2. Leoric
LEORIC
The interrogation room beneath my estate was built to remember things long after the men inside it have forgotten how to speak.
Stone walls, no windows, three oil lamps positioned to eliminate useful shadow.
The chair bolted to the center of the floor has held lords, military commanders, and twice—on occasions I do not discuss—members of the noble council itself.
The room does not always find truth. It always finds what someone values more than pain.
I stand at the back wall while Captain Neth finishes his questions.
The man in the chair is a border merchant who made the mistake of running a route that overlapped with weapons caches my scouts identified three weeks ago.
He knows something. Whether he knows it consciously is almost irrelevant at this point—in my experience, being near the truth is usually enough.
Senator Pravel stands at the room's edge, trying to look comfortable.
He arrived this afternoon with two junior aides and a written request from the council chamber asking me to characterize recent border incidents as coordinated human insurgency instead of an opportunistic criminal activity.
The distinction matters most to people who will not bleed when the war follows.
"The council's position is straightforward," Pravel told me upstairs, over wine I poured but didn't drink. "Documented rebel activity justifies expanded military presence. Expanded military presence generates funding and border authority that would otherwise take years to legislate."
He delivered this as though it were a reasonable exchange and not a confession.
I watched him across the table and thought about how two noble-born officials had died in the past four months under circumstances that satisfied a coroner and no one else.
Lord Caeven had been found in his study with evidence of a failed warding malfunction.
Lady Orthiss had suffered a fall from a perfectly maintained gallery balcony she walked every day for twenty years.
Both had been vocal about budget allocations that certain factions considered inconvenient.
Neither investigation produced charges. I am aware that I am on several lists compiled by men who share Pravel's interests and find me increasingly difficult to maneuver.
I said yes to the wine request and told Pravel the border assessments would reach the council within the week.
I did not tell him what the assessments would say.
The merchant in the chair breaks on the twenty-third minute, which is faster than I expected.
Neth extracts a warehouse location and a contact name, both of which I already have through separate channels—confirmation is useful, but it tells me what I actually needed to know, which is that this network's information security is poor enough that it will fracture on contact with real pressure.
Frightened people making expedient choices under difficult conditions, which is entirely different from what the council wants documented.
I leave Neth to finish the processing paperwork and return upstairs to find my estate's entrance hall occupied by soldiers who are not mine.
Twelve of them, bearing the checkpoint insignia from Blackwater Pass, and in the middle of the formation—chained at the wrists, hooded, one arm held at an angle that suggests recent injury—a prisoner being presented to my staff like something dangerous wrapped badly.
Theren Volkar reaches me before I've fully crossed the hall.
His voice is pitched low and carries the exact amount of neutrality that means he is already calculating outcomes.
"Border patrol. They intercepted a smuggling caravan this evening.
Forged documents, stolen medicine, human refugees, an unknown number of couriers.
The patrol sent this one to you specifically.
" A pause. "She matches a description from a six-year-old military report I was not aware was still circulating. "
A checkpoint lieutenant steps forward and begins his account.
I let him speak, which costs me less energy than stopping him would.
The details arrange themselves in familiar order—routine tip, targeted ambush, one courier isolated from the caravan before escape routes could be used.
Held for me personally, the lieutenant emphasizes, per standing orders from a warrant I issued seven years ago and never rescinded.
"Remove the hood," I tell the nearest guard.
She comes into view like a door opening onto something I have not let myself look at directly in a long time.
The inked likeness my investigators provided was old, softened at the edges from age and handling, drawn after a rebel gathering most of the attendees didn't survive.
I used it until the paper softened at the creases and memorized every detail it contained: the line of her jaw, the width of her eyes, the set of her mouth when she was making decisions she intended to keep.
I told myself the obsession was tactical.
Finding the human woman responsible for the fire would provide answers about the rebel command structure, intelligence value, strategic advantage.
I have spent seven years lying to myself very well.
Corrine Ashmere is bleeding from a cut above her left eyebrow.
Her wrists are double-restrained—wards and iron both, which means whoever coordinated the capture was not entirely confident in either method alone.
She's breathing through controlled pain, holding herself upright through will, and when her eyes come to my face they move with the automatic speed of someone reading a room for exits.
Then they stop. I watch the recognition hit her.
Not the slow understanding of a person working through unfamiliar details—instant, physical.
Her gaze travels to the damaged side of my face, dropping to where the burn scar crosses my throat and disappears beneath my collar, and stays there for a full two seconds before she pulls it back to my eyes.
She thought I died. The room has gone silent in a gradual way, people seem to understand they are observing something they can't interpret but recognize as significant. Pravel's aides stand at the perimeter trading looks. Theren is watching me instead of her.
I don't move. I don't speak for a breath longer than comfort allows, because the part of me that wants to close the distance between us and demand answers immediately is the part I'd rather treat with extreme caution.
"You have a name?" I address her with flatness I reserve for debtors who already know what they owe.
She looks at my face for another moment. Something passes through her expression that I can't categorize—not guilt, not fear exactly, something older and harder than either. "You already know it."
"I want to hear you say it."
"Then you'll be disappointed." She shifts her weight fractionally, and I catch the wince she almost manages to suppress. "I've signed fourteen different names at checkpoints across Protheka. None of them belong to me."
"The Blackwater outpost," I tell her directly. "Final months of the war. Two hundred and seventeen soldiers. Human prisoners whose count nobody ever officially confirmed. You were there."
Her chin lifts. "People have been executed for less than an accusation."
"I'm not accusing you of anything." I let her consider this. "I'm telling you what I know."
"Then you know enough to skip the questions. Unless you want me to apologize for a fire I thought had killed every monster inside it."
Pravel's senior aide steps forward—a political reflex. "Lord Kaine, the council has jurisdiction over wartime crimes. Smuggling alone carries—"
"Thank you." I keep my eyes off him when I cut through his talking. "The jurisdiction determination is mine."
Theren touches my elbow once, which is his version of warning at volume.
My advisors want her dead. The lieutenant who brought her to me has been waiting for the execution order.
Pravel's people would take her body to the council chamber as physical evidence of whatever narrative the senator is building.
Corrine Ashmere dead has value. Clean and useful value—the woman responsible for the Blackwater fire, finally brought to justice under my hand.
"Execute her now," Theren says quietly, not cruelly, which makes it worse. "Before they turn her into something useful."
I consider it. Not because vengeance is uncomplicated, but because some part of me has imagined this moment in enough variations that standing inside it feels almost surreal. She is right in front of me. Chained, injured and entirely within my authority to remove from the world permanently.
But the council wants her dead. The aides for Pravel look eager—not satisfied by justice, energized by outcome. Whatever question Corrine carries in her, killing her answers it only for me, and only partially, and closes every other door with it.
I turn to the lieutenant. "She's mine." I stare until the words have finished settling. "Under my authority, military and noble both. You'll note it in your report as a transfer, not a release."
The room erupts in exactly the ways I expect. Pravel's aide raises three separate objections in rapid succession. Theren says nothing, which is its own form of objection. Two of the escort soldiers exchange looks. Corrine watches me throughout all of it.
When the voices have subsided enough to be useful, I step within earshot so that only she can hear clearly. The scars on the left side of her collarbone are visible above her torn collar—fire, from the texture—and I file that away with the same detachment I give everything else.
"You're not going to a cell. You're going to my estate's west wing, under guard, with no exits. You will stay there until I've decided what you're worth to me alive." I let a beat pass. "If that number drops to zero, I'll revisit the lieutenant's suggestion."
Corrine meets my eyes. Whatever she expected from this moment, it wasn't this, and she's smart enough to know that the unknown is in most practical situations considerably worse than the threat she can measure. "You should have let them execute me."
"Probably." I step back. "That's a problem for later."