by Luke Arnold
It looked like a book—thick, with a hundred leaves or more bound between soft leather covers.
“Do you know what this is?” Ondego asked Kevel.
“Haven’t the foggiest,” Kevel said. Rem could tell that he was bracing himself, mentally and physically.
“It’s a genealogy of Yenara’s richest families. Out-of-date, though. At least a generation old.”
“Do tell,” Kevel said, his throat sounding like it had contracted to the size of a reed.
“Look at this,” Ondego said, hefting the book in his hands, studying it. “That is one enormous pile of useless information. Thick as a bloody brick—”
And that’s when Ondego drew back the book and brought it smashing into Kevel’s face in a broad, flat arc. The sound of the strike—leather and parchment pages connecting at high speed with Kevel’s jawbone—echoed in the dungeon like the crack of a calving iceberg. A few of the other prisoners even wailed as though they were the ones struck.
Rem’s cellmate stirred beneath his pile of straw, but did not rise.
Kevel almost fell with the force of the blow. The big guard caught him and set him upright again. The lithe elf backed off, staring intently at the prisoner, as though searching his face and his manner for a sign of something. Without warning, Ondego hit Kevel again, this time on the other side of his face. Once more Kevel toppled. Once more the guard in his path caught him and set him upright.
Kevel spat out blood. Ondego tossed the book back onto the table behind him and went looking for another implement.
“That all you got, old man?” Kevel asked.
“Bravado doesn’t suit you,” Ondego said, still studying his options from the torture table. He threw a glance at the elf on the far side of the torture pit. Rem watched intently, realizing that some strange ritual was under way: Kevel, blinking sweat from his eyes, studied Ondego; the lady elf, silent and implacable, studied Kevel; and Ondego idly studied the elf, the prefect’s thick, workman’s hand hovering slowly over the gathered implements of torture on the table.
Then, Kevel blinked. That small, unconscious movement seemed to signal something to the elf, who then spoke to the prefect. Her voice was soft, deep, melodious.
“The amputation knife,” she said, her large, unnerving, honey-colored eyes never leaving the prisoner.
Ondego took up the instrument that his hand hovered above—a long, curving blade like a field-hand’s billhook, the honed edge being on the inside, rather than the outside, of the curve. Ondego brandished the knife and looked to Kevel. The prisoner’s eyes were as wide as empty goblets.
Ingenious! The elf had apparently used her latent mind-reading abilities to determine which of the implements on the table Kevel most feared being used on him. Not precisely the paragon of sylvan harmony and ancient grace that Rem would have imagined such a creature to be, but impressive nonetheless.
As Ondego spoke, he continued to brandish the knife, casually, as if it were an extension of his own arm. “Honestly, Kev,” he said, “haven’t I seen you feign bravery a hundred times? I know you’re shitting your kecks about now.”
“So you’d like to think,” Kevel answered, eyes still on the knife. “You’re just bitter because you didn’t do it. Rich men don’t get rich keeping to a set percentage, Ondego. They get rich by redrawing the percentages.”
Ondego shook his head. Rem could be mistaken, but he thought he saw real regret there.
“Rule number one,” Ondego said, as though reciting holy writ. “Keep the peace.”
“Suck it,” Kevel said bitterly.
“Rule number two,” Ondego said, slowly turning to face Kevel, “Keep your partner safe, and he’ll do the same for you.”
“He was going to squeal,” Kevel said, now looking a little more repentant. “I couldn’t have that. You said yourself, Ondego—he wasn’t cut out for it. Never was. Never would be.”
“So that bought him a midnight swim in the bay?” Ondego asked. “Rule number three: let the punishment fit the crime, Kevel. Throttling that poor lad and throwing him in the drink… that’s what the judges call cruel and unusual. We don’t do cruel and unusual in my ward.”
“Go spit,” Kevel said.
“Rule number four,” Ondego quickly countered. “And this is important, Kevel, so listen good: never take more than your share. There’s enough for everyone, so long as no one’s greedy. So long as no one’s hoarding or getting fat. I knew you were taking a bigger cut when your jerkin started straining. There’s only one way a watchman that didn’t start out fat gets that way, and that’s by hoarding and taking more than his fair share.”
“So what’s it gonna be?” Kevel asked. “The knife? The razor? The book again? The hammer and the nail-tongs?”
“Nah,” Ondego said, seemingly bored by their exchange, as though he were disciplining a child that he’d spanked a hundred times before. He tossed the amputation knife back on the table. “Bare fists.”
And then, as Rem and the other prisoners watched, Ondego, prefect of the watch, proceeded to beat the living shit out of Kevel, a onetime member of his own watch company. Despite the fact that Ondego said not another word while the beating commenced, Rem thought he sensed some grim and unhappy purpose in Ondego’s corporal punishment. He never once smiled, nor even gritted his teeth in anger. The intensity of the beating never flared nor ebbed. He simply kept his mouth set, his eyes open, and slowly, methodically, laid fists to flesh. He made Kevel whimper and bleed. From time to time he would stop and look to the elf. The elf would study Kevel, clearly not simply looking at him but into him, perhaps reading just how close he was to losing consciousness, or whether he was feigning senselessness to gain some brief reprieve. The elf would then offer a cursory, “More.” Ondego, on the elfmaid’s advice, would continue.
Rem admired that: Ondego’s businesslike approach, the fact that he could mete out punishment without enjoying it. In some ways, Ondego reminded Rem of his own father.
Before Ondego was done, a few of the other prisoners were crying out. Some begged mercy on Kevel’s behalf. Ondego wasn’t having it. He didn’t acknowledge them. His fists carried on their bloody work. To Kevel’s credit he never begged mercy. Granted, that might have been hard after the first quarter hour or so, when most of his teeth were on the floor.
Ondego only relented when the elf finally offered a single word. “Out.” At that, Ondego stepped back, like a pugilist retreating to his corner between melee rounds. He shook his hands, no doubt feeling a great deal of pain in them. Beating a man like that tested the limits of one’s own pain threshold as well as the victim’s.
“Still breathing?” Ondego asked, all business.
The human guard bent. Listened. Felt for a pulse. “Still with us. Out cold.”
“Put him in the stocks,” Ondego said. “If he survives five days on Zabayus’s Square, he can walk out of the city so long as he never comes back. Post his crimes, so everyone sees.”
The guards nodded and set to unchaining Kevel. Ondego swept past them and mounted the stairs up to the main cell level again, heading toward the door. That’s when Rem suddenly noticed an enormous presence beside him. He had not heard the brute’s approach, but he could only be the sleeping form beneath the hay. For one, he was covered in the stuff. For another, his long braided hair, thick beard, and rough-sewn, stinking leathers marked him as a Kosterman. And hadn’t Rem heard Koster words muttered by the sleeper in the hay?
“Prefect!” the Kosterman called, his speech sharply accented.
Ondego turned, as if this was the first time he’d heard a single word spoken from the cells and the prisoners in them.
Rem’s cellmate rattled the bars. “Let me out of here, little man,” he said.
Kosterman all right. The long, yawning vowels and glass-sharp consonants were a dead giveaway. For emphasis, the Kosterman even snarled, as though the prefect were the lowest of house servants.
Ondego looked puzzled for a moment. Could it be that
no one had ever spoken to him that way? Then the prefect stepped forward, snarling, looking like a maddened hound. His fist shot out in front of him and shook as he approached.
“Get back in your hay and keep your gods-damned head down, con! I’ll have none of your nonsense after such a bevy of bitter business—”
Rem realized what was about to happen a moment before it did. He opened his mouth to warn the prefect off—surely the man wasn’t so gullible? Maybe it was just his weariness in the wake of the beating he’d given Kevel? His regret at having to so savagely punish one of his own men?
Whatever the reason, Ondego clearly wasn’t thinking straight. The moment his shaking fist was within arm’s reach of the Kosterman in the cell, the barbarian reached out, snagged that fist, and yanked Ondego close. The prefect’s face and torso hit the bars of the cell with a heavy clang.
Rem scurried aside as the Kosterman stretched both arms out through the bars, wrapped them around Ondego, then tossed all of his weight backward. He had the prefect in a deadly bear hug and was using his body’s considerable weight to crush the man against the bars of the cell. Rem heard the other two watchmen rushing near, a flurry of curses and stomping boots. Around the dungeon, the men in the cells began to curse and cheer. Some even laughed.
“Let me out of here, now!” the Kosterman roared. “Let me out or I’ll crush him, I swear!”
Rem’s instincts were frustrated by his headache, his thirst, his confusion. But despite all that, he knew, deep in his gut, that he had to do something. He couldn’t just let the hay-covered Kosterman in the smelly leathers crush the prefect to death against the bars of the cell.
But that Kosterman was enormous—at least a head and a half taller than Rem.
The other watchmen had reached the bars now. The stubble-faced one was trying to break the Kosterman’s grip while the elfmaid snatched for the rattling keys to the cells on the human guard’s belt.
Without thinking, Rem rushed up behind the angry Kosterman, drew back one boot, and kicked. The kick landed square in the Kosterman’s fur-clad testicles.
The barbarian roared—an angry bear, indeed—and Rem’s gambit worked. For just a moment, the Kosterman released his hold on the prefect. On the far side of the bars, the stubble-faced watchman managed to get the prefect in his grip and yank him backward, away from the cell. When Rem saw that, he made his next move.
He leapt onto the Kosterman’s broad shoulders. Instead of wrapping his arms around the Kosterman’s throat, he grabbed the bars of the cell. Then, locking his legs around the Kosterman’s torso from behind, he yanked hard. The Kosterman was driven forward hard, his skull slamming with a resonant clang into the cell bars. Rem heard nose cartilage crunch. The Kosterman sputtered a little and tried to reach for whoever was on his back. Rem drew back and yanked again, driving the Kosterman forward into the bars once more.
Another clang. The Kosterman’s body seemed to sag beneath Rem.
Then the sagging body began to topple backward.
Clinging high on the great, muscular frame, Rem realized that he was overbalanced. He lost his grip on the cell bars, and the towering Kosterman beneath him fell.
Rem tried to leap free, but he was too entangled with the barbarian to make it clear. Instead, he simply disengaged and went falling with him.
Both of them—Rem and the barbarian—hit the floor. The Kosterman was out cold. Rem had the wind knocked out of him and his vision came alight with whirling stars and dancing fireflies.
Blinking, trying to get his sight and his breath back, he heard the whine of rusty hinges, then footsteps. Strong hands seized him and dragged him out of the cell. By the time his vision had returned, he found himself on the stone pathway outside the cell that he had shared with the smelly, unconscious Kosterman. The prefect and his two watchmen stood over him.
“Explain yourself,” Ondego said. He was a little disheveled, but otherwise, the Kosterman’s attack seemed to have left not a mark on him, nor shaken him.
Rem coughed. Drew breath. Sighed. “Just trying to help,” he said.
“I’ll bet you want out now, don’t you?” Ondego asked. “One good turn deserves another and all that.”
Rem shrugged. “It hadn’t really crossed my mind.”
Ondego frowned, as though Rem were the most puzzling prisoner he had ever encountered. “Well, what do you want, then? I can be a hard bastard when I choose, but I know how to return a favor.”
Rem had a thought. “I’m looking for work,” he said.
Ondego raised one eyebrow.
“Seeing as you have space on your watch rosters”—Rem gestured to the spot where they had been beating Kevel in the torture pit—“perhaps I could impress upon you—”
Ondego seemed to appraise Rem honestly for a moment. For confirmation of his instincts, he looked to the elf.
Rem suddenly knew the strange sensation of another living being poking around in his mind. It was momentary and fleeting and entirely painless, but eminently strange and unnerving, like having one’s privates appraised by the other patrons in a bathhouse. Then the elf’s probing intellect withdrew, and Rem no longer felt naked. The elfmaid seemed to wear a small, knowing half smile. Her dark and ancient eyes settled on Rem and chilled him.
She knows everything, Rem thought. A moment in my mind, two, and she knows everything. Everything worth knowing, anyway.
“Harmless,” the elfmaid said.
“Weak,” the stubble-faced guardsmen added.
The elf’s gaze never wavered. “No.”