Mags grabbed the hayfork as he ran past it, ran on a couple of paces, felt Ice and Stone breathing down his neck. He turned his headlong run into a fast turn, holding the hayfork like a quarterstaff. He managed to clip Ice across the face with the handle-end. Ice went down, his nose spewing blood.
Stone danced back, and the two of them stared at each other for what seemed like forever.
The shields over both of the men were so tight it was as if they weren’t even there. And the shields themselves—
If I touch ’em... they’ll kill me. He sensed the shields roiling with the same sort of energy that had stunned him the last time he got too close. All he could do—all he dared do—was hold his own shields up and tight.
Stone’s eyes stared into his, and the most frightening thing at that moment was that there was no anger, no animosity, no emotion whatsoever in his expression. There was only calculation. He was being assessed and measured for the next time.
And there would be a next time.
Then Stone reached down, hauled Ice up to his feet. The two moved so fast Mags could hardly believe it. Stone glanced around quickly, pulled on Ice’s arm, and they bolted, running straight at the mob milling around the Guard’s Kirball field, the mob of people who were only now beginning to understand that something strange was going on.
And then they were gone, melted into the crowd.
Frantically Mags searched for the “sense” of them, but those wretched shields had clamped down, and all he got was the faint impression of the two of them retreating, faster than any human should be able to run.
Mags leaned against the wall, arms folded over his chest, face impassive. There were some captives out of this fiasco: the group in Guard uniforms who had gone after Amily.
Unfortunately, questioning them only led to a dead end.
The men in the stolen Guard uniforms had been nothing more than hirelings, who had been in the generous pay of Ice and Stone for fortnights. Oh, but they were clever hirelings, able to slip in and pass as Guards because, it seemed, they had done it before.
Many times before.
Often enough, in fact, to have been recognized by several of the Guard officers actually stationed here at the Palace, who assumed that since they were in uniform, and on the grounds, they belonged here.
It was stunningly clever. There was always some turnover here, the men had been supplied with the right people to reference, the right things to say, even the passwords.
“Which are not that hard to get,” one of the captains said in disgust, “We’ve gotten lax. Anyone with a right to be on the Palace grounds could just loiter near the gatehouses when we change and overhear them. We never thought to guard against someone on the inside.”
As the men were questioned under Truth Spell, they revealed that they even mingled with the Guards in their chosen taverns down in Haven until they were able to swap the right gossip. These were very clever men indeed—and Ice and Stone, who ordered them to do all these things, who kept them so well paid they were not the least bit interested in looking elsewhere? They were brilliant.
Unfortunately, the false Guards not only didn’t know who had hired them—other than vague descriptions—they also had had no idea that the girl they had been sent to fetch was the daughter of the King’s Own. They had thought this was all some ransom scheme when they’d finally been given their target.
Once they discovered that, they couldn’t confess fast enough. The Truth Spell wasn’t even needed at that point. It was clear they were terrified of what the King’s Own—and the King—might do to them if they didn’t cooperate. It was just too bad that they knew so little.
Pawel, however, looked to be a very different proposition, and Mags had taken his place in the interrogation room with hopes that he would learn something useful.
Like—why Ice and Stone had wanted to kidnap him.
The room was crowded to the poing of being stifling. There were four Guards, two Healers, a Herald whose name Mags didn’t know who was in charge of the questioning, Nikolas, who was not being permitted to do anything but glare, and Mags.
Pawel sat on a hard wooden chair with his head in his hands, weeping. Mags wasn’t even trying to read him; he was pretty sure all he’d get was a flood of incoherent emotions.
“I’m sorry,” he said, brokenly, over and over again. “I am so very sorry.”
He’d been saying that for the last couple of candlemarks now. Mags was pretty sure he meant it. So was the Herald who had administered a Truth Spell to him—the kind that compelled you to tell the truth. So were the two Healers who had come to make sure he didn’t do anyone any mischief and see to it that the Truth Spell didn’t harm him any.
Right now, it seemed, all it would let him do was say how sorry he was.
Mags finally got tired of it. He walked over to the man, grabbed his shoulder, and shoved him back in the chair so that he had to look up. “Mags!” the presiding Herald snapped, warningly. “Let him be. You won’t get anywhere by bullying him.”
Mags ignored the Herald for the moment. “Fine,” he growled into Pawel’s face. “We unnerstan’. Ye’re sorry. Now tell us what yer sorry about!”
He put a good deal of mental force into that command, and it seemed to snap Pawel out of the weeping fit he’d been caught up in.
Pawel gulped, coughed, and began to stammer. “I—I’m—”
“Sorry, I know.” Mags glared.
“No, I mean... It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. This—this was all wrong. I was supposed to go home. I was—I was supposed to become a priest. Of Vkandis.”
“Karsite?” someone gasped.
“What’s thet s’posed t’mean?” Mags growled.
Pawel seemed mired in his own thoughts and memories; his eyes were glazed and swollen and not really focusing on Mags.
“When I was a child, I wanted to be a priest. I’ve always wanted to be a priest. But I didn’t have the money for the love-offering to become a black-robe, or the Sun’s Blessing to command demons to my will as a red-robe. So... so they told me, if I served the Son of the Sun in another way, they’d—they’d—” He shook his head. “All my life, all I ever wanted was to serve. All my life. And this was my chance. They sent me here. They told me how to fit in. They got me a position in the kitchen. All I had to do was wait.”
“Wait a moment.” The presiding Herald was leafing through some papers. “It says you’ve been serving in the Palace and Collegia kitchens since you were thirteen! That’s a good twenty years ago!”
Pawel nodded, then hung his head. “I thought they’d forgotten about me. But I stayed quiet. I did what I was supposed to. I prayed, I waited for signs, I stayed quiet. I began to think that this was just their way of getting rid of me, or that the Sunlord had chosen another path for me. Maybe I was supposed to learn that you were not so bad after all. I never saw the demons that they said you commanded. I never saw all the evil things they said you White Riders did. You weren’t oppressing your people, or forbidding them to follow the Sunlord’s teachings. Down in Haven, things might not be that good everywhere, but they weren’t any worse than in Echtsten. Maybe I was supposed to come back on my own, and tell the priests myself what I had learned. But I was faithful to the duty I had been given, and I stayed. Then those foreigners—the trading delegation—one of them gave me the sign. I didn’t think there would be any harm in just doing what I’d promised! All I ever did was tell them what I saw and heard! There’s no harm in that!” His tone grew increasingly desperate, and then he sagged back down over his knees. “It was nothing, I never saw anything that was important! I never heard anything but what the Trainees were gossiping about! I didn’t know any secrets! Where was the harm in telling what I knew?”