For a few days after the Massacre of Sheld, the city seemed stunned. No shouts could be heard from the streets, no fights broke out in taverns, and a muted fog rose during the mornings. Before the sun had even evaporated it on the 2nd, Lerran finally received Captain Vagond of the City Watch. He had first spoken with that old man after they marched out of Worker’s Rise—he with wounded Isar leaning on his shoulder and Paksis with their unconscious captive thrown over hers. The City Watch had likely made the right decision in guarding the perimeter instead of sending in more men to die, but Captain Vagond had still seemed like a lazy, corrupt official.
Lerran made him wait, of course, while he sat in the office tinkering with one of the lockboxes. After a few minutes of frustration, he threw down his lock pick and hook and tucked away the metal box into his desk. With a twist of his key, he secured the drawer again.
Eseveer looked up when he stuck his head into her hallway office. “Send him in,” he ordered.
Captain Vagond stepped into his office with a quiet sigh. He was a bald man with a small brown and grey beard. Wrinkles around his eyes folded his olive skin into a permanent look of suspicion. “Thank you for your time, master,” he said, as he followed Lerran across the broad room. His sandals scuffed across the wide red carpet, with its pattern of sword shapes.
Lerran leaned back against his desk, and folded his arms. “What under the stars happened in there?”
“You know as much as I,” the Captain said. “The Lord Employers are dead, and half the city’s staff too. Who planned this, I know not. And how—You have newly seized this Family, sir, and I fear your hand in the Massacre…”
Lerran let out a long sigh. “Do you honestly think I would do something like this to my own city? Look at the chaos it has caused.”
“I know not,” Vagond muttered. He wore chainmail, a sword, and a small circle of yellow suns on a black brooch. His gloved hands grabbed the emblem and tore it. “But this is not my job anymore. I’m resigning.”
“Alright, have a nice day,” Lerran replied. He tossed the Captain of the Guard’s insignia into the nearby brazier. The cloth badge instantly began smoking.
Vagond blinked, bowed stiffly, and turned away. “Get out of my city,” Lerran called after him. The door closed quietly as the man left in fear.
Lerran stepped out into the hall a moment later. Eseveer was sitting at her desk filling out some paperwork with a grey feather quill. “That went well, didn’t it?” she asked.
Lerran chuckled. “Yeah, he no longer works here. Do I have any appointments?”
“Nothing pressing,” Eseveer said. She paused an awkward moment. “I was going to make a pun…”
“Are you drunk?” Lerran asked, closing his office door behind him.
Eseveer shrugged.
“Not at work please,” Lerran said as he strode down the hallway and out of her office. There had been extra guards on duty for the last few days, and they all saluted him as he passed. The basement of the estate was both a storeroom and a dungeon. There were four large cells, but right now only one prison, and he wasn’t going anywhere. The room was not lit, but the guards that went ahead of Lerran lit the torches mounted against the walls.
Their prisoner still wore blood-drenched trousers and was shirtless. One of the doctors in Sheld who was under Lerran’s payroll had finished an amputation on his arm after a long surgery the day before. The killer was asleep, it seemed, despite the flickering lights outside his cell.
Isar followed Lerran down the old wooden steps into the big basement. His right arm was bandaged from the shoulder to his forearm and a small splint was in place to make it healed properly. He looked down at the green sling his arm rested in at the same time that Lerran did.
“Good to see you out of bed,” Lerran said. “How’s the arm?”
“Better than his,” Isar said. “It’s healing alright, but I feel weak. What stinks?”
Lerran pointed to the corner of their prisoner’s cell where his festering arm still lay, etched with rat teeth marks. Isar looked away from it promptly.
The guards unlocked the prisoner’s cell at Lerran’s request, and Isar and he stepped in. The mass murderer was hunched over and still snoring. Lerran lifted his hand and sent a resounding backhand at the side of his head. The blow twisted the man’s whole body to the side, and successfully woke him up. With a cry, he righted his torso and stared up at Lerran. The stump just below his right shoulder was wrapped in gauze that was no longer clean.
For a while, they just looked at each other; Lerran would not speak first to a man who didn’t deserve his words.
Isar spoke up. “Why’d you do it?” he asked. “Kill all those people…”
The man started to smile. “They deserved it,” he said quietly. “They talked too much.”
Lerran struck him again, and this time, when he looked up a tendril of blood was dripping toward his lip. Isar paced past the prisoner, confused by the man’s reply. “Who are you?” Isar asked.
“Okarnan cousin of Ulgo,” the man replied. “But you won’t find my uncle…”
“Ulgo’s a Lord Employer, isn’t he?” Isar asked, looking at Lerran. Lerran nodded. Isar looked back at the killer and said, “You killed your uncle?”
“No, no,” the man murmured. “His blood killed him. So much blood… red, red, red.”
Lerran sighed, paced behind the man, and knelt down. He put his fingers around the man’s gauze-wrapped stump and started, very gently, squeezing. The man gasped, then cried out, and then Lerran the wound. “You said they talked too much; what were they talking about?”
Okarnan sighed as his pain was relieved. “Oh, they talked about money lots, they talked about the weather, and supper, and their families, they talked before bed, they talked before breakfast—”
Before he finished, Lerran squeezed again, hard. The guards outside the cell looked at each other, but it wasn’t anything they hadn’t heard before. Gharo and Lerran had run this crime family for many years, and many things were necessary. As Okarnan’s scream faded into a hoarse moan, Lerran looked up at the guards and told them to give the interrogation some space.
“Let me ask you again,” Lerran said, from behind the madman’s back, “What did they say that made you want to kill them?”
“Thank you for waking me up,” the man said, quietly. “Keep me awake…”
Okarnan didn’t seem to be responding to pain too much, Lerran thought. Switching tactics, he released the man’s stump and stood up straight. “How do you find the smell in here?” he asked, gesturing to the arm in front of the prisoner. Isar snorted, leaning against the wall nearby.
“Is it mine?” the man asked. “In my dreams I brought it from the rooms with all the blood…”
“Yeah,” Lerran snapped, frustrated. “Can’t you see yours is missing?”
The man lolled his head to one side, staring at his stump. The doctor had washed the blood from the man’s skin and from his dark brown hair, but it was still slicked back with sweat. “They told me I still had it.”
“No, my good friend removed it from you when you tried to slice her open, and after wounding him,” Lerran said. “Besides, you still do have it, it’s right over there.”
The man’s voice became edged with panic and he looked up at Lerran with wide brown eyes. “They lied to me!” he exclaimed. “Don’t let me go back to sleep, please!”
“Who lied to you?” Lerran asked, arching an eyebrow.
“They did! My dreams! They told me I still had my arm… Oh, what did you do to me?” the man moaned. He looked down at his stump and then thrashed against his restraints, shaking the chair and echoing wooden clapping off the damp walls of the cellar.
“Who tells you this in your dreams?” Lerran asked. “Who told you that you still had your arm? Who told you to kill them?”
“Voices, sights, feelings… I could use my arm not ten minutes ago… Now you’ve taken it from me…” Okarnan trailed off into mumbling, then declared, “Let me sleep again, let me feel whole!”
“Well, which is it?” Lerran asked. “First you told me you didn’t want to sleep, now you do. Which is it?”
The man stared at him with his mouth hanging open, unable to answer. He started to sigh, then moan, then wail… And then Isar smashed his head from behind with the butt of his sword. Okarnan slumped forward against the rope bindings and didn’t stir. Isar shrugged when Lerran stared at him. “He’s completely insane,” Isar said. “You won’t get anything more from him.”
“I need a drink,” Lerran sighed. “Do you?”
Isar smiled and nodded. “I hear Eseveer has the good stuff.”