Dragon Blood (Hurog #2)(29)

Without speaking to her confederate, Tisala turned left and entered a small room filled with buckets and mops, and grabbed one of each. Then she moved back into the hall to stand in the silent line that waited to fill their buckets.

Not that the hall itself was silent. Shrieks and groans echoed wildly from behind the barred doors. Eventually, Tisala knew, she would even get used to that. But always, the first few minutes of it were difficult. She wanted to plug her ears, but that would draw attention. At last she filled her bucket at the stone font that was full of something Jakoven's wizards had brewed up. There was nothing magic about it, herbs and alcohol mostly, or so she'd been told.

The guard who was in charge of the cleaners gave her the cell numbers she'd expected as he always did. She didn't know if he was one of the rebels or if it was some little trick of Rosem's, and she didn't ask.

She trudged through the next set of doors with her bucket and mop and shuffled through the maze of halls. She'd memorized a map before the very first time she'd come here, and now she didn't even have to count hallways. She didn't pause when she passed the dead-bolted doors leading into the mage's wing where Ward must be, though she wanted to. That wasn't her assignment today.

At long last she stopped in front of the solid door of a cell that looked just like the one next to it, except for the number over the door. Setting her bucket down, she pushed the bar up out of its cups. Several doors from her, a guard watched. As long as she didn't scream, or the patient didn't barrel out of the door, he wouldn't interfere.

She left her mop beside the bucket and got a flimsy wooden hay rake down from the wall in the hallway and entered the cell. The little room had nothing a patient could hurt himself on, but that was the only resemblance between it and the "show" cells near the entrance. The floor was strewn with straw rather than carpets. A hard wooden bench was attached to the wall. It was, barely, wide enough to sleep on if the patient were careful. There was no discreet chamber pot under the bed here.

Tisala, her nose already hardened to the smell of the Asylum, raked out the foul hay. She found little difference between this and mucking out stalls - though she knew that the man who lay on the bench with his back to her didn't feel the same way. Rosem made certain that everyone who came to visit this cell knew how this inmate felt, and behaved accordingly.

She did a good job, piling the soiled hay in the center of the hallway, where she or another cleaner would collect it later. That done, she took her mop and bucket and shut the door behind her while she wiped down the floors. She heard the dull thud as the guard barred the door, sealing her in.

The man didn't stir, so she started to scrub the floor, ridding the room of the smell of human waste. Finally he sat up, but she didn't stop cleaning until he spoke.

"Tisala, I was glad to hear that you weren't dead."

She put the mop down and dropped to her knees before the bedraggled, rag-clothed, painfully thin man who sat cross-legged on the bench.

"Your majesty." This man was the truth of the rebellion. It was Jakoven's younger brother, Kellen, whom Alizon worked to put on the throne.

Though he was sitting, she knew from previous visits that he was half a head shorter than she, and in better times his build would have been stocky. Her father would have said "built like a wall." His hair was curly and dark with a light frosting of gray. He was barely twenty-six. He'd been fifteen when his much older brother had incarcerated him in the Asylum.

The public story was that Kellen had been struck by a mysterious illness. Although he recovered physically, the pain had driven him mad. Jakoven built the Asylum for his brother, a peaceful resting place where the aristocracy could safely stow their unwanted members. For the past decade Kellen had been in this cell - but some people had not forgotten him.

Kellen had once told her that one of Jakoven's wizards had gone to Menogue and received a vision that if the king killed his brother, Jakoven himself would die a hideous, painful death. So when the king decided having a charismatic younger brother was too unsettling, he created the Asylum.

"Tisala," said Kellen again. "Rosem told me you were taken by my brother?"

It was not really a question, but she told him her story, including as many questions the torturer had asked as she could. She told him why she'd run to Ward of Hurog - not just the danger to Beckram, but the more personal reasons as well. When she was finished, he was quiet. She waited patiently.

"You appear well." It wasn't a casual comment, the years in the Asylum had made him distrust most people.

"Sire, the Hurogmeten has a wizard skilled in healing. Though he could not repair all the damage, the healer's work seems to have hastened my recovery." She showed him her hands with the nails partially regrown and turned her left hand so he could see the ugly new scar tissue.

He smiled his rare smile. In all the times he'd called her here, she'd only seen him smile once or twice. "So there is still magic in Hurog. I was told it was so, but I am glad to hear of it. We have need of all the magic we can."

"Sire, Ward is not sworn to your cause." It hurt to make the warning, but it was her duty not to mislead him.

"I know, Tisala, but Jakoven will take care of that for us - if his killing of Erdrick has not already done so." He paused. "I rather liked Erdrick, you know. But Ward ... " Kellen shook his head, eyes lost in the shadows. "Who would have thought that his stupidity was feigned? I knew him before his father ruined him - I would not have though he had a duplicitous bone in his body."