Page 150 of When the Sky Breaks

We returned for supper the next night to find Glen, Christopher, and Ansel seated out in the front yard. Ansel’s knuckles were bloodied, expression defeated.

“You should have come and found us if something went wrong,” I scolded the moment we were in earshot.

“Nothing’s properly wrong, lass,” Ansel replied. “We broke him. He’s talking. It’s only just that he only speaks Finnish.”

“He only speaks Finnish?” I repeated. “And this is the first anyone has realized that?”

“We roughed him up and got him in a wagon. Put a gag on him. Didn’t hear him talk until we got here,” Christopher explained. “And then he was damn tight-lipped the first four or so hours. But when he finally started? It was all gibberish.”

“Do you speak Finnish?” Neal asked, his tone cautious but hopeful.

I shook my head.

“Could you learn?” Glen suggested.

“It’s a bizarre language,” I replied. “Hardly related to anything. So no. Not without it taking weeks at a minimum.”

I racked my brain for a solution—finding a willing translator for something that obscure could take months, word would get out, Iksura would ask questions. If we wanted to act? We needed to move quickly.

“I have an ethically questionable but potentially useful thought,” I finally said. “Remember the girls from Estonia?”

“What, the kids Iksura orphaned?” Ansel asked.

I nodded. “Estonian and Finnish are sister languages, Uralic. They won’t be able to understand all of it, but maybe enough?”

“So you’re suggesting we send someone down to Bath and functionally kidnap children to have them translate for a man we’ve just tortured a confession from?” Neal stared at me in disbelief.

“Ansel’s rubbing off on me.”

“So exactly how rough is our prisoner looking at this point?” I asked Ansel as I went through the correspondence with the young Elven couple who’d hired on our two refugee girls down in Bath.

“You don’t want to know,” Ansel muttered from his place across my desk. “Why?”

“Because we’re about to drag two children in to translate what he says,” I replied. “Children who have had more than enough trauma for one lifetime.”

“So you’re suggesting we give up?” Ansel raised an eyebrow.

“I’m suggesting I transcribe.”

“Do I need to remind you that the last time I let you at a prisoner you clocked him in the nose?”

“Do I need to remind you that he confessed immediately after?”

“You’re still not well,” Ansel argued.

“I’m well enough,” I said. “And I should be able to transcribe, even if I don’t know what he’s saying. Phonetics work across languages far better than actual vocabulary.”

“I hate this plan.”

“So do I,” I agreed. “Now tell me what time to come down to the barn.”

It was worse than I anticipated in every single way. The barn smelled like shit and blood. I was awestruck for a moment that my stomach didn’t immediately try to turn itself inside out at the stench. Then I remembered why the too-familiar nausea had abated, and the aching hollowness returned. I’d cry about it later—cry at my baby’s grave and apologize that I’d condoned torture to try and get justice for her death.

The old man was blood streaked, one eye swollen shut, and his nose clearly broken—repeatedly, recently. Ansel and Christopher had him tied to a chair and stripped to his drawers. A ragged purple scar that looked like a bite mark marred the left half of his lower abdomen. He was trembling. Though with how my breath fogged the air down here by the coast and the stark, dark circles under his eyes, I couldn’t be certain if that was fear or cold or fatigue. Christopher kicked the leg of the chair, and the old man started talking, fast, almost indecipherable. I scribbled down what I could and prayed that it would be enough.

Akhila and Vetri Chettiar were being far too nice to us. Records said that one of my father’s emissaries had sponsored their immigration from Tamil Nadu to Bath fifteen years back, before the war in India started. Apparently, they felt they still owed the Outer Court for the kindness. So they’d taken in the Estonian refugee girls and started teaching them a trade in their fabric shop without question or hesitation. And now they’d picked up their lives with all of two days’ notice to bring the girls back, refusing every offer to let one of our guards make the trip instead.

We quickly learned that the younger of the two sisters—Tiiu—couldn’t read yet, in any language. But the older one—Anna—was going through my transcriptions with admirable patience and dedication. After a few hours work, she looked up, eyes wide and worried.