Susan Grant – The Last Warrior (страница 11)

“You’ll end up living like an animal on the run, Tao.”

“So be it. I have the survival skills. I’ll go back to the Hinterlands. I’ll disappear.”

“And I’ll be hanged for my role in it, leaving the madman in charge of the asylum. I can’t, Tao.”

Bleakly, Tao walked down the stairs, trying to think his way out of a dead end. He’d rather take his chances in the wild lands than wait for a mock trial, but he couldn’t leave his best friend to be tortured and killed.

“Don’t worry,” Markam said. “By tomorrow, it will be as if you never existed.”

Tao jerked his head up. “I thought I had three days.”

The dungeon stank of rat feces and decay, the smell of hopelessness. Markam steered him into a cell and locked him in. Although it was arguably the best of the lot, inside the tang of urine was downright eye-watering. “Be patient, and you will see.”

Tao gripped the bars. “You try being patient from inside a dungeon cell.”

“Too many lives hang in the balance to tell you more. People I care about greatly. If things were to go wrong now, and you were hauled in for an interrogation, and you revealed…” Markam stopped himself. His angular face took on the appearance of stone, his eyes full of secrets.

“You want protection for your men.” By Uhrth, Markam must have been thinking outside the box for years while Tao was away, if he had a network to protect. “In that case, I want protection for my men, also. Their service to the kingdom has been beyond the call. Beyond any crime blamed on me in a charade of a trial.”

“Xim will need to placate them after getting rid of their general. There’s enough land to go around, and a fair share of women, lonely from too many years of losing men to war. Knowing the alternative, they’ll let Xim buy them out, I suspect.”

Tao knew this was the unfortunate truth of a large fighting force. The average soldier didn’t know him, the general, personally; they received their orders through the chain of command. His officers were the ones most at risk in this. Their loyalty and honor to him ran blood deep. Yet, if they moved to defend him, they’d be hanged for mutiny.

Weary, Tao gripped the bars. “I trust you’ll look after Aza.”

“Always,” he said, his tone somber, his gaze flickering with something that gave Tao pause. It was more than just childhood friendship talking; Markam had feelings for Aza that transcended a palace guard protecting his queen.

I have indeed been gone from home too long. If Aza shared Markam’s feelings, Tao prayed the pair knew enough not to take any chances and reveal it to Xim, and that a pointless dream of star-crossed love wasn’t the motivation behind Markam’s desire to undermine the king. But he bit back the urge to demand the truth. Any such knowledge could be wrested out of him and be used to hurt Aza.

Tao let his hands slide off the bars. “You’d better go.” There was nothing more to be said, nothing more to do. Everything he cared about existed outside these prison walls. He was locked in a dungeon, and by tomorrow, according to Markam, it would be as if he’d never existed. We shall see.

“Good luck, my friend,” Markam said. “To both of us, actually.”

Then his oldest friend walked out, slamming the thick door closed behind him. The thunder echoed off the dungeon walls, the sound of boots hitting stone quickly faded and Tao was left alone with a chest thick with disbelief and a mind racing through a dwindling arsenal of options.

THE SUNS HADN’T YET peeked above the horizon when Elsabeth gave up trying to sleep and climbed up to the eaves to feed the pigeons. Her mother had always been the one to care for the messenger birds whose journeys could take them as far as the Barrier Peaks. Elsabeth had, by necessity, handed the running of the clinic over to others, but the aviary was hers to keep, in memory of her mother.

The interior of the roost was a simmering, cooing mass of gray and rainbow-hued feathers, bobbing heads, clawed feet and pecking beaks. “Hello, my friends.”

Cuh-choo-coo, cuh-choo-coo—their melody greeted. She shook a tin can of dried beans, calling them to breakfast. As they ate their feed, she filled the water dishes and trough and added grit to the floor of the pen.

A loud fluttering of wings erupted at the landing outside. The flock scattered, noisily reacting, as a large blue male strutted inside, immediately committing himself to breakfast. “Prometheus! If you stay out all night carousing, you do it at the risk of being dinner for an alley kitt.”

The bird strutted by, wearing a slender tube tied to its leg. A message.

A jolt went though her, sweeping her grogginess away. Her eyes opened wide. For most of the night she’d tossed and turned, suffering bursts of disjointed dreams, or had lain awake, worrying about Beck’s treachery, Markam’s plans, Aza’s fears and Tao’s return. Now, this message promised action.

“What do you have for me, little one?” She carefully unfastened the rolled paper and unfurled it. It was blank, and green.

“The green flag,” she whispered. She’d been the one to think up the way Markam should alert her to an emergency so she would not be caught unawares. Red meant stay at home, and green—she crushed the paper in her hand—come to the palace as soon as feasible.

In her gut, she knew why: if Markam had summoned her, General Tao was in danger, if not already dead. She didn’t want to analyze why she desperately hoped it wasn’t the latter.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE WEATHER HAD TURNED during the night, summer to autumn, the thick, humid heat of the past week replaced by the crackling air of harvest season. From the hooks behind the door she snatched a wool wrap and yanked it around her shoulders. She burst out her front door and ran around back to the medical clinic, where the current practitioner, Chun, slept with his family. The young physician, once mentored by her father, was trying to button a shirt with one hand as he answered her furious knocking at the door.

“Green flag,” she said. “Don’t know more. Tell Navi. Be at the Kurel canteen when Little Lume is straight up.” The young accountant, Navi, also worked at the palace. At high noon in the mess hall, no one would think anything strange about the royal tutor deep in conversation with the palace accountant and guest healer.

A nod from Chun assured her he knew what to do.

She waited at the ghetto gates until the suns lifted above the horizon, slowly, like two old men climbing out of bed. Then she darted toward the palace, her mind considering a multitude of possibilities for the summons. The streets were quiet, most windows still shuttered after the festivities had gone on late into the night. The streets stank of stale liquor, manure and urine. On the palace grounds, General Tao’s soldiers lay sleeping here and there, some with empty bottles clutched in their hands, others with women in their arms.

She hurried past them, her heart skittering, instinct calling out danger. Crossing the bustling upper bailey, she nodded to the regular staff, all the while pretending the green piece of paper hadn’t been balled in her fist only a short time ago. A guard stood at the workers’ entrance. Only his mouth was visible below the shadow of his helmet. Alarm twanged like the first pluck of a taut string. The entrance had always been unguarded before.

He waved her through. The only thing she could think to do next was to report to the classroom as normal and await contact from Markam. Before she’d traveled more than halfway across the grand foyer, Markam fell in step with her, his hands clasped behind his back. Shadows under his eyes proved he’d had no more rest than she.

“How do you do that,” she half scolded, “appearing out of thin air?”

“You’re simply not observant enough, Elsabeth. I was here the entire time.” Very subtly, he scanned the area to be sure no one was listening. “It’s begun. Xim arrested Tao last night. For treason.”

Her heart dropped like a stone down a well. She’d cautioned the general not to let down his guard, fearing she’d revealed too much. Instead it carelessly had been too little. He hadn’t retired to his chambers with that dancer; instead, he must have gone to seek answers after she’d refused to give him any.

Markam quickly summed up the events leading to Tao’s arrest and the planned trial, the assured guilty verdict and the inevitable hanging. “Opportunity coincided with intent. A single moment, a slip of the tongue and Xim pounced.”

Poor Aza. “Is there no hope the king will grant clemency? The general’s his brother-in-law.”

“None. Xim must follow through. If he blinks, Tao looks all the more powerful.”

“General Tao is a hero. Xim will have to convince the people the man they cheered yesterday isn’t one, after all.”

“Torture and truth potions will extract any confession Xim desires, all in front of so-called neutral observers and witness-scribes who will provide the testimony to the people. A death sentence will swiftly follow, before any real protests can form.”

He sounded so certain. She blurted out, “You can’t leave him to die.”

“Of course not. He’ll have been freed by then. Getting him off palace grounds isn’t the problem. It’s stowing the man where Xim can’t find him.”