“No point in soiling your hands, Tylar,” she said coldly. She looked around, picked up a piece of expensive silk that Hadanelith was using for a couch drape, and deliberately wiped her boot with it, dropping it at her feet in a crumpled heap. Only then did she turn to look at her prisoner.
“There are a lot of things I would like to do to you, scum,” she said, her voice flat and devoid of all emotion. “However, we’ve got one Law to deal with people like you. Hadanelith, by reason of being caught in the acts described, you will be taken as you are to the plateau above White Gryphon in chains. You will be taken to the edge of the lands we have claimed and cultivated. There you will be freed of your chains, and you will be given from now until darkness falls to take yourself outside our border marker. If, by tomorrow at dawn, you are still inside them, whoever finds you is permitted to take any steps he deems necessary to get rid of you.”
Hadanelith’s rage showed clearly in his eyes, but his voice was as cold as Judeth’s. “As I am? What, no weapons, no food, no—”
“You are a mad dog, scum. We don’t supply a mad dog with food and weapons.” Her lips thinned, and her eyes glinted as she looked down at him. “You think that you’re so clever—I suggest you start using that cleverness to figure out how to survive in the forest with only what you’re wearing.” She jerked her head at the rest of the Silvers. “Chain him up, and get him out of here before he makes me sicker than I already am.”
The Silvers didn’t need any urging; within moments they had their prisoner on his feet, collared and manacled.
Amberdrake had expected Hadanelith to fight, to heap verbal abuse on them—to do or say something, at any rate. This continued silence was as unnerving as his continued certainty that no good was going to come of this.
He is a mad dog. The forest is going to kill him, but painfully, and perhaps slowly. Shouldn’t we have at least had the compassionate responsibility to do it ourselves?
But his crimes had not warranted execution, only banishment. He could not be cured, that much was obvious, so the rulers of White Gryphon had an obligation to remove him from among those he was preying upon. That meant imprisonment or banishment, and White Gryphon did not yet have a prison.
Hadanelith glared at Amberdrake all the time he was being bound, and continued to glare at him all the time he was being hauled out of the room, as if he held Amberdrake personally responsible for what was happening to him. That just added another level of unease to all of the rest.
If they had found Hadanelith alone, Amberdrake might have turned and bolted at that moment—but they hadn’t, and through all of this, the young woman had not moved so much as an eyelash. Amberdrake’s personal unease gave way to a flood of nausea as he knelt down beside her.
He eased down his own shields, just a trifle, and touched her arm with a feather-brush of a finger to assess the situation.
He slammed his shields back up in the next instant, and knew he had gone as white as Skan’s feathers by the chill of his skin.
He looked up at Judeth, who hovered uncertainly beside him.
“It’s not good, Judeth, but I can take it from here.” He took a deep, steadying breath and reminded himself that this was no worse than many, many of the traumas he had helped to heal in his career as the Chief Kestra’chern of Urtho’s armies. He looked up again and manufactured a smile for her. “You go on along. I can manage. She’ll have to go to Lady Cinnabar, of course, but I can snap her out of this enough to get her there.”
One of Judeth’s chief virtues was that she never questioned a person’s own assessment of his competence; if Amberdrake said he could do something, she took it for granted that he could.
“Right,” she replied. “In that case—I’ll go along with the others. I want to make personally sure that chunk of sketi gets past the border markers by sundown.”
She turned on her heel and stalked out the door, leaving Amberdrake alone with the girl, a young woman whose name he didn’t even know.
And that’s the next thing; go through Hadanelith’s records and find his client list. Where there is one like this, there will be more.
You knew.it could be this bad, Drake. Just think how much worse it would be for her if you weren’t here.
Hadanelith would not run, no matter how grim and threatening his captors looked. He walked away from them at a leisurely pace, as if he was out for an afternoon stroll, keeping his posture jaunty and his muscles relaxed.
It wasn’t easy. The back of his neck crawled, and despite that officious bitch Judeth’s assertions that they were not going to physically harm him—themselves—he half expected an arrow in the back at any moment.
But no arrows came, and he completed his stroll down the furrow of planted ground without incident, carefully stepping on each tiny seedling before him as he walked, and grinding it into powder beneath his feet. A petty bit of revenge, but it was all that he was likely to get for some time.
At the end of the furrow was the land that had not been claimed from the forest—forest that held so many dangers that sending him out here might just as well have been a death sentence. Even the field workers came out under guards of beaters to drive the beasts away, and Kaled’a’in whose specialty was in handling the minds of wild beasts in case the beaters couldn’t frighten predators off.
And archers in case both fail. Thank you so much for your compassion, you hypocrites.
He did not pause as he reached the trees and the tangle of growth beneath them. He pushed right on in and continued to shove his way grimly through the bushes and entwined vines, ignoring scratches and biting insects until he finally struck a game path.
Then he stopped, a little out of breath, to take inventory of his hurts. He wanted to know every scratch, every bruise, for he would eventually extract payment for all of them.
There was the kick to his jaw, the other to his hand; the one had practically broken the jawbone, the other had left his hand numb. His guards hadn’t been any too gentle on the trip up here, either; they’d just about dislocated his arms, wrenching him around, and they’d gotten in a few surreptitious kicks and punches that left more bruises and aching spots under his clothing.
Nevertheless, Hadanelith smiled. They’d been so smug, so certain of themselves—they’d said he was to be sent into this exile as he was, and then were bound by that word from searching him!
Fools. They assumed that a kestra’chern at work would be completely unarmed—but Hadanelith was not exactly a kestra’chern.
And Hadanelith was never unarmed.
He began to divest himself of all his hidden secrets, starting with the stiletto blades in the seams of his boots.
Shortly, he would resume his journey to the boundary markers, and he would be very careful to remain outside them for the few days it took to convince these idiots that some beast or other had disposed of him.
Then he would return.
And then the repayments would begin.
Two
Skan cupped his wings and settled onto the ledge of the lair he and Zhaneel had chosen when White Gryphon was first laid out, this time only stubbing two talons upon landing. That wasn’t unusual; he was often less careful when he thought no one was watching him, and the pain was negligible. This was his home. He could blunt his talons on the stone if he felt like it.