Tahal was sulking.
I gave him his due. He'd been keen enough to fight, coming up off the cot as I took two quick steps toward him, but the first kick in the face had smacked the back of his head against the wall and that had taken the fight out of him. It had been more or less a one way beating after that. I felt bad about it, but not very. I'd made sure he wouldn't drown in his own blood and then made myself comfortable on the other cot.
When he woke up he lay on the cot glaring at me, nose broken and eyes blackened. “Bastard,” he's muttered at last, the epithet mumbled through swollen lips.
“Best remember that and keep the insults to a minimum,” I'd told him.
After a very long silence, during which I stared at the door and tried to think, he said something else that I didn't catch.
“What?” I asked.
“Is that a stone in your forehead?”
I nodded. I had also been toying with the ten carat stone that was still on my finger and that Tahal had obviously not seen. I knew that Sheo would not have overlooked it, would not have left me with it by accident. I just nodded absently and he was quiet for a while, evidently thinking.
“You don't have any magic do you?” It was an accusation, tone rising in surprised mockery.
“None worth talking about.”
He snorted, then winced in pain. “Typical.”
“Shut up,” I told him absently. I was trying to think.
He was silent for a good while but couldn't let it go.
“I do. Let me attune it and I can get us out of here.”
I thought about it. It wasn't easy to think, as hung over as I was. The dogs had begun to bay some time ago, picking up my scent as I sobered. I could almost feel them getting closer, slowly getting louder. “I don't think that's a good idea.”
“Oh no,” he muttered. “Far better to stay and rot in here.”
“You tried to escape then?”
He didn't answer until I looked at him grimly and made to move.
“Yes, yes, I tried.” He sounded angry to cover his fear of me. He was in no shape to go another round and knew I had it in me to beat him bloody. “I pretended to change allegiance,” he sighed, deciding he had better explain and not knowing where to start. “There is a necromancer,” he began patiently.
“Kukran Epthel, “ I nodded.
“No. Ishal Laharek. He…” Tahal hesitated, deciding how much to tell.
“Tortured? Intimidated?”
He sighed, expression falling into tired and bitter lines. “Tried to persuade me to join his cause. Kept hammering on about freedom, the evils of the city, slavery, how he and his would put us down and make a new free society in our place. As if any society could be more free!”
He paused and I supplied a nod of agreement, though my ideas were doubtless a little better conceived than his.
“There were other persuasions. Examples of what other ways I might serve. I pretended to relent. I was afforded some measure of freedom until I tried to escape; yesterday I think, or the day before, it's hard to tell time in here.”
“What did he have you do?”
He frowned at me. “Write letters. Try and gain support for the cause among the knights. Give false information to the patrons. I doubt anyone paid much attention to them. I worded them carefully.”
I nodded. I knew what he meant. Our grammar is a little complex and the language subtle. One clue at the end of a letter would let you read it and interpret everything anew, gaining a whole new meaning.
“And?”
“Information. I told him a lot of truth, some of which will lead them to underestimate us. Numbers of our army, and so forth.”
I nodded again. The truth is that we have an army of four legions, and right now they were far away and engaged in another war. The fact that we could raise armies quickly was another matter.
“You did okay,” I told him.
His face twisted in contempt. He didn't need or want my approval. Or anyone's. He was a patron of the city. No further vindication was needed.
I let it pass and ignored him for a while, listening to the dogs baying in my head. I had really gained only one thing from what he had told me. There were more Necromancers.
“Is he a lich?”
“What? Who?”
“Never mind,” I told him.
So, Ishal Laharek was not a walking corpse like Kukran Epthel. Not so advanced in the hierarchy? How many where they? How dangerous was Ishal? Had he acquired that mode of thought, that inertia which colored Kukran's actions? Why was I thinking about this? Because Sheo had left me with a ten carat stone, that's why. He had a plan, and I didn't doubt that in some way I was part of it. Or perhaps he just left me with a way out, with Tahal's help.
“How much magic do you have?” I asked him. “What spells?”
He glared at the stone in my forehead and I glared back. “Just tell me,” I threatened.
So he did.