The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [22]
When the night grew cool, Baruma closed the shutters and turned back to his chamber, a luxurious one with white walls and a blue-and-green tiled floor scattered with velvet cushions and set about with tiny oil lamps. In one corner lay his traveling gear and two big canvas-wrapped bales, which he never allowed out of his sight. Any customs officer who went through his goods would find heavily embroidered linen tablecloths, napkins, and decorative bands for tunics and suchlike, made by barbarians in Deverry for sale to the wealthy ladies of Bardek. Unknown to those who made them, however, once Baruma brought their work back to Bardek it underwent a subtle change. He used the various traditional patterns as labels, indicating the name of the poison in which the cloth had been soaked. Put the cloth in water or wine, and there was the poison again, safe from the prying eyes of the archon’s men.
In one of his saddlebags he carried Rhodry’s silver dagger. He’d kept it for no real reason, more as a souvenir of those intensely pleasurable hours he’d spent breaking his prisoner’s mind and will, but it did make scrying him out easier. Out of boredom as much as anything, Baruma took it out, then sat down on an enormous cushion and centered his mind by staring into the flame of an oil lamp. Since he was holding a semi-magical object of great meaning to Rhodry, the image built up fast. In the yellow dancing glow of the burning wick he saw Rhodry sitting near a campfire and eating stew out of a wooden bowl. Although he looked tired, he was far from exhausted, and he was unchained, unshackled, obviously a well-treated member of what seemed to be a large caravan. His flare of rage cost Baruma the vision. That fool Brindemo! Why hadn’t he sold Rhodry to the mines or the galleys as he’d been ordered? Hardly aware of what he was doing, he drove the dagger hard into the cushion.
This lapse of control forced him to his feet. As he put the dagger away, it occurred to him that Brindemo was going to have to pay for his failure. The guilds would show the fat trader what happened to men who cross the will of the dark powers. As for Rhodry himself, since the Old One had said nothing about where he should be sold—the agony of the mines or the galleys was Baruma’s own refinement—Baruma supposed the job was done well enough. Then he remembered the threat, the cold hatred in the silver dagger’s eyes and voice as he stood on the deck of the ship and told Baruma that someday he’d escape and kill him. Just stupid braggadocio, Baruma told himself. Slaves can never escape here in Bardek. Yet he felt a cold sweep of fear up his spine. Rhodry was just the desperate sort of man who might risk everything for revenge, simply because he wouldn’t care if he lived or died after he killed his prey.
Briefly he considered tracking Rhodry down himself, but the Old One had specifically forbidden him to kill the barbarian. If Rhodry were to die, Baruma would have to ensure that no one knew of his part in it. He could, he supposed, simply buy Rhodry back from his new master and sell him to the mines himself—but the dangers of that were entirely too obvious, considering the strictness of the laws governing barbarians and slavery. The Old One posed the worse threat. If he came to consider Baruma reckless and thus no longer completely dependable, then he’d dispose of his erstwhile student in a way that made