The False Martyr (123 page)

“
What . . . what did you
do?” Mr. Tappers stuttered from the floor.

“
I’m not exactly sure, but
I doubt I could do it again. You’ll have to keep him drugged and
try not to give him any emotion to draw on. Garth, you know what I
mean. Do the rest of you understand?”

Dasen watched then as the
blurry shapes of Sam, Geoff, and Rog followed the valati into the
room. He didn’t understand. They were supposed to be with Kian,
were supposed to be helping him kill the governor, but they were
here instead, and their uniforms weren’t even stained. The three of
them helped, a still stunned, Garth lift Dasen onto the table like
a hunk of meat. He tried to struggle, to find the power, to do
anything but his body and mind were lost to him. His eyes drifted
closed as well, as he mind spun toward blackness. Somewhere,
someone was tying his hands behind his back.

“
He’s yours, just as we
promised,” Valati Lareno said. “Now, get him out of here before his
wife returns.”

“
What’s to keep us from
taking her as well?” Garth asked. “She’s worth almost as
much.”

“
I am what keeps you from
taking her,” the valati said, cold menace in his voice. “You know
what I am, and you know not to cross me. We have a deal. I have
kept my side. Now, you keep yours.”

“
Humph,” the Morg said.
There was a long pause. Dasen thought that he had fallen asleep.
“It will be as you say, Weaver. Good luck with the girl. She is
everything that Kian said. And it seems nothing can sway her from
this mockery of a man. Not even you may be able to control
her.”

“
I do not hope to try,”
Valati Lareno said in return. “I hope only to do my part. Now, take
him to his father and collect your money. We are finished here. The
pattern is maintained, at least for now.”

#

The world had been red.
Everything red. Then it went black.

When it came back to
bright sun, blue sky, and green grass, Teth was lying under the
shaking corpse of a man whose throat she had slit. His blood pumped
onto her, sticky, warm, and wet. She could smell nothing but the
metallic stench of the blood she had spilled, streams of it,
flowing down the road and into the mud at the side. By the Order’s
will, at the dictate of a demented old man, she had killed them,
had cut their bodies open and released them back to the Order. And
not a one of them had been able to touch her. Even as she opened
herself to them, gave herself to their blades, they failed to so
much as nick her. She was everything that Kian had said, a goddess
of war sent to do the Order’s bloody will, and nothing could stop
her, not even herself.

Her first reaction to
coming back to the world, to knowing what she had just done, to
realizing that she was still alive was to scream. It was hoarse,
ragged, barely audible, and pointless. There was no one left to
hear it. She had killed them all.

When her breath ran out,
she released her anger on the corpse that covered her. She kicked
the body, punched it, tore at its clothes, scratched its skin.
Eventually, she worked her way from under it, rose – blood dripping
from her as if she had just emerged from a river of it – and began
kicking the dead man. She kicked until she fell to her knees on top
of his back and then punched him until her knuckles were sore. She
lifted her head to scream again.

“
You’re alive,” a voice
said behind her. “The Order protect me, you’re still
alive.”

Teth had the man in her
grip before he finished the words. She slammed him against the side
of a wagon, her bloody hand around his throat, her mere proximity
staining his leather vest.

He was a big man, one of
the porters, thickly muscled from a lifetime of heaving cargo. He
could have snapped her in half, picked her up and thrown her ten
feet, beaten her to a pulp, but he cringed away from her and cried
like a child, “The Order be merciful! Please, no! Oh please,
no!”

Teth growled, white teeth
standing out against the red that dripped down her face.

“
I’s just doin’ what the
valati told me,” the man pleaded through his sobs. “He told me ta
yell before the signal, ta start firin’ my bow as soon as I saw
them twins. He told me that’s the only way I’d make it through
alive. He told me you’d kill them. That we’d both live. That it was
the only way. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but he’s a valati. He told me .
. . .”

Teth slapped him, smearing
blood from her hand across his bearded face. He fell to the ground,
and she kicked him. “The ugly valati?” she snarled. “He told you to
do this? He told you I’d live?”

“
Yes! Yes! Please, the
Order take me, yes!” He squirmed on the ground like a bug, hands
up, knees to his chest.

Teth looked up at the sky
and growled.
The valati.
But he had wanted her to die. He had said it. He
couldn’t be one of them, couldn’t be a part in this. “You’re a
liar!” she screamed, voice hoarse, almost lost. “The valati wanted
me to die. I heard him say it. Why would he tell you that if he
wanted me to die?”

“
I . . . I don’t . . . .
That’s jist what he told me. He said ya’d be alive. Said that ya’d
kill ‘em all but me, that we’d both be alive when it’s done. The
Order save me, I didn’t think it’d be like that. I jist did what he
said. I jist wanted ta live.”

Teth wouldn’t believe it.
She couldn’t believe it. It was a lie. It had to be a lie. She
couldn’t still be trapped, couldn’t still be their puppet. But the
truth was directly in front of her. The valati had told this man
everything that would happen. He was one of them. He had made this
happen, had controlled it all, had used his powers over the Order
to manipulate her and everything around her. He had pulled her
strings and made her a murderer twenty times over. Not only had he
not allowed her to die, he had made her a killer, a demon, the very
goddess of war that Kian had named her.

The world turned red
again. Entire body shaking, Teth found a knife, the handle jutting
from the belt of a dockworker with a spear through his chest. She
brought it to her throat, howled and prepared to drag it across her
flesh.

“
The valati has a
message,” the man yelled.

Teth looked at him with
death in her eyes. He was the valati’s servant, was the reason all
this had happened, was the trigger that had set it all in motion.
Why should he survive when so many others had died? The valati had
told him that he would live, but she could turn it into a lie. She
could think of no more fitting final act. She turned on the man,
reversed the grip on the knife, and prepared to drive it through
his throat.

“
Please, the Order be
merciful, please,” the man wailed as she closed on him, taking her
time, picturing the bastard valati, wishing he was there instead,
that he could feel the wrath of the demon he had made. The man held
his hand up to block her as if he did not have double her weight,
as if he had no other defense against a skinny girl with a knife.
“The valati said that the boy will die.” He screamed the last, his
voice rising to a near comical tenor as Teth dropped a knee onto
his chest and slashed at his outstretched hands.

The boy.
The words wormed their way through the murderous
singularity that Teth’s consciousness had become. She fought
through her next victim’s ineffectual defenses, stabbing his hands
until they were bloody, maneuvering the knife relentlessly past
them until it was in position, until it was prepared to push
through his windpipe. He cried and begged and blubbered. His body
surrendered, went stiff. He waited for the end, words falling to
mumbled prayers.
The
boy
. “What do you know about the boy?”
Teth asked, the words registering just in time to stop the
blade.

“
The valati said he’ll
die!” the man squealed. His words were distorted by the hand
pressing his chin back, by the knife pricking at the throat it had
exposed. “He said that only you can save him, that ya have ta go
back ta the inn, that ya have ta run.”

“
What do you mean?” Teth
growled, lowering her face to his, teeth out as if she might bite
him. “He’s safe. Garth is taking care of him. I know he’s
safe.”

“
That’s what the valati
told me ta say. He said ya’d try ta kill yirself, that I had ta
tell ya that, and . . . .”

“
And what?” Teth pricked
his Adam’s apple, listened to him howl like a stung babe. “What
else?” she screamed again when he stopped. Her face hovered over
his. Blood pattered on him from her hair – drop, drop, drop. Her
knife angled toward his jugular, turning the prick into a growing
cut.

“
Stop! Stop! I’ll tell ya.
I’ll tell ya . . . . The Morg . . . the Morg betrayed you. The
valati said to tell you that, to tell you that the Morg betrayed
you.” He closed his eyes and cried. “Please . . . please. I have a
family. I have children. Please.”

Teth sat up.
Garth
.

She ran, legs shaking
beneath her, dripping red, and seeing the same.

Chapter 71

The
57
^th
Day of Summer

Everything was perfect.
Too perfect. Ipid hated it.

The seizure of the gold
had gone exactly as planned and, four days later, remained
undiscovered. The army had departed, were well on their way to
Arin, leaving a mere hundred of the city watch to keep order in a
city of several hundred thousand. The rationing was every bit as
tight as it had been for weeks, and the people had to be feeling
it. Yet there was only good news. The work crews – focused now on
preparing the devastated areas for rebuilding – caused no problems
for Naidi and Rynn. The people lined up patiently, waiting
sometimes for hours, to trade their ration papers for the barest
scraps of food. The refugees that had gathered around the Darthur
took to their name as camp followers and went with the armies as
they marched. Certainly, there were fights, there were robberies,
there was crime, but there were no riots, no protests, no mobs, no
attempt that Ipid could see to end his rule.

And it was the same, by
all indications, in all the other cities. Ipid almost wished that
it were not the case. He knew the storm was coming – kept looking
for the gathering clouds, the rising wind, the driving rain – but
there was only calm. And with no word from Allard Stully or
Ambassador an’ Pmalatir, Ipid had no choice but to wait and hope
that his chosen successor was still taking his lines from the
chosen script.

With little else to do
beyond worry, Eia had become his release. And he sought that
release as often as his body would allow through the ever
increasing emotion, danger, and pain it entailed. Things he had
only dreamt of doing, would never have even considered with Kira,
were now commonplace as each act seemed to build on the other, as
they went deeper and farther, exploring dark corners of his
emotions that he had not even known were there.

Imagining their next
encounter, Ipid eyed Eia lounging in a chair across the room, only
her bare feet visible hanging over the arm, and then the few
scribes remaining in the room before them. If he dismissed those
men, he could have her. He began to consider what he would do,
where they would be, what emotions he would bring, how he would
heighten them.

“
Lord Chancellor,” the
butler announced from the doorway, disrupting his building
excitement, “Ambassador an’ Pmalatir has arrived. He says that he
must speak with you immediately and urgently.”

Ipid let out a long slow
breath to release the emotion he had been building and bring his
mind back from the dark halls it had been traversing. Eia’s face
appeared from around the chair where she sat, eyes mischievous –
had she been thinking the same thing? He watched her and could not
help the shared smile that formed on his face.

“
We will meet him in the
east receiving room,” he told the butler when his mind had returned
to the task at hand. “Would you like to join me, my dear?” he asked
Eia.

“
I never miss a chance to
see our fine ambassador,” she answered. “I have a feeling his
message today will be especially telling.”

The way she said the last
told Ipid almost immediately that bad news was waiting. He almost
anticipated it now.

#

“
Ambassador an’ Pmalatir,”
Ipid began as he swept into the room, determined to make a better
showing of himself than the last time he’d met the ambassador on
the day they’d planned the deal with Stully. They were ensconced in
a room that was meant for such intimate, but stately, meetings.
Similar to the room where he had met Lord Stully in Aylesford, it
was paneled with richly polished wood. Weaver tapestries lined the
walls – though not the antiques that Ipid had seen in Aylesford. A
similar oval table of light colored wood polished so that it was
nearly a mirror seemed to levitate in the room. The chairs were
carved, polished, and padded with seats wide enough even for the
ambassador’s girth. And most important of all, a set of crystal
decanters marked a smaller table at their side with a liveried
footman prepared to serve. “I am so pleased that you have called on
us. I am sorry that we have not prepared a meal. If I had known, we
would have offered you the same meager rations we’ve been having
for the past few weeks. But our saving grace is that soldiers do
not know the difference between fine brandy and sour wine, so the
best bottles of Lord Stully’s estate have been saved. May I offer
you a glass?”