CHAPTER 74 Wren
CHAPTER 74
Wren
‘It is not only ingredients that transform in the crucible, but the alchemist themself’
– Alchemy Unbound
W REN WAS WOKEN with an icy bucket of water to the face.
She reeled back, gasping, only to find that she was bound to a chair. Magic-muting manacles were clamped around her wrists, chains of a similar make snaking around her body and ankles.
Her mouth was dry and furry around a gag, and as she blinked the room into focus, she recalled the taste of silver boxweed on her tongue. She’d been drugged and kidnapped, and by the looks of things, was now being held hostage.
She fought the panic rising in her chest and tried to assess the situation objectively. The manacles at her wrists instantly suggested that the People’s Vanguard was involved. Had the Warswords been wrong to think they had quelled an uprising before it started? Or was this another coordinated attack on the royal-blooded magic wielders? She was alive, which meant they wanted something from her...
Coughing around her gag, a headache already blooming behind her eyes, Wren refocused on the room. It wasn’t so much a room as it was a crypt. She could tell by the damp, cool air and the lack of windows that she was beneath layers of stone and earth. Torches flickered weakly in rusted sconces, illuminating the moss-covered walls.
Her chains rattled as she shifted in the chair, craning her neck and trying to spot the exit. Understand the surroundings. Come to grips with your limitations. Find a solution . She could do that. Her mind was a fucking blade.
Methodically, her gaze swept across the crypt, and she noted with a pang of sickening dread that there was a wall of gruesome instruments just to the left of her: pliers, hooks, tongue locks, saws, whips, and beneath them, a cage full of rats. The door to the chamber was several feet away and looked to be reinforced with wrought iron. The scent of decay hung heavy in the air, along with the metallic tang of blood. Glancing down, Wren bit back a cry of horror to find rivers of crimson trickling between the cobbles. Who had been here before her? What had been done to them?
The rats in the cage were restless, squeaking and rocking the whole vessel. The sound made her think of the rats Master Crawford had forced them to poison during his lessons. There was a chance they would have the last laugh now...Panic made another attempt to squeeze her insides, and she struggled to fight it back this time. The chains binding her to the chair were tight, and she was nauseous at the press of the alchemy they’d been treated with.
Wren cursed herself. Her own fucking invention was being used against her yet again. She should have worked out how to make herself immune to her own creation by now, especially after the experience outside the infirmary. Gods, she’d been a fool, and now...
That was her panic talking. She had to stay calm. There had to be a way—
A key rattled in the lock from the outside. Wren snapped her head towards the door, which swung inwards, revealing two hooded figures.
True fear yawned wide inside her then. She had forced Torj to remain behind, and she had no idea where she was – if she was even still in Highguard, or how long she’d been gone. The Gauntlet advantage they might have won through their prototype was a distant dream now, one that seemed irrelevant if she was carved into pieces and fed to a bunch of rodents. Wren reminded herself to breathe, to remain calm. She had fought in battles; she had faced down shadow wraiths and won...
The figures approached, their faces fully covered by masks, long dark cloaks covering up any stitch of fabric or colour that might have been recognizable. Wren noted that the masks weren’t quite the same as those worn by her attackers at the infirmary. Perhaps they were a different faction, or a different group of assailants altogether.
‘What do you want?’ she tried to say, but with the gag in her mouth, it came out a muffled garble.
One of them reached forwards, and Wren flinched as gloved fingers brushed her face to remove the gag.
She coughed and spat the taste of poison onto the stone floor. ‘What do you want?’ she repeated, clearly this time.
‘You are Elwren Embervale, are you not?’
With their masks and her dulled senses, she wasn’t sure which one of them had spoken. It didn’t matter either way. There was no point in lying. Not yet.
‘You know who I am.’ She shook her chains. ‘I wouldn’t be wearing these otherwise.’
‘Are you Elwren Embervale?’ They spoke as though they hadn’t heard her.
‘Yes,’ she hissed through her teeth, ignoring the blood roaring in her ears and the hammering of her heart against her sternum. ‘What do you want?’
Wren’s blood ran cold as the taller of the two went to the wall of instruments. A twisted combination of relief and terror surged through her as he selected a thin wooden cane.
Without warning, it whipped through the air and struck her right side. She cried out in shock as it left a sharp, burning stripe across her upper arm.
‘We ask the questions here.’
Wren couldn’t even see his eyes through the mask, not as he raised the cane again, ready to strike. She held her tongue, fighting down nausea.
‘You are sister to Althea Embervale, the Shadow of Death?’
Wren eyed the blood spatter on the hem of the speaker’s cloak. That better not be Thea’s blood , she thought distantly.
The cane cracked across her other side and she yelped, hissing at the pain. ‘ Yes. Thea is my sister. She’s a Warsword of Thezmarr.’
Answer truthfully for as long as you can , she told herself. There will no doubt be something that I won’t want to tell them, and that they do not already know...
She tried not to squirm as the shorter interrogator moved behind her and placed his thick hands on her shoulders. ‘And you fought in the shadow war alongside her?’ he murmured, his rotten breath coasting across her ear.
‘Yes,’ Wren replied, fighting to keep the quaver from her voice. If she could just be free of these damn irons, she could unleash her lightning upon them both. She could bring down the whole fucking crypt if she so wished.
She must have been testing them in her grip behind her back, because the man rattled the chains menacingly. ‘These are on good and tight, lass. There’ll be no lightning show in here today.’
Today . Had she been there all night? Or was that a promise of how long her interrogation would last? Surely someone would have reported her missing by now...
Breathe , she reminded herself.
‘How long have you been in Naarva?’ the taller man asked, tapping the cane against his gloved palm. As he did, a set of keys jangled at his hip. Keys to the crypt. Keys to her manacles...Keys to whatever was beyond these wretched walls. She forced her attention away.
‘A few weeks,’ she said, tensing in anticipation of the blow.
‘Doing what?’
‘Travelling—’
Strike.
Stars danced in her vision as the cane hit the side of her face this time. It broke the skin. Through the line of fire across her cheek, she could feel the trickle of blood.
‘You have not been travelling.’
‘I have,’ she said hoarsely. ‘All over the—’
Hands closed around her throat, squeezing tight, crushing her windpipe. Wren’s legs kicked out, her whole body flailing against the chains as she fought with all her might to get air into her lungs.
‘You’re a shit liar.’ That sour breath was hot on her face again.
Wren gasped and gasped, the chains rattling as she struggled.
Suddenly, she was released. She wheezed, coughing and spluttering and trying to take in as much air as she could, her heart pounding painfully. Eyes streaming, throat throbbing, she sagged in the chair, only the chains keeping her upright.
‘Where’s your Warsword? Not here to save you now, is he?’
Rhetorical questions. Wren’s cheek was burning where she’d been struck, the dry blood already itching. Her gaze flitted quickly to the keys and back again, and she clenched her mouth shut.
‘You’re learning,’ the man with the cane sneered. ‘That’s good.’
Thick fingers threaded through her hair from behind and yanked her head back.
‘You’re an alchemist, aren’t you?’
‘No.’
The cane struck her legs this time, and when she flinched, the second man pulled her hair painfully tight again. ‘This is going to get so much worse. This is just a warmup for us.’
‘You attend Drevenor Academy, don’t you?’ asked the first.
As soon as the words left his lips, realization dawned on Wren. These men weren’t rebels. They weren’t part of any conspiracy against the rulers or royal blood...
‘How many greenhouses at Drevenor?’
Wren’s breath rattled in her chest, her eyes going wide as the man returned the cane to its place on the wall and kicked the cage of rats towards her.
‘This little talk is going to hurt either way. The question is...how much?’ he said. ‘Tell us, how many greenhouses?’
Wren didn’t know if she was losing circulation to her brain, but she couldn’t think what a bunch of cut-throats would want with the academy. Were they looking for a bounty to steal?
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Her vision went white as she was struck across the face again, this time with the back of the man’s hand. Her head snapped to the side with the force of it, and the man behind had to hold her chair to stop it from tumbling over.
Her chains shifted just slightly, allowing her a glimpse at the far wall.
There, amid an array of torture instruments, hung her belt of potions.