Firebrand

“I am going to give you one more chance, Greenie,” Nyssa said. “Is there anything you would like to tell me? What is your king planning?”

Please answer, Estral thought. Tell her anything. She dared not speak up herself after what had happened the last time.

Then Karigan did speak, her voice hoarse. “I am just a messenger. The king doesn’t tell me his plans.”

“Wrong answer,” Nyssa said, “but I am delighted.” She stepped behind Karigan as if to size up her subject once more.

No, no, no, Estral thought. Please, dear gods, no.

Karigan glanced over her shoulder as if to see what Nyssa was up to. The gash down her cheek dripped blood onto her shirt.

Nyssa paced and rolled her shoulders, taking her time to limber up. Maybe, Estral thought, it was all for show. She was drawing it all out in the expectation Karigan would crack just waiting for the lash to fall.

Then, without preamble, swiftly and with the same deft precision Nyssa had exhibited with the knife, she struck. Karigan’s body spasmed and she gasped, but she did not cry out. Estral sobbed as though she was the one who’d been lashed. The first stroke had raised welts and drawn blood across Karigan’s back. It was no longer a “blank page.” The wire barbs in the knots would savage her.

“One!” Reed called out.

Nyssa prepared to deliver another stroke, and Estral squeezed her eyes shut.

“Don’t you be closing your eyes,” Burson growled in her ear. “Nyssa wants you to watch.” When Estral didn’t obey, he jabbed the tip of his knife into the small of her back. “Open your eyes and watch.” He jabbed again and she cried out, and obeyed.

“Do you know that my left hand is as strong and as accurate as my right?” Nyssa asked. “I can write with both, do tasks with one or the other with equal ability. It is truly a rare gift. It means I can switch hands to alternate the lashes across your back to create an artistic, but excruciating, pattern.”

“Two!” Reed called as the lash fell again.

Estral screamed even as Karigan did not. Tears blurred her vision of red.

“Three!”

She welcomed the blurring, choked on tears.

“Four!”

She tried not to see the blood. She tried not to hear the sound of the thongs rushing through the air and smacking Karigan’s back. She tried not to hear Reed’s count, now up to eight, then eleven, and relentlessly on. How could Karigan bear it?

My fault, my fault . . . If Estral hadn’t been so set on finding her father right away, if she had only listened to Karigan.

“Thirteen!”

“It’s going beautifully, Greenie,” Nyssa said, her cheeks flushed from exertion and her eyes sparkling. “Soon you will scream for me.”

Estral went into a sort of stupor, pressed up against the slats, tears runneling down her face, snot dripping from her nose. Her breaths came in ragged gasps as the litany of My fault, my fault, my fault . . . continued to stream through her mind. She lost focus, went numb.

When Karigan finally did scream, Estral jolted back to herself and the stench of blood filled her nostrils. There was a look of ecstasy on Nyssa’s face.

The count continued. “Twenty-six!” And so did Karigan’s weakening screams. On, and on.

Estral was not sure how much time had passed when she realized the cudgel was gone from the back of her neck and Burson was stepping out of the pen and locking the door behind him. Her knees gave out and she sank to the floor. The flogging had stopped, and there was another man speaking with Nyssa. They blocked her view of Karigan, but she could see the blood spatter on Nyssa’s tunic, her hands, across the wall, staining the floorboards beneath Karigan’s feet.

“I’ve missed you,” Nyssa was saying.

“And I, you,” the man replied. He was bald, wore a patch over his eye. His right hand was a hook.

Immerez, Estral thought. She’d never met him, but knew his description well enough. He had escaped the day the ice creatures had attacked the castle, and this was where he’d come. He and Karigan had a history, and this could only make things worse. The pair turned to examine Nyssa’s handiwork.

“Terrik told me how the Greenie got caught in one of the traps,” Immerez said, “and her companion.” He glanced back at Estral. “It’s very odd. Greenies usually travel alone. I wonder . . .” He moved around to look at Karigan from the front.

No, no, no. His moving revealed Karigan’s shredded back to Estral, the strips of bloody skin hanging off it. She reeled, and heaved up whatever remained of her breakfast.

Immerez laughed.

She wiped her mouth and looked again, trying not to see Karigan’s back by focusing on Immerez. He lifted Karigan’s chin with his hook to gaze into her face.

“It’s her,” he told Nyssa.

“The one who cut off your hand?”

“Yes, and I was denied retribution, but here she is, like a gift.”

No, no, no, Estral thought.

Nyssa glanced from Immerez to Karigan, and back. “You two are a matching pair.”

“Yes, the eyepatch. That’s curious. I wonder what happened to her eye. I tried to take hers out once, but missed my chance. Greenie, what happened to your eye?”

In response, Karigan, who somehow remained conscious, or had just regained awareness, spat at him.

Immerez calmly wiped his cheek. “You will pay for that, of course, but first . . .” He reached up to look under her eyepatch. She flinched away, but then sagged in what must have been deep exhaustion.