CHAPTER 9
C HAPTER 9
S ETH REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS in a blurry, piecemeal fashion. Light bled through his eyelids. Voices hummed around him. He was cold. He was lying on a hard, flat surface. His head throbbed. His chest and left shoulder ached.
When he opened his bleary eyes, he discerned a bare stone ceiling high above him. It was washed with bands of arcane light as though the light was passing through bars. The voices surrounding him cut off, but not before he heard a refined female voice say in Kastalan, “… whether he’s useful.”
Seth registered straps around his wrists and ankles, one even across his forehead—and that was when it all came back. The fight outside Atri’s temple. Raider collapsing. The net that had taken Seth down. He’d fought as hard as he could to get free, to get to Raider, but he’d eventually lost consciousness as the blows had rained down upon him.
Now, bound to a table, bare chested and bare footed, wearing only his pants, he tried not to panic. He had to stay calm and figure out what was happening.
Working against the strap across his forehead, Seth rolled his head to one side then the other. His head spun, blurring the figures, but the warrior woman was unmistakable. There was another woman, dazzling with gold, and a man in black robes.
The man said in the trade tongue, “You’re in—”
“The fucking dungeon! Where the fuck is Raider?”
So much for staying calm.
“You’re in no position to ask questions, Curator.”
Seth strained against his bonds. Leather, he thought they were. Maybe he could break them. He bowed up off the table, yanking to one side then the other.
“The man you know as Raider …”
Somehow, that cultured female voice, speaking now in the trade tongue, froze Seth as the man’s voice had not.
The woman stepped toward him. The arcane light flashed against her golden headdress. Fanning high, it was shaped like the rays of the sun. Fine gold chains looped downward from its prongs, and a fringe of them hung at her forehead, obscuring her dark eyebrows. Her rich blue gown was heavy with golden embroidery.
Seth didn’t need to be told who she was. Empress Zarina. Ruler of the Golden Empire. Daughter of the now-dead Emperor Hassan. The man who had been Raider’s lover. The man whom Raider had killed.
Gold rings glinted on the empress’s fingers as they reached toward Seth’s face. Polished nails pressed into Seth’s cheeks.
“The man you know as Raider,” she repeated, “and whom I know as Shashem. What is he … to you?”
Shashem. Was that Raider’s real name? S, Kahzir’s book had said. S stood for … Shashem?
“Please don’t hurt him. Please let me see him.”
As those words escaped Seth’s lips, he heard how they echoed the words he’d heard so often from Raider. Those words had always made his heart ache, but he felt them on a different level now. Bound to this table, he could do nothing. He couldn’t help Raider. He couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t fight. They could do anything to him like this.
The empress’s fingers drummed against Seth’s cheek. “Nasrin thinks you are lovers. She says you were intimate when she saw you on Atri’s steps. But there are many kinds of lovers. Sometimes, it doesn’t mean much.”
“Please—”
“Perhaps if you answer my questions, Seth of the Arcanum, you will get to ask one of your own.” The empress released his face. “Fadesh?”
The man stepped into Seth’s line of sight. His black robes, trimmed with gold, identified him as one of the Hand, the empress’s contingent of arcanists. Seth had seen a few of them, years ago, when he had visited Kastari with Marcus and the scholar from the Arcanum.
This man looked about fifty. He had a long dark beard threaded with gray, and his dark eyes held a cool intelligence that sparked Seth’s memory of sitting across a desk from Catalus— Kahzir —as he assigned Seth to the hunt for Julian. The look was common among arcanists. Seth had never thought anything of it. But then, Seth had also never thought anything of the scar marking Kahzir’s hand—had Raider done that?—nor of his reputation as a skilled surgeon.
But Kahzir, with whom Seth had spoken many times over many years, had bound Raider to a table like this one. Kahzir had cut him on a table like this one.
The black-robed arcanist drew Kahzir’s book from among the folds of his black robes.
“This book,” he said, flashing the golden symbols of the cover at Seth. That was all he ever got. The cover. Why had Raider not wanted him to read it? “How did it come to be in your possession?”
“Is Raider alive?” Seth whispered, nearly choking on the question.
“Yes,” answered a strong female voice. Not the empress. The warrior woman. She then said defensively, “What? He couldn’t focus. What use for him to think his lover is dead?”
The arcanist said, “We could simply compel him.”
“This is more useful to me,” the empress cut in. “Fadesh, Nasrin, stop arguing. Fadesh, continue.”
The arcanist’s cold eyes glared down at Seth. “Answer, Curator. Why was this book in your possession?”
Seth spoke of his assignment, how he had pursued Julian from Masir across the Kesh to Aqarat. He told them what had transpired there in Prince Rahim’s palace. He told them of the sand serpent and the escape. What use to conceal it? What use for them to even ask him? Rahim must have told the empress everything already.
Then she stepped in, waving the arcanist away into the shadows. She asked about how Seth had kept on Julian’s trail, and he told her of the arcane scope he had found in a bazaar in Demir.
She asked, “Why did that catch your attention?”
Seth felt confused. What did that have to do with anything? But he answered, “It was out of place. Valuable. Rare. Only a wealthy man or an arcanist would have owned it. Only an arcanist desperate for money would have sold it. So I followed the story of that scope from Demir to Shalaa, at the edge of the Kesh.”
The empress looked thoughtful. “A clue many might have missed.”
What was her point?
Her head tilted, making the light flash against her golden headdress, making the tiny chains tinkle. She asked, “Is that why you were chosen for this mission?”
“Perhaps. I was told—by Kahzir —don’t you understand that he’s—”
“That is not what concerns me at this moment. You were told what?”
“Why does it matter? This isn’t about me—”
The warrior woman stepped forward, beside the empress. She was a head taller and wore a breastplate of articulated leather that made no effort to deemphasize her female form. Her bare shoulders were broad and strong. Muscle played in her arm as she reached out and gripped Seth’s throat.
“You will answer the empress’s questions. She asked you what you were told. For what reason were you chosen?”
Seth stared into her light gray eyes. They were stern but not angry. He suspected that the same could not be said of his own. The warrior loosened her grip so Seth could speak, but she did not remove her hand from his throat.
“I was told,” Seth gritted out, “that I was the only Curator sufficiently tenacious and brutal for the job.”
The warrior woman lifted her hand away and stepped back.
The empress said, “Perhaps you are both those things, but you are neither unthinking nor unfeeling.”
She didn’t ask a question, so Seth didn’t reply. Then she did ask one: “Are you afraid to die?”
“No.”
“Are you afraid to watch him die?”
Seth’s chest started heaving. “You have the book. You know what Kahzir did to him. You can’t—”
“Well,” the empress said calmly. “We shall see.”
With that, she turned to leave, and so did the others.
Hands clenched and yanking against the leather bonds, Seth strained and shouted as the cell door clanged shut. Thrashing against the restraints, Seth felt something in his pocket. His … multi tool?
It was usually on his utility belt, which had been taken from him. He didn’t remember putting the multi tool in his pocket. Maybe Raider had done it? Raider stole the thing from him constantly to tease him, but Seth could have sworn the multi tool was on his belt at the temple.
It didn’t fucking matter. He fished it out and sequenced the blade.