Page 63 of Elvenbred

Triana lay curled up on the floor, clearly asleep, and twitching a bit. I really hope whatever you are dreaming is truly terrible.

He worked to control his rage. “What happened?” he asked the Overseer.

“Forgive me, my lord,” Vaylan replied, “I’m trying to gather firsthand witnesses, and first reports are pretty unreliable. Nonetheless, it appears that she went mad and attacked the workers in the room … with some kind of killing magic.” He paused, clearly uncomfortable.

“Go on,” said Haldeen.

“Here’s the thing, sir,” the Overseer replied. “She’s been behind on her count. Her supervisor had reported using magic sensors when she was working, to try to find some way to help her get her numbers up. She says the sensor stayed dead. No ambient movement around the girl. None at all. She kept it on her the whole time she worked. Not a glimmer.”

Haldeen felt his patience slip. “Explain why this is relevant.”

“My lord,” Vaylan asked, “if she can do Making magic without calling the ambient, then what else can she do? Killing magic is high green at the least, maybe blue, but not yellow.”

Haldeen had a caustic reply ready, then bit down on it. Damn him, he’s right. I’d assumed that because they were weak here, they’d be weak there. What if they aren’t?

“What do we do, sir?” Vaylan asked.

Haldeen felt his rage bleeding away, and he focused on Vaylan’s question. Easy to hand her over to the king, as he demanded. But, I have no other source of information on the Traitor’s World except her. I could also spend hours … days … maybe longer, looking for an exit to that cave other than the collapsed cave mouth. She might know another way out.

That alone might be worth making sure he didn’t go too far.

“We’re the best equipped to deal with this,” he replied slowly. “We know the most about her.” He thought for a moment. “Do we still have the prisoner-collar?”

Vaylan nodded. “Yes, my lord. I used it on Dralla for being drunk. Seven days’ magic severance. It should be in my office.” He frowned. “If she’s that different, then how do we know it will work?”

“The sleeper worked well enough,” Haldeen replied.

“Yes,” Vaylan replied. “But … we really don’t know what she’s capable of doing, do we?” The Overseer paused for a moment. “The Beast Cage, in the undercroft stables … where we keep the Source. It’s proof against that Monster’s magic. Maybe the cage will work on her as well. The Beast can’t do any magic in the cage.”

“Put her in with the Source?” Haldeen asked.

Vaylan nodded tentatively. “Unless you think she could hurt it somehow? If we lose that Source, we lose the south side of the city.”

Haldeen thought it over. “She could hurt it? It’s the size of a house, and made of magic. It took a handful of Blues four full days to wrangle it here. Even with what she’s shown, I think that all she could do is maybe make it mad.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Still, you never know. Use the prisoner-collar on her. Shut her off from her magic. And put her in the Beast Cage until we figure out something long-term. While she’s there, she can shovel Beast shit.”

Vaylan looked out into the hall. A stretcher party came past, bearing one of the injured up the several levels to the courtyard.

Vaylan shrugged. “The last Beast-keeper got squashed. Who knows, my lord. Maybe she will irritate it, and it will squash her into jam as well. It will solve the problem once and for all.”

Haldeen looked at him, allowing the thinnest of smiles. “That’s what I like about you, Overseer. You find a way to bring a ray of sunshine into the dreariest of days.” He paused. Still, having her die with information in her head would not do. “Before we put her in there, we’ll need to wring her out first. Glean everything she knows, then once she’s dry, it’s in with the Beast.”

He looked down and touched Triana with the toe of his boot. He could see a small spot of blood on the left toe. “Get this thing out of my sight.”

14

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Triana lifted her head, trying to shake off the nightmares. She was pretty sure they kept her asleep most of the time, waking her only to take a little food, use the chamberpot, and sit for her next interrogation. She shifted a bit, as the cobwebs cleared. The latest dream had been her walking between lines of the slaves she’d ordered killed, stretched to the horizon. Bad. But far from the worst.

Her back hurt from the cold stone. When they had first put her in here, she had woken on the cold stone floor, without even a blanket. She had been chilled to the bone. Haldeen’s minions had run a short chain from her ankle to a ring hastily drilled into the floor, in a room perhaps five paces a side. She had to give Haldeen credit, though. She guessed this room had begun life as a broom closet, but one that could be quickly fitted with a heavy stone door. The doomful thud it made as it closed told her it certainly had weight, and even if added as an afterthought, the door certainly sealed out both light and sound.

Whatever Haldeen had meant to do with her had started with the small room. Here, under the constant mage-lights and the sleeping-collar, she had lost all track of time. After her first sleep, she awoke to find a second collar, nested below the first. It was thinner, and it burned her neck and throat when she reached her finger up to touch it.

Periodically, Haldeen, the lord himself, would come, and the questions would begin. The small table and chair he sat in while he interrogated her were just within her reach. Most elven lords worth their salt had a torturer available for the difficult interrogations, and she had felt real fear that the practice had started here first. She had already decided that whatever secrets she held were not worth having her most delicate and precious hide carved, burned, or tormented in whatever creative ways they had found.

She had been quite surprised to find her interrogator was balding old Haldeen himself. She made a few snide comments about his thinning hair, paunch, and otherwise did her best to show her complete contempt for him. He had even failed to threaten her properly, and utterly failed at mustering the proper air of menace so needed for the job. She got a few choice insults in before his face went red with rage. She thought then that she had overreached and he would strike her, but instead reached for the collar’s control. She felt the fatigue wash over her, and sleep. The nightmares returned.

They left her that way long enough to place a thin pallet under her, little more than a cloth folded and stitched, but it kept the floor from leaching the heat from her body. They also gave her a thin and scratchy blanket, so while she wasn’t comfortable, she didn’t wake up with the shivering chills either. No one laid a hand on her. They didn’t have to.