Songmaster (18 page)

Ansset awoke walking down a street.

“Out of the way, ya chark!” shouted a harsh accent behind him, and Ansset dodged to the left as a cart zipped passed his right arm. “Sausages,” shouted a sign on the case behind the driver.

Then Ansset was seized by a terrible vertigo as he realized that he was not in the cell of his captivity, that he was fully dressed, though not in the clothing of the Songhouse. He was alive and free of his captors and the quick joy that realization brought was immediately soured by a rush of the old guilt, and the conflicting emotions and the suddenness of his liberation were too much for him, and for a moment too long he forgot to breathe, and the darkening ground slid sideways, tipped up, hit him—

“Hey, boy, are you all right?”

“Did the chark slam you, boy?”

“I got the number of the car. We can get him!”

“He’s comin’ around and to.”

Ansset opened his eyes. “Where is this place?” he asked softly.

Why, this is Northet, they said.

“How far is the palace?” Ansset asked, vaguely remembering that he had heard of Northet as a suburb of Hisper.

“The palace? What palace?”

“Mikal’s palace—I must go to Mikal—” Ansset tried to get up, but his head spun and he staggered. Hands held him up.

“The kit’s kinky, that’s what.”

“Mikal’s palace.”

“It’s only sixty kilometer, boy, should I have ’em hold supper for you?”

The joke brought a burst of laughter, but Ansset had regained Control and he pulled away from the hands holding him and stood alone. Whatever drug had kept him unconscious was now nearly worked out of his system. “Find me a policeman,” Ansset said. “Mikal will want to see me immediately.”

Some still laughed, but others looked carefully at Ansset, perhaps noticing that he spoke with precision, an offworld accent, that his bearing was not that of a streetchild. “Who are you boy?” one asked.

“I’m Ansset. Mikal’s Songbird.”

They looked, realized that the face
was
the one pictured in the papers; half of them ran off to find authorities who could handle the situation, while the other half stayed to look at his face, to realize how beautiful his eyes were, to hold the moment so they could tell about it to their children and grandchildren. I saw Ansset himself, Mikal’s Songbird, they would say, and when their children asked, What was Mikal’s Songbird? they would answer, ah, he was beautiful, but was the most valuable of all the treasures of Mikal the Terrible, the sweetest face you ever saw, and songs that could bring rain out of the sky or a flower from the deep of the snow.

They reached out, and he touched their hands, and smiled at them, and wondered how they wanted him to act—embarrassed at their awe, or accustomed to it? He read the songs in their voices as they murmured, “Songbird,” and “Thank you,” and “Lovely.” And decided that they wanted him to be poised, to be beautiful and gracious and distant so their worship would be uninterrupted. “Thank you,” Ansset said, “Thank you. You’ve all helped me. Thank you.”

The policemen came, apologizing effusively for how dirty their flesket was, that it was the only one in the station, and please take a seat. They did not take him to the station; rather they took him to a pad where a flit from the palace waited. The Chamberlain got out. “Yes, it’s him,” he said to the police, and then reached for Ansset’s hand. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I think so,” Ansset said, suddenly aware that something might be wrong with him. He was inside the flit; the doors closed; the ground seemed to push up on him and he was airborne, heading for the palace. For Mikal.

“The child is becoming impatient,” said the Captain.

“I really don’t give a damn,” said the Chamberlain.

“And Mikal is also impatient.”

The Chamberlain said nothing, just stared back at the Captain.

“All I’m saying, Chamberlain, is that we have to hurry.”

The Chamberlain sighed. “I know. But the child’s a monster. I was married once, you know.”

The Captain hadn’t known, but did not care. He shrugged.

“I had a boy. When he was eleven he was mischievous, a little devil, but so transparent you could see through him no matter how he tried to deceive. Even when he tried to conceal his feelings, you could tell exactly what he was trying to conceal. But this boy.”

“They train them to school their emotions in the Songhouse,” the Captain said.

“Yes, the Songhouse. I marvel at their teaching. The child can hide any emotion he wants to. Even his impatience—he chooses to show it, and then shows nothing else.”

“But you
have
hypnotized him.”

“Only with the aid of drugs. And when I start mucking around in his mind, Captain, what do I find?”

“Walls.”

“Walls. Someone has built blocks in his mind that I can’t get through.”

The Captain smiled. “And you insisted on conducting the interrogation yourself.”

The Chamberlain glared. “To be frank, Captain, I didn’t trust your men. It was
your
men who were supposed to be guarding him that day.”

It was the Captain’s turn to get angry. “And you know who ordered them to keep completely out of sight! They watched the whole thing through ops and couldn’t get there before they had taken him off underwater. The whole search was just a second too late all the way!”

“That’s the problem,” the Chamberlain said. “A second too late.”

“You’ve failed at the interrogation! Mikal wants his Songbird back! I
will
interrogate the boy!”

The Chamberlain glowered a moment, then turned away. “All right. And much as it pains me to say so, I honestly hope you succeed.”

The Captain found Ansset sitting on the edge of a couch that flowed aimlessly around him. The boy looked up at him without interest.

“Again,” the Captain said.

“I know,” Ansset said. The Captain had brought a tray of syringes and slaps. As he prepared the first slap, he talked to Ansset. Trying, he supposed, to put the boy at ease, though whether the boy was nervous or not was impossible to tell.

“You know that Mikal wants to see you.”

“And I want to see him,” Ansset said.

“But you were held for five months by someone who was probably not a friend of the emperor.”

“I’ve told you everything I know.”

“I know it. We have recordings. I think we know everything about what you did in the evenings. Every word the crew of the boat spoke to you. You’re a marvelous mimic. Our experts are studying the accent of the crew right now. Your memory of the faces has our artists busy reconstructing them. Everything you’ve told us has been in perfect detail. You’re an ideal witness.”

Ansset showed no emotion, not even a sigh. “Yet we go through this again.”

“The trouble is, Ansset, what went on during the days. You have blocks—”

“The Chamberlain’s told me. I knew it already.”

“And we must get behind them.”

“I want you to. You have to believe me,” Ansset said. “I want to know. I don’t want to be a threat to Mikal. I’d rather die than harm him. But I’d also rather die than leave him.”

The words were song. The voice was flat and empty. Not even a song in it. “Is that because of a commitment from the Songhouse? I’m sure they’d understand.”

Ansset looked at him. “Captain. The Songhouse would accept me back at any time.”

“Ansset, one of the reasons we can’t get through the blocks in your mind is because you aren’t helping.”

“I’m trying to.”

“Ansset, I don’t know how to say this. Most of the time your voice is natural and human and you react like any other person might. But now, when we need to communicate with you more than ever before, you are frozen. You’re completely unreachable. You haven’t shown an emotion since I came in here.”

Ansset looked surprised. The very fact of even that mild reaction made the Captain’s breath quicken in excitement. “Captain, aren’t you using drugs?”

“The drugs are the last resort, Ansset, and you can still resist them. Perhaps whoever put the blocks in your mind gave you help in resisting them. The drugs can only get us partway into you. And then you resist us every step of the way.”

Ansset regarded him a little more, as if digesting the information. Then he turned away, and his voice was husky as he said, “What you’re asking me to do is lose Control.”

The Captain knew nothing of Control. He only heard
control
, and did not understand the difficulty of what he was asking.

“That’s right.”

“And it’s the only way to find out what’s been hidden in my mind?”

“Yes,” said the Captain.

Ansset was silent a moment more. “Am I really a danger to Mikal?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps whoever took you found you as hard to cope with as we have. Perhaps there’s nothing hidden in your mind, except a memory of who the kidnappers were. Perhaps they had meant to hold you for ransom, then realized they’d never get away with it alive and spent the rest of the time trying to conceal who they were. I don’t know. But perhaps behind those blocks are instructions for you to kill Mikal. If they wanted to pick a perfect assassin, they couldn’t do better than you. No one but you sees Mikal every day in intimate circumstances. No one has his trust. The very fact that he pleads with us to bring you to him, to hurry the interrogation and let him see you—You can see what a danger you might be to him.”

“For Mikal’s sake, then,” Ansset said. And the Captain was astounded by how quickly Ansset’s Control broke. “Tell Mikal,” said Ansset, as his face twisted with emotion and tears began to flow, “that I’ll do anything for him. Even this.” And Ansset wept, great sobs wracking his body, weeping for the months of fear and guilt and solitude. Weeping at the knowledge that he might never see Mikal again. The Captain watched, incredulous, as for an hour Ansset could not communicate at all, just lay on the couch like a little child, babbling and rubbing his eyes. He knew that from the observation stations the other interrogators would be watching in awe at how quickly the Captain had broken through barriers that even drugs had not been able to breach. The Captain felt a delicious hope that the Chamberlain had been watching, too.

And then Ansset became relatively calm, and the Captain began the questioning, using every clever trick he could think of to get behind the barriers. He tried every indirection he had ever heard of. He tried all the dazzling thrusts that had shattered walls before. But even now, with Ansset cooperating fully, nothing could be done at all. Not even in the deepest trance was Ansset able to speak what had been hidden in his mind. The Captain learned only one thing. He asked, while questioning around the skirts of one block, “Who placed this barrier here?”

And Ansset, so deep in the trance that he could hardly speak, said, “Esste.”

The name meant nothing to the Captain at the time. But that name was all he got. An hour later he and the Chamberlain stood before Mikal.

“Esste,” Mikal said.

“That’s what he said.”

“Esste,” Mikal said, “is the name of the Songmaster of the High Room. His teacher in the Songhouse.”

“Oh.”

“These blocks you have so lovingly spent four days trying to break were placed there years ago by his teachers! Not by kidnappers only in the last few months!”

“We had to be sure.”

“Yes,” Mikal said. “You had to be sure. And we’re not sure now, of course. If the barriers were placed in his mind by his teacher, why can’t he remember how he spent his days during his captivity? We can only conclude that some blocks come from the Songhouse, and some blocks from his captors. But what can we do about it?”

“Send the boy back to the Songhouse,” said the Chamberlain.

Mikal’s face was terrible. It was as if he wanted to shout, but dared not say what he would say if he surrendered himself to passion that much. So he did not shout, but after a moment of struggle said, “Chamberlain, that’s a suggestion I
will
not hear again. I know it may be necessary. But as for now, I will have my Songbird with me.”

“My Lord,” the Captain said, “you’ve stayed alive all these years by not taking such chances.”

“Until Ansset came,” Mikal answered painfully, “I did not know what I was staying alive
for
.”

The Captain bowed his head. The Chamberlain thought of another argument, almost said something, and then thought better of it.

“Bring him to me,” said Mikal, “in open court, so that everyone can watch me accept my Songbird again. I’ll have no taint on him. In two hours.”

They left, and Mikal sat alone on the floor in front of his fireplace, resting his chin on his hands. He was getting old, and his back hurt, and he tried to hum a tune the Songbird had often sung. The voice was old and creaky, and he couldn’t do it. The fire spat at him, and he wondered what it would be like to have beautiful Ansset hold a laser and aim it at his heart. He would not know what he was doing, Mikal reminded himself. He would be innocent in his heart.

But I would still be dead when he was through.