The Heart of the Mirage Page 9

  ‘What did happen? Achates, I’m not here to punish you. Whatever you say to me will not be repeated to any military authority. That is not the way the Brotherhood works. We deal with information—the truth. Tell me exactly what happened as you remember it, and the only thing I’ll tell your commanding officer is that you’ve been cooperative. Lie to me, and you earn the enmity of the Brotherhood. And I think you know what that means. We are not beyond using the torture iron ourselves.’

  He nodded with unhappy wariness. ‘He was—Legata, he wasn’t like no ordinary man. He was a kind of—of numen. Or worse.’ He looked thoroughly miserable. ‘If I do tell the truth, you’ll call me a liar.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘Legata, I hardly believe it m’self.’

  ‘Achates, just tell me what happened.’

  He licked his lips nervously. ‘Well, Rego—Regius, that is, he was in charge. He did try to torture the fellow. But this Mir Ager, he could do things other men can’t. He could make things, um, happen. Things that should never be able to happen. I even—well, to tell the truth, I wondered if he could be a—well, an immortal.’

  I just stopped myself from snorting. Immortals were the offspring of a god, or goddess, and an ordinary human. Supposedly, they could not die of illness or old age, although, as there were ways in which they could be killed, their claim to true immortality was suspect. They were reputed to have certain magical powers. There were hundreds of temple stories, religious-based myths, about how gods and goddesses came down from their heavenly home in Elysium to seduce mortal men or women, but oddly enough all such stories seemed to be about the past. From time to time someone would come forward to proclaim themselves an immortal, but they were always ultimately exposed as a fraud.

  Once Achates started to talk, the story came pouring out of him as though he was glad to be able to tell someone. Mir Ager, he said, was brought into the prison cells unconscious, with a lump on the side of his head. The moment he showed signs of regaining consciousness he was chained to the interrogation table, in itself a form of torture because the table was covered with uneven protuberances that dug into a man’s spine. He’d answered the first question, a request for his name, readily enough: they could call him Mir Ager, he said. But when they asked other questions, he refused to reply, or gave smart-tongued answers.

  Regius then ordered Achates to take the cane and beat the soles of the man’s feet, which he did. After a while Achates had the strange feeling he wasn’t actually touching the man at all; that the cane was stopped just short of him, as though an invisible sheet of glass covered his feet. The beating certainly didn’t seem to disturb Mir Ager. It didn’t even seem to mark him.

  Regius became irate at the lack of reaction from the prisoner. He ordered the irons heated and said he was going to put out one of Mir Ager’s eyes to see how he would enjoy that. Mir Ager showed no signs of worry. Then, when Regius held the red-hot iron up and began to cross from the fire to the interrogation table, there was a flash of light and the iron suddenly melted, dripping molten metal all over Regius’s hand. Mir Ager laughed and none of them doubted the Kardi had been responsible.

  They left him on the table that night and returned the next morning. Regius was in terrible pain and ready to tear the Kardi apart. They walked into the cell to find Mir Ager had managed to free himself from the manacles that had held him. They were in pieces all over the floor, as if they had been cut. The wooden bar on the iron-reinforced door was almost broken through—and the bar was on the outside. True, there had been a crack between the door and the door jamb, but it was just that: a crack. Wide enough for a papyrus sheet to have slipped through, nothing more. Yet Mir Ager had been within a whisker of breaking out of the room.

  None of them could discover how he had done any of it. After that, they doubled the number of chains he wore.

  Regius wasn’t about to try heated irons again after what had happened the day before. Instead, he ordered the Kardi to be suspended from the ceiling by his arms, with his feet off the floor. Then a weight was hooked onto his foot-manacles so that it, too, was off the floor. By this time, they were so rattled by the man’s abilities none of them wanted to stay and watch. They left him like that, alone, for half an hour while they waited outside. When they re-entered, at the very least they hoped to find him subdued, if not begging for mercy. Instead, he was sitting on the floor, unhooking the weight. The chain they had hung him from had snapped in two.

  Again Achates licked dry lips. ‘We was real scared, Legata,’ he said. ‘Me and the other assistant was begging Rego to forget the whole thing, but Rego was as riled as a fly-blown gorclak. So we doubled the chains and hauled the bastard up again. We’d barely finished, when the whole room was filled with light, golden light. The pain of it was terrible, real bad. And Mir Ager told us—in a voice as calm as a woman nursing her babe—that he was taking his pain and giving it to us, for as long as he hung there. I sprung to the pulley chains to let him down, right quick, I can tell you, and not even Rego objected.’

  They’d talked it over among themselves then, and decided they didn’t want to try again. They chained the Kardi in a cell with every chain they could find, put a guard permanently outside and told the Commander that Mir Ager had been tortured and wasn’t talking. A day or two later he was executed by burning. Rego died two weeks later, his hand all swelled up green and nasty.

  ‘And that’s the truth, Legata,’ Achates said, ‘so help me. It’s not my fault if it sounds like one of them folk myths ’bout numina. You asked for the truth, and you got it.’

  ‘I believe you, Achates. I can’t explain what happened, but I haven’t the slightest doubt you have told me what you think you saw.’ I looked across at Brand to see his reaction, but his face was impassive. ‘Is there anything else I should know? What conclusions did you come to about his character?’

  ‘His character? Ah, he was used to being the cock on the midden heap, that one. Looked at us as though we were dirt specks on the floor.’

  ‘Highborn?’

  ‘I would say. Proud bastard. Brave, I’ll give him that. He was heaped about with chains, lying in his own muck, given no food, but he could still laugh at us as though we were the bastards in trouble.’ He gave a wary glance in Brand’s direction. ‘Legata, if I could have a word with you in private, like—’

  I nodded at Brand, who rose and left the room. ‘Yes, what is it, Achates?’

  ‘If you want to know more, ask the Prefect’s wife.’

  I blinked. ‘The Prefecta? Why would the Domina Fabia know more?’

  Achates gave a sly smile. ‘She’s a whore, Legata, begging your pardon. One of them women who can’t get what they need from their man. She pretends she’s as pure as a virgin, but she likes to lay with the dirt. She pays me to bring her down into the cells when the need is on her—wraps herself in one of them Kardi travelling cloaks—and she wants the condemned men, no less. The worse they are, the better she likes it.’

  I gave no sign of surprise. I’d heard stranger stories about even more unlikely people; it was the kind of thing those of the Brotherhood often learned about others. ‘She came and asked for Mir Ager?’

  Achates nodded. ‘She’d already seen him. She was at the slave auction and he took her fancy then. Couldn’t have suited her better when he ended up in the cells, condemned to death. She came down the day before the burning. I didn’t want her to go to him, not after all that had happened, but she can be a nasty bitch.’ He shrugged. ‘So I let her have her way. After all, he had enough chains on him for a whole coffle of slaves and I checked to make sure they was tight. I let her into the cell and waited outside, like I always do. Usually she comes out looking like a legionnaire that’s just had the free run of a brothel, but not this time. She was as white as fruit-pith. Reckon he’d just about scared the piss out of her. She hasn’t been back since. Ask her about him, and see what you get. But don’t say I was the one as told.’

  ‘The Brotherhood never
reveals its informants,’ I said. ‘All right, Achates. That will be all. See that the other man I want to talk to is sent in, will you?’

  Brand ushered the second legionnaire in a moment later. His name was Ciceron, a centurion nearing retirement who obviously resented having his competence called into question by a member of the Brotherhood—or, for that matter, by anyone. ‘That Mir Ager died,’ he said flatly. ‘He was burned to death. This man who’s wandering around creating problems for us elsewhere is someone else. I reckon Mir Ager is just a title. When the first one died, another took it over. There’s no mystery, no fantastical escape, still less the resurrection of a dead man.’

  ‘Why was there so much smoke at his execution?’ I asked neutrally.

  ‘I checked the wood beforehand,’ came the defensive reply. ‘It was dry. The only thing I can think of is someone sprinkled something on it for its nuisance value. The smoke was awful: horrible choking black stuff. I tell you, Mir Ager was burnt to a cinder, but he probably suffocated to death in that smoke first.’

  ‘Were any of the crowd near the fire?’

  ‘No. The pyre was ringed with legionnaires, at least until the smoke started—then they just ran. They couldn’t do anything else. But it was Kardi slaves who collected the wood and brought it to the square in the first place. They could have tampered with it.’

  ‘How was Mir Ager tied?’

  ‘His hands were manacled to one another behind the stake. What else was necessary?’

  ‘He seemed to have a knack of freeing himself from locked manacles,’ I said mildly. ‘Did you search the ashes afterwards for bones?’

  He exploded. ‘No, we did not! Why should we? The man was dead. It is customary just to shovel up whatever is left, ashes and all, and throw it into the sea so no one can gather the remains for burial. We don’t want these people to make martyrs out of their criminals. Come to think of it, though, I did see a legionnaire retrieve the manacles, what was left of them. They had cracked and bent, the fire was so hot once it got going.’

  ‘Who did the shovelling? Legionnaires?’

  ‘Hardly. Slaves, naturally.’

  Slaves, who might not have mentioned an absence of bones for reasons of their own. I almost sighed in exasperation; it was going to be hard to prove what had really happened, one way or the other. Had he died…or not? I said, ‘Describe Mir Ager for me.’

  ‘Tall, brown hair and eyes, your colouring, Legata—and fit—he had an athlete’s body. He looked surprisingly alert for someone who had been tortured. Smelled as high as a rotting midden, of course. Everyone does after being in the torture cells. But he wasn’t as weak as they usually are.’

  ‘Did he speak?’

  ‘I asked him if he wanted the prayers of a priestess, and he laughed.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  He hesitated. ‘Well, when I ordered a legionnaire to light the fire at his feet, he said, “You’ll be hearing of me, Centurion. Don’t think to rid the Exaltarchy of me so easily.”’

  ‘What did you take that to mean?’

  Ciceron grimaced. ‘That the Kardis would use his name to rally support for their damned insurgency. There was an unusually big crowd at his execution, and the crowd was resentful. The place bubbled like water on the boil—it was almost frightening. To be quite frank, I was glad of all that smoke. It cleared people out of there.’

  ‘Did you actually see the man burning? Be careful how you answer.’

  ‘Well, no,’ he said reluctantly. ‘I can’t say I did. When the smoke started I had to step back along with everyone else. My eyes were streaming, I was doubled up with coughing. By the time the smoke was gone, the flames were fierce and you couldn’t see anything in there.’

  ‘You don’t think he could have been an immortal?’

  He gave me a look as if I had taken leave of my senses.

  I nodded. ‘Thank you. That will be all.’

  The man left, his resentment drifting after him, and Brand looked across at me. ‘Was he telling the truth, Legata?’

  I picked up the weapon, still wrapped in the pelt. ‘Oh yes, as far as he knew it. But if by some miracle this Mir Ager freed himself, neither Ciceron nor anyone else would have noticed. Or so it seems to me.’

  ‘Do you think he did escape?’

  ‘I doubt it. I suspect Ciceron is right. Mir Ager is merely a hereditary title, and we have to look for whoever has inherited it. Let’s go back to the Prefect’s house. I want to have a word with the Prefect’s wife next.’

  ‘What are you going to do with the sword?’

  ‘Nothing for the time being, except keep it hidden. But it’s apparently a formidable weapon. Imagine if we could discover how to use it and make others like it. If we can’t, well, it might serve a purpose as bait. If Mir Ager did escape, if he’s still alive, then I rather think he would give a lot to have it back. If he died, well, perhaps the new leader will want it just as badly.’

  ‘If he’s still alive, then he’s to be feared,’ Brand warned. He eyed the wrapped sword uneasily.

  ‘So am I,’ I said grimly. ‘So am I.’

  ‘You wanted to see me?’ Domina Fabia was reclining on the divan in her private quarters and, although polite, she did not bother to rise when I was ushered in. She was highborn, after all, and I was merely adopted. It was a subtle distinction some people loved to make.

  I said, ‘If I may.’

  ‘Of course.’ She waved a languid hand at another divan. ‘This heat is so debilitating, I think. Would you like me to call a slave to fan you?’

  ‘No. I would prefer this conversation to be private.’

  She raised a surprised eyebrow, her highborn arrogance quick to flare. ‘What can you have to say?’

  ‘You know I hold rank in the Brotherhood?’

  ‘Yes.’ She began to cool herself gently with a scented fan.

  ‘The Brotherhood keeps its secrets. Our job is to hear of trouble before it happens, to trap traitors before they have a chance to damage the Exaltarchy. We do not judge. We merely pursue the truth. We keep many secrets.’

  ‘So?’ she drawled.

  ‘So, I want to know what happened when you went to see Mir Ager in his cell before his execution.’

  There was the faintest of pauses in the fanning motion of Fabia’s hand, but no other reaction. ‘I did no such thing.’

  ‘I know you did, Domina. You asked this man to service your need, and I believe he turned you down. I wish merely to know what he said. It may be of use to me.’

  ‘How dare you insinuate something so, so disgusting!’ Her indignation was false; she was all anxiety.

  She reached for the silver bell on a side table, but I was there first, closing my hand over hers. ‘No, Domina. You don’t want anyone else to know of this. This is between you and me. Do you know what it is to defy the Brotherhood? Have you any idea what it would do to your husband’s career? I can see to it that you never leave Kardiastan. Or I could tell your husband—all of Tyrans, in fact—that you visited the lowest scum of the prison cells.’

  ‘You’re hurting me!’

  I released her hand. ‘You have only one chance, Domina. I will not wait. What happened between you and Mir Ager?’

  She rubbed her hand. ‘You bitch,’ she said. ‘I know you people. You’ll have this inscribed on a tablet for the rest of my life. And every time you need something from me you will get it. There’s no escape once the Brotherhood has you! All right, all right, I’ll tell you. The bastard looked me up and down as though I were the one who was lying in the dirt of my own waste and said he wouldn’t fuck me if it was his last day on earth. Which it was, of course. Sarcastic bastard.’

  ‘So then you tried to seduce him.’

  A slow flush started on Fabia’s throat and moved up to her face. ‘How do you know that?’

  I know you. ‘A guess merely. It would be what I would do.’ If I had your kind of perverted needs.

  ‘Well, yes, I did. I slipped out of my wrap and
put my hands on him—where it counts, you know. And he was as flaccid as a wilted flower. He laughed. He dared to laugh at me and said I was as sexless as a neutered gorclak.’

  I gave the faintest of smiles. ‘I don’t suppose you let him get away with that?’

  ‘I went to claw him. There was nothing he could have done; he was chained up like a bale of shleth pelts. I would have made him as sexless as a neutered gorclak—’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I couldn’t. He stopped me somehow. There was a sort of barrier—I couldn’t see anything, but it was there nonetheless. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He was a Kardi numen. There are numina here, you know. Strange things happen all the time, you’ll see.’ She shivered. ‘Well, I guess I always knew if you play with fire you get burnt. Goddess, how I hate this country.’

  I rose to my feet. ‘Thank you, Domina. I don’t think I will need to put any of this on file.’ I smiled blandly and left the room.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  After dinner that night, I waited until the whole house was quiet and the last of the slaves had gone to bed before reaching under my divan to take out the weapon I had hidden there. I examined it again, running my hand over the hilt, touching the smoothness of the glass-like material in the short blade. It had a—a perfection about it, a flawless essence to it, and I began to wonder if it had not been crafted by mortal man. I considered the myriad stories about gifts from the gods: arrows from the Goddess of the Hunt, books from the God of Wisdom, dream powder from the Goddess of Sleep.

  Swords from…Melete? Ocrastes? Ridiculous!

  I prayed to Melete, on occasion, I gave money to her temples, but that was more habit or expediency than conviction. In my heart of hearts, I was dubious about the existence of any of the pantheon of gods and goddesses who supposedly governed the different aspects of Exaltarchy life. Yet, as I sat there with that sword in my hand, I felt it was somehow god-given. The idea was so outlandish it confused me, a confusion overlaid with the memory of that golden woman tearing away her anoudain and snatching up a similar weapon…