159 - This suited my mood

Barbutas was holding the wrist-cuffs, expecting me to turn and let him close them around my wrists. “If you’re acting on orders,” I said, “I’m the Director’s uncle.”

“It is the will of the Imperator that you come with us,” Barbutas said, the smugness underneath the put-on marble impassiveness on his face fading a little. “If you won’t come peacefully—”

“If you lay so much as a hair of your finger on me, you black-clad cannibal, I’ll put your nose-bone through your brain,” I said. “When they truth-drug me, I’ll say I believed you were acting without orders, and when they truth-drug him”—I pointed my thumb at Ilesias—“it will be confirmed.”

“Raikas,” Ilesias began to say, the terror in his eyes not much hidden, but Barbutas cut him off with a crisp, “Silence, apprentice!” He reached for my wrist, so I put his nose-bone through his brain. He fell backwards, boneless, his skull thumping on the floor. Ilesias froze.

“I guess you are in trouble,” I said to him. “Well, you already were, anyway.” A boy just happened to come out of one of the fighter’s rooms, saw a heap of Mahid corpse, gasped, and turned and ran towards the stairs, no doubt to tell Iska. Mana’s Mahid weren’t in the corridor, as he was out of his room somewhere. I weapon-sensed two more Mahid—the ones who were supposed to take this shift on me—coming up the stairs.

What they saw, of course, was one Mahid lying dead-still, one Mahid standing, and one Yeoli fighter of utterly untamed character who must have it in even more badly for Mahid than before, also standing. Naturally enough, they both whipped out their dart-tubes, thinking to save Ilesias. I grabbed him by the shoulders—he was so tense, he was easy to move—yanked him into the line of the first dart so he took it, then pulled him back into my room as the other whistled past. I kicked the door closed as he was going lax. I’d learned the timing of Arkan stun-drug.

“Jewel of the Mezem, I was thinking a flash of vivid purple might not be too much of a departure oh my little dog mother of the Ten professional God!” Skorsas had come in through his door. I steered Ilesias’s fall so he landed sprawled on my bed, sprang to the main door and shot the bolt. The door to Skorsas’ room had no inner bolt; I’d have to jam the chair under the latch, then deal with the window. They couldn’t get through, but they could shoot between the bars.

“I’m going to hold him hostage,” I said to Skorsas. Best for Ilesias, that I seem like an unequivocal enemy; at the same time, this suited my mood. I could argue it had all been Barbutas’s fault. “Do you want to be in or out?” I asked Skorsas. “You have as long as it takes me to pick up the chair and step to your door to make up your mind.”

“Every grain of sense in me says out,” he said in a breathless whisper. “So, in. Why are you doing this? They’re going to shred you.”

“Don’t do anything to help me,” I said, as I wedged the chair firmly under the latch on the door to his room with several good kicks. “In case they truth-drug you afterwards.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he breathed. “I’ll be in here.” He climbed into the wardrobe, sliding himself in between two of my scarlet and black outfits, the most appropriate hiding place imaginable for him, and pulled the doors closed except for a crack to peek through.

One of the Mahid outside tried the main door, then banged on it and said I was required to open it. When I didn’t answer, the pair went off down the corridor, sensible enough to seek for reinforcements. “Jewel of the World, they’re going to…”

I left his entreating voice behind. If I was fast, I had time to run down to the kitchen. I weapon-sensed four Mahid in the Fighter’s Parlour, standing together; the other two must be Mana’s, and they were probably discussing what to do, as much as Mahid ever discuss anything. I slipped past into the kitchen, grabbed a big jug of water, a sackful of food that would keep without ice and two chef’s knives as sharp as swords, and slipped back again.

Iska followed me back up, saying, “Lad, don’t do this, please, this is madness, you’ve been hurt so much,” which I ignored entirely. No one else knew what was going on. I shut the door in his face after I’d plundered the corpse of its dart-tube and the rest of its Mahid kit.

They gave me time also to think about the window. The night-table was about the right size to block it off, but I could think of no way of securing it that would be enough to keep it from being rammed off through the bars fairly quickly. The curtains would stop a dart, but nothing would stop the Mahid from reaching through with a staff or the like to pull them aside, after which they could shoot.

I saw a way after a bit of thought. “Pardon me,” I said to Skorsas, who was shaking so hard the satiny shirts and kilts all quivered, and began taking the silken ones out and hanging them from the rafters, putting a good fifteen layers of them, with fair spaces between each, between the window and the front end of the room. Let them try to find their way through that with a staff and darts, or even thrown spears. “What are you doing?” he gasped through a very dry mouth.

“Shh, in case that’s interpreted as a way to help me do better,” I said.

“Raikas… I mean Shefen-kas… why… why?”

“I’m mad, just as you said, Skorsas. I won’t listen to reason so there’s no point in trying.” He dug himself further back into the clothes that remained, with a faint whimper. I spoke truer even than I knew at the time. I remember it all like a dream: vividly, and yet I wouldn’t be entirely convinced it was real, but for the scars.

I took a long swig of water, and put on my bathrobe. Being silk, it was something of a defense against darts, and I could put the knives, which of course had no sheaths, in the shield-side pocket. Then I plundered Ilesias of his dart-tube and kit, too, loaded both tubes with stun-darts and slipped them in the shield-side pocket, point-end up as you must. I handled them very carefully; it wouldn’t do to keel over from a slip. This was one skill I’d never learned; I set my mind to not rely on it as much as the knives. The Mahid were taking long enough to come back that I began to think Ilesias would wake soon, so I trussed him firmly to the bed.

They didn’t take the emergency as high up in the ranks as they should have, to my mind, for they only sent six, a number that grew to eight when someone realized Mana’s pair could lock him in one of the cells, which they did. Just as well he didn’t get involved in this, which he would in an eye-blink, given a chance. They were well-equipped, though, in full armour and carrying hooks, staves, spears, darts, a door ram and so forth.

If I had been them, I’d have broken through the main door and Skorsas’s door both at once, and so rushed me from two sides, and maybe even worked through the window to get the clothing out of the way at the same time. Perhaps they don’t teach enough strategy in Mahid school; or perhaps it’s just that Mahid training is so rigid it cripples minds into falling always into one path. I’d seen that with the old Mahid who’d asked me how Niku had got out.

At any rate, two were sent to Skorsas’s door, but did nothing, apparently ordered to make sure I didn’t go out that way, and two more were sent around to the window, as if it were possible for me to get out that way. That left four at the door. Two of them set to put their shoulders to it, though they could have asked the Mezem guards, who would have told them, that the door was built too solid for that. “I have one of yours in here,” I said to them through the door. “Where should I take the first sliver of flesh from him, do you think?”

“No matter; he is Mahid,” a cold voice answered. Meaning, expendable in an instant. I’d known this, but it was something else again to hear it. At least Ilesias couldn’t. I made up my mind to put at least one cut on him, to make it look good.

The two shouldering the door bore dart-tubes in one hand and short daggers in the other, no doubt edged with stun-drug. I let them try three times, then very quietly slid the bolt, took a chef’s knife in each hand and stood back enough that their corpses would clear the door. As soon as they found themselves charging into the room, they’d look where they were going; I positioned my hands. The door banged open, I needed only to shift one hand a little and I had them both through an eye and into the brain, by their own strength. Now I had a bare instant; sane people will be frozen by such a sight, but these were Mahid. I spun to the side and towards the door as the darts shot by the rear pair flew past, kicked it shut, sprang in and shot the bolt again.

“Raikas… Raikas…” Skorsas could remember only the first name he’d known me by, and his voice was full of tears now, as I yanked out and wiped the two knives, suspecting the cooks wouldn’t want them back after this. “You killed them… you killed Mahid… this is so not like you… what have you turned into… why aren’t you thinking of what they will do to you?”

Outside the door, the two Mahid left there talked about what they should do, and I heard Iska say, “This wretched one begs your incomparable selves, Honoured Mahid, on his reeking knees, let this miserable one speak to him...” One of them just said, “Shut up, fessas.” I dragged the two bodies back into the room, out of the way.

Ilesias’s blue eyes blinked open. Before he came to himself, I saw what was a blessing to see on a Mahid’s face: natural expressions, making him look more like the child he had been, not so long ago. A grimace of pain, then brows creased in puzzlement and the eyes flicking here and then as he tried to figure out where he was, then fear, then the pain of the headache mixed with fear. Then he remembered who he was, and it all fell off him into the inhuman Mahid blankness.

I laid a knife across his cheek, at the same angle as my scar. “Beg them to let me be and absolve me,” I said, pitching my voice to carry through the door, “if you want to keep those angelic Mahid looks.”

“I am Mahid; my will is the will of the Imperator,” he answered in a voice deader than anyone so young should ever have, and looking straight ahead, not at me. I gathered that meant what I’d expected him to say: “No.” So I made the cut, feeling the point glance across his teeth. He took it with only the flash of a grimace, and lay bleeding in impassive silence, like a reclining statue with a line of red painted across an otherwise untouched cheek. Only Skorsas sobbed. “I love you,” he whispered, quivering. “I love you, I love you, there is nothing but you for me, everyone in their right mind loves you, does that make no difference?”

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