The Traitor's Heir (42 page)

“Three shirt burns?” he said. “In less than a
week
?”

“You expected less of me, Mr Kentigern?”

Ladomer threw back his handsome face and laughed out loud. “They snapped you up quickly, Ratbag!” He thrust out his hand to clasp Eamon's. “Mr Goodman,” he said, raising his hand as though he held a sword for his formal gesture, “I salute you!”

“Don't be an ass!” Eamon retorted, shaking his hand free with a laugh. “I'm just the same as I always was.”

“Conceited, ill-dressed, doubly left-footed, physically challenged, and scared of women?”

Eamon's jaw dropped. “You're a harsh, cruel man!”

“They are such undervalued skills in the modern age,” Ladomer answered, bowing, “and I thank you.”

Eamon dealt him a playful buff on the shoulder. “What are you doing in Dunthruik?”

“Belaal sent me up to liaise with one Captain Waite over some paperwork or other,” Ladomer replied flippantly.

“Waite?” Eamon was delighted. “He's my captain!”

“Really?” Ladomer grinned. “Then perhaps I shall see you for a few days while they sort the papers.”

“What kind of papers?”

“As I promised you I would, I came looking for a city appointment,” Ladomer told him. “Belaal said there were a few positions available, and my record is good for the city, so he and Lord Penrith agreed to send me up.” He lowered his voice. “There are several lieutenantcies vacant across the quarters, including one in the West where you are, but it seems that I am being considered for a role in the palace.”

“The palace?” Eamon knew of no lieutenants serving there.

“They want to assign a new lieutenant to the Right Hand.”

Eamon gaped, remembering the darkened face and mesmerizing words of the throned's closest. “The Right Hand?” The idea of Ladomer binding himself to the man chilled him. He could not bear it – how could he warn his friend to keep away?

Ladomer laughed. “You needn't look so concerned. In all likelihood they will take one look at me and send me straight back home. But moving paper for such things always takes a certain amount of time so, even if they do, I expect to be in the city at least a week.”

Eamon smiled. “Well, then, I shall enjoy your company while I have it.”

“I have to go – they're expecting me at the palace.” Ladomer drew him slightly aside. “Listen, I heard about the holk and your capture. I was so relieved, Eamon, when I learned that you were safe. Do you know if Aeryn made it?”

Eamon paused for a fraction of a second. He couldn't take any risks. “She was alive, last I saw.”

Ladomer relaxed. “Thank the Master for small mercies! Belaal seemed to think that she was connected to the snakes. Can you believe that? Shows the kind of man he is! Aeryn was far too sophisticated to be allied with such simpletons. Now, if he'd told me that
you
knew something,” Ladomer added, a mocking twinkle to his eye, “I might have believed him…”

Eamon forced a loud laugh. “What nonsense!” he cried, terribly conscious of the stone at his neck.

“My very thought,” Ladomer agreed. He took Eamon's hand and clasped it firmly. “I'll see you soon.”

“I hope so,” Eamon replied. He meant it. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too, Ratbag!” Ladomer winked and then hurried off along the road, his uniform pristine in the afternoon light.

Eamon watched him go. He felt the weight of his treachery falling anew on his shoulders. Becoming a King's man meant leaving Ladomer behind him – and he did not know that he could.

“You were going to say something, sir?” Mathaiah watched him earnestly.

Eamon shook his head. “It was nothing,” he said.

Later that afternoon Eamon was summoned to Captain Waite. He went obediently, and wasn't surprised to find that Lord Cathair also awaited him.

“My lord; sir.”

“At ease, first lieutenant.”

“Thank you, sir.” Eamon looked at the Hand. The darkly swathed man looked paler than ever that afternoon. Green eyes flashed brightly in the dwindling light.

“Mr Goodman, I came to offer to you my personal thanks for the service you rendered me several evenings ago,” the Hand said, laying one hand against his breast in a delicate gesture.

“It was my duty, both to you and to the Master. You need not thank me for performing my duty, my lord.”

“Still I am, as you may imagine, pleased with your intervention.” Cathair smiled. “How does it feel to be back in your right uniform, Mr Goodman?”

Eamon shuffled uncomfortably. “Perfection itself, my lord.”

“You should have seen him, captain!”

“I did,” Waite answered quietly.

“Ah, your first lieutenant cut a very gallant figure at the masque, captain. He has created an indelible impression on us all. Unfortunately, due to the little ruckus that followed Mr Goodman's election as winner of the evening – a most prestigious award! – his prize was overlooked.” The Hand looked back to Eamon. “With the notable exception of that occasion when Lord Rendolet came as a woman – a matter to which, I must add, he owes any and all notoriety he may possess – the masque prize usually goes to a lady and so tends to take a floral form. However, the Right Hand felt that such a gesture, regardless of its good intent, might not be so well received by you, Mr Goodman. He has taken the liberty of arranging for a few extra coins to find their way to your wages for this month.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Don't spend them all at once, Mr Goodman!” Cathair told him with his accustomed smile. “Now, to return to the matter of the assassin.” A sudden chill ran through him, as Eamon remembered the furious wrench that had torn sword and star from his breast.

“Following your various administrative and patrol duties for Captain Waite, you are to accompany me to the Pit this afternoon.” Eamon paled: the Pit was Dunthruik's most notorious prison, and Eamon had no desire to see it. “Are you fond of poetry, Mr Goodman?”

Struck dumb, Eamon could only stare. Poetry? “Yes, my lord,” he managed.

“I am myself very fond of the lyrics from the first days of Dunthruik,” Cathair told him. “‘Round, around my lady went, round around my lady fair; about her brow a crown of stars, an eagle's flower in her hair.'” He recited the words softly but watched with an intensity that seemed to go beyond the verse. Eamon swallowed. “Do you know it, Mr Goodman?”

“No, my lord.”

“You are a man of little learning, Mr Goodman!” Cathair tutted. “Perhaps you should ask Cadet Overbrook; he has the look of a scholar to him.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I ask you whether you like poetry because, as you halted this man's attempt at my life, I felt that it would be
poetic
for you to inquire of him what he intended.”

The chill went deeper – the delicate word “inquire” could only mean one thing…

To the Hand he could only show a smile. “Nothing would please me more, my lord.”

The wind buffeted him as he walked to the palace, his steps swallowed by Cathair's shadow. Mathaiah followed them. Cathair chatted to them and sometimes broke spontaneously into song. He had a fine, deep voice, and seemed distressingly cheerful.

He led them to the Hands' Hall and through a string of stone-guarded passages. Eamon was too anxious about what was to follow to really note where they were going, but Mathaiah looked everywhere. Seeing the strange writing on post and doors, the cadet's eyes widened, and Eamon wondered what new revelation had reached him.

The corridors halted in a small hall at a single staircase. The stairs led down into interminable darkness, only broken at irregular intervals by torches. The steps came at last into a subterranean hall filled with doorways. Cathair led them through one of these.

They emerged into a cavern lit by a dying brazier. A strange, slight breeze disturbed Eamon's face.

There was a hole in the middle of the cavern floor. It was about the width of three men standing together and a terrible stench – sweat, fear, blood, and excrement – issued from it. A long ladder and a trellis stood by the hole. More ominous doorways circled the whole chamber. Only Hands stood guard there.

Cathair stepped up to the brazier and kindled it to life. Gasps and groans leapt pitifully from below. Eamon exchanged anxious glances with his pale ward. It was a place of terror. It was where they would both end up if their treachery was discovered.

“Welcome, gentlemen, to the Pit,” Cathair proclaimed cheerfully. “It affords most affable accommodation to dozens of wayfaring whores and bastards.” Unadulterated horror flooded him. “Oh, it's much bigger down there than it looks up here,” Cathair added. “We drop them in for a little while, to reflect most seriously upon what they are. Sometimes we leave them there. More than one unhelpful person has died in there, I am sorry to report. And it is so very difficult to efficiently remove cadavers.” He shrugged lightly. “But we get by.”

Eamon gagged. At a command from Cathair, the Pit's Hands moved to the edge of the chamber's ghastly crevice. They stretched out their arms. A red glow formed about them; it spread down into the hole. A scream answered it. Eamon watched, aghast, as a body rose up, hoisted as though on strings. He understood then that this red light came with the throned's mark. The fiery levitation was more painful than rope or chains would ever have been.

The body was disgorged and Eamon recognized the young man whom he had stopped at the masque. The boy's face was swollen and purple, his naked torso pocked with ugly welts.

The Hands dropped their prisoner by the mouth of the Pit. His cut arms barely had the strength to support him and he collapsed at once, gasping.

Striding forward, Cathair reached down and took disparaging hold of the boy's chin. Yanking the head backwards almost farther than its neck could bear, the Hand turned to Eamon with a smile.

“Do you see, Mr Goodman, what happens to those who betray the Master? But this is just the beginning of payment for that coin.”

Was this message not also for him?

Further Hands were summoned from some dark recess of the chamber. They ruthlessly dragged the young man through one of the doorways.

The room beyond was small and silent, with a single torch fixed to the wall, which Cathair lit. The trembling prisoner was bound to the chair in the centre of the room. Along the walls were various instruments of torture, and Cathair stood silent while he allowed the young man's terrified eyes to pass over them, taking in the shape, size, and power of each. Eamon knew the names and functions of the tools, and dreaded that the boy would be made to suffer them.

“There is something missing, if I could but think of it,” Cathair mused. “Ah yes.”

The Hands returned with another man. He was dumped on the floor where he lay and writhed. In disgust, Cathair kicked him hard. Eamon winced. He could do nothing.

“Up, snake,” Cathair hissed.

The old man hauled himself upright and leaned heavily against the damp chamber wall. The point of some evil instrument glistened by his forehead. Eamon saw that the man's face had been cut almost beyond recognition: one eye had been gouged, leaving a dark, scabbed mass of crimson.

Mathaiah retched. Eamon held himself in check by a thread, for he recognized the remains of the man before him. Cathair had stopped him at the Blind Gate on his first day in Dunthruik.

Cathair stepped lightly between his two prisoners, his pallor and robes giving him a deathly aspect.

“Mr Clarence?” he said to the older man. “Please allow me to introduce you to Master Clarence. But soft! I believe that you have met.”

The young man heard the words upon Cathair's lips and managed to bring his eyes into focus on the bedraggled other. He stared uncomprehendingly, then stretched his bound hands out.

“
Pa!
”

Eamon blenched. A glance at Lord Cathair showed crippling delight in the Hand's eyes. It stifled all Eamon's will. Cathair was boundless in his strength and vile in his means. He could not be stopped.

“Do you see, Mr Goodman, the kindness that the Master offers, even to the snakes?” Cathair asked. “See! A father and son sweetly reunited.” A groan died on Clarence's lips.

“You bastard!” the son screamed. “Murdering bastard!”

“Young man,” Cathair said with mocking gentility, “your father has been my most honoured guest in recent days. I even took care of your dear mother's funeral expenses on your behalf. Let me assure you that my dogs enjoyed the event especially.”

The boy let out an incoherent cry of rage and grief. “I'll kill you!” he screeched: “I'll kill you!”

Cathair leaned close to his prisoner. “I very much doubt it,” he sneered. “Mr Goodman.”

Quaking, Eamon tore his eyes away from the sobbing, screaming, swearing boy.

“My lord?”

“Breach him.”

Eamon gaped. What could that possibly achieve? “My lord –”

“I want to know who forged the papers.”

Eamon glanced guiltily at the young man. The prisoner spat. “Damn you! Damn you and your usurper!”

“I said breach him, Mr Goodman.”

There was no other way. Eamon pressed his hand against the young man's head, the flesh sweaty and grimy. The boy struggled furiously in his bonds. In his ire he hurled curses at Eamon, and as each curse landed anger rose.

This boyish simpleton had no idea what position he had been forced into. Fire flecked unbidden on Eamon's palm. And then the world changed.

The plain was dark and he was strong. The boy was nothing before him, and in Eamon's ears was a voice he had not heard for many days:

See how he defies you? Crush him, Eben's son. Crush him with all my strength!

Yes. Eamon knew he could do it. The boy's mind was breached and lay open before him, a fruit split apart by the incision of a knife. He saw the boy's whole life, every secret thought and word, every anguish, every joy, every love and hatred. It was wretched and pitiable. With one gesture, he could stop it all.