211 - Further Brahvnikian justice in action

I was genuinely hoping, and even thought it was plausible, that the last time would be the last time in my life, I thought.

I made the sounds I could, as well as a frantic double-charcoal with my shackled hands. I’m sure the look in my eyes was very sincere. “Oh?” the watch-official said. “Don’t want to be truth-drugged? Imagine.” I did it again, for all I was worth. I’d had some notion of keeping not only my silence, but my disguise, while I was here; I gave that up now. But how to tell her I’m the semanakraseye of Yeola-e, I’m an ally, it’s political, without words? “It amuses me how every single one I arrest seems to think he is somehow a special case, or has circumstances that are particularly extenuating,” she said.

The man assisting her pressed a few drops of the drug out of the needle to clear it of air. “Maybe we should scrape you,” she said, almost absently. “You aren’t what you seem. You look like a Arkan crossbreed of some sort, with all your hair blond except your eyebrows, but you gesture, and move, like a Yeoli.” I signed double-chalk, with as much of a look of “Let me explain!” in my eyes as I could manage. “Ah,” she said. “Bringing your war here.” I guess you prefer the Arkans? “Our city isn’t your battlefield, you know. There are laws here.”

The needle felt as if it was going into my heart again. It took everything in me to master tears; I could tell by her hardwood face that she’d see that with nothing but contempt. “Tell you what,” she said, once it was done. “Sometimes people say interesting things before, or as, it’s taking effect.” She unfastened the gag.

I’ll try not to say anything boring, I thought acidly, as I licked my lips and worked my tongue as you do to reclaim ownership of your mouth after having been gagged. “Emm... Teik of the Watch, you’ve heard the semanakraseye of Yeola-e is in town, yes? Hiring mercenaries?”

“Dah, I have. I think you’ve probably kissed off your chance of employment with him.”

“I… I am him. The semanakraseye of Yeola-e. Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e. I’m in disguise. My eyebrows are real; the blond is all false. Open my shirt and you can see the brandmark. Or, of course, you can just ask me again in a tenth.”

She looked at me half-stunned, and half as though she’d found me clinging to the bottom of a dock pylon at low tide, with the slime and barnacles. “The semana...” She lifted the edge of the wig up just a hair, pulled the moustache off a touch, and yanked gently on the hairs of the end of my eyebrow, which, of course, clung.

After standing over me for a time, deliberating inwardly, she said, “No. This is something I do not wish to know.” I didn’t want to wear the gag again, but if you’ve read this far you’ve gathered that I can be relied upon to open my mouth, and she was well-practiced at quickly seizing the opportunity. She got me at about “No, no, wai—” and re-sealed it with a deft twist of her wrist. “Vyasiv, this goes over to the highest Vra. This man was never here. Understood?” He acknowledged with what must be her title in Zak, very sincerely.

But you just truth-drugged me, I wanted to scream. The highest Vra... Ivahn. If they took me to him now, I’d be under the full effect while we spoke, assuming he was kind enough to ungag me.

She patted my shoulder, proprietarily. “If what you’re claiming is true—and it’s a very wild story to not be true when you’re about to be truth-drugged—the Benaiat can ask you what he needs to know while you’re still on it. If you’re lying, we’ll bring you back here, and I’ll teach you to regret it, self-styled Fourth Shchevenga.” She erased her waxboard with firm swipes. That’s ‘self-styled semanakraseye’ to you, I hissed inwardly.

I’d never had truth-drug take effect while I was walking. It took a little longer, and was discernable to them by my staggering into things rather than turning truthful on testing questions, so they took a firm grip on my arms and then under my elbows. We crossed the harbour to Benai island on a rowboat that belonged to the watch.

I didn’t know it then, but my back-up, who’d followed me to the Kreml but not into it, of course, had split up: Sach and Alaecha had taken the public ferry to the Benai to tell my parents, and Krero and Kunarda had waited for me, then surreptitiously followed me and the guards taking me to the docks. Deciding against trying to spring me by force when I was held by friends and in such a state, they’d been unable to get onto the official boat with me, of course, and so had had to wait, cursing and spitting, for the next public ferry.

The sparkle of sun on water, the rocking of the boat, the onion-domed corridors with their scented mortar, was all like a vivid yet distant dream. The watch official went into Ivahn’s office first to report, taking Chirel, while passing red-robed monks stared at the glassy-eyed slouching lump that was me. Then they half-carried me in and sat me in a chair, and I lay my head back, without willing to. She ungagged me again.

“Unshackle him too, and everyone go,” Ivahn commanded. “He can do me no harm.” They did, and he looked me in the eyes, then gently unpinned the wig and unstuck the whiskers. It was a relief; they were starting to itch.

“Are you injured, Schchevenga?”

“No.” Only my pride, maybe mortally.

“And you did kill Edremmas?”

“Yes.” I hope it pleases you.

“Why?”

He’d never learned how to truth-drug someone, then; that was too big a question. It was somehow reassuring that he hadn’t, as if that somehow made the world back to the innocent place it had been when I’d visited here as a youth, before I knew anything of Arko. “I was hired,” I said. He’d have it all out of me, it seemed, but in one or two-word dribbles, not the eloquent flow I could have delivered undrugged.

He heaved out a long sigh. Of course he knew Annike was a friend of Mikhail; probably he’d guessed who’d hired me. “If I helped you, could you get up and over to my couch?”

“Yes.” I wasn’t sure he had the strength to catch me if I fell, but the drug took away my will to say that. Just as he was doing it, steadily enough, there was a tap on the door, and someone said something in Zak that sounded urgent. He said what sounded like ‘wait,’ and in what the person outside said, I caught the word ‘Mikhail.’ Was he here? Ivahn laid me straight on the couch, and then threw a blanket over me, covering me entire, including my face. Why did you do that? I was already too hot, and this made it worse, but there was nothing I could do about it.

“Teik Farsight, please come in.” The voices were muffled through the wool, but not enough to be unclear. I had thought Ivahn would switch to Zak, but he said this in Enchian.

“Thank you, thank you, Vra Ivahn.” Mikhail didn’t sound panicked, but then he wasn’t the kind to show it if he were.

“Have a seat. May I offer you some refreshment?”

“Why, certainly, Vra Ivahn. That would be delightful.”

“Oh, Vra Fassily, please fetch some tea for us, would you?” I heard the monk’s feet on the stones of the floor, and the brushing of his robe. “Amazing weather we’ve been having, Teik? So much rain. I am certain I would not wish to be out in it.”

They went on with these pleasantries for what seemed like a century. Was this just the usual Zak formal informality, or meant to torture me? Not by Mikhail, obviously, as he couldn’t know I was here.

I decided, though at heart I knew it was futile, to put every cell of my will into attempting to move, even just a twitch, so that one or both of them would notice. But I couldn’t find even one cell of my will, and so stayed still as the dead.

“Vra Ivahn, I did come with a matter urgent in terms of time,” Mikhail said. “Forgive me, but, I share the salt. It concerns a certain person who has been apprehended by the city watch.”

“Yes, Teik? Not that I should know about such things, but if I should happen to?”

“You have received no special notification, then? In the last very short while?”

“I may have,” Ivahn said evenly. “But I am certain that everyone within these sacred walls is no criminal.”

“Of course, but… you may have? You are not certain whether you received a specific notification or not?” Mikhail’s voice took on an edge. I could imagine those piercing black eyes.

“Mikhail, forgive my reticence and my familiarity. It may be a matter of some, em… deniability.”

“Well... I am not the person you need deny it to. Is Shchevenga here?”

I gave it all I had to move again, and again failed. Was he here to stand by me, or throw me to the wolves by somehow disavowing me? I reminded myself that truth-drugging was now the usual way here, and he must know that, and so realize he couldn’t deny any aspect of the deal.

“He is,” said Ivahn.

“And so, safe?”

“He is as safe as you and I are, as safe as in the Great Bear’s protecting arms.”

“But not safe from your wrath, I imagine. I come to tell you that at least half of that wrath should be directed toward me.” Stand by me. I remembered, he was strong on the merchant’s honour, that holds agreements as sacred. Had I been able, I’d have heaved out a huge breath.

“I am less wrathful, Mik, than you think. I will feel better without Edremmas and his ideas on the Praetanu. And yet, he was a citizen, and a crime was committed. Shchevenga’s been truth-drugged—luckily it was one of our good watch troops that nabbed him, rather than those who’d have sold him to the Arkans—and I am now in the enviable position of facing an Arkan embassy who do not recognize any citizenry other than Arkan. Thank you very much.”

“My Benaiat,” said Mikhail, with Zak-style formality, “I apologize most abjectly, for letting the big wool-haired oaf seduce me with such golden words into thinking he was above getting caught. Curse him... there’s nothing in the agreement letting me out of part of the payment if that happened.”

A third time I tried to wriggle even a toe, and a third time I failed. I should discount it anyway, I thought, in apology and to show him goodwill. How much money would that require? Those ankaryel were probably already all spoken for, in mercenary contracts. I felt sick.

“Mikhail... have a taste of this Saekrberk, it is the latest distillate—just yesterday.” I heard the gentle trickling of the liquor being poured, and both of them say the ritual word, “Korukai.”

“Ahhhh, indeed.” The clawprince smacked his lips. “That has… a streak of bitter fire that contrasts with the sweetness quite beautifully; and yet the suspicions of pine and cloudberry complement, and complicate, that fire-and-sweetness melange in a profound way.”

“Well, the secret is in the proportions…” They went on for a while about Saekrberk-making methods, while I lay drugged frozen and wanting to rip out my hair. Ivahn, you are most definitely tormenting me, I thought.

“You may have a cask, as a guest-gift,” he said. “Did you see him do it?”

“My Bear-Beloved Benaiat, I cannot begin to thank you for your munificence. I did. As did the girls.”

“How did he do it?”

“A two-hand sword-stroke so fast you could not see the blade until it was buried in Arkan fat. Then he fought down six Arkan guards easily as falling out of bed. It’s the fleeing part he didn’t do so well. Honey-Giving One... he is so impressive to speak to, seems to know so well what he’s doing... but he was out of his head so recently, I wonder if he’s entirely back in it.”

I have been sentenced, I thought, to lie here still and hear this. I didn’t try to move again.

“But that’s a good thing for his war, that he does not know how to flee well, don’t you think?”

“Ahh, Ivahn, I was speaking rhetorically when I said the fleeing part. What I truly meant was the planning part. He’s going to take over as their supreme general, Honey-Giving One help us, and yet made such a stupid mistake. I just bet a very great deal of money on his not making stupid mistakes, as did you on behalf of this whole city.”

I no longer wanted to move; just die so that my liquefied corpse flowed off the couch and oozed through cracks in the floor. “Oh, everyone makes mistakes, Mik,” Ivahn said, lightly. “He did succeed in the deed, and now he has me and the whole weight of the Benai to cover for him.”

“What, you think that was his plan?” Mikhail spat. “ ‘I won’t worry about getting caught since my old friend Ivahn and my dear backer Mikhail can figure out how to pull my fat out of the fire somehow and clean it all up with the Arkans?’ You have him lying truth-drugged somewhere? Maybe we should ask the oversized tyke.”

“Well, you witnessed; what was his mistake?” Ivahn had stepped closer to me; was that purposeful, to get Mikhail facing me so his voice would be clearest?

“He wasn’t properly prepared for effective pursuit from the watch. The route he took to escape, he must not have walked beforehand. There was sewer-work. Is that the quality of reconnaissance he’s going to do in his war, which is now ours?”

No! No no no no no no! Second Fire come, I’ll do it better! I’ll never do insufficient reconnaissance again! I would be in tears, I knew, if not for the drug.

“Our city does have a reputation for a very lax watch and very loose laws, Mik; perhaps that threw him.”

“Pfah,” Mikhail spat. I flinched all over, inwardly, as if he’d spat lava and it had landed on me. “A good strategist counts on no such thing. I should remember: he’s been a friend of yours from his youth. Charmed you blind, by the looks of it. Well... what are we going to do? The Arkans must know the miscreant was arrested; they’ll want his head, and maybe a few other parts of him taken off first, and slowly.”

“Mikhail, don’t worry, it will be nothing at all. We’ll have him kill himself.”

Truth-drug makes all words you hear much more huge than they truly are, and those who uttered them God-like; I went very still inside, too much so even to think, and the next words were almost too distant to understand. “We are so lax, and he so slippery, he will get away from us. I’m sure we have an unclaimed body in the hospital morgue, or someone awaiting execution, whose looks are close enough to his get-up. I will order prayers for the soul of the man who will save our firebrand. Let the Arkans sneer at me; you know I live for that.” They both laughed a dry laugh.

“Any help I can provide in making this convincing, you may rely on,” said Mikhail. “All I ask is—well, I was going to have one more meeting with said firebrand, to complete everything, so I will have my chance. I owe him a thorough tongue-lashing.”

“Agreed, agreed, dear friend. You will most certainly have your chance.”

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