Traitor's Knot (Light & Shadow 07)

  Which revelation stuck in the craw like the scrape of a fish-bone, jammed sidewards. 'Damn you to the plague of a thousand fiends!' Dakar rasped under his breath as the wagon was reined up for the routine inspection at the town entry. Although he was dressed as an unkempt tradesman, unlikely to raise probing questions, the nefarious dispatch he carried now might see him condemned for seditious treason. Dakar swore with invention, forced to spin a diversion to defer the armed guards and gain free admittance through the paired brick keeps.

  Simshane's House of Exotic Delights was an oasis of lavish, bad taste set amid the soot-grimed rows of the oldest, trade-quarter tenements. Dakar arrived streaming sweat, and nerve-jangled from the vituperative slang served out by Etarra's carters. The narrow escapes as he missed being run down, and the contempt raised by pedigree snobbery had not changed one whit with Alliance rule. The brothel was a nestled confection of pink-brick walls and expensive quiet. A wrought-iron grille let into its compound, softened by a trellis of climbing roses. There, a huge eunuch who reeked of spiced oils unbolted the locks with a ring of ornate, gilded keys. An obsequious touch, a secretive smile, and the client was ushered inside. Within lay a courtyard with fountains and a hidden alcove that echoed with flutes. A lithe youth with shaved hair, painted eyes, and a voice of mellow soprano came forward and steered Dakar to a bench beneath spouting satyrs. He was given a cool drink, while sensuous hands removed his crusted boots and washed his feet in a basin of lily-water. Reshod in unguents and white-rope sandals, he was expected to smile, while an urchin wearing little but gold jewellery attended his unkempt foot-wear. Another blond boy led him on a meandering stroll through shade-trees and flower-beds, then into a doorway hung with glass beads. There, ankle-deep in a costly carpet and nauseated from breathing perfume, he was greeted by the establishment's rotund proprietor.

  Olive-skinned, sporting ringlets, and hanging emerald pendants in each powdered ear-lobe, the creature had carmine lips and the glittering eyes of a snake. 'How shall Simshane's offer the gentleman ease?'

  No pause, and no disparaging glance at the visitor's drab clothes: the wealthy who patronized this house's wares quite often disguised themselves as nondescript commoners. Still sickened with shame from the clinging touch of the prandey dispatched to sponge his sore feet, Dakar jammed his right hand in the

  crook of his arm lest he slam a fist in the simpering whoremonger's face. Unable to muster civilized words, he turned over the sun wheel-sealed parchment.

  Bangled wrists jingled as the august seal was cracked and dismissed with no visible flicker of interest. Discretion would be stock-in-trade in this place. Yet any demand made by the priests of the Light would risk scandal beyond even Simshane's vicarious experience.

  The proprietor fluttered the parchment closed with scarcely a blink and no break from solicitous servitude. 'Quite an order. Of course, the immense compensation allows for all needs and contingencies. I'm pleased that your masters have entrusted our house to shoulder the requisite details.'

  Dakar need not guess the transaction at hand required the incentive of payment, at premium. His biting quiet would no doubt be mistaken for worldly impatience.

  'You've asked proof in advance that the wares will be genuine,' the proprietor resumed, his smile laid on thick as syrup.

  The spellbinder forced a nod. Still too riled for speech, he watched his acquiescence change his unctuous reception to avaricious enthusiasm. The pimp clapped his soft hands.

  A bevy of bath servants answered, each one male and exquisitely made, with hair dark, and auburn, and golden fair braided with jewels and scent.

  'Simshane's finest, at your least command.' The proprietor bowed. Already gloating, he waved for his pack of trained puppets to attend the rich client's comfort.

  Dakar survived the bath, barely. Stripped, steaming mad, and worn-out by the need to repel the barrage of professional advances, he was soon installed in an airy chamber appointed with mirrors and silk sheets. In line with Etarran taste, the enamelled furnishings and throw rugs had the gaudy opulence wealthy patrons expected of love-nests. One glance made a man want to shield aching eyes.

  By then, the day's afterglow streamed through the pierced metal screens inset in the louvred shutters. Dakar kept the sheer robe, despite torpid heat. Alone, at least until he received the live flesh imposed by the parchment, he made the best of a bad situation, locked the door, and settled to sleep.

  The servant who called with fruit juice and supper was dispatched with one surly word. Dakar rolled over and subsided to dreams as night flooded the gilt tassels, poufed quilts, and overstuffed couches in shadow. Hours passed. He forgot where he was, until a knock at his door rousted him back to logy awareness.

  Since his chamber was locked, no servant had come to light the lamps or crack the latched shutters. Dakar freed his ankles from the miring sheets and blundered between the grotesque, padded stools used for who knew what obscene purpose.

  He shot back the bar, too disgruntled to curse, and encountered a gagged and bound coffle of children. Boys; still wet from the bath, and reeking of perfume. Above twisted cloth, knotted cruelly tight, their cleaned faces were flushed with fight and fear, or streaming tears of heart-wrenching terror.

  Dakar's dumbfounded expression must have shown rage, for the escorting eunuch bearing the lamp blocked the corridor and snapped his fingers. Two muscular heavies pushed forward to flank him. These carried cudgels, and proffered no smile, their purpose being to eliminate trouble in cases where customers chose to be difficult.

  'Your high priest's detailed order, as written,' the eunuch pronounced with cold courtesy. 'Two dozen

  young males, entire and unspoiled, with the spirit not yet broken out of them. As detailed, they are presented for your inspection and, Simshane's trusts, your subsequent word of approval.'

  Dakar burned. Locked by the fury that pounded his blood, he was unable to speak.

  His silence posed danger. Already, the hardened attendants' regard shifted towards murderous suspicion. The parchment brought under the sunwheel seal could in fact pose them a trap. If the Light's priests chose to seed moral outrage and rout out the warrens of vice, they might tear down a long-standing, lucrative business, established with painstaking attention to delicacy.

  Awake to his peril, Dakar felt his hair rise. This was Etarra, where disputes over trade were resolved by hired assassins. The inlaid tin shutters were not kept for privacy, but would be barred shut to discourage prying officials and keep the brothel's victimized wares from escaping.

  Since the doorway was blocked by two heavy-set thugs all too primed to use garrotes and knives, the spellbinder sent by the Master of Shadow stepped aside and let the bound children be herded into the room.

  'You will be locked in,' the eunuch explained, his honeyed tone masking threat. 'House rules demand that the lamps stay unlit. With wildlings, we can't risk a fire. Naturally, if you find yourself compromised, we will have help stationed outside.'

  'I'll need no assistance,' Dakar said, amazed he could manage even the semblance of calm. 'In fact, I will sate my indulgence alone. Your attendants can take themselves elsewhere.'

  The eunuch bowed to a chink of gold chain. 'Indulge as you wish. I suggest as precaution, you might be unwise to unbind such as these. The handlers who managed them in the baths said Simshane's would be negligent not to warn you.'

  As the last of the children was prodded past, Dakar said with chill dignity, 'My masters have paid well enough for this night. Mine to choose how I'll use what they've asked for.'

  The eunuch returned an obscene, knowing smile, then mustered his escort and retired into the corridor. He took the lamp with him. Left in darkness, surrounded by the boys' panicked breathing, Dakar listened, while the fastening of chains, bolts, and bars went on for what seemed a long time.

  He needed trained discipline to curb his riled nerves. Through the reek ofjasmine, gardenia, and rose, he noticed the nauseating reek of seared flesh.

>   'My beauties,' he greeted with ominous calm. 'Can it be that you have been branded?'

  No sound; only the thick, muffled whimpers of children whose quaking dread found no requital.

  Dakar stepped forward. Mage-sight let him see. He bent to the tow-headed waif by his knee, examined an arm, and before the mite flinched away from his touch, felt the hot, swollen flesh where the iron had seared into young skin. 'Easy,'

  Etarrans meted out such abuse to captive clanborn to mark them as criminal labor.

  The kick launched at the spellbinder's kneecap missed, only because he expected a desperate move to retaliate. As Dakar dodged, he flipped off the child's gag.

  'Stinking pervert!' the boy gasped through puffed lips, then added a vicious torrent of curses, snapping with forest-bred accents.

  'Wise up!' Dakar cracked. 'Don't force me to beat you.' A risk within walls, since subtle knowledge of clan ways could see him staked out for a maiming, he ventured, 'You have been well-taught?'

  As he hoped, that precise turn of phrase was recognized.

  Chastened to have judged a man by appearances, the child glared back in mutinous silence.

  'Good boy,' Dakar crooned. For the sake of the watchful observers outside, he added, 'Let's agree to be seen, but not heard.' Fast and low, in Paravian, he whispered the rest. 'I'll put the question to you just once. I know you were born to old families in Fallowmere. Did Simshane's purchase the lot of you?'

  'Not the girls,' the boy murmured. 'They were already sold. Gone to the four winds and sad destiny. Why have you had us brought here?'

  'To discover sweet pleasure,' Dakar answered aloud, 'until you sing out with joy and discover good manners and willing compliance. We have until dawn to achieve this.' He sat on the bed, because his knees failed him. The tears welled thick and hot through his lashes. 'Act pleased,' he insisted. 'You won't be made prandey. But our bargain with Simshane's depends on the quality of your performance.' He added the Paravian term for 'strict patience,' masked as a murmured endearment.

  The boy's return glare held white rage and murder. He spat upon the fine carpet.

  'That's a start.' Aware the flimsy silk robe on his back was no asset to his good character, Dakar hurled himself across the bed. 'Mind carefully. Here's how we'll proceed.' While the children stared, sullen, he kicked at the footboard. His terrified audience stared with huge eyes as he rolled and panted, and creaked frame and mattress with gusto. Then he added the flourish, tore the silk sheets, and cried out in breathless abandon, 'Go on! Nip my fingers. Shout. You don't fight, I'll presume that your parents were sheep.'

  That comment raised from the lips of the child an insult straight out of the gutter.

  Dakar whooped. 'Again!' he encouraged. He tossed a pillow, then pounded until a snagged seam let out a blizzard of feathers. 'That, for your savage, rank insolence!' A belting slap against his own thigh gave the remark a cruel punctuation. 'Cry, damn you!' he gasped, while he gestured to cue the tow-headed child who still stood with tied hands on the carpet.

  A wide-eyed look met him, then a convincing whimper, more due to fright than play-acting.

  Dakar nodded. He finished his jouncing charade on the bed, then covered his movement with heavy breathing as he rose, and eased the rope binding the first child's wrists. 'On the bed. Go to sleep,' he encouraged in Paravian. 'You won't be touched. I am trained as spellbinder, by Asandir. On my life, you shall have your freedom returned. But the plan for escape can't go forward until I've wrecked the room and faked the gamut of convincing appearances.'

  And so the night passed, with no suspicious attendant from Simshane's the wiser. When at last a red sunrise spilled through the screens, it lit the wracked sheets, splintered stools, and frayed ends of rope knotted onto the posts of the bed. The restraints still left fastened to the older boys' limbs showed crusted traces of blood.

  The breeze wafted eddies through the loose down and dried the degenerate stains marring rucked carpets and floor-tiles. On the bed, huddled into an exhausted, bruised heap, the boys who were wakeful glared at the eunuch who unbarred the door to the corridor. Among them, Dakar snored replete, naked, and scratched, and flushed pink in the sweat of indulgence. The beaten, raw circles under his eyes were

  not feigned, to the eunuch's professional eye. Nor was the brisk shake required to restore him back to his overslaked senses.

  'Splendid entertainment,' Dakar murmured, thick. 'Exquisitely violent. Clean them up in the bath. Over breakfast, we'll seal the terms on your gold and arrange the hour for the coaches to come and collect them.'

  Noon broiled the craft shacks by the drill field. In the dusty, thick air, the sun blazed like lye, and heat trembled, redolent of baked earth, goose-greased leather, and horse sweat. The crossbuck doors of the cooper's shed were propped open to scoop the weak breeze, when Dakar blundered over the threshold.

  The blind man who was no common craftsfolk's relation arose from the shadows to meet him. 'They scratch?' he said gently.

  A hand far too steady to be an old man's eased the spellbinder into a seat at the trestle. There, plain fare waited, and a pitcher of water that was cold and clean, and not tainted with exotic aphrodisiacs.

  'I could fake bruises by sleight-of-hand spells and illusion. Not the blood, or the fluids, which were mine. And for that, damn your secretive viciousness!' Too distraught to do more than sip at the mug shoved into his shaken fingers, Dakar settled his damp head in a bitten hand that throbbed with an angry swelling. He was scarcely aware of the other fresh scabs, caused by an older boy too riddled with terror to listen, or trust him.

  When Arithon did not speak, the silence hurt worse. Dakar could not suffer the poisonous ache or sustain the frayed thread of detachment. 'They are all under ten, and out of their natural minds, frightened. Why in Ath's sweet name didn't you tell me? '

  'You never enquired,' came the soft-spoken reply.

  Movement, to his left, then the chink of a crock; a cool compress that smelled of an astringent herb was pressed over the festering wound on his thumb.

  'Just as well,' stated Arithon, braced as his healer's touch was slapped off. He caught the wad of soaked rag just sent flying and tossed it within easy reach on the trestle. 'Given the muddled state you were in, I didn't think you would listen.'

  The unfriendly truth pinched. Dakar expelled a wracked breath. 'That letter I delivered to Simshane's proprietor - it will in fact arrange for those branded clan children to recover their freedom from conscript captivity?'

  'Merciful grace, Dakar! You have to ask? ' A pause ensued. In the yard, the cooper's mallets banged on, while the matron harangued an apprentice for indecent language. Then, the lash of resentment too seamlessly masked, 'For a thousand gold coin weight, sunwheel-stamped, we get all twenty-four -'

  'How!' Dakar interrupted. 'You couldn't arrange that -'

  A raised hand jerked him down, while the Masterbard finished,'- complete with a signed bill of sale. You can burn that, once the children are back in safe custody. At this time tomorrow, if all goes well, they'll be on the way home to their families. Untouched. Unless, last night, you couldn't restrain yourself?'

  Another pause, this one drivingly vicious. Dakar managed to choke his galled rage, just barely.

  Rathain's crown prince resumed against censuring silence. 'Simshane's was vying to purchase them, anyway' In that sharp change of course that always drowned fury beneath the moil of deeper waters, he added, 'The girls went last week. To an unknown client who made his transactions by night and refused to receive their delivery in daylight.'

  Cold fear shot a jolt straight through a seized heart. Dakar raised his head. 'Dharkaron avert!' Somehow, he forced his hazed wits to respond. 'You think the females were purchased for necromancy?'

  1 don't think. I know,' stated Arithon s'Ffalenn, motionless in his disguise. Kewar had deepened him. The veiling illusion cast over his form was not visible, even to the extended awareness of a Fellowship-trained spellbinder's mage-sight. 'Af
ter all, I have been in Etarra five days, pursuing the purpose that brought me.'

  'Enough!' cracked Dakar. 'I suppose I deserved that. Though when all's said and done, I don't feel the least scrap of need to grovel and beg your forgiveness.'

  Arithon stared back through milky-white eyes that might, or might not, cloud his vision. A sorcerer cloaked in a stilled well of mastery, he would not be blinded to resource. 'Should you feel sorry? That was, after all, an inflicted, unconscious sacrifice.' Almost no stain of rancour darkened the words of a man whose private will had been torn wholesale from the grasp of his dignity. 'I gave the permission that granted you power in trust. What use to blame, that you and Kharadmon saw fit to use what you held for expediency? Apologize to Elaira,' Prince Arithon said. 'It is she who should grant absolution.'

  Dakar stood, furious. Fresh sweat stung his eyes. Between them, the crockery jug was a weapon he refrained from using, but only out of civil respect for a stranger's hospitality. 'In my shoes, you would have risked walking away? You would have dared the dread consequence? Athera may have come to suffer the price! How much worse, had you shouldered the failure?'

  Eyes locked, Arithon turned away first. 'What is our experience, but the reflected truth of our misapprehensions and short-falls? And also the grace of our beauty and strength, and the wise choices that make up our character?' He laid his slender, musician's hands out flat on the battered board trestle. Then gave his last line with the vulnerable quiet that stripped beyond grief to the core of him. 'We'll never know, will we?' Dakar swallowed. He cursed his own tears, which welled down his face in remorse and raw pain and stung sympathy. 'You love her that much, that the whole world should burn?'

  'You don't,' said Arithon. 'The world has stayed whole. Every-one else can rejoice for the fact. But not me.' He moved at last, too scalded to stay still or contain the bright blaze of his anguish. 'Without her, what else in my life keeps its meaning? We may as well stop this and just be ourselves. Plans set in motion must be carried through. Or Simshane's will be gelding your innocent boys, while their sisters get sacrificed to necromancy.'