by Martha Wells
The Heir let out her breath and smiled. She nodded to the lictors. "Take him upstairs."
***
Four watchful lictors took Khat up into the palace. They seemed to be taking back ways, since the staircases and halls they traveled weren't nearly so grand or so well lit as the ones he had seen before. There were armed vigils and lictors everywhere, guarding doors, gathered in corridors, talking in low voices, and peering suspiciously at each other.
Finally they passed through a knot of lictors and into a place he recognized: the anterooms to the Heir's quarters.
They passed through a few connecting chambers, then into a smaller room. Before he could look around one of the lictors tripped him. He fell heavily, the breath knocked out of him, and the lictor's knee came down hard on the small of his back. He tried to twist around and felt a sharp edge rest against the big vein in his wrist. Getting the unequivocal message, he forced himself to relax.
The cords fell away from his wrists, and the lictor stood up. Khat rolled over, bracing for a kick to his ribs or groin, and snarled at the men looking down at him.
Two of them exchanged a disgusted glance; the others merely looked startled. Khat pushed himself back, trying to get a little more room to fight in if they attacked, but they went out through the door behind them, the last one pulling the heavy curtain shut.
They had left him alone. He looked around, saw there was one other door, and leaned down to peer under the curtain. There were booted feet on the other side, at least two sets, and probably more out of sight. He sat up, taking stock of the place and wondering what was next.
It didn't look like a place where prisoners were kept or executions conducted. It was an interior room, without any handy windows to climb out. Woven rugs with a waterbird design meant to simulate Ancient work allowed only a few glimpses of the creamy marble floor. There was a low table of cedar, with inlaid gold and lapis banding its legs, a large couch piled with thick cotton pads and silk cushions, and wall niches holding fragrant candles and onyx vessels filled with dried flower petals. Tiny holes in the sculpted marble ceiling let in a draft that was almost cool. Fan-driven air from outside, probably, that flowed through water-cooled shafts.
A quick search revealed nothing that could be used as a weapon except in the blunt-club sense. There was certainly nothing sharp-edged that he could hide on himself somewhere for future use. A delicate table of gold-inlaid ebony beside the couch held little porcelain jars of unguents, with one that smelled so strongly of myrrh that it made him sneeze, but next to it was a glass decanter of water and a silver tray piled with grapes. He hadn't noticed until this moment how thirsty he was.
The Heir wanted to find out what he knew, and since her veiled friend couldn't find out the hard way, he had an idea how she meant to go about it. It didn't imply much respect for his intelligence, but that was undoubtedly for the best. This wait was probably supposed to help soften him up by giving him time to terrify himself with speculations about his fate.
Khat stretched out on the couch, tucked a silken pillow behind his head, and proceeded to eat the grapes. The cuts across his back were stinging somewhat, the scabs having pulled open during his various struggles tonight. Injuries new and old were aching from the tension in his muscles, but it was nothing to how he would have felt if that creature had torn open his mind the way it had Gandin's. He couldn't think why it hadn't been able to do the same to him, unless it had used up all its strength or power or whatever on the young Warder; it was plain that Gandin had tried to fight it. Or it was the same reason Elen and the other Warders couldn't soul-read him.
He wondered if Elen was a prisoner here, if they had done that to her ... There was no way to know.
He wondered too if the Heir realized he knew what her companion was, if it had told her not only that it had seen him but that he had seen it three times, or at least felt it once and seen it twice. Outside poor dead Radu's house, and again on the Academia grounds and in the Porta Major. At least now he knew why it had been following him: Riathen had told the Heir he would be the one searching for the relics. But Khat had read the pertinent sections of Riathen's Ancient text, and perhaps the creature's origin was more obvious to him because of that.
Perhaps she didn't know that her companion was an Inhabitant of the West. Perhaps she had never seen it without its concealing robes and veils, when it wasn't pretending to be human.
But Khat remembered the look in her eyes when she challenged the thing, the glint of mixed excitement and fear, and decided she knew exactly what it was that aided her.
Khat frowned at the ornate ceiling. He had to stay alive long enough to tell somebody. He didn't know whom yet, but somebody had to know that the Heir to the Elector's throne kept company with a legendary monster. How it had gotten here was still a mystery, but it was all too easy to guess why it had come: to open the Western Doors and let the others in.
If he could just find Elen... She probably wouldn't have any better idea what to do about it than he did, but he could hope. And at least then it would be her problem too and not just his.
The curtains on the first door were pushed open, and the Heir stepped through. With her was a man dressed as an Imperial lictor who looked less like one than Khat did.
Lictors came from the lower houses of Patrician families; this man's pale skin looked as if it had never been touched by the sun, and there was something about the bluntness of his features that suggested the Last Sea coast. He was big, more than a head taller than the Heir, who wasn't a short woman, and he was bulky with muscle, his arms and shoulders straining the seams of his robe. His head was shaved, and the outer flesh of his ears had been trimmed back to featureless lumps, as if they had been eaten away by some disease. His eyes were light blue and dull and maybe a little mad. He made the hackles on the back of Khat's neck rise.
The guard took a step toward him, and Khat slipped off the couch, going to his knees at the Heir's feet.
She touched his face. Her fingernails were long, the edges tipped with gilt to harden and sharpen them. He hated that. She said, "You really are a pretty creature. I regret causing you any harm."
Khat hoped she didn't expect to be thanked for the compliment, because he really didn't think he could manage it, even to save his life. Earnestly, he said, "I'll tell you anything you want to know."
"Really?" She stepped around him and sank down on the couch, propping herself up on one elbow and very much at ease. "That would be very helpful." She patted the edge of the couch in invitation.
He leaned against the cushions, so close to her he could feel her body heat. "But I don't think I know very much."
"We'll see." She touched his hair, as if intrigued by the texture, and asked, "What has Sonet Riathen told you about all this?"
Careful not to be too ingenuous, he kept his eyes on her face, which was really worth looking at if you could only ignore the character behind it. "He said he would kill me if I told anyone about finding the relics. Is he here?"
"No. But I know where he is. When the time is right, I'll remove him." Her fingers were moving through his hair, and this bit of intelligence was so distracting that it took conscious effort to lean his head into the caress and make it look natural. Gandin had said Riathen was under arrest at the palace. But perhaps Gandin only thought so because that was where the other Warders in his household had been taken. Well, fine, Khat thought. Now he had to worry again about where the Master Warder was and what he was doing. The Heir asked, "But did Riathen tell you what the relics were for?"
The option to pretend ignorance had been closed when the Master Warder had first brought him here to show off his abilities, but she didn't know he had read the key sections of the Survivor text. He wondered how much she did know. She had probably been the one to arrange the original theft of the relics, and the thieves had been foolish enough to cheat her and disperse the collection on the Silent Market. He said, "They may be pieces of an arcane engine."
"I see. An
d what were you doing near Riathen's house with Gandin Riat?"
Khat wondered if he dared mention Elen. The chances were good that she was under arrest here somewhere, but he doubted it would help much to have the Heir's attention drawn to her. No, better not. But if the Inhabitant had really read Gandin's soul there was no point in concocting a story. He said, "I wanted to find out what Riathen was doing with the relics. I thought there might be something in it for me." That was enough of the truth not to contradict anything she had learned from the young Warder.
She said, "I appreciate your honesty."
Khat had a bad moment, wondering if she had seen through him so easily, but her hand had moved down to the back of his neck, urging him nearer.
He obediently moved closer, leaning against her knees now, and the feel of a firm thigh beneath the cool silk of her kaftan did terrible things to his concentration. His eyes kept straying to the guard who had accompanied her, who was still a hulking presence beside the door. The Heir noticed his preoccupation and smiled at the glowering figure. "That is Saret," she explained. "He comes from one of the farthest islands of the Last Sea, where their customs are as alien to the Fringe Cities as ... as you are." Her hand moved lower, down his chest and stomach to explore the raised line of his pouch lip.
Khat's response was tinged with the memory of the fever he had given himself by hiding the little relic there, and he hoped she wouldn't be too adventurous. He said, "He's very... distracting."
She hesitated, and then decided to humor him. "Wait outside, Saret."
It wasn't hard to figure out what she wanted. Traditional krismen wisdom on the subject held that leaving marks was rude, but this was an opinion she evidently didn't share. When her long nails tore open one of the scabs on his back he almost bit her with a strength that would have dealt her a permanent scar. She was also disappointed that his anatomy wasn't more unusual, but that was hardly his fault.
Afterwards it was easy to pretend to fall asleep. He was exhausted and still not entirely recovered from the fever, but the thought that she might have everything she wanted from him now and that there was nothing to stop her from having him killed was more than enough to keep him wide awake.
In time he felt her leave the couch, and heard the rustle of silk as she slipped her kaftan over her head and stepped out through the curtain of one of the doorways. He rolled off the couch, found his clothes, and dressed hurriedly and quietly. There would still be guards towards the front of the suite, but he lifted the edge of the curtain on the other door and saw that the lictors who had been there earlier had diplomatically retreated.
Khat stepped through the curtain into another opulent little anteroom, this one with three doors in the far wall. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, other than a way out or a weapon. He just had to keep moving while he had even this limited freedom.
Khat heard the low murmur of voices then, and waited, listening. One of the voices was the Heir's, but the other was familiar as well.
He stepped closer to the middle doorway. The voice was Kythen Seul's.
"She went to Rasan, and the fool told her everything-"
"Did you kill him?" the Heir interrupted.
Khat flattened himself against the wall and tweaked the edge of the door curtain back, just a hairsbreadth. It was the room where Sonet Riathen had had his interview with the Heir days ago, before everyone's life was turned upside down. Kythen Seul stood with his back to the big cedar table, the Heir facing him. The windows behind them showed the lamplit court below, and the gauze drapes were stirring in the warm breeze. Oddly, Seul was dressed as if he had just returned from the Waste, in dun-colored robes kilted up to reveal dusty boots. Presumably his painrod was hidden under his mantle somewhere, to keep anyone from knowing him for a Warder.
"No, your so-useful 'friend' got to him first. But yes, I would have done it. I would have killed a High Justice of the Trade Inspectors for you, killed him as if he were no more than a lower-tier street rat-"
"And did you kill her?" the Heir interrupted again, which Khat thought was just as well. It had been shaping up into quite a self-indulgent little speech.
Elen had suspected a traitor in Riathen's household, and here he was. Khat should have known it was Seul, who had every opportunity to arrange the pirate ambush in the Waste, who had been so conveniently left for dead so he could return to Charisat for help. And who had perhaps bribed the pirates with the mysterious painrods that Riathen had assumed came from Constans? The Survivor text had said that the knowledge to make painrods had come from the Inhabitants of the West. Seul was evidently on good terms with the Heir, who had the willing if not cheerful assistance of an Inhabitant.
Seul hesitated. "She's with Riathen. I've convinced him that she's pressed her power too far and gone mad."
Khat realized with a start that Seul was talking about Elen. And that son of an Eighth Tier whore was actually thinking of killing her. He had told Elen to find out about the High Justice, and she must have discovered more than either of them had bargained on. The Heir must have used the High Justice to find the relics in the dispersed collection for her, using whatever tidbits of information Seul managed to get out of Riathen to help the Justice along. And using the Inhabitant too, of course, to follow them, to kill Radu, to chase them through the Academia. Or perhaps that had been its own idea. But when the High Justice was no longer needed she had had her creature kill him.
The Heir touched Seul's face. "You should have killed her."
"There was no need. She can't hurt us now. You've moved against the Elector; it's too late for anything to stop us."
Khat wondered what the Heir thought of that "us" business. Though Seul was probably right; there was no way to stop them now, and her desire to kill Elen was only a reflex action. But the Heir only asked, "They've left the city already?"
"Yes, and he's expecting me to join him again there tonight."
"Well enough. Our friend is becoming impatient. He knows he's served us well, and he wants us to fulfill our part of the bargain and surrender the relics to him. It would be a mistake to put him off any longer."
"Then I should let Riathen go ahead with this?" Seul sounded less certain. "Our 'friend' is dangerous. He could turn on us at any moment."
Khat stepped back from the curtain. The Master Warder was further along in his plans than he had thought. Riathen must already be out at the Remnant. He had heard enough.
So had someone else. Before he could take another step the curtain was yanked violently aside, and he found himself facing the Heir's ugly guard Saret. Ducking back out of reach, Khat grabbed a little alabaster table and slung it at him. The man threw up his arms to shield his head and staggered backward, bellowing wordlessly.
Khat bolted for the nearest door, slammed aside the curtain, and slid to a halt at the sight of half a dozen lictors running toward him.
Guns were pointing at him, so he stayed where he was, and two of them hauled him back into the anteroom.
Saret was nursing a bloody nose and looked utterly enraged. Seul and the Heir had come into the room, following the commotion, and the look on Seul's face was almost worth it. "What is he doing here?" the Warder demanded.
The Heir didn't appear particularly put out by either Khat's escape attempt or his eavesdropping. She was watching Seul, as if more interested in his reaction. "He was found near Riathen's house, with one of his Warders. He doesn't know anything of value."
"If he told you that, he's lying," Seul said, glaring at Khat. "Elen told him everything. She was completely taken in by him."
"She was completely taken in by you," Khat said. He could have added to that, but one of the lictors holding him twisted his arm little more firmly behind his back, and he decided against it.
"She'll thank me when this is over," Seul said, more stung than Khat would've thought. "She'll thank me for her power."
The Heir glanced quickly at him, and if Seul had seen the look in her eyes he might not have been s
o confident. To stir more trouble, Khat said, "She'll call you a lying bastard traitor and-"
"That's enough." The Heir's voice cut through Seul's angry reply. Pursing her lips thoughtfully, she added, "There's really no need to keep him alive now." She told the lictors, "Take him downstairs to the execution area. I'll come down if I have a moment."
They were already hauling him toward the door. Khat had known this was coming since the lictors had caught him on the First Tier, but that didn't make hearing it any easier. He braced his feet to slow them down, and shouted at her, "I've had better lays in Seventh Tier alleys!" A lictor punched him in the stomach, doubling him over, and he didn't get to see her reaction.
***
Two lictors and the Heir's private guard took him down several levels, maybe as far down as the belowground entrance where he and Gandin had been brought in. All Khat knew was that for the past few turns of stair and corridor, he had seen no one. The lictors hadn't bothered to speak to him, though they had been pretty free with their speculative comments to each other. Saret hadn't spoken either, and Khat was beginning to think the man didn't have the ability, though it was obvious he could understand well enough.
They came to a doorway barred with a silver-chased panel, and one of the lictors fumbled for a key to unlock it. Khat felt a lump settle into the pit of his stomach. This was it, and he didn't see any way out.
Inside was a sizable room, bare of furniture, lit by a dozen or so bronze lamps, each in a niche high up on the gray-veined marble walls. In the center of the polished stone floor was a pool, round and not much more than twenty feet wide, surrounded by a rim of black tile. The high-ceilinged chamber was round too, except the far end had a section cut out of it for a pillared gallery. Its floor was more than ten feet above the floor of the room, and it seemed to be designed to give a good view of whatever was going on in the pool. The gallery was empty at the moment, and there was no way up to it from this side, so there must be a door back up behind it somewhere. If there was, it was the only other way out.
