“This is him,” Kahlan confirmed.
“That’s right.” The lad sneered up at Verna. “I’m the one who knifed the enemy wizard. I’m a hero. The Order will bring relief and justice to the people, and I helped do it. Your kind is always trying to keep us down.”
“Keep you down,” Verna repeated in a dead tone.
“Those who are born with all the luck and advantages—they never want to share. I waited, but no one ever gave me a chance in life until the Order did. I’m a hero of downtrodden people everywhere. I’ve struck a blow against the oppressors of mankind. I’ve helped bring justice to those who are never given a chance. I killed an evil man. I’m a hero!”
The silence of everyone nearby was all the more grim with the backdrop of activity going on as men searched the camp for other assassins. Officers called out names, getting quick replies. Troops searching for invaders trotted through the night, their chain mail and weapons jingling like thousands of tiny bells.
The man on his knees grinned at Verna. “The Creator will give me my reward in the next life. I’m not afraid to die. I’ve earned eternity in his everlasting Light.”
Verna passed her gaze among the eyes of all those gathered.
“I don’t care what you do to him,” she said, “but I want to hear his screams the entire night. I want this camp to hear his screams the entire night. I want the Order’s scouts to hear his screams. That will be my tribute to Warren.”
The young man licked his lips, realizing things weren’t going as he had expected.
“That isn’t fair!” the young assassin shouted in protest.
Panic began to tremble through his body. He had been prepared for a martyr’s death, a quick end. This was something unforeseen.
“He died quick. I should have the same consideration! This isn’t fair!”
“Fair? What isn’t fair,” Verna said with terrible calmness, “is that your mother ever opened her legs for your father. We shall now belatedly correct her mistake. What isn’t fair is that a good and kind man died at the hands of a sniveling little coward so lacking in sense that he is incapable of recognizing the lies he now spews out at us.
“You wish to trade your life for the one you have taken? You wish to die in a cause you foolishly believe to be noble? You shall have your wish, young man. But before you die, you shall fully understand what it is you have surrendered, how precious is your life, and how utterly wasted. You shall come to regret your mother’s act of creation as much as do we.”
Verna swept a look of finality over the group watching. “This is my wish. Please see to its execution.”
Cara took a step forward. “Let me do it, then.” Her grim face held no hint of relish. “I would be best at carrying out your wish as you intend it, Verna.”
The lad laughed hysterically. “A woman? You all think you’re going to have some big blond bitch try to teach me a lesson? You’re all as crazy as I’ve heard.”
Verna nodded. “I will be indebted to you, Cara.” She started to leave, but paused. “Don’t let him die before morning, when I will come to witness it. I wish to look into his eyes and see if this young man has come to understand the nature of reality, and its lack of fairness, before he forfeits his life for nothing of worth and for his part in a great evil.”
“I promise you,” Cara said softly to Verna, “that even though this night will seem forever to you in your grief, it will be infinitely longer for him.”
Verna simply touched Cara’s shoulder in appreciation on her way past.
After Verna had walked off into the darkness, Cara turned to Kahlan. “I would ask to use a tent. No one should have to see what I do to him. His screams will be knowledge enough.”
“As you wish.”
“Mother Confessor!” The young man struggled frantically, but the soldiers had him in a firm grip. “If you’re so good as you claim, then show me mercy!”
Drool ran from the corner of the boy’s mouth and hung swinging in rhythm with his panting.
“But I have,” Kahlan said. “I am allowing you to suffer the sentence Verna has named, and not the one I would impose.”
Cara snapped her fingers and pointed at the young man as she marched off. The soldiers dragged the shrieking boy after her.
“The others we captured?” the general asked Kahlan.
Kahlan started for her tent. “Cut their throats.”
Chapter 62
Kahlan sat up when she realized that she didn’t hear the distant screams any longer. It was still hours till dawn. Maybe his heart had stopped unexpectedly.
No, Cara was Mord-Sith, and was well trained in what Mord-Sith did.
As she had lain fully dressed in her bed, listening to the bloodcurdling screams, aching for Verna, missing Warren, sweat had occasionally beaded her brow whenever she thought about how Richard had once been the one under a Mord-Sith’s Agiel.
To banish the uninvited, ghastly images invading her thoughts, she looked up at Spirit. The lamp hanging from the ridgepole cast a warm light on the carving, stressing the graceful lines of her flowing robes, her fisted hands, her head thrown back. No matter how many times Kahlan looked at the statue, she never tired of it. Every time, it was a thrill.
Richard had chosen this view of life over the terrible bitterness he could have fallen into. Clinging to such bitterness would only have robbed him of his ability to experience happiness.
Kahlan heard a commotion outside. Just as she sprang to her feet, Cara poked her head in through the flap Kahlan had left open. The Mord-Sith’s blue eyes were in a lethal rage. She stepped into the tent, pulling the lad behind by a fistful of his hair. He shook as he blinked frantically, blinded by the blood in his eyes.
Gritting her teeth, Cara shoved him. He fell to the dirt at Kahlan’s feet.
“What’s this about?” Kahlan asked.
The look in Cara’s eyes revealed a woman at the edge of a feral fury, at the edge of control, at the far-distant reaches of what it was to even be human. She was treading the soil of another world: madness.
Cara dropped to her knees and seized the young man by the hair. She yanked him back up and held him against her red-leather-clad body as she pressed her Agiel to his throat. He choked and coughed. Blood frothed from his mouth.
“Tell her,” Cara growled.
He held his hands out to the sides in surrender. “I know him! I know him!”
Kahlan frowned down at the terrified young man. “You know who?”
“Richard Cypher! I know Richard Cypher!—And his wife, Nicci.”
Kahlan felt as if the world crashed down around her. The weight of that world sank her to her knees before Cara’s charge.
“What is your name?”
“Gadi! I’m Gadi!”
Cara pressed her Agiel into his back, causing him to let loose a wild scream. She slammed his face to the ground.
Kahlan held a hand out. “Cara, wait…we need to talk to him.”
“I know. I’m just making sure he wants to talk to us.”
Kahlan had never seen Cara quite like this, unleashed this way. This was more than doing as Verna asked. This was personal to Cara.
Warren had been someone she liked, but worse for Gadi, Richard was Cara’s life.
The Mord-Sith pulled him upright again. Red bubbles grew around his broken nose. When the light caught Cara just right, Kahlan could see blood glistening on the red leather.
“Now, I want you to tell the Mother Confessor everything.”
He was nodding as he wept and before Cara had even completed the command.
“I lived there—where they came to live. I lived where Richard and his wife—”
“Nicci,” Kahlan corrected.
“Yes, Nicci.” He didn’t understand what she meant. “They came to live in a room in our house. My friends and I didn’t like him. Then, Kamil and Nabbi started talking to him. They started liking Richard. I was angry—”
He fell to such blubbering that he couldn’t finish. Kahlan seized his jaw, slick with blood, and shook his face.
“Talk! Or I’ll have Cara start in again!”
“I don’t know what to say, what you want,” he sobbed.
“Everything you know about him and Nicci. Everything!” Kahlan yelled inches from his face.
“Tell her the rest of it,” Cara said in his ear as she pulled him to his feet.
Kahlan followed him up, fearing to miss a precious word.
“Richard started to get people to fix up the place. He works for Ishaq, at the transport company. When he came home at night, he would fix things. He showed Kamil and Nabbi how to fix things.
“I hated him.”
“You hated him because he made things better?”
“He made Kamil and Nabbi and others think they could do things for themselves, when they can’t—people can’t do for themselves. That’s a cruel deception. People have to be helped by those with the ability. It’s their duty. Richard should have made things better, because he could—he shouldn’t have made Kamil and Nabbi and the others think they could change their lives for themselves. No one can do that. The people need help, not such heartless and unfeeling expectations.
“I found out Richard was working at night. He was hauling extra loads for greedy people. He was making money he shouldn’t be allowed to make.
“Then, one night, I was sitting on the steps, and I heard Nicci get mad at Richard. She came out to me on the steps and asked me to have sex with her. Women always want me. She was a whore—no better than the rest—despite all her airs. She told me that Richard wasn’t man enough to take care of her, and she wanted me to have her because he wouldn’t.