Chapter 99:
An Eenta guard named Baripa is our spy in LakeCentral. She informed us that the Eenta have been keeping Sukren drugged inside a clinic, but that within a few days of your arrival to LakeCentral Castle, he’ll be moved to a Rajas cell and permitted to come to consciousness. Baripa will arrange access to Sukren once he’s been moved to his cell.
Vek sat down in the hanging chair in his dorm and silently repeated to himself Lady Nari’s final instructions. He was glad to get a moment alone. The Rajas in the delegation he was pretending to serve were too twitchy and eager to please.
After repeating the instructions, Vek stood and moved to look out the window. The gold and blue-fringed curtains that usually covered the windows in senior Rajas dorms had been removed, but through the window he could see several greenhouses along the outskirts of the castle grounds. Red, blue and violet, they stood out from the green and gold Earth grasses that filled LakeCentral Quinter. All around them herds of sheep munched happily.
Vek took a deep breath. If Baripa were smart, she would be keeping track of Vek, she would know that Vek was alone now, she would come to him…
And there it was. The knock on the door. Vek hurried to pull it open; he stepped back to give Baripa room. If it was her. Whoever-it-was was wearing a doctor-priest’s robe, hood and all, and was hiding deep enough inside it to be able to avoid eye contact.
“Vek?” came a whisper from inside the robe.
“Yes.”
Off came the hood. “I am Baripa,” the woman said, still in a whisper. An Eenta. “I can change tomorrow night’s guard schedule to give you a few minutes alone with him, but if you get caught, I won’t help you. I’ve worked hard to earn a place here. Lady Nari wouldn’t want me to risk it.”
“Why not tonight?” Vek asked, trying not to sound annoyed. He found it hard these days to not get angry. “Wasn’t Sukren transferred to his cell today?”
“It’s too short notice,” Baripa replied. She reached into a pocket hidden inside the folds of her robe and pulled out a key. “I’ll show you a secret passageway into a lift shaft that leads down to the cells. At the start of nightsleep the guard will leave. You’ll have fifteen minutes at most until the next guard arrives.”
Vek took the key with his four-fingered hand. “I won’t get caught.”
“Don’t give me away if you do. You’ll suffer an accident in custody if I think you’re going to slip.”
Vek said nothing aloud. Lift, start of nightsleep, fifteen minutes. Yes, he could pull this off. He listened as Baripa told him that the Eenta had started torturing Sukren earlier that day for information about the Promised Daughter’s whereabouts. So far, Sukren had divulged nothing. That was good. Fear of continued torture at the hands of the Eenta would have Sukren looking for a way out. Vek could make use of that.
After all, if there was anything Vek knew how to do these days, it was interrogation.
***
The next night came not a moment too soon. Vek crawled through the secret passageway into the lift shaft. He had to lay flat on his stomach inside the shaft, the underside of the lift car floor a finger’s width above him. He held his breath as the guard stepped through a bi-parting gate into the lift. The car floor hit Vek’s shoulder blades. He froze. Would the guard notice the different feel beneath his feet?
Apparently not. A moment later, the pressure lifted off of Vek’s back, and the lift car rose. Vek waited until the guard was several lengths above him before slipping out of the shaft and through the gate, into the hallway.
It was almost as dark in the hallway as it had been inside the shaft. A single red bottle-lamp in the ceiling lit the way. Vek counted the cell doors under its flickering light. One, two, three, four.
The fourth door was Sukren’s. Vek turned the key, wincing a little as the door creaked open. Then he was inside.
“Who is it?” a hoarse voice whispered.
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It was pitch black inside the cell. Vek tapped his daysclock. The numbers and lines lit up, allowing Vek to make out the outline of Sukren’s body halfway up off the floor.
“It’s Vek. I have fifteen minutes. I can get you out of here,” he lied. “Where is the Promised Daughter?”
“Vek –”
“I don’t have time for anything but answers. Where is the Promised Daughter?”
“I told the Eenta the truth. I don’t know. The last I heard she’d left the bio-dome.”
Left the bio-dome? “Who’d you hear that from?”
“One of the Cursed.”
“Who is this person? I need to question her. Unless you told the Eenta about her? Are they already –”
“No,” Sukren replied. Vek found it easy to ignore the pain in the man’s voice. “I didn’t tell the Eenta about her yet.”
“Is she in the greenhouse with the other Cursed?”
“I think so.”
“What’s her name? What does she look like?”
Vek could see in the dim light that Sukren was hesitating. “You’re not in a position to bargain,” he snapped at him. “You tell me everything I need to know, and once I’ve confirmed that your information is good, I get you out of here. That’s how this is going to work.”
“Then you better hope you can move faster than the Eenta,” Sukren said. “I’m not going to be able to hold out on them for much longer. Today I almost…” his voice wavered. “But if you get me out of here now, I’ll help you, and I won’t be able to help them.”
Vek felt fury spike up inside him. “You’re a traitor,” he spat. “If I had my way the Eenta would torture you to death. You dare act like your life means anything now, after the way you abandoned us?”
Sukren was silent. Vek stepped forward and crouched on the ground before him. The light from Vek’s daysclock revealed a blindfold, no, those were bandages over Sukren’s eyes. Had he been blinded?
“Her name,” Vek said. “Name and description.”
“Even if I tell you,” Sukren whispered, “it’s not going to help you. I’m going to end up telling the Eenta soon enough, even though I don’t want to. So get me out of here. You can hate me all you want, but it’s to your benefit to stop the Eenta from trying to get information out of me.”
Sukren was right. Vek might feel nothing but rage for him, but he was still right. Too much pressure, and Sukren might even tell the Eenta about Vek’s visit.
“I can’t get you out right now,” Vek said. “But I’ll tell the Eenta that Lady Nari won’t trade for you unless you’re untouched. They’ll listen.”
Vek worked it out in his mind. He would tell the Rajas negotiators to inform their counterparts that a queen was on offer if and only if Sukren was not harmed. That would be enough to stall the Eenta while Vek followed up with the Cursed.
“Okay,” Sukren responded, the relief clear in his voice. “Her name is Lainla of the Jinkari Table. She’s around your age, a little older. She’s of Xhota blood. She’s got close-cropped hair, an athletic build, and wears glasses.”
Vek committed the details to memory. He would inform the Rajas negotiators to ask the Eenta, as a gesture of their goodwill, to let Vek choose a Cursed girl for the night. He doubted the Eenta would refuse. They would look down on him for mixing with a mutineer, but Vek was already a mutt, so what did it matter?
The lights on Vek’s daysclock blinked. He stood. He had only a few minutes until the next guard came. He had to go. He shouldn’t risk it.
The words burst from his lips anyway. “Why did you do it? Why did you run off?”
When Sukren didn’t respond, Vek kicked his thigh. “Answer me!”
Sukren drew himself up into a sitting position. “You remember what Lady Nari always said? Pick your identity and stick to it, no matter what the consequences may be.”
“I remember.”
“That’s what I did.”
Fury coursed through Vek once more. “That is not what you did. You ran out on the Free Serfs – on the Chenta. You – you come from a full Chenta lineage – you threw that away –”
“Why the hell should the Chenta have first claim on me? I was apprenticed to a Chenta doctor-priest. You think the fact that we were both Chenta affected how he treated me? No, I’m talking about Mayah.”
“What do you mean?”
“I am the guardian of the Promised Daughter. First, foremost, always. No matter what the consequences may be.”
Regret permeated Sukren’s every word. Vek turned his face away. Sukren made Lady Nari’s call to accept whatever consequences might come sound not like victory, but death.
“I have to go,” Vek said aloud. He took one last look at Sukren. Then with the four fingers on his strong hand, he opened and closed the cell door, and locked it behind him.