4.

 

The cage was not new: made from old, black iron, it was tall enough for him to stand if he hunched and square enough for him to sit if he did not stretch his legs.

He had seen other men and women in cells like this before, had in fact used a pair when he was not yet the exiled Baron of Kein. It was an easy form of torture, a slow way to cramp and waste muscle, to weaken the body and erode the sharpness of the mind with exhaustion.

General Waalstan did not want to be far from him as that happened. As if the idea were new and Bueralan the first man he had the chance to witness it on, the general kept the saboteur’s cage in the same slow, bumpy cart as his map table, a podium and leather-bound booklets. All but one of the latter were empty, the marred one half filled to judge by the leather marker down the middle. The twenty books did not look like the treasured tombs of warlocks and witches, where spells and potions were noted alongside experiments, but rather like personal diaries. That slotted neatly into Bueralan’s emerging knowledge of the man ahead of him, however, building into an analysis of both innocence and arrogance, similar to that of a young unbeaten swordsman.

Bueralan believed that Waalstan was not a soldier who had risen through the ranks. Neither did he believe that Waalstan had earned the loyalty of his soldiers through acts of bravery or skill on the battlefield.

What, then, could he say about the man that rode easily on a dark-brown horse next to the old pony that carried Samuel Orlan?

Was he a man who had entered the ranks of the military late in life?

A reluctant, yet genius general, drawn from the civilian population of Leera?

Or had he been a priest, educated and raised for this one purpose?

There was more evidence for the last: after Bueralan had been pushed into the cage, after the lock sealing him had closed with a heavy thunk, the army had remained in camp for another twenty minutes, finishing meals and performing a short prayer before they broke. He had not heard the words—the prayer had been silent, the bowed heads the only indication—but the general had led them, that was sure.

Allowing his mind to turn over the question, Bueralan stretched the cramps in his legs and rose. As he did that, Waalstan leaned over his saddle and shook the hand of Samuel Orlan. Words passed between the two and then the cartographer turned and disappeared into the ring of soldiers around them. Soon, the small, elderly form of both him and his pony were lost in the leather and chain and the drooping, leaning, dark-green-leafed branches that tinted the midday’s sunlight.

Having noticed his attention, the general halted and waited for the cart and cage to draw alongside him. “I could spare you the curiosity,” he said without malice. “If you would like?”

The saboteur nodded.

“He is off to find Dark.” His hand dropped to the side of the horse’s neck. “Though he told me he was off to the city, to the capital of Leera, which I also don’t doubt. He has a strong interest in the cathedral there. But first he will try to convince Dark to follow him to it, in exchange for your freedom later.”

Bueralan reached out with his left hand, steadying himself as the cage jolted.

“If he plans what I think he does, then he will die, and Dark will die with him. I won’t lose much in such an inevitability, but—” Ekar Waalstan’s gaze met his. “Only a fool would trust Samuel Orlan: he has his own agenda, and sees us all as pawns to be played.”

“But you play him?”

“Within my limits.” The admission was easy. “It is difficult to understand what Samuel truly desires, until you begin to consider him a man like those who claim to be the children of gods. A mortal he may well be, but he is a moral man who wants for very little and owes no loyalty but to himself, a man for whom the affairs of those like you and me are an indulgence.”

The saboteur remembered Heast’s words. With hindsight, he realized that the Captain of the Spine had woven his doubts about Orlan into his conversation, one that Bueralan had not paid enough attention to. The realization hurt. He should have noticed it, would have if he had been clear headed and was not as tired as the rest of Dark; if the fatigue of Ille and Elar’s death had not set into his bones. And as much as he wanted to believe that the others would not believe Orlan, he knew otherwise: the cartographer had already won them over.

“How do you think,” the general asked quietly, as if reading his mind, “your soldiers will fare without you, Captain?”

The saboteur offered no reply and the general nudged his horse forward, leaving him to fall into a hunched crouch, one hand curled tightly around the dark bar, the other curled in on itself. If the man leaving noticed and was concerned by the violence it suggested, he gave no evidence of it.