Katharine Kerr - Snare

‘Wait!’ Indan looked up. ‘You said you didn’t know he was one of them at first. This must mean you realized it later. How?’

‘He must have been the one.’ Hazro started gasping for breath. ‘It couldn’t have been anyone else.’

‘Oh?’ Indan said. ‘He must have dropped some hint. Why didn’t you come straight to us then? You were dangling us like bait in front of him, weren’t you? You were using us to try to buy your way into the Chosen.’

Hazro made a small choking sound deep in his throat.

‘How much did you tell him?’ Warkannan said. ‘Did you mention Jezro?’

‘No, never, I swear it! All I said was that I was on to a good thing with this investment group. I thought he’d join us. We’d been drinking, and I –’

‘You stupid little bastard!’ Warkannan raised the knife. ‘What did you tell him about Jezro?’

‘Nothing!’

‘Why did you want to join the Chosen?’

‘I didn’t. I didn’t.’

Warkannan kept working on him until the smell of charred flesh hung in the room and Hazro was gibbering, not speaking. A bit at a time, Warkannan extracted the information that Hazro had mentioned Soutan, come from the east with ancient maps that might show deposits of blackstone. He admitted bragging, hinting that perhaps he was a man who knew important things.

‘But not Jezro, never Jezro.’ He was sobbing, twitching when his tears touched the open cuts on his face.

‘Indeed? Are you sure of that?’

Over and over he denied having mentioned the name, even when he was at the point of shrieking and writhing at the very sight of a piece of charcoal. Warkannan finally laid down the tongs and sat back on his heels.

‘I believe him. A man in this state tells the truth.’

‘So do I,’ Indan said. ‘As for this business about his wanting to join the Chosen –’

‘I didn’t!’ Hazro tried to shout, but he was gagging on his own blood. ‘I just thought –’

‘What?’ Indan said. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘Insurance.’ Hazro started to cough, then gagged again and spat up bloody rheum. ‘If –’

‘If they were on to us, you were going to turn informer.’ Warkannan finished the thought for him. ‘That’s why you wouldn’t tell us.’

Hazro slumped back against the wall, his bloody lips working.

‘Yes,’ Indan said. ‘I think we finally understand.’

Soutan stepped closer to stare at Hazro’s mutilated manhood, what was left of it. ‘What are you going to do with him now?’

‘Put him out of his misery.’

Hazro screamed, choked again, and tried to speak, but Warkannan grabbed his hair, forced his head back, and slit his throat in one quick stroke. When he looked up, he saw Soutan smiling, his eyes bright, as if from a fever. Soutan nudged the dead body with the toe of his sandal.

‘Do we throw him in the ocean?’

‘No. The Chosen have recognizable ways of torturing a man, and this was one of them. The councillor is going to find something big enough to hide the body. We’ll take it back to Haz Kazrak, and I’ll dump the corpse over the wall of Hazro’s father’s garden at night for the slaves to find. His father won’t suspect us. He’ll think that the Chosen have killed his son, and then he’ll be more loyal to Jezro than ever.’

They left the body in the attic. Warkannan stayed out of sight while Indan ordered the servants to bring up a tub of hot water for his guest room. Once the tub was ready and they were gone, Warkannan could at last bathe away the stench and the gore. He only wished he could wash away his revulsion as easily.

Hazro had been a stupid young fool, a snob and apparently a coward as well. But to think that Lev Rashad – Warkannan shook his head. The very curse of the Chosen was simply that they were secret and very good at staying that way. An army within an army, they existed to spy on their fellow soldiers as well as do the Great Khan’s dirty work among civilians. They lived in the same barracks, ate at the same mess, carried the same insignia as the other members of their regiments, but somewhere in their career, they’d been taken aside and initiated into a brotherhood with rules of its own.

And they force the rest of us to sink to their level, Warkannan told himself. Maybe that’s the worst evil of all.

In the morning, when they set off for Haz Kazrak, one of Indan’s servants followed them in the cart which was laden with an enormous woven basket filled with dried fruit and other delicacies, or so the servant thought. Certainly it smelled of rich spices and rose petals. Once they reached the city, the servant and the cart both headed for Indan’s townhouse, while Warkannan and Arkazo went openly to Warkannan’s cottage, which he kept as a relief from officers’ quarters when off-duty.

Down on one of the lower hills in town lay a district full of these places, decent accommodations, complete with stables, for aristocratic officers like Warkannan, who had income from property but who weren’t wealthy enough to keep townhouses with a full staff. Warkannan’s little bungalow sat at the back of the communal garden, six irregular rooms bound together by vines and furnished with shabby wicker chairs and old rugs. When he and Arkazo walked in, his only servant, Lazzo, met him with a letter.

‘It’s from headquarters, sir.’

‘Ah. I wonder if they’re taking my resignation?’

Warkannan took the sheet of pale pink rushi over to the window. The letter read exactly as he’d hoped, a bland official statement of regret at losing such a good officer. He was to report one last time to determine his pension settlement.

‘So that’s that,’ Warkannan said. ‘If they’re so sorry to lose me they might have promoted me.’

‘I’m glad now I never enlisted.’ Arkazo flopped onto a wicker sofa.

‘Oh, I don’t know. The discipline’s good for a man. I don’t regret –’

One sharp jolt like the slap of a giant hand made the room sway. The flexible walls creaked and chafed against their binding vines as they rippled in the shock. Warkannan braced himself and glanced at the wall. A long strand of blue beads hung on a leather thong attached to a plaque of true-wood, marked out in numbered, concentric circles. The beads swung back and forth against the gauge. As he watched, the quake died out in a long shiver. The beads quieted and hung steady.

‘Just about a five,’ Warkannan said.

‘It didn’t feel like much, no,’ Arkazo said. ‘Anyway, you’ve always talked about the discipline. That’s one reason I don’t want to join up.’

‘Huh! Well, you’re going to learn about discipline now. You follow my orders, or you stay at home.’

Lounging on overstuffed cushions Arkazo raised one hand in salute. ‘Yes sir!’ he said and grinned. ‘At your service!’

‘All right. For starters, you can pack my clothes as well as yours.’

They went into Warkannan’s bedroom, where, in a chest woven of pale orange reeds, Warkannan kept what few civilian clothes he owned – khaki trousers, shirts to match, a broad-brimmed riding hat, worn brown boots. He dumped the lot on the bed, then looked away, startled at a feeling much like grief. Civilian clothes. Tonight he would be taking off the Great Khan’s uniform for the last time. As an honourable retiree he would be allowed to keep his sabre - but I’m a traitor, he thought. I have no honour. They just don’t know it yet.

‘Uncle?’ Arkazo laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, no, nothing. I’ll just go report in to settle my pension. I want our gear properly packed when I get back. Make sure you have a hat with you. The sun’s fierce out on the plains.’

Just after sunset, Warkannan and Arkazo were sharing some smuggled wine in the study when Lubahva arrived from the palace. Normally she wore modest dresses and a headscarf when she left the palace grounds, but that evening she’d draped herself with the grey veils of the ultra-orthodox, which turned her into a pious bundle indistinguishable from a thousand other women. Her behaviour, however, was far from restrained. She giggled while she tipped the old servant and made a show of lifting her veil to give Warkannan a kiss. Once the servant was gone, Lubahva sat down on a divan and pulled the veil off to reveal her black hair, done up in rows of beaded braids.