by DAVID B. COE
“By all means,” Xivled said, as Cerri stood. “Visit our cellars. Tell the cellarmaster I sent you.”
Ottah pulled the door open and held it for Eardley’s minister. “Thank you, cousin. We will.” He nodded at Fotir. “First Minister.”
A moment later they were gone. Fotir closed his eyes and exhaled through his teeth.
Xivled sat in the chair beside Fotir’s. “I feel I should apologize for them, First Minister. They have no right speaking to you so.”
“It’s all right, Minister. It’s not your fault, nor is it anything I haven’t heard before.” He regarded the other man briefly. “You should know that it’s only a matter of time before other Qirsi speak of you as they do of me. You’re in line to be First Minister to Eibithar’s most powerful house, and you leave no doubt as to where your loyalties lie. Most other ministers will envy you. Some, like Ottah and Cerri, will compare you to Carthach, if not to your face, then when your back is turned.”
Xivled gazed at the fire, looking thoughtful and quite young. “I suppose they might. You know as well as I that the jealousies of loyal Qirsi are the least of our worries.”
“Usually I’d agree with you, cousin. But we live in strange times. Every conflict weakens us, no matter how petty it might be. Noble houses are threatening each other with war, not only here, but in Aneira and Sanbira as well. The Aneirans still threaten us from the south, and we’ve noticed a good deal of activity from Braedon’s fleet. Eandi lords have grown afraid of their ministers, and now it seems Qirsi are hiding their powers to allay those fears. Ottah’s envy may seem a trifle, but it’s one more fissure in a kingdom that’s already crumbling. I fear for us, cousin. We know so little about our enemies that we’re turning on each other.” He paused, unsure as to whether to give voice to all that he was thinking. “It may not be my place to say this,” he went on at last, “but I wish your thane had allowed you to join the conspiracy.”
The minister’s gaze flicked in his direction for just an instant, but that was long enough for Fotir to see the pained expression in Xivled’s pale eyes. “I could have learned so much.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Kentigern, Eibithar
There might have been another way to accomplish his goals, had he only taken the time to look for one. Aindreas tried to tell himself that his choices were limited, that there was only so much a duke could do under such extraordinary circumstances. Indeed, there was more than a bit of truth to this. He couldn’t tell Villyd what he had in mind, for the swordmaster would never have approved. He might even have forsaken his oath of service and left Kentigern for good, or worse, informed Ioanna of what Aindreas was doing so that she might dissuade the duke with her rage and disgust. Certainly Aindreas couldn’t have told Barret, his prelate, and the only other man in the castle he could trust. And he couldn’t very well inquire in the city on his own, not without raising a swarm of questions.
The fact of the matter was, however, he was glad to be in the dungeon again, torturing once more. He had a thirst for it, just as he did for Sanbiri red. Even the stench of the place didn’t bother him anymore. There was comfort to be found here: in the screams, in the smell of the torches, in the feel of his sword cutting into another man’s flesh. If he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine that he was hurting Tavis again, exacting a measure of revenge for what the boy did to Brienne.
It was only when he opened his eyes, and saw yet another Qirsi face distorted with pain, that he remembered.
He didn’t allow any of the guards down here with him. Not even they could know what he sought in the answers he wrung from the white-hairs.
He had started with his former underministers, the other Qirsi who served him when Shurik was still in the castle. It struck him as logical that the first minister wouldn’t have been working alone, and where better to look for the traitor’s accomplice than his own circle of advisors?
Only when he turned his attention to the first man, however—a young Qirsi named Goel—did Aindreas begin to realize how greatly torturing a sorcerer would differ from hurting an Eandi. He had kept records of all the Qirsi he brought to his castle as ministers, so he knew this man was a shaper, and he took elaborate precautions to protect himself and render the Qirsi helpless.
He invited the man to the castle, slipped some sweetwort into his wine, and after the minister lost consciousness, had him taken to the castle dungeon. There he bound the man’s wrists and ankles with satin ties, which the Qirsi couldn’t shatter as he could iron shackles. Aindreas then hung him by his hands and feet like a calf being carried to slaughter, and suspended him high over a fire. When the Qirsi awoke, he was as helpless as a babe. If he managed to shatter the chains from which he hung, he’d fall to the flames below.
Still, the duke soon discovered that the Qirsi had resources beyond his reckoning. Aindreas began to ask him questions about the conspiracy, and as the man denied having any knowledge of the renegade Qirsi or their activities, the duke used a windlass to lower him toward the flames. When the handle splintered in his hand, the sound of rending wood echoing sharply off the dungeon walls, Aindreas nearly shrieked like a frightened girl.
“Next time I shatter your skull,” the man said. “I swear it. Now get me down from here.”
Shaken and unwilling to risk asking any more questions, Aindreas fled the prison and sent eight of his archers to kill the man.
“No more shapers,” he whispered to himself. “The others don’t scare me, but no more shapers.”
He soon found, however, that healers could be trouble as well. One woman healed herself for more than an hour as he tortured her with his blade, until at last she just failed, dying almost instantly. She answered not one of his questions. Another woman used magic to set his sleeve on fire and threatened to burn his hair and beard, before he ran her through with his sword. He learned nothing more from her than he had from the others.
After a time, however, he began to enjoy a bit more success. He found no conspirators, but he did learn that the Qirsi could be tortured, provided one was patient and imaginative.
He began to blindfold his victims, so that they couldn’t anticipate his attacks or direct their magic at him with such ease. He also relied more heavily on torches and the breaking of bones, particularly with the healers, who seemed far more adept at closing cuts than soothing other injuries. Finally, he learned to use a lighter hand, for once their magical defenses failed, the Qirsi proved far more delicate than Tavis and other Eandi.
Still, even as he honed his skills, Aindreas learned little from those he brought to his prison. A few told him that they were with the conspiracy after he had hurt them for some time. But when he questioned them more thoroughly, he invariably found that they had been lying, hoping to end their misery.
Before long he had killed off all those Qirsi who once served in his castle, save for one minister who had shaping magic, and had begun to comb the city for other Qirsi to question. He began with the taverns, of course: the Silver Bear, the Grey Boar, and the rest of the establishments that catered to white-hairs. No doubt he was making enemies of all the local Qirsi, but he no longer cared. He was desperate to find someone from their damned movement, and he intended to spare no effort in doing so. As failure followed upon failure, however, he found himself losing hope as well as his appetite for torture. Perhaps Shurik had been working alone here in Kentigern. Perhaps there was less to this conspiracy than the nobles of Eibithar thought. Eager as he was to find a Qirsi who could tell him about their movement, this last possibility held some appeal for him, since it undermined the claims of Javan and others that the conspiracy was behind not only the weakening of Kentigern’s defenses, but also Brienne’s murder.
He was weighing these possibilities while using torches on a slight Qirsi man, with an uncommonly round face and close-cropped white hair. It was late in the day—he had already killed one Qirsi that morning—and this second man had denied repeatedly knowing anything about the conspiracy.
The Qirsi’s voice was growing ragged from screaming, and Aindreas sensed that he wouldn’t last much longer, which was fine with the duke. The time had come to rethink his methods.
“If you’ll tell me about the conspiracy,” the duke said dully, “I swear to you, your suffering will end.” The words had started to lose meaning for him, the way he thought a litany must for new adherents in the cloister. He held a torch to the man’s back again. “Don’t you want to stop the pain?”
The Qirsi wailed, tears streaming down his face.
“All right,” he gasped, as Aindreas pulled back the torch. “Yes, I’m with the conspiracy. Ask your questions. Just don’t hurt me anymore.”
Aindreas had heard this too many times to allow himself much excitement. A tortured man would say almost anything when he reached the limits of his endurance. It was almost enough to make him admire Tavis of Curgh, who never confessed to Brienne’s murder, though Aindreas inflicted far more pain on the boy than he had on any of these frail sorcerers.
“What do you do for the conspiracy?” he asked, his voice flat.
“Mostly I gather information,” the man said, his voice scraped raw. “But I’ve also delivered gold and carried messages.”
Aindreas gaped at him, scarcely believing what he had heard.
“What did you say?”
“I gather information. I carry messages and I deliver gold.”
The duke just stood there, too astonished to speak. After some time the man began to flinch, as if expecting his torture to resume at any moment.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt me anymore,” he whimpered.
Aindreas grabbed at the parchment resting on the floor at his feet. The man’s name was Qerle jal Brishta. He was a cloth merchant who frequented one of the taverns in the marketplace. He claimed to be a gleaner and nothing more, but Aindreas had learned in the past few days that an alarming number of Qirsi lied about their abilities. Many, it seemed, possessed more than one type of magic.
“You go by Qerle?” Aindreas asked.
“Yes.”
“Did you ever bring gold to the castle, Qerle?”
“Yes, to your first minister.”
“And messages as well?”
“Only written ones that were placed in the pouches of gold. Our leaders don’t like us couriers speaking with the others.”
“Do you know the leaders? Have you met them?”
“Never.”
Aindreas waved the torch at the man’s side.
“I swear it!” he screamed. “I’ve never met them. I don’t know anyone who has, at least not so that they could see who it was.”
The duke stepped closer to the man. “What do you mean by that? ‘Not so that they could see.’”
The Qirsi hesitated and Aindreas swung his torch, making the flame flutter, like a windblown pennon. He didn’t hold it close to Qerle, but the sound itself spurred the man to speak.
“There are rumors,” he said. “Nothing more than that. But some say that the movement is led by a Weaver, and that he enters the dreams of his more trusted servants.”
A Weaver. Maybe Aindreas should have been appalled, but after all that had befallen him in the past half year—Brienne’s death, Shurik’s treason, the siege by Mertesse that nearly cost him his castle—even the revelation of a Weaver didn’t disturb him anymore.
“Has this Weaver ever entered your dreams?”
Qerle shook his head and grimaced. It took Aindreas a moment to realize that he was trying to smile. “The Weaver commands ministers throughout the Forelands. Compared with them, I’m nothing. You’ve captured a sparrow, Eandi. That’s all you’ve done today.”
“That remains to be seen,” the duke said. But he burned the man’s arm as punishment for his impudence.
“Where does the gold come from?” the duke asked, when it seemed that Qerle’s newest pain had receded.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, when you paid Shurik, where did you get his money?”
“From another courier.”
“And what was his name?”
“That I won’t tell you. You can torture me until I die, but I won’t give you the names of any others. I swear it on all that I have left in this world.”
Aindreas briefly considered resorting to the torch again, just to see if the man was as brave as his words. He quickly thought better of it, though. There was much this Qirsi needed to do for him before he died and it struck the duke as foolish to waste this life in the pursuit of yet another sparrow, as Qerle put it. Besides, there was something almost admirable in the way he protected his comrades.
“Do you know where this man got the gold?” he asked instead.
“I believe it came from a merchant, but that’s all I know.”
The duke nodded. He had little doubt that this was true. The gold was the movement’s weakness, the one path a determined enemy might follow back to its leaders. In all likelihood that path twisted and turned like a Revel dancer. No mere courier would know much about it. Indeed, Aindreas would have wagered a hundred qinde that even a man as important as Shurik knew little beyond what Qerle had just told him.
“Did you ever take a message from Shurik back to the leaders, or those who could contact them?”
“No, never.”
“Would you know how to do such a thing?”
“Even if I did, I’d refuse. I already told you: I will not betray any of the others.”
“That’s not what I’m asking you to do.”
“Then what?”
Abruptly Aindreas was trembling. For more than a turn, since his troubling conversation with the thane of Shanstead, he had pursued the Qirsi, arresting them, torturing them, and all the while, lying to Villyd and the rest about his reasons. Now, at last, he had the man he sought, the one who could lead him to the conspiracy and bring his plans to fruition. And Aindreas felt himself waver. Once he started down the road before him, there could be no turning from it. Certainly, he could never return to where he stood now. His house, his kingdom, would never be the same.
An image of Ennis entered his mind. His boy, his heir. Seeing that face, he shivered, and nearly reached for his sword to finish the Qirsi without speaking another word. But then another image came to him. Brienne. Not as he last saw her, a bloodied corpse on Tavis’s bed, but rather as she had appeared the night before she died, golden and spirited and so beautiful that it made his chest ache. Her murderer was free, and the man who guarded his life when Aindreas sought vengeance now sat on the Oaken Throne. It was more than Aindreas could bear.
He took a step forward, extending a hand toward Qerle’s head. The Qirsi flinched again, turning his face away and wincing in anticipation of more pain. Aindreas waited a moment, until the man relaxed. Then he removed the blindfold from Qerle’s eyes.
The white-hair blinked several times, as if even the dim glow of the torches was too bright for him.
“Why did you do that?” he asked, regarding the duke warily.
“I want you to help me contact the leaders of your conspiracy.”
“Why?”
“I want their help. And I think they might be interested in having mine as well.”
“You can’t be serious.”
That of all things made the duke laugh. “You doubt that I’m serious? You, who I’ve tortured for the better part of a day?”
“You’re mad.”
“Perhaps I am. But my land is ruled by a king I hate, a king who offered refuge to the man who killed my daughter. Your leaders hate the Eandi courts, but can they deny the value of allying themselves with one as powerful as Kentigern? I’m offering them a chance to bring down Eibithar’s king, and in exchange all I ask is that my court be spared, perhaps even given a place of influence in the new order their rebellion creates. Do you really expect them to say no?”
The Qirsi shook his head, his pale eyes wide, as if he feared Aindreas more now than he had when the duke was torturing him.
“I don�
��t know what they’ll say,” he said softly. “But I’m sure they never even thought this possible.”
“You have to convince them that it is. You have to make them believe that I can help their movement.”
“So, you’re going to let me go?”
“I need someone to speak with the Qirsi leaders for me. Who else is there? I’m willing to pay you quite handsomely if you succeed.” He lifted one of the torches again. “But I want you to remember this day, and what I did to you. If you fail me, your next visit to this dungeon will make today’s torture seem mild by comparison.”
The man nodded. Aindreas could see hatred in his pale eyes.
“You’d like to kill me,” the duke said. “I understand. I’d probably feel the same way, were I in your position. But you’re going to have to swallow your anger. If you betray me, or if you attempt to flee Kentigern, I’ll find you. My men will be watching your every movement, and they’ll be watching your wife and children as well. From what I hear, it seems you have a lovely family. You wouldn’t want to see any of them down here, would you?”
“You wouldn’t,” the Qirsi breathed.
“I’ve just told you I want to ally my house with the Qirsi conspiracy. You honestly think I’d hesitate to torture another white-hair or two?”
“The movement’s leaders will think I’m luring them into a trap. They may kill me when they hear what I have to say, fearing that you intend to use me as a means of capturing them.”
Aindreas shrugged. “You’ll have to convince them otherwise.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, Qerle. Frankly, I don’t care. These are your people, not mine. Talk to them. Tell them whatever you have to. But be persuasive. Your life, and the lives of those you love, hang in the balance.” The duke hesitated. “I can offer you some token to prove to the others that your message truly comes from me—a gold round perhaps, or a piece of cloth bearing the seal of my house.”
Qerle glanced down at the raw, angry burns on his arms and chest. “I think you’ve given me all the tokens I need, Lord Kentigern.”
