1

Sorpen

The level was at his top lip now. Even with his head pressed hard back against the stones of the cell wall his nose was only

just above the

surface. He wasn’t going to get his hands free in time; he was going to drown.

In the darkness of the cell, in its stink and warmth, while the sweat ran over his brows and tightly closed eyes and his trance

went on and on,

one part of his mind tried to accustom him to the idea of his own death. But, like an unseen insect buzzing

in a quiet room, there was something

else, something that would not go away, was of no use, and only annoyed. It was a sentence,

irrelevant and pointless and so old he’d forgotten

where he had heard or read it, and it went round and round the inside of

his head like a marble spun round the inside of a jug:

The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new Yearking’s immediate family by drowning them in

the tears

of the Continental Empathaur in its Sadness Season.

At one point, shortly after his ordeal had begun and he was only partway into his trance, he had wondered what would happen

if he threw up.

It had been when the palace kitchens—about fifteen or sixteen floors above, if his calculations were correct—had

sent their waste down the

sinuous network of plumbing that led to the sewercell. The gurgling, watery mess had dislodged some

rotten food from the last time some poor

wretch had drowned in filth and garbage, and that was when he felt he might vomit.

It had been almost comforting to work out that it would make

no difference to the time of his death.

Then he had wondered—in that state of nervous frivolity which sometimes afflicts those who can do nothing but wait in a situation

of mortal

threat—whether crying would speed his death. In theory it would, though in practical terms it was irrelevant; but

that was when the sentence

started to roll round in his head.

The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual…

The liquid, which he could hear and feel and smell all too clearly—and could probably have seen with his far from ordinary

eyes had they

been open—washed briefly up to touch the bottom of his nose. He felt it block his nostrils, filling them with

a stench that made his stomach

heave. But he shook his head, tried to force his skull even further back against the stones,

and the foul broth fell away. He blew down and could

breathe again.

There wasn’t long now. He checked his wrists again, but it was no good. It would take another hour or more, and he had only

minutes, if he

was lucky.

The trance was breaking anyway. He was returning to almost total consciousness, as though his brain wanted fully to appreciate

his own

death, its own extinction. He tried to think of something profound, or to see his life flash in front of him, or suddenly

to remember some old love,

a long-forgotten prophecy or premonition, but there was nothing, just an empty sentence, and the

sensations of drowning in other people’s dirt

and waste.

You old bastards,

he thought. One of their few strokes of humor or originality had been devising an elegant, ironic way of death. How fitting

it must feel to them, dragging their decrepit frames to the banquet-hall privies, literally to defecate all over their enemies,

and thereby kill them.

The air pressure built up, and a distant, groaning rumble of liquid signaled another flushing from above.

You old bastards. Well, I hope at

least you kept your promise, Balveda.

The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual

… thought one part of his brain, as the pipes in the ceiling spluttered and the waste

splashed into the warm mass of liquid

which almost filled the cell. The wave passed over his face, then fell back to leave his nose free for a

second and give him

time to gulp a lungful of air. Then the liquid rose gently to touch the bottom of his nose again, and stayed there.

He held his breath.

It had hurt at first, when they had hung him up. His hands, tied inside tight leather pouches, were directly above his head,

manacled inside thick

loops of iron bolted to the cell walls, which took all his weight. His feet were tied together and left

to dangle inside an iron tube, also attached to

the wall, which stopped him from taking any weight on his feet and knees and

at the same time prevented him from moving his legs more than a

hand’s breadth out from the wall or to either side. The tube

ended just above his knees; above it there was only a thin and dirty loincloth to hide

his ancient and grubby nakedness.

He had shut off the pain from his wrists and shoulders even while the four burly guards, two of them perched on ladders, had

secured him in

place. Even so he could feel that niggling sensation at the back of his skull which told him that he

ought

to be hurting. That had lessened

gradually as the level of waste in the small sewercell had risen and buoyed up his body.

He had started to go into a trance then, as soon as the guards left, though he knew it was probably hopeless. It hadn’t lasted

long; the cell

door opened again within minutes, a metal walkway was lowered by a guard onto the damp flagstones of the cell

floor, and light from the

corridor washed into the darkness. He had stopped the Changing trance and craned his neck to see

who his visitor might be.