THE TORTURER’S CONSCIENCE
I awoke to a strange noise. My head was full of fog and I was back hanging from my wrists on the strange wooden gibbet that occupied much of the space in the small room. It took a moment to recognise that the sound I was hearing was someone crying.
I opened my eyes. It was dark in the room, apart from a small candle glowing near the door. I guessed it must be past midnight, though there was no way to be sure. I looked around for the source of the sound, thinking that perhaps I had been awakened by my own weeping, but it wasn’t me. In the corner, sitting on his stool, was Ugh, my torturer. In his hand was a knife, one of those he used to flay the flesh from those unfortunates who fell foul of the Duke’s ire. Ugh was weeping softly, sniffling periodically and wiping his nose against his forearm. Then he’d take the knife and make a small cut against his arm and watch the line of blood appear where the knife had been.
‘What are you doing?’ The croak of my voice made me realise I’d screamed myself hoarse by the Fey Horse’s cage. In my head I heard Brasti saying he hadn’t thought that was possible, and I gave a small, weak laugh.
‘No laugh,’ Ugh said, still looking down at his knife.
‘I wasn’t laughing at you. I was … well, never mind. What are you doing?’
‘Horse choose,’ he said, almost in a grunt. ‘You make it so horse choose.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
‘Horse not killing girl. You say things to horse, and horse choose. It choose not to kill girl.’ His voice was so thick with pain and confusion that for a moment I wanted to tell him it was all right. But it wasn’t all right.
‘Fucking horse,’ he said, and cut his arm again.
I didn’t know what to say, how to make him feel better – or if I even wanted him to feel better.
‘Fucking horse,’ he repeated, and looked up at me with tears in his eyes. ‘You talk to fucking horse. You say it should not be killing girl. The horse … fucking hells, the things they do to that horse – the things she make us do to that horse … and you talk and horse stops killing. I—’
He sobbed again and put another cut across his arm, harder and deeper this time. ‘I do what I am told. I do what Duke says. I do what bitch Duchess says. But I am man!’ He stood up from his stool and it fell behind him and rolled towards the wall. ‘I am fucking man!’ he shouted as he brought the knife to my face.
‘You are a man,’ I said softly.
‘I am man,’ he repeated. ‘Fucking horse, poor fucking horse, is mind gone. Is no more mind, no more heart. She take away – she take away, but horse … Fucking horse. Fucking horse listen and stop. Not kill girl. Fucking horse listen and then not kill Horse. We tortured … we killed …’
He sobbed again and pulled away from me. ‘I am man, but fucking horse is better than me. Mad fucking thing with no mind, no heart. Is better than me!’ He screamed out the last sentence over and over for a while, smashing his fists against the walls, cutting himself, cursing himself. It was horribly like watching the Fey Horse trying to smash out of its cage.
Finally he dropped the knife. He pulled the key from his shirt pocket and came close to me. The thick smell of alcohol bled out from his mouth, and the misery bled from his eyes.
‘You tell me,’ he said, half-threatening, half-pleading. ‘You tell me how I can be … how I can be like horse, not like me. How I can be as good as horse. You tell me, and I let you go. I let you go. I get you out. Only, you tell me first.’
I thought he was lying, but then I noticed a bundle on the ground near where the stool had rolled. It was my greatcoat and my rapiers.
‘You tell me. You—’
‘Shh,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you.’
‘Tell me, tell me now,’ he said, turning his face away from me, as if he wanted this secret knowledge to be transmitted straight into his ears and into his heart.
I took a hard, painful breath through my mouth. ‘The First Law is that men are free,’ I sang softly. ‘For without freedom they cannot serve their heart …’
*
‘First Law is freedom,’ Ugh sang awkwardly as he hauled me through the passageway. ‘First Law is freedom. Man has heart, must be free. Must choose. No God, no King take away heart; take away freedom.’
It was an awkward revision to the King’s First Law, but no worse than many versions I’d heard.
‘Where go?’ he asked as we reached the bottom of the stairway.
I looked upwards. ‘The girl – is she still there?’
He nodded. ‘Horse not let anyone near. Almost break cage.’
Saints, but the girl must be out of her wits with fear.
‘Take me there, then. To the stable.’
Ugh shook his head. ‘No, is wrong idea. I take you there, guards will see, shout for other guards.’
‘I’ll get the girl and take her with me.’
He shook his head again. ‘No, you still stupid. Know many things – laws, horses. Not palace. Too many guards that way. I take you other way: cooks’ entrance. Cooks not care. I give them money; I tell them I kill them if talk. We get you out.’
It was my turn to shake my head. ‘The girl. I have to get the girl.’
‘Then how you get out from stable to palace gate? How you open gate?’
‘I suppose I’ll need a fast horse.’
He looked at me for a moment as if I had lost my mind. Then he laughed. ‘All right. All right, man of laws, I take you to stable. But then I go. I don’t think horse like me.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t know you well enough yet.’
The humour was lost on Ugh, who just said, ‘Shut up now. I must take you past first guard.’
He threw me over his shoulder again and pressed up the stairway and knocked six times on the heavy door again.
‘What in hells are you doing here?’ the guard asked as he opened the door and let us through.
‘She,’ he said as if that explained everything. When the guard didn’t move, he said, ‘He go back to horse. Go in cage. Not come out.’
‘I don’t have any orders to that effect,’ the guard said cautiously.
Without another word Ugh punched him hard in the face and the guard fell back and hit his head against the opposite wall. He slid down, unconscious.
‘Told you: orders in my fucking fist. Now you see up close.’ Ugh put me back down and we walked along the right side of the courtyard back to the stable. When we reached the edge he said, ‘Goodbye now. We say goodbye. No guards in stable at night. Just man who check courtyard, come every hour and look inside. I go back and out cooks’ way. Never come back. You go, die with girl and horse. You free. You choose.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘I told you I would kill you when you arrive. Now you go kill yourself. This no different.’
‘It’s different to me,’ I said.
He nodded at that, then turned and headed back for the other side of the courtyard.
I entered the stable and saw the beast in the cage in the centre of the building. It was still stamping and fuming, but it wasn’t throwing itself against the bars any more. I crept towards it silently, aware that, despite Ugh’s reassurances, other guards might come by, if for no other reason than to see if the girl was dead yet.
The horse made that sound between growling and neighing that I found so unsettling.
‘Falcio?’ Aline whispered.
‘It’s me,’ I whispered back. ‘Are you all right?’
She nodded, the movement barely showing in the shadowy light of the stable. ‘The bites were shallow,’ she said, ‘but she won’t let me move. She growls at me when I try to get up.’
‘I understand,’ I said.
I reached through the bars towards the horse’s mane. ‘Hey there, girl,’ I said softly.
The horse bit me and reared her hooves, striking them against the bars.
The pain brought me back to my senses. ‘Dan’ha vath fallatu,’ I said. ‘I am of your herd, damn you. Don’t bite me any more.’
The horse made that growling noise again.
‘She’s angry,’ Aline said.
‘I know she’s angry!’
‘She’s angry – but she understands, I think. When I talk to her, she seems to understand. If I say I won’t stand up, then she leaves me. If I say I want to move, she gets mad again. I think she understands, Falcio – but she’s very angry.’
I sighed. ‘I’m angry too,’ I said. ‘They took my King. They killed my King and they killed my friends and they killed my wife. Do you understand, you great fucking beast? They took my wife from me. My wife – she was everything. She was of my herd, you fucking brute. Dan’ha vath fallatu. You’re angry? Look at the girl. She’s angry too,’ I said, pointing to Aline. ‘They took her family as well, her herd.’ The horse nearly took my hand off, but I pulled it back in time. ‘All right. No more pointing for now.’
I walked over to the wall where the metal pole with the key was hanging and pulled it off.
‘They killed your herd,’ I said to the Fey Horse. ‘They killed all of our herds. Now we have a choice. Dan’ha vath fallatu. We can be one herd and fight together, or we can die alone.’
I put the key into the slot in the cage. The horse started stamping and smashing at the bars again.
‘It’s time to choose,’ I said over the racket. ‘I’m going to open this door. You can attack me and I’ll be dead, and the girl will be too when they come for her. Or you can just run off, and they’ll kill us and eventually find and kill you too. Or you can carry us. None of us can get out of here alive alone, but if you carry us, we can charge the gate and we might – we just might get through alive and into the city.’
The horse slowed her efforts, but she gave no other sign that she was understanding my words. I’m not sure what signs I was hoping for.
‘Open the cage, Falcio, quick! I hear them coming,’ Aline said.
‘Show me you’re going to help us,’ I said to the horse. ‘Dan’ha vath fallatu. Show us we are one herd.’
I could hear shouts. Someone had seen me and there would be guards soon. Hopefully not too many, but I was so weak it would take only one or two at this point. But I still wouldn’t move. But then, slowly, ever so slowly, I saw the horse start to move, almost as if the great beast was shrinking. But she wasn’t, she was just kneeling on the ground. I turned the key in the lock and swung the door open.
‘Get on,’ I told Aline.
She looked at me as if I was mad.
‘Either she’s going to help or it won’t matter one way or the other. Get on.’ I picked her up and placed her on the back of the horse. She didn’t kill the girl, so I took that as a good sign and awkwardly climbed on the beast’s back myself, just as the first pair of guards came through the doors.
I leaned low on the creature’s back. ‘Dan’ha vath fallatu,’ I said, patting the side of her neck. Then I brought my mouth close to her ear and said the only other word I remembered from the storybooks. ‘K’hey,’ I whispered. ‘K’hey, k’hey, k’hey.’ Fly. Fly. Fly.
As the guards reached the entrance to the cage, their swords drawn, I felt the Fey Horse’s muscles bunch beneath us, and the thunder of an angry God exploded through the door as she slammed through the cage door and into the guards, leaving them dead on the ground as we bolted out of the cage and into the night sky.