by Lee Ramsay
“For all your experience, you are still such a simple creature. Interrogators seldom uncover anything of value. They are blunt hammers to be used against the weak and stupid destined for the gallows or the headsman’s block.”
The Dushken alpha folded his arms behind his back with a creak of his leather coat. “How is your way any different, in the end? The boy believes he’s going to die. Your lighter touch has proven ineffective.”
Sathra scowled, her voice as thick with frustrated irritation as her expression. “Ankara demands that he remains whole. This is some manner of test. Between the rishka and what I have done thus far, I should have made some progress.”
“If the goal is to look incompetent, you’re succeeding.”
She leveled a glare at him. “What would you suggest?”
“You’re a woman. He’s a young man. If the stick does not work, bait him with something sweet.”
“I will not spread my thighs for that peasant.”
“I am not suggesting you do so, nor do I think he would welcome it. When your kinswoman wants a female tortured, the thought of such an assault often gets the tongue wagging. You must make him believe that you’re going to take what he does not wish to give.”
“I’m not that good an actress.”
“You have your mistress convinced of your loyalty, do you not?” Urzgeth asked, a patient look on his bearded face. “Break him, or admit defeat. You have three days before you must answer to Ankara.”
THE INTERROGATION CHAMBER reeked of sweat, urine, blood, and excrement. Sathra was aware of the stench but had grown inured to it. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the acrid sting of torch smoke, the cloud thick near the high ceiling as it sought escape through small ventilation shafts. The dungeon’s damp chill was ever-present, held at bay by the heat of the torches and the three bodies in the room.
She glowered at the lean figure locked into the chair in the center of the room, frustration and disdain hardening her features. Tristan’s green eyes blazed with hatred as he glared back from above the growth of his russet beard. Dried blood flaked his pale skin, the blue of deep bruising from repeated beatings blossoming across his torso, face, and legs. Scabs from the needles she had used on him cracked, thin streamers of fresh blood coursing along the irregularities of his skin.
Sathra had been unable to break him, where most did so under her ministrations. There was no doubt the beatings Urzgeth delivered hurt. His screams as she used her needles and magic on his nerve plexuses were testament to the agonies she inflicted. In some perverse way, the boy fed on the torment and internalized the pain to fuel his defiance.
She was forced to admit she was impressed, though she hid it well. The moment a prisoner sensed they had their tormentor’s respect, all was lost. Given her experience with Tristan, she suspected he would have the crassness to gloat.
The young noblewoman shook the thoughts aside as she glanced toward the chamber door. Urzgeth stared back, his predatory features blank. She did not need to see his expression to know his thoughts; the final three days Ankara allocated for Tristan’s interrogation had passed, and she had failed. She almost regretted not heeding Urzgeth’s advice to seduce the answers out of him.
“Our time is nearly done,” she said as she stepped to a table near the wall and let her fingers drift across the instruments of torture laid out on its surface. All but a handful remained unused, and she struggled with her desire to use any of them to draw out the information she wanted.
Tristan croaked something that sounded like a laugh, though there was no humor in his hoarse voice when he spoke. “How disappointing. I’m having quite an enjoyable time.”
She ignored his sarcasm. “Her grace will command your death, but only after she turns you over to her torturers.”
“I will die bored if they’re as inept as you.”
She crossed the distance between them and backhanded him. His head snapped sideways, the blow’s force enhanced by the brass studs on the glove she had taken from the table. Blood dribbled from Tristan’s lip and torn cheek.
Urzgeth growled. “Footsteps, my lady. The mistress comes.”
Sathra ignored the huntsman and placed her palms on the iron manacles locking his arms to the chair to lean close to his ear. Her soft voice was urgent as her breath stirred a lank, greasy strand of hair against his cheek. “Ankara commanded me to go gently with you. You do not want what she will do to you.”
Tristan spat a gob of blood from his torn mouth, adding another stain to match the others on her linen shift. “Don’t you understand? Whatever you want to know, I don’t have the answers.”
“I still don’t believe you.” Her gloved hand circled his throat. “Speak the truth, and I’ll kill you quick and painless.”
“Sathra...” Urzgeth’s low-pitched voice was sharp with warning.
“In the textile market, we met with a man named Marcus. Do you remember him?” Sathra asked, her words rushing together. Though he made no sound, his expression shifted. “Meeting him is, in part, why you are in this dungeon. He, and others like him, were never meant to be seen by you or Gwistain. Do you know who he represents?”
Tristan hazarded a guess. His voice was a croak when he managed to speak. “Merid.”
Urzgeth’s posture and expression grew tense as he moved away from the door. Sathra’s hand tightened and shook him by the throat. “He called out as though he recognized you. Why?”
The youth’s eyes flicked from the noblewoman to huntsman and back, the confusion on his face relaxing into a grin as he made a connection. “You’re a traitor, or betrayed. There is someone else—"
The interrogation chamber’s door creaked open, the dungeons' darkness beyond flowing into the torch-lit room. Ankara’s face hung suspended in shadow, the silver chain and setting of her emerald pendant glittering. The stone swallowed the light, green fire burning in its depths.
Sathra hissed in annoyance and released her hold on his neck. She turned and sank into a deep curtsy. Closer to the door, Urzgeth dropped to one knee in obeisance, his long, graying hair shadowing his expression.
The cynical amusement bubbling on Tristan’s lips died as his eyes met Ankara’s. Her lips curled as she looked at him, then at the top of Sathra’s bent head and Urzgeth’s kneeling bulk.
The grand duchess’s body took shape as she emerged from the shadows and drifted into the interrogation chamber. The hem of her inky robe broke on lusterless slippers, and its voluminous sleeves fell well below the tips of her fingers. Her unbound hair took on a golden gloss from reflected torchlight as it fell past her face’s sharp angle to the simple belt girding her waist.
She took Tristan’s chin in hand and turned his head from one side to the other before leveling a bland look at Sathra. “He does not appear broken. Battered, certainly. Hungry, tired, and pained, but I see anger in his eyes in a measure equal to his fear. I believe you stoked the fires of defiance rather than drowning them.”
Sathra rose from her curtsy. “He has proven most resilient, and far more stubborn than others you’ve had me interrogate. I might have been more successful had you not forbade me all the tools I might have used.”
Ankara waved a dismissive hand. “It does not matter.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“All I required was for Gwistain to believe we were torturing the information we wished from the boy. In the process, we would learn what manner of man young Tristan has the potential to be – or might have been, had he not found himself our guest.”
“I could not draw more than a few details from him.”
“Perhaps there is nothing worth uncovering. Nothing he can tell you, at least.” Ankara’s eyes wandered over the youth’s bound form. “We are to believe what he appears to be – a foundling orphan, running from no place of merit, who happened to stumble into our royal guest.”
“Then he is no spy or assassin,” Sathra said, her tone a mix between a statement and a question.
“Graciou
s me, no. I applaud your skepticism, but sometimes the truth of a matter is plain. Our neighbors in the Hegemony of Ravvos may be backward and simple, but that does not equate to stupid.” The grand duchess turned her eyes to her young kinswoman with a laugh and gestured at Tristan with a negligent wave. “He is too noticeable to be effective in either role, and is at best a pathetic excuse for a distraction. So I ask you – do you truly suspect there is more to him than there appears?”
Sathra stared at Tristan for a long moment and shook her head. “No, Your Grace.”
The older woman’s eyes grew heavy-lidded with disappointment. “I thought not. Urzgeth, fetch the tenders. I want him cleaned and moved within the hour.”
The younger noblewoman blinked in confusion as the Dushken alpha hurried from the room. “Cleaned? You’re not going to kill him?”
“In time.” Ankara slipped her arm through Sathra’s elbow and led. “Come. It is time we advanced your education.”
Chapter 29
Tristan stirred, brought to wakefulness as his hip cramped from contact with a cold, uneven stone floor. His eyes fluttered open to find his wrists locked together and pulled over his head, his weight supported by a chain mounted to a complex steel rig mounted to the ceiling. Scattered braziers reinforced the darkness with the sullen, smoldering embers. Pale, indistinct shapes dangled around him – other young men and women bound as he was, stealing what sleep they could.
His eyes followed the cogs and chains as he studied the metal framework overhead, then dropped to a dual-handled crank near the room’s sole doorway. Depending on the direction the crank turned, a series of smaller gears in the metal frame would drag the people chained to it to their feet or allow them to sit uncomfortably on the floor.
He had no idea how long he had been in this room, but it could not have been long. He had not had to relieve himself since Ankara ordered him cleaned and moved.
Two women had tended him under Urzgeth’s watchful eye. The graying Dushken bared his long, yellowing fangs in an unnecessary warning when he unlocked the youth’s manacles. Weeks of beatings and restraint, coupled with a lack of food, water, and sleep, left him too weak to do more than shift his aching joints as the women washed him with hot water and lye soap.
He studied their faces as they worked and thought the younger of the pair looked familiar from his meal with Ankara; he could not be sure, though, as he had been more focused on the grand duchess. She was attractive in a plain fashion, though as she razored away his beard and hair, he realized her plainness came more from her slack expression and lusterless blue eyes than any deficiency of beauty. Her movements were functional while lacking smoothness.
His mind dredged up a word he had heard used. “Rishka.”
“It makes people more pliant and obedient, but it robs them of any spirit. She is aware of what she sees and hears, and what is done to her,” Urzgeth said, his distaste evident. His finger jabbed into the girl’s spine, causing her to spasm in pain and drag the razor’s edge across Tristan’s cheek. She made no sound, and her expression remained slack as she resumed her task. “It makes for bad prey.”
When cleaned to Urzgeth’s satisfaction, two soldiers hauled him through winding corridors and down several flights of stairs. Tristan recognized that these men were drugged with rishka as well. He dismissed the thought of trying to break free, though; the drug may have robbed their willpower, but it had not deprived them of their strength.
The men carried him through an arched doorway into a gloomy, brazier-lit chamber. Here, they locked him into manacles dangling from the ceiling before pressing a flask of some sort of yeasty drink to his lips. The liquid soothed his parched mouth and filled the hollow in his belly, and he drank eagerly. Once the flask was empty, the guards departed; the door’s lock clicked into place with a rattle of keys, followed by fading footsteps as the men moved away.
Nervous breathing filled the room. He saw other bodies hanging around him as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. No one spoke, and neither did he. Though he fought it, exhaustion, lingering pain, and the drugged drink soon dragged him into a restless, uncomfortable sleep.
Now awake, Tristan studied his surroundings. From the red gloom came snuffles and muffled coughing. Chains shivered as people shifted their weight, accompanied by the sound of someone’s bladder releasing. Lye’s acrid sharpness muted the stench, as did the ashy greasiness of smoke rising from the braziers’ coals.
He wondered who these people were and why they were locked in this chamber, but he had little doubt about the room’s purpose. His imagination drew on his recent experience at Sathra’s hands, his skin growing clammy at the thought of more torture.
If that is what is to happen, why was I washed and shaved?
Shaving his beard and hair was as much humiliation as a means to confuse the passage of time, he reasoned, as he had a fair idea of how long it took for it to grow in. However, he found a slight problem with his theory when he recognized female silhouettes in the gloom around him. Their moonblood could map the passage of time, provided their cycles were regular.
Tristan shifted his weight as his cramping hip radiated pain through his lower back. His muscles were weak after so long without food; he doubted he could stand for a sufficient time to ease the discomfort. Laying down was impossible; the length of the chains descending from the rack overhead was too short to allow that. He supposed he was fortunate to be tall and long-limbed, as he was able to recline a bit before the manacles dug their sharp edges into his wrists.
He allowed his mind to wander as he folded his legs underneath himself and straightened his spine.
Once he recalled seeing a large amount of fabric dyed in Meridan blue – a sample of which he had seen in one of Anthoun’s books – concluding Marcus nationality was easy. The man had also been golden-haired, a color not seen among the Anahari. Then, too, Gwistain’s mission was to determine if Anahar had renewed an alliance with Merid. His accidental poisoning from eating poorly prepared fish was no coincidence, which told him the prince had uncovered something Ankara wished to keep hidden. His meeting with Marcus resulted in his imprisonment, the justification furthered by Ankara being uncertain what else he may have learned.
Sathra’s persistent questioning about being a spy, therefore, made sense. However, her surprise at Marcus addressing Tristan suggested another player existed about whom the young woman knew little or nothing. In his time in Anahar, he had seen no one with his coloring, much less his height. Marcus’s mistaking him for someone else suggested there were others in the city of Feinthresh who bore a passing resemblance to him.
Ankara hasn’t included Sathra in all her plans, which means she doesn’t fully trust her.
It was a reasonable conclusion. He had seen and heard enough during Sathra’s interrogation to realize she had some manner of alliance with Urzgeth. Ankara’s dismissal of the pair suggested she was aware of whatever game her kinswoman and the Dushken played.
If she is aware of Sathra’s plotting, why is she allowing it?
He recalled something Gwistain said after the dinner in Ankara’s garden. “From what our diplomats and spies tell us, Ankara likes to play games. Politics is a game where the stakes are high, and people are the pieces.”
Tristan understood he was one of those pieces, lost in a game between the grand duchess and the prince. He likely would never leave these dungeons alive; though he had learned little or nothing of value, he knew enough to ensure his death. Combined with Ankara’s disdain for orphans, his involvement in Gwistain’s plot sealed his fate.
Had he not been chained naked in a dungeon awaiting torture and eventual execution, he might have found the politics as exciting as Dougan’s beloved adventure stories. The reality was far more terrifying.
BRAZIERS ROARED TO life, startling Tristan from his fitful sleep. The brightness made his eyes stream as sparks swirled on a rush of heat. The other prisoners huddled in on themselves, though a few climbed to their feet with resigned looks
on their gaunt faces. Perhaps two dozen men and women were imprisoned with him. All were Anahari and young, though their haggard features and emaciated bodies made a certainty of age difficult.
No one bothered to hide their nudity, having lost any sense of modesty. Lack of sunlight heightened a natural pallor which displayed striated welts from repeated lashings. Lacerations and bite marks covered their bodies; some of the fresher injuries still sported crude stitches in coarse black thread.
Chains shivered with fearful trembling. Ragged breathing and choked, anxious sobs came from man and woman alike. Nervous sweat soured the air, competing with acrid smoke and lye.
If this was a dungeon, it was stranger than any he had read about. He expected grotesque torture devices and was surprised to find none. There was no rack or pillory, nor were there stocks. He expected to see a Fochan’s Cradle – a cruel device featured in one of Dougan’s books, where a victim was lowered onto a barbed spike mounted on a stool – but that, too, was absent. No gibbet cages hung from the ceiling or were mounted to the walls. Plain wooden cabinets stood against the walls, which he supposed held pincers, brands, or other devices. The lack of anything terrifying made the fear on the faces around him all the more perplexing.
On a raised dais near the front of the room stood a dark, throne-like wooden chair with black cushions and a deep claw-footed cast iron tub. As puzzling as the massive chair and tub were, they were less confusing than what he found when he turned his back on them. Mounted on the wall at the rear of the room was the royal coat of arms for House Sheran – a crowned onyx raven displayed affronté on a silver shield held by rampant gold chimeras. Silver candelabra bearing unlit black tapers framed the heraldic device. A large bed stood on a dais, black satin rippling like the surface of a frozen black lake.
Tristan stared at the bed in confusion for a moment before the chamber door creaked open. A liveried soldier stepped into the room and took hold of the crank’s handles. The metal framework shuddered into life, dragging the prisoners’ arms overhead as rattling chains wound around the rotating shafts. Manacles dug into the soft flesh of their wrists, their shoulders aching with strain.
