Constantine looks at his soldiers and nods again. “I asked my brother to give this soldier one of his rings.” Sure enough, a gold band gleams onthe soldier’s hand. “To remind you that when he puts his hands on this woman, my brother is doing the same with your mother.”
My eyes widen slightly.Caitomanis doing this.
Next to Constantine, the mayor meets my gaze briefly. In that second, I see a dawning realization on her face. She knows where Caitoman went. That means that she knows where my mother is being kept.
But I have no time to dwell on this.
The soldier twists the woman’s elbow firmly behind her back.
Then he shoves it up hard. I hear bone snap. The woman screams. The ring flashes.
Somewhere, General Caitoman just shattered my mother’s arm.
I fall to my knees at the blow, as if it had struck me instead. The pain roaring through me might as well be my own.
Stop, I tell Constantine. My eyes glow, the blue reflected against the ground.I’m begging you.
“Then tell me who did it, Talin.”
I don’t know!
The soldier goes up to the sobbing woman and kicks her again. My head swims at the sight.
“Tell me who did it, Talin,” Constantine says again.
I press my palms against the ground. I can feel the Premier’s determination through our bond, his will pressing against the secrets I keep guarded close to my chest. My anger fills every crevice in me, burning through my muscle and steel and skin until I think I’m going to turn into flames.Could it be, I hiss through our link, my jaw clenched tight as I glare up at the Premier,that the Strikers simply freed themselves? That you underestimated their abilities, as you do us, as you do to anyone you think you’ve conquered? Could it be that they are simply better than what you can throw at them?
Constantine’s his eyes are hard as stone. “I think you need a reminderof why you are my Skyhunter,” he replies. “I think you’ve gotten too bold, your answers those of someone who isn’t under my control. I think I’ve been too lenient with you, Talin. So let this be that reminder.”
He looks at his prisoner. One soldiers takes out a knife.
No.I suddenly startle up from the ground as the soldier grabs one of the woman’s hands. General Caitoman is grabbing my mother’s hand.Stop. Please, don’t.
But Constantine doesn’t issue an order to stop.
Beside him, the mayor suddenly takes a breath and fixes a stern look on the Premier. “Constantine,” she says in a calm voice.
I’ve never heard anyone call him his name to his face. But somehow, Constantine pauses for a moment, his eyes swiveling to the mayor as if he’d once listened to her before.
The woman glares at him. “Remember your own mother, Constantine,” she says softly. “And what she would say, were she here.”
The words are like an arrow to his chest. I feel his sharp recoil through our link, can see the paling on his gaunt face. For a brief moment, Constantine looks at Mayor Elland not like she’s the mayor of his capital, but as if she’s his elder, a woman he must once have listened to in the same way he’d listened to his own mother. I look back and forth between them, the world blurred through my tears, hoping desperately that her words were enough.
And for an instant, they seem like they might be. Constantine seems to waver, a rare hesitation on his face. I wonder if he’s imagining his mother here. I wonder if he knows that Mayor Elland had loved her.
But then the darkness in his heart clouds his face again, and any softness that might have been there disappears. He looks away from her in disgust.
“But she isn’t, is she?” he says. “She’s dead. And the dead are useless.”
He gives the soldier a nod. The soldier lifts the prisoner’s hand right as I take a step forward. For a moment, the woman meets my gaze. She is silently begging me for help, and even as I see nothing but my mother in her, I remember that this prisoner is also her own person, being tortured for no reason other than her mild resemblance to my mother.
The soldier tightens his grip on the knife. Then he brings it to the woman’s longest finger and cuts it off.
The woman lets out a piercing wail. Blood runs down her hand.
I turn my face to the ground, unable to bear the sight. I’m trembling violently now.
Constantine’s soldiers have observed me every time I’ve visited my mother. He knows how important it is for us to communicate with our hands. He knows what this cruelty means for us.
