“Stop,” I shouted. “I command you. Leave him alone.”
The tall fellow paused, his jaw slack and doltish. A second maintainer, who had legs like tree stumps and clawed hands the size of a sheep’s haunch, nudged him. “Go tell the Guardian the impostor’s awake.”
As the taller maintainer trotted out of sight, the claw-handed fellow grinned at me and kicked Paulo in the gut. Paulo’s body jerked backward, and he retched blood.
“Leave off!” I said. “You’re killing him.”
He did it again.
A mistake to let him see I cared about his victim. I had to get control here. “How dare you disobey me? Don’t you believe I’m your king?”
“Guardian says you’re not.” He wiped his piglike snout with the back of his hand. “He’d never put our king down here. Kings are fine folk.”
I babbled about greed and fear and motives, but the dolt ignored me and shuffled out of view. After the distinct sound of water sloshing in a stone cistern, he came back into sight, carrying a pail, which he emptied over Paulo.
Paulo jerked, choking and coughing, wrapping his arms about his gut. With his huge paws, the guard caught Paulo’s wrists and dragged him onto his back. Paulo’s face was battered, his eyes swollen shut, blood running freely from his nose and mouth. He breathed in tight, irregular gasps.
“Now this is a sorry sight.” The Guardian strolled into my range of vision. He bent down to get a closer look, shaking his head. “The impudent lad is feeling a bit pinched, it seems. Well, we’ll relieve him of his burdens soon enough. And you” - he approached my cell and peered through the bars - “you who dared violate the Source - ”
“Have you told your people of the garden?” I said. “Do they know what marvels lie so close to this deadness you’ve left them? Do they know of the light? Or are you the only one who sees the jeweled cave, a wonder such as I’ve not seen in three worlds?”
“You know nothing of our life or our laws. You are an impostor, and your mouth is filled with lies.”
“I see. So you do keep it all to yourself. You protect your pleasures well, just like you keep the good food and fine linens. And there are so many pleasures… Tell me, Maintainer, does this Guardian come down here to watch the floggings? Does he smile and lick his lips when you torture Singlars in the name of safety? Does he go to watch when Singlars are thrown over the Edge?”
“Silence, impostor!” He did those things. I could see it in his face. And behind him the two maintainers were nodding their heads as if such pastimes made perfect sense.
“You can’t bear to give up your sovereignty, for you enjoy the nasty bits so very much. The king might not agree with what you’ve made of this place, or he might not let you watch any more. Have you told your people what the Source says concerning the Bounded King?”
All I wanted to do was to keep them from killing Paulo, but my mouth wouldn’t stop. “Did you tell them that he was just out of boyhood, that his hair was shot with fire, or that his hands bore scars of bitterness that would never fade?” I held up my palms, burned on the day I became a Lord of Zhev’Na. “Look on these, Guardian, and tell me I’m not your king!”
He snarled and averted his face. “I see no king. Only an insolent boy. It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’ll neither kill you nor send you away. Those things the Source has forbidden me. But I was not told to feed you, and if you’re locked up here for trespassing our laws then that’s your affair, not mine.”
“So you’ll never allow them their rightful king?”
“We don’t need a king. I care for the Bounded. The Singlars listen to me, and they are better off for it.”
He snatched a whip from the maintainer’s clawed hand, and the air whistled and cracked, as he laid another bloody stripe across Paulo’s arm and shoulder. “If you are a king, then show us your strength, traveler. The Source has told me that our king will shape the destiny of all bounded worlds. If he cannot fight a weak Guardian like me, then that seems very unlikely.”
He tossed the whip back to the tall maintainer and pointed to Paulo. “Have your way with this one; just make sure he’s dead at the end of it. Leave our ‘king’ where he is. Then, seal this dungeon so that no one will ever come here again.”
“What of the other prisoners, Guardian?” asked one of the brutes.
“They can be his subjects.”
His laughter echoed long after he was gone, until it was drowned out by the sounds of Paulo’s beating. I tried to make them stop, to command them, to bribe them. I babbled about the garden and the jeweled cave, about the other worlds and the Breach, which they called the Unbounded, and of what I believed about the miracle of their existence. They would pause and listen carefully, then shake their heads and go back to their fun.
Once, Paulo stirred as if he might get up, and I threw a screaming fit to distract the maintainers’ attention, but my friend made it no farther than his knees before the short one spotted his movement and kicked him sprawling again.
“Sorry.” That was the only word he spoke in that awful time. Gods… sorry. As if he were responsible…
Before very long, Paulo was too far gone to give them sport, and they began to discuss how they would finish him. They laughed and stretched him out on his back, tracing a shallow, bloody circle on his heaving chest with their knife blades. They would cut a little deeper each time, they said, until they could take the heart out of him.
“Paulo!” I begged. “Get up, Paulo. Fight them!” He tried, but could not. His face was unrecognizable, his hands pulp, his breathing ragged.
I willed him to wake up. To find strength. Paulo, don’t die.
Their gross, callow ugliness set me tearing at my bonds again. I saw in them the same things I’d seen - and felt - in Zhev’Na: the enjoyment of pain, of fear, of horror and death. I’d seen it in both worlds and in myself, and I loathed it with a fury that burst from me like a firestorm. This was Zhev’Na all over again, but I was powerless…
“No!” A mad fury exploded through me. This was Paulo, who had made me care about him when I cared about no one in the universe. He and my mother had saved my soul. My mother might lie dead from whatever wickedness had followed us to Windham - I could do nothing for her right now - but if I could summon one scrap of strength or power to prevent it, Paulo would not suffer the same fate.
And then the monstrous thing lurking in my depths broke free. Again my chest swelled and my blood surged, and again my head split until I could see myself collapsed in a limp heap at the extent of my chains. Paulo! Get up and fight. You will not die here. I won’t let you.
Ready to summon power, I took a deep breath… and almost fainted from the pain of it. Ribs broken… three, four at least. Don’t do that again. Suddenly my hands were screaming at me… worse than the ribs and the lacerated back, worse than my aching gut and my throbbing face, so swollen I could barely see the knife hanging in the air above me… ready to cut out my heart.
One, two, roll. Hook your leg around the tall one’s ankles. Yes, that’s it. Pull him down. As Radele is always reminding you, you had the finest masters in Zhev’Na. These are stupid, arrogant beasts who know nothing of true combat. Get his neck between your thighs and hold it if you want to live. Do it. Your heart is still inside you and still beating. Everything else will heal. Pain is nothing to one who has come of age in Zhev’Na. You were never handsome anyway… freckles all over… ears too wide. The girl in Avonar is blind. She’s the only one who never saw how awkward you are.
Now take the short one when he comes in for the kill… twist! Control the knife and turn it back on him… for the Lady and the Prince and the young master… your friend. Concentrate. Squeeze harder. The tall one thinks to get away, thinks to play dead so you’ll let up, for he knows your ribs are trying to come through your skin… through your lungs, so you can’t get a decent breath. Harder. The Zhid taught you how to kill.