052 – Torture

***

A dozen of the Spry Knucklers relaxed in a loft above the old lumber warehouse. They must have a good few weeks running their protection racket, because they celebrated with bottles of wine imported from the civilized nations. The expensive wine must have dulled their senses. None of the dozen men noticed the four of us approach until we barged into the room.

“Who’s in charge here?” Zambulon demanded as it stepped from the darkness.

The Knucklers stood up in surprise at this intrusion and drew their long dirks. The fellow I had spoken with earlier at the Black Tarnish Casino was the only one to remain seated behind a table overflowing with half empty bottles and silver goblets.

“I’m the captain of the Spry Knucklers. The name’s–”

We never got to learn the man’s name, because Zambulon hurled a brick at him—one of the same that came through our windows earlier in the week. The speeding projectile struck him in the face and caved in his skull in a gory explosion. Blood and red wine splashed across the back wall of the room as the captain fell over backwards out of his chair.

The other Knucklers froze in terror. None of them dared to attack us after that opening display of force. I was a bit surprised myself. We had come here to negotiate not slaughter people.

Zambulon walked boldly through the room without bothering to draw his sword. He grabbed hold of the twitching corpse and dropped it over the loft’s edge into the darkness below. Sitting down in the captain’s chair, Zambulon examined the bottles of wine.

“Let me ask that question a second time? Who’s in charge here?”

The sweating thugs exchanged nervous glances. After a moment of tense silence one of them cleared his throat and said, “Uh… Um… You are?”

“That’s a good answer. I like you. You seem a little smarter than average. I’m promoting you to the new captain of this outfit.” Zambulon gestured with a bottle of wine. He looked around the table for a corkscrew and then opened the bottle. “Smell that bouquet. Real grapes. Not like the stuff they brew on the continent made from sukromoss or fisherberries.”

“Ha ha. This isn’t about protecting the casino is it? We stopped watching over the place on account of the new ownership, but we were going to start again right away,” the new captain stuttered.

“No no. I’m here for something a little bigger than a couple broken windows. This whole town is under new management, not just the old casino. From now on, I’m the boss of this gang. You lot answer to me or my man, Knogule, who will handle the day to day affairs from here on. Since you Knucklers are the town’s ‘protectors,’ I’m inducting you into the new organization first. Lucky for you. The other gangs will either fall into line with you or catch a brick to the face.

“Tell me, captain. Why is it that the Black Tarnish Casino has paid its money, but you sit by while people are gambling in back alley dice games and holding centipede fights?” Zambulon sifted through the dirty goblets and decided to drink straight from the bottle.

“We have a truce between gangs. We rough up out-of-towners, but we can’t touch the Spinning Ivories. It’s forbidden.”

“A truce also requires respecting each other’s boundaries. How do you decided what to do when your protection racket and their gambling racket are at odds?”

“Twice a year the gang captains all get together to hash out their problems and discuss business. So problems don’t boil over into a fight the way they used to. And the Top Boss settles disputes.”

“Top Boss? Who’s that?”

“I don’t know. Only the captains have met him. But lots of time I heard our capo complaining about kicking up money to him.”

Here I asked the newly minted captain, “How much money do you have to give to your superiors?”

“We all have to give two thirds of our earnings to the capo, and he kicks up three fourths to the Top Boss.”

“Two thirds! That’s absurd,” I said. “For the time being, reduce it to one third. We’ll grant you a grace period during the change in management.” Giving two thirds of their income away left these men too hungry. They savagely extracted funds from the townsfolk to pay off their greedy superiors. Maybe reducing their crime-taxes for awhile might give the local businesses some relief. Knogule could sort out the specifics later on. Since his true goal wasn’t money, but information and opportunity, he might ease up on the rackets that effected the lives of normal people.

The gang members looked pleased by this tax reduction except for the new captain.“What? That’s no fair! I kicked up to my captain for years, and now it’s my turn to collect.”

“Calm down. We won’t ask you contribute anything to us for now, which is far better than three quarters going to the Top Boss. You’re pay cut is actually a raise in disguise.” It amused me that this man, who had feared for his life a minute ago, now argued about his salary. The dripping brains of his former boss still decorated the wall.

Zambulon said, “To get your raises, we need to know about this Top Boss. Who are they? Where do they live?”

“Only the dead captain knew. None of us low down Knucklers got to attend the meetings.”

“Hmm. Maybe I was a little hasty with the brick. But you’re saying that the captains of the other gangs will know the Top Boss?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then I suppose we’ll have to wring it out of them instead,” Zambulon stood up from the table. He grabbed two more unopened bottles as his dues as the new crime overlord of Drainditch.

I spoke to the Spry Knucklers, “We don’t need any assistance fighting or roughing people up. Your main task is to keep your mouths shut. Don’t mention anything that’s happened here tonight to anyone. Stay away from the other gangs and avoid doing anything that could tip off the Top Boss before we deal with him ourselves. Do you have a way to get rid of the dead body?”

“Yeah. We got a septic pit on the edge of town where we sink them.”

“Ugh.” I wrinkled my nose at the words ‘septic pit.’

Zambulon pointed at me, “I forbid you from thinking about sewers. As for the rest of you, clean this place up and keep out of sight. We’ll contact you in a day or two.”

We left the bewildered gangsters to think over this sudden disruption to their lives. Hopefully their survival instincts would compel them to keep silent. My main concern was that they would give a warning to the Top Boss, but without ever having met the man in person, they did not have much loyalty to the leader of the town’s crime rings. And they didn’t even know how to contact him directly. Still, we had set things in motion, and had to act quickly.

***

“Maybe next time, don’t open a conversation with a brick to the head,” I suggested.

“I wanted to skip the preliminary threats. Demonstrations of force are worth more than words. Although, it did cause us an unforeseen delay,” Zambulon admitted. “We beat the Leech Boys to a pulp earlier in the week, so they’ve been properly threatened already. They don’t need any further brickings.”

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“What about the other gangs?”

“The Spinning Ivories are too scattered around town in small gambling dens. Tracking down their captain would take all night. And I don’t know where to find the Huggermuggers, since burglars and pickpockets are much quieter about their business.”

Everyone in town had heard that Knogule had escaped from jail and took over the failing casino—at least among the criminal element. The Leech Boys wanted their money back. So Knogule wrote a quick note inviting them to visit the Black Tarnish Casino to discuss a repayment plan, and that was all it took to lure them into our trap. Scouring the city for him was unnecessary.

Because business was dead, Knogule gave his gamesters the rest of night off and cleared out the building. When the captain of the Leech Boys strolled in through the front door, the place was empty except for the four of us disciples. He recognized us immediately.

“You four are here already?” he groaned. “Will there be anything left for me to pick clean? It’ll take a thousand years for Knogule to pay off his debt from the looks of this joint.”

Carrying swords identified us as part of the elite. We were either young sparks, hoping to enkindle our flames, noble descendants armed by hereditary right, or actual swordsmen. But it could be difficult for normal people to determine which station we belonged to. The Leech Boys didn’t have that trouble. Hwilla had jumped out of a second story window and disarmed the five men in a flash, demonstrating her magical enhancements. They knew we were real swordsmen. However, they still thought of us Knogule’s other creditors, not his allies.

The captain sat down at an abandoned dealer’s table. “I suppose I’m going to have to wait my turn to collect, huh?”

Zambulon stood in the dealers spot and shuffled a deck of paper cards printed with numbers and colorful faces, a common tool among gamblers. Although the set of cards were always the same, people had devised an infinite number of games to play with them.

“You Leeches will get your money in time. But to come to an exact agreement of terms, we need to speak to the Top Boss,” Zambulon said. The rest of us moved in behind the man.

“What? What’s all this?” he sputtered. “I ain’t got no boss. I’m self employed. The captain of my own gang of toughs.”

“That’s not the way we’ve heard it. Rumor has it that this town has a crime leader. Someone who keeps each gang to a separate racket and who maintains the truce. We’ve also heard that this Top Boss takes a real deep cut of your earnings.”

“You heard wrong. There’s no boss. I’m an independent contractor,” he protested. The captain stood up and backed away, now sensing things were amiss. “Where’s Knogule anyway? I thought he wanted to talk to me. What’s going on here?”

“Hwilla.” Zambulon gestured to his junior.

A length of stout cord flew from her sleeve and lassoed the captain around the neck. She choked him from behind to stop him from yelling out for help. He frantically struggled against the noose until the lack of air made him go limp. Yurk grabbed him by the arms and lifted the man off his feet like a child.

“Take him to the cellar.”

“Looks like we need more bricks,” I said with a sigh.

The two junior cultists dragged the helpless victim down to the soundproof basement. I didn’t like where this was going. In the wine cellar Hwilla tied the man to chair. She came from a fishing village originally, and had, in the first part of her life, learned all about tying ropes and making nets. He would not escape her knots.

Zambulon lit a small iron stove and looked through all liquor stored in the wine cellar disapprovingly while waiting for the man to revive. He pulled down a cask of green fluid, a sort of pulque distilled from types of cacti from deep in the wastelands of the continent.

“I always hated wine when I was young, the way it makes people spout out nonsense and slur their words. But now a glass or two doesn’t affect me much. The taste reminds me of home,” He put it back on the rack. “This other stuff is worthless.”

“Where did you take me?” The man came to his senses. He spun head his around to look at his new environment and at his deplorable state. He pulled against the ropes, but that only made them tighter. “What is this? I told you that I don’t have a boss.”

“That’s not what the Spry Knucklers told us,” Zambulon said.

“Don’t believe them. They’re making up stories to get out of trouble.”

“Then why didn’t you make up a story to get out of trouble? Instead you doubled down on your falsehood. I think that shows hints of loyalty. You’re trying to protect your employer’s identity.”

“That ain’t it. I ain’t loyal to anyone but myself.”

“Then maybe it’s fear. You’re afraid of what the Top Boss will do to you. That’s a mistake, because you should be far more afraid of us.” Zambulon removed an iron rod from the stove, the kind used to stir the coals. The tip of the poker glowed a dull red. “Start by telling us where the other captains can be found and where it is that you have your twice-yearly meeting.”

“I don’t know where it is. I, uh, forgot.” The question took him off guard, and the glowing piece of metal distracted him too much to come up with a convincing lie.

“You forgot? Then let me remind you…”

The idea of torturing a man for information horrified me in a visceral way. I wasn’t sure why. I’d earlier in the night witnessed Zambulon murder a man with a flying brick to the skull. It was an awful crime, but it hadn’t phased me more than any of the other deaths I’d witnessed recently. But this scene made my mouth go dry and my hands tremble.

It didn’t really make sense. The Leech Boy wouldn’t die from a poker to the face. And the physical pain would measure less than, let’s say, getting shot full of arrows or spitted on a spear. But bloody deaths in combat didn’t bother me in quite the same way as torture. Maybe it was because those people actively participated in the violence, and were not mere subjects bound in place and helpless to defend themselves. That didn’t make sense from a rational perspective, but it pulled with an irresistible, emotional gravity.

“Hey now!” I jumped between the two. “Let’s not jump to bricks and pokers first thing! I’m sure we can settle this reasonably.”

“Get out of the way, you clown. I’m going to burn out his left eye.”

“Don’t be rash. Remember that we want to take over this town. We’ll be short staffed if we slaughter all our would-be employees. Let’s try a different approach before resorting to blinding people.”

“Only pain will do the job here. He’s too loyal a henchman to be convinced with just words.”

“Loyalty is not a bad quality in a crook. That makes this fellow worth something, right? He’s a model gangster. An upright citizen of the underworld. We just need to transfer his loyalty from the existing crime boss to us. We can’t do that without some patience and a bit of mercy.” I turned away from Zambulon and grabbed the thug by his shirt. “Listen, fellow. There’s no reason to put yourself this. Tell us where your boss is.”

“I’ll never talk. I may be a Leech, but I ain’t no rat!”

“This is a conflict between leaders. It doesn’t concern a minor player like you. So step aside and let the bosses fight it out,” I said. “Look at it like this. If we win the fight, you’ll have done us favor worth rewarding. And if we lose, then the Top Boss will never hear about your betrayal. So there’s nothing to worry about.”

“They’ll know I squealed.”

Zambulon waved the glowing point in his face. “Ah ha! So you admit there’s a boss.”

“I ain’t admitting nothing about nobody.”

“Then you’re going to die.”

“I’ll die either way. Betraying the boss will end my life. Squealing will bring the other gangsters’ revenge. Angering the knights will get me hanged from a rope. And telling you off might mean I lose my head. But it’s all the same. When I go, I want to rest in the grave with my honor still intact. Nobody will say nothing dirty about the Leech Boys on my account.”

The gangster’s words were similar to what Belwane the Black said before we struck him down, a sort of resentful pride in the face of hopelessness. People who couldn’t physically resist the power of magi defied them in other ways to hold on to some feeling of self respect. Not everyone submitted to raw power or worshiped those who possessed it.

“Okay then,” I said. “We’ll let you cool off down here for a bit. At this point, you’re so hot headed that a fire poker probably wouldn’t do anything. You’d likely melt the iron.”

I pushed the other disciples out of the room and slammed shut the heavy door, leaving our prisoner alone in the dark basement. We returned to the empty casino to regroup.

“Strythe, you idiot. You’ve interrupted my interrogation,” Zambulon said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I don’t know exactly. I just needed a minute to think. That stuffy cellar was getting to me.”

Seeing a person bound to a chair like that caused me to panic. It overwhelmed me with a feeling of raw empathy, because, in a way, I saw myself mirrored in that thug. Our situations were in parallel. He worked for a secret boss in a criminal organization, and so did I. Someday, it could be me tied to a chair and threatened with implements of torture. Would people expect me to endure hot irons to the face without revealing the identity of the Dark Lord Hrolzek? Because I had far less loyalty to my boss than this common criminal did towards his own. What would be the results of betraying the cult? A worse set of torture when they discovered my treachery?

I had an irrational feeling that whatever I did to our captured prisoner would come back to me a hundred fold, but I knew that, in reality, it might happen to me either way…