Jeff Salyards - Veil of the Deserters

Braylar turned to me. “The key.”

“To the chest?”

“No, to a fair maiden’s heart. Yes, the chest, you dolt, with Anroviak’s account. Quickly now, lest his Eminence have cause to insult my integrity again. The book and scroll, they are in the chest just behind the barrel of dates, yes?” I nodded and handed him the key and he said, “Vendurro, be so kind as to fetch them both. Be quick about it. But careful as well. They are exceptionally brittle. Unlike our guest here, no matter how much he conveniently moans about his age.”

“Aye, Cap. Though careful and quick ain’t usually allies.”

Henlester didn’t spare Vendurro a second glance as the sergeant ran toward the wagons. “On the tongue or paper, a lie is a lie. Or forgery. Amounts to the same. What is this mummer’s farce about, Black Noose?”

Braylar replied, “Regardless of how you might caw to the contrary, Anroviak was not simply a heretic or disobedient cleric. His actions were endorsed by the order. At least until they weren’t. And he discovered something, didn’t he, priest? About how to control witches, to collar and harness them? Whether for nefarious purposes or simply because the man had a devious curiosity, he found a way to bind memory witches to his will, did he not?”

The high priest was hardly awed. “You are mistaken or lying, but it hardly matters which. Either way, you are not speaking truths.”

Braylar turned to Mulldoos. “I am beginning to suspect the good cleric does not believe me.”

“Looks like. Most of the time he’d have good reason, too. But today he caught you in a real truthful mood.”

“Wounded from all sides. But no matter. Our proof is running this way just now.” Vendurro handed the captain the book and the scroll. “Now then, would you care to take a look, Your Eminence?”

His Eminence did not, sniffing instead. “Some dusty tomes prove nothing.”

Braylar held the book out. “Ahh, I see. You can’t read Old Anjurian.”

Henlester did not rise to the bait. “If you knew anything about our order, as you say, you are aware that even our initiates read, write, and speak Old Anjurian.”

Mulldoos said, “See now. You hadn’t need for any scribbler at all, Cap. Should have just thrown the high priest in a sack years ago and made him translate.”

“Somehow I think his Eminence would prove… reluctant. He does not seem to be in a cooperative mood. But no matter. The accounts are here, as I said. But I suspect you know that. You simply did not know that I happened to obtain them. That bit might be surprising, but not the contents. Not to a learned and literary man like yourself.”

Henlester’s thin lips were pressed together, and hardly parted as he replied, “Here is what I suspect-if the Anjurian lords had been less splintered, greedy, and factious, they would have defeated your kind long ago. Against a resolute foe, you are worthless. What I want to know is, why are Black Nooses getting their noses dusty in old tomes anyway? You are the only filth among civilized nations who have taken to taming memory witches, thereby soiling yourselves. I saw their black arts at work myself. Even if there were records out there in the world, what of it? What more could we teach you about deviltry that you have not mastered already?”

Braylar’s playful mood seemed to vanish. “A cleric who fancies fucking and murdering crippled whores and cheating his liege lord giving advice on piety and manners. Ahh, irony. But you see, Your Eminence, I am not interested in the specifics of controlling memory witches. As you said, the Syldoon know the ways of this better than anyone. But I am very much interested in how Anroviak, and whoever he spilled his secrets to, devised a way to transfer the bonds once they had been established. Yes, that I am very much interested in.”

Henlester laughed, a dry, rasping sound like leaves blowing together. “Even if I possessed such knowledge, which I do not, as I have told you I would never reveal anything to the likes of you. Unlike barons and kings, the priests of Truth are resolute.”

Braylar stepped forward. “Sadly, I did not expect you would. Willingly. Now, we could interrogate you the time-honored way, with fire and steel. But we are humble soldiers, good at killing, less skilled at hurting a man but keeping him alive long enough to spill his secrets. And we have no interrogator in the company. However, we did have the foresight to bring two Memoridons with us. As you have noted, they are very good at blinding our overeager foes, but they have many other skills as well. Chief among these-they are experts in the arts of discovery. Their talents make the finest Anjurian interrogators look like clumsy halfwits, and the veracity of the information is never in dispute. When a Memoridon slides inside a man and tears apart his memories, there is no dissembling, no subterfuge, no half-truths.”

Henlester’s pale lips pressed together so hard they nearly disappeared.

Braylar turned to Hewspear and said, “Yet, despite their prodigious abilities, they often have a decided lack of… sympathy for their subjects, do they not?”

Hewspear nodded slowly. “They do indeed. While they are able to slither into a man’s mind and uncover any secrets hidden therein, it is an invasive, hostile act. In most cases, they cause unspeakable damage in the process. Many men,” he sighed, “they do not die, but they never recover their wits at all, either. Husks, I believe the Memoridons like to call them. They have been hollowed out, turned in to simplest of simpletons, and often can’t perform the most rudimentary of tasks and end up little better than beasts.”

“Beasts at least know enough not to shit themselves,” Vendurro added. “That there’s as basic as basic gets, but I seen a man, after the Memoridons released him, he didn’t know his name, couldn’t speak at all in fact, kept clapping the air in front of him and gibbering nonsense. And he didn’t remember not to shit himself, either. Someone likely got tired of the clean up or the stench and finally smothered the poor bastard with his own pillow. A babe or old man shits himself, well, that’s half expected, so folks are willing to plug their noses and get on with it. But a man of middle years, an imbecile with shit running down his leg every day, well, not many willing to put up with that.”

Mulldoos said, “And not just foreign bastards like yourself, Henfucker. Remember Weeze?”

Vendurro replied, “Of the Griffin Tower?”

“The very same. You see, he was suspected of treason. Tower Memoridons, they went in, ripped him apart from the inside out, got the truth of the matter. Turns out, the accusation hadn’t been accurate at all. Only that didn’t help good old Weeze none.”

Hewspear said, “That poor bastard. Is he still living?”

“He is,” Mulldoos replied. “The Griffin Tower commander had a pang of guilt once it was found out he was innocent. Didn’t have the heart to put him down, though it would have been a mercy to. Holds his knees to his chest and rocks to and fro, mumbling naught but nonsense, ‘the sheep in the deep do nothing but sleep’ and the like. Don’t think he shits himself. Might be the only thing that saved him so far. But still, a Memoridon ever rips into me, every man here knows to put me down rather than letting me half live like that.”

Henlester had heard enough. “You fail to frighten, Black Noose,” he said, for the first time not entirely convincingly. “You cannot afford to send me to your mind butchers. You need me for some vile scheme or another. Or you would have handed me over already.”

Braylar held the book parallel to the ground and slid his fingertips over the worn leather cover and the tarnished brass fastenings. “You are not wrong about the schemes. If you would prove cooperative-something I am less and less sure of-then we might have some use for you yet. And while you would doubtless be a small piece on a large board, it is better than being swept off the board completely, yes? But weighed against that, I believe you possess the information I am seeking. And frankly, the need for that is more pressing. Ideally, we would have both, but if it can be only one, it will be the knowledge of Anroviak and his transfer of the binding. So, I ask you a final time, Your Eminence. How was it done? Tell me what I wish to know, and you not only escape the Memoridons, but prove your willingness to aid us. The Syldoon are cruel, it is true, but we can also be magnanimous on occasion, especially to those who further our goals. So, cruelty or magnanimity-which would you have us offer today, cleric?”