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CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Ahearn whispered in S’ythreni’s direction. “Can you still hear ’em, High Ears? Are they following us?”

“Hear them? Yes. Following us? I don’t know.”

Ahearn nodded. “As soon as you do, give a sign.” He walked away from her post near one of the five openings in a much smaller, low-ceilinged chamber. Originally a cavern, its floor had been made level by occasional pick work and centuries of use. Still, he almost stubbed a toe as he crossed the room to an opening where the others were gathered. “So, are we having a nice, cozy chat yet?”

Umkhira’s response was guttural and tight. “It has barely been a minute and this dry-man is not cooperative.” She settled herself in front of their captive and spoke in Undercant. “Do you speak this language?” The dry-man continued to stare at the opposite wall, his posture haughty rather than bowed. Umkhira frowned, tried a harsher tongue that Ahearn had never heard before.

The dry-man, however, was quite familiar with it. He snapped an irritated reply at the Lightstrider, looking down his withered nose as he did.

Umkhira’s head snapped back as she uttered a surprised growl.

“What language was that?” Cerven wondered.

“Deepcant,” R’aonsun answered, folding his arms.

“And what did he say?” Elweyr pressed.

“I said,” answered the dry-man in passable Commerce, “that I understand both Deepcant and Undercant, but that I won’t lower myself to speak to a pekt.”

Ahearn flinched at the last word; it had been a long time since he had heard that slur for urzhen. He put a hand on Umkhira’s rage-quaking shoulder. “I’m sure you’d like to teach our guest how to keep a civil tongue in his head”—before ripping it clean out—“but for now, he seems more willing to talk to us thinskins.”

“Barely,” the dry-man sneered. “There’s little to choose between your waterfat breeds.”

Ahearn held his tongue—and sword—in check just long enough for R’aonsun to interpose himself. “Perhaps,” he mused, eyes on the dry-man, “you would prefer conversing with me?”

The dry-man looked the dragon-avatar’s immense human body up and down. “Your size does not frighten me.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” R’aonsun smiled, nodding, welcoming his opponent’s angry glare.

The dry-man started. His face went through an arrestingly swift sequence of expressions: surprise was succeeded by hatred, then terror, then despair, and finally, a vacant stare.

“Now,” said R’aonsun, “I believe we may converse in a more congenial fashion.” He smiled. “Well, congenial for us, at any rate.”

The dry-man’s eyes remained blank, but seemed to quiver in their sockets.

R’aonsun stepped aside. “You may ask your questions, now.”

Ahearn glanced at the dragon. “Seems like you’d have some questions, too, no?”

The hulking avatar shrugged. “None that are pressing. Besides, when I am in another body, it is difficult to do anything that requires either intense or long concentration. I shall exert my influence to ensure that he answers truthfully.”

“And the sooner, the better,” added S’ythreni in a loud whisper from the edge of the tunnel that had brought them to the present chamber. “I don’t know if they are following our trail, but they are certainly getting louder.”

Ahearn leaned toward the dry-man. “The intersection where we found you: is that a crossroads? Between rival tribes?”

The dry-man’s speech was slow, halting, as if each word was a piece of broken glass that he was trying to keep from scarring his throat as it rose up. “Firstly, we are not tribes, not barbarians. We are… are Izi: ‘lineages of repute.’ Secondly, the chamber from which we fled is not a crossroad, but a meeting place.”

“Are those not the same?” Umkhira asked.

His corpselike lips curled in derision before the answer came out of them. “Idiot pekt. A crossroad is a hub of travel. The place you violated is the Qōqazkep, the ‘meeting ground’ of Great Lineages.’ It is above common use; travelers may not move through it and nothing may obstruct it. It belongs to all equally. It is where parleys, exchanges, and contests are conducted.”

Ahearn was about to ask how to flee lower, and if he had heard of Zatsakkaz when Varcaxtan crossed his arms and asked, “Why were you bound and blindfolded?”

“Because I am not Iz. You would say mine is a family without a name or honor. At least, we are now. We were Iz until stripped of our surname generations ago.”

“And that makes you a criminal?” Cerven wondered.

“It does if one refuses to recognize the preeminence of the Iz. So, too, if one refuses to forsake the name of one’s dishonored family. The penalty for either is death.”

“So,” Ahearn quipped as he raised an eyebrow, “you were to be killed twice, then.”

“Yes.”

Ahearn stared at the dry-man’s flat, unironic confirmation, glanced at R’aonsun, who shrugged. Their captive had not misspoken. Well, how the hells—? “Where I come from, a fellow’s first execution tends to be his last.”

“Killed is a legal term, when used by the Huzhkepbar Iz, the Tribunal of the Lineages. It refers to an execution effected by no fewer than three, and no more than five, blows, cuts, or thrusts. All trials are observed by representatives of rival Izi, and every strike is made at the explicit direction of an Izroj—Lord—whose Iz is party to the proceedings. Members of rival Qōqaz, the greatest families, are included in the tribunal to ensure that no judgment or punishment becomes too harsh or too lenient.”

“How… compassionate,” Elweyr muttered. “So you were to be killed by, er, six to ten ‘strikes’?”

“Yes.”

“But to come back to my point,” Varcaxtan asked sharply, “what were you doing there? Waiting?”

“Yes. Waiting. The representatives of the other Izrojagi—Great Lords—who judged my case had not arrived yet. It is not uncommon that one Izrojag keeps another waiting. This is common among those who are most eager to assert their status.”

Ahearn shook his head. No matter how far you travel, some things don’t change. “It sounds as though they’ll be mighty determined to find yer sorry self.”

“That is correct. The power—and so, the authority—of the Izrojagi will be questioned if they fail to settle affronts. And in this case, they must address two of them. First, they must determine whether or not my disappearance was the work of, or arranged by, one or more rival Qōqaz. Second, they must ensure that their judgment is carried out, or the law, and they themselves, will be deemed to be without force.”

Cerven leaned toward him. “Then it seems most prudent for you to travel with us.” The dry-man did not disagree, but he might have spit if R’aonsun had allowed it. “So that we may not offend, by what name does your kind refer to itself. And also, to you?”

R’aonsun was incapable of keeping the disdain out of their captive’s voice. “Being a prisoner of the Huzhkepbar Iz does not mean I am a traitor to my race. Our name—and our purposes—are our own, wetgut. The same goes for mine.”

Varcaxtan leaned toward him, arms taut. “So, you want us to call you ‘dry-man,’ then?”

The prisoner considered, then smiled. “You may call me Izroj, if you must call me at all.”

Umkhira stepped toward him, hand on axe. “I will be gutted before I call you ‘lord,’ you vermin!”

The dry-man looked at her calmly. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see that oath fulfilled, if I only had the means and freedom to do so.”

Ahearn shook his head and smiled. “Ah, now see? That’s just the sort of nastiness that makes it hard to trust even such a fine person as yerself.” Ahearn stared at the dry-man. “You’ve got him tight in yer clutches, yeh, R’aonsun?”

“What do you mean to do?”

“Why, I mean to improve his mood!” Ahearn walked behind the dry-man, studied the light shift that was his only garment. “After all, we’ll be moving soon again, and no end in sight to that, eh? So every bit of weight makes a body weary. And weariness is, in turn, a great weight upon one’s temper.”

Ahearn continued his circuit around the increasingly anxious dry-man, drawing his own, longer dagger as he did. “But there’s only so much to be done, hey? Can’t do without shoes—which is a right pity, seein’ as they’ve such thick soles. But without those, he’d be slowing us down. So I suppose, this is the only way we lighten the poor sod’s burden—” And with two quick slashes, the rough-sewn shift fell free, pooling around the dry-man’s knees.

Only R’aonsun seemed unsurprised by what was revealed; a body so tight-skinned that it seemed to be little more than a withered sack in which to keep the wiry muscles close against the bones they served. Ahearn was too surprised to notice the total lack of hair at first; instead the torso’s expansive constellation of mauve, gray, and mustard mottles compelled, and then repelled, the entire group’s eyes.

Ahearn swallowed, resolved to keep up his bluff demeanor. “So, then, if you’re very polite to my friend the Lady Lightstrider, you might get a stitch or two back… should you care.”

“I’ve endured worse. Much worse.”

“Well then, I guess we can just dispose of this.” Ahearn tossed the slashed shift aside. “Now, if you don’t want us to leave you trussed up for the coursers sent by your Izroji, you’ll—”

“They’re coming,” S’ythreni hissed.

“How long?” Varcaxtan insisted.

“Can’t say. Could be fifteen minutes; could be five. But they’re following our trail, now. I’m sure of it.”

Ahearn stepped so close to the dry-man that their noses nearly touched. “Answers. Quickly. Will all your lot have metal weapons like the guards near your parley chamber?”

“Yes. And isharti armor.”

Ahearn managed to control his expression and his stomach; the dry-man’s breath was almost unbearable. It had a sharp, alchemical reek that Ahearn had only smelled among the starving, or people who’d been living on a diet of meat. “Attack animals?”

“Rats, large ones. Not well trained, but they know to look for an open flank.”

“Alchemy?”

“Not much. Except poison. Made from hsitsé, just like on your weapons. Wait: some Qōqaz have elders who can combine it with other compounds. When thrown, it bursts into fire and the smoke is poisonous.”

Well, bugger me! “And mancery?”

The dry-man licked his lips with a leathery tongue. “Not as you mean.”

Elweyr leaned in. “Every legend says that mantics are plentiful among your kind.”

He struggled to explain. “Maybe more than among you, but still not many. And it is not akin to yours; it is not taught as special disciplines.”

“Why?”

“Because our knowledge of it is incomplete and the Qōqaz guard it jealously. As do lone mantics without families. Each knows only a few, unrelated pieces of the whole.”

R’aonsun muttered, eyes closed in concentration. “It has ever been thus. They do not seem capable of the trust required to pool their knowledge in any orderly fashion. But whereas their individual mantics lack sophistication and control, they often compensate with surprising power.”

Ahearn glanced at Elweyr. “Is that enough for you to work with?”

The other nodded, producing the sealed light sphere he hadn’t used since Gur Grehar. “I have a few ideas.”

“As do I,” Varcaxtan added. “I’ll need everyone’s spare lamp oil.”

Ahearn suspected the Dunarran had been mulling over a defense of the chamber since they’d entered it. “Then let’s hear your plans—and quickly, if we’re to use them at all.”


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Framed