He stepped close once again and poured more water into her mouth.
Then he set about washing her down. Sores had opened where stomach fluids had burned desiccated skin, and, he could see, she had been pulling on her bindings, seeking to squeeze her hands through the shackles. ‘You are looking much worse for wear,’ he said as he dabbed ointment on the wounds. ‘You cannot get your hands through, Janath-’
‘Panic cares nothing for what can and can’t be done, Tanal Yathvanar. One day you will discover that. There was a priest once, in the second century, who created a cult founded on the premise that every victim tallied in one’s mortal life awaits that one beyond death. From the slightest of wounds to the most grievous, every victim preceding you into death… waits. For you.
‘A mortal conducts spiritual economics in his or her life, amassing credit and debt. Tell me, Patriotist, how indebted are you by now? How vast the imbalance between good deeds and your endless acts of malice?’
‘A bizarre, insane cult,’ he muttered, moving away. ‘No wonder it failed.’
‘In this empire, yes, it’s no wonder at all. The priest was set upon in the street and torn limb from limb. Still, it’s said adherents remain, among the defeated peoples-the Tarthenal, the Fent and Nerek, the victims, as it were, of Letherii cruelty-and before those people virtually disappeared from the city, there were rumours that the cult was reviving.’
Tanal Yathvanar sneered. ‘The ones who fail ever need a crutch, a justification-they fashion virtue out of misery. Karos Invictad has identified that weakness, in one of his treatises-’
Janath’s laugh broke into ragged coughing. When she recovered, she spat and said, ‘Karos Invictad. Do you know why he so despises academics? He is a failed one himself.’ She bared her stained teeth. ‘He calls them treatises, does he? Errant fend, how pathetic. Karos Invictad couldn’t fashion a decent argument, much less a treatise.’
‘You are wrong in that, woman,’ Tanal said. ‘He has even explained why he did so poorly as a young scholar-oh yes, he would not refute your assessment of his career as a student. Driven by emotions, back then. Incapable of a cogent position, leaving him rife with anger-but at himself, at his own failings. But, years later, he learned that all emotion had to be scoured from him; only then would his inner vision become clear.’
‘Ah, he needed wounding, then. What was it? A betrayal of sorts, I expect. Some woman? A protege, a patron? Does it even matter? Karos Invictad makes sense to me, now. Why he is what he has become.’ She laughed again, this rime without coughing, then said, ‘Delicious irony. Karos Invictad became a victim.’