Poor World (19 page)

The clouds rolled slowly overhead, gaining in density and color, blocking that terrible sun. Cold wind still mixed with hot, all promising a mighty fazoom of a storm building.

As I worked, I watched things along the street. Groups ran by in both directions, and individuals dashed back and forth, some of them carrying papers, others armloads of various types of supplies. Anticipation seemed to snap at everyone's heels, whether it was anticipation of the weather changing or of Kessler's Plan or both, I sure don't know. It's not like anyone ever talked to me.

Sunset fell fast because of the clouds. I kept working — pretending not to notice the occasional tutor, alone or with a group, and once Alsaes himself. That time my heartbeat kathumped, but he just stood there for a time, watching, a sneer on his face. He didn't say anything to me, and then suddenly — when I turned around from a retrieval run — he was gone.

My reward, at a quiet moment, was the sight of two shadows scurrying toward me — Irene and Diana.

“CJ!” Irene breathed. Diana just looked grim. Her arms were crossed

“How'd you get away? Is everything all right?”

“No time t'talk,” Diana said, uncrossing her arms and squirming. From under her shirt she pulled a handful of knives, and thrust them at me. Then she dashed away.

Irene yanked up her blouse and pulled three more from her waistband. Quickly, sneaking frequent looks in all directions, I stashed both sets of knives in the same way, pulling my shirt out to hang over and hide them. I wouldn't be able to sit down, but I didn't think I could anyway. I was now committed. There was no turning back, not with all those knives on me.

“Okay, thanks,” I said as I fingered the last one into place, angling the knife so I didn't have to walk like a zombie. “Tell you about it tomorrow, when victory is ours. Right now you better scram.”

“Um. I hope it works.” Irene cast a doubtful look at my waist, and then upward at the sky.

Just then some big, fat, warm raindrops hit me in the face. “Uh oh,” she muttered, and ran off.

I angled round the side of a building, hitherto empty. Light shone in the windows, startling me. I stifled the urge to run. No way could I manage a sprint and not lose those knives. I reminded myself that — until tomorrow, thank goodness — I was Kessler's “heir” and I could go anywhere I wanted.

So I made my way slowly back toward the main street. Once there, I had another awful thought. Maybe Kessler wanted me to come right in, sit down, and do a lesson with the maps. Hoo boy —

And right then my skirt began drooping slowly, the waistband sliding over my hips. Knife hilts poked at my shirt on all sides — no one was going to be fooled!

I stopped in a deserted pathway between two empty barracks buildings to readjust. How did those warrior types manage? I thought crossly as I quickly pulled free two knives that were poking me unmercifully at each step. These I slipped up my sleeves, with the blades resting on my forearm and the handles by my palms, hoping my wristbands would keep them in position.

I felt even more awkward than before, but I could move a bit better. I tried to walk normally, but I felt like a klanking robot monster.

I made it to the main street, glanced at Kessler's lit window, and whooshed a sigh of relief when I saw that he wasn't at his desk.

That relief lasted about the space of three breaths. A faint glow of white in the doorway of the building caught my attention, and fear jolted me hard when I made out Kessler's outline in the fast-gathering gloom. He seemed to be just standing there. Meditating? Waiting for a messenger? Or (gulp!) watching for me?

Rapidly I reviewed the day. Except for the knife-handoff, I'd been the model kiddie all day, just practicing, practicing, practicing. Even Alsaes had seen me at it, and I was sure if he'd found the least thing to criticize I probably would have gotten my ears blasted with his “wit.”

“Cherene,” Kessler said. “I was about to send someone to locate you.”

“Practicing,” I said with a casualness that sounded fake to my own ears. I babbled on. “Came back because I felt rain. Promises to be a wild night — ”

Just then the storm broke. Lightning flashed, blinding in its intensity, and at the same time as the rain started the thunder roared.

Through the sudden rain I saw a brief yellow glow in the jail door; the guards had gone inside. Would that make it easier? I didn't know — what I did know was that I'd better get up on the porch out of the rain before it made my clothes soggy, and clingy.

“Come inside.”

I could barely hear Kessler's voice. He looked, and sounded, like someone drugged. Lightning flashed again, but his huge black pupils did not get smaller — a mute reminder of his Chwahir heritage, for it was the same with them, from Shnit on downward. (Upward?)

He stared straight back at me, saying nothing. Danger burned through me, making my pulse hammer.

“I'm tired,” I said, before he could try to get me to sit down. “Big day tomorrow, and I was out in the sun all day.” Big fake yawn. “Gotta get my sleep.”

“No.” He grabbed at my wrist, and I evaded by lifting my hand to sling back my hair, hoping none of my knives would drop. Alarm made my heart thump wildly. I knew something was wrong. At the time — and immediately afterward — I thought it was the storm.

Thunder crashed again.

I said, “I don't have to stay, do I?”

“No,” he said. “Go.” And he watched me leave, still in that weird, blinkless stare.

It wasn't until later, much later, that I recognized what I ought to have seen at once — and I would have, had I been with a true friend, someone I knew and cared about.

The man who trusted his allies was battling disbelief.

And suspicion.

It was the eve of his greatest risk, everything he'd worked for — everything that had meaning for him.

It was also the night of my greatest risk, for none of my adventures so far had been this scary, this impossible to solve. Not even our encounters with Shnit, though there was one time nearly as bad. Rel had been there, too, when Shnit made me go as hostage rather than attack Colend. He'd come to the rescue that time.

Well, Rel was here now, but this time he was the prisoner, and the rescue was up to me.

I went to my room. My strongest wish was to get rid of the knives, but my strongest fear was that Kessler would come looking for me. Better to keep them on me. If heroes in stories can do it, I thought grimly (and how do they, anyway?) I could. So I lay carefully down, keeping myself flat, the knife hilts poking my ribs when I breathed. I didn't even reach for the diamond, which lay underneath the mattress, because I was so afraid that I'd lose one of those knives and it might clatter to the floor in the dark.

And I had to stay in the dark — if I lit the glowglobe, the light would shine under my door.

I lay and listened to the intermittent roar of rain washing away all the residual heat. Lightning flared blue, sometimes a weird light purple, and thunder shook the wooden building. Presently my room was cold, and my clothes were just damp enough to make me shiver.

Terror made the trembling worse.

Time stretched.

After an immeasurable wait I saw a faint change in the light, and got up carefully to ease my door open a crack. Kessler's office was now dark.

That meant it had to be about eleven, the time he often went to that nightmare place by magic.

Clutching at the knives to keep them in place, I tiptoed down the hall and looked out. The guards were still inside. Rain slanted steadily down, but it no longer mattered if I got wet. This was the next stage of commitment. I had no excuse to be out, not when I'd told Kessler that I was going to sleep.

So I splashed down the street toward Dejain's, hoping the heavy rain would keep me from being seen in case anyone would look out. As I snuck along I made and discarded excuses for being there if she came in. I really did not want to see her at all. I knew she had to be angry with me about that business with the poison-knife and Christoph.

I have to make it work.

I ran. Lumbered, really, because of all those knives. Sweet rainwater pelted my face, and I stuck out my tongue, pausing for one brief moment to enjoy the rain — a reminder of home, and sanity — before I remembered that if I didn't get moving, I'd be home again tomorrow, all right. With Kessler.

I turned away and tried Dejain's door.

When I'd seen the place on my previous two visits, there had been no sign of a bedroom, just the two rooms full of nice furnishings and work related stuff.

Scraping my wet hair off my face, I hustled inside. A glowglobe started to flicker to life, but I clapped and it went out again. Then I felt my way to the bookcase, and to the place where I knew that she kept the jail-spell book, the thin black one.

While Rasmusan overpowered the guards I could find the spell; I did not want to risk myself further by staying in Dejain's building. Better use the jail light, even if a fight was going on, than try a light here. No, better, go back to my room. Yeah.

Tucking the book between my arm and body (where it served to keep a couple knife hilts steadied) I reflected that at least it had few pages. I just hoped I could find the spell before Kessler saw the light under my door and came nosing around. Argh, argh. Well, I'd just have to chance it, I thought, as blue-white lightning briefly lit up the chamber.

My thoughts darted hither and thither like frenzied fireflies as I oozed out Dejain's door again.

And I began to run, the heavy, clodding steps of a person loaded with hardware she wasn't used to.

Ah, what a mess.

Where exactly did I slip up? I'll probably never know for sure, though it was probably in several places and ways.

I ran straight up the street, scanning as best as I could through the rain, but about fifty steps short of Kessler's building (which was still dark) a man's voice ripped out, clear even over the hissing downpour:

“Get her! Now!”

It was Alsaes.

Lightning zapped, starkly illuminating the street, the buildings, the half-dozen armed guards who converged efficiently, ringing me in a circle from which I could not escape. Three of them held torches — lit by magic. Still, I dashed this way and that, desperate for an opening, for escape, for a miracle, but none came.

“Drop those knives.”

No doubt about it. Alsaes was thoroughly enjoying every moment of my defeat.

A sword point poked me in the throat. Terrified, I dropped the book with a splat, yanked at my waistband and the knives splashed onto the ground under my skirt, the girls' notes with them.

“All of 'em.”

My numb fingers fumbled at the ones in my sleeves, and they dropped as well.

Lightning flashed.

Alsaes stood before me, grinning in triumph, his hair plastered on his forehead, his jaunty hat soggy, the feather bent and straggly.

While someone kept a sword pointed at my heart, he grabbed my arm, yanked me around, and then he tied my hands together — as if I could suddenly turn into Rel, and defeat them all with some amazing feat of grappling expertise and brute strength. As if I were any kind of threat at all.

I suspect that Alsaes just wanted to make me as uncomfortable as possible. He'd caught Kessler's pet in treachery, and he was going to wrest every bit of fun he could from it.

He didn't know — never would know — that my own horror, that sickening sense of double betrayal, was much worse inside my own mind than any of his bullying or ropes or weapon-brandishing.

Once my hands were tied he shoved me in the back and I lurched, stumbling forward. Only quick steps — avoiding the knives still lying on the ground — kept me from falling face first into the muddy street.

“Kessler!” Alsaes bellowed, pushing me the last few steps until we were between the jail and the office building. “Kessler! Come out here!”

Kessler was visible in the lit window.

He passed out of the glowing window-frame and then reappeared in the doorway, his face tense and still in the brief glare of more lightning.

Alsaes jumped up onto the porch, triumph evident in his brisk movements, in his voice. He started gabbling accusations, a rapid succession that Kessler, at first, did not respond to by a look or word.

“The prisoners all know your name,” Alsaes finished, in a toadying voice of fake horror. “And they're part of her plot. She'd got one of Dejain's books right here! Knives from the Halian-group's weapons stores! These notes, probably more treason — ” He held up the girls' notes, but they were soggy and shredded, and they had to be totally unreadable. So he brandished Dejain's book instead, mud dripping off it in glops. “It has to be obvious even to you that she
was
planning to kill you!”

Kessler looked at me at last, his expression unreadable in the faint light reflected from his window.

“Is he speaking the truth?”

I opened my mouth to deny the last accusation, for of all of them that one at least wasn't true.

Or was it? I thought desolately. To be honest I assumed that the prisoners would do the dirty deed — or Rasmusan. But I wouldn't have stopped them, that's for sure. So that made me just as responsible as whoever would have wielded the knife.

The time for lies was over. A tiny spurt of relief, just enough to make me defiant, prompted me to say, “Yes.”

Kessler stared down at me for a long, terrible moment. Then, suddenly, moving with that swiftness characteristic of his family, he hit me across the face.

I would have gone headlong, too, had not Alsaes viciously shoved me more-or-less upright from behind, in case Kessler wanted another crack at me. But he was done.

“Shall I throw her in the prison?” Alsaes gloated.

Kessler turned around and went back inside his office, without another glance at any of us.