The Executioner's Apprentice (The Executioner's Song Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “And you were assigned to serve in Verendal.”

  “I was. It suited me, and I’ve been happy to serve here, and happy to offer my services to the city.” Master Meyer started to chuckle and then looked over. He smiled at Finn. “You have many years before you have to face that question.”

  “What question is that?” Finn asked.

  Meyer smiled again. “I can see the look in your eye, Finn. You wonder when you will be asked to leave the city.”

  “Isn’t that the point of all of this? You train me, pushing me further along, and eventually I’m to leave.”

  Meyer nodded slowly. “That is the general progression. You can’t remain apprenticed to me indefinitely. You won’t want to, either. Eventually, you’ll decide you want and need autonomy you can’t have remaining with me.”

  “But only when I reach journeyman status.”

  “That is part of the progression. As you move beyond apprentice, you move into journeyman, which grants you autonomy I cannot quite grant you.”

  “What would that include?”

  “Other than more cases such as you have started to investigate?” He shrugged. “You would be able to carry out sentencing on your own. As you learn more about medicines, you will even be able to offer healing on your own, which means additional income.”

  Surprisingly, income was one thing he hadn’t been concerned about during his time working with Master Meyer. While he wanted to ensure he had enough money, Meyer had certainly not been stingy with his coin. Finn had always been paid on time, and paid well, and more than what he would have earned in any other traditional employment.

  “None of this matters until you have proven yourself, Finn. You still have quite a bit of time before that occurs.” Meyer got to his feet, looking around the inside of the kitchen for a moment before his gaze drifted toward the door. “You should keep working. There is much to be done.”

  Finn looked around the kitchen. He needed to do more than what he already had, and he needed to finish what he had started, but all of this felt like it was more complicated than what Finn had intended.

  “You should be careful. If the man known as Wolf has returned to the city, you need to be cautious and alert. Someone like that has an agenda.”

  Finn nodded. “I know.”

  “The challenge is determining what agenda he has and what that has to do with you. The challenge becomes trying to decide if it’s anything you want to be caught up in.”

  “What if I don’t get to decide?” Finn asked.

  “You always get to decide.”

  “Always?” He arched a brow, glancing over the Master Meyer. “I didn’t get to decide when it came to my appointment with you.”

  Meyer frowned at him. “Didn’t you? You were given two options.”

  “The other option was dying.”

  “Sometimes, dying is a choice.”

  Meyer departed, leaving Finn in the kitchen. He finished cleaning up from lunch, knowing that he still had quite a bit of work to do for the day, and needing to get everything settled. They were on a timeline that he had to meet. He couldn’t delay any longer than he already had.

  The problem for Finn was that he didn’t entirely know what way to take the investigation. For him to prove Sweth was innocent, he figured he had to dig a little bit more and perhaps even question him a little bit more. Beyond that, if he failed to prove Sweth’s innocence, then he was going to hang. Regardless of what Finn might believe about him, he didn’t think Sweth was guilty of the crime.

  He finished in the kitchen, then gathered whatever belongings he might need for the rest of the day, including the hegen card, which he slipped into his pocket, thinking that if nothing else, he might look down at it to see if it changed, though it never did, and headed out of the house.

  Once out on the street, he paused. Wolf had found him easily. Wolf knew where he was and knew how to come across him. It meant that Wolf could be anywhere in the city. It could be that he watched him now.

  He didn’t like the idea that Wolf stalked him through the city, but maybe Finn could keep ahead of him. Knowing that he was out there gave Finn the opportunity to move quickly and watch for any signs of anybody trailing after him, keeping tabs on him. If he were careful, he should be able to avoid Wolf.

  He found himself drawn to the Jorend section. Answers weren’t there, he didn’t think, but maybe if he visited the fire again, he might gain a different perspective. As he reached the street, he slowed, smelling the remains of the fire. If he hadn’t known better, he would’ve thought that it was no different from the smells coming off of a crackling hearth. It was comforting, other than knowing how many people’s lives had been destroyed. Losing their homes, belongings, everything. Some had even lost their lives.

  He lingered on the street for a moment, studying the remains. There was no way for him to determine anything from this. Meyer wanted him to dig into what happened there. How could he dig into it without having any way for him to uncover just what it was that had happened?

  He wandered along the street. He paused at one point where he had seen the men loading up the remains of their belongings in the wagon, piling up items out of the drawers, before heading farther along. In some of the homes, it was obvious that people had picked through it, taking what they could. Hopefully, only those who lived there had picked through the belongings, though there had been no security, so it was entirely possible looters had come through, claiming items from those who had lost everything. He stopped about midway along the street, looking at the buildings that hadn’t burned.

  Some of them were partially intact, as if the fire had started there, but the fire brigade had managed to make quicker work of putting out the flames. It was different from the far end of the street, where everything had burned down.

  The fire must have burned in this direction.

  Of course, Finn knew it had. Having seen the fire himself and been pushed back from it, he had known it had started from this end of the street, working its way forward.

  What he needed to know was who lived where in this section. Not just the names of the people, but he needed to know addresses and recreate a map of the entirety of the section.

  If he were to do that, he thought it would give him a better idea of how to start.

  He reached the end of the street. The wooden buildings near this end the street were little more than shells, though they were shells that remained intact. There was no sign of the same complete destruction as there were otherwise. The face of most of these buildings had burned off, leaving evidence of the homes inside. Even there, they had been picked over, with very few of the people’s belongings remaining.

  He still didn’t know who was missing.

  That fact was enough that he thought it would make a difference.

  As he turned in place, looking behind him again, a crew of a dozen men stopped at the far end of the street. They had two wagons, and they started loading. They were already planning and beginning to remove the burned sections of the city. Soon, all of this would be cleared. Eventually, the rebuilding would begin. Hopefully, those who had lost everything would have an opportunity to build alongside the others, though from what he had heard, he didn’t know if that were going to be the case. That was where he could start.

  He jogged down the street, finding the foreman. “Do you have a list of which homes you are clearing?”

  The foreman was a shorter man, dark-haired and with ropy muscles. He had a tattoo on one arm in the shape of a star, as if signifying his dedication and devotion to Heleth.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “The executioner.”

  His eyes widened slightly. He turned away from Finn, reaching into a box on top of the cart before handing something over to Finn. “This is what I’ve got. You don’t need to take me in for questioning.”

  Finn shook his head. Several of the other workers had turned and watched. Most of them were burly men, strong-appearing, and he could easi
ly imagine them impeding him were he to try to bring the foreman along with him.

  “I’m not bringing you in for questioning,” Finn said. Tension within the men began to ease, and they turned back to their work. “I’m just trying to investigate the fire.”

  “Thought they got the bastard who did this.”

  “We have a man in custody, but we’re trying to ensure his guilt before we—”

  “Before you hang him?” the foreman asked.

  Finn nodded briefly as he turned his attention to the page.

  Someone had taken the time to detail each of the buildings on the street, along with a list of the owners.

  That’s strange.

  “Are you sure about the details of this?”

  The foreman looked over to him. He’d been motioning to a couple of men, getting them to lift one of the massive charred logs and toss it into the wagon. “I got this from my boss. Can’t tell you whether it’s accurate or not.”

  “Why did you need it?”

  “We are only supposed to clear most of these buildings, not all of them.” He pointed to the end of the street. “Some of them think they’re going to rebuild.” He shook his head.

  “You don’t think they should rebuild?”

  “I’m not in construction,” he said. “They don’t ask my opinion on that sort of thing. If they did, I would tell them that it isn’t worth their time rebuilding burned buildings like that. Best tear it down and start over. That way, you don’t have something rotting from the inside.”

  “Carpenters have a way of securing it,” Finn said.

  “Sure they do,” the foreman said. “But you want to trust yourself and your family to that possibility?” He shrugged. “Might save a few coins, but not for me.”

  “How long will you be here?”

  “We got this job to finish the street. Can’t say how long it’s going to take, but given something like this…” He looked up, scanning the street. “Better part of a few weeks. We’re not the only crew working, though. They want to get this swept out of here as quickly as possible.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Talk to my boss. He’d be the one to know.”

  “I take it your boss is the one listed on the top of this page?”

  The foreman grinned. He was missing a few teeth, and looked like the kind to have been in a tavern brawl. It was the kind of person that Finn would’ve spent time with were he still in the crew. Maybe all of this was less on the up-and-up than he thought.

  “I’m going to need to confiscate this.”

  “You take what you need. I’m sure he’s got more. Besides, I’m just here to clear out the debris. Once we get that done, then we move on.”

  Finn pulled up the paper, stuffing it into his pocket.

  He had questions for Sweth.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The chapel was quiet other than the soft whimpering coming from Sweth. Finn stood by the counter, looking down at the tools, trying to decide which one he wanted to use. Sweth hadn’t been completely honest with him. It was time for him to push a little harder.

  “Most prefer it when I avoid using the ankle braces,” Finn said, carrying over the bands of metal that he could tighten around his shins. They were painful. There were ways of adding to that discomfort: he could tighten them, poke and probe, or even add a surge of heat to it as well. “I had intended to avoid using that with you, but unfortunately—”

  “I didn’t do it,” Sweth said.

  “Then help me understand the map.”

  He had moved a table close enough to Sweth where Finn could fold out the map, angling it so that he could see it, but not so close that Sweth could grab it and damage it. He needed to keep that map intact for him to finish his investigation. At this point, he had a few questions that still hadn’t been answered. Primarily relating to why Sweth had been in that part of the section, especially as he didn’t belong there.

  “I can’t tell you why they have it listed that way. It’s wrong; that’s all I can say.”

  “Let me tell you what I found,” he said, crouching down in front of Sweth and strapping the ankle braces on. He started with the left foot, tightening it just enough that it created a little bit of pressure. It was the threat of more pressure that Finn wanted. There were ways of applying these implements where a man’s mind would draw upon more information and create even more fear, which made Finn’s job even easier. “You told me that you had run into your home to gather a few items for Master Johan.”

  “I ran into my home.”

  “Only, your home isn’t listed here.”

  That should’ve been the very first place that Finn had started when he had begun his investigation, but even as he had begun to dig, he hadn’t considered the possibility that Sweth hadn’t lived on the street. The people that he had asked had not known him, and for whatever reason, that hadn’t struck him as significant.

  Mostly because he had experience with living on the street and not knowing any of his neighbors.

  “What can I say? My home isn’t listed there because I haven’t been there that long.”

  Finn stopped, smiling at him. “That is what you told me before. I gave some thought to it as well, and so I went to Master Johan.”

  His eyes widened. “You did?”

  Finn nodded. “I did. Do you know what I discovered?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “I discovered that you hadn’t worked for him for very long, either.”

  Something wasn’t adding up. Finn had spoken to Master Meyer about it, but there was some part of this that troubled him, and Master Meyer had been unwilling to piece it together for him.

  The answers were there. Finn was certain of it, but it was a matter of figuring out just what he would have to do to separate out what he knew from what he suspected. Here, he’d gone into this thinking that Sweth was innocent, and maybe he was—but not completely.

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “He said that you came to him with some skills. You had experience as a scribe.”

  “I did have experience as a scribe. I—”

  Finn finish strapping on the other ankle brace, standing and backing away from him. Right now, the braces applied just a little bit of pressure, enough that they were uncomfortable. With a few turns of the screw, that pressure would intensify and gradually begin to compress around his shins and calves, becoming ever more painful. With enough pressure, even a resistant man would cave.

  If that failed, there were other ways.

  Given the deadline they worked with, Finn needed to get answers. He wanted to know whether or not he was guilty. This was his investigation. If he got a confession, maybe Meyer would trust him to do more the next time. Then the next.

  After his conversation with Master Meyer about the progression he expected out of him, Finn wanted to fulfill his end of the bargain, and he wanted to be able to do what Master Meyer wanted of him, proving himself to the old executioner.

  “You misled me,” Finn said.

  “I didn’t mislead you. I told you what you wanted to know.”

  “Not entirely,” Finn said. He watched him. “When you mislead me during our questioning, you make it difficult for me to trust what you say.”

  He smiled tightly. Finn might not have Master Meyer’s experience, and he might not have his age—which lent him a certain intimidating factor—but he had seen him enough times during questioning that he thought that he could model something similar.

  “I haven’t been misleading you.”

  Finn cocked his head to the side, frowning. He shook his head, stepping forward and beginning to apply pressure. He turned the screws a few times. It was enough that it would dig into the shins but not so much that it would cut off all circulation. There was a balance he needed to maintain, and it was a balance Master Meyer had instructed him on mastering.

  Sweth cried out.

  “Why don’t we start from the beginning. What I’d like to know
is your name.”

  “You know my name!”

  “I know what you have told me is your name. What is your name.”

  “David Sweth!”

  Finn nodded. He held up the map. “Did you live on this street in the Jorend section?”

  “I lived there.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Only a few months.”

  Finn watched him again, still uncertain about whether or not Sweth told him the truth. “Why didn’t you tell me that when I first questioned you?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  Finn tipped his head, regarding him.

  When he had come before, he’d wanted to avoid the direct questioning himself and had taken to approaching him with kindness. That had obviously been a mistake. There was no kindness to be had for somebody like Sweth, especially if he was guilty.

  Of course, that was what the Lion had thought about Finn as well. He’d been quick to torment, though had he not, Finn doubted he would’ve said anything either. He needed to take a different approach.

  “Are you working with any crews in that area?”

  He blinked at Finn. “Crews?”

  Finn crouched down, turning the screws a little bit further. “You’ve finally admitted to me that you were only there for the better part of a few months, which is different than you alluded to before.” Finn stopped at the counter with the implements, glancing over to him. “Whether or not I asked the question directly, that would have been relevant information. I would’ve expected you to have shared what you thought would be helpful in exonerating you.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  Finn glanced down. There were many different items that he could choose from, and quite a few of them might be helpful in getting answers. He’d seen Meyer using different techniques, and Finn had even read about many others, though he had no experience in using them himself.