They rode through dawn, fording the rising light as if it were the borderland Verun, marking the passage from safety to danger, from foreign to homeland – as if by its light their pursuers were washed away.
Numb and white with shock and fatigue, Spesnova dismounted uneasily, her wide, distracted eyes falling to Cole beside her as they changed mounts.
“What's her name?” She asked, watching the tender way he passed the mare to the waiting Elite, insisting she be returned to him quickly.
Cole had to stop moving to answer her, body so stiff from riding and fighting and riding that it moved like a clattering, uneven wheel.
“Roisin,” he said, pulling the name not from thought but from the picture – riding through the dawn, watching the red light make roses of her dappled spots. He nodded; it was a good name.
He turned Roisin's head to Spesnova, gently putting the girl's hand on the mare's soft nose. Her smile came hesitantly, and with it troubling laughter in spurts quickly quelled lest they get out of hand.
“Roisin,” she said, hand stroking the soft nose more steadily each time, as if the mere fact of a friendly mare named for something as peaceful as a flower could comfort her more than even the warm and hopeful sunrise, “Rosina.”
Her smile spread, and she lingered with the mare until the very last moment, leaving her with quick embrace as if she were an old and dear friend.
They switched horses and galloped on.
Paciano slid off rather than dismounted at the next relay point, but, at his fiery gaze, not even the Elites dared suggest he be taken along more slowly without appealing to Cole. Cole looked to Nika's father. Serafinus conceded to his son's wish to ride on, though the deep-etched worry in his brow worsened.
Better to die on the road than be separated now. Paciano would ride if Paciano wanted to.
The Elites helped rig Paciano a way to strap into the saddle, but by midday he was only half-conscious, and doubling up with Cole, anyway. It slowed them down, but the boy – ‘young man’, rather – was so light it hardly mattered. Though falling with fatigue, he had to be persuaded to stuff Cole's knife in his belt, rather than clench it in one bony hand, as he had been for miles already.
They switched horses, and galloped on.
By mid-afternoon, even Cole's hands were slipping on the reins. They had long since left behind Cole's improvised Relay and now traveled the real line. With horses bred for their speed, it seemed as if they hardly had time in the saddle at all, but time made no difference. Dismounting caused such sharp pain and so reminded them of their fatigue, the jarring numbness of clinging to the saddle seemed restful in comparison.
They were challenged only once, near the Capitol; one of the Relay sergeants questioned Cole's requisitioning of almost the entirety of his stable to carry on. They had been shedding Elites in parcels as they went, and now that they were so close – just one more station – and having no reason to force the Elites to return so quickly, this was as good a place to leave them as any. As such, the Elites determined to make their final show of force count.
One does not gainsay the commander of a band of Elites short on time. They demonstrated why with ample decorum, and remarkably little actual property or personal damage. Cole saluted them as he and Nika’s family turned to leave, and they saluted back with the ease of soldiers only doing what they thought was right in the first place.
They switched horses and galloped on.
It was dark again when they reached the Ring, but the checkpoint was alive with light. They could see clearly the speckles of black that respectfully marked out the green ox of the old King, while from every post silver-grey flags danced, standing in good stead for the argent otter of the new King.
Muddled by instincts that warned him to be wary of an attack (they hadn't done anything that illegal... well, Cole might have, but still...), Cole pulled them up short of the actual building; there were enough horses and torches around the place to provide for a battalion of city guard.
“Brigadier Cole?” said a voice from the dark.
They were too tired to be startled, which was probably all for the better. The man who stepped out of the shadow by the side of the road peered up into Cole's face as if that's where his rank lay. Though the green stripes on his uniform had been hastily covered with red, and the silver seamed on rather quickly, he was nonetheless recognizable as a Lieutenant of the Capitol's units, stuck mid-way through a change of liege.
“Yes,” Cole said, his over-long delay part fatigue, part wariness.
“I think I just lost a bet...”
The man scratched his chin appreciatively, and smiled.
The lieutenant explained that he had doubted, even though the orders had come from the very highest of the Executive ranks – orders instructing them to go to the Ring, and 'wait to see if anything should happen to show up on the southeast road.' If anything, or anyone, did just so happen to show up, the orders instructed them to provide whatever horses and assistance was needed to get them to the Academy. He had indeed lost a bet, the gist of which was whether anything actually would happen or whether they were just being punished (he didn’t elaborate on ‘for what?’) by being kept out of the city-wide festivities of the Royal Wake.
Cole surveyed the scene again. Enough torches and horses for a half-hundred men. Or two regiments of Capitol Cavalry, the losing one of which got to walk home.
They switched horses, and thundered into the city amidst an escort of twenty cavalrymen. The exchange of signs at the gate was somewhat lackadaisical.
They were almost at the end.
The sound of the horse's hooves pounding over the stone streets barely cleared the general din. None of the city would sleep tonight, the third night of waking the spirit of their fallen monarch with wine and song, games and – as the sounds of explosions demonstrated that the Black Powder Ban didn't apply to fireworks – or 'wasn't going to', at any rate – colorful, dangerous, bursts of light. By the time they hit the thick of the city streets, they could do better than a brisk walk, the escort of Capitol Cavalry forming up into a fighting wedge and driving out with feet and the flat of blades and butts of spears when shouts and invective wouldn't do.
Everywhere in the torchlight, the silver of the new king glittered and weaved as it was born on back or flags or simply in streams of cloth to every part of the even the dankest alleyways of the city. The third day of waking their old ruler into the ground was given over to what the people joyfully referred to as the King's Crawl, where, like a new husband to his bride’s house, they strove to introduce the King to every cranny of his new demesne. Every body in the city was out in the streets tonight, and more than half of them seemed to be directly in Cole's way.
Laughing revelers joked and dodged towards them, even with the ring of soldiers around them. Many followed and called incomprehensibly to the girls, seeming not to notice, or not to care, that their targets' faces went pale and wide-eyed with the fear of startled animals. Locked in the ringing din of stone walls, the press of the crowds and the poly-odorous stink of celebration seemed to rob what strength was left in the family. Even Nika's stalwart father's eyes had the daze of a man too shocked to think anymore.
Cole’s unspecified worry over the general disarray coalesced into a concern that Paciano would not survive to see his brother if they spent any longer on horseback. Though the surge and beat of every renewed song or general cheer vibrated through his bones, he could not often feel the gentle rise of that wasted chest against his own.
Shoving his horse over to the side of one of their escorts, Cole took the cavalryman's long spear out of his hand. Leaning across the startled rider, he jabbed at a streak of silver cloth going by, held overhead by a crowd of revelers, hooking it up with the spear point, and hoisting it aloft.
“To the Palace! To the Palace!” he cried, as if taken with the spirit of the moment. The crowd slowly began to chant in time with him.
“Palace, Palace!”
Wild jeering shouts made much of whether or not their otter-king had seen his own sumptuous abode yet, and soon the crowd began to flow, with a frightening ease bearing the horsemen with it whether they would or no.
At the juncture where the road to the Palace veered away from the road to the Academy, there waited another continent of mounted men, these having the distinction of the personal presence of Executive General Guy in their midst. At his signal they forged through the crowd to meet Cole and his company, the sheer number of official-looking horsemen now present enough to cause the crowd to be wary of interference. Cole handed the spear off and the greater part of the crowd diverted 'to the palace, to the palace.'
Guy's brows contracted as he counted heads, pulling his horse up next to Cole's as they sheered away from the thicker crowd and began their march to the Academy – to safety, to rest.
“All well?” Guy shouted, looking at Paciano leaning against Cole's chest. Cole could barely hear him still, though he wasn't certain whether it was the ringing of his ears or the noise of music and celebration or simple exhaustion that interfered.
Cole nodded – Paciano was still breathing, at least.
“Faer's set up a room on the grounds – there's beds and a doctor and plenty of food and water. My personal guard is stationed around it,” Guy nodded towards the horsemen who had joined them. Their uniforms were plain, Guy having no seal, but they clearly took their duties seriously–
Except for Heary and Lo, who Cole recognized as the two up front, clearing the road not so much with seriousness as with an officious pride he hoped they would get over one day.
“No choice but to break the news to Durante a couple of hours ago,” Guy said, and flashed a grin brighter than streamer in the night, “For some reason he wasn't pleased. Faer was ready for him, but we're tying down the pigs anyway – just in case.”
Guy let his expression turn serious again. “Cole... even only in the last couple of hours, there's been a lot of resistance. From the Council, from the King...” heaving a heavy sigh, he trailed off. “I'd hate it when you're right, but it'd be too tiring. We've made arrangements.”
With rueful smile, he shifted his reins to one hand (and nearly ran his horse into Cole's doing it. The cavalrymen tried not to look embarrassed; he was still no horseman) and pulled a tightly folded paper from his jacket. Holding it up significantly, he stuffed it into Cole's pocket for him. “That will get you through the Gate and to the cell if nothing else will, but you need to go now. We've already stopped one attempt to have him 'relocated' – a veiled attempt to hide him somewhere we won't find him again. At this point, that's all they can do.”
Guy pulled his horse to a stop, and Cole's sluggish mind protested; they were well short of the Academy grounds – between the Academy and the Palace, as a matter of fact. While Cole tried to summon the words, Guy took a haversack from his own shoulder, slinging it awkwardly around Cole.
“This is the last stand” Guy shouted, trying to disentangle his horse from Cole's, “All we have to do is hold him here for one more night.”
Cole was still blearily staring, wondering why they were stopping, what had gone wrong, what more he could do or who needed him...
Past Guy's shoulder lay the Traitor's Gate.
Whistling up a rider to take Paciano, Guy took the bridle of Cole's horse and nodded to him.
A man in strange livery was standing by the gate, along with Lo, who had dismounted and whose expression was grim and combative as he wrenched one of the covered lanterns from the Gate's walls. Cole dismounted, feeling the weight of the haversack and the weakness of his legs as he did so, but without even the will to be curious, or to question.
He did not look back; he did not pause. He put his feet to the ground and ran, hearing the clatter of hooves bouncing off the black gate towards him as Guy escorted the family away with full guard. Lo and the other man fell into step beside him, and he disappeared into the dark.
“This way,” said the man in strange livery.
Lo took a torch from the wall, handing Cole the lantern. “We've lit the path, but the Dubh Sciath know the tunnels better. They've been putting them out at intervals.” Lo smiled, a face bobbing in the glow of torchlight. “Don't worry – Dilis knows the way.”
The man in the strange livery did not respond, merely lifting his head as if scenting the air, and directed them down another set of turns.
Down they went. As soon as they had entered the gate a muffling silence had overtaken them, drowning out even the riotous city. Further down it was joined by cold, and indeed, as Lo had said, an intermittent dark marking torches doused by the Dubh Sciath that served as due warning of what could happen should they lose themselves, or their torch go out.
Their feet splashed in puddles, the halls pushed them close and then seemed to abandon them to a directionless wideness, as inconsistent in shape and form as they were perversely laced with turns and switchbacks. Cole's own body seemed weighty on his feet, until the moments where blackness made a dive to swallow them or the walls suddenly parted and bowed away like rats in their escape bubbling around a fire – then the cold fear which pumped through his veins made everything light and insubstantial again.
These halls were meant to torment, as much as the instruments and people hiding within them, he thought. But he had not seen the instruments and people yet.
Their rocky path started to give way to a paved floor as Lo's panting to keep up began to get bad. Bidding them halt, while he went up to a wooden door set before them, Cole realized that Dilis walked with the feet of the cat – all the noise of travel he had been hearing muffled by the walls was Lo's and his own.
Dilis put his ear to the door, and his hand to handle. The handle turned obediently – Cole wasn't certain what he had expected instead, but something for sure – and he nodded, grave eyes looking back at them. Lo puffed his chest out and scowled, walking at Cole's side like a bodyguard.
The room was like any other in the palace, or the Academy, except for what horrors filled it – and the smell. The smell of sweat and damp and suffering, of old blood, and the pressure in the ears as if, should one focus intently enough on the silence, once could still hear the echo of old screams. But still, just a room – and maybe that made it worse, so conventional a place with so awful a set of furnishings.
Cole could not take stock of the twisted metal or heavy wood, the soiled ropes and boards, or anger and despair would overwhelm him, but he did notice that for all the spots of blood and dark stained tables and floors, within a dank room bristling with spikes and chains and bars, he saw not a single fleck of rust. Well-used and polished as an old silver tea set.
A small man stood before a plain chair, with neat, pale hands folded before him. His clothing was suitably festive, with the underscored fashionableness of a temperate and respectable individual, neither festooned with over-abundance nor somberly straight and plan. He hair was dark and curly, playful but for where it ended in points. He bowed respectfully, but not deferentially, like a man amidst his works, receiving visitors in his own study.
There was no Dubh Sciath, no burly doorkeeper or mute dungeon assistant. Just the little dark-haired man in his neat clothes, without even the frivolity of servant. This room of blood and chaos was his alone, and he alone occupied it. Even the calm, when all around him spoke of chaos, was his to inspire, as he inspired fear when one realized this was his rightful home.
“Esras Cole, I assume,” he said, his voice quiet and cultured, fit to more intimate conversation. “Private Loughrey, of the Executive Guards, and Dilis,” he said the last with a contained sneer, “of the company of our good Princess.”
“I am Esras Cole,” he said. “I am here to see Dominicus Galen.”
The dark-haired man raised his pale eyebrows, as if uncertain he had ever heard the name. “Forgive me, but I am not certain I know precisely where–”
“He is here,” Cole said, stepping forward. “And I will see him.”
The dark-haired man's lip pursed – deciding whether to continue with as much deliberation as a player of games of strategy. “And on what premise or authority do you expect to do this?”
There was a letter in his pocket, a sword at his side, and both could bear the weight, but Cole relied on Nika's words. “He has asked for me. The final request of man expecting to be condemned may not be ignored, on anyone's authority. Look for my name – written or spoken – or ask him yourself. You will find it.”
The dark-haired man smiled, as a clever player will when outguessed. Though Cole was not playing, he had played well. However, the game wasn't won.
“You know,” he said, “I had wondered about that. The great Esras Cole himself, after all...” he paused, seeming to consider. He no more doubtfully 'considered' than a snake doubted striking.
“You may find my job distressing, but without it, so very little could get done. I do not take pleasure in what I do, as I am sure, you as a soldier take no pleasure in the slaughter. I am not a cruel man. But in even a task so gruesome one can find the chance for learning – it is that in which I can find solace, if not in the usefulness of what I do for my country.”
His cold eyes sparkled, as much truth in them as could be plastered there by the acting of a man not inured, but unfeeling. A lie which was not a lie, by a man who begged you doubt him, if only so he could prove you wrong.
The torturer looked up at him as if puzzled. “It was most peculiar, you see, for I have had the chance to learn much of the Midraeic culture in my tenure, so unhappily flavored by war as it has been. They are a most uniform people – but, it could be said, all are in such conditions. It is my job to seek that uniformity, for in uniformity, there is truth. In that way I have come to know every prayer, every plea and true belief, and seen them crumble and fail in the faithless and faithful alike. It was most curious, most curious indeed, to hear...”
He raised his brows at Cole in a semblance of shock. “I am just as much a scholar of my own culture, yet he surprised me. When he ran out of prayers to cry, he began a most beautiful and unique ode – full of the sort of language one hears in the very oldest of lays of Ainjir – of the trickster god and his noble love. One I had never heard before, though the reference was unmistakable – it was full of the old words and allusions, the imagery and passions of the old ways, the old gods – the passed things, and things of the past.”
Like an ambling scholar, he stepped closer to Cole, bright eyes fixed on his face. “Thou thief of time, thou mischief-maker...”
A fraction of silence passed, and he stepped away, looking down before he addressed Cole again, quiet voice full of mocking pretension. “A most peculiar thing to say, but by then of course, it is useless asking anything to which one desires a worthy answer. A sad circumstance of such trials, but then again, there was not, with his confession, much worth asking him in the first place. Perhaps, as a matter of courtesy, you might illuminate the matter for me, Esras Cole.”
Cole did not move. Even under the provocation of the mockery in his eyes, Cole did not move, or speak, or take his gaze away for even a moment.
His blood boiled with a fury so hot it seemed to eat his very soul.
But Nika needed the wall, the stone, the unbreakable facade. The torturer would only take pleasure in Cole squandering his chance with violence, as he took pleasure in keeping them apart now – what pleasure such a man could take in anything. He took pleasure in the superiority of his emotionless disdain, which kept him from such pathetic displays as he daily forced on others for his amusement. To which he had forced, or tried to force, Nika.
To which Nika had responded with poetry – the one poem Nika could remember.
When he trusted his tongue again, Cole spoke, keeping his gaze level. “Take me to him.”
The torturer's brow raised, but it was only a fleabite's sting that Cole denied him what joy he might feel in watching him break with fury. He had tried, as was his duty.
“It may please you to know that you at least have friends as powerful as your enemies,” he said, finding his keys on his belt, “I was ordered to leave him mostly intact – within reason.”
He walked them through the field of horrors to a narrow, darkened hall. They followed that path, until he stopped them before a heavy door, the torch brackets beside it left bare and darkened. It was the only place where the smell of offal and waste grew heavier and fresher than the lingering scent of blood.
He unlocked the door and stepped aside, dipping his head and sweeping a hand out as if welcoming Cole to sit on his divan.
All of Cole's fury drained at facing that dark room.
Though Cole did not watch, Dilis grabbed the dark-haired man and wrenched the keys from his hand, his smile as nastily distant as his quiet slinking had been. Lo handed Dilis the torch, and the last thing Cole could hear was their marching him away, any parting words muttered by the torturer entirely lost.
It seemed the lantern clawed the darkness away, fighting thick shadows for every inch of light spread. Scraggly pale straw was strewn across the floor, so obvious dank and rotted with wet and festering with what pale creatures could live in the constant dark that the sodden clumps seemed as likely to move as the vermin. He could hear the scurrying of rats, not hiding in fear, but scratching along the stones as they ambled away from the light, their bright eyes watching, still as dewdrops as they waited for him to leave them be. The dark and bloody body of one of their own lay near the door, chewed by its living mates, its little neck smashed and broken, hurled by a hand that would not stop fighting...
“Cole?” Nika said in a cracked whisper, his voice broken with use. “'Ras?”
Cole stepped forward, and felt a stab of fear again – a stab he ignored, crossing quickly the dark until he could see, he could see...
Nika looked up at him, eyes hollow and skin pale. His body leaned awkwardly against the wall, the straw on the floor disturbed around him. The struggle to get into that position had scattered it too thin, frustrating whatever minimal comfort it would have provided in lifting the dark-spotted sack under him away from the stone of the floor. Nika seemed too thin for just three days’ worth of emaciation – or perhaps it was the heaviness of manacles, the thick bands of metal, or the wide lines of wounds and stripped skin or his half-cowering nakedness...
“Nika?” Cole said, almost afraid he would disappear if he spoke too loud. It seemed unreal to give his lover's name to that hunched and tormented form.
“'Ras...” Nika said, and the spectacle of his beaten body seemed to flicker into shadow, as if the very light of the latern shied away, or would not look...
Or was not bright enough. Turned away in shame, because it could not match the bright fire in his eyes that in the dank and squalid prison saw nothing of pain and dark, but only his love, standing before him as surely as he ever had in daylight. Cracked lips smiled, with a fierce and painful joy.
That was Nika. There was no other.
Cole dropped the lantern, hearing it crack but not shatter, and not caring; they did not need to see, nor did they fear the dark. He fell to his knees and pulled Nika to him, laying on him kisses ignorant of filth and blood and scornful of the mighty stone walls that tried to thwart them. He felt Nika's breath shuddering in his chest and the wash of tears bathing the face pressed to his shoulder, the pressure as Nika returned whatever affection he could. Every part Cole touched, it seemed, was either raw or broken, and yet every part bent to him, pressed to him. Though Nika breathed only to give thanks, Cole swore to every god and to none that he would never let go again.
“I got them,” Cole said, feeling Nika's whole body tense in his arms. He made his voice soothing, tried to hold him less tightly, so he could give it proper weight against his joy. “They're safe. They're with Guy. Faer has already made arrangement for them.”
The body in his arms began to unwind, like the string of a parcel loosened. Nika fell against him, freed of a burden he had held far longer than even his strength should have been able to accommodate. Cole spoke gently, saying it again to make it certain, for them both: Nika no longer had to bear it anymore.
“They're safe.”
“'Ras... thank you... I knew you could...,” Nika said, halting through the rubble of a collapsed throat as his tone changed, “Please, 'Ras...”
Nika pressed himself into Cole's arms, his right arm gripping hard, hand fisted in the coat on Cole’s back. “Please put my arm around you. I could– I fixed one– I could only… Just lift it – say nothing,” he demanded, though Cole had not started to speak, “but do it.”
Cole eased his hands under Nika's left arm and lifted, the heaviness of the manacles apparent even to him. Nika's breath changed to a painful hiss as Cole moved him, but he said nothing, and did not stop. Even in the weakening lamplight he could see the abused flesh of his wrists, rotted by the constant bite of restraint. He could feel it to, the halting of the joints, the way the skin tugged awkwardly around angles that shouldn't have been in his shoulder, the way muscles slid uselessly around their moorings...
He hugged Nika to him, feeling the weight across his back, the way his fingers twitched as he tried to pull tight in return.
“I can't move it,” Nika said, as if apologizing. “I can't… fix the other one, but I want to hold you.”
Cole said nothing, as he had been asked, though he could hear the pain in his labored breathing, feel the way the bared muscles shivered against him. He put their foreheads together, circling Nika's body with his so he could hold his weight cradled against himself. He kissed the bruised lips and stroked the thin cheek before him, letting Nika pretend with eyes closed that they were not where they were, that the pain of that body was not his, that his lover held him, and he could hold back.
“I knew you would come, 'Ras,” Nika whispered. “I knew it.”
“You asked for me, Nika,” Cole whispered back. “Of course I came.”
Nika's brow wrinkled against Cole's, the silent tracks of tears cutting through the clean path laid by others that had come before, but they soon stopped, as in their place came a savage and passionate smile.
“I knew it,” Nika said again, for himself. He leaned into Cole's hand, still softly stroking his cheek. “I knew you could do it. I have faith in you, Esras Cole.”
“I have faith in you, too.” Cole kissed him once again, once again as if they had never parted. He said it Nika's way, but Cole said it how own way, too. “I love you, Nika.”
Nika opened his eyes. “I love you, too, 'Ras.”
When they could not hold each other up any longer, Cole finally turned to the haversack Guy had given them. Inside was a small medical kit, a pair of thick blankets, a firestarter box, and water skin full of ration tea, with soft portions of bread, cheese, and a suet gruel that lasted not a full minute once spotted. Nika fell on the rations with a will, while Cole arranged a bed from the blankets and spare bits of uniform, and doctored what wounds he could, trying not to feel anger. It was remarkably easy with Nika finally next to him again, and making lewd comments about the smell of comfrey paste.
Though Cole knew the field techniques for resetting a shoulder as well as Nika did, he did not offer, and, for a while, Nika did not ask – it was a pain that could be avoided, for a moment, at least – until he was ready. When he asked, Cole set it, and bound the arm in a belt to keep it still.
There was little chance of defense in the cell, even less of a likelihood that Cole would be able to fight, and downright impossible that Nika would be capable, but they arranged themselves as defensibly as possible. The dungeon was a bad place to be stuck, and even with the extra bedding the cell was uncomfortable, damp, and cold – even ignoring the plentiful vermin the lantern light did not manage to chase away – but all the had to do was stay together.
To make it through one last night.
And in truth, none of it mattered. They slept soundly together on the dungeon floor, in the deepest of dreams.