“What did he say?” Percy asked him.
Hargreaves shifted, irked that he had to be the one to translate. He closed his eyes, trying to make sense of the prisoner’s words through the haze of wine. “He denies being a murderer. He stole from an unattended shop till. He’s a thief.”
Percy watched the man, his eyes slitted from the effect of strong drink. “Let’s not be hasty to condemn. Let’s consider this man’s situation. He might’ve been starving; to be thrown onto these unforgiving Golborne streets is no blessing, either. It can turn anyone into a desperate creature.”
Hargreaves glared at Percy. He knew his friend was neither merciful nor kind. “What do you suggest, Avon?”
“Justice, my friend,” Percy responded, raising his hand as if he were standing on a pulpit. “Ask this man how many years he’s been sentenced to.”
Reluctantly, Hargreaves complied, though he knew it was a dangerous thing to indulge Percy.What isn’t learned in the cradle will be learned too late.
“Fifteen years,” the man responded uneasily, in stuttering Morish.
Percy shook his head. “Is the punishment not too harsh for such a crime?”
Hargreaves gritted his teeth. “Do you suggest we let him go? Likely he’s lying; no sane magistrate would give fifteen years for mere robbery. Perhaps heisa cutthroat, and the next throat he slits may be ours.”
“Of course we won’t let him go, but we could grant him a greater mercy,” Percy said. “We won’t return him to Newtorn Prison.”
Hargreaves’s stomach tightened. “Where would you take him?”
Percy’s pale-blue eyes widened in excitement. “Orley. That old demon told me that the underworld will pay good money for living human bodies to feed on. We can take him down there, allow him to serve just a year with one of the demon nobility—a fair amount of time for his crime—and collect him the next spring. It would befair.It would bejust.”
Hargreaves swallowed. “I thought we’d put the matter of demons to rest. You are soon to be wed, Percy, too old for these childish fancies. The law may have been harsh, but it’s the law.”
Percy stared at him, then yanked the prisoner upward by his hair until he was on his feet. “Hargreaves, this is your countryman. He bleeds like you. He shares your tongue. Do you think that a Morish man would have received the same punishment? Yet you allow your kin this unfair fate due to…legalities?”
Once again, a feeling of annoyance built in Hargreaves’s breast at being compared to this prisoner, at being othered by his friend in such a way. Hargreaves was also a noble, and was far wealthier than any Avon had ever been. He had no further kinship with this prisoner than a tepid tie to a country that Hargreaves had never even seen. Why must he be responsible for the man?
But just then the prisoner started humming, as if to calm himself. It was an Algaraan lullaby—one Hargreaves’s mother used to sing him to sleep with. It jarred him to hear such a nostalgic tune come out of the mouth of such a despicable creature.
Hargreaves looked at Percy. He knew that the choice was his. If Hargreaves insisted on calling for the soldiers, then that was what they would do. Making up his mind, Hargreaves sighed. “This is the first and last time, do you understand? We take this one prisoner to the underworld, then that is it. No more dealings with the demons.”
It had not been the last time.
The Warden greeted Hargreaves now at the entrance of Newtorn Prison. Twenty odd years had passed, and Hargreaves was a middle-aged viscount. Percy was long dead.
“Your Lordship.” The Warden bowed deeply before ushering him up a flight of stairs and into his own office. It was a comfortable room, with a scarlet carpet to cushion the hard stone floor, but even here the walls vibrated with the ever-revolving assembly lines that existed within the prison.
“I have five prisoners who I think would be suitable for your…ah…purposes,” the Warden said eagerly, his eyes bulging from his thin face.
Hargreaves waved for him to start, a headache building in his temples. It was a grim business, but one Hargreaves didn’t trust to anyone else. Years ago, when the Wake was the only group to be trading in convicts, there was profit to be made. At present the market was saturated with freelance traders who had ventured into the underworld, with the Warden happily taking bribes from any of them who paid in full.
Now Hargreaves only performed this discomfiting task as an act of clemency. While it unsettled him to link himself to these Algaraans, they were still his countrymen, and he now knew how unfairly the law viewed them. It was his personal brand of justice that he took them away from a life sentence here. They could spend only a few years in the demon world before they’d be set free.
Providing they survivedit.
Lord Kilworth was the only member of the Wake to have ever opposed the trade of prisoners. He did not view it as an act of mercy, as Hargreaves did, but an unnatural act of human submission to another, lesser being.
“How dare the demons think they could steal from a human? Cow us into compliance, into shells to serve their purposes? Feed on us to grow their own powers, to prolong their lives?”Kilworth’s voice had been laced with abject disgust. “Mark my words, Hargreaves, we ought to shoot ’em before they take the notion into their heads to enslave us.”
It was a tired argument, one born out of fear. The demons could be managed, could be controlled. Hargreaves had told him that he would manage them.
Kilworth had taken a swig of hard liquor, mouth twisting from the taste. “Beings like that can only be managed through strength. Especially that demon who works for the Saint. I guarantee you she’ll know where the Limitless Vessel is. We ought to force the information out of her.”
Hargreaves had not bothered to respond, the foolishness of the suggestion grating on his ears. They’d had this argument before, but Kilworth was stubborn in his certainty. The demon servant did not know; neither Hargreaves nor Percy had ever allowed her to have that information.
No, the only person to know the location of the Limitless Vessel was Percy, now ten years in his crypt.
