Kass' bow twanged. "Yes! Haha, did you see that shot Balmos?"

The immensely-muscled, loincloth-clad Venger grunted as he wrenched his axe from the twitching body of an escaped slave. A dozen snake tattoos swarmed down his arms to flick inky tongues at the blood spattering his arms in a way Ghulen wasn't sure he'd ever get used to.

"We don't have to kill every slave we come across," Ghulen sniffed, shining the white glow of his ozone-smelling, lambent-watter lamp down the long, dry tunnel he hoped led the right way. "It just slows us down."

He pushed past Balmos as Kass jogged ahead down the dark tunnel to slit the throat of the man her arrow had maimed.

"We promise to kill faster in the future," Kass said, grinning as she wiped the blade on the slave's shaggy hair as he twitched and gargled.

"They were about to try something," Balmos grumbled. Ghulen glanced back to meet the man's red-irised eyes, certain the mercenary was lying. Again.

"You've used your Lineage as an excuse for everyone you've killed since I hired you, which has been altogether far too many people already. Did I do something I don't know about to inspire so many assassination attempts? Ghulen spoke innocently, keeping his eyes wide in feigned innocence. "Especially something that would draw the rage of a bunch of half-naked, marginally-armed slaves?"

Fortunately, the Venger was neither smart enough nor did the man care enough to confront Ghulen. Instead he grunted and flicked his axe about to spatter the blood off and make the scene more gruesome than it already was.

They paused at a three-way tunnel juncture while Ghulen sniffed. The meat-and-iron smell of Kass and Balmos' bloodletting fouled his sense of smell for a moment. No smell, however thick though, could overcome the wet, fecal odor washing up from the left-most tunnel for long.

"Smell anything interesting?" Kass said as she sauntered up to him, flicking her arrow repeatedly to arc lines of blood droplets along the wall. "Or anything at all over Balmos' stench?"

Balmos growled behind them as he caught up.

"You're on your blood," Ghulen said, struggling to keep his equanimity. Between Kass' crude sense of amusement at everything and the Venger's brutal, sullenly simmering anger, he'd found himself uncharacteristically close to losing his temper several times the last couple days. Knowing he was so close behind on Hassani's trail combined with annoyance at the companions Ocyl had forced on him to strain his usually-immutable patience.

Kass shoved an already-bloody hand down the front of her thick skirts then brought it up again. She stared at her glistening hand in horror. "By the Ascen, you're right!"

Ghulen sighed and walked down the narrow passage, while Kass chased Balmos half-way back up the tunnel threatening to wipe her hand on his face. The man was a murderous, pitiless killer, but a bit of fake menstrual blood on Kass' hand had him bellowing and tripping over himself in superstitious terror to get away. Kass at least had some hints of depths beneath the crude facade, but Balmos thus far proved little more than a simple-minded, violent beast wrapped in manflesh and brought up in a Lineage that only served to amplify the bestiality.

A useful tool if not an interesting one.

When they finally re-emerged in the sunlight, Ghulen had to wrap several layers of cloth about his lower face to avoid gagging. Balmos started swearing while Kass grinned. "Reminds me. I almost forgot I need to take a shit."

They stood on a rotting dock with only one half-sunken, small, flat raft still remaining; the rest likely nabbed by escaping slaves. A long, rickety walkway snaked out towards their destination: the tarnished, filth-caked bronze cage rising out of the nasty river. Though the waters ran wider and deeper than they looked from high above, they looked and smelled no less awful. With the waste of an entire city cascading down from two dozen canyons and falling from ten-thousand previously-caged slaves besides, he was surprised it wasn't even worse.

Spotting them, the few miserable figures inside the cage cried out, growing louder and more desperate as Ghulen carefully walked the sagging, warped wood of the walkway.

"I ain't goin' out there," Balmos said, pressing back against the stone cliff face.

Kass dropped her pack on the dock and hitched her well-worn skirts up to her knees. "How about a swim, Balmos? You're the only one I know who would smell better afterwards."

"Stay away from me, Kass. I'm warning you." The Venger actually raised his axe. "I ain't going in there."

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Kass's eyes widened and she raised her hands. "Don't hurt me, Balmos, please, I was only joking."

Balmos squinted at her, clearly struggling to determine if it was, indeed, a jape. Just as he seemed to decide that her fear and remorse were genuine, she burst out laughing.

Ghulen picked up his pace despite the risk of a plunge just to get a break from the two of them.

A dozen-odd figures pressed up against the bars of the cage, reaching out towards him as he approached. An even mix of men and women, disheveled and shivering. Ghulen could tell immediately by their pudginess, ripped finery, and smeared makeup that these had been no slaves. More likely slavers given a fate worse than death and a taste of their own handiwork besides when the slaves rose up just in time to be butchered by the Vale Legions as Sava launched her long-planned assault on Berujat.

"Please, let me out!" a man blubbered, his face barely recognizable as human after the beating he'd clearly suffered. "I have currency and gems hidden in my estate where the slaves won't have found them. I'll give them all, give everything I own to you if you let me out of this."

"Sava just claimed all property in the city for the Ancients before I came down here," Ghulen said, scanning the figures for his mark. "You saying you want me to steal from the people who are winning?"

"What? She can't do that! We wanted no part of their stupid Black Court squabbles!"

"Too bad. You've been volunteered I guess," Ghulen said, scanning the womaen. "Which one of you is Fatma?"

"Please, let me out," a woman wailed, pulling the folds of her gown apart to reveal tan-lined breasts. "You can do whatever you want to me! Just let me out!"

Ghulen's eyes shifted to her with mild interest and she pressed harder against the bars. In spite of her dismal environment and the condition of her clothing, the woman was still gorgeous. "Whatever you want!"

"Whatever I want? Are you certain?"

"Yes!" she cried. "Anything."

"Would you let me cut your breasts off?" Ghulen said, drawing the long knife at his belt and tapping it against his shoulder.

"Wh... what?" the woman said, pulling back with wide eyes.

He watched her expression closely. "Your breasts. Would you let me cut both off if I let you out?"

"My... what?" confusion, horror, and desperation warred on her face. "I didn't.."

"You said I could do anything I wanted. If not both, what about just one of them? Or I cut your ears off and scar your cheeks instead. Is losing your beauty worth your life?"

"I didn't mean... I meant, I only meant..." the woman covered herself again.

"If you don't want me doing it, I'd let you do it instead," he said, reasonably. "I could imagine it might be scary having a stranger do something so intimate."

She shrank from his gaze and simultaneously from his interest. Not the do-whatever-it-takes survivor she had thought she was.

"Leave the poor bitch alone," a deeply-tanned, dark-haired woman said, shoving the girl back. All the others waded back away from her. The woman's nostril and ear were ripped and bloody, her face swollen and bruised, and here she was locked in the Shitcages, yet she still wore a cruel smirk. "I'm Fatma."

"I figured so. Good. I was told an Inviolate with a sword made of glowing white ice dragged you here and shoved you in."

"Maybe," the woman said, looking him up and down before casting a glance at Kass and Balmos back on the dock. "I was hoping Ijran sent you to get me out of here, but if you were you would have known who I was and done it already. So who are you and what do you want?"

"I want information."

"On Hassani. The Inviolate you were talking about."

"Indeed," Ghulen said, working hard to maintain his patience for this process as Hassani slipped further and further from his grasp with every passing moment. "I know her name."

"I won't tell you where she went unless you let me out," Fatma declared predictably, raising her ragged nose high as though she held some immense leverage over him beyond a potentially-useful scrap of information.

"I will after you tell me."

"No. I don't trust you," the woman said, glaring at him.

Ghulen feigned offense as he touched the inky-black Inviolate vial dangling on its chain on his chest. "But I'm an Inviolate. We never lie."

"You'd lie in a heartbeat if one of your ordered you to. Slaves and lap dogs to the whims of the Dynasts," she said, still glaring at him.

He laughed. "You're not very good at this. I see why you're shiving in a Shitcage instead of Hassani. Insulting the one man in the entire Book who cares if you live or die here isn't anywhere close to the right way to handle this."

The woman bristled. "I know where she went! And Ijran cares. We took out the rest of the Small Masters together. He needs me."

"Does he?" Ghulen tilted his head. "Strange. How long have you been in that cage?"

"An eternity," Fatma said with a shudder, looking about her with revulsion. "A night and a day."

"Then either he doesn't need you that badly, he's dead, fled, or bleeding out somewhere with a slave's knife sticking out of his gullet. Take your pick then start talking."

Fatma continued to glare at him as though it was having any sort of effect on him. He sighed. So few people surprised Ghulen, resorting over and over to the same old adage: "if something's not working, best to do it again." Narrow, clumsy minds.

A reeking, bloating corpse drifted down the river and lodged against the bars. Several of the prisoners quickly moved closer and attempted to push it on but due to its state of decay and sogginess, they struggled to dislodge it.

Though nearly overpowered by the stench, Ghulen made himself stand still and strong.

Fighting against gagging, Fatma's look shifted to one of desperation. "She's not here."

"Clearly," Ghulen said. "Try starting at the beginning rather than at the obvious."

Fatma shifted as far from the other prisoners struggling with the body as she could. "You promise to let me out after?"

"If you give me something of value, I'll think about it."

"What's the beginning for you?" she said, chewing at her lip. "Like from when I found her feverish and rambling about her daughter after coming through the Thorn? Or...?"

"I sniffed out what she did to the Small Masters Council for you; impressive bit of work that even cutting away all the obvious exaggerations. They say she killed over twenty bodyguards single-handed, including a couple Vengers. How about starting after that?"

"Those weren't exaggerations." By the woman's blank, slightly-fearful gaze into the past, she was telling the truth. Interesting.