Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
It was far too calm for Captain Kane Atwater’s liking. Two months into imprisonment, the guards had finally discovered the most effective means to torture him: boredom.
The best way to punish Kane was to pay him little attention and drown him in mundanity. They moved the most talkative prisoners out of his current cell block, leaving him with a young woman who refused to talk and a corpse of an old man as his neighbors.
Oh well.
Kane paced the small length of his cell, absentmindedly brushing dried blood off the back of his hand.
The scar had already started to fade. No matter how deep they cut, he still got more information than they did.
Not even that Reformed, the mentalist, could crack Kane’s mental barriers.
The poor aberrant was a skeleton of a man with more demons haunting him than Kane had.
It was barbaric, really, what they did to those poor souls.
“Fools,” he scoffed.
A bell rang from the Chancellor’s tower, high above the prison.
The old mage was infuriatingly stubborn, the way he clung to life.
With nothing left to do but wait, Kane returned to the sorry excuse he had for a mattress and watched the shadows dance through the bars. Finally, two guards came to his cell. Right on schedule.
“You know the drill,” the woman, Aetna, grumbled before clicking the lock open. The older man behind her kept his sword drawn and his harsh stare fixed on the pirate.
In just a few strides, Aetna was upon him. She grabbed his arms and twisted them painfully behind his back.
Kane struggled just enough to make her complacent in her victory, confident she had the upper hand. The performative scuffle reopened a few of his fresher cuts, but they were hardly something to wince over.
His hands were shackled behind his back. “You certainly know how to entice a man.” He smirked and earned a rough shove in return.
“Move, Atwater,” Aetna commanded flatly.
He could tell the guards were growing tired of their roles. They came and bound him as such, led him to an interrogation room where they got little to no information, only to return him to his cell to repeat the process.
If Kane wasn’t careful, they would begin to suspect that the kidnapping was a ruse. The last thing he needed was for someone to realize he got caught on his own volition.
Damnit, Kane knew he should have taken a finger from the Minor Apprentice. Give the lie more credibility. He was surprised the guards believed the story in the first place.
Captain Kane Atwater had kidnapped the Minor Apprentice, and the esteemed soldiers would stop at nothing to get him back. Well, at least they pretended to stop at nothing.
To Kane’s surprise, the court seemed to dislike the mage even more than he did.
Sure, they would resort to torture in an effort to retrieve the Minor Apprentice, but they didn’t seem particularly rushed to bring him home.
Apparently, slicing into Kane was far more interesting than finding their precious mage.
Aetna paused and glanced around the cell.
It was clear that Kane had been doing some underhanded trades with the other guards.
A clean wash basin was always left in the corner, and an old chair had been added to his list of growing amenities.
They used to smash and burn his goods when found, only to find they had been mended or replaced.
The cycle was enough to drive anyone mad. Kane had chosen his shadow wisely—some poor soul to ferry materials and messages for the pirate. So long as they didn’t break him out or stir up trouble in this chaos, the guards didn’t care. Aetna had never been able to figure out who it was.
A dark rag was tightened uncomfortably around his eyes. Kane stifled a laugh. The blindfold was good for rendering him unable to see the route to the torture room, but it was always in the same place.
They went through the entire prison: a long, straight corridor, then a sharp left, then down cracked stairs that brought them even lower than the ground itself. About ten feet forward, and another right, and he was finally shoved into the usual chamber.
There were other cells with other prisoners whenever he came. It was a near round-the-clock job, it seemed, to rip people apart in either body or mind. Or both.
Only twice had he heard a misfortunate aberrant forced below the naval base.
When they refused to serve, they were brought down and subjected to the persuasive arts of sharp steel and shattered bone.
One of them didn’t last the first session.
Probably a mentalist, he figured from the way a few officers ran from the room on the first day.
They screamed bloody murder about beasts that were nowhere in sight and tried to claw their eyes out before an abjuror was able to break the madness.
The other was a young woman—a diviner, he surmised—but her sessions were much more worrisome. They were far too quiet.
Monsters, Kane decided. Tarth was full of monsters who claimed to protect people from other monsters.
“Welcome back,” his torturer, Sanders, said as if greeting an old friend. Kane supposed he could consider the man a friend, given how much time they had spent together.
“Glad to be back.” Kane was led to a stool he’d become all too familiar with in the past few months.
The blindfold was removed, and shackles were clipped to a chain nailed into the cement floor. He blinked, adjusting to the dim light of the room. It was nothing but a gray tomb, full of weapons and dried blood. He hated being confined even more than being sliced. But he would never let them know.
The scrape of wood across the floor brought Kane back to the present as his tormentor moved to sit a safe distance from him. Sanders was a man in his late thirties with a physique that betrayed his gluttonous appetite and love of drink.
Beneath soft, plump skin was hard-earned strength from his time at sea.
They had crossed paths before, on the ocean a few years back.
Kane stole a number of pink pearls that could keep a princess satisfied for a lifetime.
Judging by Sanders’s current station, the Tarthan Navy and royal council did not take kindly to his loss.
“I think today might be your lucky day.” His smile was wide at whatever new method he concocted to mangle Kane that evening.
“Consider me intrigued.” Kane let out a forced yawn in an attempt to irritate him.
Instead, Sanders cackled and pulled out a dull, rusted screw from his pocket.
Kane groaned. This was going to be a longer session than usual.
Kane was returned to his cell battered, bruised, and bloody.
No more or less injured than the usual bouts.
Clambering to the wash basin, he did his best to remove the dirt and grime from his hair and fingernails.
His shirt was near tatters, and he made a note to bribe the newer patrolman for an extra tunic.
Another muffled gong filtered down to his cell.
Kane smiled. Any day now.
In the midst of his grooming, Kane heard the sound of two guards sauntering through the prison. He paused and watched from behind the bars. They were new, unfamiliar, and Kane had been there long enough to know that no one was scheduled to be patrolling. Not at that hour.
They made their way to his section, stopping outside Kane’s own iron-bar abode with their backs to him. “Told you she was down here,” one gleaned, and the other cackled.
The young diviner cowered into the corner of her cell. Her body was all bones and jagged edges. She refused to eat or was unable, Kane wasn’t sure, but the inquisitors never allowed her time to rest her mind between her sessions.
The jangle of keys earned a whimper. Kane glared, hackles raised as they slinked toward the door.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned, his voice like velvet soaked in venom.
The two guards startled—the shorter one recovered quickly, brandishing a short sword with the aim of a cadet. “Mind your own, or I’ll gut you.”
His companion clambered for his own weapon. At least their attention was off the girl.
“Oh, you misunderstand, she has Hagsworts, extremely contagious. Causes delusions and, in severe cases, scrotal paralysis.”
They faltered, contemplating the chances.
“I’d be a much better option.” Kane gestured to his own person and winked.
“You’re a fucking liar, you bastard,” the shorter one spat, turning back to his victim. His companion unabashedly roamed his body in consideration. Kane leaned as close to the bars as he could.
Hellfire roiled in his veins, and Kane dug into his infernal nature. He could see wickedness and shame roll off the guards in waves.
The two halfwits had ventured into a prison with no abjurative wards to protect against attacks of arcanum.
They relied too heavily on the protections woven into the walls and bars, but Kane didn’t have the same kind of Talent as the mages of this kingdom.
He had Grace—an older power, a more natural way to manipulate arcanum.
Those fools barely gave it consideration, and it showed in their sloppy work.
With the last bit of energy he could muster, Kane snapped his finger, and their pant legs were set ablaze. It required more concentration than usual, likely the effects of the nullifications woven into the bars and stone of the prison, but Kane was a powerful enough caster to overcome it.
The two men ran howling from the prison as Kane stumbled back onto his lumpy cot. The energy he would normally use to heal had been wasted on saving a woman who could barely say her own name.
He would have to think more carefully. He was too close to the finish line to suffer these mistakes.
A gong rang from the surface. A signal that he was one more skipped breath closer to his goals.
He glanced at his neighbor and found the young woman crouched by the bars. Her light blonde hair was untamed, stained brown from dirt. She stared at him with wide brown eyes.
“Can I help you?” He raised an eyebrow and waited for a response. She offered no words of thanks. Not even a grunt or whimper of appreciation. He shrugged.
Silence settled back into the air around him. A faint gong filtered its way even to the depths of the prison. The Chancellor would be dead any day now. It was Kane’s countdown to freedom.
Just as the pirate settled for the night, the sound of scuffling footsteps echoed through the hall, but not in the direction the guards usually came from. Ah, Kane thought. He heard of this man before.
The stranger’s black cloak fluttered behind him as he slinked through the cells, a torch held in his hand.
His hood moved, face pointed briefly at the diviner.
The wood creaked as he gripped it tighter, and the flames flickered violently in response.
Kane could feel the slightest whisper of arcanum from the interloper. It was gone as quickly as it came.
The man stopped at Kane’s cell. There was a thud as a bundle of new clothes was shoved through the bars, along with his old coat. How the hells did this man find his coat?
“Atwater?” the stranger asked.
Kane raised a brow in shocked interest but didn’t offer a reply.
“I have a deal for you.”