Confessor (Sword of Truth 11)

Despite being men in an army led by the emperor himself, these men had probably never seen Jagang this close before. The army, all in one place, constituted a population that was larger than almost any city. If these men had ever seen the emperor before, it was likely only at a great distance. Now, as he passed close by, they stared at him in open awe.

Kahlan noted in their reaction, and Jagang’s attitude toward them, the contradiction to the Order’s teachings of the absolute equality of all men. For his part, Jagang never showed any penchant for sharing the common life of his men, a daily existence in the filth and mud. They lived in a camp that was virtually lawless, involved in crimes of every sort with their unruly fellows, while Jagang always enjoyed protection from those theoretically equal to him in every way. Kahlan supposed that if they shared one thing, it was that they, like their emperor, lived lives of almost constant, irrational violence and complete indifference to human life.

Kahlan, invisible to the soldiers all around, stepped carefully over puddles and dung. She clutched the knife tightly in a fist under her cloak, unsure, yet, exactly what she would do with it. The opportunity to take the knife had suddenly presented itself and she had acted.

In such rough surroundings it felt good to have a weapon. The encampment was a frightening place, despite how invisible she was to nearly all the soldiers. Even though she knew that she had no hope of using the knife to escape Jagang, all of her special guards, and the Sisters, it still felt good to have a weapon. A weapon gave her a modicum of control, a way to defend herself—at least to a degree. More than that, though, a weapon symbolized how much she valued her life. Having it was a declaration to herself that she had not, and would not, give up.

If she had a chance, Kahlan would use the knife to try to kill Jagang. She knew that if she were to actually accomplish such a deed it would mean a sure death for her as well. She knew, too, that the Order would not falter because of the loss of the man. They were like ants. Stepping on one would not send the colony into retreat.

Still, she knew that sooner or later she was going to be put to death—and probably made to suffer greatly along the way by Jagang’s own hand. She had already seen him murder several people for little or no excuse, so putting an end to him would at least serve to satisfy her sense of justice. Kahlan’s memory of her past life was gone. Her total awareness since the Sisters had taken that memory was that of a world gone mad. She might not be able to set the world right, but if she could kill Jagang she might be able to see justice done in one little part of it.

It wouldn’t be easy, though. Jagang was not only physically powerful and skilled at combat, he was a very clever individual. Sometimes Kahlan thought that he really could read her mind. In another way, since Jagang was a warrior and he was often able to anticipate what she would do next, Kahlan thought that in the past she could not remember she must have been a warrior, too.

Alerted by the urgent whispers of their friends, men in the camp all around came out of tents, rubbed sleep from their eyes, and stood in the drizzle staring at the swift procession in their midst. Other men turned from work at caring for animals to watch. Riders reined in their horses to wait until the emperor passed. Wagons rumbled to a halt.

No matter where she was in the camp it stank, but in among the men it was a degree worse. The cook fires added greasy soot to the smell of the latrines. She didn’t think that the hastily dug latrines were going to be adequate for long. By the foul look of the little streams of water wending their way through the camp, they were already over-flowing. The smell proclaimed that she was right. She couldn’t imagine how much worse it was going to become over the coming months of the siege.

Even with the stench and the revolting sights of some of the things going on in the camp, Kahlan noted it all only dimly in the back of her mind. Her thoughts were on other things. Or rather, on one thing: that man with the gray eyes.

She hadn’t known which team he would be with. When she had seen his face the day before he had been in a cage on a transport wagon. She knew only, from catching bits of Jagang’s conversations with officers, that the cages held some of the men who were on a team come to play in the tournaments.

Jagang had been eager to tour the teams before any of the games were to begin. As they went from team to team, she had been looking for the man. At first, she hadn’t even realized that she was doing it. She found herself staying close to Jagang as he inspected the players so that she could also see them.

He knew a great deal about some of the teams. He commented to his guards about what he expected he would see before he reached each new team. When he arrived at a new group he would ask to see the point man, along with the wing men. Several times he wanted to have a look at the men of the blocking line. It reminded Kahlan of a house-wife at market, inspecting cuts of meat.

Kahlan had searched all the faces she saw, looking at every man. She had not been gauging their height, weight, and muscle, as Jagang had been doing. She had found herself looking at their faces, trying to find the man she had seen in the cage the day before. She was beginning to lose heart, thinking that he must not be among the teams. She had begun to suppose that maybe he had ended up being sent to work as slave labor at the ramp site along with many other captives.

And then when she finally did spot the man, he did the strangest thing: he fell face-first into the mud. They were still some distance off and no one but Kahlan had really been looking at him yet. Everyone else thought the man was just clumsy as he tripped over the chain lying there on the ground. As they’d approached the team some of the guards had laughed, whispering among themselves about how quickly such a man was going to get his neck broken on the Ja’La field.

Kahlan hadn’t thought it was funny, though. She alone had been looking at the man and she knew that he hadn’t tripped accidentally. She knew that it had been deliberate.

The fall had looked real enough. No one else imagined that it had been by design. Kahlan knew it was. She knew what it was to be a captive and have to instantly do something no matter how risky because you had no choice.

She just couldn’t imagine why the man had done it.

What could be the purpose of such a thing? What danger could he have been trying to avoid? In some circumstances people did such things to get a laugh—and some of the guards had laughed—but that wasn’t the purpose behind what this man had done.

To Kahlan’s mind it had been not only deliberate, but done with haste, as if he thought of it only a second before and there was no time to come up with something better. It had been an act of desperation. But why? Why fall on your face in the mud? What could it possibly accomplish?

It suddenly hit her. It was in a way something like what she had been doing—using the hood of her cloak to hide what she was doing, where she was looking, who she was looking at. He must have wanted to cover his face. It could only be because he thought that someone would recognize him. It must have been that the man feared that Jagang himself would recognize him. Or possibly Sister Ulicia. At any rate, it had to be that he was trying to keep from being recognized.

She supposed that it did make some sense. After all, the man was a captive. Only enemies of the Order would be captives. She wondered if he was a high-ranking officer or something like that.

And he had known Kahlan. From the first instant their eyes met the day before, when he had been in that cage, she could see that he recognized her.

As she had approached his team with Jagang, she and the man had shared a look. In that look she saw that they both knew the plight the other was in, and they both had done nothing to betray the other, as if they’d made a silent pact.

It lifted Kahlan’s heart to know that among all these murderous men, there was one who was not an enemy.

At least, she didn’t think he was. She reminded herself not to substitute her imagination for the truth. With her memory gone she had no real way of knowing if he was an enemy or not. She supposed that he could be someone who h

ad been hunting her. She wondered if it could be possible that he, like Jagang, had some motive to want to see her suffer. That he was a captive of Jagang didn’t automatically mean that he was on her side. After all, the Sisters had hardly been on Jagang’s side.

But if he was trying to hide his face to keep from being recognized, what was going to happen once the Ja’La games started? He might be able to stay muddy for a day or two, but once the rain stopped the mud was going to dry up. She wondered what he would do then. She couldn’t help feeling a pang of worry for him.

At the end of visiting the teams, as they had left to see what the messenger had to show Jagang, she had seen one other thing in the man’s eyes: rage. As she had turned back for a last, quick look at him, the hood of her cloak had pulled back and he had seen the black bruise Jagang had left on her face.

Kahlan had thought that he looked like he might use his bare hands to rip apart the chain holding him. She was at least relieved that he was smart enough not to try to do anything. Commander Karg would have killed him in a blink.

From the conversations between Jagang and the commander as Jagang had started out to inspect the teams, the two were old acquaintances. They mentioned battles they had been in together. In that brief conversation she had taken appraisal of the commander. Like Jagang himself, the commander was not a man to be underestimated. Such a man would not have wanted to be embarrassed before his emperor, and would have killed his point man without hesitation had he allowed his anger to slip its bounds.

She supposed that it was that, his anger at seeing what Jagang had done to her, that made her think the man could not be her enemy.

But the man was dangerous as well. The way he stood, the way he balanced, the way he moved, told Kahlan a great deal about him. She could clearly see the intelligence in his raptor gaze. In the measured way he moved she saw that he also was a man not to be underestimated. She would know for sure if she was correct once the games started, but a man like Commander Karg would not have a captive be his point man unless there was a very good reason. Kahlan would know soon enough when she saw the man play, but to her he looked like coiled fury, and like he knew how to uncoil.

“Over this way, Excellency,” the messenger said as he pointed off through the gray drizzle.

They followed the messenger, leaving the dark sea of the camp, emerging out onto the open ground of the Azrith Plain. Kahlan had been so preoccupied thinking about the man with the gray eyes that she hadn’t even noticed that they were coming up on the site of the construction. The ramp rose high overhead. Beyond, the plateau towered above them. Up this close the plateau truly was imposing. Up this close she could see far less of the magnificent palace atop it.

When it had started to rain she had hoped that maybe it would cause the ramp to collapse, but she could see, now that they were there beside it, that it was not only reinforced with rock but being well compacted as material was added. Gangs of men with heavy weights tamped the dirt and rock as it was placed.

This was not a haphazard effort. While the soldiers in camp—like the ones guarding her—were little more than ignorant brutes mindlessly devoted to a senseless cause, there were some men among the Imperial Order who were intelligent. They were the ones supervising the construction; the brutes merely handled the dirt.