The Tower of Fear (11 page)

The women had finished passing out food. They stepped away from the children and waited. The four men got shovels and bags and went back into the foliage, apparently to clean up after the rock apes. None of the adults said a word.

Some of the children finished quickly. What they did then seemed to depend on the child. Some took their dishes to the women, who scraped the remains of their meals onto one of several metal trays sitting atop their cart. When one of those was full one of the men took it into the foliage for the rock apes. He brought a dirty pan back.

Most of the children were not bold enough to approach the women. They just left their plates where they were and moved away. The men collected them for the women.

The giant man never left the entrance.

The adults all went away.

Zouki spent a long time in a bubble of fear, homesickness, and longing for his mother. But curiosity about the apes slowly intruded upon his misery. He finally went to see what could be seen.

Before he got to the foliage the men and women appeared again, pushing carts that were not the same as those they had brought before. Once more the giant stood guard after the carts had come into the cage.

Each of the women selected a child that she led to a cart. The kids went docilely. The women stripped them naked and lifted them into the carts and began to wash and scrub them.

The carts were tubs on wheels. Part of them, anyway.

Zouki did not like baths. He asked the girl who had spoken to him earlier, “Do we all have to take a bath?”

“You do. You’re new.”

Holy Aram! They were even washing their hair! He hated having his hair washed more than he hated anything else in the world. He thought about running to hide with the apes, but he could not move.

The women removed their victims from the tubs, toweled them off, and dressed them in clean clothing taken from a hamper on the end of the cart. Then they went after more kids.

One headed straight for Zouki!

His muscles refused to act. He could do nothing but shake and start to leak tears.

The woman was not unkind as she took his hand, hoisted him, and led him unresisting to her cart.

He did not fight back till he saw the pitcher rising to dump water over his head. He squealed and batted at it, missed. The water gushed down over his head while a firm hand held him still. He shrieked then, and started pumping his legs up and down, running in place, splashing.

Firm hands sat him down in the water and forced him to lean forward. Water cascaded over him, leaving him sputtering. Hands began rubbing soap into his scalp. But after the indignity of the wash and rinse there was more, something that smelled vile and burned his head.

A woman’s voice asked, “Is this the new one?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Another woman. The one torturing him.

“Is he in good shape?”

“Except for head and body lice, which they all have when they come in, he appears to be in good health and excellent physical condition.”

“Good. Are you about ready to pull him out of there?”

“One more rinse, ma’am.”

Water splashed over Zouki’s head. Then hands hoisted him out of the tub, set him on the floor, began drying his hair with a towel. He opened his eyes.

Facing him was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

She reached out and took his face between her hands, her palms against his cheeks, and made him look into her eyes. “Don’t be afraid. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

“I want mom!”

“I know.” She patted his cheek.

The woman toweling Zouki asked, “Is he the one, ma’am?”

“I don’t think so, Not obviously.”

Zouki thought she looked very sad.

*   *   *

Arif considered the tactical situation. Mom was trying to get dressed while Stafa was trying to climb on her and Mish was complaining about something Nana had said to her. None of them were watching the door. It was a good time to go see what was happening.

He just walked out the door like it was something he was allowed to do anytime he wanted.

As children will, he had forgotten to take into account all facets of the situation. His grandmother grabbed hold of his clothing and with one yank sat him down beside her. “Where do you think you’re going, Arif?”

“I was just…”

“Just what, Arif?”

“Just going to see what the Dartars are doing.” He stuck out his lower lip.

“A bird is going to nest there.” Nana pinched his lip. “You know the rule. You and Stafa can’t go out unless a grown-up goes with you.”

“I was just going right up there.”

“Right up there is where the bad man grabbed Zouki yesterday. Remember?”

“Well, he wouldn’t grab me! If he did I’d punch him in the nose! I’d punch him so hard…”

“Arif!” Nana glared at him. Her face was starkly serious. “This isn’t a game. It isn’t play. It’s real. How are you going to get away from the bad men when you can’t even get away from your old Nana?” She reiterated, “It’s not a game, Arif. Now tell me the rules. What are you supposed to do?”

Lip out farther, Arif began reciting the litany of responses he was to make if somebody tried to kidnap him.

Mish rushed out of the house. “Mom, did you see Arif? He…” She saw him sitting there. Almost instantly, her eye strayed to the Dartars up the street. She did not hear a word Nana said. She always got deaf whenever Mom or Nana started yelling at her.

*   *   *

Azel strolled all the way around Government House twice, looking to see who was watching, if anyone was. He did not spot anyone. If someone was around he was good enough not to give himself away. That would be unusual for the ground-level men of the Living and impossible for the Dartars, who could not—and probably would not—disguise themselves as anything but what they were. There were jokes and parables about the Dartar inability to adapt. “Stubborn as a Dartar,” was a maxim as old as Qushmarrah itself.

Azel strolled to a tradesman’s entrance, knocked. A soldier opened a peekhole. “What you want?” he demanded.

“I got to see Colonel Bruda about the cut flowers he ordered.” He grinned. The guy wouldn’t know what the hell was going on, but he’d have a damned good idea, what with all the guys coming around about flowers for the Colonel. He could not be unique, could he? What the hell would a Colonel do with a ton of posies?

The Herodian bolted up behind Azel. In his own language he told his partner, “I’m going to take this gink up to Bruda. Hold the fort.”

The partner grunted. He had not bothered to look up from his lap. Too long in garrison, Azel figured.

His guide led him through dusty, seldom-used passages. He amused himself trying to estimate Government House’s backdoor traffic from the disturbances in the dust. He played the same game every time.

The guide turned into the long north-south hall. Azel glanced back. Nobody behind them. Nobody up ahead. There never was, but you had to check. You didn’t let up.

Should he do it?

Why the hell not? There wasn’t a damned thing they could do. He grinned.

He got his weight behind the punch and buried it in the soldier’s left kidney. The man folded around the blow, then crumpled. Azel leaned against the wall and waited. When the soldier finally began to get himself together and looked up, there were tears in his eyes.

“Gink, eh? You gotta learn not to let your asshole overload your brain.” He said it in Herodian vulgate, not the formal, upper-class Herodian most outsiders learned.

He saw something stir behind the soldier’s eyes. “Don’t even think about it. I’d tie your ears in a bowknot.” He extended a helping hand. “Let’s go see the Messenger of the Faith.” Though most everyone, including the common Herodian soldiers, used old-fashioned designations, among themselves the true believers used ranks that were religious.

The man let Azel help. He started off unsteadily, bent slightly, head hanging.

“I don’t reckon I hit you that hard, but if you start pissing blood you better see your regimental doc.”

The soldier said nothing. He took Azel up several floors and into a room where a Herodian ensign, still looking forward to his first shave, jumped up and opened another door, said something to someone on the other side. Then he told Azel, “He’ll see you in a minute.”

The soldier shuffled out.

“What was the matter with him?”

“Made a mistake. Made an ethnic slur.”

The boy did not meet his eye. Azel grinned, moved to a window, looked out at the bay. Hell of a view of the harbor. He wondered if he’d ever go to sea again. Not likely. That was a young man’s game. A young, stupid, blind man’s game. If you saw or figured out what you were walking into you didn’t walk.

“Rose?”

Azel turned. Colonel Bruda beckoned him. Azel followed him into the other room, grinning. He was not a tall man himself but he could see the top of Bruda’s shiny head. “I figured out how you guys can win every battle from here on in.”

Bruda faced him, frowning.

“You just pick a sunny day for the fight, put all your officers out front, and have them bow to the enemy.”

Bruda’s frown deepened. He did not get it.

“I never seen a one of you guys that was over twenty-five that wasn’t bald as a lizard’s egg. You’d blind them with the reflections. Then you could just go finish them off.”

“Your sense of humor is something we don’t need, Rose.”

“You need some of my talents, you take them all.”

“Consider the possibility that you may not be as indispensable as you’d like to think, Rose.”

Azel grinned. Bruda was as predictable as sundown. “Hell. You know, Governor Straba said something just like that when he still thought I worked for him and not for Cado.”

Bruda lost some color.

These Herodians were something. Hell on a six-legged camel in a gang, with their vaunted discipline and religious fervor. But catch them solo with a crack like that and they drizzled down their legs.

Of course, Bruda was the investigator of record in the hard, messy death of Governor Straba. Not a very good investigator, Colonel Bruda. He hadn’t caught a whiff of the truth. He had no idea that Azel wasn’t the killer.

Let him think whatever he wanted if it kept his knees knocking.

Azel had traced the murderer but had kept that to himself. It might be useful someday.

“You’ll have to wait a few minutes, Rose. He’s with someone. But he knows you’re here.”

“All right.” Azel went to the window and contemplated the harbor. For the serenity of the sea … The serenity that masked the darknesses moving in the deeps, beneath the turquoise surface. Heavenstone, the Dartars called it. Ha. Nothing to do with heaven. Gorloch knew.

Gorloch knew that behind every facade there was nothing but shadow. Ultimately, there was nothing but The Shadow.

Gorloch knew.

Bruda made little noises behind him as he tried to work but could not concentrate. Azel heard his sigh of relief when the room’s second door opened.

“Rose?”

Azel turned. “Ah. My favorite courtier.”

The man’s name was Taliga. Like all the Herodian aristocracy he was short and bald. Azel made no secret of the fact that he thought Taliga an incompetent asshole who would starve to death quickly if ever Cado—his brother-in-law—got an attack of smarts and planted a boot in his butt.

On some level Taliga was aware that he was a parasite. He hated Azel for waving it in front of him, in public. He was Azel’s deadliest living enemy.

Azel knew that. He had created Taliga deliberately. Someday the Herodians would deem him a greater liability than an asset. When that decision was made he wanted the sanction handed to an incompetent first. Taliga was his alarm.

He did not bait the man today, beyond the initial crack. He attempted small talk, grinning all the time. Friendliness, too, would set Taliga’s teeth on edge. It was a Herodian maxim that your enemies were at their friendliest and most solicitous just before they sank the knife in your back.

The military governor awaited them in a small, spartan room on the highest level of Government House. His own quarters. He took the admonitions of his faith personally. He said, “Thank you, Taliga. Good morning, Rose. It’s been a while.”

Azel waited till Taliga was out of the room. “Hasn’t been anything worth coming in about.”

“What did you do to Taliga this time? He was severely distressed.”

“Nothing, General. I was the soul of civility. I asked about his wife and daughters. I commiserated properly when he reported that your sister has been suffering from a recurring flux.”

“You’re a dangerous man, Rose. You know us entirely too well.”

“Sir?”

“And you dissemble altogether too convincingly. But I suppose that’s why you’re so good at what you do and I should be thankful you work for me and not for my enemies.”

“There’s truth in that, sir.”

“You’re also altogether too blunt. It makes you needless enemies. Someday Taliga will try to kill you.”

“To carry bluntness a step further, sir, if he tries that they’ll find pieces of him in every quarter of Qushmarrah.”

“He’s not much, Rose, but he’s family.”

Azel restrained a smile. Something had given unflappable, pudgy, but tough-as-shield-leather Cado a sour stomach and he wanted to work it off with some verbal fencing. “I like working for you, sir. But I like being alive even better. I ain’t let nobody push me since I was seven years old. Ain’t likely I’d start now. It’s like, anybody who ever leaned on me and had to pay the price belonged to somebody’s family.”

“So. Let’s stop being bull apes pounding our chests. You’re here after a long drought. Does this mean there’s finally something worth reporting?”

“Not much. The Living are either falling apart or going underground completely. Probably both. And mostly falling apart in the Hahr.”

“That’s where al-Akla executed those men.”

“One sign of an impending collapse.”

“Al-Akla’s little scheme is beginning to work, then.”

“Those guys made it work. The thing that brought me in, it ain’t much more than a rumor, but if it’s true it’s sure the Living is coming apart, at least in the Hahr.”