“You’ve been stealing away from your bunkroom by night,” he said. “You’ve been plotting. Tell me who sent you, and who you are working with.”
Csorwe said nothing.
“Silence does you no good,” said Psamag. “I know what you’ve been up to.” He turned to the table where the revenants had put down the poisoned dagger, and turned it over in his hands. Then he went to the bed, and drew back the curtains. There was someone lying there. She could see the top of their head on the pillow. “Wake up,” he said, in slightly gentler tones.
It was Talasseres Charossa, naked but for a wrap tied around his middle, making him look skinnier than ever. He blinked hard, his ears drawn up flat and tight against his skull, as though he’d been woken by an alarm bell.
“Sorry, sir?” he said, making a visible effort to relax.
“Why don’t you tell me again what you were saying about our friend Soru’s irregular conduct,” said Psamag.
“There isn’t any more to tell,” said Talasseres, in what was clearly meant to be a flirtatious tone. Then he looked up, and saw the scene set out in the bedroom, and his eyes widened. Csorwe looked back at him without expression, and after a second’s naked shock, his expression hardened.
“You can’t blame me,” he said. “If you’re stupid enough to do something like this.”
Csorwe returned his gaze steadily.
“You really can’t blame me,” said Talasseres. Something almost like disgust flickered in his voice.
Psamag said nothing throughout this exchange. Finally he laid a hand on Talasseres’ bare shoulder. “Leave, if you prefer. This won’t be easy for you to watch.”
Fierce pride warred with unease in Talasseres’ eyes. At last he bobbed his head and scrambled from the room.
Psamag used no instruments but the revenants, utterly dispassionate in their strength and obedience. He asked no questions beyond the first two. Who was she working for? Who was she working with? Silence was answered with pain. Csorwe began to answer with nonsense, drawn from some new well of defiance. Who did she work for? The Pretty Birds Gentleman’s House of Entertainment. Who was she working with? The nine old gods of Qarsazh.
Perhaps an hour passed. It was impossible to tell. Csorwe’s existence stretched and narrowed, drawn into white-hot threads like molten glass.
The General grew tired of this, and sent for a pair of pliers.
“You’re young,” he said, reaching out to touch one of Csorwe’s tusks with a sharp-nailed forefinger. “These are new. Only a coward sends a child to do his work.”
“No,” Csorwe mumbled, too weak even to snap at his hand. She could hardly move her head. Every breath came shallow and tearing.
Psamag laughed. “No? Defending the one who put you here? This isn’t my fault, child. It’s my duty to protect my interests. What’s happening to you is down to the one who sent you to this place.” He fit the teeth of the pliers to her tusk, cold against the feverish heat of her cheek. “You know what you have to do to end this. Just one word, little friend, just the name of the one who sent you to kill me.”
“Go fuck yourself,” said Csorwe, though the words came out slurred, not at all the cry of defiance she had hoped.
“As you please,” said Psamag. “Dead Tooth, pull her right tusk for me. Then we’ll see how much she likes her boss.”
* * *
Some unreckonable span of time had passed. Psamag had dismissed the revenants. Csorwe was still hanging from the beam.
“Whoever you’re working for, you’ve failed them,” the General was saying. “There’s no point holding out. I think you know that, at heart. You’re being obstinate, and it’s not achieving anything but more pain for you. You’ve tried hard, and that’s admirable in its way, but you’re clinging to a lost cause.”
Csorwe paid him no attention. She could still hear the tusk’s root breaking, like the creak of a branch as it snapped. There was a raw hollow where the tooth had been, like a bowl full of blood, and a sour taste in her mouth, mingling with the iron. Perhaps she had been sick. It was hard to tell: she drifted in and out of consciousness.
“Your boss is a powerful individual,” said the General. “So it won’t do any harm for you to tell me. We already have a good idea where you came from. And do you think that you really matter to them? This bit of stubbornness won’t do any good, and it won’t be noticed. It’s a shame to sacrifice yourself for no thanks and no reward. Nobody is coming to take you away from here. What happens is in your hands.”
“Kill me, then,” said Csorwe thickly. She felt the blood spill from her lips. In her mind’s eye there was a dark tunnel in a hillside, and a calling voice she could not name. She hoped that this was a premonition of death. She had given nothing away, but she didn’t know how much longer she could resist.
On the edge of her hearing, like a gleaming of white light, came the sound of a silver bell ringing. It hurt, like salt in the wound. Psamag shook his head as though trying to rid himself of a mosquito, then started as he recognised the sound. This was no product of Csorwe’s imagination. A bell was ringing.
Psamag frowned and drew back from her, then turned away entirely. The bell made such a soft sound, like a child’s rattle. He muttered in disbelief under his breath, and strode out of the room.
* * *
Csorwe was alone, and the binding on her right wrist had come a little loose. Psamag would kill her when he came back, and she was too weak to escape his apartments without help. But if she could reach the knife she had brought, she could end this on her own terms. The gift of Atharaisse might come good after all. As the seconds passed in silence, she worked her arm free, slowly, slowly, inch by inch, in agony. Her left arm alone could not hold up her weight. She fell with a snap as the bone broke, and passed out before she hit the floor.
The minutes passed, and she did not die. She crawled across the floor, dragging her broken arm, and reached the table where her dagger lay, and lived through every moment of it. She struggled in humiliation to knock down the dagger, and grasp it in her good hand, and shake it loose of the sheath. Atharaisse’s venom still shone on the blade, and she wondered whether Psamag had intended it for her in the end. But she was not dead.
She inched facedown across the floor, nudging the dagger after her. Minute by minute the pain caught up with her, and when it became too much she had to lie still. Every jarring breath steamed on the floorboards. She left a trail of blood, still pouring from the socket of her ruined tusk, and the old verses came back to her, out of the years behind her and The Dream of Fly Agaric: From those that are chosen, blood riseth to their mouths and spilleth from their lips, as nectar from the flower. Such a pretty way of putting it. She coughed and spat—blood and saliva and little shards of tusk enamel—and drew breath, and dragged herself upright, and hid behind the door to the room, propping herself against the wall.
When Psamag came back, he realised at once that something was wrong, and his instinct was to hang back in the doorway. Csorwe meant to spring out from behind the door and cut his throat. Instead, she fell hopelessly against his shoulders, and dragged the blade loosely across his collarbone. The horror of failure made a white-hot pit in her guts. All she could hope was that she had broken the skin, that Atharaisse’s venom might at least slow him down.