David Weber - The Road to Hell

The Masker set a fisherman’s wet bag in his nearly limp hands. He took it without thinking and checked the seals and closure out of pure reflex. The bag was intended to hold wet bait or a fresh catch, and his stomach clenched as he looked down at the Seneschal and realized what was in it. Obviously the others had been busy while he’d been staring out at the channel, but the outside of the bag-thank goodness-was dry.

Drindel was the only member of the group not dressed as a Bergahldian. He was just in normal fisherfolk clothes-of good quality, of course; Maman wouldn’t supply him with anything less, but it was much the same as anything worn by the men who harvested the two seas to feed Tajvana.

The others had covered up in acolyte robes after leaving the boat, which was why he was certain they’d planned to kill the Seneschal all along. The robes fitted them far too well to be a last minute improvisation. Of course, no one had mentioned any of that to him , which suggested some very unpleasant possibilities, but it seemed their plans didn’t-yet-include anything that involved his own demise.

As long as he didn’t piss them off, at least.

Drindel weighed the bag containing Faroayn Raynarg’s heart in his hands, uncertain of his next move.

“Go.” The Masker pushed him towards the back stair. “Feed it to your fish. It’s the sort of thing an Arcanan would do to counter their Healers.”

Drindel stumbled the first step and then ran. Laughter followed him for a few steps, until his range from the Masker deadened all sound from the Seneschal’s office, but he didn’t care. Let them think he was just new to this sort of work, and that he’d had no experience of getting his own hands dirty. Let them laugh-that was fine with him! All Drindel wanted was to get far, far away, and hope no one ever remembered his name as having any connection to this.

That Seneschal had been a powerful man, who’d been allied with Uromathia…and whose heart Drindel now carried in a fisherman’s bag.

If he could become…inconvenient to the Emperor of Uromathia, then so could a Shark Caller who knew too much and whose sharks had failed in their task. Under the circumstances, all he wanted as to be somewhere else.

Quickly.

When the door at the end of the corridor opened and Bok vos Hoven realized who was coming toward his cell, he slid onto the floor so quickly he left skin on the side of his bunk. That didn’t matter. His skin was no longer his own to worry over. He lay kissing the floor while a multitude of footsteps echoed their way down the long corridor that led to his cell.

He wanted to offer an apology for having inconvenienced His Exalted Line Lord, Skollo vos Diffletak, by having been placed in a cell so far from the door, but that inconvenience was so minor beside all his other offenses, he didn’t even dare whisper it. That would only put His Exalted Line Lord to the additional effort of having to respond to it. So he lay with his belly on the floor and awaited his doom.

Footsteps came to a halt beside his cell door. His Exalted Line Lord hadn’t arrived alone. Vos Hoven hadn’t expected him to, since no Line Lord ever traveled anywhere without a retinue of the Loyal ready and waiting to serve in whatever manner His Exalted Line Lordship required. On visits of great import, His Exalted Line Lord would travel with a retinue of a hundred or more retainers; the higher the status of the one visited, the greater the number of retainers.

On a visit to view the unworthy, His Exalted Line Lord would travel with the minimum number required to ensure His Exalted Line Lordship’s personal comfort and preserve his public status as a man of great worth and importance. Vos Hoven had counted ten retainers-the absolute minimum necessary to preserve His Exalted Line Lordship’s dignity on an errand of little or no worth.

Bok vos Hoven grieved that he’d forced His Exalted Line Lordship to interrupt his sacred schedule. He wasn’t worth even the ten retainers, let alone the man they served. A man who’d dandled the nephew who’d failed him so utterly on his knee, expecting great things of this new babe born to his line. Now that nephew had failed his mother, his father, his Line Lord, his line, and his entire caste so profoundly, he could not-ever again-so much as view their faces.

“Vermin,” the voice of the man he’d once called uncle hissed down from His Exalted Line Lordship’s height.

“L–Lord,” he cringed, barely whimpering the word in just enough of a whisper to let the man standing in judgment he’d been heard.

“Do not degrade my title by uttering it with fouled lips!”

Vos Hoven shook his head frantically, leaving bloody scrapes in his nose and cheeks. They wouldn’t have time to heal.

“The officers sitting in judgment upon Jasak Olderhan have reached their verdict.”

He held his breath. He hadn’t heard that the son of a jackal’s trial had gone to deliberations already. Now he waited, breathless, to hear the outcome. He’d entered that trial with only one purpose. Had he succeeded? Or failed, yet again?

“The son of a demon has been acquitted. Never again profane our line with your worthless blood.”

His Exalted Line Lordship turned on his heel and strode away. His retainers filed past Bok’s cell. One of them, he had no idea which, tossed something into the cell with him. It bounced with a metallic clang and skidded to a halt against his brow. The knife was so sharp it creased his scalp with a thin line of blood.

When His Exalted Line Lordship and all ten retainers had retreated through the doorway at the end of that long corridor, Bok vos Hoven sat up.

He picked up the knife. It was heartlessly plain: just a steel blade and a wooden handle. He wasn’t allowed the honor of dying with a beautiful knife in his hand. He hadn’t earned that honor, and he closed his eyes, so deeply shamed he could barely breathe.

He took solace in the knowledge that His Exalted Line Lord would never rest until the man who’d just been acquitted had paid for his part in his Line’s disgrace. He took solace, as well, in knowing that the great plan he’d been a part of, that he’d failed so dismally, was still in place.

The Mythlan officers in the field now were only a small portion of that great plan, which would reshape the Union of Arcana in ways no one living outside Mythal could even imagine, on this ordinary day. But Bok vos Hoven could. And because he could, he wept, for he’d denied himself the chance to birth that world he could see so clearly in his mind’s eye.

I offer apology for all the failures I have committed against thee , Bok vos Hoven told the ancestors who would stand in judgment over him in just a few moments, and kissed the knife in his hands.

Then slashed his throat.

The pain and the death that rose to meet him were a relief. This death would free His Lordship for the great task at hand, and so Bok vos Hoven lay bleeding out on the stone floor…and smiled.