Chapter 33
Usually when I wake, the first thing I notice is that I am not dead, not dying, that my throat is not being crushed, and that my blood is not flowing freely.
This time, when I wake, the first thing I notice is that my hands are bound.
My arms are pulled behind my back, rope painfully tight around my wrists. Opening my eyes does little to help make sense of the sensation, because when I do, the room swirls. I blink, the scene around me slowly coming into focus.
It’s dark, lit only by a single grimy faerie-dust lamp hanging from the center of the ceiling.
My head hurts. Blood throbs at my temples and my ankles where ropes are tied too tightly against the chair legs.
I crane my neck to the left and find the Nomad slumped beside me, chained in the same manner to his own chair.
My first instinct is to call out to him. Strange, how after all this time, my instinct is still to use my voice. Instead, I work with what I’ve got and throw what little strength I have into jerking my chair.
It scrapes loudly across the floor, having the intended effect. Next to me, the Nomad stirs.
“…Wanderer…” he groans. He must notice his restraints too, because he jerks his head up, his eyes shooting open. Swiveling his head, he finds me immediately. Concentration and fear tighten his expression, honing his gaze into focus. “Wanderer,” he says, more firmly this time. “Where are we?”
I don’t know, I sign behind my back. My wrists may be bound, but I at least still have some movement in my hands.
At first, I worry he won’t realize I can still communicate, but the Nomad cranes his neck so he can get a good look at my hands.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” he asks.
I can’t sign the word for sleep—not when the sign requires bringing my hand to my face—but I do my best to approximate the motion.
The Nomad frowns for a moment before understanding clicks into place.
“Phoenix was supposed to be watching guard,” he mutters.
“Yes. Well, you were supposed to get me off that train,” a voice cuts in. We both snap our heads toward the corner of the room, but there is no speaker to be found.
Until a woman materializes, that is.
Venus.
“I thought you were supposed to be dead,” the Nomad says dryly.
“Oh, no,” she says. “I was supposed to be alive and escaping with you. Except you all left me.”
“Left you?” the Nomad scoffs. “You do remember the part of the plan where Tink and I were supposed to jump onto another train. So if that’s what you mean by leaving—guilty, I suppose.”
“Well, you didn’t come back for me.”
“We were under the impression you were dead. Were you expecting a funeral?”
“Well, I wasn’t dead,” snaps Venus. “The Company guard shoved something awful and bitter into my mouth before he threw me up against the window. And when I woke, they had me locked up in this awful place. They tortured me, you know. Tortured me worse than they ever did her,” she says, shooting a glare in my direction.
“You do know that second-person pronouns are available to you, do you not?” says the Nomad.
Venus’s nostrils flare in response. It would be nice if I could reason with her rather than provoke her like the Nomad seems set on doing, but she’s on the other side of the room and can’t see my hands.
“Our magic is never worth it to Phoenix,” Venus says, almost to herself. “Not the way it is to me.”
“So Phoenix knows,” the Nomad says, sounding as if she’s only confirmed what he already suspected.
“No,” Venus answers. “She must have believed I was dead. She wouldn’t have left me otherwise.”
Any thought that this betrayal was premeditated flees from my mind at the sound of the insecurity in Venus’s voice.
“So you betrayed your friend,” the Nomad says, “and now?”
“I didn’t betray her. Phoenix is going to be fine,” Venus replies. “You two are the ones they want. The Company has no interest in Acel or Lars either,” she adds, “but probably only because they didn’t recognize Acel. Or perhaps they didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the queen.”
“I will take comfort in that as I’m being tortured,” says the Nomad.
Venus only smirks. “I never did like you.”
“Well, the feeling is mutual,” the Nomad says before swiveling his head toward me. “What about you, Tink? Did you ever like Venus?”
Answering that question hardly seems prudent at the moment.
I want to ask about Lars and Acel, but the Nomad asks first.
Venus just shrugs. “They weren’t there when the Company raided your rendezvous point. Neither was the faerie dust you smuggled off the train.”
The Nomad narrows his eyes to slits, but my stomach twists. Lars betraying us? Not exactly unexpected. But Acel… Perhaps I’d been naive to think he was my friend.
One of the guards approaches and goes to gag me, but Venus spouts out, “If you want to silence her, you’ll have to go for her hands.
That mouth of hers is no use. Oh, how grateful I am not to have to learn those stupid signs anymore.
Or wait for you to finish scribbling on that parchment of yours.
Sure, the Company guards aren’t the friendliest, but you have no idea how refreshing it is to be able to have conversations at a normal speed. ”
The words sink right where Venus intends them, in the lump forming in my throat.
It can’t produce voice, but it can feel as if someone is stabbing me as I fight off tears.
It shouldn’t matter to me right now. Not when soon, someone is going to come into this room with a knife and a bucket and bloodlet me until my body trembles and the color drains from my cheeks.
Even so, I can’t fight off the pain of my fears being realized, of every time I told myself I was overthinking turning out to be true.
That every time I convey the thoughts in my head, someone is wishing I wouldn’t bother.
“What did you say to her?” says the Nomad.
“You heard what I said,” says Venus. “And you’re in no position to make me take it back.”
“Oh, I won’t be making you take it back,” says the Nomad, his voice dripping ichor. “That would imply I’d be giving you a chance to repent.”
Venus scoffs, but she looks uneasy.
The second guard makes to cover my hands, but the first guard stops him. “Why waste a piece of cloth?” asks the first guard.
Then he grabs my finger and twists.
I let out a harrowing scream, but it’s only in my mind. My mouth is agape, forming the posture, but the pain—the pain is all-encompassing.
I don’t know why, but it’s the Nomad’s face I search for. I’m so silent, it takes a moment for the Nomad to realize what’s just happened.
Horror overcomes his face as soon as his eyes dart to my hands, still tied behind my back.
And then he goes very still.
For a moment, it’s as if he isn’t even flesh and blood, but a statue, a commemoration of himself, a semblance of the dreaded crime lord that he is or once was.
If the guard behind me spared a glance at his male captive, he would know to be terrified.
But he doesn’t look, and so he snaps my middle finger as well.
My stomach lurches with the pain. I suck in a breath of air, but it’s sharp and cold against my throat.
He’s going to break every last one of them.
He’s going to—
The third bone snaps, and the room begins to spin.
“Typically this sort of thing is done as an interrogation tactic,” seethes the Nomad. “You’re supposed to only do it when she refuses to give you information.”
“Don’t need any information from her,” says the guard. “Only her blood.”
“She couldn’t give you any useful information anyway,” says Venus with a caustic laugh.
“Then I will,” says the Nomad.
“Oh, the boss will be interrogating you later,” says the second guard. “He told us to go ahead and have our fun with this one.”
Four, and I feel my face drain of blood.
I’m not one to beg, but the pain swirls in my head. My right hand fights against the restraints, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s not in an attempt to escape, but a subconscious reaction to sign the word please.
Please.
The Nomad glances back and forth between my face and my fingers. To anyone else in the room, he’d appear calm, calculating. But there’s a franticness to the way his eyes dart, a nervous tick in his jaw. “That’s because your boss doesn’t have all the information.”
“Boss knows a lot,” says the first guard.
Five. My thumb dangles, and my whole body goes cold.
Please.
My other hand moves frantically, trying to sign to the Nomad, but there’s no use. Not when it’s tied up at this angle.
The only word I can think to sign is his name.
The Nomad stares at his name on my hand, and something in him snaps.
“Please.” The word I can’t sign comes pouring forth from his mouth. “Please, I’ll tell your boss anything he wants. Just stop hurting her. Please.”
The first guard scoffs. “You care for this creature? This”—he leans over, his breath wetting my cheek—“bug?”
He laughs, then circles behind the chair, bringing his baton down across my hand.
I feel the bones across the back of my hand snap. The scream wells up within my chest, refusing to be let out as my entire body lurches involuntarily in my seat.
What’s worse, my hand goes to sign the Nomad’s name again, but the pain is too crippling.
Another finger snaps, and my entire body rocks in the chair, the weight of my momentum causing the chair to squeak against the ground.
The Nomad’s face has gone white.
I can’t even mouth to him. Tears run down my cheeks, dropping into my lap.
When the next finger breaks, I bite down on my tongue so hard that a coppery wetness fills my mouth.
“Wait,” says the Nomad, voice rushed. “I have a trove of treasure hidden in a cave to the southeast of Morvan.”
Snap.
I gag on the blood in my mouth.
“The Gathers, it’s docked near here,” says the Nomad. “I could lead you there. You could have an entire fleet of ships at your disposal.”
“Oh, that is a good one,” says the first guard.
Crack.
I’m not sure how much longer I can hold onto consciousness.
From the looks of it, the Nomad isn’t sure either. “It’s okay, Wanderer,” he says, his voice suddenly calm. “It’s okay if you need to fade away for a while.”
But I can’t fade away. Can’t pass out. Peter bloodlet me too many times. My body is used to the pain. No longer provides me the relief of unconsciousness.
When they break the last finger, I make the mistake of thinking it’s over. Until the second guard snaps my left wrist.
My whole body tenses, seizes, the pain unbearable.
“Stop,” says the Nomad. “Please, just tell me what you want me to say.”
“We don’t want you to say anything,” says the guard. “Little creature like this should have known better than to seduce someone better than her.”
Venus makes a noise across the room that indicates she agrees.
My other wrist snaps.
Cold sweat pours all over me. I slump forward, but the weight of my body pulls pressure through my wrists, which is worse than the original pain, and my spine goes straight once more as I try desperately not to let my hands touch the back of the chair.
“There,” says the first guard. “Silent as a bug.”
Tears pour down my cheeks. I try to move my fingers, but I find myself facing a fortress of pain that makes them immobile.
The guard is right. I am silent. Truly silent.
And in some way, it’s worse than the night I lost my voice.
Everything is loud, and I am quiet. Trapped in a body that can’t communicate. Trapped in a realm of pain, with no way to escape.
All I can do is look at the Nomad, but he appears as silenced as I am, staring at my hands still tied behind my back, dangling in what must look like such strange angles.
“You shouldn’t have touched her,” he says, so quietly, I almost don’t hear him over the ringing in my ears.
“What was that?” asks the guard.
“You shouldn’t have touched her,” says the Nomad.
“No, you’re the one who shouldn’t have touched her,” says the second guard. They make for the door, and so does Venus.
She turns around, mouth open to say something, but then her eyes go wide.
“Where is he?”