“At least have a drink of water,” Molnekh urged her. “When Ruiz Aw returns for us, we must be ready to act, not weak from moping.”
She looked at him with dull amazement. How could he be so foolish as to expect Ruiz Aw to return? “He’s dead or far away,” she said.
Molnekh frowned. “We don’t know that. How many times has Ruiz Aw surprised us?”
“I think the surprises are over,” she said. “We’ll never see Ruiz again.” But she got up and went to the nearest tap. The water was cold and sweet, with a slight resinous tang.
She felt a little better after she had drunk her fill, a little more alert.
She was the first to notice the return of the mirrorsuited Roderigans. The sound of their boots sent waves of silence spreading through the cattle.
They seemed to be coming straight toward her. She scuttled back to the others, but the guards changed course accordingly, closing the distance with quick strides.
She wanted to run, but what good would that do?
Ruiz Aw began to feel that familiar terrible impatience. The metal band around his waist sent a pang; it felt as though invisible fingers probed at an ancient unhealed wound. He began to listen for the rattle of the gurney.
When he heard it, he leaped to the edge of the platform, knife raised, anticipating the stroke that would free him from the ache of the band. He felt his face twist into an unnatural shape, halfway between a grin and a silent scream.
The next job slid into the dim illumination, and he bent over, touching a soft throat with trembling fingers.
The face was only a white blur through the tears which still came each time he did a job, for some reason he no longer understood.
“Ruiz?” The voice was softer than the throat, uncertain, slurred.
Other jobs had spoken to him, begged for mercy, cursed, raved. He had paid them no attention; what could he do but end their suffering? But this voice was different. Memory tugged at him, stayed the stroke of the knife for a moment.
He rubbed at his eyes until the tears cleared.
The woman was beautiful, with tangled black hair and dark eyes. Her face bore such an incongruous expression of dreamy horror that he had to look away from her.
The band sent him pain, and it forced the breath out of him, so that he bent over, pressing his arms to his stomach.
“Ruiz… it is you. What have they done to you?”
Her voice seemed almost as sweet as the pain was bitter. He looked up again, and some tiny degree of recognition filtered into his mind. Nisa? Was that her name? What was she to him?
Nisa regarded Ruiz Aw with unwilling recognition. He was naked but for a metal band around his waist, and was covered with dried blood, black in the dim red light, his hair a spiny snarl, as though he had rubbed the blood into it and then twisted it into spikes. He was surely mad; his eyes were very wide, white showing all around the pupils, and his lips were pulled back from his teeth in a straining rictus. He clenched a knife in one large hand, and both hand and knife were clotted with coagulated blood, so much blood that the shape of his hand was obscured.
No demon from Hell could have seemed more dreadful, and even in her sedated daze she was terrified.
“Ruiz,” she said again, less certainly. Could this monster really be Ruiz Aw? Surely not, she thought. Surely this was just a torment devised by her captors for their own mysterious reasons, some automaton made in the shape of Ruiz.
His face twisted even more, and he fell to his knees, making an odd grunting sound, his breath whistling as though he could barely catch it.
She heard a small tinny voice near at hand. “Do it!” it demanded.
The pain was eating him, devouring his substance. Soon there would be nothing left of Ruiz Aw but an empty skin. He wondered vaguely if that bag of skin would still stand and slash… but then he realized it didn’t matter, that he would be gone, safe from both pain and the knowledge of the deeds he had done. He felt a dull amazement that he hadn’t seen this escape before. How easy it was going to be… to let the pain drain him away into nothingness.
Another hand would take Nisa’s precious life, but not his. Not his.
He couldn’t understand why this was so important, but he knew that it was, and so he sank toward death, almost content.
Chapter 7
Gejas shivered in the chill of The Yellowleaf’s displeasure.
“At once, at once,” he said, the words forced from his mouth by the pressure of his fear. He switched off the neurostim and watched the man on the platform slowly subside into a boneless heap.
“You’re right, of course,” he said. “But the specimen is essentially undamaged, despite appearances, Master.”
The Yellowleaf touched her dataslate, called up the specimen’s indices. Each string of numbers glowed red at the last entry. A flashing warning bar read: PERSONALITY TERMINATION IMMINENT.
“I’m sorry, Master,” Gejas said faintly. “I underestimated his attachment to the primitive woman. Who could have known? He’s such a secretive creature; he hides from himself almost as well as he hides from us.”
He watched her face; it remained cold and distant. He felt a bubble of desperation form in his chest. “But I can repair the situation, I’m sure,” he said. “I’ll place him back in the group he arrived in, intact. A sort of family, to heal his hurts and allow him to regain hope. Perhaps his bonds to the others of his group are stronger than we had assumed; perhaps we can use his loyalties to control him.
“I know; this is less satisfactory. If only we had more time…. We’d have no trouble breaking him to the leash, I’m certain. But time grows short. SeaStack burns. The pirates decimate each other, each day more passionately. We must learn what we can, Master.”
She finally turned her head and looked at him with a terrifying degree of appraisal.
“Oh, it will surely work, Master,” he babbled, believing it with all his might.
Nisa stood against the wall, arms wrapped around her chest as if she were cold, though the air still held the moist animal heat of the stockyard. In fact, she had grown used to the warmth, and now in the rough coveralls provided by the guards, she was too warm.
The others, except for Einduix the cook, stood looking about the three rooms they had been brought to. Their faces revealed varying degrees of relief and apprehension. The guards had deposited Einduix on one of the cots in the second room, where he still lay in his deathlike sleep.
Gunderd touched her shoulder, and she jumped.
He held up his hands in a disarming gesture. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. What can you tell me about the change in our accommodations?”
She shrugged. “How would I know anything?”
“Well, the guards come for you, take you away, and a few hours later we’re escorted from the stockyard and installed in what for Roderigo must be termed palatial quarters. What happened to you? Perhaps it has a bearing on our new circumstances.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He frowned. “Listen, Nisa-the-princess. We have very little chance of survival, and even if we do survive… on Roderigo our lives will torment us until we die.” He looked about the rooms, as if searching for something. “Our hosts listen, but I speak an obvious truth, so they will probably not punish me for stating it. At any rate… you must overcome your petulance and risk your dignity, if you have any hopes involving the future. Our only tools are what knowledge we can share. Tell me what you can, please.”