‘Good evening, Otah-cha,’ a man’s voice said. ‘I hope you’re well enough to move. I’m afraid we’re in a bit of a hurry.’
‘Who are you?’ Otah asked. His own voice sounded rough. Squinting, he could make out perhaps ten men in black leather armor. They had blades drawn. The armsmen lay in a pile against the far wall, stacked like goods in a warehouse, a black pool of blood surrounding them. The smell of them wasn’t rotten, not yet, but it was disturbing - coppery and intimate. They had only been dead for minutes. If all of them were dead.
‘We’re the men who’ve come to take you out of here,’ the commander said. He was the one actually standing in the doorway. He had the long face of a man of the winter cities, but a Westlander’s flowing hair. Otah moved forward and took a pose of gratitude that seemed to amuse him.
‘Can you walk?’ he asked as Otah came out into the larger room. The signs of struggle were everywhere - spilled wine, overturned chairs, blood on the walls. The armsmen had been taken by surprise. Otah put a hand against the wall to steady himself. The stone felt warm as flesh.
‘I’ll do what I have to,’ Otah said.
‘That’s admirable,’ the commander said, ‘but I’m more curious about what you
can
do. I’ve suffered long confinement myself a time or two, and I know what it does. We can’t take the easy way down. We’ve got to walk. If you can do this, that’s all to the good. If you can’t, we’re prepared to carry you, but I need to have you out of the city quickly.’
‘I don’t understand. Did Maati send you?’
‘There’s better places to discuss this, Otah-cha. We can’t go down by the chains. Even if there weren’t more armsmen waiting there, we’ve just broken them. Can you walk down the tower?’
A memory of the endlessly turning stairs and the ghost of pain in his knees and legs. Otah felt a stab of shame, but pulled himself up and shook his head.
‘I don’t believe I can,’ he said. The commander nodded and two of his men pulled lengths of wood from their backs and fitted them together in a cripple’s litter. There was a small seat for Otah, canted against the slope of the stairway, and the poles were set one longer than the other to fit the tight curve. It would have been useless in any other situation, but for this task it was perfect. As one of the men helped Otah take his place on it, he wondered if the device had been built for this moment, or if things like it existed in service of these towers. The largest of the men spat on his hands and gripped the carrying poles that would start down the stairs and bear most of Otah’s weight. One of his fellows took the other end, and Otah lurched up.
They began their descent, Otah with his back to the center of the spiral staircase. He watched the stone of the wall curl up from below. The men grunted and cursed, but they moved quickly. The man on the higher poles stumbled once, and the one below shouted angrily back at him.
The journey seemed to last forever - stone and darkness, the smell of sweat and lantern oil. Otah’s knees bumped against the wall before him, his head against the wall behind. When they reached the halfway point, another huge man was waiting to take over the worst of the carrying. Otah felt his shame return. He tried to protest, but the commander put a strong, hard hand on his shoulder and kept him in the chair.
‘You chose right the first time,’ the commander said.
The second half of the journey down was less terrible. Otah’s mind was beginning to clear, and a savage hope was lifting him. He was being saved. He couldn’t think who or why, but he was delivered from his cell. He thought of the armsmen new-slaughtered at the tower’s height, and recalled Kiyan’s words.
How do you expect to protect me and my house?
They could all be killed, his jailers and his rescuers alike. All in the name of tradition.
He could tell when they reached the level of the street - the walls had grown so thick there was almost no room for them to walk, but thin windows showed glimmers of light, and drunken, disjointed music filled the air. At the base of the stair, his carriers lowered Otah to the ground and took his arms over their shoulders as if he were drunk or sick. The commander squeezed to the front of the party. Despite his frown, Otah sensed the man was enjoying himself immensely.
They moved quickly and quietly through maze-like passages and out at last into an alley at the foot of the tower. A covered cart was waiting, two horses whickering restlessly. The commander made a sign, and the two bearers lifted Otah into the back of the cart. The commander and two of the men climbed in after, and the driver started the horses. Shod hooves rapped the stone, and the cart lurched and bumped. The commander pulled the back cloth closed and tied it, but loose enough he could peer out the seam. The lantern was extinguished, and the scent of its dying smoke filled the cart for a moment and was gone.
‘What’s happening out there?’ Otah asked.
‘Nothing,’ the commander said. ‘And best we keep it that way. No talking.’
In silence and darkness, they continued. Otah felt lightheaded. The cart turned twice to the left and then again to the right. The driver was hailed and replied, but they never stopped. A breeze fluttered the thick cloth of the cover, and when it paused, Otah heard the sound of water; they were on the bridge heading south. He was free. He grinned, and then as the implications of his freedom unfolded themselves in his mind, his relief faltered.
‘Forgive me. I don’t know your name. I’m sorry. I can’t do this.’
The commander shifted. It was nearly black in the cart, so Otah couldn’t see the man’s face, but he imagined incredulity on the long features.
‘I went to Machi to protect someone - a woman. If I vanish, they’ll still have reason to suspect her. My brother might kill her on the chance that she’s involved with this. I can’t let that happen. I’m sorry, but we have to turn back.’
‘You love her that much?’ the commander asked.
‘This isn’t her fault. It’s mine.’
‘All this is your fault, eh? You have a lot to answer for.’ There was amusement in the man’s voice. Otah felt himself smile.
‘Well, perhaps not all my fault. But I can’t let her be hurt. This is the price of it, and I’ll pay it if I have to.’
They were all silent for a long moment, then the commander sighed.
‘You’re an honorable man, Otah Machi. I want you to know I respect that. Boys. Chain him and gag him. I don’t want him calling out.’
They were on him in an instant, pushing him hard onto the rough wood of the cart. Someone’s knee drove in between his shoulder blades; invisible hands bent his arms backwards. When he opened his mouth to scream, a wad of heavy cloth was shoved in so deeply he gagged. A leather strap followed, keeping it in place. He didn’t know when his legs were bound, but in fewer than twenty breaths, he was immobile - his arms chained painfully behind him at his wrists and elbows, his mouth stuffed until it was hard to breathe. The knee moved to the small of his back, digging into his spine with every shift of the cart. He tried once to move, and the pressure from above increased. He tried again, and the man cursed him and rapped his head with something hard.
‘I said no talking,’ the commander murmured, and returned to peering out the opening in the back cloth. Otah shifted, snarling in impotent rage that none of these men seemed to see or recognize. The cart moved off through the night. He could feel it when they moved from the paving of the main road to a dirt track; he could hear the high grass hushing against the wheels. They were taking him nowhere, and he couldn’t think why.
He guessed it was almost three hands before the first light started to come. Dawn was still nothing more than a lighter kind of darkness, the commander’s feet - the only part of the man Otah could see without lifting his head - were a dim form of shadow within shadow. It was something. Otah heard the trill of a daymartin, and then a rough rattling and the sound of water. A bridge over some small river. When the cart lurched back to ground, the commander turned.
‘Have him stop,’ he said, and then a moment later, ‘I said stop the cart. Do it.’
One of the other two - the one who wasn’t kneeling on Otah - shifted and spoke to the driver. The jouncing slowed and stopped.
‘I thought I heard something out there. In the trees on the left. Baat. Go check. If you see anything at all get back fast.’
The pressure on Otah’s back eased and one of the men clambered out. Otah turned over and no one tried to stop him. There was more light now. He could make out the grim set of the commander’s features, the unease in the one remaining armsman.
‘Well, this is interesting,’ the commander said.
‘What’s out there,’ the other man asked, his blade drawn. The commander looked out the slit of cloth and motioned for the armsman to pass over his sword. He did, and the commander took it, holding it with the ease of long familiarity.
‘It may be nothing,’ he said. ‘Were you with me when I was working for the Warden of Elleais?’
‘I’d just signed on then,’ the armsman said.
‘You’ve always been a good fighter, Lachmi. I want you to know I respect that.’
With the speed of a snake, the commander’s wrist flickered, and the armsman fell back in the cart, blood flowing from his opened neck. Otah tried to push himself away as the commander turned and drove the sword into the armsman’s chest. He dropped the blade then, letting it fall to the cart’s floor, and took a pose of regret to the dying man.
‘But,’ the commander said, ‘you should never have cheated me at tiles.
That
was stupid.’
The commander stepped over the body and spoke to the driver. He spoke clearly enough for Otah to hear.
‘Is it done?’
The driver said something.
‘Good,’ the commander replied, and came back. He flipped Otah onto his belly with casual disregard, and Otah felt his bonds begin to loosen.
‘All apologies, Otah-cha,’ the commander said. ‘But there’s a lesson you can take from all this: just because someone’s bought a mercenary captain, it doesn’t mean his commanders aren’t still for sale. Now I will need your robes, such as they are.’
Otah pulled the leather strap from around his head and spat out the cloth, retching as he did so. Before he could speak, the commander had climbed out of the cart, and Otah was left to follow.
They had stopped at a clearing by a river, surrounded by white oaks. The bridge was old wood and looked almost too decrepit to cross. Six men with gray robes and hunting bows were walking toward them from the trees, two of them dragging the arrow-riddled body of the armsman the commander had sent out. Two others carried a litter with what was clearly another dead man - thin and naked. The commander took a pose of welcome, and the first archer returned it. Otah stumbled forward, rubbing his wrists. The archers were all smiling, pleased with themselves. When he came close enough, Otah saw the second corpse was on its back, and a wide swath of intricate black ink stained its breast. The first half of an east island marriage mark. A tattoo like his own.
‘That’s why we’ll need your robes, Otah-cha,’ the commander said. ‘This poor bastard will have been in the water for a while before he reaches the main channel of the river. But the closer he seems to you, the less people will bother looking at him. I’ll see whether I can find something for you to wear after, but you might consider sponging off in the brook there first. No offense, but you’ve been a while without a bath.’
‘Who is he?’ Otah asked.
The commander shrugged.
‘Nobody, now.’
He clapped Otah on the shoulder and turned back toward the cart. The archers were pitching the corpses of the two armsmen into the water. Otah saw arrows rising from the river like reeds. The driver was coming forward now, his thumbs stuck in his belt. He was a hairy man, his full beard streaked with gray. He smiled at Otah and took a pose of welcome.
‘I don’t understand,’ Otah said. ‘What’s happening?’
‘We don’t understand either, Itani-cha. Not precisely. We’re only sure that it’s something terrible,’ the carter said, and Otah’s mouth dropped open. He spoke with the voice of Amiit Foss, his overseer in House Siyanti. Amiit grinned beneath his beard. ‘And we’re sure that it isn’t happening to you.’
9
T
he first few breaths after she woke were like rising new born. She didn’t know who or where she was, she had no thought of the night before or the day ahead. There was only sensation - the warmth of the body beside her, the crisp softness of the bedclothes, the netting above the bed glowing in the captured light of dawn, the scent of black tea brought in by a servant with cat-quiet footsteps. She sat up, almost smiling until memory rushed in on her like a flood of black water. Idaan rose and pulled on her robes. Adrah stirred and moaned.
‘You should go,’ she said, lifting the black iron teapot. ‘You’re expected to go on a hunt today.’
Adrah sat up, scratching his back and yawning. His hair stuck out in all directions. He looked older than he had the day before, or perhaps it was only how she felt. She poured a bowl of tea for him as well.
‘Have they found him?’ Adrah asked.
‘I haven’t heard the screams or lamentations yet, so I’d assume not.’