The Venomancer

II.8 - The Wolves' Weakness

"No! You can't do that!" Cassa roared. "That's my family!"

"Of course I can," Jaikham replied coolly. "I am the city's law enforcement and you are under suspicion. Why so guarded unless you have something to hide?"

"Guarded? You cannot invade my family like that! I won't have it!"

"That's enough, Faro. The boy we pursue is a criminal the desert calls 'the Fetcher', and we have reason to suspect you helped him escape. Several witnesses saw you leave the capital with a boy whose description befits the one your men have been ordered to look for. I have already issued search parties. Where did you take him?"

"Your assumptions are absurd!" Cassa screamed, losing all composure. "I swore my vows to the Palace four years ago when I turned three and twenty. I earned my captaincy through bravery and loyalty. What possible reasons could I have to aid the escape of a criminal and jeopardise everything I've achieved?"

"That, we are all speculating, Captain," came the icy reply. "Affirm the person in your present company is not the one we are searching for and you shall not be imprisoned until we have evidence to charge you for aiding his escape. Lie, and you will only make this worse for yourself. After all, we are still missing the Fetcher, and from the statements given today by Messrs Monas and Toucomsens he made his business known in the Grand Market today, posed as a High Farban. Those at the Inner Gate, your own men, suspect you are involved. Not only once, but twice. I will ask you one final time, Captain, so make certain to answer according to how you wish to spend the next ten years of your life. Do you have any affiliation with this boy?"

Cassa's lack of immediate denial took Tan off guard. "I'm sorry," he said under his breath, though Tan barely caught it.

"Well?"

"Yes," Cassa breathed, and the intensity of his anger evaporated. The arm around Tan's middle slackened, as though Cassa's stout heart had finally sapped him of his strength. "General, you've cornered me," he confessed.

Tan whipped around to look at him, but Cassa stared straight ahead, as unflinching and emotionless as though made of wood. "What in Maedhros' name are you doing?"

As he expected: no reply.

"Lying to you now isn't worth it, suh," Cassa continued. "It's true that this boy is not my brother, though I was ignorant of his crimes when I caught him acting suspiciously at the Inner Gate while on duty this afternoon. I plead innocent to knowingly aiding the Fetcher the first time we crossed paths, yet after establishing his identity I learnt of his crime, and now I can return him here because of his own foolish compliance."

Tan bristled. "Are you out of your fucking mind?" His fist found Cassa's thigh in a sudden stab of anger, though the guard didn't even flinch; the impact hurt Tan's wrist more.

"If the story you claim is true," Jaikham pressed on, "then why trouble yourself with the deception?"

Cassa paused for a worryingly long time, letting his eyelids close and taking several deep breaths while he did so. Tan's jaw clenched so hard and so painfully he might've broken a molar and not noticed. Was Cassa stalling? Waiting for something? Lost for words?

"Because, my superior ... " Cassa's black eyes shot open. "This boy is not only the Fetcher we've heard about from across the Wastes. He is Tandei Sol."

Tandei Sol.

It was over.

Every soul in the desert knew that moniker. It was the mispronounced name Tan's Farban friends had given him seven years ago when he'd tried to introduce himself in his native tongue as a child, and one that had become the name of the treacherous sinner defeated by the desert a year later. The name of a boy hated, feared, spat at, deceased; a boy whose undignified, laboured death had been celebrated across the province.

What in all things righteous had possessed him to return to Farba as though nothing had happened? Love? Shara? Forever his damsel in distress? He cared for her more than he knew how to express, he didn't doubt that, but he realised too late that she was not worth his life ...

Cloth cut into Tan's throat. Cassa apprehended him by the collar. The guard yanked the silks from his hair and face, and crushed him tight into his torso. An undercurrent of gasps rippled through the sound of the flames and Tan couldn't even find his voice to deny Cassa's claim. They'd seen his complexion, recognised his face ... and they knew.

After six years of pretending to be dead; after everything he'd done to become somebody else, it was over.

"I was just as surprised as all of you," Cassa continued, his body tense. Tan's strength didn't compare. He couldn't move. "Though infinitely better at concealing it. I disguised him from you because I intended to ride directly to Emperor Dashaan, who I know has been in search of this boy for the past half a decade. I lay before me the truth: I wanted the honour. I wanted the recognition for my efforts. I present him to you now as a glorious trophy, General, if you deliver me from all punishment."

Tan tried to look up at him again. "What are you doing?" he said through his teeth. "You don't know what you're dealing with here!"

"Quiet."

The General peered over the wall of the watchtower, scrutinising him. The kuzorocari at his side leant in and whispered something in his ear. "How ... How can this be?" Jaikham stammered. "Tandei Sol ... survived? After all this time lost to the Wastes? He's ... He's alive? But what of the body we found?"

"That is for Ajura Raqmarah to answer."

Following a thoughtful pause, Jaikham reaffixed his glare. "Hm. Truly, I'd be a fool to believe you, Faro, though a bigger one if I did not."

Cassa's free hand came to rest over his heart. "I swear on everything I own and everyone I love that I'm telling you the truth. And Fates be good, suh, I do not swear lightly."

"You'd be willing to repeat that in front of Emperor Dashaan? His Imperial Majesty knows everything. Even facts from falsehoods."

"Yes."

"Very well, Captain, you have my word for now for as much as it's worth, though the decision to punish you is not mine alone to make. This requires thorough discussion and here is not the place. See Sol is detained and enter."

Tan froze in Cassa's grip. His stomach shrivelled to the size of a nut. The air in his lungs turned to lead. This couldn't be happening to him. Cassa couldn't do this. He couldn't turn him in. What about ... what about ... He just can't! Cassa wouldn't!

Cassa's knuckles collided with Tan's ear and the force bowled him off the horse. The sound rang like screams in his head and he landed with a crunch of bones on the granite. His knee smashed into splinters. His shoulder jarred almost from the socket. The coppery taste of blood spread across his tongue where he'd bitten through it.

He might've cried out in pain. He might have wept. He didn't know. He didn't know or feel anything anymore.

He wiped his bloodied saliva on Voya's sleeve and gazed up from the floor. "What ... What are you doing?" he sobbed. "Cassa, my friend ... Please. I don't understand."

"Ha!" Cassa's wicked grin awoke a wave of unadulterated loathing. "Do you think I could call myself a man of the Painted Guard if I allowed you to roam this city as you please? People change, Tandei. Your friends move on, just like you chose to move on and forget about me. Six years you let me grieve for you, believing you'd died where I couldn't help you. What makes you think I was never hurting? You're right, Tandei: you don't understand."