense. “I wish I knew what he is willing to defend.”

  He was fishing for information. She clamped her lips tight.

  “You, perhaps?” he said. “Would he be willing to defend you?”

  He was watching her speculatively. At that look, she felt a chill of apprehension—not for herself, but for Harg. For she held his future. If ever he were to be freed from pain, it was she who must do it. She was his only hope for an uncrippled life, and now Corbin Talley controlled her.

  Talley had seen something in her face, and now he came forward till he stood close enough to touch her. She fought not to flinch away. His face was complex with conflicting thoughts. He took her hand, holding it in one of his and running the fingers of the other lightly across her smooth grey skin.

  She could almost feel the blood on his hands. And yet, with the touch, awareness of him flooded into her. He was not trying to be seductive. No, he honestly assumed she loathed him, and was enduring his touch only through fear. In fact, he would have been bitterly sceptical of any claim to the contrary. In all his adult life, there had only been one profession of love or loyalty he had believed, and that one only reluctantly. It had a terrible hold on him.

  “Goth,” she whispered.

  He stiffened at the name, and let her hand drop. “What?” he said.

  “I see him in you,” she said.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Yes,” she insisted. “You are bound to him.”

  “Only in the way an executioner is bound to his victim.” A flare of self-hatred lit his eyes. “I have destroyed him. It was laughably easy. He was like a foolish, loving dog that takes poison and then licks its killer’s hand.” He paused, his face hard. “You wanted to see him.”

  “Yes!”

  “All right,” he said. “Take a look at him. See what I’ve made of him.”