by Kate L. Mary
At her side was a man, just as plump as every other person living in the city. He was as naked and beaten as the woman, but unlike her, he was awake. I wanted to go to him, to ask who he was and what was happening, but I knew it would be foolish. Fortis guards couldn’t be very far from the town square, and going to this man could get me killed.
The third person was not Sovereign, but an Outlier. He wasn’t from Indra’s tribe, though, nor did he bear the piercings of the Mountari or Huni. The passage markings he bore weren’t contained to his face alone, but swept down his arms and chest, and even his legs. This must have been the man who came into the city with Xandra.
But where was she?
“Gods,” Nyko hissed in a low voice. “I knew the Sovereign were bastards, but those are their own people.”
“They’re sympathizers. They were probably caught helping the Outliers.” Turning my back to them wasn’t easy, but I knew I had to. The only way to help them now was to get the gate open. “Which is what we need to focus on.”
Nyko grunted his assent and followed when I jogged back into the alley.
2
Asa
Once again, I wound my way through the city, while behind me Nyko huffed with the effort of trying to keep up. Being a hunter and a Fortis, he’d trained throughout his life, but not nearly as much as I had. As a guard, I was expected to be in top physical shape, and growing up, my father had been determined to make me the biggest and the strongest. It had been beaten into me, literally, and had made me hate the man even more. His efforts had paid off, though.
The city felt as empty as the wastelands, and twice as hot. My clothes stuck to my body, and the air I sucked into my lungs felt heavy and thick.
In the back alleys there was little light, while the main streets were illuminated thanks to the technology left over from the old world. On those roads we had to be extra careful, slowing to listen for sounds, keeping to the shadows when we did move.
Nyko and I didn’t come across a single Fortis guard, though, and by the time we’d reached the main road, I began to think we might make it without any opposition.
The gate was in sight when the man appeared, coming out of nowhere and slamming into me, sending me to the ground. The growl he let out when his body crashed into mine rang in my ears long after I’d hit the pavement. There was something familiar about it, but with the blood pounding in my ears and the hard body of what could only be another Fortis man on top of me, I couldn’t think.
I twisted, trying to fight, but was stopped when a fist slammed into my cheek. My head jerked back on impact, my skull slamming into the stone beneath me, and blackness even darker than the tunnel I’d traveled through to get here clouded my vision.
“Asa.”
The growl of my name clawed at my mind, but my head was spinning, making it impossible to concentrate. Even when I was jerked to my feet I couldn’t fight, and my vision still hadn’t returned to normal when my hands were yanked behind my back.
Whoever had me was in the process of binding my wrists when my eyes slowly began to focus. A short distance from me, Nyko struggled with two other Fortis men. His red hair was the only streak of color in the otherwise black night, and the grunts of pain he let out as he took blow after blow were the only sounds I could concentrate on.
“Stop.” I struggled against the man at my back.
Fingers wrapped around my neck, curling until they’d tightened enough to cut off my air, and then my head was pulled back.
Hot breath brushed across my cheek when the man behind me said, “Keep struggling and I’ll gut you like the pig you are.”
That was when it registered who he was.
“Greer,” I growled, sounding more animal than man.
I jerked forward so fast I caught him off guard, somehow managing to slip from his tight grasp. His fingernails raked across my neck, breaking the skin, but I barely felt the sting as I spun to face him. Then I reared my head back and slammed my forehead into his nose.
The crack seemed to echo louder than the boom of thunder. Greer swore as blood burst from his nose, but I didn’t give him the chance to do or say anything else before lifting my leg and bashing the heel of my boot into his stomach. The impact forced a groan out of him, and he went down.
I moved to kick him again—it was my only option with my hands tied—but I had only taken one step when hands grabbed me from behind. Before I’d even had a chance to struggle, a knee was in my back, forcing me to the ground.
On my stomach with my face pressed against the cold stone, a knee shoved against my spine, I was powerless. As powerless as the ten-year-old boy I’d held down had been. As powerless as Indra had been when I’d held her back while her husband was killed. As powerless as every other Outlier who’d ever worked in this city.
“Keep him down,” Greer growled from somewhere to my right.
Footsteps scrapped against the street, followed a second later by the thud of a boot slamming into my side. I groaned, tried to curl away, but once again found it impossible to move.
Greer knelt at my side. “I thought you died in the village.” His mouth turned down while he studied me. “Should have known better. You never were on our side. I could always see it. Could see the way you looked at them.”
The curling of his upper lip was my only warning before he spit. It landed on my cheek, and a glob of mucus and saliva ran down my face, over my lips and to my chin before dropping to the street beneath me.
“Get him up,” Greer said as he, too, stood. “I know someone who’ll want to talk to this traitor.”
The knee left my spine, and I was yanked to my feet, finally giving me the opportunity to look around for Nyko. He was down, too, pressed against the ground exactly as I had been. When he was pulled to his feet, I was able to get a good look at his face. His right eye was swollen, already starting to darken underneath, and a trail of blood trickled from his nose where it got captured by his red beard, but otherwise he looked okay. At least for the time being. It wouldn’t last. Not for either of us.
“This way,” Greer called as he started walking.
The other two Fortis men followed, pushing us after Greer. My feet stumbled over one another as I struggled to keep up with the fast pace, but I didn’t have an opportunity to fall since the man behind me had such a strong grip on my arms. I recognized him, although I didn’t know his name, but the man at Nyko’s back was someone I was familiar with. Dag. He hadn’t worked in Saffron’s house, or within the walls at all, but I had seen him with Greer many times. I also knew tormenting the Outliers as they walked through our village had been a favorite pastime of his.
Asshole.
I didn’t need to be told where we were going, but when we turned onto the street, my stomach still dropped. Greer was no fool. He’d been paying enough attention to know I’d had some kind of connection with Indra. Greer had also worked in Saffron’s house, had seen the fallout after Lysander was stabbed, and had heard the plump son of the mistress roar about getting revenge.
Greer was taking me to see Lysander.
The closer we got, the harder my heart thumped. This would be the end of me, I was sure of it. Lysander wouldn’t let me go without telling him everything, but betraying Indra was something I would never even consider. It wouldn’t matter how much he tortured me. I could take the physical pain, but the pain of knowing something had happened to her…
That was something I wouldn’t survive.
When we reached the house, Greer went in the back door without knocking. Nyko and I were dragged in after him, through the mudroom where Indra had been violated, through the kitchen were she’d stabbed Lysander, and into the dining room where I had stood in the shadows for years, watching her.
There, Greer waved to the other guards before heading deeper into the house.
One kick to the back of my legs was all it took to send me to my knees once again. A second later, Nyko dropped down next to me, and there we stayed, side by side,
a Fortis guard at each of our backs as we waited to discover our fates. My side throbbed from the kick Greer had given me, but I knew the pain was only the beginning. I just wished I had insisted on coming into the city alone. Thinking that my friend, one of the only good Fortis men I had ever known, was about to die because of me, made me nearly as sick as the knowledge that the Outliers would soon follow.
It didn’t take long for footsteps to break through the silence. The overhead lights flicked on a moment later, and I had to squint against the sudden brightness. A tall figure stepped into the room, followed by another smaller one who was holding a stick in his hand. The electroprod hummed to life a second later, the blue glow somehow helping my vision focus while at the same time highlighting the features of the smaller man, and recognition slammed into me. Lysander. I would recognize his round face anywhere.
“Die.” The word was a growl on my lips as I struggled to my feet, my focus on Lysander alone.
The Sovereign man’s eyebrows shot up, but there was no fear in his gray eyes. No wariness as I charged forward. I was blinded by rage, by the memory of what this man had done not just to my wife, but to dozens of other women.
It was a foolish move. I knew it even before Lysander lifted the electroprod. The tip of it made contact with my stomach, stopping me in my tracks as electricity shot through my body. It forced a sound out of me I had never made before, and every nerve ending in my body screamed in agony. I dropped, landing on my side, jerking uncontrollably as the electrical current radiated through me.
“I recognize this one.” With the pain throbbing through me, Lysander sounded far away. “He worked here, didn’t he? In my mother’s house.”
“Asa.” Greer grunted out my name like saying it hurt him. “He protected the Outlier. The one who stabbed you.”
“Indra.”
My wife’s name on Lysander’s tongue reminded me of the hiss of a lygan, and I desperately wanted to get up, to rip his tongue out so he could never utter it again. Only I couldn’t. Thanks to the electroprod, I was powerless.
“Get him up,” Lysander said, “Now.”
I was jerked to my feet, still trembling, and had it not been for the hands holding me up, I was certain I would’ve fallen to the ground.
Lysander’s face came into view, his mouth pressed into a sneer as he looked me over. “So you traded your people for a dirty Outlier?”
“She—” My voice shook as much as my body. “—isn’t—dir-ty.”
I wanted to say more, wanted to cover him with every filthy name I could think of, wanted to create new names for the abomination in front of me, but I couldn’t get another word out. The effects of the electric shock had faded, but they weren’t gone completely, and the lingering tremors moving through me made it difficult to even take in a breath.
“You know where she is.” Lysander took a step closer to me. “The Outlier bitch who tried to kill me.”
When I said nothing, he sank his teeth into his meaty lower lip, staring at me. Under the bright lights of the dining room, his skin looked more yellow than it had the last time I saw him. Like all the Sovereign, Lysander’s waxy complexion made him look like he was knocking on death’s door. If only I could help him on his journey.
Lysander looked me over for a second, his expression cold and calculating, before turning toward Nyko. My friend was still on his knees, and under the electric lights his face looked bloodier than it had on the street. Still, he wore an expression of determination I was more than familiar with. I had known Nyko long enough to know he wouldn’t back down from these monsters.
“Him.” It was all Lysander had to say when he jerked his head toward Nyko.
Dag took the first shot, his fist slamming into Nyko’s nose, and Greer followed suit, giving my friend no time to recover. Back and forth it went. A hit. A kick. Over and over again. If Nyko went down, it was only for a moment before he was pulled back to his knees so he could receive more of a beating.
I struggled but couldn’t move. The man at my back had a grip on me, and the debilitating effects of the electroprod hadn’t worn off enough to give me full control of my muscles. They twitched, like a bug was crawling through me, and it made it impossible to do more than struggle.
“Step away from him,” Lysander finally said in a voice colder than winter in the wilds.
The Fortis men stepped back, breathing heavily, their shoulders rising and falling in rapid succession. The bloodied knuckles of Dag and Greer were nothing compared to my friend’s battered face, but still Nyko kept his head held high as Lysander took a step toward him.
He stopped, pausing to look back at me. “I want to know where Indra is.”
Before I had a chance to respond, Lysander slammed the end of the electroprod into Nyko’s side. My friend’s back arched and a scream ripped out of him. He dropped to the ground and his body jerked again, his arms and legs curling up as the sharp current of electricity moved through him.
Lysander looked back at me, the electroprod in his hand and hovering over Nyko. “Tell me. Now.”
A tremor shook my body from the inside out, like a shock had moved through me, and I had to squeeze my hands into fists. The pain was still present, and I couldn’t imagine what Nyko was going through. Couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to be hit with that torture device for the second time.
But giving in was impossible.
My gaze moved to Nyko. His eyes had both swollen until the blue of his irises was barely visible. Still, I only needed to look at him for a brief moment to know he was thinking the same thing I was. These men were more animal than human, and we had sworn a long time ago that we would never succumb to their brutality. A beating didn’t change that.
I looked back at Lysander before saying, “Even if I have to die here today, I’ll never tell you where she is.”
The Sovereign man’s mouth scrunched up, and only a second passed before he once again pressed the electroprod against Nyko’s side.
My friend’s body jerked and his mouth opened in silent screams, as if the pain made it impossible to function enough to even make a sound. When he dropped, still writhing, the sharp scent of urine filled the room.
The man behind me let out a low chuckle. “Pissed himself.”
Rage surged through me and I reared back, hurling my body into his and catching him off guard. He stumbled, and I managed to get to my feet, managed to get in a kick, and then a second one. My boot made contact with his side, his stomach. I saw red. It was all I could see as I brought my leg back a third time, ready to slam my foot into the Fortis man on the floor in front of me.
I didn’t have the chance. Instead, I was hit from behind, a punch low on my back that sent pain throbbing through my insides. It made me stumble, made me vulnerable to my attacker, who I instinctively knew was Greer.
When he hit me again, it sent me to the ground. I landed beside Nyko, who was curled up in a ball and unmoving. I could make out the slow rise and fall of his chest and knew he was alive. Thank the gods. I didn’t know how he’d been able to survive two hits from the electroprod, but by some miracle, he had.
“Take them to the square,” I heard Lysander say. “I want answers, and I want them now.”
3
Asa
The square was empty except for the three people in the stocks, and the sight of them as I was forcefully dragged toward the stage made the dread inside me grow. I was to be tortured, that much I knew, but how it would happen was impossible to say. I had witnessed enough atrocities at the hands of both the Fortis and the Sovereign to know there were no limits to what they were willing to do to another human being. Only this was the first time I was the one facing their torture, and despite how prepared I’d thought I was for anything I might face inside this city, I suddenly realized I had been very, very wrong.
Beside me, two Fortis guards held Nyko up. He was barely conscious, but I could tell he was fighting to remain alert. His eyes would roll back until only the whites w
ere visible, and his head would drop to the side, but seconds later his body would jerk and his head would snap up. Rage unlike any I had ever seen flashed in his blue eyes in those moments, but like me, he was at the mercy of these monsters.
I shouldn’t have brought him with me.
My focus was torn from him when I was dragged up the stairs and memories of Indra came rushing back. Lying on her stomach and in the clutches of the very men who now had me. How I’d been forced to watch, horrified and tortured, as she was whipped. It had taken every ounce of self-control I’d had not to throw myself over her that day, but I’d known with certainty doing that would be a death sentence. Even worse, it would have left Indra forever vulnerable within these walls.
Of course, that was before I’d known how strong she actually was.
“Make him kneel,” Lysander said when we’d reached the top of the platform.
Like Indra on that day, I was forced to my knees while Nyko was dropped in the center of the stage. Far enough away that I couldn’t reach him, but close enough that I could see every twitch of his muscles.
The electroprod in Lysander’s hand hummed to life as he circled me, and I found myself jerking away from it.
The bastard smiled. “Tell me about Indra.”
I knew what would happen if I said nothing, but I also knew I could handle it. For her, I would endure anything. Pain. Humiliation. Even death. As long as she was safe, I didn’t care what they did to me.
My only regret was that I wouldn’t be able to keep the promise I’d made.
“Do not leave me.”
She’d whispered the words against my neck only hours after we were joined as man and wife, begging me to stay even though we both knew I needed to go.
“I’ll never leave you.”
I’d said the words, knowing it was out of my hands, but confident the gods would look out for me. They would never choose to punish us in such a horrible way after everything we’d already been through.