Her lips pulled back from her teeth in a snarl. “I’ll kill her,” she said before lunging toward the kneeling Kai woman, almost wrenching Brishen’s shoulder out of joint as he gripped her arm and blocked her with his body. “Not yet. I need her alive until I can find Ildiko.”
Anhuset’s nostrils flared. “Then can I kill her?”
He might have laughed were the situation not so dire. “Maybe.” The bile still hung in his throat at the memory of what the Kai had demanded of him in exchange for his wife’s whereabouts. “I don’t have the time or inclination to coax Ildiko’s location out of her.” He glanced at the woman, noting how she and Anhuset’s captive stared silently at each other, no doubt carrying on a wordless conversation of warnings to stay silent. He nodded toward the man. “If I were to guess, he answers to her, not the other way around.”
Anhuset nodded. “I agree.” Her hands flexed, then curled into loose fists as if she prepared to brawl. “As you say, we don’thave the luxury of time. “Do you want me toencourageher? I have no problem doing so.”
Even with the cold fire of rage licking his insides, Brishen still shied away from the idea of torture as a method to extract information. He’d suffered through that brutality himself and come away from it blinded and scarred inside and out. Subjecting another person to something similar, no matter the reason, turned his stomach. But needs must, and he’d do much worse to save Ildiko.
“I think she’ll die before she talks,” he said. He gestured to the Kai henchman. “And he’ll spill her secrets to stop her.” He hadn’t missed the horrified anguish in the man’s eyes as Brishen bound her with rope and threatened to maim her. “You interrogate him while I use her to convince him to talk.”
She clasped Brishen’s arm, stopping him from walking away. “Let me handle her.” Sympathy darkened her eyes to a lustrous gold. “She may not be Ildiko, but she still looks enough like her that you’ll have sleep terrors for years, not to mention misplaced guilt. If anyone is going to beat the shit out of the imposter, let me or Dendarah do it.”
“I won’t ask that of you.”
“You didn’t. I’m volunteering.”
Fierce Anhuset, whose devotion to him never wavered and whose insight into his character remained clear and far-seeing. She never failed to amaze him. He nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”
The false Ildiko’s mismatched eyes widened, and she scuttled back, still on her knees, as Anhuset approached, her knife unsheathed and held lightly in her hand. Brishen turned his attention to the henchman, grasped his bound hands by the rope and dragged him closer to the woman. He stayed quiet, eyes nearly white with hatred as Brishen crouched down beside him.
Brishen seized his face, claws digging into his cheeks until blood trickled down his fingers. The man wheezed a pained exhalation through clenched teeth and glared.
“Here’s how this works,” Brishen told him. “I will ask one simple question. You answer, and there will be no pain. If you don’t…” On that pause, he let go of the man’s face and glanced behind him to where Anhuset stood beside the imposter.
She’d gagged Ildiko’s impersonator with a strip of cloth ripped from the already ragged shift. The woman’s mismatched eyes glittered with desperation, fear, and warning as she stared hard at her cohort.
Brishen shuddered inside at the sight of her, enough like Ildiko to make his gut twist at the knowledge of what he and Anhuset were about to do.
He turned back to the henchman, making sure the Kai had a clear view of the two women. “Where is the hercegesé?”
The Kai, face streaked with blood, glared at Brishen, and said nothing.
Brishen stared back and said in his calmest tone, “Anhuset, break all the fingers on one of her hands.”
A pair of gasps tore from both captives, one muffled by a gag. Brishen didn’t flinch or turn around at the rapid snap of bones, or the choked scream that followed. He swallowed down a rush of bile, not seeing the anguished Kai in front of him, but the memory of leering human faces twisted with ghoulish laughter as they ripped out his claws one by one with a pair of pincers.
He mentally shook himself, and once more it was the Kai’s face before him, no longer defiant but twisted with grief and fury.
“You fucking bastard!” He lunged at Brishen who dodged nimbly out of the way. He fell to his side, only to have Brishen right him again with a clear view of his mistress and her torturer.
“Where is the hercegesé?” Brishen barely resisted the urge to punch the information out of the man. Torturing or beating him would do nothing more than waste time. He was indeed the weakness in the wall of secrecy. Brishen didn’t doubt this Kai would readily die for his mistress, even under torture. That he would allow the imposter to die under the same circumstances…
Her soft sobs sounded so much like the real Ildiko’s it was all Brishen could do not to spin around and order Anhuset to stop. Instead, he kept his eye on the henchman who watched her, grief-stricken. “Please, mistress,” he begged her.
Brishen waited another moment. When no answer was forthcoming, he sighed. “The other hand, Anhuset.”
The henchman lunged again, this time toward the imposter, as a second round of awful snicks and muffled screaming sounded behind them. He crawled on elbows and knees to reach her, using fists, feet, and teeth to fight off Brishen, who pulled him back. Brishen did punch him then, hard enough that the man hit the ground and lay still, eyes closed as his breath gusted from his mouth in heavy pants.
He lay limp as Brishen grabbed the back of his tunic and yanked him to a sitting position. The false Ildiko sat on her haunches, holding her bound hands close to her chest. Her fingers were swollen and misshapen, and tears streamed down her cheek from the one eye still mostly human. She rocked back and forth, obviously in pain, yet she shook her head violently when her accomplice once more begged her to let him speak.
Panic and impatience began to eat away at Brishen’s revulsion for what he and Anhuset did. They were losing precious time. “Where’s the hercegesé?”
The Kai man snarled in impotent fury. Brishen seized the opportunity and twisted the knife a little harder. “This isn’t a game I want to play.” He spoke over his shoulder to Anhuset. “If I don’t get an answer this time, sever both of her heel cords.” Heignored his captives’ distressed cries. “After that, hamstring her. And after that, cut off her nose.” He met the charlatan’s horrified gaze. “So I may always know who dared to threaten what is most precious to me.”
“My gods,” the other man whispered next to him. “You are insane!”
“No, I’m a husband wanting his wife back, and if I have to take your mistress apart piece by piece to make that happen, then so be it.” Brishen meant every word and more. If Ildiko died because of these two, there wouldn’t be enough left of either of them to burn or bury. “Where is the hercegesé?” Once more silence reigned, and Brishen raised his hand, signaling to Anhuset.
