A Country Falls (Greatest Thief 3) - Chapter 22: Chapter 22

Kassia immediately started to argue. Even Mayah spoke up, in broken Deoran that I thought she was probably trying to make up on the spot. Neither of them helped, though. Kalvahi waved, guards grabbed me, and I was dragged away from the women. I watched the group as I was pulled down the length of the throne room and into the hall. The last thing I saw before the doors closed was Kalvahi climbing down the steps.
I fell back on old habits, both instinctually and in an attempt to rein in my thoughts. I memorized hallways and turns, once again taking in the lack of artwork on the castle's walls. I mapped out my new path with the way Kassia had led me and quickly realized that I wasn't being taken back the same route. We headed in the same direction, but instead of stepping out into the castle grounds, I was dragged down a damp staircase into a narrow stone passageway. One of the guards grabbed a torch, and it's flickering was the only light we had.
Underground, it was hard to place the tunnel with the map I was creating in my head. But trying to add it to the map kept me from thinking about how much the tunnel reminded me of Tannix's family crypt. Although the crypt had been dry and decorated, even if the air had been musty and still. The tunnel was damp and built with plain, square bricks.
I was only slightly relieved when we climbed up another staircase, into what looked like the familiar prison again. The guards dragged me past cells that looked like the ones Tannix had been kept in. The guards grumbled to each other as we stopped outside one of the heavy doors. The guard on my left unlocked it, and I was tossed into the darkness. Before I had even pushed up to my feet, the door swung closed and the room went completely black. The bolt sliding shut was the last thing I heard. The room muffled every other sound from outside.
I carefully crawled forward until I felt the far wall, and I turned to sit against it. I hugged my knees to my chest and tried to think about the layout of the hallways. But without anything new to focus on, it wasn't enough of a distraction. So I thought about Tannix. We were closer together than we had been in months. He was somewhere outside of the city. I tried to imagine his tent. Even though I knew he wouldn't want anything fancy, in my imagination I gave it blue canvas sides and a plush carpet instead of a sandy floor. I pictured expensive furniture. Tannix sitting in an ornate chair in front of a desk laden with paperwork. I imagined pushing aside the entrance flap and stepping into the tent. Him getting to his feet when he realized who I was. Him coming around the table. Sinking into his arms.
The clunk of the bolt moving shattered my vision. For a moment it almost seemed like my daydream was coming true. A guard carried a fancy chair into the room, as if I had summoned it. He placed it across the room from me without giving me a single glance. Then a pair of guards carried in a basin of water.
I shied away when one of the men then came to grab me. He caught my arm and hauled me to my feet. I was ready to pull away from the basin, so I nearly lost my balance when instead he yanked my arms above my head and locked shackles around my wrists. Then he stepped aside, just in time for me to watch two other Deorans drag Castin and Kovin into the room. They both had their wrists bound tightly together.
Kalvahi stepped into the room, drawing my attention before I could exchange looks with Castin and Kovin. He sat in the chair, stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. My gaze darted to the doorway, hoping to see Kassia.
Kalvahi laughed. "Finagale. She isn't coming."
Being addressed somehow helped me cobble together a bit of courage. My eyes snapped back to him. At least Kalvahi was someone I had spoken with before. There was some comfort in the familiarity. "Why not?"
"Because Idavari ordered her not to." The way he said the king's name, without any title, was either proof of his distain or just because the king was family. It was hard to tell with Kalvahi. "Likely a good choice. Kassiandra is too fond of you. I know." He leaned his left elbow on the armrest. "She doesn't want you to be hurt. If you didn't pose such a risk, I might have even convinced my uncle to let her keep you. As a wedding gift, perhaps."
"She doesn't want me," I said.
He hummed and scratched his neat beard. "Of course she does, but you're too dangerous. Luckily, nobody likes broken toys. Kassiandra will lose interest once you've stopped being such a fun plaything."
It was stupid, but fishing for information had proven time and time again a decent way to navigate these conversations. So I took the risk. "A plaything like Vali?"
I knew immediately it was a mistake. Kalvahi's eyebrows furrowed, and the hand that had been stroking his beard dropped instinctually towards the handle of the knife on his belt. Then, with practiced smoothness, his idle demeanor was back. He nodded towards the soldiers and said something in a deceptively pleasant tone.
The man holding Castin shoved him to his knees beside the basin of water. He grabbed the back of Castin's head and forced him to lean into the water.
Kovin yanked against the soldier holding him so sharply that he almost got free. I strained against the chains clamped around my wrists. Castin was still, until his air ran out and he began to struggle helplessly against the strong hand on his head and the ropes around his wrists.
"I'm sorry!" I would have thrown myself on my knees in front of Kalvahi if I hadn't been attached to the wall. Anything to convince him to let Castin up. "I won't ask again, please, I'm sorry. Let him up. This doesn't have anything to do with him! I'll do anything you want, please, I—"
Kalvahi lazily waved two fingers. The soldier pulled up Castin's head and tossed him aside. He coughed up water. Still gasping for breath, Castin rolled over so he could push himself up onto his knees. One of the guards moved like he was going to kick Castin over again, but he froze when Kalvahi gave him a clipped order.
In Teltish again, Kalvahi said, "It's quite fortunate that I have a way to ruin you without physically hurting you, isn't it?"
I dragged my gaze away from Castin. "Is that all this is? You want to hurt me? It won't help with the siege." There was too much going on, and I was finding it impossible to settle on one strategy. I didn't want to be used against Tannix and Tandrin, I didn't want Castin or Kovin to be hurt, I didn't want to be tortured myself. The only comfort I could think of was that Mayah was separate from this. Whatever plans Kalvahi had for me, or whatever grudge he was holding onto, it seemed like Mayah was safe from it. One less person to worry about.
"I want to destroy you," Kalvahi corrected easily. "I want Kassiandra to remember that you're nothing but a worthless thief, and toss aside her fascination with you. I want to show my people that your escape was a fluke, and that standing against me is punished harshly. But mostly, I want to reduce you to a husk of who you once were, and see Lord West Draulin crumble when you're dumped at his feet."
My mouth went dry. "That won't help you win the war." I didn't sound nearly as firm as I wanted to. "You can't sell me back to him if I'm..."
"Of course I can. Even better, I'll make you drink this, first." He pulled a tiny vial of dark liquid from one of his pockets, and held it up to catch the torchlight. "Mokartice. Bloomshade, in Teltish. Incredibly poisonous. Getting it in a wound, as you did with that arrow, is often fatal. But with quick treatment recovery is obviously possibly. Drinking it is an entirely different story. It causes a slow, agonizing death. Taking your body apart from the inside. Before I have you tossed at Lord West Draulin's feet, I'm going to force this down your throat. So he'll pay for you, in a desperate attempt to save you. Then he'll see how broken you are, and then he'll have to watch you die. And I will still get the joy of slowly breaking you apart." With a smile, he balanced the little vial on the armrest of his chair. "No clever words?"
My mind was blank. The torture and poison scared me. Thinking of Tannix having to watch me die was somehow even worse. I opened my mouth to say something, then gaped in confusion when I heard Castin's voice instead of my own.
"If you want a show," Castin snarled. "I'll give you one." At some point during Kalvahi's speech Castin had been hauled closer to the basin of water again. The Deoran behind him had one hand clamped around the back of his neck.
"You will," Kalvahi agreed dismissively. "You and the Crelan. Finagale, you're quite an intellectual creature, aren't you? I can see your thoughts moving, trying to turn all of this into a puzzle. I know you believe you can think your way out of any problem. I know that helplessly watching your friends being tortured to death will destroy your clever mind faster than torturing you will. By the end, I expect you'll beg for the mokartice. You'll crave the pain it will cause you, because you'll know that you deserve it. You'll pray that drinking it will make amends for the pain your friends went through. The pain you caused."
I looked at Castin, but I couldn't focus on him. My heart was pounding so hard it seemed like everyone in the room should have heard it.
Kalvahi drew my attention once again by standing up. He walked over to a chest one of the guards had pulled into the room, and spent a moment looking through its contents. When he turned around, he was holding a long, thin spike in one hand, and a narrow, razor-sharp knife in the other.
"Finagale." He waited for me to focus on him again. "I'm going to use one of these on the Crelan, and you're going to decide which one." He said a few words in Deoran, and the guard behind Castin shoved his head into the water. Kalvahi smiled coldly. "Your brother isn't coming up for air until you make a decision."
In the darkness, Kovin was sobbing.
Even though we had been left without any light, I couldn't stop seeing things. Kalvahi slicing skin from Kovin's left arm. Castin coughing up water again and again, each time struggling less as he was pushed into the basin. Another knife, heated by fire, pressed against Kovin's chest. The barbed whip that had bitten into Castin's back the one time I had dared to beg Kalvahi to hurt me instead of them.
The room smelled like blood, sweat and bile. I was still attached to the wall, Castin and Kovin were somewhere across from me. Kalvahi and his men had simply dropped them. The last thing I had seen before the door slammed shut was Kovin curling in on himself, cradling his bleeding arm, while Castin shivered and tried to hug his legs against his chest.
My throat was raw from begging. It was a far cry from what the other two were feeling, and I hated how well I had come out of the whole incident, at least physically. Kalvahi's promise to poison me was the last thing on my mind. All I could think about was what was happening at that moment. The tortures I had caused kept running through my mind on a loop. Along the sickening memories came the realization that Kalvahi was going to be back to finish what he had started.
And slowly, I understood that I was finally caught in a trap I couldn't escape from. I understood that Castin and Kovin were going to die, and that I would follow them soon after.
"Finn." Castin's voice was rough and strained, and barely loud enough to hear over Kovin's crying.
Hearing my name put my thoughts on pause. There was no way to tell how long we had been waiting in the darkness, but for the first time since the door had closed, I felt the slightest control over my mind. I clung to that clarity. Tried to focus on Castin's voice instead of the last image I had of him.
"Finn," Castin repeated. "I'm not... not tied to anything. He left that bottle of poison on the, um... chair. If you want to take it..."
Fear made my voice squeak. "What?"
It took Castin a moment to reply. "If you take it now, maybe he won't have time to..." he trailed off. He was exhausted, and I could almost hear the chattering of his teeth as he shivered. "To send you to Tannix. It'll... it'll save him from seeing you die."
I anxiously tugged against the cuffs around my wrists. "Cast."
"And if you're dead, maybe we'll just be killed. Quickly."
The way out of the trap suddenly became painfully, terrifyingly clear. If I was dead, Kalvahi wouldn't have any reason to torture Castin and Kovin. If I was dead, Tannix wouldn't have to watch it happen.
Until that moment, I hadn't realized how much Kalvahi's promise had helped me. In the back of my mind I knew that at least I would see Tannix again, after it was all over. The promise of that glimpse, of holding Tannix's hand one more time, had been comforting. But to spare him, and to spare Castin and Kovin, I would give up that glimpse.
I sent Siour a quick prayer, asking that he help the poison take me quickly.
I took a deep breath. "Get it."
Castin swore under his breath as he got to his feet. I heard his careful movement across the room, towards Kalvahi's chair, and then towards me. Kovin's crying faded to whimpering. He probably didn't even know what was going on.
Before I was ready, I felt Castin's hand on my arm. His arms slid around my back and I might have collapsed into his hug if I hadn't been attached to the wall.
"Finn," he whispered into my ear. "Wait for me on Siour's chariot. We'll step into Volava's kingdom together."
I nodded against his shoulder. But before I could muster the strength to ask for the poison, the bolt in our cell door slid open.