“I’m not Ledora! I’m the Countess…”
Renunzio struck her mouth with the back of his hand. “You are the nurse Ledora, and your lies shall do you no good!” He twisted about and commanded a torturer, “Take off her shoes!” She felt her shoes being ripped from her feet, and cried out in fear. Renunzio snapped his fingers at the torturer, and a thin rod smacked across her soles. Ledora screamed, terrified and amazed that it could hurt so much.
“What did you tell the soldiers!” Rununzio thundered. Ledora bathed the soldier’s brow, telling him, “All men have the right to live without fear of the Protector making them disappear in the night! All men have the right to be free—to decide for themselves what work they will do, who they will marry, and to stand up for themselves if someone tries to hurt them, or their wives or children! All men have the right to make these choices for themselves, so that they can at least try to be happy! ”
“Rights!” the countess screamed. “I told them that all people are born with rights that no government can take away from them!”
One of the torturers looked up, startled, and behind the mask, his eyes grew thoughtful.
“Sedition!” Renunzio snarled. “Treachery! Who taught you these vile notions?” He snapped his fingers again.
The wand struck her soles, the thumbscrews bit deeper, and poor Countess Vogel, confused and terrified, cried out the first memory that came to her mind…
She sat in a room with many other men and women who had been lords and ladies (but how had they become anything less?), and before them stood a young man wearing peasant’s clothes, saying, “One by one, the men will go out to take the places of magistrates and reeves, and the women will go out to try to fascinate and marry other officials, then teach them very slowly about the New Order. Those who can’t, will become nurses to the reeves’ soldiers, and teach the fighting men about human rights and self-government, little by little.”
“And what will you do, Miles?” one of the other women asked.
“I shall disguise myself as an inspector-general,” the man answered, “and go from magistrate to magistrate, telling you all what progress we’re making, and helping where I’m needed—or calling for help from the city. ”
“Who told you!” Renunzio thundered. Pain bit again in hands and feet both, and the countess screamed, “Miles! Miles told us!”
“Us?” Renunzio pounced on the word. “Who else? Who else?”
“All the lords! All the ladies! Count Lorif, and Prince Parslane, and the Grand Duchess Kolyenkov, and…”
“Her wits are going,” one of the torturers muttered. “Silence, fool!” Renunzio snapped. “I will say when she’s in danger of breaking! Woman! Where is this Miles you speak of?”
“Anywhere! Anywhere!” she cried. “He’s an inspector-general! He could be anywhere!”
“An inspector-general!” Renunzio stared, his eyes bright with unholy excitement. “A real inspector-general, or an impostor?”
“An impostor! We were all to be impostors, every lord and lady of us! But it was all a dream, just a dream!”
The torturer swung his rod up for another blow, but Renunzio stopped him with a raised hand. “One more, and her mind will be worthless junk. Take her back to her cell. With a few days’ rest, she may tell us more.”
The word ran through the revolution’s cells that Ledora had been taken. Nurses melted away from reeves’ bands overnight, and in the Protector’s Army, no man spoke of anything but his duties and his home. Miles disguised himself as a beggar and went into the forest to work his way back to Voyagend. He stared into his campfire in the night, trying to ignore the fear that seemed to wrap itself about him, trying not to panic at every slightest sound, the cry of the owl, the call of the nightbird, the rustle of a badger in the underbrush, the snap of a twig…
The snap! He whirled about, swinging an arm up to block, and saw the two foresters looming over him for a split second before pain exploded through his head, and he sank down into the safe, warm, darkness.
Miles came to with a splitting headache. The caution of the outlaw made him lie still, opening his eyes just enough to peek through the lashes. Stone, gray stone all about him, dimly washed by light high on the wall… A stout wooden door bound with brass, a tiny hole at eye level for a standing man… He knew a prison when he saw one.
But he kept looking and wished he hadn’t, for his gaze led him to a gaunt, black-clad man with ravenous eyes who sat beside him on a low stool.
“Come now, I know you’re awake,” this apparition said, quite companionably. “Open your eyes, and let’s get on with it.”
Miles lay still, hoping the man was bluffing.
“I heard the change in your breathing,” the man insisted, “and I’ve sat by the beds of enough traitors to the Protector so that I know the difference. Come, you’re wasting time, my time, your time, and”—his voice stayed quite mild, even casual, “you may not have a great deal of time left. So be a good fellow and open your eyes, eh?”
Reluctantly, Miles opened his eyes completely, and was relieved not to see any torture instruments, nor any of the dreaded men in black masks. “My head aches abominably,” he muttered.
“Aches? Well, let it serve as a lesson, for other parts of you will hurt far worse if you don’t answer my questions with the truth.” The tone was still quite mild, making Miles shiver with dread. “I am Renunzio,” the human vulture went on, “and my task is to make you renounce indeed—renounce the treachery you have committed, or renounce life. It is, lamentably, your choice—lamentable because I’d far rather have true answers than your mutilated corpse.”
Miles knew better than to claim it wasn’t true, that he hadn’t even thought of treachery. “Water,” he croaked.
“Yes, a few drops, for you’re no use to me if you can’t talk,” Renunzio told him. He reached down and brought up a tin cup, then scooped an arm under Miles’s shoulders and yanked him upright with astonishing strength for one so skinny. The pain rocked through Miles’s head in waves; his stomach lurched and the room darkened about him. He wouldn’t even have known the cup was there if it hadn’t pressed hard against his lips and tilted. Water flooded into his throat; he coughed, drowning for a moment, and shoved the cup away, coughing still. When he was done wheezing, he realized Renunzio had done as he said—only a few drops had actually stayed in his mouth. The rest soaked the front of his shirt.
“This is my case,” Renunzio informed him. “I am the spymaster who began to suspect your plot from hearing the reports my agents brought of the talk circulating in the Protector’s Army. I put on a uniform and walked about, listening myself, and found that men who had never breathed a word against the Protector, but who fell ill and went into hospital, uttered sedition with great excitement when they came out. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, for I’ve long known that treason is a disease, and one anyone may catch. Still, I was surprised, so I feigned illness myself, and while I lay abed in hospital, a nurse named Ledora began to speak to me of a strange notion called ‘rights.’ Would you know of this?”
Words of denial leaped to Miles’s tongue, but he remembered all of his tormentor’s cautions and said warily, “I’ve heard the idea spoken.”
“Yes, and spoken it yourself, too, and loudly and long, I’m sure—but we’ll hear of that later. For now, all you need to know is that we arrested the woman and put her to the question. She denied it all, of course, even though I told her I’d heard it myself, from her own lips. We put the thumbscrews on her, and the most amazing thing happened.”