The Rebellion

by Isobelle Carmody

“Atthis?”

  “Sleep,” said a familiar voice. “Sleep and heal.”

  “Who?” I croaked.

  “Sleep …”

  I woke, groggy and lethargic. Staggering to the bathing room, I plunged myself entirely into a barrel of icy water. The cold took my breath away, and I washed swiftly, aching and gasping before getting out and rubbing myself hard enough to make my skin tingle.

  In the kitchen, Kella was nursing a cup of spiced milk. There were dark shadows under her eyes when she looked up, but an amazement in her expression startled me.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You … you’re all right?” she stammered.

  I stared at her, bemused. “Of course I am. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Last night you had a terrible fever. You were delirious and pouring with perspiration. After everything that has happened, I was afraid …” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you look so well!”

  “It must have appeared worse than it was—or I’m tougher than I look,” I said. “Where is Brydda now?”

  “He left before first light.” The healer frowned and answered my unvoiced question. “None of his people has found any trace of Matthew.”

  Depression fell over me like a blanket. “And Dragon?” I stared into the fire as I spoke and tried to keep my voice even.

  “No change,” Kella said quietly.

  She poured some milk and sat it near my hand, but I pushed it away. She shoved it firmly back. To my surprise, the warm, creamy liquid tasted delicious.

  “Have you seen Maruman?” I said.

  “No. I suppose he has gone exploring. You know how he is. Almost as bad as a teknoguilder.”

  “I hope you’re right. I’m going to try again for Matthew.” I closed my eyes and shaped a probe, letting it fly with a prayer. I cast it far, right to the edge of the Suggredoon and the sea rim, but there was no response.

  I opened my eyes and saw my own despair writ large on the healer’s face.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked in a frightened voice. “Brydda says you must leave Sutrium in a few days to meet with the rebels. Will you go if Matthew has not been found?”

  “I have agreed to this meeting, and I have no choice but to go. We’ll find him.” I looked at the healer levelly. “Kella, there is something else. I want you to come with me when I go back to Obernewtyn.”

  “What about Domick?”

  “We need him here for the time being,” I said.

  “Why shouldn’t I stay with him?” Kella’s voice was defensive, truculent.

  “Your face is becoming too well known to people who dwell hereabouts. This is a good safe house, and we don’t want to endanger it by overusing it. Domick can keep an eye on it, but he will be staying at an inn for the time being.”

  I gave her a quick look and saw that she was unconvinced. “Aside from that, I need you to look after Dragon.”

  The protestations died on her lips. Sipping at my warm milk, I watched the healer over the rim of the cup.

  “It need not be forever,” I said softly when the silence had gone on for too long.

  “Everything is going wrong,” Kella announced in sudden despair.

  Hearing her voice my own thoughts had an unexpected effect—I felt a sudden surge of stubborn optimism.

  “No,” I said.

  The healer looked startled at my sudden belligerence.

  “We have to have hope. It is the least we can do. Matthew is missing, but wherever he is, he will trust that we have not given up on him. He will believe that we are searching, and he will be doing his best to find a way to reach us. We Misfits are hard to kill.”

  Kella smiled, a quick genuine twitch of her lips. “You are proof of that.”

  I smiled back. “We have all proven it.”

  Hope ignited in her eyes, and I was surprised to feel my own heart lift fractionally.

  “You really think everything will be all right?”

  She sounded suddenly very young. I smothered a resurgence of doubt. “Of course. You’ll see. It’s only hopeless when we’ve given up hope.”

  “And Domick?” she asked after a minute.

  I looked at her quickly; the animation had died from her face.

  “You know something is wrong with him and so do I,” she said. “I have tried to get him to talk to me, but bit by bit he has withdrawn. Now we are like strangers. If I leave now …” Her eyes shone with tears, but pride kept her from shedding them.

  “Whatever is the matter with him has something to do with his spying,” I said, considering my words carefully. “It is something he needs to work out on his own, or I am sure he would have told you what was wrong. But he still loves you.”

  “Then I should not leave,” Kella said quickly.

  “That is exactly what you should do!”

  I hesitated, then decided she needed some hard words to stiffen her backbone. “Why do you suppose he has been spending so much time away from the safe house if not to be alone—to get away from you? Perhaps he feels smothered by your worrying about him so much.”

  I did not believe this. But Kella needed to come home, and Domick wanted her to go. Perhaps her presence was a strain he could not bear on top of everything else. Kella looked stricken, and I wondered if I had misread her, but after a moment, her face settled into determined lines. “Maybe you’re right,” she said at last. She was silent for a time, her brow furrowed in thought. “All right, I will come back to Obernewtyn. Domick will know where to find me when he wants me.”

  “Good girl,” I said, heartened by her courage. I wondered if I would have had as much in similar circumstances. “Now all we need to do to complete the day is find Matthew.”

  “I know where he is,” came a familiar farseeking voice.

  27

  I JUMPED TO my feet, knocking the chair to the ground. Kella gaped at me in amazement. “What is it?”

  “Daffyd is in the yard below!” I cried aloud to her. “He’s just farsent that he knows where Matthew is!”

  Her eyes widened in joy, and we hurried downstairs.

  I stopped dead at the sight of the ex-Druid armsman as Kella let him into the repair shed. He was wearing an oiled cloak that glistened with rain.

  At the inn, Daffyd had been concealed by the darkness, and before that, I had not seen him for an age. Like Domick and Brydda, I saw now that time and whatever straits he had undergone had altered him. He had lost none of his tan, which suggested he still lived an outdoor life, but there was a new intensity and a depth of pain in his dark-brown eyes that made me wonder what he had been doing since he left us. He was taller than I remembered and thinner, the skin on his bones so scant that he looked frail. But when he embraced me, I felt his indomitable will in the sinewy strength of his arms and was reassured.

  “I am sorry I did not come sooner, but they are very watchful,” he said. “Even now I dare not be gone too long, or they will become suspicious.”

  “You said you know where Matthew is,” I said eagerly.

  Daffyd gave me an assessing look. “I do, but before I tell you where he is, you must make me a promise.”

  I stared at him, bemused. “What?”

  “I have spent much time working my way painstakingly into the slaver’s organization, waiting for a time when Salamander would expose himself. That time is near, and I can’t let you do anything that would stop him appearing.”

  “Is Matthew with Salamander?”

  “The slaver you and Brydda met, Ayle, has Matthew and the other slaves, but Salamander will come for them. If you free them, you must do it at the last minute. You don’t have any idea how fanatically suspicious Salamander is. If he gets the slightest notion that something is wrong, there will be a lot of dead people and dead ends, believe me, Matthew and I are likely to be among the cold ones.”

  “I’ll be guided by you,” I said quickly. “We will not act until you give the word.”

  “Do you speak for Brydda as well?�
�

  I paused. “I can’t speak for him,” I said at last. “But he has also been searching for Salamander, because the slavemaster killed Idris. He won’t want to frighten him away any more than you do.”

  “Salamander kills like other people breathe. I suppose Brydda wants revenge.”

  “He wants to smash the slave trade,” Kella said.

  “That is a fine desire,” Daffyd said. “But this is a trade that brings a river of coin into the hands of slavers. Killing Salamander will not end it altogether. But I wish him luck. My quest is somewhat more personal.” There was something unbending in his face now.

  “You are still looking for Gilaine and the others?” I temporized.

  “Always,” he said, the terse word a vow.

  “Then Salamander has them?”

  “Not now. But he had them, and he is my sole link to them.” He frowned, seeming to weigh things in his mind. Finally, he spoke again. “Matthew is being held with a whole lot of other slaves in a warehouse on the banks of the Suggredoon.”

  “One of the river wharfs?” Kella asked eagerly.

  Daffyd nodded, but his eyes did not leave mine.

  “Then we were right. He means to use the Suggredoon to get them out of Sutrium,” the healer said.

  “Matthew is drugged, then?” I asked.

  “He was, though he did not appear to be,” Daffyd said. “I near died when I spotted him among the others. When I could touch him, I tried to farseek him to find out what he was up to. That was when I discovered that he had been drugged.

  “I managed to get the job of redosing the slaves, and I let Matthew’s dribble onto the ground and kept my fingers crossed that he would not give me away before his mind was clear. Eventually, we were able to exchange stories. I promised to come and find you, but it took all night to think of an excuse that would not cause suspicion.” He glanced outside where it had begun to rain again.

  “I don’t understand,” I broke in. “I farsought Matthew all day yesterday. If he was free of the drugs, how is it that I couldn’t locate him? Is he on tainted ground?”

  Daffyd shook his head. “The place where he and the other slaves are being held is built to extend over the Suggredoon. I think there is something tainted in the water, because sometimes the fish glow at night or they are grotesquely deformed.”

  I opened my mouth and huffed a sigh of relief. That explained everything. Probably whatever was tainting the river had also affected the sea along the shore. And from Daffyd’s description of Matthew, it looked as if Domick had been right about the slave suppliers using Sadorian drugs. The only mystery was why the soldierguard had stopped the wagon partway to administer the drug dose.

  “How does the soldierguard captain fit into the whole thing?”

  Daffyd gave me a blank stare. “What soldierguard captain?”

  I did not want to divert Daffyd when we had so little time, so I shrugged dismissively. “How did Gilaine and Lidgebaby end up in Salamander’s hands?”

  Daffyd’s eyes gleamed with obsessive fire. “Well you might ask, for it is a strange and dark story. And long. Too long for these few moments. Suffice it to say that they were sold to him as slaves. I have infiltrated the slave trade specifically to reach Salamander so that I can learn where they were sold and to whom.”

  He looked around again, as if he feared someone might have followed him. Taking me by the arm, he drew me deeper into the shed and out of sight of the yard gate.

  “There is to be a change in the way things are done. A streamlining, Ayle called it. Moving forward, all slaves are to be brought to a single spot in Sutrium—this will be regularly changed. The slaves are to be picked up by boat and taken over the seas to be sold.”

  “Straight to sea from Sutrium? No more routing them through Morganna?” I asked, my mouth dry.

  “Ayle said nothing of that, but I would guess this slave boat will stop at Morganna as well. He is to manage the sorting house in Sutrium, and I suppose there will be another sorting house and another Ayle in Morganna—maybe one in every coastal town.” Daffyd’s eyes narrowed. “What I know for sure is that Salamander will come in person, and that means I have the chance I’ve been waiting for.”

  “Chance?” Kella murmured, voicing the question shaping in my own mind.

  The armsman flicked a look at her. “I mean to farseek Salamander to learn where he has taken Gilaine and Lidgebaby. If that does not work, I will force him to recall by cruder means. If he has truly forgotten, he will pay for his amnesia with his life.”

  “Hard to believe that Salamander would come to pick the slaves up himself,” I said. “It seems so out of character for him to expose himself like that.”

  Daffyd shrugged. “He is setting a new aspect of the slave trade in place, and he does not trust any other to do it properly. In any case, while he is aboard the ship, he will be in no danger. I daresay he will not come ashore longer than it takes to load the slaves, and it is likely he will be masked. But a mask will not keep me from his mind. And I will have some time; it will take more than a little while to board so many slaves.”

  “So many slaves?” I was puzzled.

  Daffyd laughed bitterly. “I told you, Ayle’s warehouse is to be the new sorting house. Every day, more slaves are brought in to await Salamander’s ship. There are more than one hundred already waiting for collection.”

  “One hundred!” I echoed, astounded.

  “It is nothing to what will be coming, according to Ayle. These are early days.”

  “How long before this ship comes to take the slaves?” I asked with sudden foreboding.

  “Ayle said tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!”

  Daffyd nodded grimly. “Remember, you must not act until the last moment.”

  I nodded back, thinking this was the last moment. We would be lucky to get anything set up in such a short time. “Does Matthew have any ideas how we might get him free?”

  Daffyd gave a rare, crooked half smile. “I think Matthew thought you and Brydda would come up with those minor details.”

  I shook my head in exasperation.

  Daffyd looked again from the repair-shed door into the driving rain. “I must go back now. Is there anything you want me to tell Matthew?”

  “Tell him to be ready,” I said decisively.

  “I will.” He pulled up the hood on his cloak and turned to face me, his eyes shadowed. “Remember your promise.”

  He strode away without waiting for a response and was lost behind the curtain of rain even before he had reached the gates to the repair yard.

  I turned back to look at Kella.

  “He is so full of hatred,” she said. “I have only slight empath Talent, and yet it burned me.”

  “He loves Gilaine, and he is emotionally linked with Lidgebaby. And his brother was in the camp, too. I wonder how they got into Salamander’s hands in the first place. And how they escaped the firestorm that destroyed the Druid camp.”

  “What are you going to tell Brydda?”

  “Yes, what?” Brydda asked, stepping out of the shadows behind us.

  We both whirled to face the rebel.

  “It seems I do not have to decide that question,” I said coolly, not liking that he had deliberately hidden himself and listened to words that had not been intended for his ears.

  “Perhaps it is lucky for us both that you do not,” Brydda said with equal coolness. He shook his head, and the harshness melted from his expression. “I did not mean to overhear. I did not recognize Daffyd and so I hid. Only when you spoke did I realize who he was, and by then it was clear he would not welcome my presence.”

  “What will you do, then?” I asked.

  “What would you have me do?”

  “You heard what Daffyd said. He wants to find out where Salamander took Gilaine and the others. I would ask, as he did, that we do not get in his way.”

  The rebel’s eyes were somber. “Perhaps I have given you some cause to doubt me, but I tell
you now, on my life, you can trust me. Daffyd wants Salamander alive so he can milk him for information, and I want him dead. Both our wishes can be met.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  Brydda gave a feral smile. “Rescuing Matthew and taking Salamander captive so that we can question him to our heart’s content. And when he has no more to tell us, then I will deal with him.”

  I shuddered and wondered if there was ever any other way of dealing with hatred and violence.

  “Well?” Brydda prompted. “Shall we see how a sly Salamander deals with the Black Dog’s teeth?”

  I looked at the rebel steadily. “If I don’t agree?”

  He frowned. “You gave your word. I was not meant to hear what I heard, and we are friends. Therefore, by virtue of that friendship, I will abide by your decision.”

  I felt ashamed of my doubts. “You are a better friend than I am,” I said. “I will say yes, but I must let Daffyd know that this has become a rebel operation.”

  “Let us go there tonight. I will need to have a look at this warehouse and the river wharfs in order to formulate a plan, and we will find a way to communicate it to Daffyd.”

  I nodded. “Come by at dusk, then. Did you come for anything in particular?” I added as the big man turned to go.

  He slapped his head. “Of course. All of this drove it from my mind. I came to tell you that Malik has agreed to meet you but that he refuses to come unless the location of the meeting is changed.”

  “But you said they did not know where—”

  “They don’t. But he proposes his own location. He says the meeting should occur on truly neutral territory and has named Bodera’s home in Sutrium.”

  “Oh Lud,” I said uncertainly.

  “Malik sent his letter directly to Bodera, which suggests that, in spite of all my efforts, he has begun to see me as a rival.”

  “What did Bodera say?”

  Brydda scowled. “Unfortunately, he thought it was a good idea. He is proud to think that his home is neutral territory.”

  “Then what is the problem? If he is not troubled …”

  The big rebel ran an agitated hand over his unruly thatch. “It is dangerous to have these sort of meetings in a permanent place that we use. And, apart from that, the location of the meeting will be known in advance of the day, which increases the chance of treachery.”