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foul murder and now you must pay the price. Soldiers with iron chains stood with Nath the Keys.
But, I said stupidly, there are three days.
Naw. Naw, lad. The Kov s in a hurry, like. It s now.
They dragged me out and I fought, so they wrapped the iron chains around me and knocked me out.
When I came to I was chained up to the stake in a small courtyard of the Hanitchik with an assembled
party of gloating nobles and Horters, with the guards . . . and with the black- and red-robed tormentors.
Kov Ornol ham Feoste was in a jovial mood. He had brought a group of friends. He called out, I have
chosen well for you, Chaadur, murderer!
They had gagged me so I couldn t yell back. I glared in murderous fury on this miserable Kov, but I
could not break the chains.
The fires banked red in their braziers, the hot irons glowing. The tongs, the knives, the scalpels, the
screws, all were at hand. The Kov sat back on the front chair, upholstered in green brocade, and he
lounged in fine style to enjoy the spectacle. Those with him, sitting on chairs placed in the spots reserved
for them, perked up at the prospect of a bur or so of pleasure. I looked at them as the chief torturer
advanced, holding a tiny knife. He wore a black hood and his eyes glittered at me from the holes cut in
that ominously black material.
I looked at the assembled nobles and Horters of Hamal and I considered once more that the country
was evil, that this glittering, decadent city of Ruathytu was evil, and that the greatest evil of all was Queen
Thyllis herself. There were one or two men there I had seen during my days in Ruathytu; but not one I
had known well enough to imagine he would recognize me as the Amak of Paline Valley. My position
was such that I would joy in being recognized as someone anyone other than Chaadur, the
condemned murdering gul.
My wish was so rapidly fulfilled I wondered if the Everoinye or the Savanti had a hand in it. But, apart
from what I suspected they might have been doing lately, the Star Lords and the mortal but superhuman
men and women of Aphrasöe left me strictly to my own devices on Kregen. They would let me be
tortured and killed if they had no immediate need of my services.
Sitting two places away from Kov Ornol, a man lounged in his chair. I recognized him as my gaze
passed along the nobles. He wore a natty costume of blue, gray, and black stitched into a hexagonal
pattern very like the hide of a chavonth. He looked a lot like a sleek, treacherous chavonth lounging
back, this man I had rescued from the snows of the Mountains of the North at the behest of the Star
Lords.
So I stared at him as the little knife in the leprously white hand of the torturer sliced toward my skin for
the first cut. I was stripped naked. My body glistened with sweat. The gag choked me. I know my eyes
must have held all that old powerful look of the devil as I gazed at Naghan Furtway, he who had once
been the Kov of Falinur.
Now my comrade Seg Segutorio was the Kov of Falinur, and this Naghan Furtway a fugitive from
Vallia, a man who must be riddled with anger and resentment. Once before he had unmasked and
betrayed me, there at The Dragon s Bones.
Would he recognize me again?
Naghan Furtway had once held enormous power as a Kov of Vallia. His passion for Jikaida had been
inordinate; I had played him enough times in the Mountains of the North, waiting for him and his nephew
Tyr Jenbar to regain their strength and for Genal the Ice to take his icy load down the mountains, to
know he played as he lived, hard, ruthlessly, without mercy.
Yet he had raged at the cramphs of Havilfar for selling us defective airboats. Clearly his disgrace and
flight had changed his mind. He was here in Ruathytu for no good purpose. He had become a renegade.
The knife pricked my skin, slid, cut, and withdrew with a sparkle of my blood on the tip. This would
take a long time.
I watched Naghan Furtway.
The knife cut again, cunningly, painfully.
Naghan Furtway stood up, drawing that chavonth-patterned cape back, resting his hand on the hilt of his
rapier. The knife licked out and the pain stung. Soon that pain would coalesce from many tiny pains into
an insupportable agony.
Kov Ornol looked up, frowning.
Sit down, Horter Furtway. There is much to come.
So they knew, here in Hamal, who Furtway was.
I think not, Kov.
What in Havil s name do you mean! As Malahak is my witness, Horter Furtway, this cramph of a
Chaadur suffers torment to my orders before he dies.
I think not, Kov. This man s name is not Chaadur.
Kov Ornol spluttered. That is what he says, the lying rast! You believe his story?
No. For I know him, aye, I know him well.
That is nothing to me. He murdered my wife and has been adjudged guilty. I will have what the law
allows
I have the ear of the Queen. I think she will not be pleased if you persist, Kov Ornol.
That was threat enough to make any man think twice.
Between these two, the Kov and the ex-Kov, there was a great gulf. For all his bluster, cruelty, and evil,
Kov Ornol ham Feoste was a mere blunderer, an oaf, compared with the refinement of cunning and
calculation of purpose of Naghan Furtway. The sheer hardness of the man in the chavonth-patterned
clothes blunted all Kov Ornol s bluster.
The Queen must be informed at once. Furtway was looking at me much as a leem stares at a ponsho.
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