Out of the Darkness

Numbly, Talsu went where they took him. If he’d done anything else, something dreadful would have happened to him. He was sure of that. Donalitu’s men had no reputation for restraint. They didn’t lead him in the direction of the constabulary station, which surprised him enough to make him ask, “Where are we going?” He added, “I really haven’t done anything,” not that he thought it would do him any good.

And it didn’t. “Shut up,” one of them said.

“You’ll find out where,” the other told him.

He did, too, when they marched him into the ley-line caravan depot. He wondered how they would keep things quiet and discreet in an ordinary caravan car. But, being servitors of the king, they didn’t have to worry about ordinary cars. They had a special laid on just for them-and him. He would gladly have done without the honor.

“What about my family?” he howled as the car-which had bars across the windows and sorcerous locks on the door-rolled out of Skrunda, heading southeast.

“Can’t pin anything on ‘em yet,” one of the men who’d seized him said. That wasn’t what Talsu meant, nor anything close to it, but he didn’t try to make himself any clearer. He’d caught the unmistakable regret in the fellow’s voice.

The other man said, “You want to confess now and make it easy on everybody?”

Everybody but me, Talsu thought. Of course, they didn’t care about him. He said, “How can I confess when I haven’t done anything?”

“Happens all the time,” the fellow answered.

Talsu believed that. He’d spent time in a dungeon before. “How can you arrest me for treason when the cursed redheads arrested me for treason?” he demanded.

“Happens all the time,” Donalitu’s bully boy said again. “Some people have treason in their blood.” While Talsu was still spluttering over that, he went on, “Turn out your pockets. Everything that’s in ‘em. You leave anything at all behind, you’ll be sorry-you can bet your arse on that.” He shoved a tray at Talsu.

Having no choice, Talsu obeyed. King Donalitu’s men examined everything with great care, especially the coins he set on the tray. Talsu let out a silent sigh of relief that he’d got Mindaugu to take back the silverpiece with Mainardo’s Algarvian visage on it. These whoresons could have made a treason case from it without any other evidence. What difference does it make, though? he thought bitterly. They can make a treason case from no evidence at all.

Late in the afternoon, the ley-line caravan car glided to a halt. “Come on,” one of Talsu’s captors said. The other one murmured the charm that opened the door. The dungeon lay right by the ley line, out in the middle of nowhere. Talsu hadn’t expected anything else. These whoresons wouldn’t want to walk very far once they got out of the car.

Guards searched Talsu as soon as he got into the dungeon. They found nothing; the fellows who’d seized him had got it all. But they had their jobs, too, and did them. Then they threw him in a cramped little cell that held nothing but a bucket and a straw pallet. He sighed. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been through this before.

I have to be ready for the first interrogation, he thought. They ‘II let me get hungry first-he was hungry already-and they’ll probably wake me up so I’ll be all muzzy. But I have to be ready. They’ll want to break me right then and there. If I break, I’m theirs. I can’t give in.

He made himself as comfortable as he could, and waited. A cart rattled down the corridors. Suppers, Talsu thought; he knew the sound of that cart. It didn’t stop at his cell. He sighed, disappointed but not surprised.

After darkness fell, he stretched out on the musty pallet. His growling belly kept him awake for a while, but not for too long. His dreams were nasty and confused.

The door flew open with a crash. A bright light blazed into his eyes. Two guards grabbed him and hauled him to his feet. “Come on, you!” one of them shouted. Talsu went. Had he not gone, the guards would have beaten him and then dragged him where they wanted him to go. They might-they probably would- beat him later. He was willing to put off the evil moment as long as he could.

But when they took him into the interrogation chamber, he let out a cry of horror and dismay even before they slammed him down onto a hard, backless stool. The Jelgavan major on the other side of the desk greeted him with a smile. “Hello, Talsu son of Traku,” he said. “You remember me, I see.”