S. Turney - Interregnum

“Cristus?” yelled out a guard and, as a hand shot up among the crowd, he ticked the name dutifully of the list.

“Savic?”

Another hand raised and another name ticked off. With a squaring of his shoulders, the guard slapped the list down on the table beside him and the sergeant leaned over to examine it.

“Four!” he growled and then, turning to the gathered islanders, he raised his voice.

“Four prisoners unaccounted for. That’s not good enough.”

He strode forward with two of the guard at his shoulders and pointed at a random man in the front row. The guards dragged him out of the line into the open space and then dropped him to the floor. He was not a young man but far from feeble, a farmer with some muscle. He floundered on the floor for only a moment before he made to stand. The guard kicked him heavily in the gut and he fell back to the grass with a groan. The sergeant leaned over him.

“Where are these four prisoners?” he asked quietly.

The farmer shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Straightening, the sergeant nodded once at the two guards, who proceeded to pulverise the poor man with repeated kicks to the head and torso. After a solid minute they stopped. Darius strained from his position in the fourth row to see, but the man was still breathing, though unconscious. He was battered beyond recognition and Darius found his hate for the sergeant growing ever stronger, aware that this ‘lesson’ was having the same effect on everyone else. The sergeant was trying to make them fear the guard, but his actions were merely fostering hate and desire for vengeance.

The two guardsmen stepped away from their prone victim and the sergeant moved forward again.

“Where are the missing four?”

Silence greeted him and he glowered at the crowd.

“Very well, I will assume that these four islanders are hiding of their own accord. They will present themselves at the roll-call in the morning and will be duly punished. If they do not present themselves tomorrow I, personally, will break all their knees to make sure they cannot hide again. You would do well to pass this on to them when you see them and to remember it yourselves.”

He stepped back behind the table and cleared his throat.

“Very well, one by one approach the table from your lines and give your details for duties to the guard. Anyone under the age of ten need not approach; nor should anyone over the age of sixty. Those of you who fall into these categories will be restricted to the Ibis Courtyard, the Great Courtyard and the various buildings directly surrounding them. In due course, a perimeter will be set up around the set areas to prevent straying, but I’ll have to rely on everyone’s good sense in the meantime.”

As the lines filed slowly past the table, with the old and the young being directed to one side under the watchful eyes of the guard, Darius sighed. It was a damned good job they were going tonight. If he’d had to go through another day of this, either he or the sergeant would be dead. Perhaps the brute was trying to find fault wherever he could because he’d failed to find the quantity of contraband that he’d expected. If he’d seen the contents of the olive grower’s shed, he would have had apoplexy. For a moment a smile crept across Darius’ face, but he quickly forced it back down. To be seen smiling at a time like this would be to attract unwanted attention. Ahead of him in the queue he watched Mercurias, the Wolves’ medic giving a false name and his career as cook. The guard didn’t even blink at him and the grizzled soldier went on in the line to stand where he was told. Five minutes later, as he himself was closing on the desk, Darius watched the Pelasian doctor, whose name escaped him, giving another false name and the title of kitchen skivvy. Again they barely noticed the unusually dark man. A prisoner who worked in the lowly places was all but invisible to these people but then that was exactly what they’d wanted. Finally Darius himself stepped up. He’d no job but a short conversation with both Sarios and Athas last night had left him classified as a smith. Athas had told him a few of the most basic principals in case he was quizzed but, watching the way the guards were dealing with people, he doubted they would care enough to enquire. Sure enough, as his name was ticked off once more, and ‘smith’ written beside it, he was shuffled off to join the others. He couldn’t help feeling this was all too easy.

“The secret,” the Pelasian doctor murmured, “is to get the proportions exactly correct. Too little and we merely spice their meal. Too much and they will all be dead within two hours.”

Mercurias, busy taking the kernels out of a large basket of peaches, looked up speculatively at minister Sarios, standing at the other side of the table. “I presume you still want us to merely drug them?”

Sarios nodded. “I do not like poison on principle, but if it can be used correctly to merely incapacitate, then we must do it.”

Favio, the third doctor in the room, leaned over from his place with a heavy-headed mallet where he was crushing the kernels into rubble. “Minister, there are any number of fascinating drugs we could use that would work with a great deal more control than cyanide, but we don’t have an awful lot of time and there are not many sources on the island. Cyanide is the only really feasible option. After all, there are orchards all over the island and so many peaches in storage we could probably poison the entire population of the city if we so wished.”

He scooped up the latest pile of peach rubble and, dropping it in a bowl, passed it to the Pelasian, who Darius had since discovered was named Ahmesh. Ahmesh dropped the contents into a large bowl of strong shrimp and onion broth the cooks had been making for an hour, and stirred it thoroughly.

“I would say another ten kernels and ten more minutes of warming through and then we can strain the pieces out along with the remains of the onions.” He looked up at the minister. “I am hoping we’ve judged this correctly, minister, but even in my deepest, darkest days of creating cyanide compounds for my Prince, I have never tried to create a cyanide-based sleeping draught for over a hundred men. The quantities to be used are simply too unpredictable. No-one has ever tried such a thing, you understand.”

The minister once more looked sceptical and unhappy, but Darius leaned across from his position near the door and said quietly “if the quantities are wrong we can pay for it in the next life, minister. These men don’t deserve your sympathy or care and you know it.”

Sarios glanced back at his young friend. Since the attack on the girl this morning, Darius had become gradually bleaker and darker throughout the day and right at this moment, the minister had never seen him display more of a similarity to his father. Darius, for all his upbringing here, was a Caerdin through and through and the way he’d just spoken had clinched it. The young man had never spoken to Sarios like that. Never on a level like that. The minister began to wonder if involving Darius in today’s events would perhaps irreparably damage the young man’s soul.

“Just do your best gentlemen. When will it be ready?”

Favio looked across at the head cook, who nodded.

“Twenty minutes should be enough. Dinner will be ready right on time and should be nice and spicy.”

The minister turned again to Darius. “You’d best go and get the Wolves into position now.”

The young man nodded and turned to pull on the door handle just as it opened and he was almost crushed up against the wall by the heavy oak of the door. A guardsman in full kit with his helm under his arm burst in onto the raised platform around the edge of the kitchens. He glared down at the various people working and recognised the minister.