Glenda Larke - The Heart of the mirage

'Did he speak Tyranian?'

'Oh, yes. With an accent, but passable.'

'What sort of torture was used on him?'

Achates stirred uncomfortably. 'Oh, the usual. Branding irons, beating, hanging weights -'

I looked at him in surprise. 'You're lying. Why?'

The fear flared and he shuffled his feet.

'The truth, Achates.'

'That is the truth, so help me, Legata.'

'It is not the truth.' Intrigued, I asked, 'Do you mean to tell me the man wasn't tortured at all?'

'u He almost choked on his alarm. 'I didn't say that!'

'What did happen? Achates, I'm not here to punish you. Whatever you say to me will not be repeated to any military authority. That is not the way the Brotherhood works. We deal with information – the truth. Tell me exactly what happened as you remember it, and the only thing I'll tell your commanding officer is that you've been cooperative. Lie to me, and you earn the enmity of the Brotherhood. And I think you know what that means. We are not beyond using the torture iron ourselves.'

He nodded with unhappy wariness. 'He was – Legata, he wasn't like no ordinary man. He was a kind of – of numen. Or worse.' He looked thoroughly miserable. 'If I do tell the truth, you'll call me a liar.'

'Try me.'

'Legata, I hardly believe it m'self.'

'Achates, just tell me what happened.'

He licked his lips nervously. 'Well, Rego – Regius, that is, he was in charge. He did try to torture the fellow. But this Mir Ager, he could do things other men can't. He could make things, um, happen. Things that should never be able to happen. I even – well, to tell the truth, I wondered if he could be a – well, an immortal.'

I just stopped myself from snorting. Immortals were the offspring of a god, or goddess, and an ordinary human. Supposedly, they could not die of illness or old age, although, as there were ways in which they could be killed, their claim to true immortality was suspect. They were reputed to have certain magical powers. There were hundreds of temple stories, religious-based myths, about how gods and goddesses came down from their heavenly home in Elysium to seduce mortal men or women, but oddly enough all such stories seemed to be about the past. From time to time someone would

come forward to proclaim themselves an immortal, but they were always ultimately exposed as a fraud.

Once Achates started to talk, the story came pouring out of him as though he was glad to be able to tell someone. Mir Ager, he said, was brought into the prison cells unconscious, with a lump on the side of his head. The moment he showed signs of regaining consciousness he was chained to the interrogation table, in itself a form of torture because the table was covered with uneven protuberances that dug into a man's spine. He'd answered the first question, a request for his name, readily enough: they could call him Mir Ager, he said. But when they asked other questions, he refused to reply, or gave smart-tongued answers.

Regius then ordered Achates to take the cane and beat the soles of the man's feet, which he did. After a while Achates had the strange feeling he wasn't actually touching the man at all; that the cane was stopped just short of him, as though an invisible sheet of glass covered his feet. The beating certainly didn't seem to disturb Mir Ager. It didn't even seem to mark him.

Regius became irate at the lack of reaction from the prisoner. He ordered the irons heated and said he was going to put out one of Mir Ager's eyes to see how he would enjoy that. Mir Ager showed no signs of worry. Then, when Regius held the red-hot iron up and began to cross from the fire to the interrogation table, there was a flash of light and the iron suddenly melted, dripping molten metal all over Regius's hand. Mir Ager laughed and none of them doubted the Kardi had been responsible.

They left him on the table that night and returned the next morning. Regius was in terrible pain and

ready to tear the Kardi apart. They walked into the cell to find Mir Ager had managed to free himself from the manacles that had held him. They were in pieces all over the floor, as if they had been cut. The wooden bar on the iron-reinforced door was almost broken through – and the bar was on the outside. True, there had been a crack between the door and the door jamb, but it was just that: a crack. Wide enough for a papyrus sheet to have slipped through, nothing more. Yet Mir Ager had been within a whisker of breaking out of the room.

None of them could discover how he had done any of it. After that, they doubled the number of chains he wore.

Regius wasn't about to try heated irons again after what had happened the day before. Instead, he ordered the Kardi to be suspended from the ceiling by his arms, with his feet off the floor. Then a weight was hooked onto his foot-manacles so that it, too, was off the floor. By this time, they were so rattled by the man's abilities none of them wanted to stay and watch. They left him like that, alone, for half an hour while they waited outside. When they re-entered, at the very least they hoped to find him subdued, if not begging for mercy. Instead, he was sitting on the floor, unhooking the weight. The chain they had hung him from had snapped in two.

Again Achates licked dry lips. 'We was real scared, Legata,' he said. 'Me and the other assistant was begging Rego to forget the whole thing, but Rego was as riled as a fly-blown gorclak. So we doubled the chains and hauled the bastard up again. We'd barely finished, when the whole room was filled with light, golden light. The pain of it was terrible, real bad. And Mir Ager told us – in a voice as calm as a woman nursing her

babe – that he was taking his pain and giving it to us, for as long as he hung there. I sprung to the pulley chains to let him down, right quick, I can tell you, and not even Rego objected.'

They'd talked it over among themselves then, and decided they didn't want to try again. They chained the Kardi in a cell with every chain they could find, put a guard permanently outside and told the Commander that Mir Ager had been tortured and wasn't talking. A day or two later he was executed by burning. Rego died two weeks later, his hand all swelled up green and nasty.

And that's the truth, Legata,' Achates said, 'so help me. It's not my fault if it sounds like one of them folk myths 'bout numina, You asked for the truth, and you got it.'

T believe you, Achates. I can't explain what happened, but I haven't the slightest doubt you have told me what you think you saw.' I looked across at Brand to see his reaction, but his face was impassive. 'Is there anything else I should know? What conclusions did you come to about his character?'

'His character? Ah, he was used to being the cock on the midden heap, that one. Looked at us as though we were dirt specks on the floor.'

'Highborn?'

T would say. Proud bastard. Brave, I'll give him that. He was heaped about with chains, lying in his own muck, given no food, but he could still laugh at us as though we were the bastards in trouble.' He gave a wary glance in Brand's direction. 'Legata, if T could have a word with you in private, like -'

I nodded at Brand, who rose and left the room. 'Yes, what is it, Achates?'

'If you want to know more, ask the Prefect's wife.'

I blinked. 'The Prefecta? Why would the Domina Fabia know more?'

Achates gave a sly smile. 'She's a whore, Legata, begging your pardon. One of them women who can't get what they need from their man. She pretends she's as pure as a virgin, but she likes to lay with the dirt. She pays me to bring her down into the cells when the need is on her – wraps herself in one of them Kardi travelling cloaks – and she wants the condemned men, no less. The worse they are, the better she likes it.'