A river galley was built to ram another ship of its own kind without coming to grief. It made quick work of the flimsy little rowboat. Grus hardly staggered when the warship rolled over the boat. He got a brief glimpse of the thrall struggling in the Stura. Then the river galley was past.
“Well, there’s one of die bastards we don’t have to worry about anymore,” the oarmaster said as his drum let the rowers ease back.
“Yes,” Grus replied, but that was only partially true. He didn’t have to worry that that thrall would splash up onto Avornan soil. He looked back over his shoulder. No, that thrall would never come up again. But the reason he’d set out to escape the Menteshe remained a mystery.
Grus knew that, for all his vigilance, he couldn’t keep all the thralls who wanted to from crossing the Stura. More and more of them began trying it at night, when the galleys couldn’t patrol. Soldiers and farmers who found them brought them to Cumanus, where they went into the amphitheater, and to other towns along the Stura.
“How do they know?” Grus asked Alca one evening.
“How does who know what, Your Majesty?” the witch said.
“How do the thralls know they have a better chance of crossing the Stura at night?” King Grus replied.
“It only stands to reason that…” Alca stopped, looking foolish. “Oh. I see what you mean. What do thralls know about reason?”
Grus nodded. “Yes, that’s what I was thinking.”
“A couple of things occur to me,” the witch said. “One is that thralls do use words—after a fashion. That has to mean they’re able to think after a fashion, too.”
“Maybe,” Grus said, but he didn’t believe it. “And?”
“The Banished One may be telling them what to do, either directly or through the Menteshe.”
King Grus contemplated that. “Well, you’re right,” he said. “I don’t like it a bit. How can you tell whether it’s so?”
“I can ask some of the thralls who’ve crossed the Stura at night whether the Menteshe told them to cross then,” Alca said.
“And if they say no, or if you can’t tell? How can you find out whether the Banished One gave them a direct order?”
The witch sighed. “I could ask them that, too, I suppose. I don’t want to try to use magic to find out. I’ve been lucky enough to live through that sort of magic twice. The thrall the second time wasn’t so lucky, though. And next time it might be me.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Grus said. “I won’t ask you to try anything that might hurt you. I would like to know, though.” He paused in thought. “Can you use a truth spell to see if what you’re getting out of them is worth having?”
“I can try,” Alca answered. “That shouldn’t make me run directly up against the Banished One’s wizardry, which is what I want not to do.”
Accompanied by Grus’ guards, the witch and the king went back to the amphitheater the next morning. Guardsmen brought another thrall out of the excavated pit. The woman stared at Alca with mild, incurious eyes. She brushed at her filthy, scraggly hair—an absentminded gesture.
Absentminded is right, Grus thought. If so much of her mind weren’t absent, we wouldn’t be doing this now. Alca asked, as she had before, “Why did you cross the Stura? Why did you come into Avornis?”
The thrall stared at her. A frown spread over the woman’s dirty, sun-wrinkled face. “Had to,” she said at last, her voice rusty from disuse.
“I see.” Alca nodded briskly, as though speaking to someone in full possession of her wits. “And why did you have to?”
Another frown from the thrall. She might have been thinking over her answer. She might have been, but she probably wasn’t. “Told me,” she said at last. Her Avornan was an old-fashioned dialect, with a hissing accent surely taken from the Menteshe who ruled on the southern bank of the river.
“Ah.” Alca turned to King Grus. “Now, with a little luck, we begin to learn something. I have the spell ready to go.”
“Good,” Grus said.
“I hope it’s for the good,” Alca said. “Remember what happened to that other thrall.” She began to make passes in the air in front of her as she asked the woman thrall, “Who told you you had to come here?”
“He did,” the woman replied at once.
Alca muttered something under her breath that was more fitting of a longshoreman than a witch. “Let’s try again,” she said, and repeated the series of passes. “Who was he?” she asked when they were done.
“Him who told me,” the thrall said.
The witch muttered some more, louder this time. The thrall ignored that. She looked down at her hands, which were worn and scarred from a lifetime’s carelessness and toil. Alca gathered herself. To Grus, she said, “So far, the woman is telling the truth. The only trouble is, it’s not a useful truth.”
“Is she talking that way on purpose?” Grus asked.
“I don’t know,” Alca told him. “I hope not. If she—or rather, if the wizardry inside her—is having sport with me…” She muttered yet again. “I can’t think of a worse insult.”
“What can you do about it?” the king asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know whether I can do anything,” Alca answered. “That’s part of what makes it such an insult.” She turned back to the thrall. “Did a mortal man tell you to come here?” The woman shook her head. Alca brightened. “Did one who isn’t mortal tell you to come here?”
The woman shook her head again.
“Has to be one or the other,” Grus said.
“With the Banished One, who knows?” Alca replied. She turned back to the female thrall, took a deep breath, and asked, “Did the Banished One tell you to leave your home and come into Avornis?”
Alca visibly braced herself, waiting for the woman’s answer. Grus could hardly blame her, remembering the magic back at the royal palace and remembering the thrall falling over dead here at the amphitheater in Cumanus. The woman grinned—not an expression of mirth, but one that made her look uncommonly like a skull with glittering eyes. “I know,” she whispered, and nodded. “Yes, I know.”
“Then tell me,” the witch commanded. But the woman only kept staring, that—mocking?—grin showing snaggled teeth, several of them broken. Alca’s lips thinned in anger at being defied. “In the names of the gods—in the holy names of King Olor and Queen Quelea—tell me!”
The thrall woman’s grin vanished, to be replaced by a snarl of hate. “Those names mean nothing to me here. Nothing! Less than nothing!” The voice with which she spoke was not her own, but a resonant baritone. For a moment, it put Grus in mind of the late Arch-Hallow Bucco’s golden tones. Then, involuntarily, the king shook his head. Bucco would have killed to claim the sounds coming from this woman’s mouth. She—or that which spoke through her—went on, “They cast me down from my rightful place. They sent me hither. That place, they say, is theirs. This place, then, is mine. They trifle with me here at their peril. And one day, I shall see them again in their own habitation, which is mine as well. Then shall they learn even there that they trifled with me at their peril.”
After that outburst, the thrall went limp in the guards’ arms. Her eyes sagged shut. She still breathed, though, and when Grus felt for a pulse he found one. “Are you answered?” he asked Alca. His voice wobbled. He knew more than a little pride that he’d managed to speak at all.
“I don’t know,” she answered, and her voice shook, too. “That the Banished One spoke through her there—who could doubt it? But did he himself set upon her the impulse to flee north? Did he himself, or some part of his essence, dwell within her all this while? Did he know we were questioning her? I don’t know. How can I tell?”