“We must imprison ourselves to save ourselves, Oelph,” she told me. She put her hand on my mouth. “If that is possible.”
Warm and dry and strong.
We were in a cell. A cell set within the walls of the torture chamber and separated from it by a grid of iron bars. Why she put us in here, I had no idea. The Doctor had dressed herself. I had hurriedly undressed while she looked away, cleaned myself as best I could, then dressed again. Meanwhile she had gathered up the long red hair Ralinge had shaved from her head. She looked at it regretfully as she stepped over the master torturer’s body, then threw the gleaming red bundles on to the brazier, where they crackled and spat and smoked and flamed and gave off a sickening smell.
She had quietly unlocked the door of the chamber itself, before putting us both in this small cell, locking the door from outside and throwing the keys on to the nearest bench. Then she had sat calmly down on the dirty straw floor and put her arms round her knees and stared blankly out at the carnage in the chamber outside.
I squatted down beside her, my knee close to where her old dagger protruded from the top of her boot. The air smelled of shit and burned hair and something sharp that I decided must be blood. I felt sick for a little while. I tried to concentrate on something trivial, and was inordinately grateful to find something. The Doctor’s old battered dagger had lost the last of its little white beads round the top rim of its pommel, under the smoky stone. It looked neater, more symmetrical now, I thought. I took a deep breath through my mouth, to escape the smells of the torture chamber, then cleared my throat. “What… what happened, mistress?” I asked.
“You must report what you feel you have to, Oelph.” Her voice sounded tired and hollow. “I shall say that the three of them fell out over me, and killed each other. But it doesn’t really matter.” She looked at me. Her eyes seemed to drill into me. I had to look away. “What did you see, Oelph?” she asked.
“My eyes were closed, mistress. Truly. I heard… a few noises. Wind. A buzz. A thud. I think I was out of my senses for a short while.”
She nodded, and smiled thinly. “Well, that’s handy.”
“Should we not have attempted to run away, mistress?”
“I don’t think we’d get very far, Oelph,” she said. “There is another way, but we must be patient. The matter is in hand.”
“If you say so, mistress,” I said. Suddenly my eyes filled with tears. The Doctor turned to me and smiled. She looked very strange and child-like with no hair. She put her arm out and hugged me to her. I rested my head on her shoulder. She rested her head on mine, and rocked me to and fro, like a mother with her child.
We were still like that when the chamber door burst open and the guards rushed in. They stopped and stared at the three bodies lying on the floor, then hurried on towards us. I shrank back, convinced that our torment would shortly be resumed. The guards looked relieved to see us, which I found surprising. One sergeant picked up the keys from the bench where the Doctor had thrown them and released us and told us that we were needed at once, for the King was dying.
22. THE BODYGUARD
Still the Protector’s son hung on to life. The convulsions and his lack of appetite had left Lattens so weak he could barely lift his head to drink. For a few mornings he seemed to be getting better, but then he relapsed and seemed once again at the very door of death.
UrLeyn was distraught. The servants reported that he raged round his apartments, tearing sheets and pulling down tapestries and smashing ornaments and furniture and slicing ancient portraits with a knife. The servants started to clean up the destruction when he went to visit Lattens on his sick bed, but when he returned UrLeyn threw the servants out, and from then on he would let nobody into his rooms.
The palace seemed a terrible, bleak place to be, the atmosphere contaminated by the powerless fury and despair of the man at its heart. UrLeyn remained in his wrecked apartments during this time, only leaving to visit his son every morning and afternoon, and the harem each evening, where he lay, usually with Perrund, collapsed in her lap or bosom while she stroked his head until he fell asleep. But such peace never lasted long, and he would soon twitch in his sleep and cry out and then wake, and subsequently rise and return to his own rooms, old and haggard-looking and sunk in despair.
The bodyguard DeWar slept in a cot along the corridor from the door to UrLeyn’s rooms. For most of the day he would pace up and down the same corridor, fretting and waiting for UrLeyn to make one of his rare appearances.
The Protector’s brother RuLeuin tried to see UrLeyn. He waited patiently in the corridor with DeWar, then when UrLeyn appeared from his apartments and walked quickly in the direction of his son’s room, RuLeuin joined DeWar at UrLeyn’s side and tried to talk to his brother, but UrLeyn ignored him, and told DeWar not to let RuLeuin or anybody else approach him until he ordered so. YetAmidous, ZeSpiole and even Doctor BreDelle were all told this by the bodyguard.
YetAmidous did not believe what he was being told. He thought DeWar was trying to keep them all away from the General.
He too waited in the corridor one day, defying DeWar to force him to leave. When the door to UrLeyn’s apartments opened, YetAmidous pushed past DeWar’s outstretched arm and walked towards the Protector, saying, “General! I must talk to you!”
But UrLeyn just looked at him from the doorway, then without a word closed the door from the inside before YetAmidous could get there. The key turned in the lock. YetAmidous was left to fume in the doorway, then he turned and walked away, ignoring DeWar.
“Will you really see no one, sir?” DeWar asked him as they strode to Lattens’ room one day.
He thought UrLeyn would not answer, but then he said, “No.”
“They need to talk to you about the war, sir.”
“Do they?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How goes the war?”
“Not well, sir.”
“Well, not well. What does it matter? Tell them to do whatever has to be done. I do not care to concern myself with it any more.”
“With respect, sir—”
“Your respect for me will be expressed from now on by speaking only when you are spoken to, DeWar.”
“Sir—”
“Sir!” UrLeyn said, whirling to face the younger man and forcing him to retreat until his back was hard against a wall. “You will remain silent until I ask you to speak, or I will have you removed from this building. Do you understand? You may answer yes or no.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. You are my bodyguard. You may guard my body. No more. Come.”
The war was indeed going badly. It was common knowledge in the palace that no more cities had been taken, and indeed that one had been retaken by the barons’ forces. If the message to try to capture the barons themselves had got through, it was either not being acted upon or was impossible to accomplish. Troops disappeared into the lands of Ladenscion and only the walking wounded seemed to return, with tales of confusion and horror. The citizens of Crough began to wonder when the men who had been sent to the conflict might return, and started to complain about the extra taxes which had been levied to pay for the war.
The generals at the war itself called for more troops, but there were scarcely any troops left to send. The palace guard had been halved, with one half being formed into a company of pikemen and sent off to the war. Even the eunuchs of the harem guard had been pressed into service. The generals and others who were attempting to administer the land and run the war while UrLeyn closeted himself away did not know what to do. It was rumoured that Guard Commander ZeSpiole had suggested that the only thing to do might be to bring all the troops home, to burn all that could be burned of Ladenscion and leave it to the damned barons. It was also rumoured that when ZeSpiole suggested this, at the table where UrLeyn had held his last council of war half a moon earlier, General YetAmidous had let out a terrible roar and, leaping to his feet and drawing his sword, swore he would cut out the tongue of the next man to betray UrLeyn’s wishes and suggest such cowardice.