29. The Wishing Well
Chapter twenty-nine
The Wishing Well
Rerdas woke in a flash of biting cold, icy enough to feel like heat.
Ears ringing. Throbbing pain lapped at the inside of his skull.
He tried to lift his hand to his head, but the chains gripping his wrists stopped him.
The links were bolted to the grate beneath him.
He stared down at it with the one good eye he could get open.
The other was crusted shut with what was most likely blood, and the collar of his tunic was stiff with it.
It was terribly dark. Around him stood windowless circular walls of mossy stone. Indistinct shapes draped in dark cloth hung along the walls. He tipped his head back slowly, wincing. High, high above was a perfect circle of night sky.
There weren’t enough stars visible to help him work out where he was. But if it was still deep night, then his captors hadn’t brought him far. Somewhere in Kirinoll.
He should’ve insisted they leave the moment Umber got them out of the palace. Should’ve run across Marasette’s manicured paths and sloping lawns, Red Guard be damned.
Umber’s pathetic expression floated through his disoriented mind, and he growled, knocking his head back into the curved stone wall. He regretted it immediately. Pain bubbled inside his skull, forcing his good eye shut.
“Etiana,” he croaked.
No reply. Rerdas bent, lowering his head slowly so he could clumsily scrape the heavy crust from his eyelid. The effort only afforded him a slightly better look around the empty circle of the room. No nooks to hide in. Please gods, let her be somewhere nearby.
“Etiana!” he cried. His shout bounced back to him from the shadowed walls.
A door painted to look like part of the stonework opened, and golden light shot into the room. Rerdas ducked away, blinded, but a whiff of his cousin’s perfume made his heart leap. Etiana had found a way out. She’d probably talked her way free, and she had come to get him.
“Eti—”
“I’m afraid she’s occupied,” said the silhouette in the doorway, who was definitely not his cousin. The stranger’s face was cast in shadow, and all Rerdas could make out was the smooth wave of his hair. The light lacquered it red as flames.
Rerdas recoiled, his heart thumping into his stomach.
“How unfortunate that we see each other again in these circumstances,” purred Melgreth Hize. He plucked a many-paned lantern from where it hung outside the door, carried it into the round cell, and kicked the door shut behind him.
Rerdas fought not to cringe back further when Hize held the light up to inspect him. “Let me out,” he demanded, trying not to let his voice quaver. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“And yet disaster seems to follow wherever you go.” Hize hung the lantern from a bare spike and worked his fine-fingered hands into a pair of terrifyingly stained workman’s gloves.
“Where is my cousin?”
“Having a chat with Wester.”
Rerdas struggled as far upright as his chained arms would allow. “He can’t—Don’t hurt her.” He shouldn’t have said it, not to a man like Hize, who gave him a deeply amused glance.
“I see you’ve figured out what this place is for,” Hize said. “Do you know where we are?”
“We’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Rerdas whispered.
All it got him was another mocking smile. The lantern light traced the hollows of Hize’s narrow, bony face and the crooked line of his nose. A tide of horror rose in Rerdas’s throat. Hize would make him pay for what had happened in Kibo.
“You’re on historic grounds, Master Toriem.” Hize splayed a hand over the stone wall, smiling almost fondly. “Few people know that beneath the palace gardens, there’s another garden of different delights. The Red King’s Garden.”
He had to survive this and get to Etiana. The longer he held out, the more his confession that Uralta was hidden at Dantin Heckly’s estate would sound true. Hize needed to think he’d pried it out of him.
“And you,” Hize continued, “are in one of its most infamous attractions. The Wishing Well.” He chuckled over the name. “It’s outfitted with everything we’ll need for an honest talk.”
One by one, he removed the oilcloths draped along the walls, revealing an array of weaponry and contraptions.
Everything from monstrous clamps to shard-like blades, and something that looked like it was meant to saw through trees.
The instruments cast menacing shadows over the stone.
Rerdas clamped his lips shut and forced his gaze up to the circle of sky so far out of reach, his chest heaving.
“This is a favorite of mine.” Hize angled an enormous iron arm out from the wall with what might be a bear trap dangling open-jawed from a complex pulley system perched at its end.
Hize unlocked the bolted end of Rerdas’s chain and yanked him up by his wrists. He staggered, the room spinning drunkenly around him.
Something cold brushed his shoulder. Hize lowered the steel-toothed trap over Rerdas’s shoulder. The teeth didn’t cut through the fabric of his tunic, but as he tried to wriggle away, the jaws around his shoulder tightened fractionally and dug in.
“Careful, now,” Hize said. “The more you move, the worse it’ll get.
” He fastened Rerdas’s chain to another spot on the wall, so that it pulled his arms taut ahead of him.
When he tried to shift closer to the wall to relieve the tension, the trap on his shoulder contracted again, squeezing.
His shoulder ached, his wrists ached, his head ached, and he was so riven with fear he could barely feel any of it.
“Want to tell me where your aunt is, Toriem?”
Etiana would want him to start with the lie they’d maintained so far. He tried. “Traveling. In the—”
A sharp, cold point landed just beneath the knob of his spine. Rerdas held perfectly still, his throat working.
“No, she’s not.”
Hize gave him no warning. Just tore through the back of Rerdas’s tunic with whatever knife he held. He hacked through the fabric from collar to hem. Rerdas yelped as the tip of the blade sliced a shallow gully down his back.
Hize ripped and slashed at the fabric until the tunic hung in shreds and cold air blew across his exposed back. A coarse, gloved hand stroked his bare shoulder blades. He shuddered away from it, and the clamp bit into his shoulder.
“I must tell you, I love backs.” Hize’s voice was distant, as though he stood back a pace, taking in his handiwork. “I think of them like canvases.”
Rerdas babbled, only half aware of the spilling words. His flesh rippled, every hair standing on end.
“I swear, she’s somewhere—She didn’t tell us, hasn’t communicated with us, we don’t know exactly—”
“No, no,” Hize said, almost soothingly. “That’s not it. But you can take your time loosening your tongue. More fun for us both.” He moved around to Rerdas’s front and showed him the thing he’d taken off the wall.
A bullwhip, with a long braid coiled around a heavy handle.
Oh gods. Someone had to rescue him from this. He couldn’t believe what was about to happen.
“Recompense,” Hize hissed in his ear. He uncoiled the whip and cracked it against the wall.
The pain in Rerdas’s shoulder intensified. The metal jaw quivered like a slavering creature’s mouth. He looked down and realized it wasn’t the trap that was moving. His legs were shaking. His whole body rattled, and he couldn’t stop it.
“Please, don’t—”
Hize struck, the whip raining like a jet of pure fire across Rerdas’s skin. He lurched forward with a high, hitching cry, and the trap on his shoulder bit deep.
“Stop, stop, please stop, she’s in Heckly’s house, Earl—”
Hize hit him again. The pain was incandescent, made worse by knowing what was coming.
The whip came down at a new angle, splitting already swollen skin.
Rerdas screamed.
Hize didn’t care what he said. Truth, lies, none of it mattered. He wanted Rerdas to suffer.
The lash came again and again, and each time he thrashed away from it, and the trap crunched into his shoulder. He couldn’t think.
His pulse was torrential in his veins; his heart could barely keep up. Tears dripped from the tip of his nose and his chin, mingling with the sweat and blood creeping down through the grate into the drain.
“For all your pretense in Kibo, Toriem, I thought you’d be tougher than this,” Hize said cheerfully.
He dragged his fingers across Rerdas’s back, and it felt like he could reach straight through and rip out his spine.
Hize trailed the whip over his flinching back like a promise, and Rerdas screamed for help.
He screamed for anyone, every name he knew. Everyone he’d ever trusted. It was a mistake.
Gloved fingers dug into his wounds. “Why are you calling for a battleboxer, Toriem?” Hize snarled. “Why would you say his name?”
Rerdas couldn’t breathe past the feeling of Hize’s fingers spreading wide his broken skin.
Hize’s voice slowly climbed, anger searing through his amused facade. “You were so quick to leap in front of that filth. I wonder how else you debased yourself with him.”
The air hissed as the whip gathered speed and force again.
He could feel it coming down, coming for him again, and he threw himself forward to escape. The metal arm above him whirred, and agony carved straight through every bone in his crushed shoulder.
He was still screaming through the lancing pain, but he could barely hear it.
The sobs, the keening, sounded distant. Screams from someone else’s blistered throat, someone else who was going to die.
His heart seemed to beat from his shoulder rather than from beneath his ribcage, and every throb sent a fresh wave of agony rippling along his collarbone and down his arm.
The door flew open, a new river of light framing two figures.
“For all the noise he’s making, you’d better have something good,” snapped Wester. He strode into the room with a massive man lumbering behind him, eyes lowered.
“We’ve only just started,” Hize said coolly. “I don’t imagine you’ve had success with the girl?”
Wester grabbed Rerdas’s chin, examining his dazed eyes. “Careful that he doesn’t pass out again; we don’t have time for that. We need him lucid. And remember, Her Majesty assured Umber that the huntmaster would be in serviceable condition afterwards.”
Hize made a disgusted noise. “I’m aware. He’ll heal.” He walked around to peer at Rerdas, who shied away and then sobbed when his shoulder punished him for it.
“Alright.” Hize sighed. “We change tactics slightly. Come with me.”
He led Wester and the mountainous man into the hall.
Rerdas collapsed, trying not to drown in his own tears and sweat. His legs threatened to fold. Please, Eternals, earthbound gods, anyone, don’t let him hang from the trap.
Noise in the hallway, and a sharp, horrified gasp.
“Rerdas!” Etiana lurched toward him, but Wester’s huge man had a hand around her arm and wouldn’t let her cross the room. “Get him down from that!” she howled. “Get him a fucking medic, you pieces of—”
Hize slapped her hard, snapping her head to the side.
Rerdas flinched, watching through swimming eyes as his cousin braced herself against the wall and stared, her jaw clenched, chin rising. A look Rerdas knew well.
“Don’t, Eti,” he begged, his voice raw.
“Seems at least one of them has come to their senses.” Hize crossed to stand in front of Rerdas. He had a damp-looking sack in one hand, but Rerdas could only concentrate on the whip bunched in the other.
“We’re in a rush, Toriem,” Hize said. “Where is your aunt?”
He knew they could all see him shaking. “She’s… she’s hidden. At Heckly’s estate. She has the sleeping sickness.”
Hize studied him for a long moment. “Well,” he said. “Your good friend the earl said the same. Yet when we searched his estate, there was no one there, but quite a bit of the Little Dreamer tucked away in his cupboards, unused. He wasn’t very forthcoming after that.”
Hize smiled and upended the sack. Something vaguely round landed with a wet smack on the grate.
What was left of Dantin Heckly’s mangled head rolled into the light.
Rerdas whipped his face away so he couldn’t see it, twitching and staring at the opposite wall. It wasn’t real. Let none of this be real.
Etiana wailed. It petered out into rasping, unsteady breath.
Gently, Hize tapped Rerdas’s cheek with the curve of the whip. “Try one last time, Toriem. Where is she?”
He swayed in his trap, slack-jawed and deadened, and no words came. There was nothing left to tell them but the truth, and he wouldn’t betray his aunt.
“This isn’t working,” Wester said. “And we’re late to report to Her Majesty. We were to have a plan of action by dawn.”
Hize bobbed in front of Rerdas’s face, trying to catch his gaze, but Rerdas tucked his chin lower, pain boiling over his shoulder at the strain.
“Right,” Hize said. “I’ll try the girl. No ducal protection there.”
His head came up as if Hize had it on a string. “No,” he whispered.
Etiana, sunk halfway down the wall and kept up only by the silent man at Wester’s side, snapped to her full height. “Try it, you murdering beast.”
“No,” Rerdas repeated hoarsely.
Hize reached for Etiana, and she tried to kick him, but the impassive guard wrenched her hands behind her back, and Hize caught her foot. He twisted it hard, and she screamed, bucking. Hize dragged her, still battling, into the gilded light beyond the Wishing Well. They were taking her away.
Everyone was taken from him. Everyone was gone.
“Wait.” Rerdas scraped for as much voice as he had left. “Let Eti go. It’s too late. Aunt Uralta—she’s gone south. To Sol Serene.”
Hize and Wester glanced from Etiana’s horrified face back to Rerdas.
Wester’s hands clenched into fists. “What do you mean she’s gone?” He lurched into the room, his face livid. “Is she awake?”
“She’s awake,” Rerdas whispered hoarsely.
“Eternals take her!” Wester roared. “That’s not possible!”
“I don’t think the queen will grant Umber’s request to keep the huntmaster, now,” Hize said, with dawning delight.
Wester turned on him. “You idiot, this isn’t a game! She’ll have both our throats for letting Uralta Toriem get out of Kirinoll! Do you know how impossible it’s going to be to extract that woman from Sol Serene?”
Hize’s smile only grew. “But there’s the plan we present to Her Majesty. We don’t need to fetch Uralta from Sol Serene. She’ll come to us.” He twirled the whip. “All we have to do is take one of these two and send her their head. She’ll come for the one that’s still alive.”
Etiana’s gaze, glowing hot with fear, met Rerdas’s where he hung.
They were doomed. He’d doomed them all.