Lucan fled back to his manse, which had withstood the first wave with relative ease due to sitting at the top of Wylhome’s slopes and being surrounded by a walled garden of considerable acreage. The flowers had been overwatered, the dwarf trees rent from their moorings, but it was a small price to pay for safety amidst the storm. Below ground, the dungeons of the manse were even more secure, hermetically sealed so that neither sound nor prisoner could escape.

  It was to the dungeons he ventured now, down a set of forgotten stairwells concealed by a false bookshelf. At the bottom of the stairs were yet more false walls, each requiring a distinct key, which he kept on a ring at his belt at all times. His hands were trembling as he undid the locks. It had been a long time since he’d had such a close brush with death. Lucan did not like to get his hands dirty; that was what Dreyne was for. Dreyne was the hand, and he was the mind that guided that hand. But tonight, the wave had broken over his city, had soaked through his shoes and robes, had made him feel the icy chill of Koronzon. He’d actually prayed—prayed with sincerity—for the first time in decades.

  He opened the final door—black, forged from Qi’shathian steel—and stepped into a corridor dimly lit by Daimonic fires. Their lustrous light was accompanied by the smell of burning centuries. To use Daimonsblood is to almost literally burn up history, Lucan thought. And yet we do it with abandon. Lucan had no trouble with burning history, however. Archaeologists and scientists decried the use of “valuable specimens” for such mundane purposes as light and transportation, but what other use should bones in the ground be put to? Lucan had no history himself, after all. The future was what he was interested in.

  He took a right turn and followed the corridor for perhaps three hundred feet, passing nine iron cell doors. His dungeon was no Ob-koron, but he could house between ten and twenty prisoners here, depending on whether they shared cells or not. Lucan preferred them not to share cells even though it was more efficient, because prisoners who conferred seemed to resist giving up their information much longer. It is the hope of human contact, he thought. How trite and yet even I am not immune to it.

  Once upon a time, Lucan had felt the loneliness he knew many of his inmates experienced, the longing for connection, especially from a father or mother figure. As a younger man he had thrown himself on any mentor or surrogate parent he could find. Many of them used him then dumped him as unceremoniously as his true parents had. He saw now how pathetic he was to pursue such ephemeralities.

  But he had learned much from that yearning. And much of what he had learned was applied here, in this dismal place.

  The hallway echoed with the sounds of dying will. Lucan did not believe in ghosts, but these stones were saturated in the fear-laden breaths of dead men walking; they reverberated with the screams of hope forsaken. Such echoes, such smells, such vibrations left their mark, even on mortar and granite and iron.

  At the end of the corridor, standing before the last cell-door, was a towering figure, wearing a black leather cowl upon his head with two slits for eyes. The figur was bare-chested, displaying heavy pectorals and a bulging gut that somehow conveyed more power than any cultivated stomach muscle could. From the waist down he wore soiled leather britches. A belt around his midriff was fashioned with a leather pounch which contained bloodied tools. The tools would not have looked out of place in a carpentry shop or a book bindery, save for the stains that adorned their edges and points. The cowled man bore a cleaver fully six feet long, curved in the Qi’shathian style, its reverse-edge serrated with hungry teeth.

  Xarl was Lucan’s torturer—and executioner, too, when prisoners used up their usefulness. It was a strange irony that Lucan, having been raised an orphan, seemed to draw other lost souls into his orbit, becoming the surrogate father of those abandoned by parents and life to fend for themselves. Either we rise above life’s vicissitudes, or we succumb, Lucan thought. And I must rise.

  “You will not need your sword today, Xarl,” Lucan said. The torturer seemed to carry it wherever he went. Lucan wondered sometimes if he went to bed with it. Xarl was a man of esoteric pleasures, after all. “It is information I seek today.”

  Xarl rested his sword gently against the dungeon wall. He nodded once.

  Xarl rarely spoke. When he did, Lucan often wished he had not. This was one of those rare occasions where he gave voice, sounding like the theront toad he was.

  “My lord,” he croaked, as ever using the incorrect honorific, as though he were some Yarulian stooge from the Age of Departure. “This one has been twenty years here… What more can we do to break him?”

  Lucan sighed. There was truth in Xarl’s words. No one had ever lasted so long. The sheer physical endurance was impressive by itself, saying nothing of the psychological resilience the prisoner had displayed. But Lucan was a firm believer that every man, even the most worthy, the most godly, the most committed, had to have a breaking point. The prisoner had not yet taken his own life—and he’d had opportunity to do so. That meant he was still clinging to hope. And if he was still clinging to hope… Well, everyone knew, deep down, that hope was the most treacherous of mistresses, the most sinful of wives. Hope would betray the prisoner. Lucan was sure.

  “Open the door,” he said.

  Xarl did as he was bid, using his own set of keys to unlock it. The door groaned as it swung wide. Within, a naked form shivered. It did not immediately impress one as human, for so much damage had been done to it. But slowly, if one looked close enough, one saw that this was, or had been, a man. Lucan did not torture his prisoners every day, but two decades had been ample time to do significant work.

  Xarl strode in first, staring down at the curled ball of flesh.

  “Benjamyn,” Lucan said brusquely. “I hope you are well today?”

  The pile of skin and bones unfolded itself. Lambent eyes stared up at him from the shadows. The prisoner’s face was half-black from lying in blood and feces. His naked body was a patchwork of despicable scars, a topographical map of pain’s rivers. He was missing an arm and a foot. The cauterised wounds still glowered blackly, years on. His genitalia had been removed. He had only a few teeth left, and these were so rotten Lucan doubted that there would be any pain in their removal. He was running out of things to do to the man.

  “Come now, why so glum?” Lucan said. He found that a cheery disposition was about the most torturous thing he could inflict on his prisoners. He could tell it grated even on Benjamyn, the most resilient of all the souls here, though he endured it with formidable stoicism. “You have had ample time to yourself these past months. Why, I have hardly touched you! And Xarl is under strict instructions not to play with his toys when I am not present.”

  Benjamyn stared at him. The solidity of his defiance was dazzling. Lucan had missed it. He had been turning his attention to other, lesser souls these past months, and he’d forgotten, almost, how much he relished the challenge.

  There was a rumbling noise. The manse trembled, even down to these black foundations. The first sign of a crack in the prisoner’s armour showed as he glanced up at the ceiling, concern furrowing his brow. Even after all this, he wants to live. What could he possibly have to live for now? His family will have forgotten him. His friends are all dead—I made sure of that. Could it be the treasure he knows of?

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Lucan crouched down, meeting the prisoner at eye level. Xarl loomed over them both, breathing with a heaviness that belied his strength and stamina.

  “Listen to me,” Lucan said, and something in his change of tone summoned Benjamyn’s attention. “I will be honest with you for perhaps the first time. A natural disaster has befallen Wylhome. The sea has risen up in anger and smashed my city to pieces.” Lucan said these things as though they were no more than inevitable setbacks, like an old horse breaking its leg on cobblestones, or an elderly man falling sick in the cold. He had long ago hardened himself to life’s cruelties. His ardour for success could not be dampened even by an ocean. And he knew that in catastrophe often lay the greatest opportunity for advancement. “It will take us years to rebuild. Maybe even decades. Unless, of course, you tell me what you know. Think, Benjamyn, your secret could now do some good, could help rebuild a city, rebuild lives.” Lucan drew closer, risking his only proximity with the prisoner, though Benjamyn was so emaciated, Lucan doubted very much he could harm anyone now. The smell that wafted from Benjamyn was ungodly, but Lucan could endure such things when the need arose. “I know you still possess the secret. Your defiance only confirms it. And I know something else about you: you cling to something, some hope. It is the only explanation for your resilience. You believe there is something that you need to do before you die. That kind of belief can keep men going through even the darkest storms.”

  Benjamyn absorbed all this in total silence, as though his mouth were glued shut. His mouth, of course, was the one part of his body they would never harm, for they needed the secrets only his tongue was capable of uttering. Lucan knew, despite his silence, he was drinking every word down. He sensed the change coming, and this was Lucan’s final and ultimate masterstroke.

  “I cannot set you free, of course,” Lucan said. “But you know that already. If you were to tell anyone of what happened here, then it might go ill for me. No, this is where you will unfortunately meet your end. I have already offered you comforts to ease that painful reality. Books, pleasures of flesh, food, and drink. You have refused them all. You have preferred the whip, the gentleman’s saw, the knife. I have asked you what you want, what it would take for you to relent, and you have always refused to tell me.” Lucan drew closer still, actually placed a hand on the prisoner’s mud-slimed shoulder. He made a mental note to wash it no sooner than he gained the sweet air of the upper manse again. “But now I implore you: tell me what it is you hold on to. Tell me what it is you want. And you shall have it. And then you may die in peace.”

  The prisoner stared at him. His mouth opened a fraction, then closed again, like the infuriating teasing of some whore, who showed but did not allow one to taste. Lucan held himself rigidly in place, his every muscle tense. He knew patience now would be the key, patience and silence, but his instincts screamed at him to press harder, to interrogate, to demand.

  He waited.

  “You speak of honesty,” Benjamyn whispered. His voice was croaky from lack of use. “But you have not been honest with me about why you want to know the location. Your city may be threatened, it may be under siege, but knowing the location will not help you rebuild. What I know only has the power to destroy men’s hearts and souls.”

  Lucan gritted his teeth. He stood.

  “Xarl. Attend him.”

  The torturer lurched forward. Benjamyn scampered back. Even now, he still flinched from the pain, even after so many years, so many horrors. The human instinct to survive was so strong it defied reason.

  Xarl gripped Benjamyn by the throat and slammed him against the wall. With a gurgling laugh, he produced a filleting knife, crusted with dried blood, from the pouch at his belt.

  “Cut out his tongue then let him bleed,” Lucan cried. “I’ve had enough of him, and no longer wish to pay the Relics to feed him!”

  Xarl laughed again and gripped Benjamin’s jaw with one huge, spiderlike hand.

  “Wait!” Benjamyn screamed.

  Lucan held up a hand and instantly Xarl released Benjamyn, taking a few steps backwards as the prisoner slid down the wall. He was trembling, head to toe. His eyes were wild and frightened. Could it be, Lucan said. That all this time, his tongue was the answer, the breaking point. How deliciously ironic.

  “You will talk?” Lucan said.

  Benjamyn nodded.

  “Then tell me first, Benjamyn, what could a man like you possibly need his tongue for?”

  The prisoner stared at Lucan. His eyes flicked occassionally to the grisly filleting knife still in Xarl’s hand. Then at last he straightened.

  “My daughter,” he finally said. “To tell her I love her. One last time.”

  Lucan felt as though the prisoner had stabbed his heart. He was tempted to order Xarl to cut out his tongue anyway, to abandon what he so desired on the pyre of contempt. And yet, he could not. The love of a father. That is what has given him strength. Lucan felt like the one underneath the torturer’s blade. Benjamyn’s words ahd excoriated him to his deepest being. The one thing he had always lacked, the one thing he had always craved, now reflected back at him, embodied in this broken husk of a man who had defied all his ingenuities. He was no poet, but he saw the poetry in it all. He felt a strange kind of grief rise up in his gullet—a desire to be sick and to weep coming over him all at once. He was giddy and reached out a fluttering hand to stabilise himself on the walls.

  Benjamyn watched him with terrible apprehension. He did not know if this reaction was some further performance, some gimmick to betray him yet more deeply.

  Lucan trembled, rallied.

  “I am a monster, Benjamyn,” Lucan said. “But I am a monster who was ripped from his parents, who never knew them. They sent me over the sea. That is how much they must have hated him. That is why I am the way I am. And so, you might say that your request has… moved me. You shall have your wish. Tell me your daughter’s name, and I shall bring her to you, and you shall say your farewells. You have my word, though I understand you have little reason to trust it now.”

  Benjamyn nodded.

  “Bring her to me,” Benjamyn said, his voice thick with emotion. “And I will tell you what you want to know.”

  “The Shadow Market,” Lucan whispered.

  Benjamyn nodded, and it seemed like some kind of energy flowed out of him at acknowledging that he would, at last submit, for he slumped suddenly on the ground, robbed of strength. Lucan feared he would die.

  “Xarl, check his temperature!”

  The torturer put away his knife and stepped toward Benjamin, feeling his brow, touching the pulse at his throat.

  “He is fine, my lord.”

  Lucan breathed a sigh of relief. It would be an even crueller irony if he were to perish now.

  “Make sure he will well fed and watered. We must care for him, now that he is going to cooperate.” Lucan coughed to clear his throat. He felt this emotion was making him ill. He could not wait to leave, but their transaction was not yet completed. “Needless to say, Benjamyn, that if you give us a false location, then your daughter’s life will be forfeit.”

  Benjamyn did not even flinch, but nodded slowly.

  “I will tell you truly. I am tired of holding on. I just… I just want to see her.”

  Good, Lucan thought. Very good.

  “Well then, tell me her name, and I shall have my best men track her down.”

  Benjamyn smiled to himself, as though with a secret joy, perceiving some light that Lucan could not see.

  “Ylia,” he said. “Ylia Hart.”