Servant of the Empire

8

Interrogation

Hokanu ran.

The streets were a bedlam of noise and fleeing citizens, with Arakasi a shadow among them distinguishable only by his voluminously flapping priest's robe. Hardened to a warrior's fitness as he was, Hokanu was not accustomed to bare feet. After stubbing his toes on raised bits of cobblestone, sliding precariously through slime in the gutters, and once landing heel first on a broken bit of crockery, he would have welcomed even ill-fitting sandals despite the resulting blisters. Yet if Arakasi was aware of his difficulty, he did not slacken pace.

Hokanu would have died rather than complain. Mara's life was at stake, and every passing minute made him fear that she might already be beyond help, that the hideous slowacting poison might have damaged her beyond healing.

'Don't think,' he gasped aloud to himself. Just run.'

They passed a pot seller's stall, the proprietor rushing about in his nightshirt, shaking a fist at passersby. Arakasi pressed the Shinzawai to the right.

'Warriors,' he murmured, scarcely out of breath. 'If we go straight, we'll run right into them.'

'Imperials?' Hokanu obeyed the direction change, a grimace on his face as his toes squished through something that stank of rotted onions.

'I don't know,' Arakasi replied. 'The light plays tricks and all I see are helmet plumes.' He took a deep breath.

'We won't stay to find out.'

He ducked left into an alley yet more narrow and noisome than the last. The sounds of the riot were fading, replaced by the furtive skitter of rats, the dragging steps of a lame lamplighter on his way home from work, and the creak of a costermonger's cart being hitched to a bone-skinny needra.

Arakasi drew up his hood and ducked into a moss-crusted doorway. 'We're here. Mind the portal - the arch is very low.'

Hokanu had to bend over to enter. Beyond lay a cramped courtyard, choked with weeds and what looked to be a physician's garden, overgrown with medicinal herbs. There was a fish pool at the center, also overrun with weeds and sedges; Hokanu stole a moment to wash his feet. The water was piss-warm, and noisome. He wondered in disgust if people or dogs had used the spot for a privy.

'That was originally a cistern,' Arakasi whispered, as if in answer to his thought. 'Korbargh dumps his wash water in it, by the smell.'

Hokanu wrinkled his nose. 'What sort of a name is Korbargh?'

'Thuril,' the Spy Master answered. 'But the fellow's no native of the highlands. By blood, I'd say he has more of the desert in him. Don't be deceived. He's smart, and he speaks as many tongues as I do.'

'How many is that?' Hokanu whispered back.

But Arakasi had already raised his hand to knock at the plank that served Korbargh as front door.

The panel opened with a jerk that caused Hokanu a start.

'Who's there?' A gruff voice snarled from within.

Unhzed, Arakasi said something in the gutturals of the desert tongue. Whoever he addressed tried to yank the door closed, but the stout wood jammed ajar as the Spy Master shoved his censer in the opening. 'Let us in t'see your master, skulking dwarf, or your tongue I'll have out'f your face!' he said in a gutter Tsurani dialect used by thieves and beggars.

His tone was one that Hokanu had never heard from him, but that made his flesh crawl.

The dwarf said something back that sounded like an obscenity.

'Not good enough,' Arakasi replied, and with a swift inclination of his head invited his supposed penitent to help him storm the door.

Frantic with concern for his wife, Hokanu fell to with a will. He slammed his shoulder against the panel with such force that the dwarf was knocked backward, and the leather hinges burst inward. Over a boom of downed wood, Arakasi and Hokanu fetched forward into what appeared to be a foyer, tiled in terra-cotta, and decorated with friezework left over from times when the neighborhood had been more prosperous. The dwarf was yammering in a mixture of languages, that his fingers felt crushed, and his head was bruised by the door bar, which had been kicked from its brackets, and now lay in splinters on the floor.

'It was rotten anyway,' Hokanu observed, scraping splinters from his shoulder. 'In no condition, certainly, to keep out as much as a rat.'

A touch from Arakasi urged quiet. Hokanu obeyed rather than bridle at the presumption. As a huge, toweringly muscled stranger in a robe embroidered in li birds entered, the Shinzawai noble's eyes widened. 'Desert blood, did you say?' he murmured sotto voce.

Arakasi disregarded the comment and instead said something in desert tongue to the dwarf, whereupon the creature stopped howling, scrambled to his feet like a hunted gazen, and fled through a nook in a side wall.

'Gods above,' boomed the giant in the effeminate robe.

'You're no priest.'

'I'm glad you see that,' said the Spy Master. 'It saves us unnecessary preamble.' He moved as though to push back his hood, and his sleeves fell back, revealing a crisscross of leather ties. The knife sheaths they secured were empty, their contents a silver flash in Arakasi's hands as he lowered his arms.

Hokanu's gasp of surprise that Mara's Spy Master should own weapons of precious metal was canceled by a bull bellow from Korbargh. 'So! You're the one who killed my apprentice.'

Arakasi licked his teeth. 'Your memory works well, I see. That's good.' His knives might have been gripped by a stone statue, they were so steady. 'You'll recall, then, that I can strike you through the heart before you can think, let alone run.' To Hokanu the Spy Master said, 'Unwind my belt and tie him, wrist and ankle.'

The giant drew breath to protest, and quit at a twitch of Arakasi's wrist Hokanu took the greatest care not to come between the two as he unknotted the priestly cincture; it was braided needra hide, and tougher than spun cordage.

Hokanu tied the knots tightly, fear for Mara canceling any mercy he might have felt for the man's comfort.

A huge wooden beam braced the ceiling, with horn hooks inset for hanging the oil lamps preferred by the rich; they held only cobwebs now, but unlike the leather loops used by the poor for the same purpose, they had neither rotted nor weakened.

Following Arakasi's glance, Hokanu almost smiled in vindication. 'You wish him strung up by the wrists?'

At Arakasi's nod, the giant screeched in a tongue Hokanu did not recognise. The Spy Master replied in equally guttural accents, then switched language out of politeness to his master. 'There is no help for you, Korbargh.

Your wife and that lout of a bodyguard you sent with her are detained. There is a riot going on, and Imperial Whites are out in force, barricading off the streets where she was shopping. If she is wise, she will shelter the night in a hostelry and return home in the morning. Your servant Mekeh is currently hiding under the ale barrel in your back shed. He saw how your last apprentice died, and as long as I am here, he will not dare to show his face, even to summon help for you. So I ask, and you will answer, what the antidote was that should have filled the vial my companion will show you.'

Hokanu hauled the cord taut, half hitched it secure, and produced the green flask retrieved from the dead trader in the warehouse.

Already pale from having his arms wrenched upward, Korbargh turned white. 'I know nothing of this. Nothing.'

Arakasi's brows rose. 'Nothing?' His tone sounded regretfully mild. 'Ah, Korbargh, you disappoint me.' Then his expression hardened and his hand moved, fearfully fast.

Steel arced in a blur across the room. The blade grazed past Korbargh's cheek, shearing off a lock of greasy hair, and stuck with a thunk in the support beam.

In changed intonation, Arakasi said, 'There are three ciphers, in desert script, on that vial. The hand is your own.

Now speak.' As the prisoner raised his chin for renewed denial, Arakasi interrupted. 'My companion is a warrior.

His wife is dying of your evil concoction. Shall be describe his more inventive methods of extracting information from captured enemy scouts?'

'Let him,' Korbargh gasped, afraid but still stubborn. 'I won't say.'

Arakasi's dark eyes flicked to Hokanu. He gave a half-smile that was mercilessly cold. 'For your Lady's sake, tell the man how you make prisoners talk.'

Grasping the Spy Master's drift, Hokanu set his shoulder against the wall. As if he had all the time in the world, he described methods of torture cobbled together from hearsay, old records found in the Minwanabi house as it was being cleansed for Mara's arrival, tales told to unsettle new recruits, and a few things he improvised. Since Korbargh did not appear an imaginative man, Hokanu lingered with unholy relish over the grisly bits.

Korbargh began to sweat and shiver. His hands worked at his bonds, not out of hope of escape, but in mindless, desperate fear. Gauging his moment to a nicety, Hokanu turned to Arakasi. 'What method should we try first, do you think, the heated needles or the levers and ropes?'

Arakasi scratched his chin, considering. His eyes seemed to caress the alchemist's quivering body. Then he smiled. It was a smile that caused Hokanu to suppress a shiver. 'Well,'

he drawled. His eyes were ice. 'You want to know what I think?'

Korbargh bucked against his bonds. 'No!' he said hoarsely. 'No. I'll tell you what you wish to know.'

'We're waiting,' Hokanu cut back. 'I think that tapestry rod in the next room would serve very nicely as a lever.

And I know where we can find those flesh-eating insects close by-'

'Wait! No!' Korbargh screamed.

'Then,' Arakasi interjected reasonably, 'you will tell us the recipe for the antidote that should have gone in this vial.'

Korbargh's head twitched frantic affirmative. 'Leaves of sessali steeped in salt water for two hours. Sweeten the mixture with generous amounts of red-bee honey so your Lady doesn't vomit the salty herbs. A small sip. Wait a minute. Another. Wait again. Then as much as she can take. The more she swallows, the faster she'll heal. Then, when her eyes dear and the fever leaves her, a small cup of the mix every twelve hours for three days. That's the

-antidote.'

Arakasi spun to face Hokanu. 'Go,' he said curtly.

'Take the horses and run for home. Any healer will have sessali herb in his stores, and for Mara, time is of the essence.'

Anguished, Hokanu glanced at the strung-up figure of Korbargh, sobbing now in hysterical relief.

'I will pursue his connections,' Arakasi said urgently, and found himself addressing empty air. Hokanu had already disappeared through the broken door.

Night air wafted through the opening. Chilling Korbargh's sweating flesh. Down the block, two drunken comrades reeled their way homeward, singing. Someone threw a pot of wash water out of a window, the splash of its fall broken by a startled yelp from a street cur.

Arakasi stood motionless.

Unnerved by the silence, Korbargh stirred in his bonds.

'Y-you are g-going to let me g-go?' He finished on a note of crispness. 'I did tell you the antidote.'

A shadow against the darkened wall, Arakasi turned around. His eyes gleamed like a predator's as he said,

'But you haven't said who purchased the poison, in the bottle disguised as an antidote.'

Korbargh jerked against his bonds. 'It's worth my life to tell you that!'

Cat-quiet, Arakasi stepped up to his prisoner and wrenched the knife out of the beam; of incalculable value in the metal-poor culture of Kelewan, the blade flashed in the dimness. The Spy Master fingered the steel, as if testing the edge. 'But your life is no longer a bargaining point. What has yet to be determined is the manner of your death.'

'No.' Korbargh whimpered. 'No. I cannot say anymore.

Even were you to hang me, and the gods cast my spirit off the Wheel of Life for dishonor.'

'I will hang you,' Arakasi said quickly, 'unless you talk: that is certain. But a blade can do hurtful damage to a man, before a rope is used to dispatch him. The question is not honor or dishonor, Korbargh, but a merciful end, or lingering agony. You know the drugs that can bring blissful death.' Touching the tip of the knife to the fat of the prisoner's upper arm, he said, 'And you know which drugs on your shelves make you writhe in torment before death, drugs that heighten pain, keep you alert, and make time seem to pass slowly.'

Korbargh hung from his wrists, his eyes huge with fear.

Arakasi tapped his knife point, thoughtful. 'I have all the time I need, but none I'm willing to waste listening to silence.'

'my wife-' began the desperate poison seller.

The Spy Master cut him off. 'If your wife gets home before you have told what I need to know, she will join you. Your bodyguard will die before he can cross the portal, and you will watch me test my methods on her. I will dose her with drugs to keep her conscious, then carve the flesh from her body in strips!' As the big man began to weep with terror Arakasi asked, 'Will your dwarf apprentice sack your house, or give you both an appropriate funeral rite?'

Arakasi shrugged. 'He'll steal everything worth selling, you know.' Looking around, he added, 'Given your location and your clientele, I doubt anyone will be quick to report your murder to the City Watch. It's possible no priest will ever say a prayer for either of you.'

Korbargh snarled something unintelligible, and Arakasi stopped threatening. He stepped forward, grasped the hem of his captive's robe, and cut away a strip of fabric. The cloth was not silk, but the weave was fine, and ribbon embroidery adorned the hem. Arakasi expertly twisted the length into a gag. Before he could bind it over Korbargh's mouth, the huge man gasped and pleaded.

'If you gag me before your fiendish tortures begin, how can I give what you wish, even if I were of a mind to talk?'

Arakasi never paused, but jammed the cloth between the poison merchant's teeth. As the larger man bucked and twisted, the Spy Master tied the ends with knots as secure as any sailor's. 'I am anything but a fool,' he said in a voice of velvet consonants.

Arakasi left the bound man to dash upstairs. He returned with several vials which he held before Korbargh's eyes, one at a time. 'Tai-gi root, to heighten perception and pain,' he began. 'Powder from ground jinab bark, which will keep a man awake for a week. Sinquoi leaves, which will make time pass slowly. You will shortly discover that I know these as well as any healer. And I was instructed in the use of knives by an expert. You will not be permitted to scream when the agony starts, and if you wished to spare yourself pain and speak first, you have forfeited that chance already.' With a gentleness that inspired shudders, the Spy Master loosened Korbargh's robe. He bared a hairy expanse of sa drinker's belly to the night air, then turned away and disappeared briefly into the next room.

Korbargh thrashed against his bonds like a hooked fish.

He stopped when he had exhausted himself, and was hanging limp when Arakasi returned, bearing the oil lamp used to illuminate the desk when the hired clerk came to do the accounts, and the basket the day servant used for sewing.

Mara's Spy Master placed these items on a small table, which he lifted and set to his left. Then he removed the knife from his sash, and squinted to check the edge for flaws. It being a metal blade, the razor-sharpness of the weapon shone balefully perfect.

The poison merchant moaned into his gag as Arakasi said, 'I will begin without using the drugs. You may imagine how this will feel after I administer them.' He moved forward and, stroking carefully, opened the top layer of skin from his victim's navel slantwise toward his groin. Blood pattered onto the tiles, and Korbargh gave a muffled shriek. He kicked and flopped.

'Keep still,' Arakasi cautioned. 'I despise a messy job.'

His victim was in no position to heed, but the Spy Master seemed not to care. His quick hand compensated for Korbargh's jerks and jumps. He made another light cut and removed a triangle of skin, which he tossed aside. Then he nicked through the fat layer beneath and, as if he were performing dissections at a physician's college, bared the muscle below.

'Will you talk now?' Arakasi said conversationally.

Korbargh jerked his head in the negative. He was dripping sweat, along with his blood, and his hair and beard were soggy. He moaned into his gag, but the look in his eyes stayed belligerent.

Arakasi sighed. 'Very well. Though l warn you, the pain has hardly begun yet.' His knife hand moved, in utmost precision, and the muscle of his victim's abdomen parted.

Korbargh gave a muffled screech. Unheeding, the Spy Master picked out the severed veins and tied them off with thread. Then his blade set to work on the bared entrails beneath, and the blood ran faster.

The floor underfoot grew slippery as in a slaughterhouse, and the air took on the same reek. Korbargh lost control of his bladder, and rank wetness added to the puddle.

'Now,' said Arakasi, his shadow straightening with him as he looked up into the poison seller's face, 'have you anything constructive to say? No? Then, I fear, we will have to work next on the nerves.'

The knife dipped into living tissue, separated a nerve sheath, and scraped, very gently.

Korbargh thrashed, unable to howl. His eyes rolled, and his teeth pierced deep into the sour cloth of the gag. Then he fainted from the pain.

Some dim time later, his head snapped back as a pungent aroma filled his nostrils. As he blinked away confusion, strong hands poured foul-smelling liquid between his lips while clamping his nostrils closed, forcing him to swallow.

Pain redoubled to blinding agony, and his mind became gripped by horrible clarity.

“You will speak now,' Arakasi suggested. 'Else I will continue this until morning.' He wiped his sticky blade, fastidiously tucked it into his sash, and reached up to loosen the knots that prevented Korbargh from speech.

'Then when your wife arrives, I will begin on her, to see if she knows anything.'

'Demon!' gasped the wounded man. 'Devil! May you rot in body and mind, and come back next life as a fungus!'

Arakasi, looking bland, reached into the gore of his handiwork and tweaked.

Korbargh released an air-shattering scream.

'The name,' the Spy Master pressed, relentless.

And words tumbled out of Korbargh's mouth, giving him the name that he sought.

'llakuli,' Arakasi repeated. 'A rumormonger who can be found on the Street of Sorrowful Dreams.'

The poison seller gave a miserable nod. He had begun to sob, his face like yellow grease. 'I think he was of the Hamoi Tong.'

'You think?' Arakasi sighed as if correcting a child. 'I know so.'

'What of my wife?'

'The tong may seek her out. That is a risk you knew when you agreed to sell to them. But I will be hours gone when she returns, so in that, she's safe.' Arakasi reached up very swiftly and cut Korbargh's throat.

He jumped back as blood sprayed, and his victim kicked his last in this life. Arakasi immediately snuffed the wick of the oil lamp. Merciful blackness fell and hid the carnage in the foyer.

Arakasi worked on in the dark, his hands now trembling in spasms. He pulled Korbargh's robe closed and tied the sash, so that the young wife would not be greeted with the

.'

full grisly details of the night's events upon her return. The Spy Master cut down the body and laid it in a posture of repose on the floor. About the blood he could do nothing. His earlier search for the lamp had revealed that the household kept no wash water to hand. He wiped his fingers as best he could upon a tapestry, a prayer mat being the only other choice that would serve for a towel. Then, in the corner of Korbargh's bedchamber, he succumbed to his nenes at last. He knelt clutching an unemptied night jar and vomited violently. .

He retched long after his belly was emptied. Then, unwilling to pass through the foyer again, he made his exit through a window.

The streets were all but deserted, the riot long since quelled. A few stragglers hastened homeward, and more shadowy figures lurked in the darkened alleys. A shivering, bedraggled priest had nothing of value to rob; Arakasi was left alone. The night wind in his face helped to steady him.

A brief stop by an ornamental pool in the entry of what was probably a brothel allowed him to rinse the rest of the gore from his hands. Blood was still crusted beneath his fingernails, but right now he lacked the stomach to use his knife to scrape them dean. He jogged, and to drive back the nightmares that lingered from Korbargh's foyer, he turned his-mind to the information he had sickened himself to win.

Ilakuli he had heard of; and there was a man in the city who would know his whereabouts. Arakasi hurried into the night.

Hokanu ran on foot. His two spent mounts jagged at his side on leading reins, their chests lathered, and their ~

distended nostrils showing scarlet linings. Fear for Mara's; life kept him on his feet, long after muscle and sinew were exhausted. He still wore the loincloth of a penitent. the clothing he had recovered from the inn, he had paused only to lace on his sandals. The rest he had stuffed into the roan gelding's saddlebags, never mind that he looked like a beggar, half naked and coated with dirt and sweat.

His sole concern was the recipe for the antidote that offered the last hope for his wife.

Mist dung in the hollows, rendering trees and landmarks ghostly in the predawn gloom. The prayer gate to Chochocan hulked up out of whiteness like something from the spirit lands ruled by Turakamu, God of the Dead.

Hokanu raced under its spindle arches, barely aware of the painted holy figures in their niches, or the votive lamp left lit by a passing priest. He stumbled on, caring only that this gate marked the beginning of the end of his journey.

The borders to the estate lay over the next set of hills, and through a defile guarded by his own patrols. A runner would be posted there, along with a trusted officer and another man trained as a field healer. With any luck, he would have the herb for the antidote in his stores; and every Lord's kitchen stocked red-bee honey.

Hurting in every joint, and gasping in the extremity of exertion, Hokanu hoped the Good God would forgive him for neglecting the prayer of passage the gate ~s intended to inspire. He lacked the breath for speech, and he knew if he stopped he would fall prone and pass out. Immersed in a misery of tiredness, Hokanu crossed through the arch into the pearly mists beyond.

The horses sensed the ambush before he did.

The big roan gelding plowed to a stop, snorting, and the mare shied. Jerked forward by the sudden halt, Hokanu gasped in frustration. But the arrow fired from a thicket by the roadway missed him by inches, clattering harmlessly on the verge.

Instantly, he banged the gelding with his elbow, sending it into a maddened pirouette. The snorting mare curvetted into its quarters, and the gelding let out a squeal and a kick. Hokanu snatched his sword from the saddle scabbard.

Under cover of the milling animals, he doubled back into the arch of Chochocan's prayer gate.

Hokanu dared not assume there would be only one ambusher. He offered a brief prayer to the Good God that, whoever they were, they would not be familiar with horses from the barbarian world, for the beasts offered his only chance of staying alive.

Still tied together by their leading rein, his mounts thrashed before the archway, the gelding determined t"

land a defensive bite or kick, and the panicked mare spinning, jerking, and rearing, in an effort to bole. Hokanu chanced that no assassin born on Kelewan would dare those stamping, seffking hooves to rush the archway and take him The ambusher's only option was to flank him through the entrance on the other side, and praise be to Chochocan, whatever dead Minwanabi Lord had raised this offering to the god had spent with a lavish hand. This gate was massive, built of stone and timbers, with flying buttresses to support its great height. It had intricate carving, rare gilt spires, an`~