Appalling sobs shook the child, tearing themselves up out of his throat and racking his thin body.
In that moment Zorsha learned how to hate.
The study was very dark; very quiet. Felaras listened to Zorsha's tight-voiced recitation with growing nausea. She had no doubt that he was retelling the tale exactly as the boy had told it to him; he was white as salt, and just barely under control. She had never seen him so angry—she rather doubted anyone had. Zorsha the calm, the easygoing, the half-asleep—Zorsha had just been awakened to something he'd never anticipated.
When Zorsha finished, she steepled her fingers just below the level of her eyes and looked at him as searchingly as she had ever measured anyone.
His face was as tightly controlled as his voice had been—but just beneath that tight control there still was a terrible and implacable anger. Merely speaking had not purged him of it; if anything, it had intensified it. She was finding herself very glad that she was not the object of it.
"And your analysis?" she said, finally.
"I was trained to always demand both sides of a story, Felaras. Frankly, I don't care to hear the other side of this one. I really don't want to know what could bring men to act like that—like rabid beasts. All I want to do is destroy the beasts and the thing that made them that way. Which, to my analysis, is the Talchai and the Suno."
"That's not a rational way of looking at something—"
"I don't want to be rational!" he hissed. "You weren't with the boy down there; I was. You didn't look into that dead little face—into those hopeless eyes. This was a fourteen-year-old boy, Felaras! A child that age couldn't make something like this up!"
"I never suggested that he had," she said, overcome by a profound weariness for a moment. Why me? Why is it me who must face this? Deal with this? Somehow rectify this? "Is he all right?"
"I think so. As all right as he'll ever be. When he ran out of strength to cry, I carried him back to his room; Kasha got Boitan and Boitan gave him something that made him sleep. Boitan said he thinks this actually did the boy some good—'catharsis,' he called it." Zorsha shook his head, and only now did Felaras see that his eyes were red from weeping of his own. "I stayed with him until he was under. Kasha's with him now, and his dog." He clenched his hands on the arms of the chair; a white-knuckled grip that would have cracked weaker wood. "Felaras, the weapons the boy suggested are inhumane—and I want to construct them. I want to use them. I want to drive home the lesson that what the Talchai did will be paid for. I want them to think that every god above and every demon below has turned its hand against them. I want to make retribution so terrible that no one will ever contemplate atrocity like that against anyone again. And I want the Talchai, above all else, to know the reason why this is falling on them."
She parted her hands and looked at them with surprise; they were shaking. She'd thought her control was better than that—but the story had gotten past her defenses enough to make her tremble with the effort of holding in her own reaction. "Do me this favor, Zorsha. First, sleep on it. Second, speak with Jegrai and Northwind. Then decide. If you still want to construct these things—I'll back you. Reasonable?"
He nodded curtly.
"I'm going to ask a very personal question, and remember, it's because I've made you my successor and I have to know your strengths and your weaknesses. Why this boy? You haven't—" Her face flamed with embarrassment, and she looked away.
He read the embarrassment correctly, and snorted. "No, Felaras, I'm not a pederast. Gods help him, that would be the last thing Yuchai would need! No, set your mind at ease on that subject; I still want Kasha, quite healthily, let me tell you. It's because—I look at Yuchai, and I see myself all over again. He's enough like me inside to be my own son—more like me, probably, than a son would be. I've come to love him for his brave little soul and his bright mind as surely as if he'd been born my son." His face hardened. "And they hurt him. Hurt him in a way no physician can deal with. I think that no matter what Boitan says, the only thing that's going to truly let him heal and let him put his mind on something besides revenge is to get revenge. Or at least the promise of it."
Felaras nodded, slowly. "That makes a peculiar kind of sense." She cleared her throat a little. "I shouldn't admit this, but I agree with you. On everything. Just follow through on those promises, all right? Let's at least give this the appearance of rational thinking."
The chair legs scraped harshly on the floor as he pushed away from the desk and stood up. "I'd like to stay with him in case he has nightmares. Boitan thought he might."
"Fine, go ahead," she replied absently, still trying to make some kind of sense out of the catalog of horrors Zorsha had recited so tonelessly. "Send Kasha back here, would you?"
She stared at the flame of the single candle on her desk, letting it mesmerize her, trying to see some reason, any reason, behind what seemed so unreasonable. The things the Order, as a group and as individuals, had endured in the past—those things were actually understandable. Fear of the unknown, hatred for the foreign, greed, the desire for power—all normal human motivations. But this—
Even at third hand, it chilled her. Jegrai hadn't gone into the personal details of what had happened to his Clan. If he had, she might well have given him his bargain months before. But then again, she might have suspected an adult of fabricating at least part of the story—
Poor Yuchai. She couldn't begin to imagine what it had been like to live through it.
A shadow passed between her eyes and the candle flame, and she started.
Kasha was sitting on the edge of her desk, and had just waved her hand in front of Felaras's eyes to get her attention.
"I had a word with Shenshu and Demonsbane," she said quietly. "They've been figuring the boy for a breakdown for a while. Seems his father is one of those stone-faced, iron-willed types who finds any show of emotion something less than honorable. They're relieved, both that it came, and that Yuchai had an acceptable father-substitute with him to get him through the worst of it. They couldn't speak too highly of Zorsha, both for his handling of the situation and for his compassion. Right now, so far as Shenshu's concerned, Zorsha hung the moon."
Felaras shook her head. "That's not what's bothering me. It's why. How could human beings do that to other human beings?"
Kasha sighed. "I can only tell you what they told me. First, that this Khene Sen is just as charismatic and persuasive as -Jegrai—and he's twelve years older. He had a lot of time to get his people brought around to his way of thinking. Second, that Sen's mother was Suno; an alliance marriage. Now think about what Teo told us: the Suno consider all other races to be inferior. Fit only to serve, to enslave."
Felaras nodded, seeing the pieces falling into place, seeing the pattern start to emerge.
"Put those two things together, add what the Suno have probably been telling Khene Sen, about how superior, how great a leader he is, and about how much they can give him—and then produce Jegrai. Charismatic, brilliant—and young. Young enough to beat Sen just by outliving him. And you get?"
Felaras sucked in a breath. "A very frightened man; a man who sees the possibility of being cornered staring him in the face. A man who sees the way to exterminate that threat now if he just acts quickly enough."
Kasha nodded. "That was basically what Demonsbane figured. 'Exterminate' is a good word-choice—remembering that Sen is half-Suno."