Eli followed the man through the city, staying well behind him while watching from a spark. The streets narrowed into a neighborhood of awnings that jutted between stone buildings crowded with apartments.

Small apartments, but safe and reputable. A neighborhood of clerks and assistants and lesser merchants. And of scribes, so Eli kept his head down while his sparks darted to and fro. Sure, finding a place to spend a night then focusing on Berent Manor was the smartest move, but he wasn't feeling smart.

He was feeling bloodthirsty.

In the middle of the block, the bulky man climbed a few steps then knocked on a door.

An older woman opened the door and the bulky man presented her with his flowers. The spark heard him say, "Hey, Ma, brought you a little something."

His mother pulled his head down to kiss him on the forehead. Then they stepped inside, beyond Eli's field of view, though he heard the woman putting a plate together for her son. He leaned against a wall and eavesdropped with a spark while they chatted about the family--and about the man's job, though his mother thought he worked as a footman, not an apprentice torturer. Apparently you didn't tell your doting mother that you brutalized people for a living.

Though she mispronounced 'first footman' a 'fist footman,' which Eli found ironic.

When the man left a few hours later, Eli tracked him across the city. He won a copper at a cockfight, then stopped for a few drinks at a tavern with friends--but not the skinny man with blue eyes. Eli had been hoping for the skinny man with blue eyes.

After the tavern, the bulky man headed to a friend's house, a thatched cottage on a block with dozens of them. Wait. Not a friend. A brother. His brother. The other bulky man, the one Eli hadn't seen often, but he still recognized the man's voice.

So they'd both gone into the family business? Oh! Oh, his mother hadn't mispronounced his job, she'd been having a little joke. 'Fist footman.' Funny.

Halfway to the door, Eli grabbed a rock from the path. He paused, sending a spark to check inside the cottage. The bearded brother sat at a table in the front room, setting up a game of skint, while the other stepped into the back. Didn't sound like anyone else was there, so Eli knocked.

The bearded brother opened the door. "Yeah?"

"Is this yours?" Eli asked, showing him the basket in his left hand.

"Huh." The man frowned at the bread. "I don't--"

Eli brought the rock in his other hand against the man's temple. Not hard enough to kill him. He didn't want to kill these two. At least not yet. Not fast.

The man crumpled and Eli tossed the rock outside and said, "Hey! Something's wrong! Help!"

The other brother bustled from the back room then made a frightened noise at the sight of his brother on the ground. "What--what happened?"

"He collapsed." Eli said.

"Oh, Dream, no."

"Let's get him inside." Eli stepped through the doorway and crouched at the fallen brother's feet. Turning his back to the standing man to make himself look harmless. "Is there a healer nearby? Careful, don't yank him--"

The brother started to crouch to help Eli--then paused. He'd noticed something was wrong. Maybe he recognized Eli, maybe he recognized the wound on his brother's head.

Either way, he drew a dagger from his belt and slashed at Eli.

So much for looking harmless.

But the brother moved a little slower than a troll--and much slower than one of the marquis's guards--so Eli ducked the attack, feeling the blade catch in his hair. Still without turning his head, watching through a spark, he grabbed the man's outstretched wrist while he caught the guy with an elbow strike in the crotch.

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

The man gasped and folded and Eli broke his wrist then covered his mouth with his other palm to keep him quiet, and held him while he struggled. The man was strong, and terror made him stronger, so Eli bounced his head off the floor then pinched his nose shut.

The man writhed with panic and managed to take a pretty substantial bite out of the pad of Eli's thumb.

Pain was nothing new. Eli kept squeezing until the man went limp.

Then he stood and locked the door and went into the other room for a rope that his spark had found, stretched taut with damp clothes on it. He yanked it free and went to tie and gag the brothers but the first one, the bearded one he'd hit with a rock, was dead.

Huh.

He tied and gagged the surviving brother and searched the bodies and the house. He found some workable clothes and a good rucksack, in addition to the regular household goods and a half-heartedly hidden stack of erotic drawings. Pretty compelling, too. He leafed through. A few of them might've awakened some dormant impulses but there was a corpse in the other room, which sort of killed the mood.

Eli packed the rucksack, then searched the patch of land behind the cottage. It was pretty private, blocked by a hedge that rose over a stone fence. There was a latrine and a shed with a handful of tack and tools and ... ah!

A root cellar was tucked against the house, beneath a leaf-strewn wooden hatch. It was narrow and deep, with a ladder instead of stairs. A handful of last year's turnips and parsnips moldered in the bottom of rickety boxes. Eli ate them, then dragged the corpse to the top of the cellar and dropped it in.

After a moment's thought, he dragged the living brother to the top as well.

Then he slapped him until his eyelids fluttered open.

The man made a panicked, muffled sound behind his gag.

"You're going to tell me the name of your superior," Eli told him. "The man with blue eyes. You're going tell me how to find him. You're going to tell me everything you know about the Keep. The layout, the security."

The man swore at him. The words weren't clear, but the meaning was.

So Eli knotted lengths of robe around each of his wrists and each of his ankles. Tight enough to break the skin.

The man's fingers turned purple and Eli lowered him head-first into the cellar, onto his brother's body. Then he returned to searching the house. He didn't find much more than dice and dust until a spark caught an odd shape among the rafters.

Swooping closer, the spark spotted a small burlap bag tucked in the shadows. Eli tried to nudge the bag off the rafter with his sparks, to drop into his hand, but they still weren't strong enough. So he climbed onto the table and pulled himself into the rafters, and he sat there with legs dangling and opened the bag.

Twenty-three silver. Huh. As a Junior Scribe, he'd earned a silver a month, though the archives also fed and housed him. An assistant torturer would've earned more. Five or six silver a month, he'd guess. One silver was a hundred copper, while one copper was ten bits--though nobody but the poorest used bits. One gold was a hundred silver. He'd seen a few gold coins in his life, but not many--and he'd never actually touched one. A single gold represented a good year's income. There was even a saying: 'making gold.' One gold per year and you'd live comfortably.

So twenty-three silver, that was a few months' worth of real wealth. Not to mention the fifty-odd copper he'd found on the brothers themselves. Far more than he'd expected. More than enough to find a place to sleep, to buy whatever gear he'd needed to finish this.

After he tucked the money away, he inspected his face in a mirror. He looked different. It wasn't just that he was two inches taller from standing straighter. It wasn't just that he'd lost his flab and gained muscles. His eyes looked ... steadier. Or harder.

Maybe less human.

He frowned at his reflection, then returned to the root cellar.

The smell was bad and the man was trembling. Eli looked down at him and said, "The name of your superior and how to find him. Everything you know about the Keep. The layout, the security."

The man nodded frantically.

Eli climbed in and reached overhead to close the hatch. The darkness didn't bother him but made the man whimper. He dragged him upright then loosened the man's gag slightly and said, "You might--"

"Please, please," the man whispered. "I'll tell you. My hands, please."

"If you lie," Eli said, "I know where your mother lives."

The man gasped. "You don't, you can't!"

"Piss me off, and I'll pay her a visit. Bring your heads along in a sack. Dump them in her lap and--"

"No no no ..."

Eli leaned down, one hand on the ladder, and kissed him on the forehead. "My favorite 'fist footman.' Bringing his mother flowers."

The man trembled even more violently and told Eli that his boss's name was Treli Trestan, and that he lived in the outer bailey with his family. He told Eli everything he knew about the Keep, the entrances he used, the protocols of the 'interrogation department,' the staff and the layout and schedule.

When he couldn't think of anything else to ask, Eli climbed from the root cellar. He crossed the yard to the stone fence and started filling the cellar with stones. Tossing them in. The noises stopped after a few minutes, then he washed his hands in the basin and grabbed the rucksack and left.