Bounty
Page 35
When it was over, an expression of mortal terror was frozen in his eyes. It was nearly impossible to tell if breath still entered his lungs, but it was a state of being further immersed in the void between life and death even than hibernation, and did not require more than a trickle of sustenance for preservation.
Seth knelt by his head in the grass. “You probably won’t be feeling much for a very long time,” he said to the motionless man beside him. “I know it’s the pits, but…look at it this way: at least it doesn’t hurt you any. Lucky for us, you can still process what goes on around you, so we can come by and taunt you any time we please. Other than that, don’t worry – you’ll be well taken care of. Just trapped in a confining madness of stillness and silence that will pass like an eternity. Rather like being buried alive, I imagine, only you’ll have to endure it for the entirety of your sentence. Any questions?”
Not even the slightest response twitched from Ossen’s body. His frozen, terrified eyes just stared into the world.
“Good. Then we’ll leave you to settle in.” Rising, Seth moved away to take his leave from the scene, and Catris glanced at Godren before turning to follow.
“It’s done, Godren,” she said, pausing beside him. “There’s no point in dwelling on it. You wanted justice; he will suffer the poetic folly of the painless hell he first inflicted on another. It will release him in time.”
Inclining his head in acceptance of Catris’s reassurance, he waited until a moment after she continued her trek back toward the palace before letting her words ring true and leaving it be.
Empathizing was no way to go about delivering justice. Especially not when the only reason he could empathize was because he’d suffered the relevant effects by the corrected offender’s own hand.
Leaving his old rival lying in the grass, he walked back toward the great symbol of architecture that was his new and enduring home, granted once again the beloved compensation of an unyielding peace that persevered over the memory, and the terrible just infliction, of turning everything but a man’s heart to stone.