“Scumble on your tricks.”
Yuli fell into a rage. It was all he could do to stop himself attacking and beating the man. He flew in fury to the instruments hanging on the wall, and lashed at his chair with a whip. He seized the fat lamp that stood on the table and thrust it under Usilles eyes… . He hit himself on the chest.
“Why should I lie to you, why betray myself? What do you know, after all? Nothing, nothing worth having. You’re just a thing, snatched up from Vakk, your life without meaning or importance. You have to be tortured and killed, because that is your destiny. Fine, go ahead with it, enjoy feeling your strength die day by day—it’s the price you pay for pride, and for being a cretin. Do what you will, die a thousand times. I’ve had enough. I can’t bear the torment. I’m off. Think of me as you lie in your own scumble—I’ll be out, free, free, under the sky where Akha’s power can’t reach.”
He shouted these words, careless who heard him, blazing before the beaten pallor of Usilk’s face.
“Scumb off, monk.” Just the same sullen phrase he had used all week.
Jumping back a pace, he brought up the whip and struck Usilk with the stock across his broken check. All his force and rage went behind the blow. His glaring gaze saw by the lamp’s uncertain light exactly where on the cheek under the eye and across the bridge of Usilk’s nose the stock struck. He stood with whip half-raised, watching as Usilk’s hands came up towards the injury, how his knees buckled. He swayed and fell to the floor, resting on knees and elbows.
Still clutching the whip, Yuli stepped over the body and quitted the cell.
In his own confusion, he was scarcely aware of the confusion round him. Warders and militia were running here and there in an unexpected manner—the normal progress through the dark veins of the Holies was a funereal walking pace.
A captain came along briskly, holding a flaring torch in one hand and shouting orders.
“You’re one of the priest-interrogators?” he demanded of Yuli.
“What of it?”
“I want all these rooms cleared of prisoners. Get them back to their cells. The injured are going to be put in here. Look sharp.”
“Injured? What injured?”
The captain roared his annoyance. “Are you deaf, Brother? What do you think all the shouting’s been about this last hour? The new borings in Twink have collapsed, and many good men are buried. It’s like a battlefield down there. Now, get moving and get your prisoner back in his cell, fast. I want this corridor cleared in two minutes.”
He moved on, shouting and cursing. He was enjoying the excitement.
Yuli turned back. Usilk still lay crumpled on the floor of the interrogation room. Stooping, he seized him under the shoulders and dragged him into an upright position. Usilk moaned and appeared semiconscious. By levering one of the prisoner’s arms over his shoulder Yuli could persuade him to walk after a fashion. In the corridor, where the captain still roared, other interrogators were removing their victims, hustling excitedly, nobody exactly looking displeased at this interruption to routine.
They headed into the dark like shadows. Now was his chance to disappear, while the excitement was on. And Usilk?
His rage was dying, his guilt reftming. He was aware of wishing to show Usilk that he was sincere in his earlier offer of help.
The decision was made. Instead of heading towards the prison cells, he turned towards his own quarters. A plan grew in his mind. First, he had to revive Usilk, to prepare him for escape. It was useless to think of taking him to the brothers’ dormitory, where they would be discovered; there was a safer place.
Wall-reading, he turned off before the dormitories, propelling Usilk up a winding stair, off which, in a warrenlike arrangement, the chambers of some of the fathers led. The band of carving under his hand kept him informed of where he was, even when the darkness grew so intense that phantasmal crimsons drifted through it like submerged weeds. At Father Sifans’ door, he tapped and entered.