The Threads of Magic by Alison Croggon (best books for students to read .TXT) 📗

of this, she began to get very bored. Perhaps they meant to leave her here all night. Perhaps, she thought, she might get away with falling asleep. It would pass the time. Because she was unable to move, she was increasingly uncomfortable.

Amina sobbed a bit more and then twisted around in the chair, trying to find a more comfortable position. There wasn’t one. She relaxed all her muscles and let herself doze, as if she had cried herself into exhaustion. She needed to be rested for whatever was coming.

Some time later, in the darkest, coldest watches of the night, the dungeon door opened. By then the tallow candle had burned itself out, and she had been in complete darkness for about an hour.

Four men entered, all of them dressed in deepest black so their faces and hands stood out white against the shadows. Two were guards who carried pitch torches that they fixed to brackets on the wall. The sudden dazzle and smoke made Amina’s eyes smart. The third was the torturer she had seen earlier.

The fourth man was Cardinal Lamir himself.

The hairs rose on the back of Amina’s neck. This was serious. Maybe it was a case for last resorts, after all.

“Mistress Bemare,” said the cardinal, smiling thinly, “I must apologize for the discomfort of your accommodation. Sadly, it is sometimes necessary.”

Amina stared back at him. “I beg you, sir, to release me,” she said. “I have been most unjustly imprisoned, and I don’t understand why. I have duties, sir, and responsibilities . . .”

“It has come to our attention that you practice witchcraft.”

Amina looked shocked. “No, sir! How can that be so? I have never in my life . . .”

Lamir signed to one of the guards, who rolled some objects out of a small bag onto the tray of torture implements. The muffling candles, curse it. A selection of cooking spices. A little paring knife. An old doll of Oni’s that Amina had kept long after Oni outgrew it, as a memento. They had obviously made a thorough search of her rooms. Perhaps someone had taken the stew off the fire.

“A poppet. A witchknife. Magical unguents. These are all incontrovertible evidence that under the guise of being a housekeeper in the Old Palace, you have practiced the evil arts of witchery.” Lamir pointed to the doll with a theatrical shudder. “Which unfortunate did you curse with this poppet, eh? What devilish charms did you weave in your evil practices?”

Amina looked completely bewildered. “But . . . I don’t understand, sir.”

“Explain these evil items, witch!”

Now she wanted to laugh. “If you wish, sir. They’re easily told. That doll belonged to my daughter, sir, when she was a baby, and I kept it. As a memory, if you like. The candles are for cleansing the air of unpleasant odors. That there’s a paring knife. And those I think are cooking spices, sir. For the flavors.” She craned her neck, trying to see. “Some of them are excellent for the digestion, too. Like the turmeric, that yellow spice there . . .”

Amina was using her strongest arts of persuasion, concentrating on being eager to please, homely, honest. The two guards exchanged glances, and she saw that she was swaying them, although of course they wouldn’t dare to intervene. Perhaps sensing this, Lamir dismissed the guards. Amina watched the heavy door slam shut behind them.

The torturer hadn’t responded in any visible way. Perhaps he was so used to seeing people pleading for their lives that he had no human responses left in him at all.

“It’s well known, witch, that such as you disguise your black arts with plausible-sounding excuses that trip easily off your tongues,” Lamir said. “Don’t think you can deceive me.”

“But, sir, there’s nothing more to tell.”

Lamir nodded to the torturer, who had picked up a nasty pair of pliers and was turning it over in his hands, looking thoughtfully at Amina. It was a professional kind of look, like a carpenter trying to size up the best way to saw a knotty piece of wood.

“I’m sure there’s much more to tell. Let us see how a little application — a tiny, tiny taste of what’s to come — will help to refresh your memory.”

“But, sir, I explained . . .”

Amina let panic bubble up in her voice. She wasn’t pretending now. It didn’t matter whether she was a witch or not; she was bound hand and foot, utterly vulnerable before two men who had every intention of doing her harm. She had seen human beings do violence to each other often, since her work with lost children meant she had spent many hours in the most desperate districts of Clarel. But this was different. The intention, in itself, was terrifying. She had never seen it so clearly in a human face before: it was cold, emotionless, devoid of anything except a conviction of its rightness.

At the best of times, Amina didn’t deal well with pain. She put up with it when she had to and avoided it when she could. She was fond of her body and wanted it to remain the way it was.

The torturer slowly walked up to Amina and, for the first time, met her eyes. This was his moment. He was enjoying it.

Perhaps even now it wasn’t too late.

“Please,” she said, turning her eyes to the cardinal. “Don’t do this, I’m begging you. Why me? I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I think we both know that isn’t true,” said Lamir. “You are come to the place where all lies will be burned out of you. Our only desire is to save your soul.”

The torturer, who had paused while the cardinal spoke, turned his attention back to Amina. She shut her eyes.

PIP WAS JUST DRIFTING OFF TO SLEEP WHEN HE woke with a start, thinking that someone had called his name. Without knowing why, he was mortally afraid.

He sat up. The storm had passed, and a stray beam of moonlight slanted through the