‘Because, not only do I have more money than you, Invigilator, I am-unlike you-entirely indifferent regarding who ends up owning it. Hand me over, by all means, sir. And watch me buy my life.’
Karos Invictad stared at the man.
Tehol wagged a broken finger. ‘People with no sense or appreciation of humour, Invigilator, always take money too seriously. Its possession, anyway. Which is why they spend all their time stacking coins, counting this and that, gazing lovingly over their hoards and so on. They’re compensating for the abject penury everywhere else in their lives. Nice rings, by the way.’
Karos forced himself to remain calm in the face of such overt insults. ‘I said I was thinking of handing you over. Alas, you have just given me reason not to. So, you assure your own Drowning come the morrow. Satisfied?’
‘Well, if my satisfaction is essential, then might I suggest-’
‘Enough, Tehol Beddict. You no longer interest me.’
‘Good, can I go now?’
‘Yes.’ Karos rose, tapping the sceptre onto one shoulder. ‘And I, alas, must needs escort you.’
‘Good help is hard to keep alive these days.’
‘Stand up, Tehol Beddict.’
The man had some difficulty following that instruction, but the Invigilator waited, having learned to be patient with such things.
As soon as Tehol fully straightened, however, a look of astonishment lit his features. ‘Why, it’s a two-headed insect! Going round and round!’
‘To the door now,’ Karos said.
‘What’s the challenge?’
‘It is pointless-’
‘Oh now, really, Invigilator. You claim to be smarter than me, and I’m about to die-1 like puzzles. I design them, in fact. Very difficult puzzles.’
‘You are lying. I know all the designers and you do not number among them.’
‘Well, all right. I designed just one.’
‘Too bad, then, you will be unable to offer it to me, for my momentary pleasure, since you are now returning to your cell.’
‘That’s all right,’ Tehol replied. ‘It was more of a joke than a puzzle, anyway.’
Karos Invictad grimaced, then waved Tehol towards the door with the sceptre.
As he slowly shuffled over, Tehol said, ‘I figured out the challenge, anyway. It’s to make the bug stop going round and round.’
The Invigilator blocked him with the sceptre. ‘I told you, there is no solution.’
‘I think there is. I think I know it, in fact. Tell you what, sir. I solve that puzzle there on your desk and you postpone my Drowning. Say, by forty years or so.’
‘Agreed. Because you cannot.’ He watched Tehol Beddict walk like an old man over to the desk. Then lean over. ‘You cannot touch the insect!’
‘Of course,’ Tehol replied. And leaned yet farther over, lowering his face towards the box.
Karos Invictad hurried forward to stand beside him. ‘Do not touch!’
‘I won’t.’
‘The tiles can be rearranged, but I assure you-’
‘No need to rearrange the tiles.’
Karos Invictad found his heart pounding hard in his chest. ‘You are wasting more of my time.’
‘No, I’m putting an end to your wasting your time, sir.’ He paused, cocked his head. ‘Probably a mistake. Oh well.’
And lowered his face down directly over the box, then gusted a sharp breath against one of the tiles. Momentarily clouding it. And the insect, with one of its heads facing that suddenly opaque, suddenly non-reflective surface, simply stopped. Reached up a leg and scratched its abdomen. As the mist cleared on the tile, it scratched once more, then resumed its circling.
Tehol straightened. ‘I’m free! Free!’
Karos Invictad could not speak for ten, fifteen heartbeats. His chest was suddenly tight, sweat beading on his skin, then he said in a rasp, ‘Don’t be a fool.’
‘You lied? Oh, I can’t believe how you lied to me! Well then, piss on you and your pissy stupid puzzle, too!’
The Invigilator’s sceptre swept in an arc, intersecting with that box on the desk, shattering it, sending its wreckage flying across the room. The insect struck a wall and stayed there, then it began climbing towards the ceiling.
‘Run!’ whispered Tehol Beddict. ‘Run!’
The sceptre swung next into Tehol’s chest, snapping ribs.
‘Pull the chain tighter on my ankles,’ Janath said. ‘Force my legs wider.’
‘You enjoy being helpless, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Yes!’
Smiling, Tanal Yathvanar knelt at the side of the bed.
The chain beneath ran through holes in the bed frame at each corner. Pins held the lengths in place. To tighten the ones snaring her ankles all he needed to do was pull a pin on each side at the foot of the bed, drawing the chain down as far as he could, and, as he listened to her moans, replace the pins.
Then he rose and sat down on the edge of the bed. Stared down at her. Naked, most of the bruises fading since he no longer liked hurting her. A beautiful body indeed, getting thinner which he preferred in his women. He reached out, then drew his hand away again. He didn’t like any touching until he was ready. She moaned a second time, arching her back.
Tanal Yathvanar undressed. Then he crawled up onto the bed, loomed over her with his knees between her legs, his hands pressing down on the mattress to either side of her chest.
He saw how the manacles had torn at her wrists. He would need to treat that-those wounds were looking much worse.
Slowly, Tanal settled onto her body, felt her shiver beneath him as he slid smoothly inside. So easy, so welcoming. She groaned, and, studying her face, he said, ‘Do you want me to kiss you now?’
‘Yes!’
And he brought his head down as he made his first deep thrust.
Janath, once eminent scholar, had found in herself a beast, prodded awake as if from a slumber of centuries, perhaps millennia. A beast that understood captivity, that understood that, sometimes, what needed doing entailed excruciating pain.
Beneath the manacles on her wrists, mostly hidden by scabs, blood and torn shreds of skin, the very bones had been worn down, chipped, cracked. By constant, savage tugging. Animal rhythm, blind to all else, deaf to every scream of her nerves. Tugging, and tugging.
Until the pins beneath the frame began to bend. Ever so slowly, bending, the wood holes chewed into, the pins bending, gouging through the holes.
And now, with the extra length of chain that came when Tanal Yathvanar had reset the pins at the foot of the bed frame, she had enough slack.
To reach with her left hand and grasp a clutch of his hair. To push his head to the right, where she had, in a clattering blur, brought most of the length of the chain through the hole, enough to wrap round his neck and then twist her hand down under and then over; and in sudden, excruciating determination, she pulled her left arm up, higher and higher with that arm-the manacle and her right wrist pinned to the frame, tugged down as far as it could go.
He thrashed, sought to dig his fingers under the chain, and she reached ever harder, her face brushing his own, her eyes seeing the sudden blue hue of his skin, his bulging eyes and jutting tongue.
He could have beaten against her. He could have driven his thumbs into her eyes. He could probably have killed her in time to survive all of this. But she had waited for his breath to release, which ever came at the moment he pushed in his first thrust. That breath, that she had heard a hundred times now, close to her ear, as he made
