Sword Bound

Chapter 38

I WAS FAIRLY CERTAIN I’D BEEN IN THE ROOM BEFORE. If not, in one exactly like it. Same small, squared windows high in the wall; same door with hinges and lock on the outside, a lip over the jamb so nothing could be inserted; and a wooden cot. A nightcrock.

Tariq, again, shut one hand very tightly into my harness and let the flesh over my kidney once again make an acquaintance with his oh-so-delicate knife. Hamzah squatted, unlocked the ankle shackles. Even as he did so, Tariq pressed the knife point slightly more deeply. I knew very well what he was doing. While the repeated wounds were nothing more than slices, they were also promises. Umir’s men wanted no surprises from me as they took off the shackles.

Next, the wrists. This time Tariq didn’t use the knife. Instead, a knuckled punch struck me hard right where the knife had been, immediately over my kidney. I arched backward, fighting the pain, and Hamzah took off the wrist shackles before I could do anything. As he and Tariq let go of me, as they went out the door, chains and shackles clanking, the best I could do was fall to hands and knees. No fight from me.

For some time I knelt on the floor, willing the pain away. Slowly I got to my feet. A burst of pain slammed me in the kidney and all the muscles tightened. I swore, gingerly tried to stretch. But not such a good idea.

I strung together some of the vilest curses I could think of or invent, and walked carefully to the cot. I sat down. Waited for the worst of the pain to pass. Once most of it did, I stood up again. I threw the cot over onto its side. Sat down on one of the topmost wooden legs, and bounced. Twice, and the leg cracked right off the frame.

On my most recent visit a couple of years ago, I’d used a broken cot leg as a sparring blade, to make myself fit again. This time I’d employ it as something else.

I stepped to the door. Knocked gently on it to measure the thickness, the sound. Then I began bashing the leg into the door over and over again.

The exercise would not harm or open the door on its own, but it would make it impossible to ignore me. And then a person would open the door.

Bash—bash—bash—

Bash—bash—bash—

After a few more bashes the leg cracked lengthwise and fell apart in my hands. I tossed the pieces aside. Went back to the cot. Broke another leg off it, returned to the door.

Bash—bash—bash—

My lower back hurt like hoolies with the exertion so soon after a kidney punch. I ignored it by bashing the leg against the door all the harder.

I heard voices outside. I stopped bashing long enough to set my face against the door. I shouted. “I can do this all night!” Bash— “Really I can.” Bash—

“Stop!” someone shouted from the other side of the door.

Bash—bash—

“My master says to ask what you want! Other than your freedom, of course!”

Oddly, that made me grin. Bash—bash—bash—

“STOP!”

I stopped. “Take me to Del. That’s all I want. Take me to her.”

Silence.

“All right,” I called. “Here I go…”

“STOP! STOP!” The tone sounded frenzied. “I’ll ask my master!”

I waited until it was likely he’d gone. I rested a couple of minutes, panting, then began again.

Bash—bash—bash—

The master apparently did give permission for me to be moved to wherever Del was because not long after my request, the door lock rattled. I knew how the game was played; I’d played it here before. I walked to the far wall, tossed the cot leg aside, and waited peacefully.

Hamzah first. Tariq next. Shackles and chains.

“Are you his favorites?” I asked. “Does he have you do any additional services for him other than catching people? You know—services.”

They were too professional to get angry. In fact, they looked almost bored.

“Take me to Del,” I said.

Tariq smiled. “We may just clear the room of all furniture, even the nightcrock. Then what would you do?”

“Yell. Want to hear me?”

Hamzah shook his head in mild disparagement. “We’ll take you to her. But if you try anything, you’ll never see her again.”

“Umir wouldn’t kill her,” I said sharply. “He’s never been that kind of man.”

“No, no,” Hamzah said. “I meant exactly what I said. You’ll never see her again. That does not necessarily require killing either of you.”

No, it didn’t.

I put out my hands. Hamzah locked shackles over my wrists again. The connecting chain was exceedingly short. “Try us,” Hamzah suggested.

I shook my head. “Just take me to her.”

They did.

Del was in what appeared to be the healer’s quarters. She was not in a cell but an alcove that adjoined a larger room containing cabinets of herbs, pots and bottles, rolled cloth, rolled paper, any number of other things I could not identify. A table was nearly as crowded with various items, including candles, oil burners, lamps. Herbs hung from strings stretched across the room. All of them lent the air an odd mixture of astringency, sweet spice, and something that made me cough.

Tariq and Hamzah stood on either side of me. A man came out from the alcove, a question in his face. He looked at them, then at me.

“He’s to stay with the woman,” Hamzah said. “Someone will wait outside the door. He’s a prisoner.”

The healer said in a surpassingly dry tone, “I rather assumed that when I saw the shackles.”

“Del,” I said curtly, staring at the man.

The healer made dismissing gestures to Tariq and Hamzah. “Go. Go. This is not a place for swords and knives. This is the place where I repair what swords and knives have done.” And before I could once again demand to see Del, he held out a beckoning hand, indicating the antechamber.

It was small, low, arched. A narrow cot was pushed against the wall. A lantern hung from the ceiling on a chain.

She lay on her back beneath two blankets, a pillow under her head. She remained very pale, but there was faint color in her lips again. I knelt down beside the cot. “Oh, bascha…I’m so sorry.”

The healer stood behind me. “Did you know she was pregnant?”

I wanted to stroke her head and hair, but to do so would likely result in shackles and chain striking her. “No,” I said. “She hadn’t told me. Will she be all right?”

“She lost a lot of blood. Did it come on suddenly?”

I related what physical insults Del had suffered, from the man sitting on her to the pommel pressing hard against her abdomen all the way to Umir’s from the oasis. And the blood when they took her down from the saddle.

The healer’s expression was grim. “It’s not unusual for a woman to miscarry. But the cause of this was probably everything that happened today. She needs rest, water, broths to eat.”

“Did they tell you she’s a prisoner, too?”

“I assumed it.”

I was disgusted. “And yet you willingly serve Umir.”

His face tightened. “You had best be thankful I do, or I would not be here to render aid. You’d still be shackled like a beast, and she would be dead of blood loss.”

I bent forward, pressed lips against her brow. “Heal well, bascha. Rest well. There’s no need to leave just yet.”

The healer emitted a dry cough of a laugh. “You won’t be leaving until my master says so.” He paused. “My name is Wahzir.”

I turned from where I knelt on the floor, looked up at him. He was a small man, slight of frame, most of graying hair missing from the top of a brown skull. A beak of a nose dominated his face. His eyes were the rare shade between brown and green. Thin skin stretched tautly over pronounced facial bones. The robe he wore was of an excellent weave and weight, dyed gray-blue.

I restrained an angry response and swallowed back the taste of fear. “Will she live?”

“She should,” Wahzir replied, “but I make no promises. I do what I can do and leave the rest to the gods.”

The gods. The gods. Always the gods. I didn’t believe in them. But then, I’d never believed in magic, either. So, just in case, I asked within my head that the gods heal Delilah.

I moved to the end of her bed and propped myself against the wall there so I could watch her face. Shackles clinked.

Wahzir frowned. “Stand up.”

“What?”

“Stand up. The way you moved bothers me.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’ve asked it. If you like, I’ll add a ‘please.’ Please get up.”

I got up. Ow. Wahzir moved behind me, set a hand on the small of my back right where my kidney was. Since I was only in dhoti and harness, I felt his dry touch. I winced.

“Well, you’ll be pissing blood for a few days.”

“I know that!”

“Or you’ll die.”

“Die?”

His tone was quite matter-of-fact. “Oh yes. You can die of a hard blow to the kidney. The organ rots inside you. It poisons the blood—”

“Stop,” I said, feeling queasy again. “I don’t need to know the details.” I moved away from the healer and resumed my place against the wall, upper body propped up as I sat. It stretched the insulted muscles in the small of my back.

Wahzir disappeared a moment, then returned, dragging a stool into the alcove. He sat down, very much at ease. But he looked thoughtful. “What is it about you that makes my master want you? What are you to do?”

I shrugged. “He did not take me into his confidence.”

The healer thought a moment longer, eyes narrowed, lips twisted. He was turning something over in his head. And then he began to laugh. “It’s the book! The Book of Udre-Natha! So, the rumors are true! Now it fits together—the puzzle is solved!”

“What rumors?”

Wahzir showed small, even teeth briefly in an amused smile. “That you had locked it against all others and only a mage can do so. Only a mage may open it.” The smile remained, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “You gave the book to my master knowing he couldn’t open it, because you—a mage—closed it. Locked it with spells. Then you disappeared before Umir could do anything about it. But a man recently brought word where you lived, and that you were going north. Umir knew you’d return to the South. And he knew how to find you on the way. No one bypasses that big oasis.”

No. No one did.

“I’m sure Hamzah and Tariq were growing very bored, waiting for you.” He laughed again. “All is explained.”

There was no reason to deny it. “You’ve seen it? The Book?”

“Oh, yes. My master likes people to know what he owns; he doesn’t hide all away. His pride is his collection. We’re all allowed to see it.”

It crossed my mind that he might be lying. Umir was a subtle man. “Describe it for me.”

“I don’t need to.” Wahzir rose, left the alcove. I heard him rustling papers, moving pots around, shoving things aside. Finally he returned with a large book in his hands. “Is this it?”

It was a plain, leather-bound book. No inset gemstones, gold or silver scrollwork, no burned-in knotwork designs that might set it apart from other books. Hinges and locked latch and hasp were made of patinaed copper, and time-darkened gut threaded the pages onto the spine.

I looked from the book to Wahzir.

He smiled. “I thought perhaps it might be a copy. But it isn’t, is it?”

“What are you doing with it?” I made a gesture to encompass the larger room, astonished that Wahzir not only had it, but that a book of such power, a grimoire, would be jumbled together with everything else in an untidy room.

“Trying to open it,” he said lightly. “I’m a mage.”

“A mage?”

“Mage-healer.”

I’d heard of them. I’d never met one before. “But why here?” I asked. “Shouldn’t it be kept in a safer place?”

“I told my master I could not be expected to sit alone in a reception chamber and open it. I required what I was most accustomed to, and that is here in this room. The book was brought to me.”

I played over something he’d said. I was very careful with my words and intonation. “Trying to open it.”

“And failing.”

“But you’re a mage.”

He sighed. “We are not infallible.”

I began to be a little concerned. I’d always detested magic, and most of what was claimed to be magic, wasn’t. But I’d learned. I’d been taught that lesson atop the stone spires of Meteiera. “You said you know something now. That you understood the puzzle.”

“I know why my master has done what he’s done, yes. And why. The rumors about you are true. My master wants you for the magic in your bones.”

Ignoring him, I got up again, moved back to Del’s bedside and sat once more. “Bascha?”

“I gave her a draught,” he said. “She won’t waken for quite some time.”

Bitterly I asked, “Umir’s idea?”

“No. Mine. She needs to remain very still or the bleeding might begin again.”

I turned, leaned my back against the edge of the bed. My kidney stabbed with pain, and I couldn’t suppress a grimace. I closed my eyes, sighed very deeply. Shackles rattled in my lap.

“He wishes very badly that the book be opened, does my master.”

I grunted.

The book lay on his lap. “Would you do me the favor of pushing your hair back?”

I stared at him in bafflement. “Push my hair back? What in hoolies for?”

“Will you?”

“There’s no reason I should do any such thing.”

“Please.”

We stared at one another a long moment. I was angry, frustrated, and he knew it; he was calm, patient, and I knew that. So I skinned my hair back from my forehead, baring the edge of blue tattoos that ran all along my hairline.

“Ahhh.” He smiled. “Thank you. I’d always heard of the mages of Meteiera, but had never met one.”

I let my hair flop back over my brow. “Yes, I’m very unique.” And kept the tattoos hidden with hair. The mages of Meteiera shaved their heads.

“Is it true that you’ll go mad and die in ten years?”

I had seen men leap from the spires in the moment before the madness overtook them, killing themselves so they would do no harm to people they loved. Not all had the will to leap. Some had indeed gone back to families, thinking they could control the madness—and slaughtered them when the magic overwhelmed their minds.

I told Wahzir the absolute truth. “I’m a sword-dancer,” I said. “That’s all. A long life lies ahead of me.”

Wahzir smiled sadly. “The book must be opened.”

“Hunh. Umir should know by now that I don’t surrender quite so easily.”

“You must,” he repeated. “Please.”

I scowled at him. “‘Please’ isn’t going to work this time. I don’t know what Umir’s paying you, but it’s not going—”

He broke in. “He’s not paying me. I’m part of his collection.”

It stopped me cold. I stared at him.

“Part of his collection,” he repeated. “There aren’t many of us left, you see, we mage-healers, so here I am.” He shrugged lightly, as if resigned. “But when I tell you the book must be opened, it has nothing to do with me, or even my master. It has to do with you and your future.”

That was odd. “My future?”

Wahzir’s eyes were kind, but also sad. “Umir has your daughter.”