Chapter 29
Eldric
H is weeks passed in meager meals at guard change and the occasional escort to an interrogation room. Only kept alive so that Lorali could finish her duties because, once begun, the rituals could not be taken over by another. Or so the archcleric had claimed.
He was escorted beneath the ground through familiar passageways hewn from grey stone, flanked by a guard on either side. Even with time between now and his life as a guardsman of Athera, Eldric knew these halls as if they were his own veins. Had patrolled them, escorted prisoner after prisoner through them. The catacombs were disorienting, a maze of dead ends and looping turns. His younger self would have scoffed at the idea of him being the one escorted down these halls in rattling shackles. How disappointed he would have been to see what he’d become.
Slumped in his seat, Eldric waited for Fulke or one of his ilk to begin another day of questioning that would get them nowhere. Eldric never answered straight—or refused to speak all together—causing Fulke to fumble and lose his composure. His tantrums were childlike, down to the uncoordinated thrashing of fists he called a punch. It was a script they repeated over and over, without fail. One he deserved. Though he couldn’t help finding a morbid spark of joy at the thought of being able to drive Fulke’s arrogant ass to the edge until his last breath. He would make this as difficult as possible, going out kicking and screaming as the door beneath his noose dropped.
When the door finally opened, Eldric’s gaze didn’t leave the whirling patterns he traced on the table. It was a new form of entertainment, something other than the mesmerizing flickering of the torchlight on the cracks in his cell wall. Someone cleared their throat as they pulled the chair across from him and sat down. The timbre was too deep and rich to belong to his usual interrogator. They rested their large, gloved hands on the table, the city’s crest embossed upon the worn leather protruding into his vision. His tracings paused as he looked up to meet the hard gaze of Commander Sorin Nightingale.
“You’ve decided to come to interrogate me yourself, then?” Eldric asked, putting on a bravado he didn’t feel. He knew he could never goad Sorin the way he could Fulke or the others. The man was as solid and unwavering as his faith in Athera. “Did Fulke give up already ?
His former Captain—now Commander—gave a grunt of acknowledgment, always a man of few words. Eldric swallowed softly as they held each other’s gazes. He knew that, within his heart, Sorin was a good man. He believed in order and rules and justice to a fault. To the point that he could not ignore those things for the greater good, for the sake of the very people they were charged with protecting. Following the law, even though it was wrong. Protecting those who did harm rather than the ones who needed it most. That was not justice.
He tried to sit in the heavy silence, to match the calm of his former captain. But being in his presence broke something in Eldric’s armor. A desire to reach out, to give Sorin the chance to do the right thing and investigate further. While he might die, that didn’t have to be the end.
“I found it,” Eldric finally said .
When the commander didn’t respond, he continued. “The proof. The truth. I told you I would find it, and I have. I—was right.” His voice cracked at the end. He was right, he thought again as he shook his head with a halfhearted chuckle.
“But at what cost?” the commander asked. There was a soft sadness in those brown eyes of his. One that made Eldric grit his teeth, the shackles at his wrists jingling as he pushed back in his chair.
“Someone once taught me that the price of justice is never free.”
“I think you misconstrued my words,” Sorin snorted, recognizing his own words from the lecture he gave every batch of new recruits. The one Eldric had heard when he’d been nothing more than a tangle of gangly limbs and bright dreams. Hope undiluted by pain.
“No, I think I learned just what I needed to.” Eldric pressed his lips together, arms crossed as much as the bite of the manacles would allow.
“You’re a good man, Eldric. It was tragic when you were caught the first time; I’m heavyhearted to see you here again.” He hesitated, shaking his head. “There will be no high cleric to save you this time.”
“I know.”
Eldric swallowed, chest too tight and tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth to keep from biting back. He tried to ignore the weight of his sins that would pull Lorali down with him. If he thought about that for even a moment, his execution would come early. He would be a body without a soul, spirit broken at last.
“What are you really here for, Commander?” he couldn’t help but ask, trying to move on from the thoughts. “You sound almost remorseful to have me, your most wanted, in custody. Surely you didn’t come to lament my fate.”
“Your high cleric asked me to bring this today.” Commander Sorin reached into his pocket, pulling a bracelet woven of red and gold. It was Lorali’s tidy work he set in the center of the table, cut from his wrist when he was taken in. It reminded Eldric of warm summer days filled with laughter, exchanging their bracelets beneath an endless sun for her birthday. Now, on his own, she returned that very bracelet to him. It tore something within him as he reached forward, not wanting to let the commander see.
“Is this your angle? Try to be sympathetic and get me to talk?” Eldric bunched the braided threads tight within his fist.
“Why did you break your oath to the guard?” The commander ignored his question, bringing up a past he could never escape. “You have still been devoted to justice since you broke your oath. I have watched you serve this city from the outside. Why leave? Why not stay, become the change you wish to see? It’s what I’ve done. The guard differs from what it once was.”
Sorin leaned in, fingers steepled as he continued his inquisition. As if he were a friend, that mentor he had been once all those years ago when Eldric was young .
“Not enough, or I wouldn’t be here. Everything can’t be changed from within. It doesn’t happen by following the rules. Ignoring those who are hurt because you are ordered to.”
“This is about the girl, still? After all this time?” he asked, rubbing the thick stubble along his jaw.
“It has always been about her,” Eldric said. “She showed me that the guard would break its oath to the people by turning a blind eye when ordered. That is not justice. I may have broken my oath to the guard, but I never broke my oath to the people.”