The Ruined City Read online

  The Taerleezis issued neither warning nor command to disperse. Advancing smartly in close formation, they cut down all in their path. Attempted resistance was inexpert and ineffectual. Within moments, some ten or twelve Faerlonnish lay dead on the pavement. The rest fled for their lives.

  It was not to be supposed that so flagrant an affront to Taerleezi authority would go unpunished. Two hours later Taerleezi troops in full battle regalia descended upon Rookery Grove, a neighborhood of modest homes and shops adjacent to the Plaza of Proclamation. Taken by surprise, the residents offered little opposition as the invaders burst in, taking tenement after tenement by storm, and herding male Faerlonnish above the age of ten out into the street, where all were systematically butchered and decapitated. Some two hundred bodies were left in the street for the locals to dispose of as they saw fit. The heads were mounted on poles and arrayed in neat rows at the southern end of the Plaza of Proclamation, to serve as a reminder to all.

  TWO

  The term “solitary confinement” was a misnomer, perhaps applied ironically. There was nothing in the least solitary about Vinz Corvestri’s confinement. He shared his tiny space with a host of companions: some four-legged, some six-legged, some indeterminate of appendages, all of them unwelcome. He could hear them rustling and clicking, too near at hand. Sometimes their movement stirred the damp straw on which he lay, and sometimes they scampered or scuttled across his body, the tickling contact always causing him to jerk, no matter how often he felt it. Sometimes they stung, and then he hit at them. Usually they escaped, but when they didn’t, and the small creatures exploded juicily against his skin, the sensation was worse than a sting.

  He never saw them, however. He never saw much of anything, for the darkness was intense. Once upon a time, not so very long ago—or perhaps it had been long ago, it was impossible to judge the passage of time while buried alive—he had possessed the ability to draw upon the vast potential power of the epiatmosphere as a source of light, whenever he wanted. Or, when he preferred, he had been able to achieve a temporary capacity to see clearly without benefit of illumination. He could not do these things now, however. For uncountable days and nights he had been denied use of the powders, draughts, lozenges, and assorted inhalations upon whose properties he customarily relied for mental enhancement. And even had he enjoyed access to such substances, he could never have achieved the inner clarity and focus so essential to the practice of the arcane art; not here in this black hole of a dungeon, with its rats and its crawling things, its reeking atmosphere faintly tinged with smoke, its puddles, weeping walls, and its deep chill. Not here, where he was perpetually hungry and cold, often sleepless, and always afraid. In this place he was helpless as any ordinary prisoner.

  He was not ordinary, however. He was a magnifico of Faerlonne, head of one of the Six Houses, and as such a personage of some consequence, even to his loutish Taerleezi captors. Or so he often told himself; and not without some reason, for what else could explain the clearly preferential treatment he had received? Despite his extreme wretchedness, he was fortunate by comparison with most others, for—unlike those anonymous fellow captives—he had not been tortured; at least, not technically. He had been subjected to countless miseries and humiliations. He had suffered through hours of threatening, abusive interrogation. He had been bullied, screamed at, reviled and mocked, deprived of sleep, slapped, shoved, spat upon and urinated upon—but he had never been whipped, beaten, or maimed. He was achingly hungry, but not literally starving; chilled to the bone, but not literally freezing. He had once been conducted to the prison’s deepest levels, there to behold the instruments of torture—but those instruments had never touched his flesh. Bad as it was, it might have been far worse.

  He wondered whether anyone had dared to intercede on his behalf; his family, perhaps. During the term of his incarceration he had received neither visitors nor messages from the outside world, and had expected none such to be permitted. Sitting there alone in the dark silence of his living tomb, however, he could not help but wonder whether he had not already been forgotten by all who once knew him. Perhaps he had received no greeting or word of encouragement because none had been sent. His wife, Sonnetia—would she spare so much as a moment’s thought for him? Or had she quite dismissed him from her mind? Well, perhaps she had, but one thing was certain—young Vinzille would not. His son’s affection was deep and true. On this point, if few others, Vinz was genuinely secure.

  For a while he sat very still, head filled with recollections of the happy times he had shared with Vinzille in the workroom. But the miseries and terrors would worm their way back into his thoughts, despite all his efforts to bar them. His teeth would chatter, his hands shake, no matter how he tried to still them. And then all of it flew from his mind as the cell door opened and the light from the corridor burst in upon him.

  The onslaught took him by surprise. He had heard no tap of approaching footsteps. The stone walls and heavy cell door muffled nearly all external sound, thus intensifying the prisoner’s sense of utter isolation; by design, no doubt. The lantern light was moderate, but dazzling to Vinz’s unaccustomed vision. He shut his eyes and turned his face away.

  A thud of boots on the floor, and then their hands were on him, hauling him to his feet. He offered no resistance. Nor did he ask them where they were taking him. He already knew.

  Out of the cell, along the damp corridor, and up a narrow flight of stairs they steered him, Vinz still blinking against the light, mute and passive in the hands of the two guards, the iron fetters that confined his ankles clanking with every short step. Another few feet, then they thrust him through a familiar door into a small, grim room.

  The place was bare as always save for a table laden with notebooks, ledgers, and writing materials. At the table sat three men. Their names and titles were unknown to Vinz, but he recognized their faces, having confronted them often enough. The one on the left, with his long visage, long upper lip, and drooping eyelids, looked like a sleepy horse, but that appearance was misleading; he was very much awake. The one on the right—chubby, elderly, silver-haired, and pink-cheeked—might have been taken for a benevolent grandfather, but for his palely depthless, blind-looking stare. And the one in the middle—burly, black-thatched, and red-faced—glowered like some hard-drinking village bully. All three of them wore the shoulder sashes and brass insignia of minor Taerleezi officials.

  Vinz knew what to expect, and the meeting held no surprises. The interrogation began, consisting of the same questions that he had heard and deflected so many times: Who were his accomplices among the criminals of the Faerlonnish resistance—what names could he supply? Who were the leaders—what names? What were the plans? What were the targets? Had the Magnifico Corvestri taken part in the attack upon the Palace Bonevvi, as the evidence clearly suggested? Could he identify his fellow culprits, thereby diminishing his own guilt? What about the attack upon the Oats Street Armory? The magnifico had been there, along with—who else? What names? What NAMES?

  The voices hammered.

  In earlier interviews he had striven to defend himself, answering all questions put to him at earnest length. He had been stalwart in his denials, composed and lucid in his explanations. He had even ventured to hope that his eloquence might favorably impress the interrogators.

  Such hopes were vain. They had not troubled to contradict or refute him. Indeed, he might have thought them deaf, had not the horse-faced individual periodically shifted his somnolent gaze from the prisoner’s face to the notebook on the table before him, wherein he scribbled the occasional observation. They had always permitted Vinz to speak uninterrupted. Then, when he was done, they had simply repeated their questions.

  He had attempted to parry with questions of his own concerning the nature of the charges and evidence against him, but these drew no response. Thereafter he had lapsed into silence and apparent vacancy.

  His silence in no wise discouraged the Taerleezis. Their queries and accusations
flew like arrows, but presently a new string of syllables added itself to the bombardment: Your silence, denying nothing, equates to a confession of guilt.

  In better times, the arrant injustice would have infuriated him. Now it hardly seemed to matter. He said nothing, and the threats proliferated along with the indignities, yet his skin remained whole, for the most part. The voices were beating at his ears, and he performed an internal operation that he had lately developed—mental removal. The discipline of a lifetime was not wholly lost, even here, and he achieved success with relative ease. The grim chamber and its noisy tenants faded from his consciousness, and he walked green meadows in the company of his son.

  A sharp slap across the face recalled Vinz to confused reality. The hands of the guards were on him again, and they were not exactly hurting him, but they were busy, and it took him a moment to understand what they were doing. The sudden chill of the atmosphere upon his exposed flesh cleared his mind. They were tearing his garments away, using the points of their daggers where the fabric refused to yield. Within seconds they stripped him bare of all save iron fetters, and one of the interrogators was intoning piously: Decency is a privilege that you have failed to earn. Then someone threw a bucket of cold water over him, and the guards were guffawing.

  This latest humiliation was indifferently effective. Vinz was conscious of physical discomfort underscoring dull misery. He seemed to have lost the capacity to feel much else. Apparently the Taerleezis recognized his present imperviousness, for the interview concluded abruptly, and the guards removed him.

  Down again to the lower level of the prison known as the Witch. Back into his tomb of a cell. The door clanged shut, and the darkness swallowed him.

  He sat very still, eyes wide in the dark. Soon he started to shiver. That, in addition to the chattering of his teeth, recalled him to a sense of his own damp nudity. He was very cold, but unhurt, and once again he wondered at the comparative restraint of his captors. But then, he reminded himself, they had no real need of a confession to justify his conviction and execution. That packet of letters they had discovered in his home on the evening of his arrest furnished all the proof the law required.

  He had never been allowed to see those letters, and could only speculate as to their contents; just as he speculated endlessly as to their origin. Beyond doubt they were forgeries, planted in his study by some enemy bent upon his ruin. An enemy enjoying access to Corvestri Mansion, probably by way of a servant or Sishmindri. The suspicions scuttled through the dark of his mind as the rats and insects scuttled through the dark of his cell, but always sought the same recurring conviction. The woman Brivvia, who had been spied entering and leaving Belandor House more than once; the woman who was personal maid to his wife.

  He thought about his wife now. It seemed he could not stop himself from thinking of her. The Magnifica Sonnetia, with her beautiful, fine-boned face that he could not read. Sonnetia, with her perfect composure, perfect manner, and perfect deportment covering … he knew not what. Sonnetia, with the mind and heart he could not fathom. Had she dispatched her maid to Belandor House?

  His shivering intensified, but that was natural enough. His naked flesh was still wet, and it was very cold in his cell.

  “This has continued too long. You must wake up now. It’s your duty, and you are needed. Wake,” Aureste commanded.

  There was no response. Innesq lay still in his bed, unconscious, unreachable as ever, neither dead nor truly alive. Unlike those around him, he suffered nothing of fear or grief. Aureste resisted the impulse to drive his fist into the peaceful white face. But he needed to drive it somewhere. His dark eyes, burning within their deep sockets, lifted from the bed to the form of the nearest victim.

  “You have failed,” he observed, with a sensation almost approaching pleasure.

  “No,” replied the Sishmindri called Zirriz.

  “No? My brother is awake, then? He’s conscious and mentally whole? Somehow I failed to observe it.”

  “More time. Find magic dust. Then good.”

  “You’ve had time enough. What did I tell you would happen if you failed? Well? Do you remember?”

  A deep tremor rippled the amphibian’s facial muscles.

  “I see that you do. Speak, then. What did I promise?”

  “Hunger and death.”

  “You have earned both.”

  No reply. The Sishmindri simply stared at him, eyes goldenly blank, and Aureste’s ire heated. Zirriz did not beg or bargain. Offering neither excuse nor self-justification, he simply awaited his doom with the quiet impassivity of his kind. There was no satisfaction to be had from him. The threatened execution was largely bluster—a healthy, well-trained Sishmindri was simply too valuable to kill outright. But there were lesser punishments perhaps affording a certain measure of enjoyment.

  A braided leather whip armed with a cluster of lead pellets at the tip lay coiled on the chair beside the bed. Aureste had absently dropped it there some twenty-four hours earlier, in unconscious anticipation of this very moment. The whip seemed magically to leap to his hand. He plied the lash with vigor, and the lead pellets ripped a long gash across Zirriz’s brow.

  The Sishmindri instinctively threw a protective arm across his eyes. A vicious rain of blows tore his livery to shreds and beat him to the floor, where he crouched in shuddering silence.

  And still no satisfaction. The creature refused to cry out. His blue-green blood was streaming from dozens of crisscrossing cuts, he was swaying upon the verge of collapse, but no sound escaped him.

  Some demon stirred to life in Aureste’s brain then, a deadly resolve to break his victim, increasing the speed and force of his blows. The lash was now tearing long strips of greenish flesh from Zirriz’s back, no doubt marring him forever and considerably reducing his value on the open market, but the Magnifico Aureste was beyond caring. For a time, his awareness of his surroundings all but lapsed. And then came a sound refreshing as springtime rain—a muted croak of agony—followed by Zirriz’s collapse into unconsciousness.

  The world resumed reality. His chest heaved and his arm ached. The Sishmindri lay motionless in a blue-green pool at his feet. He did not know whether the amphibian still lived, and for the moment did not care. A sense of weary disgust filled him and he tossed the whip aside. Then, with reluctance, almost as if afraid of what he might confront, he turned his eyes to the bed.

  He was afraid, Aureste realized. For reasons best known to himself, Innesq Belandor valued and esteemed the Sishmindris. To see one of his favorites so savagely abused would shock, grieve, and offend him. He would disapprove; he might even withhold forgiveness.

  That last possibility was insupportable.

  He might have spared himself the worry. His brother lay comatose as ever, and disappointment twinged across Aureste’s mind. Some part of him below the level of consciousness had hoped that a violent outrage, an assault upon his deepest sensibilities, might blast Innesq from slumber. But violence was as useless as pleas, commands, and exhortation.

  He had seriously damaged or destroyed a costly piece of property, to no purpose. Zirriz lay motionless as Innesq, a silent embodiment of reproach.

  Aureste yanked the bellpull and a Sishmindri answered the summons promptly. Another male, clothed in livery, and—but for the brown mottling upon the skin of his pate—a near double of Zirriz. He did not recall the creature’s name and did not want to know it.

  “Remove him,” Aureste commanded, pointing at the fallen amphibian. “Tend to him if he is still alive, dispose of the remains if he is not. Call such assistance as you require, but get him out of here.”

  There was no answer. The Sishmindri was staring at the limp form on the floor, and his great eyes were full of something that few humans knew how to read.

  “Well, do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then look to it.” Aureste exited the chamber, stalking swiftly through the north wing corridors to the sanctuary of his makeshift study,
where he seated himself at the worktable with a sigh. His body, mind, and spirits all seemed iron-weighted. A draught or three of strong spirits might have lightened the load, or at least distanced it, but he resisted the impulse. What if Innesq awoke, to find his brother—distanced? Better by far to lose himself in work.

  The binder containing Nalio’s lists of destruction lay on the table before him. He opened it and tried to apply himself, but the catalog of ruined rugs, burnt bedding, and shattered chandeliers soon sent his mind wandering along uncharted paths. He was a little uncomfortable with himself, he realized; an unaccustomed sensation. Inappropriate as well, for he had every right in the world to beat his own Sishmindri, and Zirriz had deserved a good hiding or worse. He had failed his master, after all.

  A light tap on the closed door broke his reverie.

  “Come,” he commanded, and another Sishmindri appeared. Female, this time. Empty-faced, like all of them, but something in the hunch of her shoulders made him wonder if she knew yet what had happened minutes earlier in Innesq’s chamber.

  Of course she knew. By this time every Sishmindri in the house knew. So much the better, the lesson would make better servants of them.

  “Woman here,” the Sishmindri announced.

  Brivvia again, he supposed. His brows drew together. He had no further use for her at present, and if she thought to extract additional payment from him, she was sadly mistaken. It was on the tip of his tongue to order her ejection, but then he decided to deal with her personally. He would make short work of Brivvia.

  “Admit her,” he ordered.

  The Sishmindri bowed and withdrew. A moment later a cloaked and hooded woman stepped into the room.

  She had been making good use of the money she’d had from him, was his first thought. She had exchanged her cloak of dreary grey-brown frieze for a much better garment of fine wool, colored the almost black-green of pine boughs at twilight. The change suited her, even seemed to lend her extra height and grace.