She was beginning to remember-past those ordered details arranged with clinical detachment-and with those memories there was… pain.
Pain beyond comprehension.
I was driven mad. That is why I could not remember anything. Entirely mad-I don’t know how Bugg and Tehol healed me, but they must have. And Tehol’s consideration, his very uncharacteristic gentleness with me-not once did he seek to take advantage of me, although he must have known that he could have, that I would have welcomed it. That should have awakened suspicion in me, it should have, but I was too happy, too strangely content, even as 1 waited and waited for Tehol to find himself in my arms.
Ah, now isn’t that an odd way of putting it?
She wondered where he was. In another cell? There were plenty of moaners and criers for neighbours, most beyond all hope of communication. Was one of them Tehol Beddict? Broken into a bleeding, gibbering thing?
She did not believe it. Would not. No, for the Great Traitor of the Empire, there would have to be spectacle. A Drowning of such extravagance as to burn like a brand into the collective memory of the Letherii people. He would need to be broken publicly. Made the singular focus for this overwhelming tide of rage and fear. Karos Invictad’s crucial act to regain control, to quell the anarchy, the panic, to restore order.
What irony, that even as Emperor Rhulad prepared to slaughter champions-among them some reputed to be the most dangerous Rhulad would ever face-Karos Invictad could so easily usurp the attention of everyone-well, among the Letherii, that is-with this one arrest, this one trial, this one act of bloodletting.
Doesn’t he realize? That to kill Tehol Beddict this way will be to make of him a martyr? One such as has never been seen before? Tehol Beddict sought to destroy the Letherii system of Indebtedness. Sought to destroy the unholy union of coin and power. He will be the new Errant, but a new kind of Errant. One bound to justice, to freedom, to the commonality of humans. Regardless of whether he was right, regardless even if these were his aims-none of that will matter. He will be written of, a thousand accounts, and in time but a handful will survive, drawn together to forge the heart of a new cult.
And you, Karos Invictad, oh, how your name will ride the breath of curses, for ever more.
Make someone a martyr and surrender all control, of what that someone was in life, of what that someone becomes in death. Do this, Karos Invictad, and you will have lost, even as you lick the man’s blood from your hands.
Yet, perhaps the Invigilator understood all of that. Enough to have already murdered Tehol Beddict, murdered him and dumped the body into the river, weighted down with stones. Unannounced, all in the darkness of night.
But no-the people wanted, needed, demanded that public, ritualized execution of Tehol Beddict.
And so she went round and round, in the swirling drain of her mind, the bottomless well that was her spirit’s defensive collapse sucking her down, ever down.
Away from the memories.
From Tanal Yathvanar.
And what he had done to her before.
And what he would do to her now.
The proud, boisterous warrior who had been Gadalanak returned to the compound barely recognizable as human. The kind of failure, Samar Dev was led to understand, that infuriated this terrible, terrifying Emperor. Accordingly, Gadalanak had been cut to pieces. Long after he was dead, Rhulad’s dread sword had swung down, chopping, slashing, stabbing and twisting. Most of the man’s blood had probably drained into the sand of the arena floor, since the corpse carried by the burial retinue of Indebted did not even drip.
Puddy and other warriors, still waiting their turn-the masked woman included-stood nearby, watching the bearers and their reed stretcher with its grisly heap of raw meat and jutting bone cross the compound on their way to what was known as the Urn Room, where Gadalanak’s remains would be interred. Another Indebted trailed the bearers, carrying the warrior’s weapon and shield, virtually clean of any blood, spattered or otherwise. Word had already come of the contest’s details. The Emperor had cut off Gadalanak’s weapon-arm with the first blow, midway between hand and elbow, sending the weapon flying off to one side. Shield-arm followed, severed at the shoulder. It was said the attending Tiste Edur-and the few Letherii dignitaries whose bloodlust overwhelmed panic at sudden financial straits-had then voiced an ecstatic roar, as if answering Gadalanak’s own screams.
Silent, sober of expression and pale as bleached sand, Puddy and the others watched this grim train, as did Samar 1)ev herself. Then she turned away. Into the side corridor, down its dusty, gloomy length.
