“Why do you baby her?” Another soldier sat on a chair by Evvy’s feet. He stood. Like the other man, he wore the tan uniform. This one had an untidy mustache and carried a leather strap in one hand. “She’s going to get the full treatment sooner or later.” He drew back his arm and slapped the soles of Evvy’s feet with the strap, hard.
The pain shot through her like fire. She gasped, then bit her lip.
“Please, take my advice,” the soldier next to her head whispered. “Tell him what he wants to know.” He looked at the other man. “She’s just a girl! Ask your questions — you don’t have to hit her!”
“You’re an idiot, Musheng. Why are we here if we don’t teach them respect for the emperor? She came to this country to carry information against him and fight for his enemies, didn’t you, Evumeimei Dingzai?” He struck Evvy’s feet with his strap again. She screamed and tried to imagine a stone where she could keep her secrets. She had done so before. Another blow, or two, might make her blurt out something important, like where the others had gone, or the thing that Rosethorn carried. That was the problem with being quick with her tongue. Sometimes she spoke before she thought. She couldn’t do that now.
The soldier Musheng took Evvy’s hand and clasped it tightly. “Dawei, she could be your daughter!” He looked at Evvy. “Please, child. You came here with three companions, Briar, Rosethorn, and a dangerous slave, Parahan. Tell us where they are. We’ll have a mage see to your feet —”
“Let them heal like my arm had to heal when the northerners poured boiling oil on it!” snapped Dawei. He drew the strap lightly across Evvy’s burning, bleeding feet, making her flinch.
“A mage will tend your wounds,” Musheng said with a glare at Dawei. “But my captain won’t allow it unless you tell us what we need to know. These people abandoned you here when they knew trouble was coming, didn’t they? You don’t owe them anything.”
Evvy didn’t listen. She had the stone in her mind. Inside it she hid her cats, and her friends and where they went: Rosethorn and the thing she carried, Briar and the soldiers moving the villagers to safety, Dokyi and his lonely journey to Garmashing. Souda vanished inside the stone as well. Maybe these zernamuses didn’t already know she had come to Gyongxe with two hundred soldiers. Finally she blinked at Musheng. “What people?”
Dawei snorted. “That’s what you get for your kindness! Insolence! A Zhanzhi gutter rat lies to you about information she knows perfectly well you already have!” He slapped the strap harder over the soles of Evvy’s feet twice, grinning at her screams. “Tell him the names of your companions, and apologize!”
“I don’t know their names anymore,” she said.
Musheng sighed. “Why don’t you know their names, Evumeimei?”
“They told us she was a mage student,” Dawei said. “She did some magic.”
“Forgetting things is a high degree of magic for a student,” Musheng said. “I think you’re lying to us. Girl, you don’t help yourself this way.”
Evvy didn’t answer. Now she was trying to think her feet to stone. She had done it before. Someone — she couldn’t remember who — had told her to imagine herself as stone, though he’d woken her just as she had it worked out. That part she remembered.
Dawei lashed her again. She lost the feeling of stone. Pain washed up her legs in bloodred waves.
“Tell the emperor you have me,” she whispered. She remembered the emperor. “He likes me. He gave me a cinnabar cat.”
“Who do you think sent us in search of you and your friends?” Musheng wiped her face with a cold cloth. “Where are they, Evumeimei?”
“I want my clothes,” Evvy said. Her feet throbbed. In spite of herself tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. They ran into her ears. How could feet hurt so much? “I feel bad without any clothes.”
“You don’t need clothes,” Dawei told her. “Talk, and you’ll get them back.” He looked at Musheng. “She ought to have said something useful by now.”
Musheng nodded. “Let’s see what the mage thinks.”
Dawei scowled. “It’s past midnight. She hates to be woken up.”
“She’ll want to know the girl hasn’t talked, late hour or no. Wake her.”
Dawei left the room. Musheng leaned against the wall. “If I were you, I’d tell Nanshur Jia Jui what she wants to know, right away. She isn’t patient like Dawei.”
Jia Jui — she knew that name, but she wasn’t sure where she knew it from. She thought Jia Jui was another friend of hers who had cats. It was hard to think when she hurt so badly. “I don’t know what you want,” Evvy said. “I wouldn’t tell you if I did, but I don’t.”
“They were at this fort with you,” Musheng said. “The other prisoners told us that much. They said the First Dedicate of the Living Circle temple was here, too. Dokyi left before they did. What did he want?”
When he said “Dokyi,” Evvy saw a stone in her mind. “I don’t know,” she said, trying not to whine. “Would you put water on my feet?” It was hard to concentrate on making them feel like stone when they burned so badly. “Really, I’m just a kid. Why would these people you’re talking about tell me anything?”
“You’re a baby goat?”
That confused her. “I — I heard it somewhere. It’s street talk for somebody young.”
“Kid or no, you’re a prisoner now,” Musheng said. “Tell me something that Nanshur Jia Jui will think is useful and I’ll pour water on your feet. I had mine lashed once. I know how much it hurts.” He sighed and drank some water. “None of the villagers or soldiers we questioned knew why First Dedicate Dokyi was here, but you were with Rosethorn. He talked to her for a long time. Tell me what he wanted, and I’ll help you.”
“Anything to report?” A beautiful young woman entered the room with Dawei just behind him. She wore a bed robe of soft peach silk rather than a mage’s usual black robes and hat. There were no mage beads on her neck or wrists.
“She is very stubborn, Nanshur Jia Jui,” Musheng replied, bowing deeply. “She did not respond to the strap or to kindness.”
Evvy’s thinking, sluggish with pain and the effort she needed to maintain the stone around some of her memories, finally placed the young woman. “Jia Jui,” she mumbled. “Where are your cats?”
Jia Jui smiled as she bent over Evvy. “You remember me. That is good. Sadly, my cats are at home. They are too unhappy when I travel. But I understand you dragged your poor cats all the way here.”
Evvy frowned. “They’re used to traveling. Why are you in Gyongxe?”
Jia Jui shrugged. “The emperor my master has begun the conquest of this country. I must say, Evvy, I am sad to find you here. You do not show your appreciation for the Son of the Gods and the favor he showed you very well, do you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Evvy replied crossly. What Jia Jui said and what Evvy remembered were not the same. “Where’s Captain Rana?” she demanded.
Jia Jui sighed. “He threw himself off the wall of this fortress rather than let us question him. I hope we may do better, Evvy, but you must not force me to be cruel. Answer our questions, please, and spare yourself further pain. Tell me where Rosethorn and Dokyi have gone.”
Evvy remained silent and tried to make her poor feet feel like stone.
Jia Jui ran a finger along Evvy’s cheek. It broke the girl’s concentration. “Jia Jui, I don’t know who you’re talking about!” she protested.