Dark Legion Page 31

  When he turned, he leaned over me, his hands on the leather straps around my wrists, his face so close my eyes had trouble focusing on his. “Why are you here? Why?” he shouted, and his spit spattered my eyes. He turned when the old man tapped on his shoulder, then stood aside to let the old man take his place.

  The old man smiled, piercing me with his gray eyes. I felt… something, like a pressure on my skull. “A year has passed since your escape. What have you done to damage the empire?” the old man asked, and I felt the force pulsing past me grow stronger.

  My mouth opened and words spilled out. I could not stop myself. “Killed my master, killed a sorcerer, killed a slave master, killed a centurion, killed a three-horn, released another which killed several legionnaires, killed another legionnaire, released more than a thousand slaves, burned a ship along with the nobles and the princes —”

  “Argh!” was the sound that came from Solas as he charged at me, then beat the top of his head against my face, again and again. I felt my nose break with the third hit. After a few more, the old man pulled him away.

  I could barely see, my vision blurry and unstable. I spat the blood filling my mouth, but it did not go very far, and a generous portion landed on my lap. When I ran my throbbing tongue over my teeth, I was surprised to find them all still there, though a few moved in my bleeding gums.

  The old man stepped between Solas and me. “What have you got against the empire? Against Solas?” he asked.

  “He burned my parents in front of me, enslaved my brother and me, and fucked my kingdom and my people in the arse.”

  He turned to Solas. “See? I told you that violence begets violence. A pity some lessons are hard to learn.”

  “His father, Kaleb, tried to have me assassinated!” Solas said. “We met under a banner of peace, and that traitorous fuck tried to kill me. He killed my wife! What would you have had me do?”

  This was news to me. My parents had been burned with the palace after a meeting with Solas, true, but I had thought he was the one who betrayed the peace banner. Knowing my father tried to kill Solas, peace banner or no, gave me more respect for my father. I would have done the same, though I thought I’d have done a better job of it.

  “What are Malakai’s plans?” the old man asked.

  I shook my head. It wasn’t that his power over me had eased; I just had no idea what the plans were.

  “Vesh?” Solas asked.

  “He doesn’t know,” the old man said. Vesh. That was his name, not that it mattered, as condemned as I was. Vesh turned to leave.

  “That’s it?” Solas asked. “We need to know what Malakai is up to. An assassination attempt? I can’t believe they are just here to rob me. Malakai could have moved them to my treasures without breaking a sweat, or done it himself.”

  “Malakai is one for keeping to rules. The rest of us know to do what’s necessary.” What did he mean by “the rest of them”? “Just kill Saul. He can’t tell you what he doesn’t know.”

  “We’ll see about that. Innis!” he shouted. “Come in, please.”

  A tall man came in, his head hung low, and walked to stand beside Solas. Even with his slouch, he was a good bit taller than Marcus. “Saul, meet Innis. I’m sure you will find a lot to talk about. He’s a torturer too. I would have had a master torturer come for a chat, but they are in short supply these days.” Solas narrowed his eyes on me. “Innis, Saul is not feeling overly talkative. Or at least, not on the subject I am most interested in. Find out about Malakai, and what Malakai has planned.” The emperor turned on his heels and walked to the door.

  “Make sure to kill him when you are done playing, Innis,” Vesh said. “This one is dangerous… possible futures swirl about him like a dust storm. Unclear.” Vesh and Solas left the torture chamber, and the sound of the bolt sliding home echoed through the stone room.

  Innis uncoiled like a mountain cat, stretching to his full height, straight as a rod. He was a giant, and the two stars that shone from his eye sockets let me know that I was in for a world of pain. Thing was, I knew Innis. Not just the type of man he was—one who relished this line of work; I knew the man himself. I had taught him many years ago. I wondered if he remembered me.

  All noise in the torture chamber was loud, amplified as it bounced off the stone walls. When he pulled off his shirt, he rotated his neck in a clicking of bones, and the sound of metal on stone was loud as he dragged the table across the stone tiles, the tools clinking together. My screams would soon fill that space.

  He smiled as he sat on a low stool beside me, and his crooked grin did odd things to his too-tight skin.

  “Talk,” Innis said. “Tell me of Malakai.”

  “Fine.” Innis looked disappointed that I gave in so easily. “Malakai loves stuffed reptiles. He likes to dress them up, and to arrange them in poses that amuse him.” Innis smiled again, and leaned over the table as he looked over his tools. Clearly he thought I was having him on. He selected a pair of pliers, smiled again, then leaned over my right hand. His smile dropped away, and I could not help but laugh. I laughed a long time, to the point where it hurt. “You wanted to pry some nails off?” I asked through the dying embers of my laugh. “Sorry to say, someone beat you to it.”

  Innis growled and punched me in the guts. It hurt, and it hurt bad. I would probably have doubled over had I not been restrained. So I smiled instead. While it hurt, I was sure it did not hurt me nearly as much as it would a normal man. Angus made sure I measured pain on a different scale. Innis growled again, got to his feet, and retrieved an oil burner from a shelf on the wall. He set it on the table and, using flint, set it alight. The flickering light from the flame did nothing to soften the man’s appearance, and his deep set eyes, hidden in shadow, looked like hollow cavities. He looked like a man who’d escaped the hells before he did his time. Gods, I reckoned the man would have loved it there and would have found employment.

  Innis picked up a metal nail and placed it in the fire. They were effective, there was no arguing about that, but I hated using them myself. I generally stayed away from methods involving fire, though I made exceptions. Fire reminded me too much of my parents’ murder. The nails were short and narrow, not intended to kill, merely to cause agony. Though that was most of the trick to torture. A dead man spoke few truths. Innis picked the nail out with the pliers, leaned over me, ripped my shirt open, and brought the glowing nail close. I took a shallow breath, and held it, bracing myself.

  He stopped and jerked his head up in surprise.

  “What?” I asked, looking down. In the dim light it looked as though my chest was covered in black spots. In the light of day, they were poorly healed burn marks. “Oh, that,” I said. “Yes, someone beat you to that as well.” Innis sneered, then stabbed the burning nail into my chest. I gritted my teeth, but I did not scream. Don’t get me wrong, it hurt like hell, but not as much as it had when Angus first introduced me to this technique. My skin sizzled, and the smell of burning flesh wafted up at me. There was another reason I stayed away from fire when torturing. It made me hungry. Cooking meat smelled like cooking meat, no matter what it belonged to. My traitorous stomach grumbled, but the pain helped me keep my mind off roasted meat. As I adjusted to the pain, my face relaxed and I laughed. It was a forced laugh, but I wanted to get under Innis’s skin to piss him off.

  Innis stood suddenly, roared, and threw his wooden stool against the wall, shattering it. He looked at his tools on the table, breathing heavily. I had not had many pupils back in Castralavi, but Innis was the worst. He had loved the work and never shied away from inflicting pain, no matter how disturbing. But he had never understood the finer arts of torture and often forgot the small things. Besides, the man was far from stable, and while torturers were not generally the sanest of men, there were limits. He was a rope stretched too tight, ready to fray, and he reacted too much, too easily. Half of an idea started to play around in my head.

  When Innis calmed himself, he looked over his shoulder
at me, smiling once more. Shit, what now? Innis held the device in front of me, and I fought to keep my smile intact. This was going to be unpleasant. Sure, it was all unpleasant, but thumbscrews were particularly so. Innis spoke slowly. “Tell me about Malakai.”

  “Your father never loved you, did he?” I asked. “Or perhaps he loved you a little too much?”

  Innis punched me in the nuts, hard. My breath left me and I leaned as far forward as my restraints allowed. Barely at all, in other words. It took me a long time to recover. My put-on bravado only went so far. When I looked up, my right thumb was clamped down in the screws. Innis had a fire in his eyes, and it was not just the flame of the burner reflecting in them. Clearly I had hit a sore spot, though I had to admit that Innis had done a better job. The pain in my lower abdomen was still throbbing. Innis turned the screw once.

  The pain shot up my arm. It was a dull pain, but I knew it would get worse, and quickly.

  “Did he take you himself? Or just look the other way when your uncles came to visit?” Innis bared his teeth and turned the screw once more. I swallowed hard, then nearly choked on the spit as the pain shot along my arm, up my neck and into my skull.

  I bared my teeth. “Look, let’s talk, Innis. Can we talk? That is what you want, isn’t it?” Innis nodded slowly, and the cold running down my spine told me I had some power over him. Not much, but some. I wished that I had gotten to know him better when he was my student, but I’d spent as little time as possible with the sick fuck. “Okay, then. Perhaps you have heard of my former master. Man by the name of Angus, the emperor’s head torturer. Former head torturer.” Innis nodded, and his brow furrowed. “Yes, we have met before. I trained you. Sadly, I was not as thorough as my master was when he taught me all he knew of the art. And it was a lot. Thing is, he believed in teaching through experience. He taught me by torturing me. Everything you can do, he has already done to me. More, I would bet. Now, considering I’ve already gone through it all, what do you think the chances are of you cracking me before I die? And how will your beloved emperor react if you fail at your job? Are you indispensable?” Innis did not answer, but I could see the man was thinking it through. “In the interest of getting results, can I suggest something to you, Innis?” Innis snarled, and turned the screw once more. Oddly, the pain only increased a little. I wondered if my body had a limit to how much pain it was willing to show. I smiled. “As I was saying. Let’s get this over with. Do you have a vial of liar’s demise?”

  Innis stood bolt upright. “You recommend that? For yourself?”

  “You think I’m joking? I don’t want this to drag on for days when there is no reason for it. That poison will get you what you want to know, and I will die a quick, though far from easy, death.” Liar’s demise was a bastard of a poison, and I thought back to the dead Inquisitor in my own torture chamber and the convulsions that had killed him. You could be certain something was bad when it got a reaction out of someone like Innis.

  Innis smiled at me as he nodded. “Very well, have it your way.” He unscrewed the device from my thumb, placed it back on the table, and walked to the wall to rummage through the shelves. While Innis’s back was turned, I bit my lip, and held back a scream that was fighting to escape. I was in agony. My thumb hurt more when the pressure was released than when it was on. So much for my theory on my pain threshold. The pain slowly faded, and by the time Innis had the poison ready, I was able to crack a smile again. Barely.

  Innis came back wearing long gloves, carrying the beaker with utmost care, which confirmed some of my suspicions. Innis came close, then glared down at me. “Am I going to need to force this down your throat?”

  I smiled and shook my head. “Innis,” I said forming a name with every ache, throb, and pain in my body. There was a lot to go around. “Please untie one of my arms. I have a bitch of an itch that I would like to scratch before I die. You know that stuff is fatal, that there is nothing I can do.”

  “I’ll release it as I pour it down your throat,” Innis said.

  I shrugged. He held the beaker to my mouth, and I swallowed once. Innis really wasn’t very good. Perhaps I was a lousy teacher. Only a small portion of the beaker was necessary. While I was immune to it, I suspected that had its limits. If I consumed too much, there was a real possibility of me shaking myself to death.

  I held the poison in my mouth when I felt the strap loosen on my arm. His own mouth was open too, most people just could not help themselves, like mothers, who when feeding their children opened their own mouths to coax their children into doing the same.

  I spat the mouthful of poison at Innis, covering his face, his mouth, and eyes. Innis leapt back, dropping the beaker in the process. It hit the floor and shattered, and my laugh did not sound too dissimilar. This time, my laugh was not put on, but it was maniacal. I could not believe that trick had worked. Two twisted madmen in two different torture chambers with the same poison. I loved that magic liquid.

  Innis spun on me. “You bastard! You stupid bastard! You know you’re as dead as me,” Innis screamed.

  “Afraid not,” I said. “I am an assassin, and trained to consume my own poisons. Sad to say, for you at least, that I am quite immune to it.”

  His nostrils flared, and I was sure his eyeballs actually protruded from those deep sockets. He ran to the wall and retrieved a cleaver, took one more step, then his legs gave way beneath him. I laughed a little more, then settled down and cleared my throat.

  “Tell me, Innis, does the emperor have a vault in this palace? One that actually contains treasure?”

  Innis lay flat on the ground. He could lift his head from the floor but could not prop himself up in any way. His face twisted as he tried to fight off the poison’s primary effect, being the inability to lie. “Yes,” Innis blurted out.

  “Where is it?” I asked.

  “Beneath his bed.”

  “He fits it all under his bed? How?”

  “Hidden chamber. Under his bed,” Innis said.

  “You know this for certain?”

  “No… Rumors.”

  A chamber beneath his bed. Excellent. I wrestled my right arm out of the leather strap, and as I untied my left, I glanced back at Innis. “Slaves were caught when they tried to escape. How many?”

  “Three.”

  “What? Three slaves?”

  “Three slaves,” Innis said.

  “You’re sure that’s how many were caught?”

  “Yes.”

  Laughter shook my body, and if felt as though my heart would burst from relief. If only three had been caught, then the rest had either given up on the attempt or gotten away. “Farewell, Innis,” I said as a spasm took hold of him, then another. “Enjoy the hells. You deserve each other.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Crooked Eagle

  The torture chamber shared many similarities with the one I knew so well. The one thing I wished it did not share was a door that locked only from the outside. Alas, it did, so I found myself watching the corridor of cells from the narrow slot of a window, with Innis shaking himself to death behind me. “One for the one who waits,” I said in offering to Svyn. I cast a glance at Innis. He was big, sure, but not all who had claws were lions, and you should never fight a lion unless you were one yourself.

  From my angle, the cells appeared to be empty except for one, where I assumed my friends were kept. There were two guards stationed outside it, at any rate. I had to find a way out, but the how of it escaped me. I pondered all sorts of preposterous ideas, going as far as to arrange some of the torture implements to see if I could manufacture a tool to reach through the slot and somehow unlock the thing.

  My planning was interrupted by the sound of boots on stone, with the occasional scrape of metal. I returned to my narrow window to see Solas and his armored Inquisitors walking past. Solas slowed for a moment, and I ducked down as he looked my way. I held a hand to my mouth, and screamed, directing the sound to the back of the room. The sounds that
came from a tortured man were hard to replicate, but it was a fair impression of such a scream. I peeked around the corner and saw a smile played on his face. Then he continued on until he reached the guarded cell. The Inquisitors once more had their swords outstretched, pointing into the cell.

  “Comfortable, I see,” Solas said.

  “Fuck off.” That would be Neysa.

  Solas laughed. “Don’t worry, you won’t be here long. I have something special in mind for you, girl. You like fire, so you will go out in a blaze. As for you…” he said, looking to the side, presumably at Marcus. “You are in luck. Tomorrow is Gallows Day. Many will come to see the so-called rebel leader swing from a rope.”

  Solas smiled. A tall red banner decorated the wall behind him, depicting the swooping eagle of the empire. Standing with his hands on his hips, Solas mirrored the eagle, his arms like the eagle’s wings and his prominent nose the beak. I screamed again, figuring it was time for another one.

  “Sounds like your friend is enjoying his time with my torturer.” Solas said, then turned to the guards. “One of the brothers will bring you down a bottle of the elixir shortly. Make sure she drinks it. Don’t waste a drop.” The guards saluted, and Solas turned and continued down the corridor without another word, his dogs trailing behind him.

  The guards relaxed when he passed out of sight, and smiled into the cell. “We’ll need to get Arnold and Len to help us hold the big one,” one guard said to the other. Arnold and Len were the brutish jailers who had helped me into my chair earlier. “I doubt he’ll stand back while we force that drink down her throat.”