25 Rhona
Rhona
Knights traded shifts all the time, but Rhona wasn’t one to adjust her schedule on a whim. So when she approached Sir Winston
about his overnight prison shift he was, understandably, a bit surprised. It hadn’t, however, stopped him from taking the
shift in trade for Rhona’s next morning garden shift.
Now Rhona stood at the end of the dimly lit hallway, cells full of the Iron Empire’s enemies as far as she could see. The
captives moaned and screamed, filling the hallway with a cacophony that overwhelmed Rhona on the best of days, and nearly
stopped her from doing her job on the worst.
She’d already been working for hours, nearly half her shift done, waiting for the right moment to approach the two prisoners
she needed to speak to. Now was the right time.
Rhona paced the hallway, peeking into each cell until she found who she was looking for—the Corisian. Finally, she saw him.
He was filthy, huddled in the corner, his blond hair dull and greasy from lack of washing.
“Corisian,” she said lowly, watching his head snap up to look at her, his blue eyes bright even in the dim light of the stone
cell.
“What do you want?” he said, spitting at her.
“I want to understand why you attacked the noble houses this week,” Rhona said, nonchalantly wiping the spit off her chest
plate with one gloved hand.
The Corisian looked at her, head tipped to one side. “Your people already ripped all of my fingernails off to get that information
from me,” he grunted, showing his bloodied hands to Rhona. “Not that they needed to, since they had a witch with them the
whole time. They just did it for the cruelty . . . unsurprisingly.”
Rhona cringed at the sight of his hands; she couldn’t imagine how much pain he was in. She had had a hunch that the Corisian
may react this way to her, which was reasonable given the circumstances, so she had come prepared.
Rhona held out a roll that she’d stuffed with freshly cooked meat in the mess hall before she’d headed to this shift. It was
cold now, but it was much better than the slop that the prisoners were fed: some sort of grain mixed with water, not even
cooked enough to digest easily.
“I brought something that might interest you.” She watched the Corisian scramble forward and reach for the sandwich, making
her wonder when he’d last been given that slop. “But not before you answer my questions.” She pulled the loaf out of his reach.
“You’re all monsters,” he growled, anger and yearning warring in his eyes as his gaze locked onto the roll in her hand.
“Maybe, but I’m a monster that is willing to feed you . . . provided you earn it.”
The Corisian waited, silent. Rhona chose to take this as a yes.
“Good.” Rhona nodded. “Why did the Corisians attack the noble houses?”
“The Iron Empire is dangerous, and we intended to remove some of the more influential nobles to destabilize the trade structure
of the empire.”
“And?”
“And if we disrupt the trade lines and businesses of the noble elite, it will leave the military side of the Iron Empire weaker to invasion.” The prisoner’s eyes remained trained on the food in Rhona’s hand.
“So you intend on invading?” Rhona pried.
“I’m not privy to that knowledge, only that we want to see the Iron Empire destabilized.”
Rhona squinted, trying to determine if there was a lie anywhere in that, but he seemed to be telling her the truth, none of
the classic lying tells present as he spoke. He wasn’t twitching or picking at his skin, and he was unafraid to look directly
at her. Rhona had to admit, keeping some agents partially in the dark wasn’t a terrible plan for Corisia. “Who was your primary
target?”
“There wasn’t one. We were told just to destabilize as much of the nobility as possible.”
“Did you work with anyone inside the Iron Empire?” Rhona tapped at the metal of the bars with one hand, looking back at the
stairs to make sure no one was coming down.
The Corisian smirked. “Like I told your friends, yes, we did. But I don’t know who they are. In Corisia we have some witches
still, even if they’re weaker than yours used to be, because we’re not barbaric. It means we’re smart enough to know the tricks
to beating a witch who can talk to the Flow and sense truth. Astrans worked with us, but we never saw their faces, never heard
their voices.”
Rhona watched him, frustration settling in her belly. This was helpful, surely, but not nearly as helpful as she had wanted
it to be. She wanted names, dates, precise things about any sort of growing rebellion that she could bring back to Lady Maeve,
who could give her more information that Rhona could then give Lord General Kerrigan. For the glory of the Iron Empire.
“Why do you want to know?” the Corisian asked, getting closer to the door and peering at Rhona, his nailless fingers wrapping
around the rusting, filthy bars.
“The Iron Empire must find those who betrayed us,” Rhona answered.
“Right.” The Corisian nodded, a glint in his eye. “But you weren’t in the room when I was being interrogated. You’re here,
alone . . . so why do you want to know?”
Shit.
“Private Iron Retinue matters are not the privilege of a prisoner to know,” she said as she shoved the sandwich through the
bars.
“Sounds like it,” he said sarcastically, ripping into the sandwich and continuing to speak through his mouthful of food. “You
need to get a little better at espionage if you’re going to do things like this.”
Rhona stood quietly, racking her brain for a response.
“Relax,” he said in between huge bites, his mouth full enough that the words came out garbled. “If anything, I’m relieved
to see the Iron Empire has people working against them from the inside.”
“I am not—” Rhona stuttered.
“Right.” The Corisian winked.
Rhona felt the urge to grab his head and slam it against the bars of his cell. She took a deep breath, and then another. Injuring
him would only cause questions to be asked; it would do her mission more harm than good.
“Have a good life, Corisian. As long as it may last,” Rhona said before continuing down the hallway to the final cell, where
she knew the witch was.
As she walked down the hallway she shook her head, lost in thought. Rhona couldn’t understand why the Corisian insisted that
she was working against the Iron Empire. Everything she did was for the safety of the empire and the people within it, and
sometimes that meant asking important questions. It didn’t make her a turncoat.
Rhona reached a cell marginally larger than the others and with an actual bed in the corner, a desk wedged in along the far wall. The bare minimum of comfort for someone who would be imprisoned until they died.
“Rhona Mayhew,” the witch said as she turned toward the bars, still sitting at her desk.
Rhona hadn’t seen this woman since the day she and Commander Hugo had captured her. It was early in the Iron Empire’s reign,
and Commander Hugo’s regiment had been sent out to cull the witches of Astra, with the specific guidelines that witches with
truth sense should be spared for the Iron Empire’s purposes—to be used against their own kind.
Rhona had been a new knight under Commander Hugo’s wing. She remembered admiring him so greatly during that time, a true paragon
of the Iron Empire’s ways and an unparalleled witch hunter. They’d found this woman, Esther, in the capital as they had prepared
to leave the city. Commander Hugo had simply had a feeling, a sense that this woman had something strange about her. Rhona
remembered escorting her back to the castle to be tested, and after she’d been confirmed as a truth-sense witch, she’d never
seen her again. But Rhona recalled what she’d said to her as she rode with the woman to the castle, Esther bound and unable
to move.
“You will all regret killing us when a greater power comes, and you can do nothing but wish for divine intervention. You are
killing the gifts Astra has given us each time you execute a witch.”
The words rang in Rhona’s head as she looked at one of the last truth-sense witches in Astra. Her time in prison had aged
her, and she was covered in dirt. Did they let her bathe? Rhona understood these prisoners were enemies of the Iron Empire
but did they not deserve to live cleanly, at least?
“Esther.” Rhona nodded sharply.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Esther asked, her voice ragged and tired.
“I’m asking the questions today, witch,” Rhona said. She wasn’t about to be analyzed by a truth-sense witch.
“That is a shame,” Esther replied, hazel eyes sparkling.
“Tell me what you learned when you spoke to the Corisian.” Rhona leaned into the bars against the woman’s enclosure.
Without pause, the witch proceeded to tell Rhona everything she’d just heard out of the Corisian’s mouth, proving the prisoner
hadn’t been lying. “Why are you asking, Rhona Mayhew?” She tilted her head as she questioned Rhona.
“For the protection of the Iron Empire,” she answered before thinking—before remembering.
“That is not the truth,” the witch cackled, pushing away from her desk to stand and stepping toward the bars of her enclosure.
Shit. It was the truth . . . but was it the whole truth?
“A friend wanted to know, and . . . I am helping them,” she amended her previous statement.
“That feels like the truth, the Flow says it’s the truth.” Esther tilted her head and reached for Rhona’s hand. Rhona cringed
away, both at the use of the Flow and because she was too overwhelmed to be touched.
“Who is the friend?” Esther asked.
“I am not answering your questions, witch.”
“So, they are important enough to be hidden, but not important enough to be able to know this information. Interesting,” Esther
said, a wide smile blooming across her face.
It unsettled Rhona.
“Esther,” Rhona started, “is there anything going on that I should know about?”
“Why would I tell the monster that captured me and trapped me here?” Esther mused.
“Because if the Iron Empire is lost, you will never be free,” Rhona answered.
“Rhona Mayhew, the Iron Empire is the reason I am not free.” The woman’s words hung in the air between them, forcing Rhona to truly think about what she had done to this woman’s life.
And Esther was right. Rhona needed something to convince her, to show her that the witch could trust her. “The friend is a
witch, and she has seen you in danger.”
Esther blinked, eyes lost in thought for a second before snapping back to Rhona’s. “You’re working with a seer? Here? At the
capital?” she whispered, the cacophony of prisoners screaming around them making it almost impossible to hear her. “I thought
they were all dead.”
“What have you seen or heard?” Rhona asked again, dodging the witch’s question. Anything she said was up for scrutiny from
the witch, and Rhona didn’t want to put Maeve in danger.
She watched the witch ponder, considering whether or not to trust Rhona. “I hear the guards talking about soldiers going missing,
but it is not just soldiers. It’s prisoners. Every other day a man in white, a wraith in this dark dungeon, comes through
to pick someone. And they leave and are never heard or seen in the prison again.”
Soldiers were going missing? Prisoners too?
“That is helpful. Anything else?” Rhona pushed.
“Not much happens down here, if you can believe it.”
Rhona could.
“The friend has been asking about you too. They wish to know if you’re okay,” Rhona said.
“Do I look okay?” Esther scoffed.
“Not really,” Rhona answered honestly.
“The truth,” Esther said, a hum escaping her lips. “I am alive. That is what matters,”
“Thank you,” Rhona said, handing the witch another sandwich from in her bag.
Rhona left the alcove where the witch was kept and quickly headed back to her post to suffer through the screams of the Iron
Empire’s most dangerous enemies for another four hours.