20

To Rasim's relief, his captain recoiled with genuine horror. "Are you mad? I'm no murderer."

Amdria, though, began to smile. "What a splendid solution. So tidy. Yes, I think the prince's thought is worthy, Captain. I see no reason you should not execute the boy immediately."

Terror slammed through Rasim, each beat of his heart smashing against his ribs until he thought he would throw up. He struggled to his knees, staring fearfully at Nasira as tears began to roll down his cheeks. He didn't really think she would kill him. Not really. Not exactly. Except—except if it was his life over the lives of everyone else on the Waifia, if it was the only way to save the enslaved Sinaz crew, then...then it might be a bargain worth making. A bargain he could understand, at least, even if he was scared to death of it.

Lorens cleared his throat very softly and everyone's gaze, even Rasim's, snapped to him. "Forgive me," he murmured, "but surely this isn't the place for it? I'm sure the Council watching him die would be very satisfying and all, but if he dies in anything less than the public eye, I fear it might make a legend out of him. There are those who would fight back in his name, never believing he had died for his audacity."

Amdria's mouth pinched as she considered that. "You suggest the arena, then?"

"If you think it wise, Lady," Lorens murmured.

Disbelieving amusement touched Amdria's face before she considered Nasira a moment. "Well, then, Captain. I believe you have a choice. You'll either be executioner or among the executed, in the arena."

Nasira's fists clenched and she lowered her head, teeth bared and eyes crushed shut, as she stood rigidly before the council. Rasim felt a whisper of her witchery, and could almost hear her weighing the odds before she lifted her gaze, grimly. "So be it. I've come this far and I can hardly afford to go back. I'll do it."

Rasim whispered, "Captain," in helpless fear, and she gave him one cold, hard look.

And she had to. He knew that. To keep up their charade—assuming they still had any chance of pulling off their plans—she had to. But knowing that didn't make it any easier. Knowing that this wasn't the time to show that he still had access to his witchery didn't make it any easier, either. There would be a moment when he could dare. There had to be. But right now the best either of them could do was play along, and hope that Lorens had some plan in mind.

His plan might just be to get both Nasira and Rasim out of the council chambers alive. They were far more likely to survive an escape attempt outside of the heavily-guarded chambers than inside, at least, even if it was hard to believe Lorens's cool tones and calculating suggestions were on their side at all.

It was hard to believe anybody was on Rasim's side right now, though. He wished Kisia and Desimi were with him. Well, not with him. It wouldn't do anybody any good for them to all be chained up in the council chambers. But he wished he knew where they were.

He wished he knew if they were safe.

A guard came in and went to Amdria's side as Rasim and Nasira stared at one another. Amdria's smile sharpened as she listened to the guard, and she sent him away before returning her attention to Nasira. "Well, Captain, you'll be able to prove yourself today. The other three missing arena slaves have been found. There will be a public execution before sundown."

Rasim went boneless, unable to hold himself upright anymore. Agnet. Bayar. Karluk. They were going to die because of him. Sickness twisted upward from his belly, choking in his throat.

"You propose I execute them all," Nasira said softly.

The words shot through Rasim like needles, awakening prickles of pain across his skin. His chest hurt terribly, and a sudden heartbeat felt like it was the first one in minutes. He struggled for a gasp of air, keeping it quiet, and the pain in his chest lessened.

"I do indeed," Amdria replied with a smile like knives.

"If I must." Nasira's voice remained quiet, but filled with resolve. "I have no real choice, do I."

"None at all. Really, Nasira, what a lot of sentiment you have for the enslaved. I'll be surprised if you can live with yourself when it's all said and done."

The captain met Amdria's gaze and pulled a nasty smile from somewhere. "I'm sure a fine house and servants will lessen the guilt."

"Servants." Amdria snorted. "You have to pay servants, Nasira. That's not how the Moranese work."

"I am not Moranese."

"That," Amdria said dryly, "is manifestly obvious. The executions will be held in the arena. I'm sure you'll understand if you remain under quite significant guard as we journey there."

The arena. Rasim put his forehead down to hide a grim smile. They had gone to so much trouble to get out of the arena, and they would die in there anyway. There had to be a way to get them out. There had to be something Rasim could do, because he wasn't about to leave them to die.

"I've made my choices," Nasira said in a dark voice. "Guard me if you must, but these are the seas I've chosen to sail."

"It appears our escapees hoped to sail different seas themselves. They were found near the Waifia," Amdria replied with arch amusement. "Perhaps there's something you'd like to tell us, Captain? Ought I inspect that ship again."

Rasim's heart lurched again and he bit his arm to keep from crying out in alarm. Nasira, apparently oblivious to him, now only sounded irritated. "If you must, I can't stop you, but it's a ship, Amdria. There are no secret rooms on a ship. Your own people inspected it when we removed the crew, and they wormed their way into every space a living creature could possibly fit." Nasira paused, studying the Moranese councelor for a moment. Then her tone became more natural, even casual, as if she'd actually come to terms with what she'd agreed to do. "I owe you some coin for that, in fact. They killed a handful of rats that had slipped on board. I loathe rats on my ship."

Amdria gazed neutrally at Nasira for a moment, then suddenly laughed. "I'll accept your coin and thank you for it, and I confess that having walked the Waifia myself, I saw no wall or door out of place. Even a Seamaster needs all the room a ship provides, I suppose, and Ilyarans aren't known for smuggling...anything." She sounded a bit sour, as if Ilyarans were in general too law-abiding to be trusted.

Rasim, relieved beyond measure that the Waifia would not be inspected, buried his face against the floor. His stomach and heart were flip-flopping and their violence made a cold sweat stand out on his whole body. Of all the trouble he'd gotten himself in over the past year, this spying was the most terrifying.

"Our lawfulness is why my crew didn't imagine I would sell them until it was too late," Nasira said flatly. "I imagine they now wish they'd been more suspicious. That Skymaster slave of yours ought to have been, too. He's a fool to have been drawn to the one Ilyaran ship at the docks."

Rasim silently cried, I'm sorry! and wished he could undo the advice that had sent Karluk to the docks. At least Nasira had dissuaded Amdria from boarding the Waifia again. Zyterna and her children were still safe, even if Nasira hadn't known she was protecting them.

"He is," Amdria agreed. "Well, we had best go to the arena early, before the inquisitors have done their job too thoroughly. We'll want to know exactly how they escaped, and the inquisitors often remove their tongues before the end."

"Inquisitors?"

Amdria's eyebrows rose. "We can hardly send escapees to a clean and simple death, Nasira. An example must be made. They'll be alive enough for you to drown with your magics, or however you choose to do the deed, but not much more than that."

Rasim shuddered and Nasira stared at Amdria a long moment before speaking slowly and clearly. "You people are barbarians. I may have thrown my lot in with you, but I will never accept that torture and murder are the actions of a civilized people."

Unkind mirth danced in Amdria's eyes. "Then we had better get there very early, so your poor delicate sensibilities aren't offended by the state of the slaves we must speak to. They're being brought up through the city now. We'll meet them at the gates, and this one," she said with a lip curl directed at Rasim, "can be thrown in with them." She tilted her head and guards came to surround Nasira, making it clear that she was, at best, only cautiously trusted. Two more guards came to drag Rasim out into a well-appointed but empty square in front of the council buildings. Even the street beyond the square was comparatively empty, as if someone was keeping it that way, so for a few minutes, he and Nasira were outside alone, save for their guards, underneath the bright, chilly Moran sun.

Rasim, unable to help himself, said, "Captain?" in a small voice. She and Amdria had been speaking Ilyaran in the council room, and he supposed the rest of the Moranese council knew his language, but it seemed less likely that their guards did.

Nasira gave him a cutting glance that silenced any hope he had of talking with her. Of strategizing.

He couldn't believe he was simply on his own, not when he was right there beside his captain, but...she wasn't wrong, either. They shouldn't talk. Certainly not to plot, at least. He let his fear fill him, turned it to anger, and spat a curse at her.

Whether the guards understood the words or not, they certainly understood his tone. A mean chuckle went through them as Nasira gave him a look of such disgust it bordered on pity. Then she turned her attention away again, visibly hardening herself. Rasim guessed that was necessary, if she was supposed to kill him in a little while.

He had no idea how she was going to get out of that. And he was the clever one. The one who was supposed to come up with plans to get out of things like that.

The awful idea that maybe Nasira was counting on him to come up with a plan dawned on him. Not just a plan, either. One that would get her to safety as well as himself and the other three arena slaves. He said, "Captain," again, and this time Nasira snarled, "Shut up, slave," to the obvious amusement of their guards.

So they probably did understand, or at least, Rasim had better act as if they did. A voice barked from somewhere nearby and Rasim was hauled up again, dragged toward a low, open carriage that someone led into the street beyond the council hall square.

"Come," Amdria said from behind them, in a voice like water running over smooth stones. "Join me, Nasira. Show the people of Moran that you have nothing to do with this little revolution."

Nasira murmured, "Of course," and went with the Moranese woman as Rasim was dragged to the back of the carriage. A guard lashed his wrists to a hook on the carriage's back, baffling Rasim for a moment. Then he thought he understood: Amdria wanted to be seen as his captor, but wouldn't lower herself to riding in a cart where he might be chained to its floor. This way she got to be seen, and he still got dragged along behind in the most humiliating way possible.

But it meant his bare feet were on the stone cobbles of the street, and that gave him a chance at using his stone witchery, if he had to.

The cart turned on to the main road leading to the arena. Agnet and the others were probably going to be taken this way, too. The greatest number of people would see them that way, and making sure they were seen was obviously an important aspect of their punishment.

But they weren't just going to be punished. They were going to die.

All of Moran seemed to already know the slaves had been recaptured. People thronged in the streets again just as they had the evening before, but with a different urgency now. Then, they had been afraid and angry. Now that fear was being given an outlet, and they were eager for blood. Rasim could tell it from the sounds of voices, even speaking a language he didn't know, and from the hard edge to their laughter. Everything was going back to how it had been. The escape had been sheer chance. No one really broke free of slavery, not in Moran, and those who tried were being punished. The air felt taut, stretching toward breaking.

Agnet had been right. No one really wanted to be rescued by outsiders. Not even if it was a clean victory, and Rasim couldn't deliver that. The people lining the streets were fraught with tension, ready to be pushed one way or another: back into the familiar patterns that they knew, or into explosive change.

And by Siliaria's fins, Rasim wasn't going to allow his friends to be delivered into the hands of torturers, no matter what the cost.

A roar was building down the road. Rasim twisted, trying to see, and caught a glimpse of traffic on the road behind him. The crowds crushed around it, and things were being thrown, probably at his friends.

Rasim, hopeful but not confident, reached for the river with his power and was relieved to feel the under-street tributaries that carried the city's waste into the main river. That was more than he'd been able to feel earlier in the day. Maybe his sea witchery was returning, although not fast enough. He wouldn't be able to rely on it to stage a rescue. And skymastery might be easier for him than stone witchery, but short of scooping everyone up and flying away with them—a skill that was far beyond him—Rasim didn't see how it could get them out of there.

Which left him with stonemastery. Rasim sighed, wishing that particular magic came more naturally to him, and then, despite everything going on around him, muffled a laugh. He could almost hear Kisia saying, drolly, "Yes, your life is very hard, Rasim. You can probably work all four Ilyaran magics, but you have no sense of one of them. You poor thing. However will you manage?"

Fighting off a grim smile, Rasim began to build an image of what he wanted in his mind. He poured the stillness of stone witchery into it, wondering, as always, if he was doing anything at all. Usually he was trying to do something immediately, so at least he found out fast whether he'd succeeded. This time he had to wait to release it. Without a sense of the building magic, he could only hope something was actually happening.

A headache built behind his eyes. If he'd been at sea, Rasim might have thought the air pressure was changing. That was how it felt, like pressure looking for an outlet. It made holding the image of the magic he was working more difficult, but the thought of Bayar and Agnet kept Rasim focused.

He was still trembling with the intensity of holding a single thought in his mind by the time the caravan of captured slaves caught up to him. He looked over his shoulder, trying to see what he had to deal with.

There were three wagons, drawn by plodding oxen, and, unlike the carriage that pulled him along, they were all heavily made and surrounded by even heavier armament. There were no fewer than six guards for each wagon, bristling with spears and grim faces. The guards walked along more than an arm's length from the wagons, like they wanted to be sure the slaves could be easily seen. Slaves with downcast eyes led the oxen, so there were more than twenty people surrounding the captured trio. It seemed a little excessive for three slaves, although Rasim knew he would put his money on Agnet if she had only her own half-dozen to face.

But not chained as she was. All three of them, Agnet, Bayar and Karluk, were chained, standing, in the middle of their wagons. Agnet had a fresh wound on her forehead, blood drying crimson in her white eyebrows, and a tightly wrapped length of cloth around her upper left arm where she'd taken the spear blow. Her sneer of defiance was so potent that people looked away to avoid meeting her eyes. Bayar had lost his resolute calm. Tears rolled down his face, although he wasn't sobbing. Karluk looked defeated, worse than either of the others, and Rasim realized he didn't even know if his family was safe. The jeering crowd threw fruit and heels of bread at them. Nothing more, though. City guards cuffed a couple of youths who flung rocks. The city councilors didn't want the slaves accidentally killed before they could be executed.

And they certainly didn't want them to escape. Rasim stopped looking over his shoulder, and released the first wave of witchery he'd been building.

He expected it: all the stonemastery he'd tried so far had worked even if he hadn't felt it building. But even expecting it, the way stone exploded upward in the road was shocking. A jagged circle shot up well above Rasim's head, all the cobbles and paving stones jamming together to make walls around them. It smashed through the carriage, pulling him along. Nasira and Amdria's screams were audible above everything else, for a moment. They were on the other side of his barrier, though. Nasira would have to rescue herself. Rasim had too much else to do. His chains had come free from the back of the carriage as it flew apart, but his wrists were still bound to each other. He'd try to get them off later.

He'd placed the magic just right. It was a narrow box surrounding the wagons, and only two guards were caught inside the ring. The rest, having been walking more than an arm's length away, were stuck outside, though their sword hilts and spears were already banging against the wall Rasim had constructed. The two inside the wall were so astonished it took them a moment to react.

In that time, Rasim caught Agnet's eye and held it as if the intensity of his gaze could promise her he had a plan. "Tell the drivers to unhitch the oxen!"

Her eyes were bright, fiery blue as she met his. She nodded, a smile pulling at her mouth as she bellowed Rasim's command at the drivers. Then she crouched, wrapped her chains around her forearms, and with a roar, put forth an effort beyond comprehension.

The chains that ripped free of the wagon's floor. Hands clasped together, chain gripped between them, Agnet spun, and, still roaring, slammed the freed end of the chain into the nearest guard. The strength of the blow knocked him into the other guard and they both fell. Agnet leaped out of the wagon and onto them, out of Rasim's sight.

At the same time, the terrified slave boys handling the oxen quailed and refused to free them. Probably smart, Rasim thought, but he didn't want the innocent animals to get hurt. He scrambled to release the first one himself, slapping its haunch to send it as far away from the wagon as possible. The walls meant they couldn't run very far, but it would have to do. He went after the second beast, racing over Bayar, who had fallen to the floor of his wagon, hiding. Karluk had the look of a man desperate to waken his witchery through mindkiller's fog. Hoping he hadn't been primed to take orders from only one person, Rasim called out, "Use your witchery to save yourself, Karluk!" and then, as he freed the second ox and leaped to the third and final wagon, he whispered, "Your family is safe," to the other Ilyaran. "Use your magic, Karluk."

Karluk's mouth twisted. "They gave me heartbreak, not mindkiller. I'm defenseless."

Dismay slammed through Rasim as a spear clattered across the wall he'd shaped. Karluk snatched it up and began working his chains free. "Keep my family safe, Rasim. Nothing else matters to me."

Rasim nodded. "We still have a chance. Hold on. This is going to get bumpy. Agnet! Get Bayar!" He slapped the third ox away and finally, gasping, released the last stone witchery he'd prepared.

For a glorious moment it seemed it would work. The ground beneath them sagged as the stone under the street softened. There were river tributaries down there: all Rasim needed was enough space to drop them through, and he could get them to safety. He thought he could drop the whole section of street down, if he had to, but Agnet was already free and Karluk was halfway there. If Agnet could grab Bayar in time, they would only need a space wide enough to fit the big Northerner's broad shoulders, and they would be free.

Agnet bounced up, bloody from her fight with the guards, and, roaring once again, ripped Bayar's chains free of the wagon. Rasim saw it more clearly this time, how the old wood, uncured and softened by time, gave up its grip on the heavy nails that held the chain base into place. She scooped Bayar up and all but threw him at Rasim, a triumphant grin bright and beautiful across her face. That was how Rasim would remember her forever: sun-white hair loose and wild around her tanned face, her eyes brilliantly blue under the streaks of red drizzling from her forehead, her muscles shining with sweat and blood.

And that was how she died, free and defiant under the Moranese sun, as a guard finally lurched over Rasim's barrier and shoved a spear through the back of her neck.