A Rational Arrangement, page 37
But above all was a mortal certainty that if his captors took him from Newlant, he’d never see anyone he loved again. I have to try.
The cart rolled to a stop. He heard one of his captors call out a hallo. A new voice answered from some distance. “Any trouble with the job?”
“Nope, all clear.” Footsteps moved away from the cart.
Now. Nikola surged upwards, staggering as he threw off the tarp. Even without the sack, he might as well have been blind: no light on the dock save the directed beam of a shuttered lantern, which swung towards him as the holder yelped. “Hey!”
Nikola jumped the side of the cart, landed awkwardly, and ran in what he hoped was the direction they’d come and not, say, off the pier and into the water. The sound of feet behind him spurred him to greater speed despite his bound hands. One captor cursed as he made a lunge for Nik and missed, but Nik’s triumph was short-lived as another man tackled him to the dock. He struck the wooden planking face-first with a cry muffled by the gag, unable to use his hands to break his fall. Knife-man yanked Nik’s head back by his ponytail, bodyweight pinning him to the dock. “Bad move, yer highness. Shame. Been doing so well. C’mon.” Knife-man stood and hauled Nik upward by his hair; Nik scrambled to get his feet under him, teeth gritted around the gag and whimpering.
Nik complied as Knife-man steered him to the boat, but made another attempt to escape as they lowered him into it, kicking and writhing in their arms as a man in the boat grabbed his legs. Taken off guard, his captors dropped him into the water. The weight of his Ascension finery dragged him down; Nik kicked frantically for the surface. He was almost grateful when strong hands from the boat seized his collar and shoulders and hauled him into it. Saltwater stung his cut cheek.
“Feisty, is he?” the newcomer remarked.
“Must be you, Brick. Was sweet as a lamb ’til ’e heard your voice.” Knife-man kicked Nik into a prone position on the floor of the rowboat. “Just row, will ya?”
Three of his captors manned oars on the boat and rowed. Knife-man watched Nik for the first few strokes, then aimed an impersonal kick at the small of his back. “Jus’ makin’ it harder on yerself, yer highness. Gonna stay put this time?” Nik nodded, face screwed up against the pain, half-drowned and hopeless.
Knife-man manned an oar then. In the dark still night, they rowed for the distant pinpricks of lantern-light from a ship moored out in the bay.
Before they were a quarter of the way there, Nik was shivering violently and blue with cold, only the gag keeping his teeth from chattering. His captors had a brief argument over his state, which Knife-man ended with: “Need ’im alive. Which there ain’t no point to havin’ taken ’im if ’e up and dies of exposure. Get ’im out of those clothes and give ’im your coat, Red.”
“Why my coat?” a thickset man whined.
“On account of I said so. Shut yer yap or ’e gets yer trousers too.” Knife-man cut Nik’s bonds. “Ya hop outta this boat, yer majesty, and I’m gonna let ya drown this time, got it?” Nik nodded. He knew how to swim, but suspected the cold would kill him before he could make it to shore and shelter, even if his captors didn’t grab him again. He needed no encouragement to strip out of his icy soaked clothing and hunker inside Red’s coat. Knife-man re-tied his hands, in front this time, and put the sack over his head again.
When they reached the ship, they used a sling of canvas and rope to raise Nik into it. Brick said, “As I’ll tell the captain”, and two sets of footsteps departed. The remaining three led a shivering Nik across the deck and handed him below through a hatch. After a dozen paces and a turning, Knife-man pushed Nik into a cushioned wooden chair and tied his feet to the chair legs.
Nik hadn’t heard the sounds of anyone else aboard so far. Shouldn’t there be more? Could the rest be asleep? He knew little of ships, but had a vague idea that a vessel large enough to have multiple decks required a sizable crew, with sailors up at all hours. Perhaps not when moored? Perhaps they were on holiday for Ascension, like so much of Newlant.
“Can I’s have my coat back?” Red asked.
“No. Set a fire.” Knife-man said.
Nik’s mouth was dry and his throat ached from choking on seawater earlier. He tried to moisten his tongue, wishing they’d take off the cursed gag even more than he wanted to drink. He tried to muster some outrage to combat the sick sense of fear that made him tremble almost as much as the cold. He was still wet under the coat, his long ponytail dripping cold saltwater down his back. Though warmer than the frigid winter night outside, the cabin was still chilly. Nik turned his head and started to lift his bound hands.
Knife-man snapped, “And what do ya think yer doin’, yer majesty?”
Nik rolled his eyes beneath the hood. Ungag me and I’ll tell you, cretin. Moving slowly to show he planned no surprises, Nik brought his tied hands to the back of his neck.
“Hoy! Don’t ya be tryin’ ta get that hood off, boy. What’re ya thinkin’? Answer me!” Knife-man’s voice moved closer. Nik cringed, spreading his fingers in the most placating gesture he could manage.
“’E’s gagged, Crit. ’E can’t answer,” Red commented, mercifully.
“…I knew that. D’ya think I’m stupid? What’s the matter with ya? Get that fire goin’!”
With the man no longer yelling at him, Nik clawed the ribbon from his hair with numb fingers, leaving the hood in place but separating strands of hair so it’d eventually dry and be less cold.
Red finished lighting the stove. Footsteps sounded outside the cabin door and Nik’s captors rose. At the opening of the door, the bully-boys murmured, “Cap’n” in respectful tones.
“This is him?” a new voice asked, dubious.
“Which as it is, sir. As there was a mishap what ended with him sopping, we shifted ’im outta ’is fancy clothes. But got ’im coming out of that big fancy house o’ his. Caught ’im all alone, sir, so’s we didn’t need the catsbane neither.”
Catsbane? Nik hadn’t heard of that before.
“Mph. Good enough. Dismissed.” Feet shuffled out the door, but the captain must have signaled for Knife-man-Crit to lag behind, because a moment later he muttered, “Bring her up, Crit.” Crit assented and left.
The new man pulled the hood off of Nik. A single lantern and the faint glow from the stove illuminated a cabin furnished as combination dining room and study. The captain was better-dressed than his men, clothing unpatched and a warm ivywool frockcoat left open in the growing warmth of the cabin. He had curly brown hair and a narrow face with a pointed chin, looking young to be in charge of a ship. The man’s mouth twisted in a grimace of a smile. “Hello again, Lord Nikola. Want that gag off?”
Again? Nikola nodded, trying to place the man’s face.
“All right. I didn’t want to do it this way, you know. Tried doing it your way, but you wouldn’t oblige.” The man slid the blade of a knife under the gag to cut it off, and Nik winced involuntarily. His captor steadied Nik’s head with a hand on his hair. Savior! Nik reflexively reached for his god as he saw the man’s mind:
Demon-ridden.
The captain resisted treatment, jerking his knife backwards and cutting the gag free at the same time that he yanked his other hand out of contact. “None of your tricks now!” He pointed the tip of the knife at Nik’s face.
I am dealing with a madman who does not want to be cured. Nik shivered violently. “What tricks? What do you want of me?” he asked, voice hoarse and shaken.
Another grim smile. “Same thing I’ve wanted all along, m’lord.” The door opened, and the demon-ridden man turned to it. “Thank you, Crit.” He took a woman’s arm and guided her into the room. She was middle-aged, with similar features to the captain. Her eyes were vacant, gait a clumsy shuffle. “I want you to heal my mother.”
Nik’s stomach sank as recalled them both now. They’d come to petition a few weeks ago: the woman was unresponsive but was not demon-ridden and had no deformities in her mind that Nik could detect. Her son had threatened him then too, but Anthser had intervened before it came to blows. “Sir, the reason I did not heal your mother is that I cannot.” What was their surname? Brock? So many petitioners since then.
“I don’t think you understand your position here, m’lord.” The captain’s thin brows drew down. “You will heal my mother. No warcat is going to turn us out now, and I don’t care how much time it takes or what you expect to be paid. You will cure her.”
“It is not a question of time or money, sir. I cannot diagnose her. I cannot heal her.”
The curly-haired man released his mother’s arm and stepped forward to strike Nik with the back of his hand. “You lie!” he snarled. “You are the best! I know you can do it and you will!” Even as Nik reeled, whimpering, he tried to cast out the demon again at the contact, and felt the Savior’s sorrow at being refused. The captain shook his hand as if it stung. “What are you trying to do to me?”
Nik hunched his shoulders against another assault. “Mr. Brock, you are not in your right mind. You’re possessed by a demon. You must allow the Savior to cast it out.”
“Brogan.” The captain took a step back, reaching into his pockets for thick gloves. “My name is Brogan, and I am not the one who needs healing. Look at my mother!” He grabbed Nik by the hair with one gloved hand, hauling his head about to force him to look at the woman. “Look at her! Are you trying to convince me she doesn’t need help? Do you think I’m stupid?”
Tears stung at Nik’s eyes and he hated the whimper that escaped as he tilted his head further to ease the tug on his hair. “I am not saying she doesn’t, but I can’t—”
“Shut up! Shut up!” He moved to hit Nik again and this time Nik raised his bound hands in time to deflect the blow.
“Don’t hit me!” Nik yelled back, wishing he sounded angry and not pitiful, begging, trembling with fear. “I’ll try, all right? Let me try again with her. Please don’t hit me.”
Brogan grunted and released his hair. Nik swallowed, still shaking. I can’t. I know I can’t. What is he going to do to me when she’s not healed? Brogan led his sleepwalking mother closer. Nik licked dry lips. “I need to touch her face to mine. I can see her mind best that way.” His captor pulled another chair adjacent to Nik’s and sat her in it. Awkwardly, Nik leaned over to rest his forehead against hers. Her mind was much as he remembered it: he’d spent several minutes studying it the last time. It’s not that I didn’t try. I tried. Looking again isn’t going to change what I see, and everything is…fine.
Minds were astonishingly complex and varied, and it was all but impossible to learn what was wrong with a defective mind without guidance of some kind. Most of what he’d learned about non-demonic problems had been from either his great-grandmother, who had shown him what to do on her petitioners, or from her grandfather’s papers. The rest had been from observation of healthy minds: studying all the ways a particular mindshape might look when functioning properly helped in recognizing when it wasn’t. On rare occasions, re-examination of those he could not quickly diagnose let him see a problem he had missed, but it had never, not once, taught him to identify a new cause of dysfunction.
Maybe this time would be different. Or maybe it was something he’d missed.
Nikola subjected her mind to the kind of scrutiny he reserved for study, the kind he’d given to his great-grandmother when she was teaching him to identify various mental structures and how they interacted. He’d examined perhaps a dozen volunteers – greatcats, family members, Fireholt subjects – this closely. He mapped the shapes of Mrs. Brogan’s mind now, outlining each part, the borders of different emotions, types of memories, connective webs, the texture, color, shape, feel of each piece. The last time, he’d focused on motor control and the centers that controlled sleep and dream states. He intensified that search, looking for any granule that might be an irritant, any hint of wrinkling that might indicate dysfunction, anything at all.
Nothing.
He invoked the Savior anyway, to wash over the seemingly undamaged mindshapes, and felt his god’s too-familiar sorrow, unable to help. Nik moved to the other parts of the mind, though he could imagine no way a defect in hatred or love or compassion could cause her condition. He examined slowly and thoroughly, aware that he was stalling, aware there was nothing he could do but stall.
About halfway through this examination, Brogan hit Nik, knocking him out of the trance. “What are you doing?” Brogan snarled. “Why haven’t you cured her yet?”
“I am looking for the problem, you imbecile!” Nikola yelled back, and received another blow for it.
“I don’t believe you.” Brogan glared at him, eyes narrowed.
“Demons and angels! What possible reason would I have to lie?”
Brogan flexed his fingers. “Reputation. You don’t want anyone to find out you’ve been turning away petitioners you could cure out of greed. I won’t tell a soul, I swear. I just want my mother back.”
Nikola stared at him. “Sir, you are not in your right mind. There’s a demon—”
“SHUT UP!” Brogan punched him again and Nik cringed, whimpering. “Stop lying! Stop wasting my time! I know what your problem is – you’re just not motivated yet.”
Nik swallowed against mounting terror. He’s insane and I can’t cure him because he doesn’t trust me and I can’t make him trust me because he’s insane and oh Savior he’s going to kill me because I can’t—
Brogan turned away, moving out of sight behind him. Nik twisted as much as he could while secured to the chair, trying to project calm, willing it to be contagious. “It’s not a matter of motivation, Mr. Brogan. I am doing everything in my power—” which is nothing there’s nothing I can do Savior help me “—please let me—”
From behind, Brogan struck the back of Nik’s head with something hard. “Don’t lie to me! If you were doing ‘everything in your power’ she’d be cured now!”
Dazed, Nik said thickly, “I need time—”
“Shut UP!” Brogan forced another gag into Nik’s mouth. “I don’t need to hear your excuses! I don’t need anything from you except for you to cure my mother, and you needn’t talk for that.” He knotted the ends of the gag behind Nik’s head then circled around to his front. He dropped a leather roll onto the tabletop nearby – something inside it clinked – and grabbed Nik’s bound hands to tie his left wrist to the arm of the chair. Panicking, Nik struggled. He nearly toppled the chair he was secured to but Brogan just backhanded him until Nik was too dizzy to resist. Then his captor finished tying down his left arm, cut apart the rope holding his wrists to each other, and tied down his right. His feet remained bound to the legs of the chair. Brogan removed Nik’s gloves next, then tilted Nik so that the side of the lord’s head touched the cheek of the unresponsive woman in the chair beside him. “This stops,” he told Nik, “when she’s better. Not before.”
Nik tried to focus on the woman’s mind again, but his heart was hammering, eyes tracking Brogan as the man unrolled the leather wrap he’d set on the table. It was a toolholder, little pockets holding an array of metal implements, from long thin needles to slim metal picks, pliers, tongs. Brogan fetched a pot and filled it with glowing coals from the stove. He pulled several needles and a pair of pliers from the toolkit, and dropped them into the pot.
Brogan positioned a chair before Nik and sat, splaying Nik’s shaking fingers and eyeing them with a clinical detachment. “Cure her, Blessed,” he growled.
Nik choked around the gag, struggling to breathe. If he could have willed himself to faint, he would have. Savior oh Savior please – eyes squeezed shut, Nik scanned desperately over Mrs. Brogan’s mind – how can he do this in front of her, Savior, unresponsive is not the same as unaware – praying for some new insight, invoking his god anyway, feeling the Savior’s grief mingle with his own despair.
Brogan used the toolkit’s small tongs to pluck a needle from the brazier. Nik could feel heat radiating from it, Brogan’s hand forcing his fingers straight when he tried to fist them, the shocking, excruciating pain as the searing needletip bit into his finger just under the nail.
The only thing that stopped him from screaming was the gag.
When Nik was thirteen, he had attempted suicide.
He’d tied a stone about his ankle and jumped from the footbridge into the river that cut through his father’s estate in Anverlee. At the time, he’d thought it would be quick and painless, but it hurt, as if his lungs were on fire and then he was choking on water and that hurt more. He’d panicked and was making a futile attempt to untie the rock when Jill fished him, rock and all, from the river. She had seen him take the plunge from a hilltop and been racing to his rescue. He’d begged her not to tell his parents, and she’d agreed on the condition that he swear, first, never to attempt suicide again, and second, to seek his great-grandmother’s help immediately. Nik had always been grateful for her intervention.
Until now, when he would have given anything for death, for release from this nightmare.
The pain from his hands was driving him to madness: he could see the knots of trauma growing in his own mind, in flashes as he tried desperately to distract himself from the inescapable agony.
The process had become horrifyingly familiar: Brogan would hammer one burning hot needle after another under one of Nik’s fingernails. Eventually, Brogan would pry the fingernail itself off with heated pliers and move on to the next finger. He’d completed the cycle on three fingers of the left hand and then switched to the right. It did not seem possible that such a small part of the body could cause so much pain. The worst of it was that it wouldn’t kill him, that it was unbearable yet he had no choice but to bear it. Nik would have done anything to make it stop, would have begged, pleaded, sold himself, denounced the Savior, confessed to any crime, if only it would end. But even if Mrs. Brogan’s disorder had been in his power to diagnose, Nik could not have discovered it under these conditions. He was unable to focus on anything beyond the agony, the horror of what Brogan was doing to him. His face was streaked with tears, he had soiled himself, vomited at the smell of his own burning flesh. Brogan had stopped for that last, briefly, to remove the gag while Nik had been in danger of choking to death, then stuffed it back in as soon as Nik finished retching. Nik had stopped trying to suppress his nausea after that, hoping for another respite or, even better, death. It had worked a couple more times, but unfortunately there wasn’t enough left to choke on any more and dry heaves barely made Brogan pause. The torturer only muttered to himself about Nik’s ‘cursed stubborn pride’, or an occasional lunatic outburst like, “Do you think I want to do this? This is your own fault! You could stop this any time you want!”
