The Ships of Merior by Janny Wurts

Author:Janny Wurts
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Interrogation

When the brothers s’Brydion resolved to interrogate a miscreant, niceties fell by the wayside. Since the deepest and dimmest of Alestron’s dungeons lay explosively gutted, the work crews who extinguished the fires now laboured to shovel away wet ashes and wipe the carbon from salvageable steel. The only other keep not jammed to capacity with weapons held a ring of glass traders incarcerated for fraud. Rather than suffer the delay while they were moved, Lord Bransian chose to weigh the blame for his ruined armoury in the sanctum of his private study.

Collared and dragged by the mailed fists of guardsmen back up the same tiresome tower staircases, then heaved with humourless force through the doorway, Dakar staggered into candlelight. The chamber where he had shown Rathain’s emeralds was lit now by massive candelabra on stands at the four points of the compass. Grazed with patched blood and bruises, whooping in starved gulps of air, he sagged to his knees against the wall chest, left open since morning, when Keldmar had snatched his paired swords. The brothers were nothing if not thorough. Dakar’s hands were trussed afresh in stout cord, beyond liberty to grope to see if other weapons remained swaddled in the oiled rags that lined the bottom.

If the Mad Prophet held out hopes to ease his plight through fast talk, the speed of events soured his opening. When Guard-captain Tharrick had no ready explanation for a spy who had slipped through his posted watch, the brothers s’Brydion lost patience. They ordered him stripped and flogged with supreme unconcern for bloodstains on their rich carpets.

Quaking and sick, Dakar shut his eyes against the poor wretch’s screams as the lash fell. Tharrick was innocent of accepting any bribe, and zealous as any man might be in adherence to loyal duty; against the wily Master of Shadow, no sentry in Alestron had a chance.

Unaware he had spoken his opinion out loud, Dakar started as a bandaged hand clamped his nape.

‘What was that you just said?’ Mearn’s unquiet pacing had carried him within earshot. Changed out of his dandy’s velvets, he now wore scarlet riding leathers scaled across the shoulders with brass plates. His lovelock had singed to a frizzle. He had a marked cheek, a heel too tender to bear weight, and both hands poulticed for bums. The sting inflamed his already volatile temperament like the inexorable blaze of a slow match.

Dakar tried a noncommittal mumble.

‘Say again!’ shouted Bransian with a curt gesture to his left.

The mottled, ugly henchman who wielded the whip stopped his stroke, and Dakar’s reply rang incensed across silence. ‘I warned you before. You dealt with a sorcerer. And I said, you punish the wrong man.’

‘Indeed?’ The duke leaned out and snatched the dangling tail of the lash. Still in his scuffed and carbon-filmed armour, he twined the bloodied leather between skinned fingers, snapped hard, and jerked the stock from the grip of his lackey. ‘If Captain Tharrick is guiltless, you are not.’ A flourish of the swinging handle saw two hyperalert guardsmen jump to cut the luckless officer down.

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