TWO

In Daylight

Amon slumped forward in his chair. He was sitting in a small antechamber within the bowels of Stormhall. His head was in his hands, his elbows on his knees, and he was alternating between covering his face and cupping his ears.

He didn’t think he had the stomach for much more of this. A shrill cry from the larger adjoining room washed over him. His hands shot back to his ears.

Thred’s stomach was far stronger. Far more resistant to this pain and noise than his own. At first, Thred had originally suggested there must have been another way to get the information they needed. Amon regretfully recalled it was himself that first mentioned the method they ended up using. However, Thred didn’t put up much of a fight once the suggestion was made.

The word “torture” still made Amon mildly woozy.

Thred, while a slow starter, soon took to his assignment with a scalding zeal and a white-hot poker. He now looked for all the world as if his skills were well-honed from practice. It was wrenching watching him work. Amon’s nerves couldn’t withstand the pure assault of watching and hearing Thred work on the man. It had taken the briefest moment to discover it was best for him to wait outside. So, he was here, sitting in the antechamber.

Another scream slashed the air followed by several rapid barks and a few cries for mercy. Hiding in the next room wasn’t much better as it turned out.

Amon straightened in his ladder-back chair and put his head back against the wall. His eyes stared at — No, his eyes stared through, straight through, the rough ceiling. He imagined it pressing lower and lower toward his head. Confining him. Stifling him. How long could this go on?

No, he had to stop it.

He inhaled deeply, pulled his eyes from the ceiling, and stood. He steeled himself to walk into the newly reconstructed, iron-scattered torture chamber. This would not have gone on this long if there was anything left to find out. It was plain now. His information had been wrong.

He strode across the small antechamber, fists straight down at this sides, clenching and unclenching. For the sake of this man’s sanity, he needed to make Thred stop.

As he reached for the handle, there was a loud scrape of metal on metal and a bar on the other side of the door slid back, a new kind of assault on Amon’s ears. It was barred from the other side? Could he have even entered the room earlier if he’d wanted to?

Amon blinked and suddenly realized the silence in the other room. How long had it been quiet? His hand was still outstretched towards the handle. He nearly leaped back from squealing hinges, instantly folding his arms across his chest as he assumed his best and hardest look of impatience. It would not be good to let Thred see how much this torture had truly bothered him.

As Thred pushed the door aside and stepped through to the antechamber, Amon could hear soft, pained murmuring from the bleakness beyond the doorway. He peeked around the corner and saw the back of Jylai’s head, lolling from over the top of his chair. Blood was sliding along the mahogany uprights. At least the man was still alive, even if barely. The last thing he wanted to do right now was to quietly dispose a body. Aside from making this event even more bowel-twisting, it would be a waste of a political resource.

Amon and Thred would soon be satisfied that he had no more information to divest. Jylai would have his wounds cared for and be made ready to travel. From there, Amon would make arrangements for a ship to carry the man to a work camp east of Nearn near the Direhold.

An old retainer of Amon’s ran the camp and was always looking for the soft criminal types to cut planks. He had quickly discovered the ones breaking the more innocent laws were usually the ones who broke earth the easiest. Those more violent criminals were too busy trying to break out. Jylai was a good fit for the farm.

Jylai Derr was, according to Amon’s men, a competent lord despite having married into his current house. He had been an up and coming banker when he’d been smitten with his future wife. She was a third or fourth cousin to the current Duke of Rainn… Ah, the current Margrave of Rainn.

He hated to do it, but it would be relatively easy to manufacture evidence of fraud and put the entire family in disgrace. It would be yet another arrow in Amon’s quiver when it came time for the Margrave Warin Daloret to step aside. And questions about Jylai’s trip north would be minimal.

Thred banged shut the door, cutting off his view of a bloody Jylai. Amon grimaced and tasted bile. No, if he couldn’t convince Thred to stop, this was not going to end well.

Thred Angum was large. Tall and barrel-chested. His considerable skill with a blade and the sharpness of his mind made him quite the satisfactory bodyguard. Even despite his sometimes infuriating independent nature.

“Thred, we have to send him north.”

“But, Viscount,” Thred started to protest.

“No. I’m afraid of traveling down a path from which there is no return. I refuse to…”

“He confessed that he works for Viscount Cyriac Edos and is a courier for messages between the Viscount and a Sush Noble,” Thred delivered flatly, cutting him off.

Amon Mantisarr lowered his hand and the finger he didn’t remember raising. He stood there with a blank look on his face for a long moment, his mind numb. He reeled through the implications.

Edos was working with the Sush.

It was bad enough that Cyriac Edos was part of a jumped up family barely above the peasants themselves, but this additional information? They were traitors to the Crown as well? It was preposterous.

What implications does this have for Duke Warin Daloret? Amon was still angry about the way the King had made Daloret the Margrave of the March and not himself. It was understandable given Amon’s youth, but King Egan has the wisdom to appoint a more appropriate leader for the expansion into Sush lands. Even a young, but loyal Margrave was surely better than an older, backstabbing one.

“So, it’s true,” he whispered at last as his gaze dropped from Thred’s face to the floor, eyes glazed and unfocused. “The Margrave and Edos are going to feed us to the savages.” He glanced back up at Thred.

If the Edos estates in western Rainn were to suddenly require far fewer Sush warriors to guard against the Duchy spilling across their border, that would mean his own Mantisarr estates in the east would see Sush reinforcements. Sush chieftains would simply take their forces east and reconquer the March. They would likely not stop until they’ve taken all of House Mantisarr too. King Egan might even loose the entire Duchy.

This was potential disaster. It was a miracle Amon stumbled across the plot before it fully developed.

“Jylai says it was peaceful. He didn’t know what the messages contained, but he didn’t think there was any malice intended,” said Thred. His face darkened for a flash before he continued. “However, I think he’s holding something back. I think he still fears what Viscount Edos might do if he found out he’s been talking to House Mantisarr.”

Thred held Amon’s eyes for a moment. It was as if visions of Sush raiders storming over his borders, murdering and raping his vassals, poured from Thred’s eyes into his own. Thred knew exactly what was at stake. Amon would not see the last of the Mantisarr family.

A childish petulance followed by a sudden sneer rolled across Amon’s face in quick succession.

“He fears Edos might find out to whom he’s been talking? Viscount Cyriac Edos,” he said, a fist and finger flicking to point back toward the stairwell in the hallway. His voice frothed with contempt and outrage as he continued, “is just barely counted a lord. They are a house of anointed boot-lickers. While here House Mantisarr sits, having been a crucial ally of the kingdom for over 300 years. It is our right by the blood, and the sacrifice, and the oaths of my forefathers!”

He was near screaming now. “My grandfather’s grandfather gave his life breaking the Sush Northern Marsh to bring our House to the Vicountship and glory. I will not see six generations of House Mantisarr dishonored through the machinations of a scheming supplicant whose House only came to power through a queasy currying of favor.”

He continued, his mouth twisted in fury, “The position was not merely handed to House Mantisarr. We,” he said, pausing for the briefest lip-curling hiss, “earned it.”

There was a timid knock at the hallway door.

Amon slowly swiveled his gaze from hatefully glaring at his retainer to hatefully glaring at the outer door. It was thick with wood and iron but the heat in his eyes might well have set it afire.

Thred, in his intensity, didn’t seem in any way surprised by Amon’s raging outburst. Maybe that was because he’d witnessed so many of them of late. In fact, if Amon didn’t know better, he would have sworn that Thred was encouraging him to fly into these rages with his calm manner and obedience. It was as if Amon felt the need to fill the emotional void with his own fury.

“Yes?” he said loudly as he relaxed his hands and arms, smoothing a wrinkled tunic. There was a sound like a key turning hard in the lock and the door swung open and a bruised man took a halting step across the threshold and bowed.

Paran Sharrifon was a blunt instrument. He was tall, but not too tall. Wide, but not too wide. And he was smart, but not too smart. Old, but not too old. He’d been by Amon’s side since his father had indentured the man away from a rat-infested galley porting out of Drakar. Amon had only been a small child at the time. Paran’s loyalty ever reflected his gratitude for that opportunity to get off the sea. And right now, Amon wanted to hit him.

It was just the pressure, he told himself.

After all, at 19 summers old, he was the youngest living Viscount of Rainn and the youngest ever to head the Mantisarr family. The duty should have fallen to his uncle after his father died in the Marsh. That never happened. A vicious group of Psions called The Illuminate saw to him requiring a full-time nursemaid and a dribble cloth.

“Did you find him?” Amon asked.

“Yes, M’Lord,” Paran said as he swept his soft leather cap from his head and wrung it briefly in his hands. His nose was bandaged and his face bruised as if he had tried to smash it through a wall.

“Where are Wil and Enmes?” Amon asked. Paran looked uneasy at the question. Amon glanced back over his shoulder at Thred to see if he was the cause, but the man was just standing there, statue-still and staring. His expression blank and unthreatening, he merely looked at Paran.

Licking his lips, Paran started, “Well, we chased that stableman down jus’ like you said. We followed him quick and surrounded him. Next thing we know, he’s got a couple toughs there to help him out. Lucky for us, we was in a tight corner. The three of us moved in, but, M’Lord… Well, Wil and Enmes didn’t make it back out of that alley.” His eyes went wide and he hurriedly added, “But, neither did the other three! It was only me that lived, M’Lord.”

Amon nodded solemnly. This was terrible news. His men were dead. They died killing other men in a dark alley in The City. His city. He didn’t have time right now to properly address the mess that was his retinue. Neither Wil, nor Enmes were family men, but there would be other kin that needed to be notified.

Damn the Margrave. This was his fault. At least the authorities cleaning up the alley would draw conclusions of a drunken street brawl gone sour. Still, it was frustrating to lose two of his best men to chasing down a stranger.

Early in their dealings with Jylai, a man with the look of a stable hand walked in on them while Thred was carving bloody tracks along the Edos’ messenger. He was a dirty man, covered in grime as if straight from the stable or the practice yard. The Righteous only knew what he was doing down in these depths below Stormhall. He was probably looking for a quiet corner to shirk his duties in the stables.

Amon sent Paran, Wil and Enmes to quietly confront him and bring him back here. He can’t really say what he would have done had they brought him back. Send him to the farm too? Despite how uneasy he was with this resolution, it was probably the best in the end. Yes, he paid the price in blood, but what he bought was silence and discretion.

“You’re sure that scoundrel wasn’t able to tell anyone what he saw?” Amon asked. Condemning him to be a criminal would at least assuage Paran’s feelings of misgivings. Eventually, he might even feel like his friends died with honor and their deaths weren’t wasted.

“Yes, M’Lord. He didn’t have time to say nothing. We was right there on him,” Paran said, his face brightening with his eagerness to please and obvious relief that Amon didn’t seem angry.

This was recoverable. As heartless as it sounded, it was probably for the best that there were now fewer men alive who knew what happened down in these dungeons.

“Good,” Amon said. “You did well, Paran. That man was obviously a thief and a spy.” It was possibly even true. Who else would be prowling around in the dungeons?

“Take up a post outside that door and see to it that doesn’t happen again.” Amon pointed to one of the chairs around the small table where he was sitting earlier. “And Paran, I’m sorry for the loss of your friends, but you understand that it was the spy’s fault, don’t you?”

“Yes, M’Lord,” he said as he nervously scratched his chest. His eyes darted around the small room before he grabbed the suggested chair. “They was good men.” With that, he bent in a crusty bow and backed out the door.

Amon stood still for a moment longer before he walked over and placed one hand on the center of the closed door and the other on the cold, iron handle. He heard a slight scrape of the chair legs against the stone floor on the other side. There was a small thud as Paran must have thrown himself down in the chair next to the door.

Was Paran one of the two men Amon could still trust? Or was there only Thred? Nonsense. Paran was an honest soul and probably was only a little shaken at how quickly this was all turning south. The Righteous knew Amon surely was.

With that thought, he turned back to Thred and said, “We need to finish and be away from here. And quickly.”

Thred was not standing in the antechamber anymore. He’d already opened the steel door and moved into the cell. It seemed he anticipated the need for haste.

Amon turned his thoughts to figuring out what to do with Jylai after Thred extracted all the information they needed from him. This was turning out to be messier than Amon had bargained for. If he didn’t have any additional information, that would lend to the belief he wasn’t integral to Cyriac’s plans. That would be he wasn’t fully trusted.

Surely someone who was an untrusted messenger could be bought. Or threatened. Even going to the farm would require Amon to own Jylai’s loyalty somehow, either through fear or gold.

However, If Jylai lied about knowing the internals of the negotiations between Cyriac Edos and the Sush, it would stand to reason that he was involved and couldn’t be released. The only option was for Amon to sneak him out of Stormhall and into the cells below his own keep. It would be more inconvenient, but over time, he could prepare him for a trip up north.

“Viscount.” It was Thred’s voice calling from the cell. Amon’s thoughts splintered.

“I’m sorry, My Lord, but he’s dead.”

Amon closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

How had this gone so wrong so quickly? The torture, the threat of discovery, five bodies in an alley and now this. It would have been so much easier for Jylai to disappear from his friends, family, and contacts if the reasons came from his own mouth. But, disappearing suddenly and permanently? That would make everyone nervous, especially Cyriac Edos.

Besides, before today, he’d had not a single dead man to his name. He opened his eyes thinking there was nothing to do now but press on.

“I’ll send Paran for some canvas.”

The words left his lips much too calmly.