Wasteland

7

Once on the upper level, they hurried along the balcony looking out over one of the main corridors. Rather than a railing, it had a short wall at the edge. They went past side halls and room after room until they finally reached the room Richard was looking for. He opened the door and then stood in the doorway, staring into the darkness within, his anger on a slow boil.

Coming back out, he looked farther down the balcony and saw light coming from one of the other rooms. Three soldiers of the First File on patrol coming along the balcony from the other way eyed the room on their way past it. Each big man had on dark leather armor over chain mail. Each carried a sword sheathed at a hip along with knives. One also had an axe held in a leather holder that covered the sharp blade edges. The wooden handle hung down, swinging freely as he walked. Each had a beard and strands of long dark hair that flowed down over broad shoulders. Their arms looked like they could have been carved from blocks of granite. They were the kind of soldiers that no one would want to cross, the kind of men of the First File who were widely feared.

Richard signaled and the three soldiers sped up a little, then came to a stop when they reached him and his group.

“I’d like you three men to come with me,” Richard told them as he gestured back the way they had come.

They clapped meaty fists to their hearts and then fell in behind Kahlan and Shale, but ahead of the Mord-Sith. The five Mord-Sith were not happy about that, but let it go for the time being because Richard had already started out and they had to catch up as it was.

Shale leaned in close from behind so only Richard would hear her. “I thought the plan was not to let any soldiers see us?”

He knew what she meant. “When we leave, yes. But right now, we can’t avoid it. There have already been hundreds of pairs of eyes on us all along the way coming up here. Don’t forget, it’s not only soldiers the goddess could use. She can use anyone who isn’t gifted. For now, though, it can’t be avoided. Worse, the goddess doesn’t need to possess the person, she merely needs to take a look through any of those eyes to keep track of us. The people she used wouldn’t even know she was doing it. Unless, that is, she exerted control over them to make them do her bidding, like she did with Dori—remember?”

Shale nodded with a grim expression on her beguiling features.

With everyone following behind, Richard hurried to the open doorway with light coming from inside. He paused with his hands on the sides of the doorframe.

A clean-shaven, middle-aged man was sitting behind a desk, bent over his work. A lamp sat on either end of the desk. The man blindly dipped a quill pen in an ink bottle as he focused on jotting notes on a collection of papers arrayed before him.

Richard stepped through the doorway and into the room. The Mord-Sith pushed past the soldiers, like going around giant oak trees, and came into the room behind Richard. The man working behind the desk finally noticed all the people and stood.

“Lord Rahl, you’re out late. How may I help you?”

Richard thought the man might be rattled to have the Lord Rahl and a party that included soldiers and Mord-Sith show up at his door. Instead, he seemed calm and interested in what Richard needed. His blue-edged white robes of office with the gold bands on the sleeves were lying over a chair. The man apparently didn’t care to wear them when he was working and instead was in his shirtsleeves.

“What is your name?”

The man bowed his head of thick, dark hair. “Edward Harris, at your service, Lord Rahl. I am second-in-command to Mr. Burkett.”

“And where is Mr. Burkett? I need to speak with him at once.”

“I believe Mr. Burkett has gone home for the day. But it sounds like it’s urgent.” Edward Harris gestured to the side. “His quarters aren’t far away. I can take you there, if you wish.”

Richard held an arm out behind him. “Lead the way.”

Harris hurried around the desk, not bothering with his robes, and went out to the balcony area, where he turned to his left. At an intersection he led Richard and his party down a simple-looking side hall that turned away from the balcony. A short distance down the hall, he came to a door with Burkett’s name on a small plaque to the side.

Harris lifted a hand toward the door. “These are his quarters, Lord Rahl. Do you wish me to wait?”

Richard nodded to the man and then knocked. “For now, yes.”

When there was no answer, Richard knocked again, more insistently, and then a third time. Finally, he tried the door and found it locked.

Richard, what little patience he had now gone, threw his shoulder hard against the door. The door offered little resistance to his weight or mood. It stayed on its hinges as it banged back against the inside wall. Everyone stepped out of the way as splinters of the wooden doorjamb skittered across the floor of the hall. Knowing how upset Richard was, no one said a word.

Richard charged into the room without waiting for a greeting or an invitation. Burkett, in his stocking feet and still in his official robes, looked up with bloodshot eyes, but didn’t get up from a chair at a table against the far wall. He had a bottle in one hand. The room was orderly and well-appointed with simple but comfortable-looking furniture. A dark doorway probably led to a bedroom. Richard didn’t see a wife or anyone else in the apartment.

“I knocked,” Richard said. “Why didn’t you answer?”

“Because my workday is done,” he said in a slur. “I don’t like people bothering me after work.” Burkett tried to set the bottle down on the table, but it took him three tries to find it. “What’s the meaning of this, anyway? What is it you want?”

Richard seized the man by his tunic, lifted him out of the chair, and slammed him up against the wall. No one, including a surprised Edward Harris, said anything.

Richard clenched his jaw with barely contained anger. “I told you that I wanted to see all the gifted. You told me that you had all the gifted in the palace collected and sent to the library.”

“That’s what I did.” Burkett licked his tongue out from under his overbite. “That was all the gifted living in the palace or staying here as guests, just as you asked.”

Richard pulled the man away from the wall and slammed him into it again, banging his head hard enough to crack the plaster. His thin hair slipped off the top of his head where it had been covering his daisylike birthmark and fell down across his red face.

“You lied then and you’re lying right now,” Richard said through gritted teeth. “You didn’t tell me about all the gifted.”

Burkett tried, as best he could what with being held up in the air and hard against the wall by an angry Lord Rahl, to gesture his innocence.

“I didn’t lie! I told you about all of them. I had all of them collected. All the gifted in the palace were sent to meet you up at the library, just as you asked. I saw to it. I have them all listed.”

Richard lifted him away and threw him against the wall again. By now the shock was sobering him up a bit.

“You lied and you’re lying now!”

Burkett’s tongue licked out from under his overbite. “No, I’m telling you the truth. Those were the only gifted living or staying at the palace. Why would you doubt my word?”

“You keep track of everything going on in the palace for the Lord Rahl. That has always been your job. Your office keeps records of the visitors, the dignitaries, and the gifted living here. Especially the gifted. That was the most important duty you had for Darken Rahl, and you have a network of people everywhere who report everything to you, especially about the gifted, because Darken Rahl, like those before him, would not have tolerated you not reporting all of the gifted to him.

“You are the spider in the center of that web, and you know when anyone plucks one of those strands. I am the Lord Rahl now, and I asked for that same information you have always kept for the Lord Rahl. I asked you for all the gifted, and you deliberately didn’t tell me about all of them.”

“But I did, I swear! I swear I told you about every one of them. Every one!”

Richard cocked his head, gritting his teeth again as he put his face closer to the man. “You swear?” Richard asked. “Is that right? You swear?”

Burkett nodded furiously. “Yes. I swear.”

“What about Moravaska Michec?”

The blood drained from Burkett’s red face.