By the ripe oaths puffed in onion-breath over his head, the Sorcerer’s conjury did more than shape-change his gender.
“… be damned to the nadir of Dark, I cannot read into this wretch! His simple mind’s empty of purpose as wiped slate. Anyone but a moron would be pissing his breeches by now from the morbid echoes of primal terror.”
A blurred shimmer of white betrayed the proximity of a temple priest. Dace shuddered, aghast. Now aware his discomfort stemmed from the active probe of a True Sect examiner, he thrashed weakly and retched.
The temple-trained talent released his entrained grip. “At best, anyway, a lackey’s experience offers us questionable value. Slit his throat, I say, before he wakes up. We can’t have our faces remembered.”
“No,” snapped another gruff voice. “Bind the wretch first. We don’t know why Lysaer sent him ahead, and he may prove more useful alive.”
“He’s only a footman,” the examiner scoffed. “The Light’s avatar will never be swayed by low-class human sentiment.”
“Perhaps not,” the speaker agreed. “But deliberation does not discard an advantage, and patience ensures that we’ll finish our day’s business quietly.”
More grumbling ensued, while one of the cloaked men-at-arms was convinced to step out for a length of stout rope. Dace sprawled on his back, miserable under the after-shock, and reeled by the scents of stale sweat and whore’s musk that cloyed the air like a stain.
Another heavy-set tread creaked the floor-boards nearby. A stranger’s cowled face hovered above, pale as a bloated fish. Dace grasped the distorted impression of watery-blue eyes, thick-lidded beneath sandy lashes. Then a slippered toe shoved him onto his side.
Through his gasping discomfort, his laconic captor observed, “Better test him again, before your dedicate captain returns. I’d rather ascertain beyond any doubt Lysaer doesn’t suspect we know anything.”
The examiner’s protest that naught would be gained became overridden by nervous authority. “And you’d swear by the Canon such stupidity’s innocent?”
“The ethic of my office forbids me to speculate.” The temple’s arcane inquisitor sniffed. “I’ve reported as much as my talent can see. Another probe is a waste, more than likely to injure the subject.”
“This affray goes beyond paltry harm to a servant! How much damage can the True Sect doctrine withstand, subjected to a debate over policy spear-headed by the fallen avatar? Have you better means to find out why the Light of his godhead forsook the war against Shadow in Lanshire?”
The examiner yielded on that point, discomposed. A whiff of almond soap and sweet incense breathed out of his clothes as he bent, pudgy hands cupped at Dace’s sore temples to resume his frustrated inquest.
“I’ll need more help,” he complained to the muscular dedicate poised by the door. “Bear down and restrain this fellow before he goes into frothing convulsions.”
Dace moaned, still unstrung in a muddled haze. The men overcame his pitiful struggle as though they pinioned a rag doll. Stretched against a rug rank with mildew, he braced for the excruciate pain as the examiner pried into his mind.
No such dreadful horror occurred. The redoubled assault instead triggered a sharp flare from the buried thread that sustained Davien’s working. The examiner grunted. A powerful talent, he sharpened his effort, determined to tear through the unexpected resistance. Whether his next thrust aimed to smash Dace’s psyche at the cost of crippling insanity, the Sorcerer’s construct lodged in Dace’s left wrist blazed into conflagration. The tingling, electrical burst combed through flesh and spirit. The effect doused the examiner’s Sighted incursion as thoroughly as a wet blanket.
For Dace, the burst triggered a flash-point gestalt that exposed his tormentor’s double-blind plot. After the Master of Shadow escaped the field at Lithmarin, and since the True Sect war host’s decisive defeat by a sanctioned High King’s crowned power, Erdane’s high priesthood suspected Lysaer s’Ilessid’s lapse into heresy at the Great Schism had progressed to incorrigible corruption. The examiner sought proof the Light’s avatar had become suborned beyond salvage.
Dace had blundered into a True Sect ambush, arranged under the pretence of a covert meeting. The temple cabal’s interrogation for lapsed divinity was meant to occur here in secret, masked by darkness and the rowdy debauchery of seamen on shore leave. After they exposed Lysaer’s wilful course as a threat to the True Sect cause, none would notice the splash of a naked corpse, sunk off the pier for the crabs. A decomposed body stirred up by the tide might raise some desultory questions. But never for long in the stews of East Bransing, where knifed casualties were the routine victims of drunken disputes.
Dace shuddered and raged. He could not save himself, far less disarm a deadly conspiracy poised for his liege’s destruction.
Already the structure beneath him thumped to an inbound tread.
“Here’s our man with the rope,” the temple authority mused with self-righteous confidence.
“Check to make sure,” snapped the Sunwheel dedicate, crouched over the servant’s pinned wrists. “Let’s have no more pesky surprises upsetting our mission.”
Dace reacted first and bellowed in agony.
A hand muffled his mouth. But not before the incomer’s reaction delivered the ring of drawn steel. The locked door banged, kicked open to admit a shattering flare of daylight. Gloom and shadow fled, pierced by a blade poised for bloodshed.
Dace twisted his head. Dazzled, he picked out distinctive gold hair: Lysaer s’Ilessid, come early to hear the account of the lackey whose flung stone had delivered a warning of treachery.
Shock froze the tableau, while Lysaer’s freezing gaze met the servant drugged and held in duress.
The compromised examiner shoved off his knees and spluttered excuses. “My exalted lord! Forgive us, we had to be certain of your man’s loyalty.”
As quick, the cowled priest in authority oiled over the awkward disruption. “Lord Exalted, put up your blade! Naturally, your sacrosanct safety demands our diligent oversight.”
“I found nothing, besides. The fellow is earnest,” the examiner hastened to add. Brazenly indignant, and quite unaware that Davien’s agency had exposed his murderous duplicity, he gushed, “He’s quite unhurt! We gave him a posset to ease his discomfort under our examination.”
Dace held his tongue through the unctuous display. To show more than a commoner’s ignorance would destroy credibility, if not damn him as a minion of Shadow. Yet if his liege shut the door and stood down, the temple cabal might try to recoup their upset initiative.
He had to respond. Dizzy and nauseous, near incapacity as Lysaer’s outraged order freed his cramped limbs, he let the sick after-shock fold him double. With luck, he might spew on the traitorous examiner, or render the air in the stifling shack too disgusting to breathe.
But his retching heaved nothing from an empty stomach. Up-ended by vertigo, limp as slaughtered meat, Dace heard his liege’s rebuke through the whirlpool as consciousness fled. “I will sanction no such cavalier handling or excuse a worthy servant’s abuse. Bear the fellow up. Now! I’ll attend him myself. A harlot’s bed is no place for a sick man, no matter his humble station.”
Summer 5923
Counter-currents
Awake in the comfort of clean sheets, Dace hears his liege’s contrite confirmation: that the steward’s connection had exposed the temple informant’s duplicity; and asked what reward he desires for an act of selfless, true service, he requests the grant of position as his Lordship’s personal valet …
Engrossed over tactical maps in a tent, surrounded by his ranked captains, The Hatchet stabs a thick finger into the notch at the Pass of Orlan, and declares, “Like