They did take him to a dungeon, this time. Rodrick had seen a dungeon or two in his day, and this one was quite pleasant, by those standards. There were no rats. No filthy dung-smeared drifts of hay full of lice for bedding. No skeletons hanging by their wrist bones from shackles on the wall, though he suspected that was something torturers liked to stage for intimidation value rather than something that really happened naturally. The basement was on the dark side, and the cell was bare stone, true, but the walls were clean, with no bloodstains or scratched pleas for the blessed release of death left behind by prior inhabitants. Rodrick sat on the floor in the corner with his back against a wall, looking at the thick steel bars that penned him in. Captivity had never suited him, but he’d brought it on himself.
After an uncountable interval, Rodrick was given a cup of brackish water and a bit of bread—no weevils, this was a lovely dungeon—and a hard-boiled egg. He ate, contemplating the flickering shadows in the light of the single torch in the hallway. He was considering trying to sleep on the stones when Kalika appeared, escorted by a hard-eyed guard with a scimitar big enough to fell a tree hanging at his hip, incongruously carrying a three-legged wooden stool in one hand.
Kalika waved the guard away imperiously, and he sighed like he’d lost an old argument for the thousandth time, then set down the stool before Rodrick’s cell and walked off some little distance. Kalika sat, taking her time about arranging her scarves and necklaces just so, then looked in at Rodrick. “I am here unofficially, because, as I said, I’ve taken an interest in your case. I thought I’d share some of the recent developments.”
“News is welcome, as long as it’s welcome news. If I’m going to have my head struck off in the morning, though … Actually, I suppose it’s better to know, even if it will fill my final hours with anxiety instead of hope.” His final hours would actually be filled with desperate attempts to escape, in that case, but he wasn’t hopeful about his chances for success.
“I understand a message was left at that horrid tavern in the foreign quarter you mentioned, telling your friends to present themselves at the palace. They will be questioned sharply, if and when they arrive … though if one of them really is a garuda, that helps your case. I suppose it’s possible for garudas to lie, but they set great store by their uncompromising honesty. One wonders how a trickster like yourself made an alliance with one of those.”
He shrugged. “At first I lied very well, and then I stopped lying. I can’t say Dhyana likes me much—I think she prefers Hrym by a wide margin—but she purely hates the Knife in the Dark, and I helped kill a number of them.” Indirectly, mostly, but it still counted. The cult would certainly hold him responsible, so he might as well take the credit where it did him good.
“On that score … The thakur sent a couple of the court wizards to investigate the site of this supposed temple. This is all secondhand, mind you, from … call them friends of mine … who overheard, but I’m told they found the temple, and the banner of Vasaghati you mentioned, and a great many dead, mostly eaten by creatures from the jungle but identifiable for all that. They also found a second temple with a secret room devoid of treasure, and the remains of several constructs of the sort the Arclords were known to create, including a stone golem…” She shook her head. “A story as outlandish as yours seemed like it must be a lie, but it seems at least some of it was true.”
“Ah, but that’s the sign you’re an amateur liar at best,” Rodrick said. “Professionals often do their best to make their lies simple and clear.” He recalled a couple of elaborate impostures that were more complicated than they needed to be, just because it was more interesting that way, but there was nothing that said his advice about how to lie had to be entirely truthful. “You’ll find that, the more complex the lie, the faster it falls apart. No, it’s reality that’s absurd and overcomplicated. What sort of complicated lies is Nagesh telling? How is he explaining away his absence from the palace? I know he was gone for some time—he was at the temple. Or can rakshasas teleport, too?”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “He was out searching for you, as he found your attack on the thakur in his presence a source of personal shame. Or so he explained when he returned to the city, which he did rather more quickly than you did—of course, he had access to a flying carpet.”
“See?” Rodrick said. “He told an excellent lie, because almost every word is true, just not in the way you’d expect. He was searching for me, after all.”
She adjusted her bracelet. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but … Nagesh is gone. He vanished soon after you turned yourself in, after a servant loyal to him reported your arrival and my involvement. Nagesh was not seen to leave the palace, but if he is … what you claim … he would be able to escape with relative ease. The powers of rakshasas vary, but even the least of them are capable of great stealth. His flight is taken by many as evidence of guilt, though of course that is not definitive.”
“Better and better,” Rodrick said. “I’d prefer to see him strung up by his feet and beaten with sticks, but running away will do—I’m sure your people will track him down eventually. Given all that’s happened, when my friends arrive and confirm my story, as they will, do you think I’ll be set free?”
She shook her head. “It’s nice to see you so hopeful. You stole from the thakur, Rodrick, crept into his library and absconded with a scroll of great antiquity and value.”
Rodrick scowled. “I didn’t creep anywhere. A librarian showed me to the shelf! And the scroll may have been old and valuable but no one had looked at it in centuries. No one would have even noticed if it was gone if I hadn’t come clean.”
“Ah, but you did confess. The punishment for a common thief is the loss of a hand. But stealing from the thakur … I’m not sure, but it would not surprise me if the loss of your life was deemed a reasonable punishment.”
Rodrick tilted his head back and looked at the dungeon ceiling. This was just marvelous. “The thakur isn’t inclined to be merciful because I killed so many of the Knife in the Dark and exposed the treachery of his close advisor?”
“I can’t presume to speak for the thakur. I don’t sit in on his counsels, I just know people who do. But … News of Nagesh’s potential treachery left the thakur shaken. Some of the recognizable corpses at the temple were known to people in the palace, though fortunately none were so highly placed as Nagesh. A teacher at the Conservatory, relatively new, but considered a rising star. A monk at one of the better monasteries, not high-ranking, but still, his presence indicates a troubling potential for deeper blight. A maid employed by one of the oldest families in the city, privy to who knows what secrets spoken unthinkingly in her presence. You may have undone innumerable plots by helping kill those cultists. And what you said, about the cult’s attempt to stage a coup and take over the whole island, to make it a machine for pumping the toxin of the Knife in the Dark out into the wider world … that did carry weight. Will it be enough to spare your head? I couldn’t say.”
“Hmm. And giving the thakur the Scepter of the Arclords? Does that bring me a little more goodwill? Enough to tip the balance toward life and freedom?” Rodrick didn’t expect to be given a palace, though in normal circumstances he thought that would be reasonable considering all his service, but a fast ship laden heavily with gold seemed plausible.
She sighed. “You seem so smart, sometimes, and then, at other times … Rodrick, scholars debate whether the Scepter of the Arclords even exists. It’s a fairy tale the Arclords tell themselves—a great treasure left behind, one that could restore them to primacy in Nex and even allow them to retake Jalmeray, perhaps even a way to call back their beloved old vanished archwizard himself! It’s nonsense. I don’t doubt you found something—perhaps a staff that grants clairvoyance, based on the eyes you say decorated it—but I think wishful thinking led you to believe it was something more.”
“Oh, thank goodness you’re here to set me straight,” he said. “I don’t have any experience at all with wondrous weapons of untold power and deep magic. How would I ever recognize such a thing if it came into my hands?” It was hard to tell in the dim light, with her dark skin, but he thought perhaps she blushed. “If it’s real, that would help my case, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, and if you had wings, you could fly.”
The guard grunted, and Kalika turned her head, then widened her eyes, leaping from the stool and stepping back. Rodrick went to the bars and tried to look down the hall, but he saw only shadows from his vantage, and the shape of the guard slumped on the floor.
“You fool!” she said. “What are you doing here?”
Nagesh came forward, in his human disguise, his clothes disheveled, his grin wide but his eyes hunted. “I’m here to kill. I knew Rodrick would be brought here eventually, so I hid myself away—I know all the places to hide, and I can go unseen at will. I wanted Rodrick, but the daughter of the minister of justice will be good, too. In fact, I believe I can make it look like Rodrick killed you—that might be better. Or I could dispose of you entirely, and take on your face, and continue to move in the corridors of power … yes, that might be good, they say you have a very promising future.”
“Someone already had that idea, worm.” Kalika’s voice was imperious and cool, and not at all terrified. “You struck one of my loyal guards, and for that you will suffer, even more than you will suffer for your terrible failure to the Lady of Knives.”
Nagesh hesitated. “What—do you claim—”
“I serve the Knife in the Dark.” She looked at Rodrick with such disdain and hate that he backed away from the bars. “When your failures became apparent, I was sent to step in.”
“You were not at the conclave—”
“Some of us are too important for such charades, ghoshta.” She spat the word like an insult, and Nagesh flinched.
“I am darshaka,” he said, but it was really more of a whine.
Kalika snorted. “Perhaps in this life, but your failures will be known, and in your next incarnation you will be lucky if you are not made pagala.” Nagesh flinched again. She glanced at Rodrick. “There are castes among the rakshasas, Rodrick. This one before me is not the lowest, but he is far from the highest. All rakshasas have appallingly high opinions of themselves.” She drew herself up—and kept drawing herself up, seeming to grow two feet in height. Her human features melted away, revealing a regal figure with the head of a snow-white tiger, draped so heavily in gold and gems that her rich robes were barely visible underneath. A medallion of the Knife in the Dark was prominent among her necklaces, now. “But in this case, he will bow to a mere weretiger, knowing that I am exalted in the eyes of the goddess I serve, and that he pretended to serve.”
Rodrick swallowed, but managed not to whimper. Her attention was mostly on Nagesh, at least. Maybe while she was tormenting him a guard would appear, and … and … be knocked unconscious or killed like the other guard. Oh, why had he ever let Hrym leave his hand? Truth was a terrible option.
“I—I am loyal—” Nagesh said.
Kalika snorted. “Rodrick told us all about your plans to take over the cult, fool, not that we ever believed your devotion was true. Rakshasas are loyal only to themselves. Our Lady knows that. She indulged you, though, and why not? To attempt to betray the goddess herself is a powerful form of treachery, and she adores betrayal in all its forms. The depths of your vileness only made her stronger.”
Kalika stalked toward Nagesh, who was trying to maintain his composure, but doing a poor job of it. “The plans we have for this island are too important to leave in disloyal hands, so I came from Vudra and slew this Kalika and took her place. I am the new archaka of Jalmeray—the true archaka—come to shepherd things to completion, and keep watch over you. But now it’s all a shambles. Reveal yourself, Nagesh. You should wear your true face when you face our Lady’s judgment.”
The advisor’s features shimmered, revealing his snake’s head. His snout showed scars from where Hrym had struck him, which gave Rodrick some comfort. Not much, but when you were about to be murdered while defenseless in a cell, you took what comforts you could.
The regal weretiger interlaced her fingers, long claws curving over the backs of her hands. “Do you have anything to say in your defense, Nagesh?”
He knelt, bowed his head, and said, “I … I do serve the goddess. Rakshasas respect power, surely you know that. And … none of this is my fault. It’s this man, this Rodrick—he ruined everything! It would have been such a marvelous thing to kill the thakur’s childhood friend. Every rumor would have said the thakur planned the murder, that he summoned this man to the island for that very purpose! The dead man’s family would have sought revenge, and chaos would have bloomed everywhere! But he ruined it!” Nagesh lifted his snake’s head and stared at Rodrick with infinite hatred, forked tongue flickering wildly.
They said you could judge a person by the quality of their enemies. Rodrick had made a particularly vile one, which spoke well of him. Perhaps someone would mention that at his funeral, if these two left enough of his body to bury.
“But you chose the tool,” Kalika said. “The fault is yours.” She looked at Rodrick. “I think I’ve heard enough. Haven’t you?” She showed a mouthful of tiger’s teeth, and Rodrick put his back against the wall.