The Poison Throne, page 38
The owner stood wringing his hands, burbling that it was no doing of his, they’d just barged in. The Watch were always acting that way, they had no respect for . . . He looked down at the bodies and wailed: ‘What will I do now?’
Manel said simply: ‘Bury them. You’ve land out back where you grow herbs, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ve a spade?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then get digging.’
When the coffee arrived, they sat back at their table. The owner had put a Closed for illness sign on the door. ‘Only whilst I clean the floor,’ he said, and was now scrubbing the blood stains off the tiles. ‘Lucky it’s not wood,’ he muttered, ‘never get the stain out of wood.’
The four enjoyed the coffee, something that had not been available in the marshes.
‘If they’re all like those three,’ the sergeant said, ‘we won’t have any trouble at all.’
‘They won’t be.’ Akiba picked up a honey cake and ate it whole. ‘The general says the black robes will be at this ceremony but we can’t rely on that. And the Watch, even if they’re as useless as them,’ he jerked a thumb at the back yard, ‘will be more than enough to get in our way. We stay out of sight.’
Manel held up a sheaf of bone tokens, blue polished ovals as big as a thumb, which she had removed from the bodies. ‘These are passes, use them if you have to, we need to avoid trouble until trouble arrives with the army. We’re not here to fight but to rearrange the city. Killing one vital official is worth cutting down a hundred like that trash we just buried. Are we clear? Are we ready?’
They nodded and got up. On the way out the sergeant growled to the owner. ‘Not a word now, my friend, or we will be back and there’ll be another one for the back yard.’ He patted him on the head and they were gone.
73
Gregor
Pain receding from his head. Where was he? Darkness. A sharp scent – he sniffed again. The throbbing in his head grew less. Should he open his eyes? No, the dark was better, he could hide in the dark. That’s right, hiding, he had something to hide. What was it, had he forgotten it? That sharp smell again, right under his nose. He didn’t want to wake up, to open his eyes and see what?
‘Open your eyes. That’s it, you’re better now. Hm? Feeling better? Try opening your eyes for me.’
They seemed to be stuck closed. He grunted and went to lift a hand to massage them but he couldn’t. His hand wouldn’t move. The other hand? No. He leaned forward but something was holding him. Straps?
‘That’s good, you’ve come back, you’re here . . . open your eyes now. Open!’
He opened his eyes.
Dorin.
‘He’s waking up, Inquisitor.’
Barakat.
‘I believe you were on your way to arrest me, Gregor?’
His mouth was so dry. He wanted a drink but it was stuffed with a rag, he could taste the sweat on it. He was gagged, he couldn’t speak. Where was he? He knew, of course he knew, he had spent many hours in a room like this, standing where Barakat and Dorin now stood, looking at the man or woman in a chair such as the one he sat in now, with straps and restraints, bound, helpless, waiting for the questions to come. But this was not in the cellars. There were no windows in the cellars. No cabinets of scalpels and saws and – all the Gods help him – long screws and pincers and mallets – steel instruments of healing whereas his had been used for different purposes. He was in the Medical Academy. Instruments of healing but not for him.
Barakat leaned close. ‘Gregor, somehow we always knew it would end like this, didn’t we?’ He stepped back. ‘Doctor, the first, if you would.’
Dorin came forward, in his hand steel shears. He took hold of Gregor’s left little finger, pulled it up against the strap holding his wrist to the arm of the chair, fitted the blades of the shears around it and, grimacing, cut. Pain shot through Gregor’s body, he bellowed into the gag, twisted against the restraints. He barely noticed Dorin pulling a blade with a glowing end from a brazier and swiftly pressing it against the stump. More pain. Intolerable pain. For a moment Gregor was floating above himself, looking down on the room, on Dorin and Barakat, on the glow of the coals in the brazier and smoke from his scorched flesh – then he was slammed back into himself, sucking air in through his nose.
‘Of course,’ Barakat said, ‘you’ve done a lot of this yourself so I don’t need to explain the process.’ He held up a hand, ‘No, no, don’t try to speak, please. There’s nothing you can say. There’s nothing I want to know. I know everything. Do you believe me? Of course you do, I never lie, everyone knows that Barakat never lies. So you may be asking yourself: “What do they want?” We simply want to hurt you, Gregor. And just in case you harbour hope in your heart that someone might rescue you? The Regent Sarah, perhaps? Does she still think of you as her man? Well, let me dispel that hope. She has no further use for you. She thinks you’re already dead. Nobody knows you are here.’
With sickening certainty Gregor realised it was true – he was alone with this man – no, not alone, Dorin was here and Dorin hated Barakat . . .
‘Doctor,’ the Inquisitor said, ‘the second finger, I think.’
Dorin was grey with horror in the lurid light of the brazier. He picked up the shears again. He looked as if he might vomit at any moment. He muttered: ‘I think he might be trying to say something.’
‘Oh, I am sure he will want to try and persuade me of his loyalty. How he despises the rebels, tell me that it was he who discovered the plot, that he is a believer. Is that it? Do you think you demonstrated your loyalty by killing the heretic Ibn Bai?’
Gregor was shouting against the rag filling his mouth. Muffled sounds came out, nothing more, there was no sense there.
‘I’m sure there are so many things you want to tell me. Don’t worry, we’ll get to that. Before we have finished we will examine your soul in full!’
Gregor fell silent. The agony in his hand was now a throbbing that came and went in time with his racing heartbeat. The pain was slightly less, he could cope with it.
‘Good, you’re listening. You are interested, no doubt, to know why I, Barakat, wish to make you suffer? Well, let me reassure you, it’s not for anything you’ve done in Tumanbay. You’ve done well here, haven’t you, you and your brother. The two of you. Poor boys from the steppes where life is so harsh. Winter in the mountains. What chances of making it to Tumanbay?’ He leaned close, so close their faces were almost touching, and whispered: ‘Three is better than two, Gregor. I can help you both. Two will die together but with three, always someone awake, always watching . . .’
He stepped back and stood there looking down, calm, almost serene. ‘I dreamed I had no arms or legs.’
He waited. ‘Nothing to say?’
Gregor waited.
‘The snows. The boy with the injured leg. I was slowing you down and you offered to carry me.’
Snow, so cold, trapping them in a world of whirling white – they would die out here, he knew it as certainly as he felt the agony in his muscles, the numbness of his lips, the ice building up on his lashes.
‘What is it, why have we stopped?’
‘Qulan’s too far ahead, I can’t see him anymore.’
‘But why have we stopped?’ Varsi’s voice was annoyed, like the child he was and Gregor felt an answering stab of anger.
‘I need a rest, I have to stop, you’re too heavy.’
‘You said you’d carry me. We have to go on.’ Again that whining edge as if he had the right to be carried like some Pasha.
‘Wait, just give me some time.’
‘We’ll get lost. You promised, you promised you’d carry me, you said we were brothers.’
Gregor shut his eyes. He wished he could shut his ears to the insistent voice. Anger like a scarlet thread crossed the darkness behind his eyelids and he discovered a great truth: it’s easier to do a bad thing if you can justify it with hate.
‘We have to go on, pick me up, you promised, you said, you promised . . .’
‘I’m sorry, Varsi.’ He slipped an arm round the narrow chest and walked them both towards the edge of the track, where the rock fell away into emptiness. Varsi struggled feebly in his grip.
‘No, listen, we are three. Three is better than two, Gregor. I can help you both.’
‘But you can’t and you know you can’t.’
‘Two will die together but with three!’ He was fighting for his life the only way he knew how, with words. ‘Always someone awake, always watching . . .’
They stood at the perimeter of rock and sky.
‘You can’t come with us . . .’ Gregor shouted. He almost fell himself – the white emptiness before them was drawing him forward.
Weeping, Varsi screamed: ‘What are you doing? Qulan, Qulan, help me!’
Gregor fell to his knees. Varsi scrabbled, bleating like an animal. Gregor pushed him away, shouting something, he didn’t know what – and Varsi was gone.
By the time he’d caught up with Qulan, he was weeping, distraught, showing a vulnerability the older boy had never seen before.
‘Something happened . . . something terrible . . . I couldn’t save him . . .’
‘I dreamed I had no hands or feet.’ Barakat smiled. ‘Did Qulan know? When you told him, whatever lie you told him, did he know? He had the measure of you, Gregor, or did he choose not to think about it, knowing you had handled it all? Isn’t that how you’ve both lived ever since? What a successful partnership. It’s taken you to the top. Oh, I’ve read about you over the years. The ruthless administrator and the great commander. Well, look at you now. Doctor – take them all . . .’
Dorin advanced, the shears in his hand. He mouthed: ‘I’m sorry, Gregor,’ and opened the bloody, crusted blades. Gregor widened his eyes, shouted into the rag with a terrible urgency.
‘Hold, doctor. I am a just man. I believe everyone deserves the chance to acknowledge their wrongdoings before they depart this world for whatever realm will accept them. I dare say, Gregor, your reception will be as painful as your departure. Would you like to repent, to beg for the mercy of a faster death?’
Gregor nodded furiously and widened his eyes still further into a terrified stare – one he had seen all too often.
‘Doctor, remove his gag.’
Dorin untied the cleave and removed the filthy cloth.
‘Speak.’
‘I have something . . . you want.’
‘You have nothing.’
‘You have a child, a son.’
Barakat froze.
‘What do you know of him?’
‘You keep him locked up. You want to cure him.’
‘Silence. Doctor, do your job.’
‘Wait, Barakat. Have you seen him? Have you seen your son today?’
‘What?’ That hint of uncertainty and doubt in the Inquisitor’s eye – there it was. His hand shot out, he grasped Gregor’s face, his nails like claws in the flesh. ‘What have you done, Gregor?’
‘Is he safe? You need to check.’
Barakat let go and backed away to the door of the cell. He wrenched it open. One word: ‘Wait.’ And he was gone.
‘Dorin, give me water, for the love of God.’
It was warm but as good as he’d ever tasted. It dribbled over his lips, moistening them and cleaned the foul taste from his mouth. ‘Why are you doing this, Dorin?’
‘You betrayed them, Gregor, every one of them.’
‘They were fools and incompetents. They would never have succeeded and Madu had betrayed them anyway.’ He hoped the shades of the dead sultan would forgive him the lie. ‘I needed to be trusted so I could get close enough to kill Maya myself. I trusted no one else. Their role was to die. Most of them were more than ready for martyrdom, you know that. And I never gave you up, Dorin, you’re in the clear. What time is it – has the ceremony started yet?’
‘No. Barakat wanted to . . . have done with you before he went.’
‘Then there’s still time. We can do it but you have to free me. We can get out together.’
‘Gregor, I would rather trust a nest of scorpions than you.’
The man was a mass of fears. ‘Do you think Barakat is going to let you walk away from this? You said you hated him, you were sick of what he made you do. You were a doctor once, not a defiler of children’s corpses. You can get out of this city, go away, start again. Be Doctor Dorin. Be the man you can be.’
74
Heaven
On the main Maduk thoroughfare there were crowds; they didn’t need to worry about being seen or questioned. The sergeant said that if this many people were coming back from worship then Tumanbay had got a whole lot holier than he remembered.
Manel said: ‘No, these aren’t worshippers, they’re not dressed for the temple; there’s something else bringing them out.’
Looming above the crowd, Akiba said, ‘Looks like everybody is on the move. Must be this business of Maya, maybe they want to see her.’
‘I want to see her,’ Heaven said, ‘and cut her damned throat.’ Akiba grunted agreement.
‘We’ll do it, wait and see, Heaven. We’ll make her pay for everything.’ He stopped; they were on the edge of Heroes Square where more masses of people were milling around as if spiteful winds were tormenting a wheat field, sending the tall stalks this way and that. There were even street vendors shouting their wares: Mangos, sweet mangos; Mamoul hot – mamoul cold, just the way you like them; kofta, the best, vine leaves sweet as the Hills of Dorn. Soldiers of the Watch were there too but they were being pushed this way and that and had as little control as anyone else.
They stood on the corner for a moment before going their separate ways. Heaven took Akiba’s hand in hers and looked up into his face. ‘Be safe, my love.’ He bent down and kissed her.
‘And you – and I swear we will find our child.’
The sergeant grinned. ‘True love, nothing like it. Not that I would know.’
Manel grinned back: ‘Love tomorrow; today we bring down the bitch. May the Gods of war go with us and may victory or honourable death be ours tonight.’
‘That’s what I like,’ the sergeant said, ‘all or nothing, put your last coin on a throw of the dice!’
They had found the words they needed and together they repeated: ‘All or nothing,’ and went their separate ways.
The Street of the Feathers was emptier than the Maduk thoroughfare had been and progress was easier. Of late Heaven had fallen into the habit of talking to her child. It was a way of keeping him or her alive in her heart – he, and she thought he was a boy, was out there somewhere, waiting for her to find him. The litany was always the same: ‘I want to know you so badly. There are so many things I have to tell you about your grandmother and your grandfather, about the adventures of your mama and papa. Ibn Akiba. Yes, all these things are your stories, waiting for you as if they are in a great library, like your grandfather’s library. Wonderful stories of faraway places and journeys and ships and towns that marched across the desert and fortunate arrivals.’
She was passing the public baths, one of the few institutions Maya had allowed to stay open but there were not many customers today. The ferment that was stirring the city had emptied them out. She crossed the street and hurried down a narrow alley between the blank white walls of merchants’ compounds; it was a shortcut to her house, her father’s house.
She stopped before emerging on to the street and took several deep breaths. To see it again, the familiar walls, the gate – would someone have moved in, or might it have been destroyed? Her nose tingled: tom cats had been marking the walls, this was their territory. She gathered herself and carried on and there it was, the front gate with the little wicket door set in it, slightly ajar. She remembered . . .
She remembered being a girl, not here but somewhere else in their old house, and she must have been very young and her father was saying: ‘Here’s a riddle for you, my sweet: when is a door not a door?’ She had thought and thought but could not find an answer and he had chortled: ‘Why, when it’s a jar. Do you see, the door is ajar but it’s also a jar!’ Oh, she remembered his pleasure at the awful riddle, the way his face creased up as he laughed and clapped his hands, his sheer delight and her mama shrugging her shoulders as if to say: ‘Well, really!’ But they all loved it and laughed together.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and pushed the little door open and stepped through.
‘The fountain, it’s still working,’ she told her son. ‘Father was so proud of it.’ Leaves floated on the water and lay on the tiles of the patio. She stood for a moment, listening to the sound, the drops falling like rain – then another sound: a door closing inside the house. Who?
‘Ayeesha?’ The tall, willowy shape of their maid squinting in the sunlight. She walked out onto the tiles, her gaze level and cool. She showed no surprise.
‘Madam, what are you doing here?’
‘I came back.’
‘They’ll be looking for you.’
‘It’s all right, Ayeesha, I’m so glad to see you.’ She hurried round the fountain, her arms open.
The maid held up a kitchen knife, its blade long and thin. ‘This is my house now.’
Heaven stopped. ‘No, it’s my father’s house. Ayeesha, we have to talk . . . I mean, of course it’s your house, it always will be and . . .’ She was babbling and the maid wasn’t listening. Her eyes were as hard and unyielding as buttons.
