that it would be a quicker death. For them it was. I saw them die.”
He was silent for a while. If he thought of that first night when the soldiers took them … there were the makings of madness in that. Time for his revenge. “Why did they take you?” he asked.
Giter twisted his hands together. “I do not know. They seem to think that I was your confederate. If you swore to them that I was not, that I had nothing to do with it, have no idea where she is … ” His eyes showed unquenchable hope. “They think it is a case of ‘when thieves fall out’, but if you said that I knew nothing of it, they would believe you, would they not?”
Ilbran smiled grimly. “There is no chance at all that they would believe me. They promised me a respite from torture if I would name my allies, and I could think of only one man worthy to be so named.”
Giter looked at him in shock. “They believed you?”
“You are here. They do not take chances, it seems. But I did not expect to have the pleasure of your company so close.”
Giter whimpered, and cowered in his corner. “They tortured my son, to make me confess, and when I confessed to stop them, they killed him. My wife, my children, they took them away. I do not know what they did with them.”
Ilbran caught his breath in horror. He had not realized, he not stopped to think, what his impulse for revenge would bring.
His thoughts ran in mazes of self-condemnation. They believed me. Nahil’s men believed me because I had broken. I would have betrayed anyone. If I had known her hiding place I would have told them. But not knowing that, I lied, and brought death on many, ones I do not even know. I am without honor or pride.
He bowed his head. Little was left to him but emptiness and despair. He thought of the future—of the few hours he had remaining. The torturers had been skilled; they had given great pain but little injury. They had left his body strong to live a long time tomorrow, when they would strip him and tar him, chain him to the tall stake in the center square of the city and set him on fire, the slow fire that would cling and burn, and would only spread and burn the more, for all that he tried to stifle it.
Burning, the cruelest death of all. He would try to fight, to win a better death on a soldier’s sword.
He had seen an execution for treason once, when he was too young to understand. They muted them somehow, so that their screams would not disturb the gentle nerves of the executioners.
He had thought that the black animal dancing and capering on the end of the chain was some sort of a clown, and so he had laughed and amused himself with the rest of the crowd, until his mother came and dragged him away. That night he was scolded and sent to bed supperless, filled with the shame of doing something terribly wrong, though he did not know what it could be.
Now he understood. His parents had thought he knew. They had thought he was laughing at the sight of death. Now he could never explain.
He had escaped lightly from the torture, because the soldiers, clever brutes, had known that the surest way to a confession was to torture father and mother while he watched. We were too stubborn, he thought. We should have betrayed the girl, worthless royalty, the moment the soldiers seized us.
Giter still moaned and shuddered in the corner. Ilbran, gazing at him, tried to recapture the bitter joy of revenge, but now he felt nothing but shame. What use to apologize? It would be a coward’s act, to ask for forgiveness when no repayment could be made.
The doors clanged open, and the familiar footsteps came down the corridor. “Where will we put this one?” asked one of the guards, the humorist. “In here. They won’t be crowded for long.” He guffawed at his own wit.
“These days, the Sudains should give us a cut-rate price on tar,” the other guard agreed.
The door of Ilbran’s cell swung open. He stared in amazement and incomprehension.
The man that the guards held between them, gray-clad, in bulky robes. A grizane? Or some impostor masquerading in gray robes? No, a grizane, true enough. It would have been less amazing