Blindfold. Kevin J. Anderson

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СКАЧАТЬ began to reread his Machiavelli.

CHAPTER

       7

      i

      For days after reading the mind of Eli Strone, Kalliana remained in her chambers in Guild Headquarters, slipping out only at late hours … trying to hide from the nightmares she had taken from the killer, nightmares that now resided firmly in her own mind.

      The violence, the bloodlust, the self-righteousness possessed her, despite her constant efforts to purge it from her thoughts. Not only had she witnessed the crimes in Strone’s head, but she had experienced them as well, as if she herself had done them. And in her quiet moments in the darkness of her quarters, a deep suspicion grew that perhaps she herself was capable of the same monstrous acts….

      Kalliana sat in silence on her narrow bed, plucking pieces of honeyed fruit from a bowl, but the sweet stickiness contrasted violently with the tacky texture of drying blood in her imagination. A thin skewer of spiced chicken reminded her of pieces of dripping flesh, sliced away with brisk, efficient strokes of a scalpel as a paralyzed victim screamed into the night….

      Other citizens might have envied her freedom to indulge in such delicacies, but every time Kalliana visualized the spraying blood and the slaughtered victims, felt the warped justifications flooding from Strone’s mind … she wondered how many of the common people would still envy her position if they knew.

      Outside, in the vastness of the world, she knew other laws were being broken: small offenses out in the holdings that could be dealt with by local, nontelepathic Magistrates … or major crimes by people who would be hauled off to First Landing for trial by the Guild.

      Kalliana shuddered. It wouldn’t be her turn again for some time, though. The Guild had eleven other Truthsayers to share the duties of justice, and nineteen less-powerful Mediators, who negotiated solutions to civil and political disputes. Kalliana was not needed, not now. She would have time to recover, just in case the searing memories assimilated from Strone had damaged her telepathic abilities. She hoped it would be enough time.

      Kalliana slept on her pallet in the midmorning, feeling the bright sunlight as it streamed through the outer viewports in the ship wall—and still she woke up sweating, panting hard. She was afraid of the darkness, but nightmares found her even in broad daylight.

      The signal at her door startled her, and she had a sudden, wild vision of Eli Strone, escaped from his prison, come back to flay answers out of her with a sharp scalpel. I’m not guilty. You saw my reasons! You know! How can you call me guilty?

      But the young man outside the door to her quarters was so harmless that she burst out in a shamed laugh, though his good-natured grin was masked by concern. “Ysan, you startled me.”

      The seventeen-year-old boy glanced away shyly, his white robe and sash looking too large on his skinny build. “You’ve been hiding, Kalliana,” he said. “Nobody’s seen you in days. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

      The boy was four years her junior, but a gulf of more than age separated them. He was still innocent, a trainee who had not yet been tested for his green Truthsayer’s sash.

      She began to make an inane reply, but found she didn’t have the energy to deceive him. Ysan was a refreshing breeze, a healing kindness that allowed her to see the good side of human nature while recovering from the bad.

      Ysan raised his eyebrows. “Let me come in. Tell me how bad it was—that might help you. Besides, I have to get prepared for it myself.”

      She thought how the razor edge felt as it sliced through skin, an ever-so-faint rasping, a rubbery tug. The blood was thick and wet, smearing like oil, darkening as it mixed with dust…. Through Strone’s perceptions she had enjoyed the sensation—

      “I can’t talk about it, Ysan,” she said in a husky whisper. “There’s no way I can describe it. No way I want to. I just need … time. I’ll work through it.”

      Whenever she tried to focus her thoughts and fortify her psyche, though, Kalliana felt the battering ram of violence come back at her. The secondhand screams were growing quieter day by day as she tried to erase them—but it was a long, slow process. Recovering from the furnace of Strone’s deluded sense of justice was more difficult than anything she had ever endured in her pampered life.

      Ysan frowned, leaning on the doorframe. “You’ve helped me enough times, Kalliana. There must be something I can do.” His eyes lit up above his soft cheekbones. His fair skin prickled pink. “Why don’t you show me what you saw? I can take some of the burden from you.”

      “No!” she cried, then looked sternly at him. Also born in the Guild and raised with increasing dosages of Veritas, Ysan had practiced mind-reading abilities from the time he was a child—but the young trainee hadn’t yet walked through the shadowed valleys of guilt and remorse. Mental abilities still seemed like fun to him.

      “Ysan, this isn’t a game. Enjoy your innocence as long as you can,” she said, trying to soothe the dejected look that showed on his face. “You’ll be tested soon enough.”

      “I’ll be tested in a few weeks. I’ll be a full Truthsayer. Can’t you—”

      “No.” She clutched her warm wool wrap closer around her. “I just need a little more rest. I’m going to sleep now—that’s all I need. Really.” She softened, allowing a smile. “But thanks for your concern.”

      “Sure,” the young man said, fidgeting uncertainly, and then he stepped back into the corridor. “Well, pleasant dreams, then.”

      ii

      Kalliana sat up gasping, hearing the echoes of a shrieking victim in her ears, one of the last batch that Eli Strone had skinned alive, a rugged man with a work-seamed face, whiskered chin, and the misery of barely hidden guilt in his eyes. Filtered through Strone’s own memories, the disgust she felt for the victims’ imagined sins overpowered her own horror at the crime. They deserved to die. They deserved it! The rugged victim screamed again—

      But then Kalliana realized the noise was not imaginary. She heard a persistent, whining buzz, a summons from Guild Master Tharion. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows.

      “Yes,” she said, taking a deep breath and forcing her voice louder, stronger, as she activated the viewplate.

      “Please come and see me on the bridge deck,” Guild Master Tharion said, “in my ready room.”

      Kalliana acknowledged, then dressed herself in a clean white robe. She ran her fingers along the emerald Truthsayer sash; now its bright, honest green seemed tarnished to her. She cinched it tight around her slender waist and walked briskly toward the antiquated turbolift that took her up to the Guild’s command center.

      The central administrative offices had taken over what had been the bridge of the SkySword. The smooth mechanical finery of the decommissioned military equipment gave the Guild Master’s seat and the surrounding offices a sterile cleanness and austere technological precision that could not be conveyed by the soft adobe or baked bricks СКАЧАТЬ