From behind the positioning of Lannon’s prison chair and behind the iron bars of the prison cell, Farek’s frown could not be seen. He folded his arms and leaned against the brick wall as he watched Lord Sha enter the prison cell. A short bald man entered behind Sha, carrying a small wooden chest; as he entered the timid individual placed a flat piece of metal in the wide brazier in the corner, leaving the utensil’s leather handle at a safe distance from the flame. Lord Sha’s guards positioned themselves outside the cell, near the door of the entire room.
Lannon, lifting his head weakly, managed a whimper as he saw his torturers returning. There was little introduction this time—Sha folded his arms and nonchalantly asked, “Where’s the coin stashed, Lannon?”
“I told you everything I knew,” Lannon stammered. “My coin was payment for my life. I told you, we have to make that trade.”
“I don’t care about your life,” Sha said quietly. “You can have that. It will be a life of pain, however.”
The bald man opened his chest. Lannon raised his head to watch as the man withdrew two black-handled knives. The torturer placed them alongside one another and dragged out a long metallic rasp. Lannon started to shake in fear. When the interrogator dragged a second chair closer and sat down in front of the prisoner, Lannon’s head sagged down.
“I stashed it in Noress-That-Was,” Lannon sobbed. “Please, there’s no need for more of that…. You can go and get it, just leave me be. It’s in a box, under the floorboards of an abandoned house in the Cobblestone Bog. Viner and Dunn Road. I can take you there if you want, please, just…”
Sha smiled and the gold bead in his beard quivered. “In Noress-That-Was? Who did you speak to there?”
“No one,” Lannon said. “No one. I stayed there on my way here. Stashed the gold. Moved on.”
“And no one gave you shelter? Surely, Brother Oritto has some connection in Noress-That-Was, someone to make certain you were on track?” Sha’s words hung in the air quietly, accompanied only by Lannon’s heavy breathing.
“No one,” Lannon asserted again, shaking his head once.
Sha gave his bald man a nod. With still, certain hands, the torturer pulled a gag over Lannon’s head and yanked it tight in the man’s mouth. As Lannon tried to struggle and cry out, the bald man inserted one of his knives into Lannon’s thigh. The prisoner jerked and moaned loudly into his gag as the man pulled up and down with his knife, sawing a good long gash. Removing the knife, the bald man selected something else from his clean wooden box—a canteen. Upon seeing it, Lannon trembled and shook his head back and forth habitually. He was trying to plead with them around the rope between his teeth. The canteen terrified him more than the knives.
“Well?” Sha asked. “Last chance.”
Farek stepped closer to the bars. “What is that?” he asked, nodding his head toward the bald man and the canteen.
Lannon immediately rattled his chair. Around his gag he mumbled as loudly as he could, “Help me! Please, help me!” He could not see Farek, but now he knew someone else was watching.
The bald man looked at the Master of Insight with a raised eyebrow. Sha was glaring at Farek and strode over to the bars to whisper, “This is a delicate craft. Interruption can break or alter a subject’s state of mind. If you have questions, we should speak after, Lord Gallendris.”
“That doesn’t matter now, does it?” Farek pointed out. He had already broken the subject’s state of mind. “Answer my question.”
Sha bit his lip in frustration and turned back to the narrow-eyed torturer. After giving him an authoritative nod, Sha strode back to his original placement, a few feet in front of Lannon, overlooking the bound prisoner. Given permission, the bald man answered, “A potent mix of lemon, salt, and sap from the Xarosi blossom.”
Farek had never heard of Xarosi blossoms, but he understood the purpose of the canteen. It would cause great pain to Lannon’s wound. Then the tool from the brazier would cauterize the wound and they could begin again. Typical torture, Farek thought. He had expected tools enhanced with magic or some fantastical truth serum.
“May I continue?” Sha asked, raising his hand in a mock flourish.
With a shake of his head, Farek said, “No, let’s speak outside.” He stepped toward the door but waited for Lord Sha to stride out of Lannon’s cell. The man walked impetuously, glaring at Farek as he led the way into the next room—a guard station of sorts. Alone at last, Lord Sha burst, “You are getting in the way of my investigation, Farek.”
“That’s Lord Gallendris,” Farek corrected, filling his eyes with the loathing he felt for this man.
Lord Sha raised one eyebrow. “And I act with the authority of the Matriarchs. I will call you whatever I wish,” Sha growled. “Right now, it’s drifting closer to insubordinate.”
Farek quivered, but let the words hang in the air for a moment. He did not soften his expression.
Sha took a deep breath to calm himself. With a slightly more pleasant voice, the spymaster explained, “I allowed your sister and yourself to attend out of respect, but make no mistake. Your presence is not necessary to my mission.”
“Forgive me for the interruption then, as I allowed you to enter my home and practice torture in my basement,” Farek said with a snort. Sha looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel at that, so Farek raised his hand and at last eased his direction. “I simply had a few questions, for such a master of interrogation.”
Sha inhaled deeply and let it out in a sigh. “Two minutes then,” he impatiently decided.
“Shouldn’t you investigate whether his claim of the hidden gold is true?” Farek asked. He kept his voice low. Even if he didn’t like torture, he didn’t want Lannon hearing their conversation.
“We will,” Sha said. He waved a hand toward the cell. “He just told us, mere moments ago.”
“So why continue? Without verifying if that is the truth, you have no way of knowing if he just continues to lie, to appease his suffering.”
Sha nodded, but spread his hands as he replied. He spoke as though educating a child. “It would take five days to get news to Noress, a day or two to find or disprove the gold, and another five to receive the news. During this time, Lannon will heal and learn to be more resistant to our techniques. His terror must not ebb,” Sha said assuredly. “Now, four spies have already been dispatched to Saanazar to investigate Brother Oritto—they left a week ago.”
Farek raised an eyebrow. He had only tried speaking to the local Grey Sister, not dispatching spies. Of course, Farek preferred to trust very few operatives.
Sha took a breath and continued his rant-like explanation. “It is my job to continue pushing Lannon, keeping him at his breaking point, and cross-examining everything he says. Do I think someone in Noress-That-Was works for Brother Oritto? Not by a long shot. But I think if I push Lannon, he will have more to say—which gives us more to examine.”
“What is your impression of Lannon so far, then?” Farek asked. “He strikes me as a man willing to die with his secrets.”
Lord Sha nodded. “I think the same of him as most criminals. He is a rodent, scurrying around for cheese and biting all manner of fine folk. I do not enjoy torture, though it is a necessary component of my job. I much prefer to oversee executions…” he trailed off. “Lannon broke last time I questioned him. He may not have the truth, but no man can govern what he says after a certain point. Eventually, all he will have left is gibberish; then we need only discern the truth from the lies.”
Farek sighed. He wanted to let Sha continue, to see if the man’s theories were true. He needed to know what Lannon knew—the security of his sisters depended upon it. But if he let Sha continue, standing there, and letting it happen…. Farek did not forgive Lannon one bit, but he needed to be able to forgive himself, at the end of the day. If he let Sha continue, he would need to see it all through, to the very end, to justify allowing it to continue another minute. This was his moment to make this decision. His stomach turned itself over and over.
The easy way out was to wash his hands of it. He could tell Sha, “Continue your mission,” and then go upstairs. He could even ask Sha to leave his house, to take Lannon, and find the truth on his own. The spymaster would likely still report his findings. Gods, Sha would probably prefer to be operating solo, like that, Farek thought. As much as he wanted to take the easy option, he couldn’t. At the end of the day, he would still have made a choice to stop or allow Lannon’s continued suffering.
“Let’s resume,” he said quietly.
Sha clasped his hands together in a sort of restless bow and strode past Farek. The latter followed solemnly, still trying to come to terms with what he had to permit, for the safety of his family.
Lannon spent the next half-hour denying that anyone in Noress-That-Was was involved. He insisted he only visited the capital in order to hide his coins, and resupply on his way to the Bank of Soros. Between his screams over the hour that followed, he regurgitated the same story about Brother Oritto. His body became even more marred by seared, angry scabs. His hair, dishevelled and malnourished, shook around his ears, heavy with sweat. His hands, bound behind the chair by tight rope, clenched and unclenched, grasping a permanent place inside Farek’s head.
At one point, Sha leaned forward, grabbing Lannon’s shoulder while his torturer cut on the prisoner’s other shoulder. Lannon was quivering and groaning, but he tilted head to meet Sha’s shrewd expression. The Master of Insight urged him, “You have to give me something, Lannon. Something to work with—anything!”
Lannon pulled his head back and shook as the bald man widened the gap he had cut and prepared his agonizing concoction for another spray. Lannon’s light, pained breathing grew deeper until at last he interrupted his pant by moaning around the gag: “Lo Mallago.”
Sha raised a hand, and everything stopped. Farek put his face against the bars in disbelief. The gag was pulled away and Sha grabbed the prisoner’s sweaty chin. “Lo Mallago?” he asked. “What about Lo Mallago?”
Lannon winded voice replied. To Farek, watching from behind, the voice seemed ghostly and altogether separate from the tortured and so-resistant body. “It belongs… to the Matriarchs, you see…. There’s only a few… nobles who the Matriarchs would trust to… rule it. If they die…” Lannon trailed off and bowed his head forward as soon as Sha released his jaw.
That’s a secret! How does he know? As Farek understood it, only the Matriarchs, their close advisors, and the select Lords involved in the plot knew about that sale. And, of course, the sale of the city was known by any survivors of the crime Family of Sheld. How the state of Lo Mallago’s ownership came to be known by this would-be assassin was a story of its own.
But Sha wasn’t interested in learning how Lannon knew about Lo Mallago. “What?” the man demanded. “Were you hired by Brother Oritto or by someone in Lo Mallago? Which is it?”
“Lo Mallago,” Lannon repeated, quietly. “Please, don’t hurt me anymore.”
“Give me a name!” shouted Lord Sha.
Lannon looked up at the questioner once more. Then he hung his head once more. “Harloss,” he said.
“Are you lying?” he asked Lannon. At a wave, the torturer leaned closer with his sinister canteen.
Lannon mumbled, “No lie.”
Farek gripped the prison bars with white knuckles. What, by the gods, is happening? If Lannon was telling the truth, Farek had been ordered to marry someone in a city that wanted him dead. He would need to find this Harloss immediately. The man tried to destroy my House to protect his phony autonomy? Farek needed to know more.