Law of the Broken Earth(33)

Tan shook his head. “Lord Istierinan, I’m afraid this is going to be a long night. Because I truly do not know what you are talking about! I took nothing returnable. Everything I stole was set down in plain ink and has long since been carried away out of the past into the future—” He stopped as the Linularinan spymaster stepped across to the table and began to take things out of the satchel.

To Tan’s astonishment, what he was laying out was bottles of ink and little bundles of quills. Tan almost laughed in sheer surprise. Quills and ink! Whatever Istierinan had in mind, Tan was definitely glad to see legist’s tools rather than the other sort. But what did the Linularinan spymaster have in mind?

“Well?” Istierinan said to Tan. Not ominously. He’d taken a quill out of the packet, and ran it now through his fingers. His tone was more one of… weary exasperation, if Tan was any judge. The spymaster made a small gesture down toward Tan’s feet. “You would have more trouble keeping your feet, I imagine, with broken toes. Or missing toes. Or whatever. There are so many possibilities.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Tan agreed smoothly. “There’s surely no need to test the question, if you would only be plain. Lord Istierinan, what is it you want?”

“Want?” Istierinan took a small step forward, his calm cracking to show—what? Anger, yes, but not merely anger: There was something else underneath the rage. Fear, even terror, tightly leashed, and something else—desperation? Despair? Istierinan might well lose his position because of what Tan had done to him—probably would, probably should, maybe already had—but Tan had not thought the old Fox of Linularinum would go so far as to torture and destroy a spymaster who failed him. But he could not at the moment imagine what other fear could render Istierinan so desperate now.

Or had the King of Linularinum not sent Istierinan after Tan after all? Maybe Istierinan was here on his own, in one last effort to regain the king’s favor and his old place in the Fox’s court? No, that didn’t seem likely—Tan’s thoughts were interrupted in their circular flight by Istierinan himself taking a cudgel from one of his thugs and slamming it down toward one of his feet. Tan jerked his foot out of the way and Istierinan changed the strike to a sweeping sideways blow against his knee.

The crack of wood against bone was horrifying even before the pain hit, and then the cudgel swept around to threaten the other knee, and Tan tried to get out of the way of the blow, lost his footing completely, and found himself once again strangling helplessly, only this time the agony from his broken knee overwhelmed the terror of suffocation, briefly. Then the lack of air forced even the pain into the background, and at last he made it back to his feet—his foot—but then immediately fell again as some of his weight came onto his bad knee in a red explosion. He made it up once more, somehow, and fought to keep his balance—he dreaded a blow against the other knee, though he told himself, with what rationality remained to him, that surely Istierinan did not mean to kill him, not yet. Though a second blow against the first leg would not be much of an improvement.

But Istierinan did not strike him again, waiting instead for Tan to regain his balance and his breath. When Tan swayed, flinched from the red rolling pain, and nearly fell again, the spymaster put the tip of the cudgel against Tan’s chest to steady him. “So,” he said softly. “Will you continue to insist that this night be long?”

Tan tried to focus on the question, on Istierinan’s face. The haze of sweat and tears and nauseating pain got in the way. He blinked, blinked again, and managed at last to put the pain aside enough to spare some attention to the spymaster. Istierinan was now leaning on the cudgel like a walking stick. If he’d been playing the court dandy, he would have probably looked urbane and sophisticated. Here in this disused barn, no one could have mistaken his ruthlessness.

“Are you listening to me? Are you capable of thought?”

Tan shook his head, not in denial, but trying to clear his mind. Even that motion somehow jarred his leg. Tears of pain came into his eyes; a wave of faintness threatened his balance. At Istierinan’s impatient wave, one of the thugs stepped forward to support him.

“Would you care to sit down? Agree to return… what you stole, and you may. One way or the other, you will return it, or at least release it, before dawn. Give it to me now and I will even let you go, no more harmed than you are now. I will sign any binding contract you care to dictate,” he added, as Tan’s eyebrows rose in wordless incredulity. He took a small but rather fine leather-bound book out of his satchel, gave Tan a significant look, and set the book down on the table, precisely centered. Then he removed the top from one of his bottles of ink, picked up a quill, and gave Tan another look, even more significant. Tan stared at him, hopelessly bewildered.