31. Chapter 31 #2
“Mm.” She looks at me for a while. “Here’s what I notice. Two nights, and your answers haven’t changed by a word. Most men improve their lies under pressure. They add detail. You give me the same sentences in the same order, and a starving man shouldn’t be able to do that.”
“I’m not most men.”
“No. And that’s my problem.” She glances at the glass, then back at me. “One more thing worth your thought. Your Court has known you’re missing for two days. Nobody has come. No word through the trade, no pressure on our houses. Think about what that says about your value to them.”
“It says they haven’t found this building yet.
It doesn’t say they’ve stopped looking.” I hold her eyes.
“You’ve taken a Seigneur of the Nocturne Court.
Faine won’t leave that alone. Not for my sake; for the precedent.
Whoever gave you the order to take me either doesn’t understand what the Court is, or doesn’t care what it costs you when it arrives.
In your position, I’d want to know which. ”
Ecaterina considers that for three seconds, maybe four.
“You’re very good,” she says.
“I’ve had practice.”
“So have I. Which is why I’m done spending time on you.” She picks the glass up off the table, carries it to the washbasin in the corner, and pours it out slowly, watching me while she does it.
I don’t let my expression change, and the effort drains me almost as much as the broken arm does.
“I want you to understand my position,” she says.
“I don’t have anything against you. You were a good client, and you were polite to my manager and to me.
But you can’t be sold, you can’t be traded, and nobody I could hire is going to break you.
A day didn’t soften you. A week wouldn’t either.
You’re a bad investment, Seigneur, and I don’t keep bad investments. ”
“Then we both understand what’s left.”
“We do.”
“Then understand this as well. You’re getting nothing. And when it’s done, somebody above you is going to ask you why, and I hope the answer keeps you employed.”
She gives me a small nod, polite to the last, and steps aside for the men.
They come in, four of them. I’m too drugged to put up a fight.
There’s a corridor, then two flights of stairs going up, then a second corridor with doors along one side.
Vasile is standing at the end of it.
His collar is undone. He hasn’t shaved. He doesn’t look anything like the man who bowed to me on those steps.
“My lord.” His voice is low and urgent. “My lord, I want you to know I had no part in—”
“Vasile.”
He stops.
“Get in a car tonight. Don’t go home. Don’t go to a bank.” I get it out while they’re moving me. “You know what she looks like. You know her name. As long as you’re alive, you’re the man who can point at her, and these people don’t leave men like that walking around.”
He stares at me.
“Tonight,” I tell him. “You have hours.”
They drag me past him. I don’t hear him move.
The room at the end faces east.
I know that before anybody says a word about it. The sun is on the other side of that wall, below the horizon, on its way.
Bare floor. Bare walls. One window with boards screwed over it from the outside. There are runes cut into the door frame all the way around, and the cuts in the wood are pale. New. Made for me.
They put me down against the far wall, take the iron off my wrists, and strip me down to my briefs.
One of them tips my head back and empties a small bottle down my throat.
More of her vile brew. I twist my head to spit it out, but he clamps a hand over my mouth until I swallow.
They go out fast. The door shuts. The runes flare, then fade.
Ecaterina speaks through the door.
“You have enough of that in your system to dry you out in hours, whether you meet the sun or not,” she says. “Either way, the boards come off at four.”
“Of course they do.”
“Under the boards there’s glass. The sun will come in. I’m told it takes a while, and that the beginning is the worst part.”
“It is.”
“You’ve had a long night. I won’t make a speech.”
Her footsteps go away down the corridor.
I get myself up and put my back against the stone. My hands are free for the first time since the lounge. The left arm won’t hold weight, and it will be hours yet before it does.
I hold my right hand up in front of my face.
The scar runs from the knuckle to the wrist bone. It hasn’t faded, and it isn’t going to. Sunlight is the only thing that has ever marked me.
She put it there. Then she went around my room, blocking out every gap the light could come through. And she never told me she’d done either one.
There are things I should be doing with this time. Counting how long the Court takes to notice. Working out what Faine does about it. Deciding what I say if that door opens in an hour.
None of that is what’s in my head.
What’s in my head is a woman I left behind with no idea of where I was going. She doesn’t know I won’t be back. Crowe will have got her out of that house by now. Her sister is in a mountain six hours away from her, and I sat nine feet from that sister, knowing everything, and stayed silent.
I never gave her a choice about any of it.
You’re a fool, Val-Serein.
I sit with that thought. Time passes.
Outside, somebody sets a ladder against the wall.
The first screw comes out and drops to the ground below. Then the second.
I don’t look at the window. I sit in the corner with my back against the stone, and I turn my right hand over, and I keep my eyes on the mark she left on it.