Dangerous Gifts Read online

  I found it hard to care. It was the chains. How I hated the chains. The cold weight made me shudder.

  The Fenac gave me a cage to myself. I don’t think they knew what else to do with me.

  “Hey,” I said. “The chains?” I didn’t like the way my voice sounded, weak. But it was the feel of them, of being bound that way. My skin seemed to shrink around me in anticipation of pain.

  “The chains?” one of them said. “Oh, you don’t like the chains, eh?”

  “Come on,” I said, trying not to let my voice shake. Almost succeeding. “Please. What am I going to do?” At that moment I didn’t know myself. I could hardly think straight. This is not Tiresana. There is no pillar of adamant for them to bind you to; Shakanti is not waiting for the moon to rise so she can play with your pain.

  But my skin was unconvinced.

  They didn’t take them off. They searched me in the most perfunctory fashion, without actually touching my flesh at any point. I still had a knife on my thigh, my modesty – such as it was – and not a lot else.

  Tired, smoke-coloured light drizzled in through the high window slits. Two Fenac I didn’t remember seeing before sat at a table, pushing counters about, occasionally glancing over at the cages. The other prisoners shifted and whispered.

  I shuffled some straw into a pile as best I could with my feet, and sat down. Things skittered in the corners. I hoped they were rats, not beetles.

  “Hey,” one of the prisoners whispered. “Hey, you the one who was with the Itnunnacklish?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “You think she’s real?”

  “For what it’s worth, I think she is.”

  “’Course that one think she’s real,” someone else hissed. “Get paid, hey?”

  “I get paid to use my sword, not to lie about what I think,” I said, and yawned helplessly. I hadn’t slept much the last few days. In fact, it felt as though I hadn’t slept much for weeks. Despite the crawling sensation the chains gave me, suddenly I wanted nothing more than to lie down, whatever was lurking in the straw.

  “You think she’s the Itnunnacklish, you supposed to guard her, but you get yourself arrested. Maybe you Gudain after all, not give half a shit.”

  “I give,” I said. “I give plenty of shit.” I yawned again. “Trust me.”

  If whoever it was answered, I didn’t hear. Sleep grabbed me like a drowning man, and took me under.

  I WOKE CLUTCHING for balance, utterly confused, certain I was falling. I couldn’t get hold of anything, my hands were still chained.

  I sat up and tried to ease the stiffness out of my joints. The tiny window was black; it was night. How long had I slept? The Ikinchli in the cages either side watched me, some warily, some with interest, some just with the blank gaze of people with nothing else to look at and nowhere else to go. A lot of them were bruised.

  “Hey, Curves,” one of the Ikinchli males said. He was a chunky sort, with wide, muscular shoulders. There were stains on his face I realised were probably dried blood, and his grin showed a missing tooth.

  “Hey, Muscles. Do we get fed in this place?”

  “Once a day.” He tilted his head. “You missed it. Terrible guak. Youwouldn’t like. Next time I eat it for you.”

  “Generous of you,” I said.

  I desperately needed a piss, and realised that there was, actually, a degree of privacy; a curve of wall with a bucket behind it. The wall was high enough to conceal me from the shoulders down. Gudain ideas of modesty again, I supposed.

  “Hey,” I said. “Hey, mister.”

  “What?”

  “I need...” I jerked my head towards the wall. “And I can’t, you know, with these things on.” I turned my back, shook my chained wrists, looked at them over my shoulder. I’m not great at winsome, but I made a stab at it. “Come on, give a girl a break, what do you say?”

  The Fenac looked at each other.

  “All right,” one of them growled. “But don’t do anything stupid.”

  I don’t know what they’d been told about me, but they were pretty cautious; and of course, they were on edge. The Ikinchli weren’t the only ones with bruises, and one of the Fenac had had a clump of hair torn out, leaving an ugly, crusting wound.

  Five of them came in, one dealt with the chains, and the others held sharp objects close to bits of me I didn’t want punctured.

  They waited while I used the bucket. I checked my thigh-knife, but left it where it was.

  At least they rechained my hands in front of me. I wondered what the hells had made them so nervous; none of the other prisoners were chained as well as locked up. Maybe my reputation had preceded me. It was obviously a more impressive one than I realised. Three I could have handled – maybe. But five, with another three waiting outside and on the alert for trouble, not to mention the guards upstairs... No.

  I wondered what they planned for me. A trial? To make me disappear? That might prove awkward, Fain having made it clear that eyes were being kept on me.

  Not impossible, though. Just awkward.

  So I sat, and thought, and watched the Fenac. Those baggy brown uniforms had a bit of stiffening around the neck, like the internal ruff of Gudain fashion, but smaller. It probably meant the throat was fairly well protected. Couldn’t tell if they were wearing groin-guards – the material was too loose and puffy. They had helmets, low and round with a small brim, held on with a chinstrap. No noseguard – hmm. Short, efficient-looking swords. They were still playing their game, but they glanced up every now and then. They looked alert. And they were both Gudain. The chances of using a few wiles to persuade either of them to get close enough to give me an advantage was pretty minimal; even when they’d been ‘searching’ me, they hadn’t taken the opportunity for fondling, though that might just mean they had more sense than first appeared.

  The Ikinchli ceremony, the Enkantishak, was the following day. Would Enthemmerlee take the Household Guard with her? Better them than nothing, but All preserve us, that could go so very wrong.

  Now I’d slept, and had nothing to do but think, my mind began to pick through the last few days like a bird fossicking in the undergrowth, turning over every leaf and twig.

  Because my gut was yelling at me again. Something was up, something was wrong, something much more than my being locked up.

  I’d missed something. I knew it.

  I stared at the Fenac, until one of them clocked and glared at me in that gaoler’s stop looking at me or I’ll come over there and make you regret it way. Funny, the way you can feel someone’s look on the back of your neck.

  I’d felt it leaving Malleay’s room. Someone had been watching. The person who’d accused me of breaking the Moral Statutes? Whoever they were, they wanted me out of the way.

  The captain? He’d certainly seen me in a state of undress, but it seemed unlikely he’d know about Malleay. In fact, the only person other than Malleay who could possibly have any idea was whoever had been watching that night.

  The nearest room was Selinecree’s. But... Selinecree? She didn’t seem likely. The mere fact that someone in her household had been accused, surely, would be an embarrassment. More scandal, more gossip...

  Fain? Could he have wanted me out of the way? Why?

  All I could think was that when Laney turned up, if I wasn’t there, he’d have a better chance of persuading her to take off the oath – or so he might think. But he wanted Enthemmerlee alive, and she had a slightly better chance of that with me around. Fey oaths... Well, they’re not infallible, from what I understand. They’ll do their best to be fulfilled, but in the end all they really do is tip the odds.

  And for all I knew, Laney had already turned up. It was more than time. She could already have undone the oath. If she knew where I was, she’d probably come racing in to sort everything out... but she’d be walking into a bunch of Gudain not only immune to her seductions, but with an automatic prejudice against foreigners. And in a building full of iron.


  She’d be weak as a kitten and probably end up in the cell next to me. If they chained her, she’d be in agony.

  One of the Fenac was writing something, the scritching of the pen just audible over the sighs and mutterings of the prisoners. He had his tongue pressed against his upper lip, and squinted at the page as though afraid it might leap up and bite his nose off.

  That made me think of Bergast.

  There was something going on with Bergast, I was convinced of it. The constant muttering of spells, the way he’d dropped his shirt over the papers in his room, the twitchiness around Mokraine... He was hiding something. Was he working for whoever wanted Enthemmerlee gone? Was he part of whatever was going on inside the Section? Had his been the eyes I’d felt?

  I stared at the lampflame on the Fenac’s table. Yellow flame, glinting on the coins as they half-heartedly shoved counters about in some game.

  A yellow thread, wavering in the light, plucked away and gone. It bothered me, that thread. Why did it bother me?

  Yellow and blue, blue and yellow. Something, thin as a thread, wavering. Refusing to be grasped and woven into a pattern.

  Blue. Blue cloth. Blue cloth glimpsed in the rain, the sound of a laugh.

  Selinecree had been wearing blue, that day I’d seen Dentor sneaking off to the ruined building.

  But Selinecree? Seducing Dentor? That had been my assumption; but then, I was thinking like me, not like a Gudain. They didn’t seduce. And she attended privaiya regularly, which meant she couldn’t feel desire even if she wanted to.

  I felt a tingling in my hands. Maybe desire wasn’t the point. Maybe the point was to get to the guard. To cause trouble. To weaken their ability to protect Enthemmerlee. Which had started even before I got there. Rumours that the guard were to be disbanded – who had started them? No one knew. But it was a good way to make them unsettled, to thin an already uneasy loyalty to one many of them would regard with suspicion, maybe even fear.

  A bottle by the captain’s doorstep. Who had put it there? I’d assumed Tantris had forgotten it, but what serious drinker forgets a full bottle? Keeping him oiled would certainly reduce his effectiveness.

  It didn’t even have to be her who put it there. If she was in cahoots with Dentor, or more of the guard, she just needed to get one of them to leave it for her. And if the guard in question would rather the captain kept to his old slobby ways and left them to their own devices, instead of getting them to buck up, they’d be happy enough to do it.

  My brain was racing now, thoughts tumbling over each other, like the fall of pebbles that heralds a rockslide.

  She was the one who’d told the guard to let the Fenac in, wasn’t she? I’d thought she was just being an idiot, but maybe she wasn’t the idiot I thought.

  The Statutes apply to all who are capable of being restrained by them. I’d been affected by the smoke. Which, twisted the right way, meant I was capable of being morally restrained. And who had been there, who had been startled, by my response to the smoke?

  Selinecree.

  I stared at the hanging lamp, the flame trembling with my quickened heartbeat. Yellow. Yellow. Why yellow?

  The thread attached to the Ipash Dok. The little decorated box, intended to be laid on the altar, where some natural action of the heat would make it open.

  I’d never seen Lobik wearing yellow. But I’d seen Selinecree carrying a small parcel at the docks. A small parcel tied with bright yellow ribbon.

  And Rikkinnet had said the Ipash Dok didn’t look like something Lobik would have chosen. It looked like something sold to travellers.

  Something that would make a perfect vessel for... What?

  Nothing good. I knew that. Nothing good at all. It would be opened at the Enkantishak; tomorrow, or – I glanced at the dark window – maybe today. I didn’t know how long I’d slept. But when it was opened, something bad would happen.

  I had to get out of here.

  How?

  I pushed myself to my feet and looked around.

  The bars were solidly set in the stone. The door, any cage’s vulnerable point, had hinges as thick as my arm and no evidence of hasty construction. There was a big, thick, ironbound and solidly locked door at the top of the stairs, with, if I remembered rightly, two Fenac standing in front of it.

  If you keep your prisoners right beneath your seat of government, I guess you really don’t want them getting out.

  “Hey. Hey,” I said.

  “What d’you want? Need another piss, do you?” said the one with the torn scalp.

  “No, I just... I realised something. Something dangerous to the family. The Entaire family. They need to know this.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure they do.” The Fenac yawned. “I’m sure they want a message from a criminal.”

  “Look, there’s a ceremony tomorrow, they’ll be there, something bad’s going to happen. They need to be told. I’m not asking you to let me out, for the All’s sake, I just want to give them a warning!”

  “So what’s this bad thing, then?”

  “I...” Shit. “I don’t know, exactly. But they’ve been given something, an Ipash Dok, and there’s something wrong with it. Something bad inside it.”

  The Fenac snorted. “Nice try,” he said, and turned away.

  “I’m serious! Dammit...” But they ignored me, moving right to the other end of the room.

  “Hey, Curves,” the muscular Ikinchli hissed. “This is the Enkantishak, the welcoming of the Itnunnacklish. You say the Ipash Dok has something in it that will harm her?”

  “Yes! And she doesn’t know!”

  He turned and said something to those behind him.

  There were suddenly a lot of Ikinchli eyes on me.

  “This is true?” someone said.

  “Yes, it’s true. I need to get a warning to her, something.”

  “They will not take,” Muscles said. “Most of the Fenac, they want her to disappear. Don’t care if she dies.”

  “Well, I bloody do,” I said. “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then help me!”

  “How?” Muscles said. “If I could make the bars melt, would have done it by now.”

  He had a point.

  I gripped the bars, looking at the damned Fenac with their card game and their letters home and their weapons.

  Place looked a lot like a barracks.

  The Fenac looked a lot like soldiers.

  I can’t believe you’re thinking this, Babylon.

  I’m not. I can’t think it. There has to be another way.

  Eight Fenac. Fifty or so Ikinchli, behind bars.

  I sat down on the straw, leaned my head against the wall, and closed my eyes.

  “You going back to sleep? Much help for the Itnunnacklish, that.”

  “Shut up, all right?” I said.

  But the harder I thought, the further I was from seeing any kind of solution.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs, and a familiar, human voice should have made me feel better.

  Except the voice sounded a lot like that of Angrifon Filchis. I opened my eyes, and there he was, standing at the base of the steps, holding onto the railing.

  “Here, here, what are you doing here?” said the Fenac commander.

  “Come to visit the prisoner,” Filchis said.

  “At this hour?”

  “Got to check in on one’s fellow citizens, you know,” Filchis said, grinning like a dead carp. “Oh, yes, another citizen of Scalentine. You thought I wouldn’t find out” – he waved a finger at me – “you thought I wouldn’t remember, but I did.”

  “What do you want?” I said.

  “To make sure you’re not creating trouble for our hosts, of course. Though it seems you’ve created quite enough already.”

  “She’s been quiet,” the Fenac said. “Now, if you don’t mind...”

  “Violated the Moral Statutes, I understand. Well, of course it’s hardly surprising. Lax attitudes, you see. I hope you’re keep
ing your men well out of her way.”

  The Fenac bristled. “I hope you’re not suggesting my men are corruptible,” he snapped.

  “Not at all, not at all; only I know her type, you see. Lax attitudes, as I said. Mixing with all and sundry. Getting up to who knows what.”

  I realised suddenly that he wasn’t just holding onto the bannister for show.

  “You’re drunk,” I said.

  “Oh, no. Not at all.”

  “You want us to throw him out, Commander?” said one of the other Fenac.

  “Now, now,” Filchis said, raising his finger. “I’m here as an envoy from powerful forces in Scalentine, you know. If you want people on your side in the struggle against undesirable elements” – he waved at the Ikinchli in their cages – “you’ve got to recognise your friends when you see them. I just want a little word with the prisoner, that’s all.”

  I saw the Fenac commander glance up the stairs, as though checking for who might be standing behind Filchis. “Make it quick, then,” he said. “And no passing anything through the bars, right? I’ll be watching.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I have no intention of passing anything.”

  “Wind, maybe,” I said. “Go away, Filchis.”

  He came up to the bars, too far away to grab, close enough for me to smell the wine on his breath. He put his hands behind him and swayed, looking at me.

  The grin had gone. Now he looked like a stray dog that hopes for a scrap and will turn nasty if it doesn’t get it.

  “What do you know?” he said.

  “About what?”

  “You were asking questions, earlier. Questions about why I’d been sent here.” He leaned closer. “I want to know what you know.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Filchis.”

  “Maybe it was just... someone’s way of keeping an eye on me. Is that it? He doesn’t think I can be trusted. He’d rather tell her all his secrets. I know.”

  “Well,” I said. “I don’t. You’re not making any sense.”

  “‘Get to Incandress,’ he said. ‘And then, just listen, and watch. After the barbarians have their ceremony,’ he said, ‘everything will be settled.’ But you know...” Filchis leaned back, and out came the finger again, wavering a few inches from my nose. “I don’t think I believe him.”