Call of the Colossus: An epic fantasy novel (The Mindstream Chronicles Book 2) (38 page)

There had to be a drawback to that idea, though. Why hadn’t the king himself proposed it to her when they met? Instead, he tried to pretend he wasn’t involved in the smuggling and vowed to investigate it. Did he expect her to wait year after year for some resolution? How long did he think he could continue to put her off, saying his people were no closer to uncovering the smugglers than they were on the first day?

The war had gone on for so long, that many men only knew fighting. Some of them knew how to repair weapons or patch wounds, but most men didn’t learn the skills that women did for making and repairing goods and equipment, mining metals or gems, treating illnesses and wounds, tending crops or animals, making wines and ales, or even governing cities and towns. They would learn, of course, and for the first few months communities might struggle to feed, clothe, and house the returning men. They would adapt. Society would become stronger with more people finding ways to contribute.

For years, she’d put her own life in a neat, little box on the assumption that she would be a leatherworker, wife, and mother and little else. Now she was neither. She’d adapted. It’d been a struggle at times to think outside the boundaries she’d built for herself, but she was a stronger person now. If she could magically reverse everything that had happened since she’d left Kaild to become a Truth Sayer, knowing what she knew now, she wasn’t sure she would be satisfied with that old life. As much as she missed her family and friends and the opportunity to marry Gunnar and bear his children, she was a stronger person now. The hardship had forged her like a blade.

She sat through supper, eating without enthusiasm, not listening to the conversation. Even the drone of voices and clack of spoons against bowls were drowned out by the thoughts in her head. She didn’t understand how The First Godly Redeemer, the largest Iskori temple in Jolver, could be so wealthy that the dominee ran out of body parts to hang jewels on, while the king had to smuggle godfruit to his enemies in order to feed the soldiers protecting the Tree. The Temple was part of the kingdom, not a separate entity, and as such, the king had control of its purse strings. Why did he not simply funnel some of its money toward the war effort?

“Jora?” Adriel asked, disturbing her train of thought. “Are you coming?”

The dining hall had quieted considerably. Most everyone had left, Jora realized, and the enforcers were lining up outside the door, waiting for the third bell. And her bowl was still half full of cold food. “Yah,” she said, standing.

Adriel joined the line of novices and disciples filing out of the room and soon disappeared from view into the hallway.

Jora shoveled a few more spoonfuls of food into her mouth as she carried the tray and bowl to the table of dirties.

She’d never paid much attention to the enforcers before, nor they to her, but now that her robe was red, she couldn’t help but notice the hard look in their faces as they stared at her like hungry wolves eyeing a lamb. Korlan, standing at the front of the line, offered a dim smile as she shuffled forward behind the last of the novices to leave. He looked different from his peers. His eyes weren’t yet feral, his smile not yet a snarl. He might still be saved from their fate, but it would first take her forgiveness, something she wasn’t sure she could manage.

She squeezed through the doorway past them with her shoulders square, trying not to let them see the nervous twitch in her hands.

“Gatekeeper,” one whispered. Others echoed. “Gatekeeper. Gatekeeper.” It became a chant, their whispers haunting her like ghosts along the hallway to the stairs. She fled, running upstairs as fast as her legs would carry her, bumping shoulders with her oblivious peers as she raced past them to escape those whispers.

Inside her room, she leaned against the closed door and let loose a shudder. They were justice officials. Why they would persecute her that way was beyond her comprehension. Knaves and bastards, all, she supposed. Except for Korlan. How alone he must have felt, a tool for Milad to use against her.

She pulled her stool to the window and sat. The shadow of the tree in the courtyard was long, its dark fingers still against the justice building’s rear wall.

Gatekeeper
.
The enforcers’ whispered chant still echoed in her mind. Did they know something she didn’t?

She sat up straight.
Finn.

A feeling of panic squeezed her chest. She shut her eyes and opened the Mindstream, desperate to assure herself he was all right.

His thread was gone.

No.
Her mind clamped down on the idea, rejecting it.
No. It
’
s here. It has to be here.
She searched for it, certain her own fear was making her overlook it.

His thread was gone. Simply gone.

“No,” she heard herself say. The word came out as a pitiful wail, a plea for it not to be true. They wouldn’t have slain him. They wouldn’t be that stupid.

She slid backward along her own thread to the moment earlier in the day when she’d found him in the jail cell. While Mindstreaming to her own past, she searched for Finn’s thread, riding her own stream. It was there, solid as ever. That she could see his thread in the past meant that he had to be dead.
No
, she thought, pushing the idea aside. He couldn’t be. She clung to it as she swung her perspective around to see his face.

His resemblance to their father took her aback. How had she never noticed how much Finn looked like Papa? They shared their big, gentle eyes, like hers except not so close together. They had the same sharp nose, smaller than her own and more baronial. Finn had their papa’s strong chin and wide mouth, now turned into a frown.

She so wanted to reach out in the Mindstream and stroke his cheek, to offer a measure of comfort that she was there, that he wasn’t alone.

She advanced his stream, slowly at first, afraid of reaching the sudden end the way she’d reached Tosh’s—on the blade of a sword.

Finn sat in the cell for an hour or two before a pair of enforcers came to get him. They marched him, shackled and gagged, down the corridor and loaded him into a wagon the way they’d done Jora. They took him to the Justice Bureau, not to a courtroom but downstairs to one of the thick-walled, soundproof rooms where the enforcers conducted their duties.

Finn’s eyes widened when he saw the iron tools of torture hanging from pegs on the walls. He struggled at first, tried to get away, but the enforcers caught him and wrestled him into the heavy chair whose arms and seat were stained with old blood. They strapped him into it with a leather belt around his chest, another across his thighs, and two more for his forearms.

He kicked at them, then tried to push the chair away from the black stone table. The enforcers hollered at him to stop, and one of them, the bigger of the two, took a leather strap from a peg, about an inch wide, and struck Finn across the face, leaving a welt on his cheek. “Do it again,” he said, holding the strap in his cocked arm as if hoping for a chance to strike him again. Finn quieted, breathing like a bull through his nose but not daring to take another chance.

The other enforcer knelt down and buckled Finn’s ankles to the chair legs.

Jora’s mouth watered, and her stomach churned. Though she had to know what happened to her brother, she needed a minute to get a hold of herself first. She dabbed at the sweat on her brow, took a long drink of water, and continued.

The two enforcers left the room. Finn struggled to get free, but it was no use. The straps were secure. After a few minutes, the big enforcer they called Gruesome entered, dressed in an apron stained with blood. Finn’s face contorted into an expression of fearful disgust. He tried to say something, but the gag muffled his words beyond recognition.

“Afternoon,” Gruesome said with a smile. He was missing the first two molars behind his long eyeteeth on the top, and the two center teeth were chipped and ragged. “I’m Gruesome, but you can call me Grue if you want.” He checked the tightness of the straps holding Finn into the chair. “I’ll try to make this as painless as possible. I’m told your sister threatened my boss with bodily harm if I hurt you too badly.”

“Jora?” Finn seemed to ask.

“Around here, she’s called the Gatekeeper. So sensitive, like a delicate flower. We have to tiptoe around her til we figure out how to harness her like a draft horse. You might just be the bit in her mouth, the yoke on her shoulders, the whip on her ass.” Gruesome chuckled as he sauntered around behind the chair. “For that reason, we’ll keep you alive as long as possible. Watch your fingers.” He pushed the chair up to the table so that Finn’s fingers touched the top, but his palms didn’t quite reach. “There we are. Which is your dominant hand?”

Finn wiggled the fingers of his left hand, though Jora knew that to be wrong. He was trying to spare his dominant hand from injury.

“All right, then we’ll use the right. Don’t want to render you completely useless now, do we?”

Finn tried to object, wiggling the fingers of his right hand. “No.”

“No? You want me to use the left one instead?” Gruesome asked. He narrowed his eyes. “You didn’t lie to me about your dominant hand, did you? Lying to a justice officer carries additional penalties, you know.”

Finn nodded fervently. “Left hand,” he managed to say.

Gruesome sat one butt cheek on the table and leaned a forearm casually across his thigh. “Let’s make sure. Nod your head if you want me to use your left hand.”

Finn nodded. Tears filled his bloodshot eyes.

“Because you’re actually right handed?”

Again, Finn nodded.

“Then you lied to me.”

Finn hung his head and gave a small nod.

Gruesome let out a sigh as he stood. “All right. Left hand it is. Last chance to change your mind.” He went to the wall and picked out a thick, iron-headed mallet. Twice he slapped its head into his left palm.

Finn watched him silently. A tear broke lose and trailed down his cheek.

“Want something to bite down on?” Gruesome asked. “I’ve seen men break teeth trying to grit through the pain. I’ll bet your wife would prefer you don’t mess up your pretty smile, eh? Oh, wait. Fists, I forgot,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Never mind.”

Finn blinked a couple of times, his head slightly cocked.

The enforcer opened a drawer under the table and picked out a leather disk that had teethmarks on it. “Want it?”

Finn nodded, and Gruesome untied the gag. “What about my wife?” he asked. “What did you forget?”

“I’m not s’posed to tell you,” Gruesome said. He shoved the disk into Finn’s mouth then leaned close to Finn’s ear. “But it’s not good news.”

Jora was so angry, she trembled. They hadn’t told Finn what happened in Kaild. They let him continue thinking his and Jora’s family was still safe and healthy, carrying on with their lives, that his wife and daughter were waiting for his return. And here was this cur taunting him with the information, like a sausage held over the head of a starving child.

“Here we go,” Gruesome said, adjusting Finn’s hand on the table’s edge. “Don’t flinch or I’ll miss and break a knuckle, then I’d have to do it again. You wouldn’t want me to end up crushing the bones. A clean break will heal better than crushed. Understand?”

Finn nodded. His nostrils flared, and his breathing grew heavier.

“It’s best you look away.” Gruesome set the mallet against Finn’s third finger, then raised it, lowered it slowly, and raised it again, measuring the blow. He slammed the mallet down hard. A crack split the air, followed immediately by Finn’s muffled scream.

“Good,” Gruesome said. “That’s one. Just one more to go. Need a rest, or do you want to get it over with?”

Finn shook his head.

“No rest. All right. You’re tougher than you look.”

Gruesome took the same measure with the mallet on Finn’s middle finger. When he slammed it down, another crack and scream filled the room, but this time, blood spurted across the table. Sharp edges of bone jutted from the wound.

“Oops,” Gruesome said. He tossed the mallet down and started digging around in the drawers, pulling out lengths of stained cloth.

Finn’s face went pale. For a moment, he stared at the wound in shock. Then his eyes went glassy. They seemed to lose focus just before his lids closed and his chin dropped to his chest.

Jora watched with tears streaming down her face while the enforcer wrapped Finn’s hand in bandages. He unstrapped the belts holding Finn in the chair, his movements growing more hurried and desperate, while blood continued to gush from the wound. “Don’t you die,” he muttered. “Milad will have me whipped for sure.”

At last, he got Finn free and pulled the limp body up over his shoulder before running up the hallway toward the stairs, calling for a medic.

Jora closed the Mindstream, not wanting to Observe Finn’s death. She hunched over, sobbing, the pain in her chest too great to bear. Her entire body felt like glass that had been struck with a mallet, cracks shooting across the surface and deepening with her every breath. Finn, her only remaining brother, had been taken from her. What had she done so horrible to deserve this? What had her family and friends done besides love her and try to do their best to mold her into a compassionate, hard-working adult?

She rocked back and forth, crying, whispering apologies to Finn and to everyone else whose death lay across her shoulders. The world looked bleak and dark to her now, the last rays of the sun behind her. She was alone. What would her days be worth going forward? How could she struggle through the boring books on law or listen to Bastin prattle on about processes that no longer mattered? A world where family members were killed by people trying to control her was too gloomy to live in. A country that would lie and deceive and stab its own citizens in the back was not worth her loyalty. A war where young men died so that the rich became richer had to be stopped. If the king wasn’t willing to let everyone have the godfruit, then there was only one way to end this war.