Retribution (Drakenfeld 2) (49 page)

The lengths people would go to in order to extend their lives.

I pushed for names. In the heat of the moment, I felt I had no reservations about inflicting any torture upon them – there was no civilization out here, and all my standard rules were irrelevant. However, the threat of Leana’s blade was enough with these dejected men.

The names came forth.

Lydia Marinus. Grendor of the Cape. Bishop Tahn Valin. The Kahn brothers. They had all been part of the scheme. They were all abusing children and using them for material and metaphysical gain. But there were far more names. Presumably the killers could not have known them all and had murdered those they could get to. Other individuals involved in this island’s despicable operation might have tried hard to keep their influence to a minimum. Either way these names would be issued to Sulma Tan and the queen. Their investigation would have to continue into the furthest reaches of their culture.

The operation existed to harvest the mineral known by several names. Evumite. Redstone. Bloodstone. Life-giver. There were local names, too. This, combined with some of the strange word-hybrids in their syntax, indicated that people had been isolated here for so long that their language had evolved. I had no doubt that those in charge of the operation would have gone to any lengths to keep the workers here for ever. It would have been too much of a risk to take them back to the mainland.

Evumite, they claimed, was able to extend life and grant special powers at times; when pressed on what these powers were, they could not say. As they spoke I wondered if such powers had been the reason why the bodies of those murdered on the mainland had stirred in some way – that there was still some strange form of life within them.

The precious mineral was available in incredibly rare quantities, located in isolated pockets buried deep underground. Very little ever made it to the mainland. Everyone who worked here, who was no longer a child, and who had proved themselves during five years of service, was permitted a small lump of evumite as payment for their trouble. A charitable gesture, the captives claimed. The longer those people served, the more evumite they might be given. The man I thought was in his fifties said he was eighty-four years old and had worked here since he was eleven.

Children had been shipped to the island simply to work the mines. They were small enough to fit through the tiny tunnels that formed a vast system underground. Those who made it to adulthood were either disappeared or employed to inflict torture on others. Evumite was so difficult to find that the operation perhaps produced a fistful a year at first, but the more sacrifices that were made, the more successful the mines had become. These offerings to the gods, no matter how shocking, were
working
according to the needs of the island. The captives before me could not even contemplate that the success might have been purely coincidental.

What happened on Evum was not just the workings of the ancient cult of Hymound, as I had first thought. It was also a self-sustaining business operation organized by some of the wealthiest people in Koton – largely traditionalists and people who secretly worshipped the old gods. Money and donations came to fund it in exchange for evumite, and the chance to live forever. Lydia Marinus had been the backbone of the operation, donating a great deal of mining equipment.

Sulma Tan was shocked as she read the names I had taken down, and confirmed their position high up in Kotonese society. She had no doubt the queen would want them purged. We could only speculate on how many of these stones had made their way throughout Vispasia over the years.

Later I sat slumped against a wall as grasses stirred in the breeze and the evening sun began to fade from the skies. In the distance was the sound of the sea, calming and rhythmic. Leana remained quietly beside me, neither of us wanting to engage in much conversation. For the first time in weeks I felt at peace, though I suspected I was in some state of disbelief, or simply too numb to process what I had seen.

‘We like to think we’re not primitive people, we Kotonese,’ one soldier remarked to me as he passed by, ‘but look at us. We still use human blood for pleasing the gods. We’re still barbarians.’ His crestfallen expression, which was shared by others here, suggested that they felt the burden of the discovery. It had been a betrayal of their own nation, of everything they had stood for. He reached under the neckline of his tunic and produced a Nastran symbol upon a chain. ‘Don’t think bad of us, sir. Not everyone worships Hymound.’

A simple nod, thin-lipped, was all I could muster as he walked away. Contemplating the legality of the matter, I began to pen an urgent missive to the Sun Chamber in Free State, which I would deliver as soon as we were back on the mainland.

Such practices as human sacrifice had been outlawed at the creation of the Vispasian Royal Union, two centuries ago. Indeed, it was written into the constitution of each member nation and, for as long as anyone could remember, only animals could be used in blood offerings on altars across the continent.

Children, though.

Not just humans, but lives terminated before they had the chance to blossom into something great.

As I questioned the men, soldiers continued to round up prisoners from various pockets of the island. I saw them returning with more figures chained in a line, their hands raised above their heads. At first I felt that these could be interrogated in the morning, but something struck me as odd, so I walked over to meet them.

‘Where are the children?’ I demanded of the soldiers. ‘They couldn’t have all been burned.’

‘We’ve not found any, sir,’ one replied. Behind him the line of prisoners was being marched to the side of the building alongside the others. ‘This lot said they’ve all been put down. Burnt.’

‘They’re lying. Go back and find them.’

‘It’s getting dark, sir. An hour of light left at the most.’

‘Go back,’ I repeated. ‘Take torches to light and go back. Search every building on the island. Go underground – that’s where some of them will be. We’re not leaving this island until we have secured their freedom. They’ve suffered long enough. Any survivors will be taken back to the mainland.’

He stared at me blankly.

‘Do it!’

‘Sir.’

Dispiritedly, they reorganized themselves. After hearing me, another eight men volunteered their services and a moment later they all marched off with unlit torches.

Back in our makeshift camp, someone had lit a large fire away from the prisoners. The smell of cooking drifted towards me and I trudged over to the others without much of an appetite.

‘Do you honestly think they will find any of them?’ Sulma Tan asked, rising to greet me.

‘I do not think anything,’ I replied. ‘This is simply the right thing to do. For far too long on this island there has been a shortage of this sentiment.’

Glowing in the light of the fire, her tired, worn gaze met my own. Respectfully, she added, ‘I am not so sure I could be in the Sun Chamber, if this is what you have to deal with all the time.’

‘It isn’t always this bad.’

‘I am horrified,’ she said. ‘The queen will be horrified, too. Everything she has been trying to build in her country has been undermined by the people closest to her. This is not how it was meant to be.’

‘Then the queen needs to choose better friends in future,’ was all I could manage in response.

Twenty-three children came with us on the journey back to the mainland.

Just twenty-three.

There may well have been more survivors and I prayed to Polla that those children were able to tap some hitherto undiscovered vein of evumite in order to stay alive. It might prolong their existence just a little longer, enough to keep them going until another force could be sent to investigate the operations on the island thoroughly.

We made sure the rescued children were fed well. They were, understandably, very silent and unwilling to say much, no matter what language I tried. Aboard the other two ships we kept our prisoners in chains below deck, feeding them meagre rations for the day – which was, probably, more than they would receive when we got back to the palace gaols.

Now that the investigation had been concluded, I used the opportunity to write down my discoveries in full so that I could present them to the queen and send an urgent messenger to brief the Sun Chamber on the entire affair.

It had been a curious journey from discovering the severed and discarded pieces of Bishop Tahn Valin, before finding Grendor of the Cape, Lydia Marinus and Tagg and Meruwa Drennar – highly influential people within the nation – dead in a public place, their bodies dumped. Originally it had looked like their lives were not connected but all of them were, in fact, bound together by this vile operation.

I thought again of those who had committed the murders, who had been victims and had escaped, bided their time, and taken revenge when the opportunity came. If I had gone through the experiences they had endured, if I had suffered the same daily privations as them – being made to crawl through tunnels, being beaten and worse – would I have been able to let those experiences go?

Murder was murder, however, no matter how justifiable. To remove a life from this world is the decision of the gods, and the gods only.

For now, though, the difficult choice of what to do with these people was not mine to make. All I could do was simply inform the rulers and lawmakers of what had gone on, and let them come to their own conclusions, no matter how uncomfortable they were. It was for nation states to enforce their own justice, and not the will of the Sun Chamber.

We were meant to sift through the debris and present the case as we saw it. Should we operate any differently, should we demand that nations behave in a certain way then that would create a very different Vispasia, one not too far removed from being an empire. That was not what the Sun Chamber was about. Besides, it was unlikely that any royal would want to submit to a higher authority – other than their gods.

During the afternoon I leaned over the balustrade observing the distance, lost in my own thoughts, my cloak flapping in the breeze. Leana approached me with her welcoming insouciance, her boots heavy on the deck.

‘No sickness still?’ she asked.

‘None.’

‘No seizures?’

‘Nothing for many days now.’

‘This evumite – you claimed it had properties. This whole mining operation has claimed that too. The reason for our being here is based on the realization that this rock has properties.’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Spirits save me. You have not taken the ring out of your pocket since you realized what it could do. It obviously helps you. Will you keep it?’

It was true that I had recovered swiftly from my injuries when I had been beaten, and that my seizures and sickness were no longer a concern. There was no denying that owning such a thing would enhance my life in numerous ways. Not only would my seizures be a thing of the past, but my work might improve if I could recover from the unavoidable skirmishes that came from being an Officer of the Sun Chamber.

‘It could,’ she added, ‘make both our lives a lot more simple, could it not?’

‘If I
take
this for my own gain, Leana, then am I any better than those men and women who made children suffer in dark tunnels, simply to enhance the pleasure of their own existence?’

‘We cannot know if it was pleasure. The people who owned it had much to gain by remaining alive – land and wealth and status. Therefore they had much to lose in death.’

‘Either way, this stone has the blood of children all over it. It has the history of an operation that is unspeakably sinister, that has destroyed the lives of the most innocent of our world.’

‘You are still stupid if you do not take it. Your life was a challenge with your seizures and now it is not.’

‘That may be so. However, we managed to cope with the problem, more or less. If my seizures have gone away, then more problems will come to fill in the void and occupy my mind. But the issue remains that the stones are not only evidence in this case, but it would be improper if I left here with one in my pocket. It would be a theft – not only of a trinket, but my morals would forever be gone.’

I expected more admonishment from Leana, but none came. Instead she nodded. ‘Good. I expected you would say that, so I am pleased that you have not disappointed me.’

‘Nice to know that you’re checking up on me.’

‘You are not the only one who understands morals,’ she replied. ‘I have read the same books as you, albeit in more refined languages.’

‘And probably in better bindings,’ I added, a nod to her once-fantastic wealth – something else that I had learned so recently.

Leana did not respond to my comment. Instead she laid a firm hand on my shoulder before marching back across the deck, leaving me alone with the blue vista, the cool breeze and the repetitive sound of oars cutting through the water.