CHAPTER 26 #2
“Mordoks prey on small magical creatures and when they can’t get those, bats, mice, and small birds, and they need magic to survive, so the more magical the prey, the better. When a mordok bites something or someone, they imprint on the taste, and they can find them by magic across distance.”
“No, I got all that. We let her lick some blood or bite someone’s dirty laundry, and then we make those weird noises, and she finds the person.”
He’d gathered that from just watching the beastmaster and me. Huh.
“Why do we want her?” Lute asked.
“Because last night I ripped out a chunk of the Butcher’s hair.
And a bit of scalp. It’s in my study. My clothes from last night also have his blood on them.
‘Reynald’ had cut him, and when the Butcher shoved me away, some of the blood got on my tunic.
I hid it in my linen chest before we left, so Clover wouldn’t wash it. ”
Lute’s eyes lit up. “We’ll be going hunting.”
“I hope so. It’s worth a try.”
Tzeri screeched into my ear. I raised my hand to scoot her, and she clamped onto my finger.
“Ow! Third time today.”
“Let me take her,” Lute said. “She’ll behave for me.”
“I don’t think she knows how.”
“Trust me. Animals like me. Seriously, let me take her.”
I unbuckled the pauldron and carefully lifted it off me. He bent his knees a little and I set it on his shoulder and buckled it in place.
Tzeri hissed and snapped her teeth an inch from his ear.
“You’ll come to regret this,” I warned.
“No worries. We’ll come to an understanding . . .”
A figure lunged out of a side street. I caught a flash of steel as it sank into Lute’s side. His mouth gaped.
A hand gripped my wrist, and the world swirled into gray nothing.
Stab.
The pain burned into my side, hot and cold at the same time. It sliced into me, into my organs, and my whole body screamed.
I gasped.
Someone scooped my legs from under me and dropped me onto something hard. The pain in my side exploded into blinding agony. I tried to get up, but a hand clamped my throat and slammed me back down. My head bounced off the hard surface. My vision swam.
Something caught my neck, constricting it.
I blinked away tears. The Butcher’s face came into focus. I tried to punch him. My right arm didn’t move, but my left did. He caught my fist and forced my arm down.
“Flailing won’t help,” he said.
Some kind of restraint clamped my wrist. I kicked with my left leg. My heel drummed something hard. I was on a table. I was on the Butcher’s table.
He stepped to the side. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a workbench with something metal on it.
The Butcher turned back to me, a mace in his hand.
He walked to the end of the table. Steel fingers gripped my ankle.
The mace swung up and came down. Agony crushed my left knee.
I screamed like I’d never screamed before in my life.
Through the haze of pain, I saw him move. He clasped my right ankle. I knew what was coming and that half a second of anticipation nearly broke me. When the blow came, I almost blacked out. I wanted to black out.
He slapped my face lightly. “Not yet. Stay with me awhile.”
Tears streamed from my eyes. I couldn’t stop. Everything hurt.
He pulled a knife out and began cutting off my dress.
I would die here, on this table. I knew it with absolute certainty. There was no escape.
The Butcher leaned over me, his dark hair dripping over his shoulders. “Are you with me? Do you understand what’s happening?”
I stared at him, wishing I could claw his eyes out.
“Good,” he said. “You’re bleeding from a lacerated liver. I nicked a major blood vessel. That is a mercy. The last one you will ever know. You will be dead in half an hour.”
If only I could get a hand free.
“You’re not getting the full treatment. You haven’t earned it, and you don’t deserve it. You are not one of us.” He tapped my chest. “You don’t have the heart of a knight.”
Fuck off, you sick asshole.
“I will make it simple for you. There are things I want to know. Tell me and I will end it fast. Refuse, and I will fill the last moments of your life with agony.”
I clenched my teeth as hard as I could.
“You think it hurts now. The next thirty minutes will feel like thirty days. It will hurt in ways you can’t even imagine.”
Nobody would come for me. Nobody knew where I was. It was just me and him, the light of the lanterns hanging above me, and this table. That would be my world until I died.
And then, I realized with cold horror, I’d come back to life, and he would do it again.
And again and again; even if I broke and told him everything he wanted to know, if he found out that I could die and resurrect, I would be a reusable torture toy.
If I was lucky, I would lose my grip on reality.
If not, I would die in agony and wake up perfectly aware I was in hell, over and over.
“Here’s what I know. The first time I saw you was in the Dog Market. You were in the crowd. Everyone was scared and shocked. You were angry. I noticed you. Then someone of your height and build attacked me in the plaza. Today I saw you again, entering the Citadel.”
He had been watching the Citadel. I should have thought of that.
“Every Firsday, Eliarde Docell visits her second cousin at the Citadel at exactly eleven o’clock.
She rides through the barbican at the first strike of the bell.
Today I watched you go in. Then a rider was dispatched.
You left in a Defender carriage. I waited.
The bell tolled, but Eliarde never came. ”
He loomed over me, his eyes unhinged and filled with menace. “You knew. You warned them.”
I said nothing. My heart was pumping my blood out of my body with every beat. I could feel it draining out of me, taking my life with it.
He swung out of view, and I heard him walking. He circled the table like a shark. His voice vibrated with barely contained rage.
“That was Everard in the plaza. He was probably with you in the Dog Market before that. Didn’t see him today. They must be looking for him. Scars from Fatefire are hard to miss.”
The sooner I died, the sooner the pain would end. And once it did, I would have one shot at ending this. Only one.
“How did you know I would bring Velpor to the plaza? It’s a good question, but I have an even better one.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Only two people know who has earned the right to the full treatment. You belong to Everard. He trusts you. He has you run his errands. I only want to know one thing.” He leaned over me again, his teeth bared.
He didn’t seem human, and his voice was a snarl.
“Did that fuck Hreban betray me and conspire with Everard to stop me?”
There it was, confirmation of everything I suspected. Hreban had hired him.
“Answer me,” the Butcher growled.
I stared at him.
His expression relaxed. His voice was normal again. “I guess it’s true what they say about the Sleepless Duke. He does know how to pick his people.”
He stepped away, then turned back to me. He was holding big sharp shears in his hand. The kind you used to shear sheep or cut through branches.
“He stole Eliarde from me. I’m taking you from him. You’re a piss poor replacement but needs must.”
He fiddled with the restraints on my right hand and wrenched it upright, so I could see it. I tried to fight him, but my arm wouldn’t obey. I had no strength left.
He caught my index finger between the blades.
“Just one question.”
The blades came together with a metallic scrape. I screamed. He showed the bloody stump of my finger to me.
“It’s not complicated.”
The sheers sliced again. My middle finger was gone, and the pain drowned me. I hung in its depths, unable to move, unable to scream, just existing and hurting.
“Did Hreban betray me?”
Screech.
“Tell me and it will be over.”
Screech.
I just had to endure it. I was dying already. I was so close. Eventually the agony would end. There was no choice and no escape until it did.
He leaned close to me, and I felt his breath in my ear. “If you want, you can whisper it to me. Nobody will ever know.”
My lips were so dry. They had stuck together, but despite the agony, I made them move.
“I will kill you,” I said into his ear. “I will make you pay for everything you’ve done.”
He straightened. “No. You never will. And now I need to get on with it. We don’t have much time left.”
He was right. He made thirty minutes into thirty days. I cried, and I screamed, and I called for my mom, but I never told him anything he wanted to know. I was blind by the time I drew my last breath, but I heard him cursing as I died.
Everything hurt. The pain was like air, in my body, in my blood, in every cell.
I opened my eyes.
The wooden ceiling above me was grimy. Familiar clusters of lanterns hung from it, no longer lit. I was still on the table. He’d left my corpse there.
Slowly, oh so slowly, I turned my head and saw him. He sat at a table, with his back to me. A roasted chicken with a drumstick missing rested on a big plate next to him. He’d tired himself out and gotten hungry.
Just one shot. There would be no do-overs.
I tried to move my right hand. I had fingers again. I squeezed them into a fist and raised my arm, half expecting him to whip around and stab me.
He kept eating.
My hand was whole, and he hadn’t resecured it. Why would he? I was dead.
I reached for the thing binding my neck. A leather strap.
He reached for the pitcher on his left and I froze.
The Butcher refilled his cup and set the pitcher down.
I traced the strap with my new fingers. It was secured by a metal nail threaded through it. I clamped my fingers around the nail and pulled up. It came free with shocking ease, and I froze again, holding my breath.
He kept chewing.
I pulled the belt to the side and sat up. The same setup held my left wrist. I pried the nail free and slipped off the table.