she could have talked for hours without stopping. It had been annoying, but he had never considered what it would be like for a man unable to speak, for a slave used to everyone ignoring him.
“After Malcolm was taken and Father was killed,” said Nerina, “why did you stay with me?”
Azaces’s face twitched, a similar jerk going through his emotional sense.
“Because,” said Annarah, “you were not cruel to me. Because you spoke to me. When Master Ragodan was killed, all the other slaves fled. You would have died from the wraithblood. There was no one else.” Azaces closed his eyes. “I have failed so many times. I could not fail again. So I took you to the Sisterhood of the Living Flame to break you of the wraithblood.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about Malcolm?” said Nerina.
“Because it would have meant your death,” said Annarah.
“I do not understand,” said Malcolm. He was still scowling at Azaces, but some of the rage had cooled from his sense. Azaces had indeed betrayed Malcolm, but the recitation of the horrors that Azaces had endured seemed to have unsettled him. “Why did you not tell her the truth? Yes, yes, the missing tongue, I know. But you could have found some way to tell her what had happened. If you cared about her enough to stop her from using wraithblood…”
“To tell her would have meant her death,” said Annarah.
“Explain,” said Caina.
“No one escapes the Inferno,” said Annarah. “It is the Iron Hell, the prison where men become Immortals, and those who are sent into its darkness do not return. Once Master Malcolm entered the Inferno, I knew he would not come out again. If you learned the truth, you would pursue him…and it would mean your death.” His free hand moved, and Morgant started to raise his dagger, but Azaces only gestured at the implements of torture filling the Hall of Torments. “It might mean far worse than your death. It still might mean your death.”
“You could have stopped me,” said Nerina. “You could have stopped me from trusting Ciaran or joining the Ghosts.”
“But you could have stopped me, Azaces," said Nerina. "If you had been even a little suspicious of Ciaran, or thought that this was a bad idea, I never would have come. The equation would have been multiplied by zero and then ended.”
“The Balarigar changed my mind,” said Annarah.
Kylon glanced at Caina, saw her standing motionless.
“At first when you spoke with the Balarigar,” said Annarah, “I thought it folly. Yet I saw the terror the Balarigar wreaked upon the master slavers of the Brotherhood. We dared Grand Master Callatas’s Maze with the Balarigar and survived, went into the netherworld with the Balarigar and came out alive again. I had heard the Szaldic slaves speak of the Balarigar, but I thought it only a legend at best and madness at worst. Yet after the things I had seen…perhaps Ciaran could do it. Perhaps Ciaran could come into the Inferno again and live. Perhaps Ciaran is the Balarigar.”
Kylon was surprised that Azaces was protecting Caina’s identity. Azaces knew that she was a woman, and he was concealing that fact from Nasser and Malcolm and the others. Perhaps Kylon shouldn’t have been surprised. Caina had kept Morgant and Malcolm from killing Azaces, and she had a gift for inspiring loyalty in her Ghosts.
He ought to know, given that he was following her into mortal danger in a fortress thousands of miles from his home.
“When Ciaran recruited you to enter the Inferno, I followed along,” Annarah said. “I knew we would learn the truth of Master Malcolm’s fate, one way or another.”
“You had to have known,” said Kylon, “that it might lead to your death. If Nerina learned the truth, she might kill you then and there. Or if you found Malcolm, he could get the rest of us to kill you. Morgant almost killed you.”
“I know,” said Annarah. Her face was beginning to glisten with sweat, and Kylon wondered how much effort it cost her to maintain the strange contact with Azaces. “I deserve such a fate for my crimes. I slew the woman I loved in this awful place. I killed and killed as an Immortal. I helped Master Ragodan kidnap Master Malcolm, and I remained silent about it for years.”
“Can’t blame a man without a tongue for keeping his thoughts to himself,” said Morgant.
“Yet that is far from the worst thing I have done,” said Annarah. “If you wish to kill me, do