Chapter 9 #3
“You thought you knew who I was,” Horpus continued.
“You thought you could get away with it and hide behind laws and guild rules as if I gave a shit. Or maybe you weren’t even smart enough to think about the consequences.
You saw something you wanted, she said no, and you took it anyway.
I don’t know which explanation makes me angrier. ”
Horpus drew a small dagger from his belt. Higcliff’s breathing quickened, his fear driving him toward hyperventilation.
“I long for the day when I can touch myself in moments like this.”
“If this was only about me, I would start by tying off tourniquets for each of your limbs. You don’t feel as much pain that way, which is a fair criticism of the method, but you would get to watch pieces of you disappear, chunk by chunk.
I prefer that kind of pain, and I don’t have to worry about you bleeding out.
I’m going to give you a choice, though. Shall I tell it to you? ”
The prisoner offered a muffled “yes.”
“Instead of torturing you, I can kill you quickly. All you have to do is nod your head, and I will grant you that mercy.”
The fight in Higcliff’s eyes went dim. He had underestimated Horpus once, but now his future had no room for misinterpretation.
A veteran member of the Thieves’ Guild, someone so good at navigating the kingdom’s underbelly that aspiring villains looked to him for guidance, wanted him dead.
Higcliff knew that delaying his own demise would only mean more time to suffer.
So Higcliff nodded. He would take the quick death.
Horpus bellowed a laugh right in his face. “Did you give her a choice? No, you didn’t, but I will.” The guild master turned to me. “Please put his blindfold back on while I step outside.”
“I would bed that man and use his rage to fill myself with bliss.”
“Fucking stop it with that shit,” I said.
Higcliff looked at me, even more confused than before.
Great. I was embarrassed in front of a prisoner. Aurketzu’s whispers were getting to me, wearing away at how certain I was that she was actually gone, that these were just stray moments of my imagination.
I retied the blindfold as Horpus requested, and he returned a few minutes later with his niece.
She was small and frail, like her strength had been stolen from her.
Her movements were furtive, but her eyes didn’t have the softness of defeat.
They were sharp and resolute. She was wounded but not ready to quit.
She carried Horpus’ dagger.
“Take as much time as you need,” Horpus said with the calming voice of a father encouraging a child to try and swim for the first time.
The wait lasted several minutes. She stood there, blade in hand, looking at the man bound before her. She didn’t move, and her face didn’t change. This was her life and her decision. She didn’t have to go through with this if she didn’t want to.
So that was the question she had to answer right then: What did she want?
She stepped forward and pulled the knot on the blindfold. Higcliff went wild again when he saw her face, yelling through the gag and rocking and jerking in every direction, trying to find a way out of his bindings.
“I can do anything I want?” she asked her uncle.
He nodded.
To Higcliff, she said, “Don’t worry, baby, we both know you want this. Let it happen, and enjoy it.”
She stabbed the dagger through the back of Higcliff’s right hand and into the armrest of the wooden chair.
“That’s the hand you choked me with. Remember that?”
Higcliff reeled from the pain.
“You should beckon this one to your chambers. She is broken. There is bliss for both of you in her hopelessness. You can fill the hole in her heart with your cock, viceroy.”
I did my best to ignore Aurketzu’s words.
I held up the sword Podni left with me and pulled a few inches of the blade from the scabbard. The metal was a searing red, a permanent heat that came from the fire mana crystal Stacey used to forge it.
“It's as hot as it looks,” I said. “It's yours if you want it.”
She accepted the sword, drew it, and inspected the blade. She dropped the flat of the blade on Higcliff's wrist, a few inches up from where the dagger was still embedded in his hand.
He held a long cry of pain this time. His flesh sizzled from the burn, and the room smelled like burnt grease.
If it wasn’t already, the enchantment would eat through the flesh to begin burning bone.
That was an interesting pain to imagine, one of your bones burning.
In a way, I knew that feeling. Getting hit with Holy magic felt like I burned up from the inside. That had to be similar.
I thought watching this would give me some sense of pleasure, but no, I was bored. I stepped next to Horpus and spoke softly.
“Since this is a family matter, I’m going to give you some privacy,” I said. “I have to ask: How many dead paladins did this earn me?”
Without looking away from Higcliff, Horpus answered, “I’ll help you kill every last one of them.”
I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder for a moment.
As soon as I stepped over the threshold and outside Abby’s wards, the world was quiet again. No screams. No cries. No scraping of a chair bouncing across the floor. All I heard were birds in the tree and wind rustling leaves. What a beautiful day it ended up being.