Wellspring of Chaos

IX

There was a low groan, then another. After a time, Kharl realized that he was the one groaning. He closed his mouth, and the sound stopped. Around him was darkness. Underneath him was something hard-very hard, slimy, and damp. His head was pounding. He levered one hand under him, then the other. His hand slipped, and he tried again. It took him more tries than he could count to get into a sitting position.

He put his hand to the back of his head, gently, wincing as his fingers touched the huge lump there. As he lowered his hand, in the dimness that was like night, he could barely make out the dark substance on his fingertips-blood.

His eyes took in the area around him. He was in a small, stone-walled chamber with a heavy door that had but the smallest peephole, through which a faint glow of light seeped, so little that he could not tell whether it was day or night.

“What you in here for?”

Kharl turned his head quickly, and more pain lanced through his skull. The words came from a figure sitting propped against the outside stone wall.

“They say I killed someone. I didn’t.”

“That’s what everyone says.” The shadowy figure cackled. “None of us did nothin’, we didn’t, and some of us didn’t.”

Kharl started to respond, but then winced as pain stabbed through his skull.

“Don’t matter what you did. Justicer’s going to say you did, ’less he finds someone else who did. That doesn’t happen much.”

Kharl eased himself across the damp and slimy stone floor to the other side of the cell, leaning back gingerly, careful not to bang his head against the rough wall stones.

“You don’t look like an assassin or a docker,” offered the other man.

“I’m a cooper.” Kharl took a deeper breath and wished he had not. The air was rank with the odors of unwashed bodies, filth, and worse.

“Cooper, huh. You a good cooper?”

“I thought so.”

“Why’d you kill someone, risk losing all that?”

“I didn’t,” Kharl said tiredly. “My neighbor’s shop caught on fire. I was fighting the fire, and someone cut the throat of one of those blackstaffers in my shop.”

“Ha! They’ll hang you quick as they can. Lord West, he don’t want to tell the black demons that the murderer got away. Don’t want them shelling Brysta. No, ser. That he don’t. Hang anyone he can to stop that.”

Kharl could see the truth in what the other had said. But what could he do? “They don’t let anyone see you here?”

“You jesting? Won’t see anyone till you go before the justicer. That’d be Reynol, ’cause he hangs everyone, and that’s what they’ll want. Four sentences-that’s all they got. Flogging, time in the quarries, cut off a hand or foot or both, or hang you. You, they’ll hang. Don’t matter you did it or not.”

“You’re cheerful.” Kharl swallowed.

“Yep. Cheerful Kaj, that’s what they call me.”

“What about you? Why are you here?”

“Me? I called that pigswill Egen a bawdson.”

“For that, you’re in here?”

“Lucky to be alive. Egen’s Lord West’s youngest, captain in the Watch. Likes girls, young girls. Didn’t know he was watchin’…said he wasn’t man enough to handle a real woman. Whole tavern laughed. Didn’t say nothing. When I came out later, his men were waitin’…and here I am.”

Kharl had the sinking feeling that Egen and the young swell who’d attacked Sanyle and Jenevra were the same man. There were too many coincidences…far too many.

He could feel himself beginning to sweat, and with the nausea he was feeling intermittently, he wondered if he could hold his guts in.

“Egen…real pissprick…and his daddy just looks the other way…”

That didn’t surprise Kharl.