Lysias didn’t want to ask his next question, either, but for different reasons. As much as he held Lynnae’s dead husband in disdain, he’d not been able to carry those feelings over to the child of that union no matter how hard he tried. But it was a child he’d still refused to meet when Lynnae last stood upon the steps to his home and his servants refused her entry. He’d not even asked after the boy’s name, and now, he winced at the memory of that day. “And my grandson?”
A cloud fell over Esarov’s face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Her child took fever and died.”
Lysias blinked, ambushed by sudden and unexpected emotion. He found himself suddenly disoriented by the wash of grief and regret and rage. What have I done, Lynnae? He sat for a moment, ordering the tears that now threatened him to stand down. His voice caught when he spoke. “He’s dead?”
Esarov nodded. “I seem to recall you were not pleased with her. situation. You should be delighted, I would think, at this outcome.”
He let the air go out of him in a rush and felt his shoulders sagging. He stared at Esarov. “Is that all?”
“Yes,” Esarov said as he stood. “I have no other news. But she is safe, and the Gypsy King is treating the Entrolusian refugees well-giving them food and shelter and work.”
Lysias nodded and watched Esarov walk to the window. He slipped out onto a narrow balcony and climbed over the rail. “My men will find you in three days’ time for Erlund’s response,” he said as he vanished into the fading day.
Lysias closed his eyes and felt a tearless sob shudder across his shoulders.
“We should go soon,” Sasha said, messing her hair and clothing.
When he looked up into her striking green eyes, Lysias wasn’t sure what he hoped to find. Grace. Compassion. Forgiveness, perhaps.
But all that met him there was silent, cold accusation.
Vlad Li Tam
Vlad Li Tam awoke to the sound of a chime and pushed aside the light satin sheets of his prison bed. He forced himself to sit up slowly, once again inventorying his new surroundings.
There had been no further conversation and certainly no explanation when they’d ushered him into the suite of windowless rooms. He’d been left clean linen robes and sandals and had found the bathing chamber, complete with heated water and a marble tub. And once he’d cleaned himself, servants had arrived bearing platter upon platter of steaming seafood, sticky rice, and fresh fruits. He’d taken that first meal sparingly before crawling onto the feathered mattress and falling into a deep sleep.
There had been several meals since, and he assumed that meant days had passed.
He’d spent at least one of them hammering at the door, bellowing his questions and demands.
Really, the same question expressed in different ways.
What do you intend with my family?
It rode him even as he studied the patterns of this new Whymer Maze. They’d moved him from degradation to luxury and left him alone without any expectation that he was aware of. At some point, he knew, it would turn again.
Until then, he ate, bathed and slept in nearly identical cycles.
But now, he realized, was something different.
The chimes. He stood and pulled yesterday’s robe over his naked skin. He walked out into the sitting area and saw the girl waiting for him there.
She inclined her head. “Good evening, Vlad.”
Evening, he thought, careful not to return her gesture of respect. “What do I call you?”
“Ria,” she said.
Vlad Li Tam met her eyes. “Where are my children, Ria, and what are your intentions toward them?”
She smiled. “They are here,” she said, “and I have none.” She stepped back, toward the door. “Would you like to see them?”
Vlad Li Tam swallowed, his eyes narrowing. This is the turn, he thought. “Yes,” he said. “I would.”
Ria turned, her dark robes flowing around her like ink poured in water. “Let’s go see them, Vlad.”
There were no ropes. No guards. No blindfolds. As they walked, he forced Francine calm to enwrap him and turned his mind to the work of learning. He measured each step from the door. He noticed the stone hallway, the texture of the floor, the quality of the air and the way that their footfalls echoed ahead and behind them. His eyes measured the span between doors-doors made of the same dark wood that the mysterious vessel was made from, reinforced with bands of iron and a series of keyed bolts.
His eyes and feet and ears and nose drank in everything, sorted it by degree of usefulness and stored it away. When he needed it, he would bring it back. And at some point, he would know enough to-
“Your father taught you well, Vlad,” she said over her shoulder. “But you will not be well served by that knowledge here.”
He stared at the back of her head. “Why is that?”
She laughed. “Because he designed this place with you in mind.”
Vlad forced himself not to react. He did not break stride, and though she wasn’t looking, he kept his face masked. Mal Li Tam’s words had stayed with him. Your own father betrays you. Vlad remembered the slender black volume, so like the others he’d burned the day Rudolfo had come demanding answers. The smoke of House Li Tam’s secrets had hung heavy over their jungle estate, thick and choking. History they had built by bending and breaking and building men and women, slowly and in secret.
And more secrets within the secrets.
Vlad Li Tam said nothing, placing one sandaled foot in front of the other. Ahead, he saw that the corridor ended with a wide, rounded flight of stairs that rose up, widening as they went, until they ended at a wide set of double doors in shadows cast by intricately carved marble pillars. He hesitated and she stopped.
“Your children are waiting, Vlad.”
And even as her words registered with him, he suddenly knew that he did not want to go willingly where she led him. He found himself wondering if her threat earlier applied to this moment as well. I can have you carried, she had said. He suspected that it was so.
Vlad Li Tam forced himself forward. She climbed the stairs and he followed. Once they reached the top, she pulled open the door.
Robed men-four of them-slipped out and around him. Vlad felt hands upon his shoulders, and he tried not to tense himself. “Exactly what are you-”
Vlad closed his mouth. He’d seen drawings, certainly, and he’d heard the Gypsy King’s Tormentor’s Row described enough to know what awaited criminals and enemies within its screaming walls. But the magnificence of the room was boggling. He stood now on a wide, circular balcony, overlooking the cutting room below with its tables and pipes. Recliners and armchairs on the observation deck had been replaced with simple wooden stools and an upright rack beset with straps and manacles. But other than those spartan furnishings, the space was lavishly decorated. Art, the likes of which Vlad had never seen, lined the circular walls-various demonstrations of the cutters at work. Heavy purple velvet curtains offset high stained-glass windows. The railings and blood-catchers were gold, and near the tables below, silver blades of various shapes lay waiting for skilled hands to wield them.
The robed men dragged Vlad to the rack, and finally he resisted. He lashed out with a foot and heard the solid crack of an ankle. The man went down a thud, and Ria’s voice shouted out, echoing across the domed chamber.
“Enough,” she said. “You forget about the well-being of your children.”
Vlad Li Tam snarled, then hung his head. They’re dead anyway. No, he told himself. Not yet. And maybe there was a way still to save them. He let the three remaining men escort him to the rack and strap him in.
Ria smiled down at him and whistled low. A table of knives appeared. “I told you I would be your Kin-healer and Bloodletter. Do you remember this?”