Chainers Torment

CHAPTER 10

The empress's mirror had been silent for weeks, and Veza had quickly become desperate for anything of substance to report. Obtaining information from or about Laquatus was not a problem. He frequently called to flirt and chatter about Cabal doings. Obtaining useful information from or about Laquatus was another matter. Veza had exhausted her private library and her admittedly sparse network of contacts, and had even paid passing sailors and local hoodlums for any gossip or rumors about the ambassador. So far, the ambassador remained a cipher.

There were those who claimed Laquatus was a staunch supporter of the emperor, but there were an equal number who claimed he was firmly but secretly in Llawan's camp. The most prevalent opinion was that he was simply following the tide, which currently favored Aboshan. It was rumored that he had vast mental powers, and could rewrite your memories as easily as he could sign his own name. Veza heard tales of the awesome creatures he had enslaved with the power of his mind and the darkest of spells, of the pirates he had betrayed and the rivals he'd had purged. None of it was reliable or novel enough to report to Llawan.

To avoid submitting another rehash of conflicting hearsay about Laquatus, Veza had at last resorted to magic. She was not an expert in any one particular discipline, but she did have a solid command of water- to-air breathing incantations and other basic seagoing survival spells. She was extremely adept at research, however, and she soon discovered a spell that could help her. It was a knowledge immersion ritual practiced by some of the more contemplative cephalids in the empire.

It was designed to expand one's capacity to process information. Properly prepared and cast, the spell allowed scholars to read and retain a library full of scrolls in the time it took a hot bath to cool. In a sense, you gathered your data and poured it into a small body of water. Then you climbed in to soak up that data with every pore.

Veza had made all the preparations and readied herself to carry them out. If it worked, she'd have something of value to share with the empress. If not, she had lost nothing but some time.

She choked down a vial of the briny potion and grimaced. She scattered a mixture of herblike seaweed, powdered pearl, and dried fish entrails over the surface of her sleeping tub, then pronounced the words to the immersion spell. She blew on the carved driftwood effigy of Laquatus in her palm, then lowered herself into the churning, bubbling water. As her eyes sank beneath the surface, she experienced the flash and crack of lightning in her mind, and her body went rigid as steel.

She saw Laquatus in a giant Cabal arena, watching a huge frog fight. She heard the frog's bellowing roar, which nearly drowned out the continuous internal whine of the predator's natural bloodlust.

Veza trembled in the churning bath, her eyes sightless, her mouth voiceless.

She saw the frog look at Laquatus, with the merman reflected in the beast's great eye. She saw Laquatus look at the frog, with the amphibian captured in Laquatus's stem glare.

Another jolt of electricity slammed through Veza, and her paralysis broke. Still blind and mute she began to thrash, splashing even more water out of the tub. She was aware of her legs merging and melting together to form a tail, and the pain was as excruciating as ever. Her jaw locked, as it always did during these transformations, with her sharp teeth piercing her lower lip.

She heard the frog's booming vocalization from Laquatus's point of view. She heard Laquatus's voice in the frog's head, issuing constant orders and demands for obedience.

Veza found her voice and screamed just as a massive explosion of water and spray cast her completely out of the tub. Heavy, tailed, and clumsy on the wooden floor, she clawed painfully at the boards and then raised her torso with her arms. She heaved for breath and started to choke. During the shock- transformation, she had inadvertently gone into her true deep-sea form. She couldn't breathe because her lungs were empty and flattened inside her chest. With a powerful flip of her tail, she rolled herself to the edge waters that lapped at her living room and dumped herself into the bay. Clear, cold sea water flowed over her gills, and she quickly began to regain her equilibrium. In the water, she was no longer clumsy and her increased body weight was supported by its own buoyancy. Exultant, she thrashed her tail again and shot out under the walls of her cottage, out toward the open sea.

Veza had the answer. She had seen something that would at last give Llawan direct access to Laquatus's schemes. Something to justify the imperial trust that had been placed in her.

Laquatus controlled the frog. The frog obeyed Laquatus. There was a permanent, almost palpable link between them both, mind and body. And while Laquatus's mind was too well guarded to invade, and the frog's was too primitive to understand, the link between them was neither. To a practiced psychic, reading that link would be as simple as eavesdropping on a conversation between intimates.

Laquatus's reliance on agents had just given them an opportunity to determine his loyalties once and for all. It wasn't much, Veza thought, but it was potentially the first drop in a deluge. She turned in mid-stroke, pleased at her grace underwater after so much time on land, and then she shot back toward her cottage and the empress's mirror.

"And you are certain this will work?"

"Yes, my empress," Veza said. She was still in her tailed form, but she had reopened her airways in order to speak. It had been difficult retrieving the mirror without switching back to her legged form, but she had managed it. Now she floated comfortably in the bay, perched on the edge of her cottage floor while she spoke into the mirror.

"And Laquatus will not know we are monitoring him?"

"Not if your psychics are careful, Empress."

Llawan paused. "Are you psychic, Director Veza?"

"No, Empress. I merely observed the existence of the link. I didn't attempt to examine it. To get the kind of information I think we can, we will need to employ an expert."

"A very subtle and gifted expert, we should think," Llawan said. "Fortunately, we have the finest mind-rider in all the empire right here in our city." She turned and clicked a few curt commands to someone behind her. Then she regarded Veza with a suspicious eye. "Are you currently tailed, Director?"

Veza flushed, giving her blue skin a purplish tone. "Yes, Empress. It was a side effect of the spell I cast."

"We understand. You will resume your land-going form at once." "Empress?"

"We are going to test this theory of yours. We are going to give you information to pass along to Laquatus. If he sees you changed as you are, he will assume you have been to the depths and are in league with someone to betray him. He might guess Aboshan and he might guess Llawan, but if he guesses at all, he will be on guard. And we would have him as unprepared as possible when we first attempt to monitor him."

"Of course, Empress." Veza said a silent blessing for her luck. She was not sure she could change back on command, and at least now she would not have to try in front of the empress.

Llawan sat silent for a moment, thinking. Then, she said, "I will send a courier with falsified documents that prove we are in hiding. You will show them to Laquatus and offer to deliver them to him if he so wishes." She half-opened her beak in a sharp cephalid smile. "Laquatus will certainly pass the information on to Aboshan. Our imperial husband is always pleased to hear reports of our weakness, and Laquatus is always eager to please the emperor.

"If our monitors pick up our planted information in the link you describe, we will know that it is truly a window into Laquatus's mind. And you, Director Veza, will have earned our gratitude and our love."

"You honor me, Empress Llawan."

"Not yet, Director. First, we will test your flash of inspiration. This audience is over."

Llawan broke the connection, and Veza watched the mirror go dark. Then she carefully laid it down and pushed herself off the floor into the water. She felt calm and confident, but her exhilaration faded into fatigue as she floated in lazy circles around her tidal pool.

She knew she'd been ignoring her regular duties as depot director, but she also knew that however things happened, she wouldn't have to worry about them for very much longer. Either her idea would bear fruit, Llawan would reward her, and Aboshan would declare her his enemy. Or, her idea would fail, and Llawan would punish her, and she'd be stuck in Breaker Bay forever, with plenty of time to catch up on her paperwork.

In any case, she thought, she wasn't in any shape to do anything with the next few hours but take some well-earned time to herself in the gentle lapping waves of Breaker Bay.