Draka

I spent almost an hour listening to the drip water from the ceiling, which condensed on the cold stone and slowly gathered on the stalactites that hung there before plunging back into the pool where it had originally evaporated from. Drip, drip, drip, it went as the girls made their way through the drains, slowly getting closer.

The barrel rocked a few times, but it didn’t do Tark any good. The boys must have trussed him up good when they shoved him in there. Probably gagged him, too.

When Herald and Mak arrived I was surprised to see only the two of them. The first was in a foul mood, while the second was grinning smugly. “Could you not have picked an easier place to get to?” Herald complained in my general direction as she stood up straight, then bent backwards, popping her hips out with a groan. “I do not think that my back has ever been this damn sore!”

“Divine justice for every time you’ve joked about me being short,” Mak told her cheerfully. “And are you really going to whine like this in front of Draka? Toughen up and take it!”

“You being short enough to walk upright in these worm-holes is not something to be smug about!”

They both sobered up, the reality of the situation catching up with them, when they saw the barrel. It was still sitting on the jetty where I’d left it. I winged over, silently joining them as they walked down the wooden stairs. They circled the thing, Mak looking almost sick. Herald gave it a kick every so often.

“This is it,” Herald said, switching to Tekereteki. “It is not the Blossom. It is not the woman who gave the orders. But this is the bastard who held the knife.”

Mak stopped, her hands clenching and unclenching, and a shudder went through her. “And the hammer, and the pliers…” she whispered. “And other things.”

Herald knelt by her sister, putting her arms around her. “You do not have to do this,” she said. “You do not have to be here. Not if it will cause you more pain.”

“I do. We should ask him questions first. Perhaps you can do it, Draka, but I think I have a better chance of getting something out of him.”

She looked so scared and vulnerable that it was painful to see. She’d looked nervous in the alley, but she’d done well. Now we had the guy tied up in a barrel, and she looked like she’d rather be anywhere else. Still, she was right. Not only did she have my Charisma, and possibly Command, backing her — however those worked. She was just more social than I had ever been, more used to talking to people, and she knew the culture and society of Karakan far better than I could have possibly picked up in my time here.

I felt more worried about Herald losing it than anything else. Otherwise I was as calm as could be expected, considering what we were about to do, and I tried to project that onto Mak. What I felt didn’t replace her own emotions, but influenced her to some degree and I figured that, whether trying to affect her actively worked or not, I could always try.

“I will leave it up to you,” I said. “I know that it is hard for you, but I agree. I think if I try, I may just kill him the first time he resists or says something unpleasant. Better if I stay back, I think. You should know, though, that he seems to respond to threats against the Blossom’s sister, Kesra.”

She gave me a sharp nod. “All right. I will remember that. Shall we open this thing, then?”

“Do we want any light?” Herald asked, producing a lightstone from the simple bag she had slung over her shoulder.

“I think so, yes,” Mak said. “Better that he sees our faces.”

Herald nodded, then channeled her magic into the stone, which ignited with a cold, blue light.

When they closed the barrel, Tam and Val hadn’t sealed it shut properly. Tark might have been able to open it from the inside, if he wasn’t constantly being watched and also tied up, knocked around, missing a hand, and probably suffering from some serious blood loss. It was convenient for Mak, though, as she didn’t need to worry about the bands that would normally have kept the head in place. Instead she simply hammered on the edge of the head with her fist until it turned, the opposite edge popping up and allowing her to wrench the whole thing out.

The stench that hit us as the air inside escaped was foul enough to make the two women back up, their faces twisting with disgust, and even I pulled my head back for a moment before unceremoniously shoving the barrel over, then lifting it by the bottom end and dumping Tark onto the rough wood of the jetty. He lay there, gasping and groaning, with his legs tied together with the knees firmly folded and his arms tied behind him above and below the elbows — they couldn’t be tied at the wrists, since his right arm ended in a blood-soaked, bandaged stump. Oh, yeah, I thought to myself with some satisfaction. I did that.

He barely had a moment to orient himself, looking up at us with murder in his eyes, before I grabbed him and dunked him as deep as I could in the water, holding him by the ankle. I brought him back up, let him snort and sputter and catch his breath, then repeated the process a few times until I hoped that I’d gotten most of the filth off him and dumped him back on the jetty.

Herald squatted next to him, grabbed him by the hair, and lifted his head towards her. “Hello, Parvion Tarkarran,” she said, trying and failing to keep the anger out of her voice. Where Mak smelled of fear every time we spoke of the man, and especially now that he was in front of her, all I felt from Herald was a deep, churning rage, tightly but not completely controlled. I knew that the fear was still there. I’d soothed her back to sleep enough times, when she woke in the middle of the night weeping, begging some unseen tormentor to stop. But with Tark helpless in front of her there was none of that. Only a struggle, one that I recognised all too well, to not lose control and kill him before we even got a word out of him.

For a moment I thought that she’d lost the struggle, as she brought up her dagger. I thought that she was about to slit his throat, but she only slid it in under the gag, removing the cloth with one sharp, jerking cut. With a retching cough Tark spat out another wad of cloth that had been stuffed in his mouth.

I don’t know what I expected, but the first words out of his mouth were “‘Teki whores…” and that set the tone of our conversation.

Herald hissed indignantly and knocked him in the teeth with the pommel of her dagger. “I want to hurt you,” she said, teeth clenched, her voice trembling as he grinned at her.

“How lovely.” His voice was lower than normal, hoarse and rough, and he spat some blood. “We have something in common. I never thought you two would miss my attention so much that—”

His snark vanished into a high-pitched groan as Herald split his lip, her own lips peeling back. “Shut up, you filth!” she snarled, then smashed him in the nose for good measure.

“Back off,” Mak snapped, putting her arm between the prisoner and her sister. “The idea is to get him to talk!”

Herald, it turned out, was not interrogator material.

I was mostly there for moral support, so I sat back and let them handle it. While Mak dragged Herald back a foot or so and gave her a stern look, though, I took the opportunity to wrap Tark up in shadows and give him a really good squeeze. To my extreme annoyance the little bastard just shrugged it off, somehow getting to his knees and spitting more blood towards my sisters.

That only further infuriated Herald. “You disgusting—!” she screamed and threw herself towards him, but Mak wrapped her arms around her sister’s waist, set her heels, and stopped Herald dead.

“Stop it, Herald!” Mak said. “You are smarter than this! He is trying to provoke you, and succeeding!”

Herald stopped straining, then settled back on her haunches. “Fine,” she said, scowling past Mak at Tark. “You do it!”

“Thank you,” Mak said, giving her shoulders a quick squeeze before turning back around. When she saw Tark on his knees her lips curled, and with a sandal to the chest she pushed him back over.

“Like my sister said: she wants to hurt you. I don’t blame her. I want to hurt you, too. I want to hurt you in every way that you hurt me, and every way that you hurt her. But we have questions for you.”

“You don’t have it in you,” he sneered. “The righteous and honorable Tekereteki adventurer. You don’t have what it takes to break someone. And I do not break as easily as you do.”

“I never said that I did. But Herald does, as much as it pains me to say it. So I’m going to ask for one thing. Just one thing: The Night Blossom. Tespril Zabra. Tell us how to get her, and if I believe you, I’ll cut your throat. Quick and clean.”

“Fuck you, whore. Tell her to do her worst!”

I saw Mak jerk back just a little at the insult, and I wanted to tear the bastard’s throat out for it. “Fine,” she said. “Herald—”

Tark just continued. “That wasn’t the first time we met. Did you know that? Did you even know that you were working for the Blossom, in the end? Hells, Hardal even recognized you. How many guests did you offer ‘private performances’ to, before you disappeared on us? You were popular, I know that. Why—”

“Shut up!” Herald roared, and lunged for him, leading with her dagger. There were tears of anger in her eyes, and I have no doubt that she would have simply killed the bastard if Mak hadn’t gotten between them and wrestled the dagger from her, Tark laughing all the while.

“Enough!” I commanded, as Herald went to her knees, crying with rage as Mak tried to calm her. “We all know how to make him talk. We know what the worst torture he can imagine is. Why else would he have used it on you two?”

All three heads turned to look at me.

“Wait here,” I said. “And don’t fucking kill him, yeah? I’ll be an hour, maybe two. I don’t know if Kesra sleeps in her bed anymore, so I might have to look for her. You brought a healing potion or three, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, we did,” Herald said, her fury briefly replaced with a dawning shock at what I was suggesting.

“Great. Bye, Tark!”

“Wait!” he shouted as I leapt onto the ledge where the short tunnel opened into the drains. “Wait!” he screamed, louder and shriller, as I ducked in. “I’ll give you Zabra!”

I stopped, backed out, and looked at him. “And why would you do that? Why would a loyal little weasel like you give up his boss?”

“That’s no concern of yours, lizard!” he spat. “Leave Kesra in peace and I’ll tell you where you can find Zabra.”

I made a show of considering it, hemming and hawing before saying, “All right. But understand this: If you lie, I’m taking Kesra. If you clam up, I’m taking Kesra. If I think that you’re stalling or if you bore me, I’m taking Kesra. And if that doesn’t make you talk, I’m questioning her when we’re done with you.”

“She can’t tell you anything,” he sneered. “She doesn’t know where the money comes from, or where Zabra goes when she’s not at home. You’d be wasting your time.”

I descended the stairs to where he lay and put my face right in his. The lightstone was the only source of light, and a weak one at that. To Tark, unless he had some Advancement that let him see in the dark, it must have looked like two golden eyes and a hundred teeth just appeared out of the shadows, and for all his fearlessness he pulled his head back at that.

“I wouldn’t be wasting my time,” I growled. “Her blood would be the next best thing to her sister’s, wouldn’t it?”

I was bluffing so hard that I had imaginary cold sweats. Even Instinct wasn’t interested in killing some girl just because of who her sister was. I would take her, and I would question her. I might traumatize her in ways that would never heal. I might use her to draw Zabra out. But I wouldn’t torture her, and I wouldn’t kill her. Not to make him or her talk. But Tark couldn’t tell that. He was quick and strong, and I suspected that his complete lack of fear was an Advancement of some kind, but he couldn’t tell if I was lying. And once he’d agreed to answer our questions Mak took over. She was cold. Distant. She spoke like she was somewhere else, speaking to someone else, but she was effective. Every time she thought he was trying to deceive her she repeated her questions, then again later. At one point she simply stood up, turned to me, and said, “This is pointless. Get Kesra, and let’s start over.”

Something about how emotionless she was in that moment convinced him, and he became much more cooperative after that.

As morning approached we had a pretty comprehensive list of the places Zabra might be found, as well as when she would usually be in each place. Herald, who’d been taking notes, asked, “Are we done here? Do we need him any more?”

“We could use him if it turns out that he lied after all,” Mak said, still distant. “Otherwise, no.”

With that Herald walked over, grabbed him by the scruff of his tunic, and hauled him up to sitting. He stared at her, silently but with utter hatred, as she smiled and patted his cheek.

“Thank you, Tarkarran,” she said. “We’ll be sure to tell Zabra how helpful you’ve been. And if anything is wrong, if one word is off, we will ask Kesra to correct it for us.”

“You lying cunts,” he growled. “Just wait! Once our roles are back as they should, when I have you locked to my table, I’m going to make you hurt in ways you can’t imagine. Your sister was fun, but she broke too fast. You? I wonder if you’ll beg like—”

His words cut off suddenly, his eyes bugging as Herald silently drew and slammed her dagger into the side of his neck, hard enough to pierce all the way through and knock him on his side.

“SHUT. UP!” she roared, tearing the blade out, then slamming it back in at a different angle as blood pumped and poured from severed veins and arteries. Tark tried to speak. He looked genuinely surprised, as though he’d truly expected to leave that cave alive. But all that came out of his mouth was a gout of blood, joining what was already leaking between the wooden slats of the jetty to splash into the water below.

As I stood in stunned silence and Mak looked on dispassionately, Herald leant in, heedless of the blood still spurting weakly from his torn throat onto her face. She grabbed a fistful of hair and growled into his ear. “Listen to me, you worthless filth,” she hissed. “You hurt us. You broke us. Hells, I don’t know when the nightmares will finally go away. But you did a piss-poor job of it. You half-assed it. You didn’t destroy us. And we have healed, and gotten stronger, and we are whole again. We are richer and doing better than ever. And you, you little shit, are bleeding out in a cave, in the dark. And soon your precious Zabra will join you. So fuck. You.”

With a final snarl she tore her dagger free, reversed the grip, and slammed it through his temple.

Tark jerked once. He shook for a few seconds, the blood at his throat bubbling. And then he was still, the only sound coming from him being the blood still dripping into the water.

Herald was not done. A sob tore from her, then she started kicking the corpse, screaming and calling him names I hadn’t thought she knew. Only when she again wrenched the dagger loose, having to brace with her foot to get it out of the bone and nearly stumbling back into the water, did Mak and I rush in to stop her, Mak disarming her and wrestling her, crying, to her knees.

“I hate him!” Herald choked out as she wrapped her arms around her sister, pulling her down and holding her like she was the one protecting Mak rather than the one needing comfort. “I hate him! I hate him so much! What he did to you… what he said… I don’t care what you did or didn’t do. I love you, Mak. I love you so much!”

“Hush, sweet sister,” Mak mumbled from somewhere inside Herald’s arms. “I know. I know. I love you too.”

Parvion Tarkarran ended his days far out at sea, dropped from a great height. The next night I delivered a letter, sealed inside a leather tube so that I could carry it inside my mouth while Shifted, into Tespril Kesra’s bedroom. She wasn’t sleeping there, but the message was hopefully clear enough.

I had considered dive bombing Tark through the balcony door, but the thought of Kesra, who was probably innocent in all of this, being woken by a corpse crashing into the room made me feel bad, so the hand-delivered letter would have to do.

The letter was short and to the point, written painstakingly, and after several attempts, in my own hand:

To Tespril Zabra,

I look forward to our next meeting.

Draka