by Angus Watson
From off to his left: “Prefect, sir, I’ve a chest of treasure waiting back at my rooms at the Sauntering Mink. A golden cup full of rubies and emeralds is yours, if you’ll just let me out of here …”
Prefect, sir … Prefect, sir … over and over again.
Rem decided that thrusting his own arms out and begging for the prefect’s attention was useless. What would he do? Claim his innocence? Promise riches if they’d let him out? That was quite a tall order when Rem himself couldn’t remember what he’d done to get in here. If he could just clear his thunder-addled, achingly thirsty brain …
The sullen-eyed prefect led the two who dragged the prisoner down a short flight of steps into a shallow sort of operating theater in the center of the dungeon: the interrogation pit, like some shallow bath that someone had let all the water out of. On one side of the pit was a brick oven in which fire and coals glowed. Opposite the oven was a burbling fountain. Rem thought these additions rather ingenious. Whatever elemental need one had—fire to burn with, water to drown with—both were readily provided. The floor of the pit, Rem guessed, probably sported a couple of grates that led right down into the sewers, as well as the tools of the trade: a table full of torturer’s implements, a couple of hot braziers, some chairs and manacles. Rem hadn’t seen the inside of any city dungeons, but he’d seen their private equivalents. Had it been the dungeon of some march lord up north—from his own country—that’s what would have been waiting in the little amphitheater.
“Come on, Ondego, you know me,” the prisoner pleaded. “This isn’t necessary.”
“’Fraid so,” sullen-eyed Ondego said, his low voice easy and without malice. “The chair, lads.”
The two guardsmen flanking the prisoner were a study in contrasts—one a tall, rugged sort, face stony and flecked with stubble, shoulders broad, while the other was lithe and graceful, sporting braided black locks, skin the color of dark-stained wood, and a telltale pair of tapered, pointing ears. Staring, Rem realized that second guardsman was no man at all, but an elf, and female, at that. Here was a puzzle, indeed. Rem had seen elves at a distance before, usually in or around frontier settlements farther north, or simply haunting the bleak crossroads of a woodland highway like pikers who never demanded a toll. But he had never seen one of them up close like this—and certainly not in the middle of one of the largest cities in the Western world, deep underground, in a dingy, shit-and blood-stained dungeon. Nonetheless, the dark-skinned elfmaid seemed quite at home in her surroundings, and perfectly comfortable beside the bigger man on the other side of the prisoner.
Together, those two guards thrust the third man’s squirming, wobbly body down into a chair. Heavy manacles were produced and the protester was chained to his seat. He struggled a little, to test his bonds, but seemed to know instinctively that it was no use. Ondego stood at a brazier nearby, stoking its coals, the pile of dark cinders glowing ominously in the oily darkness.
“Oi, that’s right!” one of the other prisoners shouted. “Give that bastard what for, Prefect!”
“You shut your filthy mouth, Foss!” the chained man spat back.
“Eat me, Kevel!” the prisoner countered. “How do you like the chair, eh?”
Huh. Rem moved closer to his cell bars, trying to get a better look. So, this prisoner, Kevel, knew that fellow in the cell, Foss, and vice versa. Part of a conspiracy? Brother marauders, questioned one by one—and in sight of one another—for some vital information?
Then Rem saw it: Kevel, the prisoner in the hot seat, wore a signet pendant around his throat identical to those worn by the prefect and the two guards. It was unmistakable, even in the shoddy light.
“Well, I’ll be,” Rem muttered aloud.
The prisoner was one of the prefect’s own watchmen.
Ex-watchman now, he supposed.
All of a sudden, Rem felt a little sorry for him … but not much. No doubt, Kevel himself had performed the prefect’s present actions a number of times: chaining some poor sap into the hot seat, stoking the brazier, using fire and water and physical distress to intimidate the prisoner into revealing vital information.
The prefect, Ondego, stepped away from the brazier and moved to a table nearby. He studied a number of implements—it was too dark and the angle too awkward for Rem to tell what, exactly—then picked something up. He hefted the object in his hands, testing its weight.
It looked like a book—thick, with a hundred leaves or more bound between soft leather covers.
“Do you know what this is?” Ondego asked Kevel.
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Kevel said. Rem could tell that he was bracing himself, mentally and physically.
“It’s a genealogy of Yenara’s richest families. Out-of-date, though. At least a generation old.”
“Do tell,” Kevel said, his throat sounding like it had contracted to the size of a reed.
“Look at this,” Ondego said, hefting the book in his hands, studying it. “That is one enormous pile of useless information. Thick as a bloody brick—”
And that’s when Ondego drew back the book and brought it smashing into Kevel’s face in a broad, flat arc. The sound of the strike—leather and parchment pages connecting at high speed with Kevel’s jawbone—echoed in the dungeon like the crack of a calving iceberg. A few of the other prisoners even wailed as though they were the ones struck.
Rem’s cellmate stirred beneath his pile of straw, but did not rise.
Kevel almost fell with the force of the blow. The big guard caught him and set him upright again. The lithe elf backed off, staring intently at the prisoner, as though searching his face and his manner for a sign of something. Without warning, Ondego hit Kevel again, this time on the other side of his face. Once more Kevel toppled. Once more the guard in his path caught him and set him upright.
Kevel spat out blood. Ondego tossed the book back onto the table behind him and went looking for another implement. “That all you got, old man?” Kevel asked.
“Bravado doesn’t suit you,” Ondego said, still studying his options from the torture table. He threw a glance at the elf on the far side of the torture pit. Rem watched intently, realizing that some strange ritual was under way: Kevel, blinking sweat from his eyes, studied Ondego; the lady elf, silent and implacable, studied Kevel; and Ondego idly studied the elf, the prefect’s thick, workman’s hand hovering slowly over the gathered implements of torture on the table.
Then, Kevel blinked. That small, unconscious movement seemed to signal something to the elf, who then spoke to the prefect. Her voice was soft, deep, melodious.
“The amputation knife,” she said, her large, unnerving, honey-colored eyes never leaving the prisoner.
Ondego took up the instrument that his hand hovered above—a long, curving blade like a field-hand’s billhook, the honed edge being on the inside, rather than the outside, of the curve. Ondego brandished the knife and looked to Kevel. The prisoner’s eyes were as wide as empty goblets.
Ingenious! The elf had apparently used her latent mind-reading abilities to determine which of the implements on the table Kevel most feared being used on him. Not precisely the paragon of sylvan harmony and ancient grace that Rem would have imagined such a creature to be, but impressive nonetheless.
As Ondego spoke, he continued to brandish the knife, casually, as if it were an extension of his own arm. “Honestly, Kev,” he said, “haven’t I seen you feign bravery a hundred times? I know you’re shitting your kecks about now.”
“So you’d like to think,” Kevel answered, eyes still on the knife. “You’re just bitter because you didn’t do it. Rich men don’t get rich keeping to a set percentage, Ondego. They get rich by redrawing the percentages.”
Ondego shook his head. Rem could be mistaken, but he thought he saw real regret there.
“Rule number one,” Ondego said, as though reciting holy writ. “Keep the peace.”
“Suck it,” Kevel said bitterly.
“Rule number two,” Ondeg
o said, slowly turning to face Kevel, “Keep your partner safe, and he’ll do the same for you.”
“He was going to squeal,” Kevel said, now looking a little more repentant. “I couldn’t have that. You said yourself, Ondego—he wasn’t cut out for it. Never was. Never would be.”
“So that bought him a midnight swim in the bay?” Ondego asked. “Rule number three: let the punishment fit the crime, Kevel. Throttling that poor lad and throwing him in the drink … that’s what the judges call cruel and unusual. We don’t do cruel and unusual in my ward.”
“Go spit,” Kevel said.
“Rule number four,” Ondego quickly countered. “And this is important, Kevel, so listen good: never take more than your share. There’s enough for everyone, so long as no one’s greedy. So long as no one’s hoarding or getting fat. I knew you were taking a bigger cut when your jerkin started straining. There’s only one way a watchman that didn’t start out fat gets that way, and that’s by hoarding and taking more than his fair share.”
“So what’s it gonna be?” Kevel asked. “The knife? The razor? The book again? The hammer and the nail-tongs?”
“Nah,” Ondego said, seemingly bored by their exchange, as though he were disciplining a child that he’d spanked a hundred times before. He tossed the amputation knife back on the table. “Bare fists.”
And then, as Rem and the other prisoners watched, Ondego, prefect of the watch, proceeded to beat the living shit out of Kevel, a onetime member of his own watch company. Despite the fact that Ondego said not another word while the beating commenced, Rem thought he sensed some grim and unhappy purpose in Ondego’s corporal punishment. He never once smiled, nor even gritted his teeth in anger. The intensity of the beating never flared nor ebbed. He simply kept his mouth set, his eyes open, and slowly, methodically, laid fists to flesh. He made Kevel whimper and bleed. From time to time he would stop and look to the elf. The elf would study Kevel, clearly not simply looking at him but into him, perhaps reading just how close he was to losing consciousness, or whether he was feigning senselessness to gain some brief reprieve. The elf would then offer a cursory, “More.” Ondego, on the elfmaid’s advice, would continue.
Rem admired that: Ondego’s businesslike approach, the fact that he could mete out punishment without enjoying it. In some ways, Ondego reminded Rem of his own father.
Before Ondego was done, a few of the other prisoners were crying out. Some begged mercy on Kevel’s behalf. Ondego wasn’t having it. He didn’t acknowledge them. His fists carried on their bloody work. To Kevel’s credit he never begged mercy. Granted, that might have been hard after the first quarter hour or so, when most of his teeth were on the floor.
Ondego only relented when the elf finally offered a single word. “Out.” At that, Ondego stepped back, like a pugilist retreating to his corner between melee rounds. He shook his hands, no doubt feeling a great deal of pain in them. Beating a man like that tested the limits of one’s own pain threshold as well as the victim’s.
“Still breathing?” Ondego asked, all business.
The human guard bent. Listened. Felt for a pulse. “Still with us. Out cold.”
“Put him in the stocks,” Ondego said. “If he survives five days on Zabayus’s Square, he can walk out of the city so long as he never comes back. Post his crimes, so everyone sees.”
The guards nodded and set to unchaining Kevel. Ondego swept past them and mounted the stairs up to the main cell level again, heading toward the door. That’s when Rem suddenly noticed an enormous presence beside him. He had not heard the brute’s approach, but he could only be the sleeping form beneath the hay. For one, he was covered in the stuff. For another, his long braided hair, thick beard, and rough-sewn, stinking leathers marked him as a Kosterman. And hadn’t Rem heard Koster words muttered by the sleeper in the hay?
“Prefect!” the Kosterman called, his speech sharply accented. Ondego turned, as if this was the first time he’d heard a single word spoken from the cells and the prisoners in them.
Rem’s cellmate rattled the bars. “Let me out of here, little man,” he said.
Kosterman all right. The long, yawning vowels and glass-sharp consonants were a dead giveaway. For emphasis, the Kosterman even snarled, as though the prefect were the lowest of house servants.
Ondego looked puzzled for a moment. Could it be that no one had ever spoken to him that way? Then the prefect stepped forward, snarling, looking like a maddened hound. His fist shot out in front of him and shook as he approached.
“Get back in your hay and keep your gods-damned head down, con! I’ll have none of your nonsense after such a bevy of bitter business—”
Rem realized what was about to happen a moment before it did. He opened his mouth to warn the prefect off—surely the man wasn’t so gullible? Maybe it was just his weariness in the wake of the beating he’d given Kevel? His regret at having to so savagely punish one of his own men?
if you enjoyed
YOU DIE WHEN YOU DIE
look out for
THE COURT OF BROKEN KNIVES
Empires of Dust: Book One
by
Anna Smith Spark
Merith is the newest recruit to the mercenary band hired by Orhan to assassinate the Emperor. Young, charming and impossibly handsome, he hides the worst secret of all. He is a direct descendant of the world conqueror—and half demon—King Amrath. Merith has made some powerful enemies in his short life, including his own father, and their reach is far longer than he imagined.
Thalia had never wanted to be High Priestess, to appease the One God of Living and Dying by stabbing sacrificial victims to death in the great temple. Even those who volunteer to die falter at the end; so Thalia, who has to look into their terrified eyes, harbours growing doubts about the religion she serves. And as soon as her successor reaches adulthood, Thalia herself will be tied to the altar to await the knife.
Orhan Emereth wanted to avoid the lethal power politics of the capital; but risks everything—including his pregnant wife—by staging a coup d’état to save the Yellow Empire from itself.
Knives.
Knives everywhere. Coming down like rain.
Down to close work like that, men wrestling in the mud, jabbing at each other, too tired to care anymore. Just die and get it over with. Half of them fighting with their guts hanging out of their stomachs, stinking of shit, oozing pink and red and white. Half-dead men lying in the filth. Screaming. A whole lot of things screaming.
Impossible to tell who’s who anymore. Mud and blood and shadows and that’s it. Kill them! Kill them all! Keep killing until we’re all dead. The knife jabs and twists and the man he’s fighting falls sideways, all the breath going out of him with a sigh of relief. Another there behind. Gods, his arms ache. His head aches. Blood in his eyes. He twists the knife again and thrusts with a broken-off sword and that man too dies. Fire explodes somewhere over to the left. White as maggots. Silent as maggots. Then shrieks as men burn.
He swings the stub of the sword and catches a man on the leg, not hard but hard enough the man stumbles, and he’s on him quick with the knife cutting. A good lot of blood and the man’s down and dead, still flapping about like a fish, but you can see in his eyes that he’s finished, his legs just haven’t quite caught up yet.
The sun is setting, casting long shadows. Oh beautiful evening! Stars rising in a sky the colour of rotting wounds. The Dragon’s Mouth. The White Lady. The Dog. A good star, the Dog. Brings plagues and fevers and inflames desire. Its rising marks the coming of summer. So maybe no more campaigning in the sodding rain. Wet leather stinks. Mud stinks. Shit stinks, when the latrine trench overflows.
Another burst of white fire. He hates the way it’s silent. Unnatural. Unnerving. Screams again. Screams so bad your ears ring for days. The sky weeps and howls and it’s difficult to know what’s screaming. You or the enemy or the other things.
Men are fighting in great clotted knots like milk curds. He sprints a little to where t
wo men are struggling together. Leaps at one from behind, pulls him down, skewers him. Hard crack of bone, soft lovely yield of fat and innards. Suety. The other yells hoarsely and swings a punch at him. Lost his knife, even. Bare knuckles. He ducks and kicks out hard, overbalances and almost falls. The man kicks back, tries to get him in a wrestling grip. Up close together, two pairs of teeth gritted at each other. A hand smashes his face, gets his nose, digs in. He bites at it. Dirty. Callused. Iron taste of blood bright in his mouth. But the hand won’t let up, crushing his face into his skull. He swallows and almost chokes on the blood pouring from the wound he’s made. Blood and snot and shreds of cracked, dry human skin. Manages to get his knife in and stabs hard into the back of the man’s thigh. Not enough to kill, but the hand jerks out from his face. He lashes out and gets his opponent in the soft part of the throat, pulls his knife out and gazes around the battlefield at the figures hacking at each other while the earth rots beneath them. All eternity, they’ve been fighting. All the edges blunted. Sword edges and knife edges and the edges in the mind. Keep killing. Keep killing. Keep killing till you’re all dead.
And then he’s dead. A blade gets him in the side, in the weak point under the shoulder where his armour has to give to let the joint move. Far in, twisting. Aiming down. Killing wound. He hears his body rip. Oh gods. Oh gods and demons. Oh gods and demons and fuck. He swings round, strikes at the man who’s stabbed him. The figure facing him is a wraith, scarlet with blood, head open oozing out brain stuff. You’re dying, he thinks. You’re dying and you’ve killed me. Not fair.
Shadows twist round them. We’re all dying, he thinks, one way or another. Just some of us quicker than others. You fight and you die. And always another twenty men queuing up behind you.
Why we march and why we die,
And what life means … it’s all a lie.
Death! Death! Death!
Understands that better than he’s ever understood anything, even his own name.
