The Pharaoh Contract

Chapter 11

Ruiz woke slowly to the sensation of heat and confinement, and the bitter smell of rust. His head thumped with a regular rhythm, a stabbing pain behind the eyes. He groaned and sat up in semidarkness, to discover that he was naked.

His senses swam for a moment, and he touched the back of his head gingerly. Blood was crusted on a split in his scalp, but his probing fingers found no evidence that his skull was cracked.

Where was he?

Beams of hot light penetrated his prison through chinks in the welded iron that surrounded him. Carefully, he rose to hands and knees and put his eye to one of these cracks. His heart sank. He was in the Place of Artful Anguish.

One of the other iron huts was visible through his chink, and above it flew a black pennon, indicating that it also contained a condemned criminal. Ruiz wondered who the other was, and why that unfortunate had been selected to share Ruiz’s punishment.

Useless to think about it. His immediate concern was escape, which must come soon, before the performance in which he would Expiate his sin against Lord Brinslevos. Already he could feel the uneasiness of the death net, tugging against its anchorages in the depth of his mind. He would live only until the situation was irretrievably hopeless; then he would die, and the uninformative circumstances of his death would be transmitted to the League. Ruiz shook his head. Bad enough to die painfully, worse still to die pointlessly. He knew nothing, except that a conspiracy of some sort flourished on the orbital platform, a datum that the League might logically have assumed without the event of his death.

He shifted his thoughts from the gloomy avenue they had begun to follow. The situation was far from hopeless; surely when Denklar heard of his predicament, the innkeeper would communicate with him, and then it would be a simple matter of the innkeeper fetching the packet of pangalac devices hidden in his room. Ruiz had only to exercise patience, and to survive his time in the iron hut. It would grow hot, no doubt, but surely the Lord’s executioner preferred lively victims to ones already half-cooked.

As if in answer to his surmise, a pair of stout women came into view, laboring under shoulder yokes and large buckets. They set the buckets down next to the other occupied cage with theatrical sighs of exertion, and presently began to pour water into the pan-shaped roof of the cage.

“Air-conditioning,” Ruiz muttered, and shortly he heard the trickle of water on his own roof.

“Hey,” he shouted. “What foolishness is this? I’ve done no wrong. Call the Lord, tell him I’m innocent.”

One of the women chuckled sardonically. “The Lord is feeling poorly; in fact, I hear your Expiation must wait a day, until he feels well enough to give his complete attention to the performance. Myself, I haven’t much sympathy for you — since you botched the job. So many fine poisons exist. What madness possessed you to dose the Lord just enough to make him ill? If you’d succeeded in murdering him, they’d have hung you from the battlements and that would have been that — a clean death and a quick one.”

“Ill-considered of me,” Ruiz said in an agreeable voice. “And the other prisoner?”

The woman laughed again, and this time it was a sound of pure pleasure. “That’s Rontleses, who didn’t see you make the switch that poisoned the Lord — as was his responsibility. What’s worse, his gimpleg trusty has reported to the Lord that several days ago you and the coercer talked together in low voices, at an unlikely spot out in the catapple plantations. So the Lord suspects a conspiracy between you and Rontleses, though none of his advisers can imagine why you should thus plot.”

She leaned close to the iron. “In Stegatum, opinions differ. Though you blundered away your opportunity to rid us of Brinslevos, at least you’ve taken Rontleses to his death, which pleases almost everyone but Rontleses.”

“Well,” said Ruiz. “Every blessing is mixed. For my part, I’d prefer not to accompany Rontleses.”

“No doubt,” said the woman, whose voice seemed to come more faintly, as if she was leaving. “They undertake Rontleses’ Expiation tonight, and yours tomorrow night, so you can look forward to at least one more day of life. Who knows, perhaps he’ll speak under the question, convince the Lord of your innocence. Probably not. Rontleses is a hard man. He’ll be pleased with your company in Hell, even if you are innocent.”

Ruiz heard no more. He sank down, clutching his aching head.

Vilam Denklar stood in the room formerly occupied by Wuhiya the oil man. He peered from the window that overlooked the Place of Artful Anguish, wringing his hands. He was being forced to an unpleasant decision, but he could see no way out. The agent in the iron cage was an Uberfactorial; no doubt he carried a death net. Were Denklar to ignore his plight, and allow the agent to die for his foolishness — as Denklar would certainly do were the idiot of less exalted rank — the news of his inaction would immediately reach the League. Soon thereafter, implacable persons would come calling. “Denklar,” they would say, “tell us why you did nothing to save the Uberfactorial.” And what would he answer? They would judge him incompetent at best; at worst, a traitor.

So engrossed was he in his thoughts that he failed to hear the light step of Anstevic behind him, until a hand fell on his shoulder. He spun, to see Anstevic, looking dusty and red-eyed, as though he had spent an uncomfortable night in the waste. He opened his mouth to curse at Anstevic for so startling him, but the assassin clutched Denklar’s throat with one hand, sealing off his wind. In Anstevic’s other hand was a long dagger, thin as a wire. This he slipped into Denklar’s open mouth, so that the point pricked his palate. Denklar tried to pull away, to no effect. He tried to shut his mouth, but the wireblade was as rigid as an iron bar, and forced his jaw down cruelly.

“You have questions,” Anstevic said softly. “They must wait, possibly forever. First I’ll ask mine, and I hope you can give the right answers.”

Denklar nodded, a tiny careful movement, and Anstevic smiled. “Good,” he said. He withdrew the dagger from Denklar’s mouth. “Quietly now, tell me what has happened.”

Anstevic’s grip loosened slightly and Denklar drew a deep shuddering breath. “This morning men came from Brinslevos Keep, with Rontleses and the snake oil man. Wuhiya, he calls himself.”

With horrifying speed, Anstevic picked Denklar up by his shirtfront and threw him against the stone wall, where he hit with a dull thud. Anstevic jerked the dazed innkeeper to his feet and spoke in a harsh voice. “Do not dissemble. Tell me who the oil man really is.”

“All right, all right. He’s a League agent, Uberfactorial. I meant no harm — he told me to tell no one — but remember, I mentioned him before, I’m a loyal friend, Anstevic.”

Anstevic smiled encouragingly. “Go on.”

“I don’t really know what happened. After they put the prisoners in their cages, they came into the inn and ordered breakfast. They said the oil man had tried to poison the Lord, which makes no sense. He’s an Uberfactorial, after all; if he’d tried, he’d have succeeded, surely. Rontleses will die, they said, because he was on duty last night, watching from concealment to see that no treachery occurred when the Lord and Wuhiya smoked together. I can’t understand it at all.”

Anstevic muttered something under his breath. “Bad luck,” he said ambiguously.

“Yes… bad luck.” Denklar began to see a positive aspect to Anstevic’s unexpected presence. “But I’m glad you’re here. You can get him out of the cage and away from Stegatum much more easily than I — it’s more your line of work, isn’t it? I’m an innkeeper, not a man of action.”

“Umm…” said Anstevic. “Have you contacted him? Has he managed to send any messages to you?”

“No, no… I was just considering how best to proceed.”

“Good, very good. A pity, in a way, that the Lord survived. Eh? Then they’d have dealt with him at the Keep, and we’d have been out of it. But the Lord believes in public displays, so I suppose we must act.” Anstevic chuckled, apparently in a good humor again.

Denklar began to relax. The matter was out of his hands and into more competent ones — a great relief.

The wireblade slipped through the soft flesh below his chin, through his palate and into his brain. Anstevic gave a dexterous twist.

Denklar knew an instant of cold stinging astonishment, and then he was dead.

There was little blood. Anstevic rolled the corpse under the bed, and sat down to wait, pipe in hand.

The morning passed, and Ruiz gradually recovered his equilibrium. He explored his cage, but found no encouragement. The cage was stoutly constructed, with heavy forged fastenings and a solid door, locked with a massive padlock. The padlock’s keyhole faced the small grid set into the door, by luck. Had he a piece of wire, he might have tickled it open, but he was naked and the cage was swept clean. The cage grew hot, despite the water, but not unbearably so. Ruiz sat cross-legged in the center of the cage and concentrated on his situation. As the pounding in his head eased, he was able to think more clearly about the events that had led him to the Place of Artful Anguish.

The Lord had been poisoned, though not by Ruiz. The Lord was not well loved in Stegatum and the surrounding nomarchy. No doubt the Lord had many enemies, one of whom had seized the opportunity to assassinate Brinslevos in such a way that Ruiz would be blamed. It served no great purpose to wonder who or why; what was important was this: Ruiz was still alive. Presumably Denklar would help, and Ruiz could escape under the cover of night. And then Ruiz would be on his way. Unless, Ruiz thought, Denklar was part of the conspiracy that had first revealed itself aboard the platform. This was a disquieting idea, and led to a train of further unpleasant speculations. Perhaps the Lord had been poisoned not by the Lord’s enemies, but by Ruiz’s. In this case, Denklar might do nothing, except perhaps to laugh as Ruiz was taken out of the cage to his death. No, no, that was unlikely, because he had revealed himself as an Uberfactorial to Denklar, and so Denklar must assume Ruiz to be equipped with a death net. Even if Denklar was a conspirator, he would be foolish to dare the League’s investigators, who would be aware of the circumstances of Ruiz’s death as soon as it occurred.

If instead Brinslevos had died, and Ruiz had been executed immediately, such a plan could have worked well. Had that been the plan?

Ruiz shook his head; such speculation was pointless. For the present, he must compose himself to wait for Denklar’s help, which in any ease would not be forthcoming until after dark. When he was free, he would question the innkeeper vigorously. The thought was pleasant and calming.

The afternoon passed in heat and silence, and Ruiz was astonished to find himself bored. That the imminent prospect of a painful death could not divert him from boredom for a few short hours seemed to aim a frightening and ominous thing, though only abstractly. He pounded his fists against his forehead. “Alertness, alertness, Ruiz,” he told himself.

As the sun sank to the level of the surrounding hills, the citizens of Stegatum began to appear, strolling about the Place of Artful Anguish in couples and small groups, as though it were a peaceful park. Children ran here and there, occasionally stopping to fling a stone at the iron cages, which made a fine loud clang. Rontleses presently began to bellow lurid curses. Ruiz said nothing, plugging his ears with his fingers, and consequently the children spent most of their stones on Rontleses’ cage. Their parents looked on with solemn approval. No one attempted to speak to Ruiz Aw.

When the sun was down and twilight was fading, the citizens went in to supper, and a crew of laborers brought a small wheeled stage into the square, leveled it, and then set up a variety of unpleasant paraphernalia on it. There was a tall iron frame, well supplied with straps and chains and hooks, a coffin-shaped box, a long table with dark stains dried on its edges.

Ruiz felt a chill, and found himself no longer bored.

When darkness completely covered the town and the air had grown colder, a rank of torches was lit behind the stage. Peering from a crack in his cage, Ruiz saw the citizens of Stegatum gathering for the night’s entertainment. The square was filling up; presumably the peasants of the outlying districts had heard about the execution, for there seemed to be many more folk present than lived in the town. The spectators crowded close about Ruiz’s cage, and several adolescent boys climbed to the top of the cage, where their hobnailed boots created a splashing din. Apparently he was to be ignored, for the present.

When the square was almost full, a steam chariot arrived, somewhat larger and fancier than the one that had fetched Ruiz to the keep. The crowd became very quiet. The chariot parked before the stage, and its midsection cantilevered open to reveal Lord Brinslevos, lying on a luxurious couch, with a fur coverlet pulled up to his chin. The Lord seemed pale and tense. After a moment, he raised his arm and made a peremptory gesture. “Begin,” he said, in a weak voice. He looked once toward Ruiz’s cage, and Ruiz thought he saw as much puzzlement as anger in the Lord’s glance.

The Lord’s conjuror, who wore robes of inky black, appeared on the platform, and the torches grew brighter. “Citizens of Stegatum,” he said, in a well trained voice. “Welcome to this Expiation and Exemplification.” He bowed with a flourish. “Bring us the subject!”

Two soldiers in black livery opened Rontleses’ cage and dragged him out. He had fared less well than Ruiz during the heat of the day; his legs would not at first support him, and his eyes stared blindly, without comprehension. When one soldier offered him a drink from a leather cup, he clutched at it, drained it in two gulps.

Just outside his cage, Ruiz heard a chuckle of quiet satisfaction from a person he could not see. The person whispered, “He’s too mad with thirst to refuse the philter, which will make him docile and at the same time abrade his nerves, so that he feels each agony more intensely. Ha, ha, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving man.”

Ruiz shifted to another crevice, and now he could see in profile the pleasant features of Relia, resident doxy at the Denklar Lodge. She turned to glance toward him, and said, “Are you in there, Wuhiya? I think I see the gleam of your eye.”

“Yes,” he answered. “I’m here.”

She shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry to see you. You seemed a decent sort, for an oil man. What possessed you to give the Lord bad oil?”

“I don’t know….”

A short silence passed, during which the soldiers half-carried Rontleses onto the stage. They secured his naked body to the iron frame, and he seemed to recover some of his self-awareness, glaring with burning eyes at the crowd, and the Lord.

Relia sighed. “Later I’ll try to bring you a water reed, so you can defy the philterer when your turn comes tomorrow night.”

“Thank you,” he said, but she had moved away from the cage. A compassionate woman, Relia the doxy, he thought — but he hoped he’d be gone before she brought him the water.

The performance began, and Ruiz watched with morbid interest.

First the conjuror warmed up the crowd with a series of small tricks, humiliating and painful, but not yet mutilating. He pretended to squeeze the coercer’s head, and brown vapor seemed to jet from the victim’s ears. He appeared to discover several large venomous insects here and there about the coercer’s body, which the conjuror retrieved fastidiously with tongs, though not before they had bitten Rontleses painfully, so that the victim shrieked and writhed with astonishing energy. Then, from Rontleses’ straining month, he began to pull a shiny pink egg, which proved a bit too large to extract. He dithered over the problem with the egg half-protruding from the victim’s face. Rontleses turned first red and then blue, when the conjuror pinched his nostrils together, ostensibly to get a better grip on his face. Eventually, the performer tapped the egg with his wand, and it hatched into a greasy cluster of white segmented worms — some dripped off and some seemed to wriggle down Rontleses’ throat. Rontleses coughed out worms and drew a great shuddering breath. His face had already changed, in some basic way, so that he seemed a different man entirely.

Ruiz felt sick to his stomach, but he couldn’t turn away.

The first major episode of Rontleses’ Expiation began. The conjuror flung a thin white silk over the former coercer, who sagged in the middle of the frame, apparently exhausted by the preliminaries. The folds of the silk settled over the victim like fog, and by some trick of arrangement, seemed no longer to be hiding a human shape, but something monstrous, something pregnant with ugliness. The torches guttered low for an instant, motion rippled the silk — then the conjuror whipped it away.

Rontleses had suffered a terrible metamorphosis and now resembled a huge spider with a half-human face. By some means, the ligaments of his legs had been stretched or severed to allow his legs to be twisted up behind his head and over his shoulder. His toes pointed downward in an unnatural manner; they jiggled feebly, and his arms waved spastically from beneath his buttocks. Four artificial limbs had been attached to his abdomen; these flipped about with more energy than his natural limbs, and after a moment Ruiz saw that they were animated by snakes held within the pale leather tubes. The reptiles struck at each other, and at Rontleses’ flesh, with indiscriminate enthusiasm.

Rontleses could not scream, apparently because the spider mask he now wore over his lower face also functioned as a gag. But his eyes were wild with pain, and he jerked his head violently to and fro, adding to the theatrical impact of his new form.

The conjuror bowed low to Lord Brinslevos. “Thus do we see the Expiant in his true shape, an insect who would sting his Lord’s hand.”

The Expiation proceeded.

The conjuror poured onto Rontleses’ body a hundred insects, which burrowed into the victim’s skin and disappeared, until the conjuror clapped his hands and shouted an arcane word, whereupon the insects emerged and flew away. The exit wounds formed a bright red message in the angular Pharaohan script. It seemed to be an apology, but it was legible only for an instant, before the blood ran down Rontleses’ torso and blurred the letters.

An intermission ensued, while the conjuror treated the victim for shock and stanched the blood.

When the Expiation resumed, the former coercer hardly seemed human, except for his eyes, which now appeared to view the world with as much bewilderment as pain. He hung from his frame and accepted the further indignities inflicted upon him with more docility than his executioner considered proper. Fire was employed, and knives, and various irritant venoms, and once again Rontleses writhed with as much vigor as his broken body allowed. Clever barbarities were enacted upon him, for perhaps another half hour.

In the end, Ruiz could no longer stand to watch, and so missed the moment of Rontleses’ death, which was marked by a silence from the crowd. The silence seemed so portentous that he stood and, peering from his cage, witnessed the finale.

The corpse of Rontleses sat up in its coffin and pointed a pallid finger in Ruiz’s direction.

Its mouth dropped open and then moved with a fair semblance of life. “Wuhiya the snake oil man is to blame,” the corpse shouted, in a metallic buzzing voice that seemed entirely appropriate to its speaker. “Wuhiya has killed me, but he’ll commit no more mischief.” Its dead lips pulled back from its broken teeth in a grim parody of a smile. “Ha, ha.”

Ruiz wondered what sort of apparatus animated the corpse, and whose voice issued from the torn lips. The eyes were dull, and looked in slightly different directions; that was the weakest part of the illusion, in Ruiz’s opinion.

“Wuhiya plotted to destroy my Lord, from jealousy and madness, and he clouded my mind with his poisons, so that I failed my duty, and deserve no less than I’ve received. But I have my Lord’s forgiveness, and I go now to the Land of Reward without regret.” The corpse dropped its quivering finger, inclined its head respectfully toward Lord Brinslevos, and then fell back into its coffin.

The show was over. A murmur of disappointment ran through the crowd, and someone spoke close at hand. “The Lord was easy with Rontleses. Too bad; he deserved far worse, and now the oil peddler will suffer in his stead.”

Ruiz shuddered. If he had just witnessed leniency, of what did harshness consist? The datasoak had glossed over some of the particulars of Pharaohan criminal justice; so much was certain. He felt the death net tug at his life, a bit more strongly than before, and for an instant he was almost tempted to give in and spare himself even the possibility, even the contemplation of such pain, such degradation. But then he shook himself and took a firmer grip on his unruly emotions.

Denklar will be here soon, he told himself, and forced himself to believe it.