A Court of Lies

by Kate Avery Ellison

  One of the Seekers, a lean one with eyes like live coals, thrust a parchment under the warden’s nose. It was stamped with the seal of the Citadel. “Consider this your notice,” he said. His voice sliced like a blade. “We apprehended this prisoner in Gillspin. We came here straight away.”

  The warden took the parchment. His eyes fell over the lettering, saw the name written across the top. This letter had been issued by the innermost circle of the Citadel. The ones who could lift his banishment to this forsaken wasteland.

  His smile stretched across his teeth as he stepped aside, sweeping a hand to usher the Seekers inside.

  “Please,” he intoned, “come inside out of the storm. We will have refreshments and rooms prepared for you at once.” He snapped his fingers at one of the guards, who strode away to inform the prisoners who had earned the right to sweep floors and prepare meals.

  “Who is the prisoner?” he asked, watching as the Seekers shook the snow from their cloaks and stamped it from the bottoms of their boots.

  The Seeker who’d handed him the parchment frowned. “That is information that only a chosen few need to know, warden.”

  The warden sputtered. “I am the warden of this prison—”

  “And the Citadel has been discussing your service here,” the Seeker replied.

  The warden quieted. He studied the man before him, and then looked at the prisoner.

  “Why does he not wear a collar?”

  “It was broken in his escape attempt,” the Seeker replied. “We made this makeshift replacement. We will, of course, require a new collar as soon as possible.”

  “Of course,” the warden said. “We use a similar device on some of the prisoners here,” he added, “But I’ve never seen it on a prisoner coming in.” He paused, looking them over. “I shall need to record your names and stations—”

  “We will see the prisoner put away first,” the lean Seeker said firmly. He spoke like one accustomed to giving orders.

  The warden bristled inwardly at being told what to do, but he dared not anger these men. They were important, surely, if they were carrying such papers. He looked closely at the prisoner, but the dried blood on the man’s face made it difficult to get a satisfactory look.

  “Of course,” the warden said with another thin smile. “This way. Have you been to Ikarad before?”

  “No,” the lean Seeker said.

  The rest looked on sourly, as if the questions were inane. As if the warden were a fool.

  The warden decided to take them the long way. Show them what he oversaw here in the prison. Impress them. Wipe those smugly superior expressions off their faces.

  He led the Seekers and their prisoner through the soaring doors made of ancient, rune-inscribed stone that led to the hall of staircases. Light filtered through the ceiling above, a ceiling crafted from magic into a vaulted V with shapes and runes emblazoned into the roof and down the walls. The light illuminated the great hall crafted long ago by powerful magic. Relics adorned the walls—the bones of mammoths, and dire wolves, and the skull of a dragon, its jaws stretched wide.

  “This hall,” he said, “was forged by ancient Seeker magic a thousand years ago.”

  He looked over his shoulder to see their faces, expecting awe, but instead, the group of Seekers was gazing at him with furrowed brows.

  The warden blinked. Were they not impressed? Had the fellows of his order grown so jaded? Surely, they were only disguising their amazement.

  “I have heard of this hall,” one of the Seekers said to him coldly. A woman, he realized with a start. How had he not noticed her before among the rest of these men? She was shorter, her face softer. He looked at her more closely, wondering who she was and why she looked oddly familiar to him, when she continued, “But it was described to me differently than this.”

  “Differently,” the warden repeated, his mind still scouring his memories for where he’d glimpsed her face.

  “Where are the rest of the dragon skulls?” she asked.

  “We moved them to the third level storage chambers,” he said after a pause. “There was an… an incident. They were damaged.”

  He saw no need to go into more detail.

  The Seekers, however, looked interested at that.

  “An incident?” the tallest one said.

  The warden had trouble hiding his scowl. He was not a bloody tour guide. “An ice howler managed to get inside. It ran everywhere, breaking things, scrambling up the walls. Look, you can still see the claw marks. Got loose in my chambers somehow, and the blasted thing tore up several of my fine cloaks. Absolute madness. Anyway, it damaged the dragon bones when it—”

  The warden stopped. Was it his imagination, or was the prisoner smirking?

  The warden’s lip curled. He strode forward and struck the prisoner hard across the cheek.

  The prisoner’s head snapped back, and he grunted in pain as he stumbled.

  It felt good to release some of his disappointment on that insolent cur. The warden smiled, until he realized the Seekers looked displeased. They focused their attention on him in a way that felt threatening, somehow.

  “Do you always make a habit of striking prisoners in the midst of their armed escort?” the woman asked. “Or do you have a particular dislike for this one?”

  The warden massaged his hand, which felt as if he had just tried to punch one of the ice walls. The warden was not a man who often swung his fists. He had guards to do that for him. “He was— He was smirking at me,” he said. He felt a little breathless with their gazes all fixed upon him. They were intimidating him, and they knew it, and that those facts rankled him. Not knowing how high ranking they were within the Citadel was giving him a headache, too. Here he was on his best behavior, because one could never be too sure, and it was his life’s mission to escape this frozen wasteland, not be sentenced to another decade overseeing Ikarad.

  “He’s a prisoner,” the warden added with a scoffing sound. “He’s headed for the vaults. A month there, and he won’t remember his own name. What’s one strike on the cheek?”

  “We prefer our prisoners in good condition before we interrogate them,” the woman said.

  The warden returned his attention to her. What was it about her that teased the back of his memory so?

  “My men will interrogate him thoroughly,” he assured her. “They are expert torturers, never fear.”

  Her left eyelid twitched as she stared back at him, and her gaze was flat and cold. Did she find him repugnant? Irritation swelled in the warden’s chest. He was doing his duty, serving in this awful place with the leaking ceilings and the lack of proper plumbing and the screams of the prisoners echoing through the grates at all hours of the night. How dare she look at him as if he were a monster? As if he wanted this. Relished it.

  No, this was his punishment too.

  “We are going to interrogate him first,” the lean Seeker said in a voice that allowed no disagreement. The kind of voice that made lesser men shake in the knees.

  The warden locked his knees so they wouldn’t shake as he peeled off a glove and reached for the prisoner’s head. Who was this man, to be treated with such concern? Was he a turncoat? A spy? A defector?

  The tallest Seeker closed a gloved hand around the warden’s wrist. His grip was like a vise.

  “We are going to interrogate him first,” he said, giving the warden a little shove backward as he spoke. “Before your butchers get their hands on him. We want his mind pristine for our purposes.”

  The warden contained his fury at such treatment in his own prison. Reminding himself once again that these were important individuals—individuals who, if pleased with him, could put in a good word at the Citadel—he put his glove back on and ran both hands down the front of his robes.

  “If you will all follow me,” he said in a clipped voice, turning on his heel to lead them to the second level chambers.

  The staircase, the steps of ice, wound down in a tight corkscrew. The Seeker
s were silent as their boots stamped down the steps behind the warden. He secretly wished that they would slip, but the enchanted ice had the texture and grip of stone.

  They reached the second level of the prison. Here, there were guest quarters for when prisoners arrived with an official overseeing the transfer.

  He’d never had so many, especially not for one prisoner.

  It was curious, to say the least.

  He ushered the Seeker group into a room chiseled from the ice and clasped his hands together as he performed a little awkward bow and then immediately regretted it. He saw the amusement in the eyes of the prisoner.

  When these Seekers were done with that man, the warden intended to see that he never smiled again.

  “Is there anything else you require at present?” the warden asked carefully. “Besides the collar?”

  “No,” the tallest Seeker said. “And we’ll send for the collar tomorrow. Don’t disturb us before then. This interrogation might take all night.”

  Then, they shut the door in his face.

  ~

  Briand’s hands trembled as she pulled off the Seeker cloak and dropped it to the ground of bluish-white ice that formed the smooth floor beneath their boots. Even the furniture in the room was made of ice.

  “The warden kept looking at me,” she said.

  “Well, you talked a good deal,” Nath grumbled. “I thought we were supposed to stay quiet except for Kael and Tibus.”

  Briand ignored him. She looked at the Seeker. “Auberon—is there any way he could know me?”

  “I doubt it,” Auberon said. He lifted his chained hands to touch his nose gingerly, and he winced.

  Kael spoke, gathering their attention. “We’ve finished the first part of the plan. Now, we need a guard.” His gaze cut to Auberon. “First, we need to convince them that we’re really interrogating you.”

  “Do you think you can play the part, Seeker, or should we help you?” Nath asked, pulling out a knife.

  “I have some experience to draw upon,” Auberon said stiffly, looking at the knife.

  “Then get on with it,” Tibus grunted. “Every moment I spend in this place makes me want to put a knife through my chest.”

  “Pick your worst interrogation,” Nath said. “Make this count, Seeker.”

  Auberon sighed through his nose. He flexed his shoulders and inhaled deeply, and then he closed his eyes as if reaching into himself for a visual. The others watched with varying levels of curiosity, amusement, and derision.

  And then, he screamed.

  It was the hopeless kind of scream that people make when they know they are going to have everything dragged from them, as painfully as possible, and there is nothing they can do to stop it. The kind of scream a man makes when he wishes to die, wishes he could find a way to kill himself.

  Chills ran across Briand’s skin. She felt sick to her stomach.

  She knew that Auberon must be drawing on memories of such screams to sound so utterly convincing. People he’d tortured.

  The thought of any human being feeling this much agony, this much hopelessness, filled her with rage and horror. She wanted to seize by the hand whoever the poor soul was and yank them to safety before putting a knife in their tormentor. She leveled a glare at Auberon as she fingered the hilt of her knife.

  The screams went on and on. Crispin put his cloak over his head, and Nath leaned against the wall, looking white as if remembering some pain of his own. Even Tibus seemed unsettled.

  Finally, Kael held up a hand, and Auberon stopped. He was sweating, and his breaths came in gasps.

  “That was very convincing,” Kael said. “Well done.”

  Auberon lifted his head and looked at their leader. His eyes glittered. He didn’t reply.

  “Now,” he said to Kael. “It’s your turn.”

  Kael nodded. He came forward and unlocked the chains on Auberon, who stripped off the gloves with relish and flexed his hands and wrists as a groan of pleasure slid from his throat.

  Kael took a step back, turned his head, and waited.

  Auberon smiled, a slow and delighted turn of his lips. He formed a fist with his long, delicate Seeker fingers.

  Briand remembered the fight she’d seen in the Seeker’s memories. The one he’d lost.

  Auberon swung hard. His fist cracked against Kael’s cheekbone. Kael let out a shout, and then Tibus did too. Nath ran to the door to call for a guard.

  “You two,” Briand heard him calling. “We need help in here at once!”

  The stamp of the guards’ boots sounded in the doorway, and then they rushed into the room and were greeted by the sight of Auberon, face bloodied and mouth snarling, whirling to do battle as Kael fell to the floor with a hand clapped to his eye. While they were taking this in, Nath and Tibus knocked them over the heads with the hilts of their swords.

  The guards crumpled, unconscious. Auberon hurried to the side of the closest one and placed a palm against the man’s temple. He closed his eyes for a moment as he looked inside the guard’s mind.

  “The main prison room is two levels below,” he said after a pause. “That’s where they will be keeping Jade.”

  “And the storage room?” Briand asked. “See where it is.”

  Auberon shot her a look. “You are planning to keep your promise to that dragon?”

  “Best not to disappoint a dragon,” she replied, and he tipped his head in acknowledgment of that point.

  “The third level storage chambers,” he said as he pressed his hand to the guard’s head again. “Yes, I see them. They’ll be tricky to get to after we’ve rescued Jade.”

  She looked at him, and he at her, and she saw his expression soften a tick.

  “But we can get to it,” he said after a moment.

  “Hurry,” Tibus said. He had already stripped down the other guard and was now squeezing into the man’s clothing. “Get him undressed. Who is going to wear his armor?”

  In the end, Nath was too thin and Crispin too short, and Briand laughably too small, so Kael wore the armor.

  “This leaves the Seeker as our leader if we run into trouble,” Nath protested, but Kael looked past him, toward the door.

  “Listen,” he said.

  Footsteps.

  They all stilled, waiting to see if those footsteps would stop. Briand held her breath. She met Kael’s eyes, and the look he gave her was as stolen as a kiss.

  The footsteps continued.

  “Let’s go,” Kael said, and the rest of them pulled on their silver Seeker cloaks once more and made a cluster around Auberon, who was now only pretending to be locked in chains.

  Kael, who had memorized the map Auberon had provided them back in Gillspin, led the way as they slipped into the corridor, leaving the guards hidden in a small supply room, tied and gagged and covered in Tibus and Kael’s Seeker cloaks.

  They had to hurry. That confinement wouldn’t last long. They needed to find Jade and be gone before the guards were discovered.

  “This way,” Auberon said, pointing toward a doorway.

  “If my memory serves me correctly,” Kael said coolly, “that leads to a garbage pit.”

  Auberon gave him a thin smile. “Ah, you’re right. I’m mistaken.”

  Kael gave him a long look before striding ahead, leading them to another staircase that spiraled downward into darkness. Before he entered the stairwell, he snagged a torch that flickered with blue, cold fire and held it aloft as they descended. Crispin was utterly silent, and his face, when the torchlight hit it, looked gaunt with fear. Briand stepped closer to the lad.

  “I’ll knife anyone who tries to harm you, Feverbeet,” she promised in a whisper.

  That earned her a smile from Crispin and a chuckle from Nath behind them.

  In the distance, a door slammed. The sound made them all jump. Nath muttered something under his breath, and Tibus laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  “Steady, man,” the soldier said. “You’re all right.”r />
  “Of course I am,” Nath snapped, but he didn’t shrug Tibus’s hand off immediately. “I don’t trust that Seeker, though.”

  Auberon overhead him and stopped abruptly on the steps. He loomed over Nath, his face tight with fury. “I made a mistake,” he hissed. “There’s no treachery in that.”

  Nath drew back with a scowl, his hand dropping to his knife. “We shall see. And if you are leading us into a trap, I’ll cut off your—”

  “Nath,” Kael said calmly from below them.

  “Yes,” Auberon mocked as Nath turned away. “Go like a dog called to heel. Like a slave. ”

  Nath started to whirl back around, his hand on his knife, but Kael’s hand was there first, stopping him.

  “The mission,” he said quietly, his eyes locking with Nath’s. A look of trust passed between them. Nath breathed in and out, and his face cleared. He nodded.

  “He is jealous of what he cannot possibly understand,” Tibus murmured.

  The look that crossed Auberon’s face for a split second was pure torment. Then he tucked it away behind a smooth, careless smile. “You’re right—I could not possibly understand the foolish devotion you hold to this traitor, or his failed prince, or any of these idiots. I am, after all, a monster.”

  Nath growled something unintelligible but didn’t further engage.

  The tension stretched.

  “Let’s go,” Kael said, his jaw flexing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  FOR WHAT FELT like an age, the only sound that met Briand’s ears was the quiet clamor of their feet on the steps. The staircase went down and down.

  “Are we descending into the seventh level of hell itself?” Nath hissed. “How long does this go on?”

  Auberon held up a hand.

  They stopped, and they listened.

  In the far distance was the sound of weeping.

  “Not much longer,” Auberon muttered.

  Light flickered faintly below. They had reached the third level.

  The smell was like rotting meat. Briand covered her nose and mouth with the edge of her cloak, and she noticed the others doing the same, except for Kael and Tibus, who had to use their sleeves. They stepped into a long corridor. A frosted window of ice thin enough to see through stretched along the right side of the hall. Inside, they saw a vast, black space, like a cave, the interior mostly in darkness except for the light of fires at intervals.