by Travis Bughi
Yet, despite all the beauty, nothing could hide the fact that the fortress was a deathtrap. Around the fortress was a treacherously large moat that connected with the ocean, turning it into a river that washed and swayed with the tide. A drawbridge had been lowered for their arrival, providing the only passage through the structure’s thick walls. Atop those walls, which hid the bottom half of the keep, Emily saw distant figures walking in twos, back and forth in both directions, passing amongst rows of cannons and large, wooden contraptions that appeared to be designed to sling rocks or giant arrows. Emily could guess little beyond that. She hadn’t seen anything like them before. She wondered at the size of the fortress, though, wondering if it could house hundreds or thousands, for only the ancient temples in Savara could compare to the monstrosity that was Katsu’s home.
They passed a large town along the shallow bay the fortress bordered, and the people came out in droves to see Katsu’s passing army. They cheered loud and strong as the soldiers came by, and some of the villagers broke ranks to welcome home those they knew personally. When Lord Katsu strode by mounted on a komainu, they sank to their knees and placed their foreheads to the ground. Two lifted babies up toward their Lord, and bright tears streamed from their eyes as he waved his hand over them in acknowledgement. When Emily and the other prisoners went by, they were assaulted by jeers, boos, and spittle. Takeo took the worse of it. His name was shouted first in shock and then in disgust. A hail of rotten food and stones descended upon him, and the soldiers only laughed and encouraged it. Emily wanted to rush forward and protect him, but the chain would not let her.
The crowd faded as they neared the fortress, and at the edge of the moat, the army split into two groups. The larger portion stayed outside and began to set up camp while the smaller portion, which included the prisoners, began to travel up the narrow stone path toward the drawbridge. It was surprisingly steep, that path, and Emily feared for any army that might have to assault this place. The drawbridge was level, though, and solid beneath her feet. They passed into the fortress, and it swallowed them hungrily.
Emily wasn’t given much time to view the interior. The prisoners were marched across the wide courtyard and taken below into the darkened depths beneath it. After a few twists and turns, a dungeon the size of a Lucifan bank came into view, illuminated by flickering torchlight and tiny, barred windows that let in slivers of light. There must have been nearly fifty cells, arranged in three stories in a circular pattern with ladders connecting each level. All of the other prisoners were detached there to be shoved into any open cage.
Emily and Takeo were led to the opposite end, down to the bottom level, and through another door into a separate room no larger than Emily’s old bedroom back on the Great Plains. Inside were three cells made of vertical iron bars, and Emily and Takeo were separated into two of them. Their shackles were removed, Takeo’s gag undone, and the torch in the room taken out. The door closed, and complete darkness surrounded them. In the muffled silence, Emily heard some of the other prisoners crying from the large, communal room.
“At least my gag is off,” Takeo whispered after a long pause.
Emily tried to think of something witty to say, but nothing came to mind. She just sat in the dark, contemplating what would happen next. All she could think about was trying to escape, but she could only get past one of the obstacles they’d placed before her.
She waited a few moments for Takeo to bring up Lei, but he stayed quiet. The sorrow festered in the silence, and she spoke just to escape her thoughts.
“Takeo,” she said. “How long do you think we’ll be in here alone?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “At least a little while. How long will it be until Heliena hears you’re locked up down here?”
“I’m going to risk it.”
Emily reached into her hair, deep down into her roots, and untangled her lockpicking tools. With one pin in each hand, she fumbled her way toward the cell door and began to tinker away at it, clicking the lock’s parts into place so it could be opened.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “We can’t escape now—not that way, at least.”
“I know that,” she replied, “and I’m not escaping. Just be quiet.”
He obeyed, and she spent a few good moments in silence making the lock click as she picked it. The task took longer than she wanted, but she was out of practice and had to work in complete darkness. Her desire was strong, though, and her success was bittersweet as the cell swung open, creaking louder than she would have liked. She waited a few beats to see if anyone would inspect the sound, but apparently they hadn’t heard because no one came. She felt her way over to Takeo’s cell.
He came to her, and they reached through the bars to hold each other tight.
“I bargained for your life,” she whispered, voice thick as she held back the tears. “They were going to kill you.”
“I know,” he spoke into her ear. “I suspected, at least. Renshu was sharpening his sword, but they stopped him, and I knew it was you. What did you do? Did you promise him the colossus? Please tell me you didn’t.”
“No, never.” She wove her fingers into his hair and brushed her nose against his. “He wanted to know about Lucifan, and I said I’d tell him nothing if you died. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had.”
“It was enough.” His nose raised, and he kissed her through the bars. “Thank you. I didn’t want to disobey you.”
I commanded him to live. She gave a pathetic laugh and pulled him in for another kiss.
“I’m glad you didn’t give me the same order,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to make it through this one.”
“Don’t say that.” He combed her hair with his fingers, and she didn’t wince this time went they caught a tangle. “You’re strong, so very strong. Remember that. Remember Chara.”
Emily remembered her grandmother. She could not so easily forget the woman who’d plucked her from a mundane life. Were it not for Chara, Emily would still be on the Great Plains, jealous of one brother for being a gunslinger and fearing for the other brother who’d run away. Were it not for Chara, Emily wouldn’t be in Juatwa right now, locked away in a dark dungeon. Were it not for Chara, Emily would never have met Takeo, and that alone wiped away any chance of regret.
“I love you, Takeo,” she whispered.
“I love you, too,” he whispered back.
“You’re not going to die here,” she said. “Katsu said he would sell you into slavery in exchange for my cooperation. When you get free, can you find my family and tell them what happened to me?”
“Oh, Emily,” he said, and his fingers pressed against her skin as he pulled her closer. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“It was all I could do. One of us has to make it out of here.”
“You’re not dead, yet,” he said. “Don’t give up. You’re not dead.”
They held each other for too long in the dark. The jingle of keys and the sound of footsteps provided a faint warning for Emily to retreat into her own cell. They were brought water and then locked away again.
In the darkness, Emily thought of Chara.
Chapter 30
In the pit of darkness that was their home, time was impossible to discern. It could have been as short as half a day or as long as three by the time Renshu Miyazi with two samurai in tow came for Emily. She was shackled again, which annoyed her more than it upset her. If there were a pair of iron restraints out there she could not escape, she had yet to meet them. The first pair the guards tried ended up being too large, and they had to find a smaller pair to slip onto her thin wrists—now thinner than usual because their captors had not yet brought them any food.
She was led out, and the low, flickering torchlight of the wider prison was like a blinding flash from Savara’s sun, making her eyes squint and tear up. She had to blink several times before anything became discernable. A part of her was relieved when they exited the prison and she found it was nightt
ime; the sun would have blinded her. The samurai led her across the courtyard, up a spiral staircase, down a hall, through a door on her left, up another flight of stairs, down one more long and narrow hall, and finally through a set of double doors into a chamber of epic proportions.
The room was completely circular, including the ceiling, which was rounded like a dome and supported a golden chandelier with a dozen candles lit and flickering. The walls were white and smooth, hiding the stone-brick joints that would have been visible from the exterior. Like the angels’ tower in Lucifan, windows adorned nearly every wall; only these had images inlaid with colored glass pictures of samurai and shogun alike. Through them, Emily head the faint crash of ocean waves churning in the darkness of night. Inside the room, there were chests, rolled up rugs, paintings on those walls that didn’t have windows, and several tables pushed together with large scrolls laid out over them. Near those tables, Lord Katsu was seated with a monocle in one hand and a quill in the other. To his left sat the old sennin, staff in hand. Behind Katsu was Heliena, standing tall with a grin on her face, a whip in her hand, and her bow and quiver leaning on the table beside her.
It had been nearly a year since Emily had last seen the woman who’d killed her grandmother, but there was no delay in her ability to recognize the dark-haired beauty. Slim and short, Heliena had a delicate figure, curving hips, and a face that could have been mistaken for that of a half-angel—a beauty so encompassing that it took away the breaths of those who gazed upon her for the first time and made them question their sanity when they looked again. Emily had been jealous of that beauty, once, but it would have been madness for anyone not to be.
There was no jealousy now, though. That feeling had long been burned from Emily’s heart by rage, anger, and betrayal. Those emotions came upon her again, just as strong as they had always been—strong enough to cloud her mind and set her teeth. Her muscles tensed, her lips snarled, and all thoughts of giving up were pushed unceremoniously from her head. Murder and violence overcame reason, and Emily became just as hateful as the evil she’d come to destroy.
Heliena sneered. “Hello, farmer.”
Emily’s body took over before her mind could think. She gripped the shackles and strode forward to strangle Heliena with the chain, but she remembered where she was when Renshu took ahold of her arm. She tried to wrench free, but that only encouraged him to try harder, and soon he and his samurai were dragging her forward rather than allowing her to lead the way.
“The center will do, Miyazi,” Katsu muttered, not bothering to look up from his scrolls.
Emily saw the iron bolts in the floor only just before they locked her into them. She was forced to her knees, and her leather vest was ripped off, baring her chest to the light. She gasped and covered herself. The two letters she’d been holding since she’d left Themiscyra fell loose, and Katsu chuckled.
“Hiding letters?” Katsu huffed. “I should have had you searched more thoroughly.”
Renshu brought the letters to Katsu, while Emily hugged her bare chest and watched as Katsu gave them a disinterested glance before tossing them on the table. Emily was gripped by despair as she stared at the letters.
I’m sorry, Belen, Emily thought. I failed you, too. She’d carried those letters for over a year, nearly two. They’d been through so much, she and those letters, and now their journey would come to end with their goal unfulfilled. Those letters should have been delivered to the woman-turned-werewolf in Angor whose son would be turning one year old.
I am destined to break all my promises, aren’t I?
The other two samurai pulled her arms free of her chest and drew her chains through the bolts in the floor. There was one for each limb and another for her throat, and when they clicked in place, she was no longer capable of wiggling free. She hunkered down, trying to shield her exposed chest and feeling more vulnerable than she ever had before. Renshu grinned, but neither of the other two samurai gawked. All three backed away, bowed to their lord, and then left. When the door shut behind them, Heliena’s grin grew wider.
Katsu gave a heavy sigh and tossed the monocle upon the scrolls. His eyes lingered on her bare skin, and he fingered his moustache before looking at Emily’s face as if she happened to be shackled to the floor by chance.
“Knowledge is power,” he said. “Hide it well. That’s what a mentor of mine once said. I listened well to the first part, but I’ll admit that the second part is a bit of a struggle. He certainly was a master of both, or I’d have foreseen his betrayal, and my father would have grown old.”
He looked over his shoulder, and Heliena strode out around the tables, letting the whip in her hands uncoil and drag on the stone floor. It trailed behind her like a basilisk, licking the immaculate floor.
“You see these scrolls here, Emily?” the shogun continued. “This is everything my archive possesses on the subject of angels. Being that those feathered immortals never left Lucifan, it isn’t much, but it is interesting nonetheless. Over the many centuries, more than a few scholars have taken an interest in them and have written down all they knew and could learn. A good deal of it is speculation, but some spoke with the angels personally and recorded everything—their aura, their beauty, their grace and forgiveness—I even know that this Quartus was a mute, and it was theorized he made the colossi in the image of the first knight. Even you find it interesting, I know it.”
Emily did, but her attention was focused on Heliena. The two amazons glared at each other, each with equal portions of malice, but Heliena’s face bore the look of anticipation, while Emily’s carried regret.
“As you can guess, few of those scholars mention the idea of the colossi being commanded,” Katsu went on. “Of those that do, only one contrived the notion that such a power could be transferred to a mortal. He did not theorize how, though, and that does not surprise me. I’m really just reading over this to help you.”
“If you want to help me,” Emily said, “then you can start by killing your wife.”
The whip slashed into Emily’s shoulder faster than she could flinch, snapping like thunder and ripping through her flesh. A bright red line showed, and Emily screamed.
Truth be told, she had felt worse pain. The jinni’s assault on her mind had been the worst, and compared to that, the lash felt like a pinprick. However, it was a painful pinprick, and she found herself shaking.
“Her back, Heliena,” Katsu muttered. “I don’t want to risk you catching her eye. She’s not to die, yet.”
Heliena walked slowly by Emily, taking great care to look down on her and flash a malicious smile.
“It’s too bad my dear sister didn’t come with you,” Heliena said. “I’ll have to hunt her down myself.”
“She’ll kill you,” Emily replied.
The sennin tapped his cane, and Emily’s heart plummeted. No, Emily nearly wept. Don’t let that be a lie!
Heliena laughed, and the whip cracked along Emily’s back. Her next scream was a gargled combination of agony and sorrow.
“The matter at hand, please, Emily.” Katsu motioned toward the scrolls. “I’m looking for a shortcut. I want this colossus of yours, and you want to see Takeo set free. Surely we can come to an agreement.”
“Is that why you locked us away together?” Emily said, breathing fast to fight the mounting pain. “Hoping my emotions will cloud my judgment?”
“They already have, but yes. It’s important for people to be reminded of why they’re still alive.”
He looked away back to his scrolls, and Emily heard the whip slip through the air. Her back tensed, but it did no good, and the tip of the whip lashed her back like fire. Emily cried out once and then twice as the whip hit her again, but then she clamped her teeth shut as the whip fell over and over and over again.
Heliena grunted with the amount of effort she put into her swings, pausing only to laugh, and then laid open Emily’s back. Five, six, seven, and Katsu held up a palm. Heliena paused, then whipped Emily once more
.
The shogun raised his voice to say, “Heliena.”
“Oops.” She pursed her lips and frowned.
Emily had collapsed on the floor, shaking as tears rolled down her cheeks. Her teeth had clenched so hard that her jaw hurt, but she did not feel it over the pain on her back. It burned like fire, and every tiny movement made the fire burn hotter. Even breathing was just barely worth the effort to keep her alive, and her breaths were short and ragged. Her hands gripped the chains so hard they’d gone white.
“Leave us,” Katsu said.
“Why, my lord?” inquired Heliena. “I’m not finished.”
“Come over here, then,” he said and sighed.
Heliena kicked Emily on her way back, but what hurt the most was that it made her back tense, flexing the fresh wounds. Emily gave a shallow moan.
“Do you know why I’m doing this?” Katsu asked.
Emily didn’t respond. She couldn’t find the strength.
“It’s because you’re stubborn,” he answered. “I don’t harbor torturous thoughts out of pleasure, only out of necessity. You defied me from the moment we met, daring to bargain with me when clearly you should have given up. People should know when they’re conquered, like the Old Woman. I see now what Count Drowin said about you having spirit, though I am not as fond of it as he was. I’d wager defiance runs in your family.”
Much to my mother’s dismay, Emily thought.
“So you want me to cooperate,” she said, mustering up the strength to speak, “and you figured this was the best way to motivate me? By having the woman I came to kill lash me?”
She could have laughed if it wouldn’t have hurt so much, although a small chuckle did escape her lips, and she wondered if it was the sound of her sanity slipping. To her surprise, Katsu chuckled, too.
“My, you really are interesting.” He fiddled with his moustache as he regarded her. “Even now, you refuse to look ahead. Do you think that was anything other than a small taste of what will happen to you? You think that was torture, Emily? That was a sign of affection. All your body parts remain intact.”
