6.

 

As if to spite Bueralan, the job in Ille dragged out and turned sour.

He remembered standing outside an empty brick and wood farmhouse next to Aerala, the afternoon’s sun high in the empty sky above. Inside, Liaya, Zean and Kae were moving through the building slowly, working through the traps that had been left within, in the hope that they—on the “tip” they had received anonymously—would run in and be killed. Now, they would comb the building for clues, for the pieces that they were missing in the identity and location of those who were in charge. “It was clumsy,” he said to the Aerala, following her gaze to the edge of the forested skyline. “I assume they did it to make us, to figure out who we had in hiding, but all they’ve done is give us something. It might not be much, but after two months, it is more than we had.”

“Silence would have been their best choice,” the dark-haired archer said. “They were close to starving us out on information before this. Another month like this and we would have no choice but to walk away, to leave Alden to his own fate. It would have been a failure on our part, but it would have been a clean one. Surely, whoever is organizing this must be young, must be someone who hasn’t yet learned patience—someone for who this means more than it does to us.”

“Someone emotionally invested?”

“Yes,” she said without pause, “someone just so.”

Two nights later, Bueralan met with Lord Alden to give his weekly report. He and Liaya had worked up a hypothesis of the number that opposed the lord, a month of math and estimates that he presented without the evidence of a confession, or sighting by his own people. Yet, he planned to maintain belief that Alden and his small army were outnumbered five to one. Even allowing for the difference in training, that left the Lord of Ille at a disadvantage. In his planned responses to the information, the saboteur had included the option of leaving, a choice that he was going to steer Alden toward before hiring mercenaries, if he could.

He wanted, as well, to pull in Deanic, Ruk and Elar. All three had filtered into the town and farms at the end of their first meeting, but little had come of it. Deanic had found nothing and Bueralan knew he wouldn’t last a second job. Ruk, working a whorehouse as security, had turned up a few men and women, but none led back to the center of the movement and he was of the opinion that the job had run dry. Only Elar had had some luck: he had reentered Ille on a mule, head shaved and a two-week beard grown, looking for a dead cousin—the irony of it now struck hard as Bueralan rode away from Mireea—and found himself working on farms. He felt that one of the farmhands lead back to the chain of the revolutions command, but he had not broken him yet. It was the closest any of them got to being in a position of power, but it did not change Bueralan’s opinion about the situation.

Lord Alden disagreed.

“It is one or two men at the heart of it, I am sure,” he said, sitting on the long leather couch that ran opposite the glass window of his office. “Disgruntled soldiers, a wayward child from across the river. I have given you names.”

“All of which have turned up nothing.”

“Like your hypothesis.” The lord lifted his left leg across his right. “Let me ask you, Captain, do you sympathize with these men and women who plot against me?”

A low sigh escaped Bueralan. “I do not take sides,” he said.

“Everyone takes sides, even if they shouldn’t.” Alden nodded to the window, to where a long garden of green, red, and yellow was kept. “Take my grounds keeper, for example. He has worked for me for close to twenty years but I doubt he would be upset if a rebellion took my head off. He may even cheer as the sword came down. He had a sister who had been caught stealing from here and I was forced to punish her for it.”

The woman had been flogged, her fingers cut off after, one each day until there were none left. Bueralan had heard the story.

“I can’t fault him for that,” Alden continued. “But if I were to die, he would lose the money that has paid for his fine house, the money by which he lives now, caring for his sister and her child. None of the men and women who behead me would concern themselves with his welfare afterward, a fact that may or may not escape his attention. He would have no work, no prospects and because he was still working for me when the rebellion broke my gates down, he would have very little chance to turn those fortunes around. But I have no doubt that still he sides with those men and women more than he sides with me, and I would be a poor man if I did not realize that. I would also, I hesitate to admit, have a much less beautiful garden if I did not understand it.”

“And your garden is quite beautiful,” Bueralan said. “But it does not change the fact that you have a much deeper and much better organized rebellion than you believe.”

“Whereas I believe, Captain, that you and yours lack the proper desire to see this through.” Alden rose slowly, his knees cracking as he did. “I have watched you and your team develop a dislike for me, for my cruelty, as it is popularly reported. If my gardener were in my place, I wonder, would he be different? I do not know and it does not matter—but it has led me to believe that there lacks a desire in Dark to finish this. Please, follow me.”

Alden led the saboteur out of his office and down a dark, warm hallway. The walk was not long, but had enough distance that by the time he approached the door, Bueralan had begun to suspect what was going to be revealed.

He was not wrong.

In the center of the room, on a low table covered in a dark cloth, lay Elar. The afternoon’s sun lay thickly across his still, wet form, while puddles of water pooled beneath him, laced with faint traces of red. Most of the blood, however, had already been drained out of him—drained through the cuts, punctures and amputations that had taken place.

“He washed up in the river this morning,” Alden said, closing the door behind Bueralan. “He was found by a farmer who brought him here.”

Elar’s right hand was gone, two fingers remained on his left, crooked like bent wheat. Tar had been used on the ends, burning the skin; from them, his arms and chest were mostly whole, marred by cuts and slashes, half a dozen holding lumps that had been stitched over. With his knife, the saboteur cut open the stitches and found small bags. Lord Alden, standing on the other side of Elar, informed him that they most probably held flesh-eating grubs, given the depth of the wounds when he lifted the cloth away. Following the flow of his body, Bueralan saw the mutilation of Elar’s genitals, the stitched cuts down his legs, the shattered kneecap and the amputated toes that ended in hard black tar.

Reaching up, he tilted the face—the face he knew, the face untouched but for the lines that spoke of his death—to him.

“You may dislike me as you feel fit, Captain,” Lord Alden said quietly. “But there are only villains in revolutions.”