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“Absolutely,” he answered flatly.
“We’ve got you now!” Vordius grinned, turning back to the girl. “It’s good to see you again, Fenia Brazelo. Do you remember me?” he hissed through clenched teeth. “You tried to kill my brother, you vile piece of work! I’ll squeeze you so hard your heart will pop out of your mouth!” The young woman turned her face away.
“Stop it, Vordius,” Sorgius said in a voice that was still quiet, but suddenly firm. “Can’t you see she’s terrified? And she’s been beaten.”
“Let’s finish her off!” the guardsman cried, never taking his eyes off his target. “We’ve got her, Sorgius! The one who poisoned Uni!”
“We aren’t scum like those out there,” Sorgius nodded at the door.
“You’re right, of course,” Vordius agreed, “but what I see in front of me is one filthy hag. And I swear by the Emperor’s crown that she’ll tell me everything she knows and then I’ll…”
“And then what? Don’t you understand? That’s exactly what they want us to do.”
“What?” Vordius turned from the girl to his friend and back.
Sorgius’ voice got stronger. “Unlike some people, who let their anger get the best of them, I’ve given some thought to what is really going on here.”
“And?” the guardsman asked, scratching his shoulder.
“They tossed her in here for a reason. They want us to make short work of her ourselves!”
“But why? What would they gain by it?”
“Don’t you see? Imagine you’re Asp and the Imperial Guards are looking for a girl who did a dirty job for you. That makes her a problem, and you don’t need problems. So they grabbed her and knocked her around until she told them everything she knew. Then they tossed her in here for us to finish her off. Even if we manage to get away, we won’t be able to tell anyone what we found out because we’ll be charged with murder.”
“That’s a bunch of complicated nonsense.”
“Maybe it is, but I recommend talking to her peacefully. After all…”
Vordius put a palm to his forehead. “Of course. You’re always the lover, and you didn’t get enough small talk with her last time.”
Sorgius grimaced, “Don’t give me that garbage. You’ve known me too long for that. Save it to tell as a joke when we get out of here. Now move out of the way!” He pushed his friend aside and took his place.
“Hello,” he said, bending down and looking a little embarrassed.
Fenia stared out from behind her dirty hair with a hunted look. In better days, she would have tossed her hair over her shoulder with an elegant motion of her small head or blown it out of her face impatiently. Now, her dirty, greasy hair was the only thing between her and these frighteningly aggressive men, and she hid behind it in hopes of saving her fragile world from destruction.
“Please just listen to me,” Sorgius went on. “We are very worried about our friend Uni. Someone poisoned him while we were at the Fish. The only thing we want is to find out who ordered it and prove his guilt. You were just carrying out someone’s orders, weren’t you?”
The girl nodded.
“Then you have no reason to fear us.”
Fenia froze for an instant and stared up at Vordius.
“Take three steps back, please,” Sorgius instructed him without turning around.
The guardsman scowled, shrugged, and measured off the required distance with his boots.
“Please, go on,” he said in a falsely sweet voice. “I won’t watch.”
Sorgius bit his lip and looked down. Then he raised his eyes to the girl’s face. “He won’t yell at you again. Isn’t that better?” he asked softly.
She closed her eyes and nodded. Her shoulders started to shake.
“We’re in the same boat,” Sorgius went on. “And there’s nothing any of us can do about it. But I promise neither of us will hurt you. If you want, I’ll leave you alone and you can sit here by yourself. Would you like that?”
Fenia shuddered and looked up at him. “Don’t leave!” she said with obvious effort.
It was only then that Sorgius noticed that her lips were puffy. A backhand blow, he mused. It doesn’t look like her teeth are broken. That’s good.
“I won’t leave you,” he said quickly. “But I will sit down, if you don’t mind, before my legs fall asleep,” and he groaned as he arranged himself in a seated position on the cold floor. “That’s better!”
For a while, they stared at each other in silence. Then, Fenia looked down and tried to wipe away her tears with a filthy shoulder. It didn’t go well.
“Can I help you?” Sorgius asked. “I can untie your hands.”
She looked back at him, but her eyes fell again. The Vuravian realized that her arms were tied behind her back, like his had been. And he remembered how ridiculous he had felt when the ruffians released him.
After an uncomfortable silence, he said “Listen, Fenia, we have to get those cords off your wrists. If we don’t, they’ll leave scars right where everyone will see them.”
The young woman’s face remained blank.
“Let’s do this. I’ll take a step back. Then you turn around and show me your hands, and I’ll do my best to get the cords off.”
She stood up.
“That’s right. Face the middle of the room.”
Fenia froze.
“Vordius, go stand in a corner. That’s a fellow.”
When he knelt in front of her, Sorgius caught a whiff of her incense, and it was incongruous given the circumstances, reminding him of that evening at the Fish and the continuation that had never happened. He would have given a great deal to return to that evening!
The knot was impossibly tight, and Sorgius’ well-groomed fingernails were not up to the task. Fenia looked over her shoulder to monitor the process.
“I know I’m not wanted, but perhaps I could help?” Vordius inquired from his corner. As a guardsman, he knew the art of making knots and untying them like no one else.
Fenia jumped away.
“Stop it!” Sorgius said testily to the back of her head. “If he was going to hurt you, he would have done it already.”
Vordius bent over the knot, doing his best to ignore the nearness of her body. “Hmm, I thought I could undo it with my teeth, but I see that won’t work. But no matter, it will just take some time. This goes through here. Watch your finger. And be still! That’s right. Like that. I know it hurts, but be patient. Heavenly Deity, I believe I’ve done it!”
The young woman leaped away from him and held her hands up for inspection. Her dirty face gave a child-like grimace – it was too dark in her corner for her to see. Moving cautiously, she joined Vordius by the oil lamp on the wall.
“The bruises will be gone in a couple of days,” the guardsman said in an attempt to brighten her up. While they had searched for Fenia, Vordius had hated her violently, but now that he saw her helpless figure, his revulsion drained away. “It wasn’t her idea, of course,” he said to himself as an excuse. “Someone threatened her. They made her do it.”
“I suppose I have to thank you,” Fenia said, coming round.
“Not yet,” Vordius shot back jokingly. “We’re still locked up.”
“Aren’t your friends from the Emperor’s guards turning the docks inside out like an old woman shaking a pillow?”
“I would give a great deal to see that with my own eyes,” Vordius laughed, “but I’m afraid that’s not the case.”
“What are you saying?” Fenia asked, narrowing her eyes, which made her look like a fox.
“We’re in this on our own,” Sorgius said, examining the damage her cords had wrought on his fingernails. “This handsome man’s superior officers have no idea where he disappeared to. And if they do find out,” he gave a long whistle. “Don’t argue with me, Vordius. You and I came up with what turned out to be the perfect plan for romantic suicide. I’ll admit my guilt if it makes you feel any better.”
“We just wanted to find the person who poisoned Uni,” Vordius shrugged his powerful shoulders. “And you were the first suspect.”
“You wanted to find me?” Fenia was incredulous. Her voice started to sound unhinged. “Are you serious? You wanted to find me?” She pointed at Vordius and her laughter grew louder. There was something wild and even sick about her reaction. “You wanted to find me, so here I am, right in front of you! What are you going to do now? Question me? Get revenge for your dead fool?” She pointed her chin at the door. “That’s exactly what they want! Come on, give me your worse!” She was laughing so hard that tears ran down her filthy cheeks.
Sorgius froze, feeling humiliated. Vordius glowered. Then he strode across the cell and slapped her face sharply, but not too hard. Fenia cried out. Her face turned pink, and the sense returned to her face.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I had no idea it was poison…”
“What?” Vordius’ jaw dropped.
Just then, the door bolt slid open and the same four ruffians came back in. This time, they had their weapons at the ready: two carried long Seregad daggers, and the other two held thick clubs of the hittle wood that grows in the thick Arincilian jungle.
“Look at them,” said one of the ruffians, a fat, older man with dirty gray wisps of hair behind his ears. “They’re all standing around laughing because they don’t know what to do! I guess they need help!”
“They know what to do. They just don’t know how,” broke in the man next to him, slapping his palm with his club. “Faces to the wall, sissies! Mickay will heat things up in here!”
Shaggy-headed Mickay stuck his dagger in his belt, wiped his hands on his bright green shirt, and then…
If Vordius had been alone, he would have tried to calculate the consequences, assess the risks, and come up with a rough plan of action. But now, his instinct to protect those weaker than himself took over. He grabbed the sputtering oil lamp and threw the oil in the thug’s face. The effect was immediate, but without a light, neither side could see what was going on in the melee.
Moving in on the cries of the burned man, Vordius grabbed him and wrestled the dagger from his belt. A few blows later, there was one less ruffian in the cell. The others were fighting all around him, and it sounded like they were fighting each other.
“Fenia crawl to the wall!” Vordius cried. He immediately realized that he had given away his location.
Following his intuition, he dodged left and barely missed a club aimed at his head. Crouching, he slashed at the shadows around him, crying “I’ll kill all you pigs! I’ll slash you into belt leather!” Someone screamed and began cursing like a sailor. An instant later, the door opened and one of the ruffians called for help. As the door slammed open, it let the deem light of the torches from the corridor in. Out of shock or fear, he didn’t know himself, Vordius started to feel or even sort of see the things around him: the silhouettes in the twinkling light of the candle, trembling in the stream of air from the door, and the shades of fire on the walls.
Expecting a crowd of the thugs to swarm into the cell any minute, Vordius made a terrible mistake: he threw his newfound dagger at the man in the doorway. The knife wasn’t meant for such use, and it hit the man handle-first. The Heavenly Deity, though, was on his side, and the knife handle somehow landed squarely on the back of the man’s head. He fell to the ground, his large body blocking the doorway.
Stunned by his luck, Vordius almost got hit by the third ruffian. He grabbed the man’s club at the last second, but the man let go of it and head-butted him in the face. Vordius saw stars and lost contact with reality for an instant, during which the thug threw him to the grown, sat on his chest and started beating him with his fists. He only got in a few blows before Fenia, silent as an owl, grabbed his hair in her left hand and, with her right, drove a dagger into his neck.
“Can you walk?” she asked the guardsman, who was sprawled on the floor.
“Of course!” he said cheerily, but he had a hard time getting up. He felt like there was a hive of bees buzzing in his head. His legs gave out and he grabbed the young woman’s shoulder, almost causing her to fall.
“You’re in bad shape! Where’s Sorgius?”
“Over here!” came a voice at the other end of the strip of light from the doorway. The little Vuravian was crouching by the wall with his arms over his head. “Is it all over?”
“Let’s go, may the Shadow take both of you!” the young woman said with a scowl.
“Of course! I’m running already!” Sorgius replied, tripping over the fourth ruffian, who was crawling across the floor with one hand covering a wound in his side. Sorgius hitched up his wide pants and kicked the man hard in the face. The ruffian cried out and started crawling in the other direction.
“Get moving, fearless leader!” hissed Vordius, cursing his own slow-moving body. Then he turned to the girl. “Let’s make for the river!” He pushed aside the body in the doorway.
They found the exit to the landing quickly. Gripped by fear, Vordius imagined a horde of cutthroats drawn by the sound of fighting, but the storehouses on the landing were abandoned and empty. Soon, however, they heard voices and saw flickering lights behind them. They would be foolish to expect miracles.
“We have to find a boat!” Vordius commanded. “Fenia, you look to the left. I’ll look to the right. Sorgius, find some oars!”
“Yes, Enel nicor!” grumbled Sorgius. He turned his head this way and that and dove into an old storeroom set back from the water.
“Where in the shadows are you going?” cursed the guardsman.
Sorgius didn’t even turn around.
Vordius clutched his head. Their enemies were getting closer, and he knew he didn’t have enough time to get them all safely away in a boat. A wave of nausea hit him, and something was pounding inside his left temple.
“I found some oars. They’re heavy!” puffed the Vuravian as he ran up, holding his elegant pants up with one hand.
Fenia cried out. When they turned to the sound of her voice, they saw her waving frantically. “Here! Here’s a boat!”
“Did you check if it’s sound?” Vordius asked as he jumped in. In the next instant, he realized she had already untied the rowboat from the dock. It buckled and slid away from the bank.
“What about me? You forgot me!” Sorgius cried out, standing on the bank with an oar under each arm. He turned around and saw the first of their enemies running down the landing.
“Jump, you fool!” Vordius screamed with all the love he had for his friend. He couldn’t imagine losing him so stupidly, right when they were about to triumph over some of the capital’s most hardened criminals.
Spurred on by this wise counsel, Sorgius, who was out of his mind with fear, made a pitiful face and leaped as far as he could – which wasn’t quite far enough. His oars almost knocked Vordius into the next life, but the guardsman managed to dodge the blow and grab hold of them, leaving Sorgius suspended above the water.
“Give me the oars! I need to row!”
“What am I supposed to hold onto?”
“Grab the stern, you clown!”
Fenia tried to help the ridiculous pair, stepping gingerly in their direction with an outstretched hand, but her added weight made the stern too heavy.
“Get back to the bow! Just sit tight and don’t move!” Vordius groaned weakly. He was praying that the ruffians weren’t armed with multi-shooters, and that there weren’t any other rowboats in the vicinity, and – for good measure – that he and his friends could just vanish into thin air. The way things were going, he feared they could all end up dead without any help from their enemies.
Sorgius finally let go of the oars, and Vordius quickly put them to good use.
“Hold on, do you hear me?” he ordered his friend, who was being dragged along behind the boat like a log. “Once I put some distance between us and them, I’ll help you get in. Don’t do it yourself. You’ll just turn us over!”
It was difficult to pick up speed with Sorgius holding on to the stern, but the friends had taken the only sound boat in the area. They did not know that, however, so Vordius pulled for the middle of the river where it was dark and he could rest a little.
“Give me your hand and crawl in slowly,” he said as he hauled his friend into the boat. “It’s so dark out here I can’t see a thing!” With Sorgius finally in the boat, Vordius let out a sigh and lay down in the bottom. “Praise the Heavenly Deity, we’re all alive!”
“Watch where you put your feet. You aren’t the only one in this boat!” Fenia reminded him from somewhere in the dark.
