Or not quite empty. Geroen’s young guardsmen were sitting on the floor, against the wall, pale and insensible. But Tan was not there.
Yet Mienthe found she knew where he was, just as surely as she knew, without looking, which way was down or where her own hands were.
She knew Tan was unconscious. She knew he was nearby, but getting rapidly farther away. She knew he was heading west, toward the river and Linularinum. And she knew something else: that she would never manage to persuade Geroen she knew anything at all.
She was right about everything but the last.
CHAPTER 3
Tan, smiling, pulled the bed table nearer to hand and riffled through the stack of paper a servant had brought, along with a very good supper and a passable wine. The supper was now crumbs and the wine was gone, and he had even slept for a while, which he had not expected after so long unconscious. But then, unconsciousness was not quite the same as sleep, he thought, amused. Now, despite so recently wearing himself out with his gift, he found himself rather drawn to the paper and quills that had been provided. The lamplight would be adequate, if he happened to wish to write a little.
It was good paper, thick and heavily textured. Well-made paper like this was a pleasure to work with; it wouldn’t let ink smudge or fade. The array of inks was also impressive. The blue was a good, deep color like distilled Casmantian sapphires, the green fresh and bright as springtime, the purple dusky and rich.
He thought that a young woman of the Delta was unlikely to know, but would probably like, Anariddthen’s newest cycle, all sweet love and desperate loss and brave heroism, and an ending that was, contrary to most romantic epics, at least ambiguous rather than tragic. It would please pretty little Mienthe, he decided. He was clear already that anyone who wished Lord Bertaud’s goodwill might well give some thought to pleasing his cousin.
The Anariddthen—yes, Tan decided. Not only would young Mienthe probably like it, it also could be taken in pieces of a sensible size. There wasn’t much chance he’d fall into the legist’s trance and wear his fingers to the bone trying to reach the end in one session. Yes. The Anariddthen would do very well. Green ink, Tan thought, for the beginning. He picked up a green quill—made from a parrot’s feather, he presumed, and very handsome it was, if not the sort of quill a professional would care to be seen using for serious work. But perfect for a light romance. He dipped it into the matching ink, and found himself standing alone, chilled half to death, in a cavernous building filled with dim shadows and dusty cobwebs.
There had been no sense of transition at all. Tan’s shocked gasp and sharp twitch backward were natural, but ill-advised: He discovered that his ankles were chained together and his wrists chained to his ankles by coming too hard against the limits of the chains, losing his balance, and falling. And then he discovered that another chain was around his neck, this one running high aloft to the distant ceiling of the building. With his hands chained, Tan could not catch himself: The chain about his neck slipped through a steel ring and he was suddenly strangling. It took a terrifying moment of breathless, off-balance struggle to regain his feet, and even then he had to toss his head sharply to get the strangling chain to run back through the slip-ring so he could catch his breath.
His throat felt bruised where the chain had closed around it. For an instant he could not help but picture what would have happened if he’d fallen with a little more force and crushed his windpipe, or if he hadn’t been able to get back to his feet and had simply hung there, strangling—The images went beyond vivid to visceral, and he shut his eyes for a long moment and devoted himself to breathing. Slow, steady breaths. He was not going to panic and give himself to his enemies… to Istierinan, to be plain, and what was Istierinan doing with a pet mage running his errands? What mage would it even be? None of the court mages at Teramondian served or worked with or even liked Istierinan, so far as Tan knew. Obviously he had missed something. Evidently something important.
Tan knew very little about magecraft, but obviously Istierinan couldn’t have stolen him out of the Delta’s great house and tumbled him into this place through a blank moment of time unless he had a Linularinan mage working with him. But, earth and iron, why had the Linularinan spymaster gone to such trouble to do it? Istierinan risked offending not just Feierabiand but the Lord of the Delta by stealing Tan out of his own house? Even when it was patently too late to stop the stolen information from getting out? It was incredible.
Although, on the other hand, Tan had to credit that Istierinan had clearly managed the trick. Perhaps so silently that Lord Bertaud would not be able to take official offense? At least, so silently that Istierinan could tell himself that the Lord of the Delta wouldn’t be able to take offense? Tan ran that question backward and forward in his mind even while he turned most of his attention toward examining his situation and his prison. He wasn’t injured. Not even bruised, save where the chain had closed across his throat when he’d fallen. Istierinan and his people had taken some care, then, that he not be harmed. Yet. But his shirt was gone, and his boots. No wonder he was cold. His skin prickled with the chill. Or maybe with fear.