Chapter 8
The next morning Eleanor awoke to find Raf sitting by her side, a serious expression on his face. "What is it?" she asked once she'd returned to full consciousness.
"I was wondering what they want from you," he said.
"I don't know."
He studied her face. "What do you know that they don't?"
"Um, well..." She thought for a moment, and decided that she really only knew one thing worth knowing. "There's a secret room in Dashfort," she said hesitantly, uncertain whether she should really be telling anyone about it.
His eyes brightened, and a smile spread across his lips. "The puzzle chamber – of course! So you're trying for the academy as well."
"You too?" Eleanor asked, feeling a thrill of excitement at the idea. If he was on the same path as she was then there was some reality behind all the legends – and that meant she'd made the right decision back at the school, for all that it felt like a lifetime ago. And, however strongly she felt that everything had gone wrong, if she'd ended up in the same place as another postulant then she knew that she couldn't have steered too far from her intended course.
"I was, until I fell into the trap at the code tower. Is that where they got you?"
"No, I was... Well, it's a bit complicated. Some smugglers tried to sell me. It's a long story."
He raised an eyebrow but to Eleanor's relief he didn't ask for more details; she didn't want to talk about it more than she had to. Anvil's death still weighed heavily on her mind.
Instead, Raf asked, "So do you know which country we're in?"
"Taraska. I guess we're still in Taraska La'on, I don't think there was time for them to move me out of the city while I was knocked out."
He nodded. "Thought it might be. Bastards. This is just the sort of thing they'd do."
"Why?"
"They've always wanted to break the Association – they see the Empire as a threat to their trade routes, but we always find their spies."
She almost laughed. "You know everything!"
"I didn't know they'd started taking girls into the academy – otherwise I would've guessed sooner that you were one of us."
Eleanor stared at him in surprise. Weren't all jobs available to anyone with the right abilities? Wasn't that the whole point of the assessment system?
"The Association was around long before the Empire with its current laws was formed," he explained when he saw the confusion on her face. "It can be a bit old-fashioned."
"Oh." She didn't really know what to say. "Do you know a lot about it?"
"A bit."
"So what was your assignment?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "I didn't even read the letter."
She couldn't help feeling impressed with his confidence. "I'd have been happier if I hadn't – some stupid local police job. I thought this would be better, but I'm almost wishing for a quiet life now."
"It won't all be like this," he said. "We were caught by surprise. And we haven't been trained."
"Do you think..." She hesitated, wondering if what she was about to say would sound too stupid. "Do you think this is part of the induction?"
"No." Though his voice was firm he didn't seem to be mocking her for wondering, which came as a relief. "One of the others who was here, when he tried to escape..." Raf illustrated his point by drawing his hand across his throat, a chilling gesture which said everything more succinctly than words could have done. "I had wondered, but I think this is real."
"Then we have to get out of here."
"Yes," he said slowly. "But not just yet."
"Well, we'll need a plan, but–"
He cut across her: "We have to wait. The academy doors open on the equinox – we have to keep them busy till then, or this might all be for nothing."
"Why?" Eleanor fought to keep emotion from her voice, but the idea of deliberately staying here for any longer than they had to seemed ridiculous. She already had a broken nose, and she didn't want to think about how many bones in her body remained to be broken.
"They know they're close to getting everything they need, but I don't think they know when the doors open. If we can keep them busy till after then, then we've got a whole year to get back and deal with their men back home. Otherwise..." he shrugged. "There's no point getting back sooner if we destroy the Association in the process."
"But if they kill us–" Eleanor began.
"So what? It'll be more than just us who get killed if they break the Association."
She stared at him in disbelief. "Would you really rather die than tell them what you know?"
"Don't you think it's worth it? Isn't it more important to protect the Empire from them – from people who do this?" He indicated his most recent wounds. "Besides, what makes you think they wouldn't kill us as soon as we told them anything?"
Once he said it, it was obvious: the only thing keeping them alive was the value of the information in their heads. If they gave in and talked, they would undoubtedly be disposed of.
"How do you think I've survived so long?" he continued. "They know I'm not telling them everything. The others either tried to escape, or just told everything they knew about the code tower – and they never came back. I don't cause them any trouble but they know I'm keeping things from them, however much they hurt me."
Eleanor's fingers went to her nose, which had swollen hugely overnight. "You might have to teach me how to do that," she said. "I don't know how much of this I can take." This felt like a significant gap in her education – even Laban's extra tuition had given her no training in how to resist interrogation under torture.
"We can get through this," Raf said softly, taking her hand in both of his. "All we have to do is survive. One day at a time, okay?"
She nodded. One day at a time. If they couldn't even plan to break out before the equinox, then they didn't have much choice.
"Let's play a game," he suggested. "Take your mind off the pain."
"Okay," she agreed, though she found it hard to believe that anything would really take her mind off it.
"Do you know the guessing game?" he asked. "You think of an object, and I have to ask you questions to guess what it is."
"I know it."
"Good. Can you think of something?"
She nodded, and he began the guessing. Was it alive? No. Was it smaller than a person? Yes. Was there one in the room? No – she laughed at the very idea, they had so few things. Was it made of metal? Yes.
"Is it a weapon?" he asked.
"How did you know?"
He smiled, and pressed on with his questioning without answering her. "Is it a dagger?"
"Not quite."
He paused for a moment then asked, "A sword?"
"Yes!"
"Any specific sword, or just generally?"
"General will do – I was thinking about some longswords I saw at the market. Is it my turn to guess now?"
He nodded, and she smiled. Maybe the distraction was helping a little.
For a few days after that they were only disturbed by guards bringing water and food – often dry bread but sometimes a bowl of boiled grain, and occasionally a few scraps of meat. They occupied themselves with various games and riddles, trying not to dwell on the torture chamber which waited just around the corner.
"They're giving you time to think about it," Raf explained. "They want the threat to really sink in."
"It sank in when he smashed my nose," Eleanor said bitterly. The break was still causing her a lot of pain, and though she would never have admitted it at the back of her mind she was scared of seeing her own face again if she ever escaped to somewhere with a mirror.
"They want you to have time to imagine much worse than that," he said. "Luckily, it gives us time to work out how to keep you alive. You have to think what you can tell them without giving them the number. Or the way into the puzzle chamber, if you can help it."
"I don't know," she said for what felt like the hundredth time. She knew it w
as important – her life might depend on it – but she just couldn't think of anything that could work.
"Think harder. Ellie, you have to do this."
Suddenly, it came to her. "My knife," she said, remembering with a shudder the way the man had held the point to her neck. "He was asking about my knife."
"Go on."
"Maybe I can think of something about that."
"What's special about the knife?" he asked. "Is it school issue?"
She shook her head. "No, I was given it. But if I can come up with something interesting..."
"It has to be true," he warned. "When they've got you under pressure, the last thing you'll be able to do is lie. So tell me about this knife."
"It's silver, I think. It has emeralds set into the handle, and it's perfectly weighted for throwing–"
"They know all that!" He sounded impatient as he cut her off. "They have it right there. Tell me the history."
"It was given to me by my mentor – well, he left it for me when he disappeared. I was only fifteen. I think he wanted me to have something better than the school knives to practise with."
"Excellent! That's a very promising start – just let slip that this man gave you the knife, then let them beat you up a bit more, but they won't want to kill you until they find out who he was. So that should get you through at least a couple of days."
Eleanor found it hard to reconcile the look of excitement on Raf's face with the fact that she was about to be tortured, but at least his strategy seemed to be keeping him alive. Just survive, she reminded herself. Concepts like comfort belonged to a different world.
Two more days passed before the guards came and hauled her back to the torture chamber. They locked her back into the manacles and left her alone to wait for her questioner, while she rehearsed in her head what Raf had told her to do. They'd agreed what she would say, but she knew that to be convincing she had to endure as much as she could before she seemed to give in.
They left her hanging until her arms were aching before the short man came in. "Today you talking?" he asked her.
She bit her lip. She had to wait for him to ask her about the knife again; she couldn't just start volunteering information, however much pain she was about to cause herself by keeping silent.
He beckoned a guard from across the room, and Eleanor braced herself for what was about to come. Today it was a five-tailed whip, with iron beads threaded onto the end of each strand; the guard today made sure she got a good look at it before he took his first swing. After a few lashes her shirt ripped, and then the beads tore into the flesh of her back until she could feel the blood beginning to dribble down.
Eventually the short man motioned to the guard and – after another crack for good measure – the whipping stopped.
"What do you want to know?" Eleanor asked again, gasping through the pain.
She was relieved that he brought out the knife; she didn't have a reserve plan. "Where you getting this?" he asked, holding it up to her face so that the flat of the blade pressed against her swollen nose, causing her to wince in agony.
"I was given it," she said. She knew she was breaking too soon, but she couldn't help it. At least he was asking the right questions.
"Who giving?"
She pressed her lips together and ignored him, concentrating on the way the cold iron of the manacles cut into her wrists, trying not to think of what was bound to follow if she didn't answer. He pressed the knife harder against her nose, the point pricking between her eyebrows, and she squeezed her eyes shut in a feeble attempt to protect her vision. Even if he wanted her alive, he probably wouldn't care about blinding her.
Suddenly he moved the blade down and left in one sharp movement, slicing into her cheek. It was all she could do not to scream. As he stepped away from her she felt the blood well up, and then a hot trickle down her cheek.
"Talk," he said flatly.
She kept her eyes closed and her mouth shut, and prepared herself for the next inevitable assault. She heard the whip moving through the air before it reached her, and she flinched even before the iron balls gouged her back. She counted five lashes, ten, twenty. The pain was more intense this time as the new wounds fell on already bruised and broken flesh.
"Who giving knife?" the short man asked once the whipping had stopped again.
Eleanor forced her head up to look at him, blinking tears from her eyes. His face was impassive; unreadable. "My teacher gave it to me," she said. "It's just a knife."
He growled and motioned for the guard to inflict a couple more lashes of the whip, but seeing how close she was to fainting he ordered her to be taken back to the cell almost immediately afterwards.
Raf hurried to her side as soon as the guards had left, the pot of jelly ready in his hand. He spread a little across the cut on her cheek and she couldn't even stop herself from yelping at the pain, tears streaming down her face.
"Be careful," she said, when she opened her eyes again and saw how much of the jelly he'd scooped out. "We can't get any more."
"Shhh. Don't worry about it now." He moved around to reach her back, and she braced herself for the fresh assault on her nerves. "How much did you have to tell them?"
"Not much." She hoped he wouldn't be disappointed in her – for breaking so soon, or for taking such a beating, or for feeling so faint now. "Only what we agreed."
"You need to rest," he said once he'd finished rubbing the jelly into her back. He handed her the tattered blanket. "Sorry there's nothing better."
Another five days passed before the guards came for Eleanor again – although they took Raf one day in the meantime, bringing him back bruised and shaken though he insisted he wasn't really hurt.
The next time they took her to the torture chamber the guards fastened her into the manacles as usual, and left her hanging while they conferred in hushed voices. The short man was nowhere to be seen, and the other guards had showed no sign of being able to speak Charanthe – she wondered what they were going to do with her if they couldn't even understand a word she said.
After a prolonged discussion with his colleague, one of the men – she recognised him as the one who'd wielded the whip with such enthusiasm a few days earlier – came across and grabbed roughly at her hair, forcing her face up towards his until he was peering straight into her eyes. The wiry hairs of his beard tickled her face; she could feel his breath warm against her cheek and could smell the stale remnants of his last meal. She stared blankly past him, determined not to react, focusing instead on the strange iron contraption the other guard was fiddling with.
The bearded man prodded at her face with bony, long-nailed fingers, paying particular attention to the broken line of her nose, and the cut that snaked across her cheek. She closed her eyes, hoping not to betray the pain she felt with every touch, and trying not to think about what might come next.
Eventually he stepped away from her, and a grating metal sound made her look up. He was turning a wheel above her right shoulder, gradually winding in the chain which attached her right arm to the metal cage. It didn't take long before her joints were stretched beyond her comfortable reach, and she cried out in pain as her shoulder gave way again where she'd pulled it aboard the Rose. The guard smiled unpleasantly, and moved around to a similar wheel on her other side.
Once both of her arms were painfully extended, the guards left her alone in the room. On his way out, the one who'd turned the wheel picked up a silky green robe from a hook near the door. She hadn't noticed it hanging there earlier, but now she was sure it was the same distinctive green as she'd seen inside the strange building with all the snakes. She wondered if he was part of that religion – if that was indeed what it was.
She didn't know how long they left her hanging there, with no windows to monitor the changing light, but she guessed it was going on for half a day before the short man came in to see her. A cruel smile curled his lip when he saw her discomfort.
"You feeling tired?" he asked. "You want
ing rest? You just need to talking."
She put as much energy as she could muster into glaring at him, and he laughed.
"You will to telling me about your knife-teacher?"
She shook her head. She and Raf had agreed that she could go into a little more detail on the training Laban had given her, but she was afraid there wasn't really enough to say to keep her interrogators interested. Why would they care?
The man stepped towards her, and aimed a careful kick towards the bottom corner of the cage; it was then Eleanor realised that the chains from her legs could also be shortened by winding them onto a small wheel. She gasped as her left hip was jerked downwards.
"Talk," he said. "Teacher was at your school?"
"No."
"Where?"
She shook her head.
"What he teaching you?"
She would have refused to answer, but he leant casually against the side of the cage and rested his foot on the wheel again.
"Knife-throwing," she said quickly, though she knew she was only delaying the inevitable. "More advanced than the school classes. And close-combat, with weapons and without."
"Why he teaching you this?"
Eleanor swallowed hard. The conversation was turning the wrong way, this was beyond what she was supposed to be saying today – while she still had plenty more she could bring out on what Laban had taught her. Besides, she wasn't even confident that she knew the answers.
She delayed too long, and the short man kicked the wheel by her left foot again. "You want we bringing your friend in? Maybe he making you talk."
She shook her head again. If she was going to be pained and humiliated, she at least preferred to be alone; she couldn't help fearing that Raf's support might evaporate if he saw how badly she was handling herself. He wouldn't take her side if he thought she was a risk to 'the Association', as he called the assassin organization, or to the Empire.
"Tomorrow, then." the short man said. "Tomorrow we bringing you both together." Then he called out to summon the other guards.
They unlocked Eleanor's manacles and she felt the relief in her muscles even as they carried her back to the cell and deposited her unceremoniously on the floor.
Raf looked her over before handing her the blanket. "It's working," he said. "You've got them convinced that they need you alive. However much pain they cause you now, they'll be careful not to risk killing you."
She didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. In a way he was right – she'd escaped from today's interrogation with a minimum of physical damage, but though there were no marks left on her skin the pain had still been unbearable. At least when she'd been thinking about broken bones, her imagination had been limited by the number of bones she knew about; with more subtle forms of torture, they could start all over again every day.
"All we have to do is survive," Raf said gently. "You're still alive; that means you're winning."
She closed her eyes, unable to feel any truth in his words. She didn't want to argue so she curled up beneath the blanket and lay in silence, too shaken even to cry, until she eventually drifted into nightmare-filled sleep.
She woke a little later, some time after darkness had fallen, to find Raf still awake at her side. "They brought some meat," he said. "I think it's chicken. You should eat."
She began to protest that she didn't want anything, but he pushed the bowl into her hands. Once she started eating she realised how hungry she was, and then the food ran out sooner than she would have liked.
"He said they were going to bring us both together, tomorrow," she said once she'd finished.
Raf didn't look surprised. "More stupid games," he said. "We should've expected this sooner."
"Why?"
"They know we're helping each other; they don't like that. They want to turn us against each other by making me responsible for your suffering, and you responsible for mine. Talk or his arm gets broken, that sort of thing. We should've expected it."
Eleanor didn't want to explain how she was feeling so she said nothing. He was undoubtedly right about their captors' intentions, but even armed with that knowledge she couldn't promise she wouldn't react exactly that way. If he had the power to stop them hurting her, and he didn't do it, she didn't know how she could avoid hating him for it – no matter how kind he'd been to her so far. She looked away, ashamed of herself.
"We need a code word," he continued. "A signal – then if things are getting too much for you to cope with, you can let me know and I can throw them something to make them ease up."
"Okay," she agreed. "Any suggestions?"
He thought for a moment. "We don't want them to know we're doing it, so it can't be too obvious. It has to sound like something you might actually say – or scream."
"Like... 'help'?" It sounded silly even as she said it, but it was the best she could think of.
He looked hard at her. "Can you promise me you won't say it unless you mean it?"
She nodded, then had to squeeze her eyes closed to stop a couple of tears which were threatening to escape her. This was going to be one of the hardest trials yet.
"Besides, it's a gift to us if they start interrogating us together," he said thoughtfully.
She was about to object but he put a finger on her lips to silence her.
"I know it'll be hard," he said. "But think about it this way: both of us, out of this cell, in a room full of weapons. They're giving us a way out, if we can work out how to take it."
She nodded. He had a point – if they could only find a way to take advantage of it. "Any bright ideas?"
"Not really. Those manacles are a problem, so we'd have to break away at the beginning or the end, while they're moving us."
"Beginning," she said firmly. "We'd be too tired... afterwards." She didn't need to say after what.
They fell into silence, both trying to think of a plan, although Eleanor found herself distracted by the horrors lurking in her imagination – as bad as the actual torture was, it was made many times worse by the way her mind constantly tried to anticipate their captors' next innovations in cruelty.
The next morning one of the guards woke them before it was even fully light outside, gave them each a drink of water, and left them alone again. Eleanor wondered if they'd have a day's reprieve but they weren't that lucky, although it must have been past midday by the time that four guards came to the cell and, as promised, took both of them back to the torture chamber.
The room had been rearranged since the previous day, with two cages now set so that once Raf and Eleanor were manacled in place they were facing one another, their bodies barely a foot apart.
The short man arrived quickly today, a strange smile twisting at the corners of his lips. "Now, who will to talking first?" he asked, looking between them.
"Neither of us want to talk to you," Eleanor said flatly, finding her confidence increased now Raf was with her. She smiled at him despite the aches in her joints – she hadn't recovered from the previous day's ordeal, and her shoulders felt dangerously close to dislocating today before the real trials had even begun.
"Vras shatrokda," the short man said, waving his hand in Eleanor's direction.
She heard a couple of the guards step up behind her, and one of them pulled the back of her shirt up before touching something red-hot to her skin. She screamed before she could help herself; of course she'd been expecting pain, but the sudden burning heat had caught her off guard. She could feel the first blister forming even as the guard moved his brand to another area of her back.
"Who will to talking?" the short man asked, then turning to Raf: "You want to saving your girlfriend from hurt?"
The assaults came at irregular intervals, sometimes giving Eleanor time to catch her breath and wonder whether they'd stopped, but always there was another burning touch to plunge her into agony again. Help. She turned the word over and over in her mind, all of her efforts focused on not saying it. She had to hold out. A few times she caught hersel
f wondering why Raf didn't make them stop when he could so obviously see her pain, but she scolded herself for letting such thoughts cross her mind – the whole point of having an agreed word was so that they didn't have to second-guess one another's tolerances. But still she couldn't help wishing he'd bail her out sooner.
Eventually the short man motioned to the guards, and they turned their attention to Raf. Eleanor couldn't bear to watch as they brought a fresh poker from the furnace, glowing white with heat, and touched it to his arm; she squeezed her eyes closed, bit her lip, and tried to block out the sound of his agonised breathing. She wanted to make it stop, but she knew Raf would be more angry than relieved if she intervened.
They went through three cycles before both were too exhausted to even scream any more, and the short man gave the order for them to be taken back to their cell. They were given a small bowl of meat scraps, a lump of stale bread and a cup of water, and they shared out the last of the jelly to soothe their burns.
It was a struggle to find any sleeping position which didn't exacerbate the pain of the blisters. Yet as she lay unable to sleep, listening to Raf's light snores, Eleanor felt a small sense of triumph – somehow, they had survived another day, and they'd even managed it without giving anything away. Now they just needed to find a way out.
Rebellion (Chronicles of Charanthe #1) Page 8