Chapter 40
‘Hey!’ a voice bellowed behind us.
We snapped around in a flash of simultaneous shock, as if pulled by the same pair of strings.
Fast. Not fast enough. The burly guard emerging from a cell five paces away had already opened his mouth again, squinting at us with beady eyes – taking in the toxic sheen on our clothes, the oily dust on our faces, the corridor we’d just stepped out of. ‘Where the hell did you two—’
Durlain shot forward.
They slammed into the dark stone wall together before the end of that barked question – him and the guard, who was barely an inch shorter and twice as broad, but not nearly as vicious.
A wheezing grunt escaped the other man at the impact.
Durlain gave an unpleasant yank in the same moment; a joint cracked painfully, and the guard would no doubt have screamed again if not for the slime-covered glove pressed against his mouth.
Far too close, another voice yelled, ‘Kador? All well?’
The guard’s eyes bulged in his reddening face.
‘All well,’ Durlain shouted back, louder than I’d ever heard him, his voice a pitch-perfect imitation of the brash cry that had risen behind us a moment ago. ‘It’s the bloody rats again.’
‘Oh, for hell’s sake,’ the other voice grumbled, and heavy footsteps removed themselves around the corner.
Kador made a desperate, keening sound into Durlain’s palm.
I decided it was time to stop being useless, threw a look around, and found a door that wasn’t locked and barred.
The cell behind was empty, it turned out when I dragged it open.
Durlain didn’t take his hand off the guard’s face as he summarily marched the two of them into the dank room with a murmured request for me to shut the door behind them.
Only when I’d done so did fire flare in his free hand, revealing Kador’s saucer-wide eyes and broad, heaving chest. He’d given up his attempts to wrestle free.
As soon as Durlain loosened his grip even a fraction, though, he dragged in a breath, unmistakably intending to cry out again.
‘I really would advise against that,’ Durlain told him with deceptive mildness, fingers tightening around the man’s clean-shaven jaw again. The flames in his other hand flickered a silent warning. ‘I’ve been informed it’s quite unpleasant to have your vocal cords charred out.’
The guard stiffened.
‘Shouldn’t we just kill him?’ I asked, frowning. ‘I assume you’re not planning to drag him along, and he’ll only cause us trouble if we leave him here.’
‘He might be worth the trouble.’ Durlain cocked his head, even though he was standing behind the broader man, lean arm tight as an iron chain around those bulky shoulders.
‘Just as a matter of curiosity, Kador, do you happen to have encountered any nineteen-year-old fireborn girls in these dungeons lately?’
Implausibly, the man’s eyes widened farther.
‘I think he has,’ I put in, leaning sideways against the damp wall. Ehwaz lay loosely in my hand, just in case.
‘Well, that would be helpful.’ Durlain’s voice was pleasant in that most dangerous way, like a sweet smile showing teeth.
‘So helpful I might feel inclined to not scorch anyone’s vocal cords, even.
Let’s say I remove my hand and we have a little conversation – no one screaming, no one dying. Think we could manage that, Kador?’
Kador winced a little at the sound of his name but nodded urgently, then gasped as the hand on his face vanished. The wrist he rubbed over his mouth was frantic – wiping away the foul residue that had been stuck to that dark glove.
‘Tell me,’ Durlain said quietly, stepping around the man’s broad form, still cupping his flames in his palm. ‘The girl?’
‘The … the dark-haired one?’ Kador stammered, inching back to the nearest wall as his dark little eyes flew back and forth between the two of us. ‘The one who made the Second General cry?’
There was a pulse of silence.
Then Durlain said, suddenly sharp, ‘She did what?’
‘She … The king’s Second General. Lord Berthelam.
’ He paused to wipe his mouth again, then flinched as he saw Durlain’s expression and hurriedly added, ‘Look, I don’t know what was said, alright?
Old man went to have a word with her and came back in tears, blubbering about his dead granddaughter and hell knows what else. It’s why they—’
He abruptly stopped talking.
Flames flared white. Durlain snarled, ‘Why they what?’
‘Look,’ Kador spluttered, staggering another defensive step back and meeting the wall in a clang of chainmail against stone. ‘Who are you? Did you come in through the Maw gate? If the king didn’t send you, I can’t just—’
‘To hell with the king.’ Durlain’s voice was fraying at the edges, the fire dancing wildly in his hand. ‘You’ll talk or I’ll make you talk. Where is she?’
‘He’ll kill me,’ Kador panted. His eyes were wild on the flames; sweat beaded on his forehead, glistening wet in the firelight. ‘If he finds out I talked to you, he’ll do worse than anything you could do to me, so …’
‘You might be underestimating our creativity,’ I said, because Durlain looked about to burn the skin off the man’s hand then and there and we really didn’t need the attention a bout of agonised screaming would bring. ‘Whereas the king might never find out.’
He snapped around to me, fear moving over for a flicker of scorn I knew all too well. ‘And what do you know of it, bitch?’
Right.
One of those.
I’d encountered two types of hate in my years in Aranc’s service. Some of my victims loathed me because I was pressing a knife to their throats; others loathed me because I was a woman pressing a knife to their throats. The first I considered perfectly understandable. The latter …
They underestimated me.
And they always broke more easily in the end.
Oh, hell. I knew so very well how to make this one crack in a matter of minutes – if it would even take that long. Just one more time … Wouldn’t it be worse, really, to not use the skills I had when all our lives were on the line?
‘Dur?’ I said, not taking my eyes off the man’s reddened face.
He didn’t move on the edge of my gaze, tall and dark in the flamelight. His voice was tight with anger or frustration as he said, ‘I’m beginning to think he might not be worth the trouble after all.’
‘No. It’ll take too long to make him talk, though.’ I threw a swift glance at the closed door and made my decision in the span of a heartbeat. ‘Would you mind if I broke a promise?’
The fire stilled.
Kador was making a good attempt to press himself through the wall now, gaze darting between us but chin set at an obstinate angle I’d seen before.
It was the look of a man who imagined himself braver than he was – and most of all, the look of a man who lacked the creativity to understand just how very frightened he ought to be.
Still. He knew Lesceron’s methods, and he wouldn’t easily accept that he had worse options … which was, it seemed, the same conclusion Durlain reached in that frozen moment.
‘Last chance,’ he told the sweating guard.
He’d regained his self-possession, more or less – although with an edge below the surface that told me one push too many might end with a smouldering corpse at his feet.
‘Tell me where to find my sister and I’ll lock you up here for your colleagues to find you.
Keep your mouth shut and my companion will take over the interrogation. ’
Kador gave a shrill scoff. ‘If you think I’ll tell her—’
‘Oh, do shut up,’ Durlain interrupted with resigned venom. A muscle twitched at his jaw as he met my gaze. ‘Only behind closed doors, Thraga. Please.’
‘Promise,’ I said and lifted my hands.
Naudiz. Ansuz. Lack, sound.
I’d done this so many times before.
I knew the exact way Kador’s eyes would widen – knew the shapes his lips would form.
I knew the way his breath hitched when his voice failed to come, knew his next silent attempt to scream, knew the inevitable fear exploding across his face when the realisation finally sank in …
It wasn’t boring, watching the game play out.
I hated it too much for it to be boring.
But hell, it was old.
Old, and invariably effective.
‘That’s better,’ I said, hearing the impassive flatness of my own voice, the feeling seeping out of me.
Emotion was a luxury I could not afford as my fingers moved, shaping patterns I could – did – feel in my dreams. Raido, mannaz, laguz, isa.
Change, body, water, ice, and there was the familiar crackle, the familiar soundless howl with which Kador curled around his lower arm as the blood beneath his skin began to solidify into delicate red crystals.
So simple. So elegant.
So very, very painful.
‘You realise what I am, don’t you?’ The closest I’d ever been able to bring myself to speaking the obvious facts out loud. But it worked – Kador’s contorted face was the face I’d seen so many times before, blanched with fear and shock. ‘You realise what I could do to you?’
I didn’t need sound to know the whimper he let out.
On the edge of my sight, Durlain didn’t move, face unreadable in the shadow.
I raised my hands again, and the broad-shouldered guard jerked away from me with quaking knees and mindless terror in his eyes, clutching his hand to his chainmail-covered chest even as his legs buckled and he went down to the floor.
Not even a fraction of the pain Durlain could have administered, and yet he was already breaking …
because they were used to the known danger of fireborn magic, all of them, whereas I was the monster under their beds.
The nightmare lurking in the shadows. The creature of unspeakable evil they’d been taught to hate and fear all their lives, and fuck – if Seidrinn’s usurper kings had to make a monstrosity out of me, I might as well use it.
I might as well turn it against them.