Goija Hin, also bent with age, his hair growing so long and stiff over his shoulders that he resembled one of his miserable captives, lashed Myk savagely. Neither lash nor curses hastened the old burdened slave. He staggered onward without protest, though his calves above his fetters were raw from whipping.
“My trouble is, I neither want to wield the lash nor feel it,” Laintal Ay told himself. Another layer of thought arose in his mind, like mist on a still morning. He reflected that he lacked certain qualities. There was little he wished for. He was content with the days as they fled.
I’ve been too content, I suppose. It was enough to know that Oyre loved me, and to lie in her arms. It was enough that once Aoz Roon was almost like a father to me. It was enough that the climate changed, enough that Wutra ordered his sentinels to keep their place in the sky.
Now Wutra has left his sentinels to stray. Aoz Roon has gone. And what was that cutting thing Oyre said earlier—that Dathka was mature, implying I was not? Oh, that silent friend of mine, is that maturity, to be a mass of cunning plots inside? Wasn’t contentment maturity enough?
There was too much of his grandfather, Little Yuli, in him, too little of Yuli the Priest. And for the first time in a long while, he recalled his mild grandfather’s enchantment with Loil Bry, and of how they had stayed together happily in the room with the porcelain window. It was another age. Everything had been simpler then. They had been so content then, with so little.
He was not content to die now. Not content to be killed by the lieutenants if they thought him involved with Dathka’s plotting. And not content either to die of the bone fever, contracted from these two wretches they were carrying away from the city. It was still three miles to the old tower he had in mind.
He paused. The phagors and Goija Hin trudged on automatically with their vile burdens. Here he was again, once more meekly doing what was asked of him. There was no reason for it. His stupid habit of obedience had to be broken.
He shouted to the phagors. They halted. They stood where they were, without moving. Only the burdens on their shoulders creaked slightly.
The group was standing on a narrow track with thickets of dogthrush on either side. A child had been eaten near here a few days earlier; evidence suggested a sabre-tongue had been the killer—the predators came in close to settlements now that wild hoxneys were scarce. So there were few people about.
Laintal Ay struck in among the bushes. He got the phagors to carry their sick masters into the thicket and set them down. The monsters did so carelessly, so that the men rolled on the ground, still in locked positions.
Their lips were blue, peeled back to reveal yellow teeth and gums. Their limbs were distorted, their bones creaked. They were in some way aware of their position, yet unable to cease a constant motor movement, making their eyeballs roll horribly in their stretched facial skin.
“You know what’s the matter with these men?” Laintal Ay asked. Goija Hin nodded his head and smiled evilly to demonstrate his mastery over human knowledge. “They’re ill,” he said.
Nor did Laintal Ay forget the fever he had once caught off a phagor. “Kill the men. Make the phagors scrape out graves with their hands. As fast as you can.”
“I understand.” The slave master came heavily forward. Laintal Ay stood with a branch pressing in his back, watching the fat old man do as he was bid, as Goija Hin had always done. At each step in the proceedings, Laintal Ay gave an order and it was executed. He felt himself fully implicated in everything and would not let himself look away. Goija Hin drew a short sword and stabbed it twice through the hearts of the sick men. The phagors scraped graves with their horny hands—two white phagors, and Myk, as obese as his master, prickled with the black hairs of age and working very slowly.
All the phagors had shackles on their legs. They rolled the corpses into their graves and kicked dirt over them, then stood without movement, as was their fashion, awaiting the next order. They were commanded to scrape three more graves under the bushes. This they did, working like mute animals. Goija Hin ran his sword between the ribs of the two strange phagors, afterwards smearing the yellow ichor on their coats as they lay face down, in order to clean his blade.
Myk was made to push them in their graves and cover them with dirt.
As he stood up, he faced Laintal Ay, sliding his pale milt up the slot of his right nostril.
“Not kill now Myk, master. Strike off my chains and allow me to go away to die.”
“What, let you loose, you old scumble, after all these years?” Goija Hin said angrily, raising the sword.
Laintal Ay stopped him, staring at the ancient phagor. The creature had given him rides on his back when he was a boy. It touched him that Myk did not attempt to remind him of the fact. There was no feeble appeal to sentiment. Instead, he stood without movement, awaiting whatever would befall.
“How old are you, Myk?” Sentiment, he thought, my sentiment. You couldn’t face giving the necessary order to kill, could you?
“I prisoner, don’t count years.” The s’s were dragged like bees from his throat. “Once, we ancipitals ruled Embruddock, and you Sons of Freyr were our slaves. Ask Mother Shay Tal—she knew.”
“She told me. And you killed us as we kill you.”
The crimson eyes blinked once. The creature growled, “We kept you alive through the centuries when Freyr was sick. Much foolish. Now you Sons will all die. You strike away my chains, leave me go to die in tether.”
Laintal Ay gestured to the open grave. “Kill him,” he ordered Goija Hin.
Myk put up no struggle. Goija Hin kicked the huge body into the depression and piled dirt about it with his boot. Then he stood among the tanglewood, facing Laintal Ay, moistening his lips and looking uneasy.
“I knew you when you was a little boy, sir. I was good to you. Myself, I always said you should be Lord of Embruddock—you ask my mates if I didn’t.”
He made no attempt to defend himself with his sword. It fell from his hands and he went down on his knees, blubbering, bowing his hoary head.
“Myk’s probably right,” Laintal Ay said. “We’ve probably got the plague in us. We’re probably too late.” Without another glance, he left Goija Hin where he was and strode back to the crowded city, angry with himself for not striking the fatal blow.
It was late when he entered his room. He stared round it without relaxing his black expression. Horizontal rays of Freyrlight lit the far corner, flaring up brightly, casting the rest of the room into unlikely shade.
He rinsed his face and hands in the basin, scooping up the cool water, letting it run over his brow, his eyelids, his cheeks, and drip from his jaw. He did it repeatedly, breathing deeply, feeling the heat leave him and the self-anger remain. As he smoothed his face, he noted with satisfaction that his hands had ceased to tremble. The light in the corner slid to one wall and faded to a smouldering yellow, making a square no bigger than a box in which the world’s gold decayed. He went round the room, collecting a few items to take with him, scarcely giving a thought to the task.
There was a knock on the door. Oyre looked in. As if sensing immediately the tension in the room, she paused on the threshold.
“Laintal Ay—where have you been? I’ve been waiting for you.”
“There was something I had to do.”
She paused with her hand still on the latch, watching, breathing a sigh. With the light behind him, she could not decipher his expression through the thick dusk gathering in the room, but she caught the abruptness in his voice.