The Hope of Vitality, page 12
Will bowed.
“The emperor must have questions about what’s going on, or he wouldn’t have sent an independent envoy,” exclaimed the king. “What use can we make of this Bisri Ahuzza?”
Lady Tulinay did not hesitate. “I believe we need to build rapport with him, Your Majesty. It might weaken the Grand Vizier if we limit our communication to the bisri.”
“It might also get Ahuzza killed,” Will said grimly.
She frowned. “He’s the emperor’s envoy. Surely it wouldn’t be easy to simply get rid of him.”
“The Grand Vizier doesn’t seem over-particular about who he eliminates,” Will reminded her. “He was willing to kill the emperor’s daughter. And apparently for no other reason than to create an incident he could use against us. The man has no scruples.”
Will’s brows drew together. “We must not underestimate him. He’s accustomed to manipulating the truth to suit his own agenda, and he’s extremely good at it. He had Ahuzza completely convinced when we first met. If the bisri is starting to have doubts, the Grand Vizier will see him as a liability.”
“Then we’ve already put him in danger,” said Lady Tulinay. “I was studying him carefully, and I had the clear impression he’s becoming conflicted.”
Will nodded. “I believe you’re right. A change of heart will only work in our favor if Ahuzza manages to stay alive.”
“There’s little the emperor can do to save him,” added Lady Tulinay. “He’s too far away.”
King Krasmir was frowning. “What is the emperor’s attitude to all this? Surely he would be furious if he knew the games his chief minister has been playing!”
Will shrugged. “Without direct access to him, we can only guess, Your Majesty.”
Lord Boedwyk gazed absently up at the mast, his brows drawn together thoughtfully. “Consulting directly with His Imperial Majesty could be…enlightening.” He sighed deeply. “If only the voyage to Kat Ahket was not so long. Perhaps distance is emerging as our greatest enemy.”
Lady Tulinay looked sharply at Boedwyk for a moment before apparently deciding to ignore him entirely. “Bisri Ahuzza is the emperor’s eyes and ears,” she said, “so it’s in our interests to have him report back. Since getting rid of him is likely to become a high priority for the Grand Vizier, preserving his life must be a high priority for us.”
“We can try to warn him,” said Lord Kulferan.
King Krasmir nodded. “Do it,” he said. He turned to Will. “What were you saying about the Ahran captain, Lord Torbury? The one who brought the princess here. Is he still alive?”
Will shrugged. “We all know that the Grand Vizier is lying about what happened to Princess Neira. I decided to see how he would react if he thought we had solid evidence against him. I knew the princess mentioned Captain Gharpin by name. However, I need to make it clear there was no truth to anything I said, Your Majesty. As far as I know, while he was at Rog the captain never spoke about what happened with Princess Neira. And I have no grounds for believing he didn’t perish at sea. I was baiting the Grand Vizier. I wanted to see how he would react when he wasn’t the one controlling the information flow.”
“He didn’t like it,” said Lady Tulinay decidedly.
“Maybe not,” growled the king. “But how does that help us?”
“People make mistakes when they think they’re losing control,” said Will. He shook his head. “But we’ve done nothing to hurt him yet. He’s as dangerous as ever.”
“And we still don’t know his agenda,” said Lady Tulinay. “Even though I have my best agents working on it.”
“To find a way forward we need the emperor involved,” said Will. “Bisri Ahuzza is the key.”
“Our priority is simple—to free Princess Teylee and King Rupert!” insisted the king. “Never lose sight of that!”
They made their way back to Rog without further comment.
Will returned more determined than ever. Having looked his enemy in the eye, he wanted only one thing: to see him brought down.
Bisri Ahuzza crouched wordlessly in the prow of the longboat as they glided away from the Rogandan vessel. The Grand Vizier sat facing him. The interpreters had found places of their own further back in the boat.
“So I have seen my celebrated adversary at last!” crowed Rheibas. He appeared to be in unusually high spirits. “I trust I appeared suitably shaken by Torbury’s ridiculous assertions.”
Too discomfited to speak, Ahuzza stared back at him.
“Already he will be composing a dispatch to his king. To no avail.” He curled his lip. “The man is vastly overrated. It is beyond time for him to be humbled.”
The boat pulled alongside the Grand Vizier’s ship.
Rheibas prepared to climb aboard with his interpreter. “Return the bisri to his ship!” he ordered the sailors.
Then, bending low to Ahuzza’s ear, he mouthed, “Be careful, Bisri. Be very, very careful.”
13
Kahrlin shoved his captive forward roughly. In response the queen gave out a muffled cry, but she was wasting her time. The Ahran had tied her gag himself. No one would hear, however hard she tried to yell.
He smiled in grim satisfaction. Thus far the Castelan fools who accepted his money had done what he paid them to do.
Pulling the cloaked and hooded captive to an abrupt halt in the shadows of a building, he nodded to Akohlsa, the agent assisting in that night’s extraction.
His confederate disappeared around the corner. The minutes dragged, and Kahrlin grew increasingly impatient. Before he could decide to do anything rash, Akohlsa reappeared leading a horse with a wagon. Empty barrels lay in the wagon beneath a thick waterproof covering. Akohlsa had already pulled back the covering, revealing a narrow space between the barrels.
The queen’s arms had been tied in front of her. The two men now bound her legs and dumped her unceremoniously in the wagon, throwing the covering over the barrels and the prisoner.
Both men climbed onto the driver’s bench, Kahrlin taking the reins. Clicking his tongue, he guided the horse toward the city gates. It was imperative that they escaped the city before the regent’s men locked it down.
One final hurdle remained. The guards at the gates had been bribed handsomely to keep the gates open and to ask no questions. There were never any guarantees though. Shifts could be changed, and the new guards at the gate might cause problems. There was little he could do about that. The guards he bribed would not receive the bulk of their payment until after the wagon was safely through the gates. That gave them an incentive to be on duty as expected.
The wagon rolled slowly away from the palace. Thus far there had been no hitch of any kind in Kahrlin’s carefully laid plans. Faint cries sounded behind them as they approached the gates. The queen’s fallen guards must have been discovered. The alarm had been raised. Time was now pressing.
Kahrlin’s heart began to race. The temptation to goad the horses into a gallop grew as every minute passed. He resisted the urge, and they clip-clopped forward steadily as before.
To his relief, the gates lay wide open. If the guards had heard the distant cries, they were choosing to ignore them. Chatting casually to each other, they waved the wagon through.
Increasing the pace to a trot, Kahrlin crossed the bridge and swung the horses north. The hunt must surely be up now, but a safe house beckoned just clear of the city. He gave the horses their heads, and the wagon raced on into the night.
For the first time he allowed himself to enjoy a measure of satisfaction. He had every reason to be satisfied—this operation would be his crowning achievement. The groundwork had been laid slowly and patiently, the preparations meticulous at every stage. Arrangements were firmly in place well before the Arvenian queen arrived.
The single biggest challenge had been finding a way to lure the queen from the safety of her apartments into the open. Countless plans had been explored and discarded. In the end, Kahrlin had reluctantly concluded she would need to be extracted while she was sleeping. It was the highest risk solution, but he could see no alternative. Then, as the two of them lay hidden in readiness, she had decided to go for a walk—in the open, and with only two guards. He wanted to laugh out loud.
The horses were tiring when he finally guided them off the main road and down a narrow lane. Reaching the end of the lane, he steered the wagon toward a large barn beside a lonely farmhouse.
They had done it. The Arvenian queen had been plucked from the castle under the noses of her hosts.
The Castelan regent clearly had no idea what was taking place in his capital that night. The fool had no idea how thoroughly Kahrlin’s agents had sidestepped his every attempt at security.
A wry smile came to his lips. He could only imagine the panic of the people he had bribed when they learned they had assisted in the abduction of their own former princess. He had spun them a yarn about pilfering barrels of wine from the over-stocked royal cellars. The fools had accepted the tale only too readily when they caught a glimpse of bags bulging with coins.
Their heads would roll once the regent’s men ferreted them out. That suited Kahrlin perfectly. He had no interest in leaving behind loose ends.
After two weeks hiding out in a barn not far from the city, Kahrlin was more than ready to risk the next stage of the journey out of Castel. The queen had not proven especially difficult to manage, but he had already wearied of this assignment. He would never be able to relax until he had handed responsibility for her to someone else.
The mission held promise of becoming a huge success. If they were able to complete it as planned, he had every expectation of further promotion. At the very least he would be lavishly rewarded for his efforts. None of that would happen unless they made it to the coast undetected.
Assuming they reached the coast, a longboat would pull in to a remote beach and row the captive to an Ahran ship lying offshore. Kahrlin and his small team would join them, remaining with the ship until they were handed their next assignment.
Getting to the coast undetected was easier to imagine than to achieve. The first problem was that the roads were swarming with soldiers. Ahran agents posing as merchants reported that access to the coast was regulated with unusual energy. Worse, people in every town and village in the kingdom had been asked to report abnormal activity or suspicious strangers. Under these circumstances it would be a remarkable achievement to make it halfway to the sea.
None of this came as a surprise to Kahrlin. From the beginning he had assumed a vigorous manhunt would be mounted. In response he and his confederates had come up with a simple, if unusual, plan.
The first step had been the preparation of a suitable mode of transport. A wagon with tall sides had been acquired and a false bottom installed, deep enough to accommodate a person lying prone. The ceiling and the base of the receptacle had been lined with thick wool, and pairs of metal brackets placed at one end. The false bottom had been cleverly designed to allow a section of it to be removed for easy access to the hidden space.
The intent was to place the queen inside the false bottom, lying on a layer of wool and with another woolen layer above her. Her ankles would be fastened to the metal brackets and her wrists tied. There would be enough space to wriggle around and turn her head, although movement of her body would be severely constrained. Sections of the wagon floor not covered by wool had sufficient gaps to permit adequate circulation of air.
One of Kahrlin’s men tested the prison to ensure that the sound of any movement would be muffled effectively by the wool. He emerged unnerved after a few minutes in the confined space. Kahrlin sneered at his reaction, mocking him as nothing more than a baby.
Later that day the queen was forced to drink wine laced with crushed opium seeds. Dazed and disoriented, she was laid in her new quarters and secured in position. As soon as the false bottom was put in place, the wagon swung in behind a somber procession.
Leading the procession was an open wagon carrying nothing but a coffin. Immediately behind it was a carriage full of mourners. Their baggage had been collected earlier and placed on the false bottom of the wagon hiding the queen.
The genius of this solution to the Ahrans’ dilemma was its simplicity. Several agents had searched the capital and the surrounding countryside until they identified a family with roots in a seaside village who had suffered a recent bereavement. The deceased was the patriarch of a small but tight-knit family, and his widow was surprised and touched to learn that an unknown benefactor had offered to pay all expenses associated with transporting the deceased to his home village and burying him there.
No reason existed for the procession to be secretive in any way. The corpse truly was that of a loved husband and father, and the mourners close relations who were genuinely grieved. None of them had any notion that the procession included several Ahran agents, nor that an abducted queen lay hidden beneath their baggage.
The procession inevitably attracted considerable attention. At the first town soldiers brought it to a halt, insisting on opening the coffin to check the corpse. They also briefly checked the baggage wagon without finding anything untoward.
At first distressed, the mourners were persuaded to be understanding. When the same thing happened at the next town, the widow became agitated. Emotions boiled over at the third enforced stop.
Quickly realizing that the situation was unsupportable, town officials arranged for soldiers to escort the mourners to their final destination. After that, neither the mourners nor their cargo were hindered in any way.
The journey took several days to complete, but thankfully the largesse of the benefactor extended to comfortable lodgings along the way.
Kahrlin’s agents, all hand selected, looked like Castelans and spoke their language without noticeable accents. Posing as hired labor, they unloaded the baggage from the wagon at each overnight stop, reloading it the next morning.
Once it was fully dark, the queen was released and allowed to eat, drink, and stretch her legs. After long days spent in a confined space, the strain on the captive was extreme. More than once they removed the cover to find her unconscious. Whenever they returned her to her prison she resisted fiercely until they administered the drugged wine.
Kahrlin didn’t care. In his eyes she was worth little more than another item of baggage. As long as he could deliver her alive and in one piece, he would be more than happy.
The last overnight stop was in a town not far from the coast. Local laborers were hired to take the place of the Ahran agents, both for the final leg of the journey to the coastal village and for the entire return trip to the homes of the mourners near the capital.
Kahrlin himself made sure the new laborers understood what was expected of them. While he was thus engaged, the queen was transferred to another wagon that other agents had prepared for their arrival. On this occasion she was bound and gagged but not otherwise confined.
Once the whole town was soundly asleep, the wagon rolled into the countryside, passing slowly in the dim moonlight over rough trails and rolling hillsides until it eventually came to a halt at the edge of a small beach.
Lifted from the wagon, the queen was carried bodily to a waiting longboat and dumped without ceremony into the bottom of it. Lying trussed at the feet of Kahrlin and his team, she was rowed to a waiting Ahran vessel.
A rope net was lowered from the deck, and the queen was placed within it. As soon as it was hauled aboard, the remaining passengers clambered up rope ladders onto the deck. The ship then raised anchor and departed.
Kahrlin finally allowed himself to relax. His efforts would be sure to attract the attention of the chief minister. And why not? His plan had been bold and imaginative, and he had executed it with his usual finesse. Unlike some of his fellow agents. His lips twisted into a smirk.
Bolnyk might be the chief minister’s senior agent, but he could never be accused of finesse, much less of imagination. His recent successes looked impressive on the surface: capturing the Arvenian commander’s boy, the Castelan king, and the Rogandan princess. But he deserved no credit for taking the boy. He only became aware of the abduction after it was done. Bolnyk’s contribution had been to botch the boy’s transfer. He had been forced to kill the child, ending any value he might have had as a hostage. As for capturing the king and the princess, that had been dumb luck and nothing more.
Bolnyk might be loyal, but he was also dull and uninspired. Sooner or later the chief minister would weary of him. When he did, Kahrlin intended to be seen as the obvious replacement.
As the shoreline slowly faded from view in the dim light, one of the sailors approached Kahrlin. “The captain invites you to join him.”
Kahrlin followed the sailor to the captain’s cabin and went inside.
“Welcome!” The captain greeted him enthusiastically, his face alight with satisfaction. “A job well done, Kahrlin! Well done indeed!” He handed the agent a goblet of wine. “A toast! In celebration of the perfect outcome to an extremely challenging mission!”
The two men sat together well into the night, laughing and drinking with increasing abandon.
The following morning, a somewhat unsteady Kahrlin joined the captain at the mast. The queen, finally released from her bindings, stood nearby, silently staring out to sea. She made for a pitiful sight. With her cloak held close about her, and her face obscured almost completely by her hood, she seemed intent on hiding from the world.
The captain nodded in her direction. “From what you’ve told me, your queen showed considerable fortitude, considering everything she’s been through in the last few weeks.”
Kahrlin raised an eyebrow. “She can hear what you’re saying.”
The captain shrugged. “Hearing is one thing; understanding is another. I’ve been reliably informed she doesn’t speak a word of our language.”
“I was told the same thing, and I can confirm it. It became intensely frustrating in the weeks she was with us. She doesn’t even understand Rogandan. We had to lower ourselves to speaking Arvenian if we wanted a response.” He spat onto the deck.
