“Escaped!” snarled Lebbick. “What do you think? Did you expect him to wait around and let us catch him?” Rage swelled the cords of his neck. “He was translated away the same way Geraden’s bloody creature was translated in.”
“But why?”
“How should I know? I’ve never looked inside his head. Maybe he just hated Nyle. Maybe Festten offered to make him rich. Maybe Gart took his relatives hostage. I don’t know and I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned, he just did it.”
“No,” Terisa said as if now she had nothing to fear. “That isn’t what I meant. Why did he do it that way? Why have the guards killed? Why—?” Why do that horrible thing to Nyle? “They might have been interrupted. They might have been caught. What about the noise? Wouldn’t being attacked by some kind of beast make noise – warn the guards outside? Why take the chance?”
Fuming, the Castellan started to spit an explanation at her. But she didn’t want to hear him say anything more against Geraden. She ignored him.
“He’s a physician,” she said. “ ‘The best physician in Orison.’ He didn’t need any help getting rid of Nyle. And he didn’t need to make himself look like a traitor. Don’t you understand?” Lebbick’s slowness to grasp the implications surprised her almost as much as her own certainty. “All he had to do was fail. Let Nyle die. Put something toxic in the wound and cover it with bandages. No one would ever know. No one would even suspect.
“Why take the stupid, stupid risk of all that bloodshed?”
Castellan Lebbick stared at her as if she were growing noxious in front of him. “So maybe he didn’t do it.”
“Then where is he?” shot back Terisa.
“He wouldn’t let them kill Nyle without trying to stop them – without trying to get help.” Lebbick was making a visible effort to understand her. “Maybe they killed him, too, and took the body with them.”
“Why?” she repeated. “Why bother? To create the illusion they had a confederate they didn’t need? To make you think Underwell is guilty when he really isn’t? What does that accomplish? What would be the point?”
“Right!” The Castellan clenched his fury in both fists. “What would be the point?”
And still she wasn’t afraid. His entire face was eaten—Calmly, she asked, “What did Underwell look like?”
Lebbick made a strangling noise. “ ‘Look like’?”
“Compared to Nyle,” she explained. “Were they about the same height? The same weight? About the same coloring?”
“NO!” the Castellan yelled as if she had gone too far, as if this time she had finally pushed him past the point where he could hold back his hands. And then, an instant later, what she was getting at hit him, and he stopped.
In a thin voice, he said, “Yes. About the same.”
Quietly, as if she didn’t mean anything personal, she pursued her argument. “If you put Underwell in Nyle’s clothes, would you still be able to recognize him? If you gave him wounds to match the ones Nyle was supposed to have – and if you disfigured him – and if you covered the rest of him with blood – would you still be able to recognize him?”
Castellan Lebbick stared at her with apoplexy on his face.
“I think Nyle is alive,” she finished, not because she thought the Castellan still didn’t understand her, but simply because she had to say something to control the silence, keep him from exploding. “I think the poor man who got butchered was Underwell.”
With an effort, Lebbick pulled a breath between his teeth. “All that,” he chewed out distinctly, “you think all that, and you haven’t set foot outside this cell. Sheep-rut! How do you do it? What do you use for reasons? What do you use for proof?”
Now that she had arrived at her conclusion, she lost her invulnerability. He was beginning to scare her again. “I’ve already explained it.” She was determined not to let her voice shake. “Eremis wants to shift the blame onto Geraden. Partly to get him out of the way, so he can’t understand his talent and start using it. And partly because Eremis isn’t ready to betray you yet. Maybe his plans aren’t finished. If he sprang his trap now, Prince Kragen would get Orison. Alend would get the Congery. Isn’t that right? But Eremis is in with Gart – with High King Festten and Cadwal. He wants to keep us all safe until Cadwal gets here – until Alend is out of the way.
“If Geraden is working with Gart – if he really does serve Cadwal – he wouldn’t have done any of this. He wouldn’t have risked accusing Eremis, he wouldn’t have done anything to undermine Orison. Until Cadwal got here. He wouldn’t have ruined his own position by killing his brother.”
She would have gone on, trying to build a wall of words between herself and the Castellan, but he cut her off. “That’s enough!” he snapped fiercely. “It’s just talk. It isn’t a reason. It isn’t proof. You’ve been in this cell all day. What makes you think you know what’s going on? You say he’s doing everything because he’s guilty – but he would do exactly the same things if he was innocent. I want proof. If you expect me to go arrest the ‘hero of Orison,’ you’ll have to give me proof.”
Just for a second, Terisa nearly failed. Proof. Her mind went dark; a lid closed over her courage. What kind of proof was there, in a world like this? If Underwell had been stretched out naked in front of her, she wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between him and Nyle. She didn’t know men. Only the crudest physical characteristics would have enabled her to distinguish between him and, say, Eremis. Or Barsonage.
Then, abruptly, the answer came to her. In sudden, giddy relief, she said, “Ask Artagel.”
“Artagel?” demanded the Castellan suspiciously. “Geraden’s brother?”
“And Nyle’s,” she countered. “Make him look at the body. Take the clothes off and make him look. He ought to be able to recognize his own brother’s body.”
Lebbick glared at that idea as if he found it offensive. Under one eye, a muscle twitched, giving his gaze a manic cast. She had gone too far, said something wrong, accidentally convinced him her arguments were false. He was going to do what he had come for in the first place. He was going to hurt her.
He didn’t. He said, “All right. I’ll try that.
“It’s too bad Underwell doesn’t have any family here. It would be better to look at this from both sides. But I’ll try Artagel.”
Terisa felt faint. She wanted to sit down. The Castellan’s scowl was still fixed on her, however. He made no move to leave. After a moment, he said, “While I’m gone, remember something. Even if that is Underwell’s corpse, it doesn’t prove Nyle is alive. It doesn’t prove anything about Geraden or Eremis. All it proves is that some shit-lover is still plotting something. If you want me to arrest the whore-bait ‘hero of Orison,’ don’t show me Underwell is dead. Show me Nyle is alive.”
Then he left. The cell door banged; the key scraped in the lock; hard bootheels echoed away on the stone of the passage.
Terisa sat down on the cot, leaned her back against the wall, and let herself evaporate for a while.
THIRTY: ODD CHOICES
The bars of the cell were of old, rough iron, crudely forged and cast. Little marks of rust pitted the metal like smallpox; it looked ancient and corrupt. Nevertheless the bars were still intact, despite their age. Against the gnawing of rust, which the rude workmanship and the damp atmosphere aggravated, the iron was defended by generations of human oil and fear. Since the dungeons were first constructed, dozens or hundreds of men and women and perhaps children had stood in this cell, holding the bars because they didn’t have anything else to do with their need. And now the ooze of sweat and dirt left behind by their knotted, aching, condemned hands protected the metal from its accumulated years. Sections of iron could be brought to a dull shine, if Terisa rubbed them with the sleeve of her new shirt.