Chapter Seventy-Seven: Cruel Weapon

A grunt swept from his body as Osmund was hauled up and restrained. Beneath him, a wooden table. Lurking in the shadows, the figures of men, more than just the unseen brute behind him, and Mylo. Exactly how much had he failed to notice on his tumble down?!

“Y-you’ve got it all wrong,” he cried, because it was all he could do with his arms wrenched behind in that unyielding grip. The crooked phoenix mask was at last torn away. “It’s an innocent mix-up, I only came here looking to earn some extra coin, please!”

Mylo’s was the only face he could see, and it was curled around a sneer. “You think you can play stupid again? Now? You think I’m stupid, boy?”

A sound, like a knife unsheathing. Panic leapt into Osmund’s throat and lodged beneath his tongue.

Then, another voice:

“The party continues below. May I join you?”

Osmund blinked towards the tiny halo of light at the top of the stairs. There in the open door was a masculine silhouette. Not Pravin by height, but Osmund recognized the man’s accent from around Pravin’s table, which was potentially as bad.

“Baratte,” acknowledged Mylo. He lowered his knife and stood aside. And so Osmund’s fate changed hands from one handler to another. “They still jiggling our ‘king’ about up there?”

The newcomer inclined his head. “I favor a live performer to a dead one,” said the tidy fellow in his Chantelais accent. “Offers more…range.”

Lurching fear radiated from deep inside Osmund’s gut. Suddenly, he might’ve preferred Pravin.

The man took a half-seat on the table where Osmund rested, just beside the meat of his thigh. “How bad you gonna rough him up?” asked Mylo suspiciously. Both faces were phantoms in the dark. “He’s got a good head for accounts. It’d be a waste. Any chance we could still find use for him?”

Baratte disregarded him. “I prefer not to discuss my methods in front of clients,” he said in an offhand fashion. He loomed large over the table and his captive, who had been forced into a half-lean on his back. Suddenly he dipped his head in a polite bow. “I am Antoine Baratte, an associate of the Guild. Here, I would ask for your name. But our time together is limited, so we skip here the part where you lie to me about who you are. Who sent you?”

The candelabra nearby threw a little illumination on his features. The Chantelais was in his late 30s or early 40s, of overall average proportions, but his impeccable grooming gave him the look of a professional man—a chirurgien, or a highly-placed clerk. His hair and brows and mustache were dark and thick, every strand tamed into compliance, and his doublet was of a thick, rich material.

Osmund attempted to stall, squinting and blinking as if concussed and grappling for coherence. Think! He was safe as long as they wanted something from him. There was a scene just like this in a novel he’d read…

“I don’t know who I’m working for, they wouldn’t see me except in disguise,” he invented, hoping the wavering in his voice was the expected amount, and not the kind born from a fear that someone here owned a well-thumbed copy of Bloodmistress of the Wicked Queen. “Th-they meet me at the same time every week. Only me. Perhaps, if you used me to get close to them—”

A raised hand interrupted the yarn. “Stop. It’s boring me.”

“Ah-huh?!”

“Your story.” The man sighed, then went on candidly, “I have an ear for a good tale. To tell them once was my profession. This one? It bores me. You came up with it just now?”

Osmund stared. He felt a weird—shame. It was embarrassing, being seen through so openly. But his pride was hardly the only vulnerable thing at the other man’s mercy.

“I have a thought, m’sieur, since we both enjoy stories,” said Baratte. “I want you to recite Ocens’ Upright Verses, in Meskato, to the best of your power.”

At least Osmund wasn’t alone; Mylo, too, looked at the other man like he was raving mad. “This some mind game?” Mylo couldn’t resist asking. “It wouldn’t be faster to break a few fingers?”

Baratte didn’t humor the crude suggestion. He smiled at Osmund in the manner of an expectant tutor. “I know you know the words,” he said. “Any good little Tolmish knows the ascension story.”

That, of course, wasn’t the problem. Osmund knew the story of the mortal Ocens’ ascension to the heavens, and his meeting with the heavenly prince, inside and out, and he was sure he could get through the tale in Meskato easily enough. In fact, he could not see any disadvantage in fulfilling the request, and that frightened him.

With that same unwaning smile, Baratte said, “Or we do things my colleague’s way, if preferred.”

“No! No, that’s alright,” Osmund practically yelped, his as-yet unbroken fingers flexing fearfully. “U-um, let’s see.”

Switching to Meskato, he gave a brief account of Saint Ocens’ itinerant childhood, which he condensed at an impatient gesture from Baratte. He likewise sped through the crafting of the Numinous Relics (here, awkwardly rendered as “spiritual holy items”), and had just concluded Ocens’ meeting with the heavenly prince when Baratte held up a hand to silence him again.

“Yes,” the man said, an assured fullness to his cheeks. “That’s enough.”

“Anything we can use in there?” Mylo asked impatiently. “Or was that really just the ascension story?”

“It was the ascension story,” Osmund insisted, trembling. “Exactly as you asked. I-I haven’t told you anything more.”

“Ah, but you see my friend, you’ve told me a great deal,” said Baratte brightly. “A lot lies in a person’s accent and diction. You’re not a native to this language—that much is obvious. Nor were you trained in it by a single master. You picked it up in pieces. I hear soldiers and servants and even princes in you. Yes, you did not struggle at all to conjure the speech style of the heavenly prince—you sounded like someone who has known princes very well. So,” and here he leaned forward, “who in the imperial family’s circle is double crossing us, and how much do they know?”

“Says he’s in a hurry, then shows off,” Mylo muttered.

Double cross? Osmund’s mind was reeling. What in the eight names of hell was he getting at?! This man could not possibly mean to imply that the Tolmish Merchants’ Guild had secret dealings with the imperial family! Certainly not with Cemil. Osmund was sure at least of that. With Safet and General Nadir, maybe? But Nadir was already a wanted man, which meant Safet was taking a risk if he was indeed harboring him and Lalezar—why would they betray valuable allies?

Perhaps he had stumbled into something bigger than he, or even Emre, had realized.

“Alright,” Baratte said suddenly, sounding bored. “A finger every minute until he talks.” Mylo stood, knife flashing.

Osmund writhed instinctively away, but the unseen man behind him held fast to his wrists. He could throw out a name, Safet’s perhaps, but he knew nothing about the boy prince, they’d see it instantly for the ploy it was. The blade bit sharp into his pinky finger, and Osmund shut his eyes against his betrayal and inhaled, trusting that a prince of the Meskato was as safe from the revenges of a Tolmish merchant as anyone in the world could be. “I-I’m investigating the counterfeits!” he confessed. “I was sent by—by Şehzade Cemil!”

This was plainly an unexpected answer. Baratte raised a brow. “You aren’t the one passing information to my countrymen in Chantel? Guild movements, cargo?”

“Keep filling his head and we’ll have to gut him,” Mylo warned.

Yes, please stop talking, Osmund agreed silently in horror. “I haven’t heard a thing about Chantel,” he insisted. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, I-I’ll forget it all, honest, I-I’ll be worth far more to you alive!”

“Hmm.” Baratte folded his arms. “Just answer me one thing.”

“Yes, yes!”

“Who wanted my lord Pravin dead?”

Words died in Osmund’s throat.

“Does Prince Cemil know more than we supposed?” mused his captor. In a tone that might’ve been respect he asked, seemingly of himself, “Or perhaps you serve more than one master. Was it our friend, hrm, ‘Nightingale’, I wonder?”

The more Osmund heard, the less he understood. “I,” said Osmund weakly. “I, I, I don’t know—”

“I think you’re lying,” said Baratte coolly.

“It’s the truth! I’m not allied with anyone else!”

“If that’s so, let’s return to the question we eluded at the beginning.” The icy stare crawled under his very skin. “Who are you?”

No one. A servant. A prince’s favorite, nothing more. The answers stayed inert on his tongue, and would not come. Osmund looked into the man’s eyes with an animal fear. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Baratte saw the color of his every lie. He would scrape off the layers until he found the truth. The only protection was to stay silent. Stay silent and pray that some deliverance, help from Emre and Sakina or the heavens themselves, would come.

What were a few fingers compared to his very life?!

…But Baratte would not suffer his silence. At his nod, one of the shadows in the corner lowered his hands and started fumbling with something. Osmund squirmed, waiting to see the emergent flash of a cruel weapon from some hidden pocket, but then he realized the man was unlacing himself.

A moment of confusion bloomed into fresh horror.

He thrashed madly against his unseen captor. “No no no please,” he moaned.

“Then indulge me,” Baratte said, almost kindly, despite his uncompromising hold on one of Osmund’s struggling legs. Oh god, that shape in his—he was—he was “enjoying” this. “Who are you?”

Panic, lancing cold and sharp. A hand, a terrible hand, slithering down his trouser leg to snag the top of his boot and pull. Anything to make it stop. “No one, it doesn’t matter, please,” he threw out desperately.

“Should I trouble Pravin for the truth?”

“No!” His limbs were tightly constrained; every muscle burned with the effort to get free. The room became blurred with his useless tears, a final insult in the loss of control over his own body. “Please don’t,” he tried again. “Please, please, Pravin, he’ll kill me, Cemil will pay to have me back alive, he’ll pay you, please, please stop.”

“Oh, are you his Tolmish toy?” The barely-there pressure of something cold and metallic, brushing his cheek. (Not a knife, but what?…) “They say the şehzade is in Elmaluk. Hmm. Does he even know you’re here? Does anyone?”

Further contemplation of that nightmarish question was cut short. As one, they all looked up. Crashes and thuds, as of tables overturning. And that smell…

Mylo cursed and dashed up the stairs. Other shapes in the dark staggered back uncertainly, waiting for instruction. Baratte frowned. “Are we out of time?”

“Smoke, sir!” said one of the men. “I smell a fire!”

“What? There shouldn’t be…”

“Governor’s men!” shouted someone directly above. Osmund’s heart leapt against the bars of its cage. Cemil? No, it couldn’t be. Sakina and Emre?

Now only half-restrained, he flailed, and toppled the candelabra. It vanished off the side of the table, and all plunged into complete black.

The men yelled in alarm. Footsteps thundered on the stairs. Osmund wrenched as hard as he could, and his arms came free. Then he rolled off the table onto the cold ground. Blood; he’d bitten his lip. The room was a single solid shape. The smoke was heavy. Already? He had to get out.

The world spun on his first attempt. He veered, shoulder catching the wall. Dizzy still. No, focus, stand!

Someone grabbed his hand. “Run,” barked the familiar voice before Osmund could react—it was only Rylan. Thank the heavens, somehow he’d been found, and just in time. He would not die friendless here. 

Drained of resistance, he let the other drag him behind. They darted through the smoke, up the stairs, past the claustrophobic press of frightened human beings. Then outside at last.

A woman’s domineering voice shouted “Halt!”—in Meskato, then in accented Tolmish—but Rylan was fast and agile. They ran several blocks before at last Osmund found the strength to do anything besides trail limply behind the other man like a downed kite. “I have to go,” he tried to say, pulling them back from a jog.

“Come with me,” Rylan said, not hearing him. The ring on the chain around his neck had emerged from his shirt and was swaying with his breath. “The boardinghouse, you’ll be safe. Stay with us.”

“I can’t,” Osmund attempted again. “I have to…”

“Where are you going?”

Osmund didn’t reply. The grip around his hand—warm—finally loosened.

“I just have to,” he said. “I’m—sorry.”

He left the other standing there. Again anything more clever had abandoned him. And he ran.