I stepped outside for a pause, a moment to think. The rot within still clung to my throat. The stench that thickened the dungeon was one I knew all too well.
The gutters were no place for magisters. None of us came here. Our presence was rarely welcome. But around the outpost, where guards prowled the cobblestoneless streets in packs, the people kept their heads down. Fear was a better leash than law.
This place was the belly of the city, wedged between the market’s gold and the opera’s marble. The air here was no cleaner than below. The ground squelched beneath my boots, mud and waste swallowing each step as I turned back toward the outpost.
The guards moved aside when I passed. I descended the narrow, coiling stairs and crossed the iron-barred door into the dungeon. Thalen and his chancellor, Alaric, stood in low-voiced discussionoutside the prisoner’s cell. The guard who had questioned the boy stood still as stone before the door, waiting for the next order.
General Alaric von Brecht had been called here after the patrols in the gutters caught sight of a suspected weapons smuggler. They claimed to have found Eamon, a young Bretannian merchant, crossing into Befest with illicit cargo. They had watched him for days, and when he vanished into the gutters and reappeared elsewhere, they took it as proof enough. Had arrested him this morning.
Alaric had come himself; he never could resist the scent of a possible siege. He’d sent for Thalen. Thalen, in turn, had sent for me.
The chain of command. Always the same. Always ending with me.
“We’ve been at this for hours,” I heard Thalen say. “I’ll go in. I can get it out of him.”
Thalen and his mastery of conjuring magical weapons and fireballs was not a torturer’s art, despite what he convinced himself.
“No,” I said firmly, interrupting them. “Let the guards take care of this. This is not our type of work.”
Thalen’s scar tightened across his cheek. “We might not have the luxury to let the guards handle him. The threat of siege is real. If this boy can give us a location where they stock their weapons, we can stop it before it explodes.”
Let it explode. Let them come. I was neither patient nor kind enough to stop it, to spare Dereck Thorne’s army from ash.
“What are you going to do? Boil his blood?” I asked, sharp.
“If I must…”
I considered it, then shrugged. I lacked patience to argue and suspected that boiling someone’s blood would yield more than blunt force.
“Just make sure it doesn’t stain my armor,” I snarled. I was fond of those black leathers, after all.
Alaric nodded at Thalen, granting him leave to enter the cell.
The guard moved aside and opened the door. It cracked and creaked until it closed behind us.
Eamon was bound to a chair, his head bowed, blood still sliding from his lips. He could not have been more than eighteen. He heard us and raised his head, then smiled with a wet, insolent scoff.
“You again…” he muttered. He coughed several times. “Tired of spreading lies, you come to torture a simple merchant like me yourselves?” He coughed again.
Thalen’s eyes darkened to red, and the boy’s spine stiffened as magic began to work the blood under his skin. Bruises flared across his face and chest. Veins pulsed like ropes beneath flesh, and the boy threw his head back and screamed.
“Where do you keep the weapons?” Thalen asked. I knew he would ask but once.
The boy stifled the wail, bit his lips, and writhed against his bonds. Ragged sounds bubbled from his throat, wet with blood.
“A… battle… is coming,” he stammered. “You… cannot stop it.”
Thalen’s glare brightened. Heat pooled in the cell.
The boy screamed again and, between shrieks, spat, “There is no… secret stash… of weapons.”
The air grew slick with sweat.
“We are everywhere. The entire city is our keep.”
A sizzle cracked.
“No king but the people. No king but the people. No king but the people.”
