Will

The keep’s dungeon was in reality a repurposed underground larder. Everything had been cleared from the large, open room except wall sconces with burning lanterns and four rusted cages fastened to the stone floor, placed at a fair distance from each other.

Unfortunately, the healer expired before he could even be brought down, so he was hauled off for disposal instead. That was a shame—he would have preferred to question both of them—but he would work with what he had.

All the cages except the one that held Lady-Consort Dawn were empty. Brimstone was not a patient man; when he decided to take prisoners, which was rarely, they tended not to last very long.

The badly burned woman lay slumped against the bars of her cage, shivering. Will had gently wrapped her in blankets to keep her from becoming hypothermic—a serious risk now that she was missing much of the thermal insulation her skin provided—and plied her with potions when she was lucid enough to drink. Then she threw up, and he had to start all over again.

He could not hear the academy bell towers chiming the hour this far below ground, but he guessed that it took at least one or two before she was finally somewhat stable, and had enough wits about her to speak more than a word or two.

Four of Brimstone’s guards had accompanied him inside the dungeons, and were clearly meant to be keeping an eye on him. They’d quickly gotten bored, however, and were currently huddled around a game of cards on the floor, playing for a pile of 1G notes.

Will knelt by the lord’s wife, making sure that his back concealed her from the guards’ view, and touched three fingers to her exposed forearm; a piece of hale, milk-white skin that contrasted harshly against the livid red and black and pink and blister-yellow that covered much of her.

Her eyes flitted open. They widened in fear, and for a moment he feared she might scream, but then she seemed to recognize him, and her lids slackened again. “Will,” she said.

“Yes, my lady,” Will replied.

“I… don’t know if that’s still the proper title for me.”

“Me neither.”

“Am I dying? I feel so cold.”

“You’re not dying.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” About eighty percent. “Now, my lady, I—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Dawn. I need you to focus. Do you remember what you promised me?”

She groaned. The bandages he’d wrapped around her head were already staining an awful red-brown. “There are people,” she murmured. “They’ll hear.”

“Not while I’m touching you like this,” Will explained at a whisper, pressing his fingers into her arm more firmly to reinforce his point. “I’m using my Light Touch passive to block any sounds from going beyond a six-foot bubble around us. They won’t hear as long as you speak quietly—I can’t completely muffle anything louder than a whisper, I’m afraid.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Dawn said with a tiny, exhausted laugh. “I barely feel like I can speak at all.”

“I understand. You’ll need to, though.”

“You want to kill my husband.”

Will gave a small nod. “So I need you to tell me everything you know about him.”

“I’m not sure I want that.”

Will frowned. “Why?”

“Why else?” The skin of her lips split and glistened with blood as they parted in a bitter smile. “I love him.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t.” She stared at him—through him, he realized—for a long time. Then, as soon as he began to think that she was slipping away again, she said: “But I do.”

It was pure insanity, but Will did not see the point in arguing with a woman who had only barely been snatched off her deathbed. “Be that as it may,” he said, “I’m sure you can see that he needs to die.”

She hesitated for a time, then blinked hard, tears wetting her eyes, and slowly nodded. “You’re probably right.” Her gaze held his, pleading. “I didn’t try to poison him.”

“I’d guessed as much.”

“Neither did Walther.”

“Then who did?”

“Handsome.” She hissed the name. Her eyes narrowed with intensity for just a moment before exhaustion took her again. “It must have been.”

“Why?” Will asked.

She shook her head weakly. “I don’t… have any proof. But I’ve never felt at ease around him, and he wields entirely too much sway with my husband. Toward his own ends, I suspect.”

“Brimstone seems to trust him.”

“Implicitly. He’s the only person my husband trusts without any reservations.”

“Why is that?”

“Because he’s taken a vow… to never tell a lie. He keeps this fact a secret from most, but from what I’ve gathered, he’s gained a large boost to his Empathy score in return. This means that he can easily read the hearts of others, so my husband also uses him to weigh the motives of those around him.

“Except… I think Handsome chooses his words very carefully. Talking in such a way that he’s technically not lying, but not really telling the whole truth either, or telling the truth in a misleading way.”

“For example?”

“It was his testimony that turned my husband against me and Walther. But I know I didn’t do anything of the sort—and I think he knows that, too. He was asked if he thought I had poisoned my husband, and he didn’t really answer the question. He said that I loathe and despise Brimstone, and that one can never underestimate the treachery those closest to us are capable of.”

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“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Despise him.”

“No!” Dawn cried out with sudden force, enough to break through the muffling effect of his Light Touch. Will gritted his teeth in soundless exasperation and glanced over his shoulder, but the men were still focused on their game.

When he looked back, he found Dawn’s face pulled together in anguish. “No,” she said, less firmly this time. “Or… well, I don’t know. Yes. Of course I do, a little. I know what my husband has done as well as anyone else. The people he’s slaughtered. But that’s not all I feel for him. I wanted to help him—to show him a better way. I thought it was working. I would never have tried to kill him.

“If Handsome could view my heart well enough to see my hatred, he should have seen the rest of it, too. But he didn’t mention that. Nor did he mention that I was clearly innocent.”

“I see.” Will shifted his crouch to ease the stiffness in his legs. “And Walther? Is it possible that he acted alone? He might have seen his chance when he found out that Brimstone had agreed to let you cook for him, slipped something inside when you weren’t looking.”

Dawn shook her head with a tired sigh, licking at dry, bloody lips. “I don’t think so. He knew that Brimstone had Poison Resistance—it affected the dosages of antidotes he would give my husband in cases just like this, where poison had been employed against him. I don’t think for a second that Walther would be foolish enough to try something like this.”

Will nodded. It did make some sense. “Then, the assassination attempt might never have been intended to kill Brimstone. Maybe it was only done to implicate you—you are the only other person who really had the lord’s ear, after all. If Handsome is the manipulator you say he is, he might not have liked having that kind of competition.”

“That’s what I believe.”

“Do you think he’s working for Lady Winter?”

Dawn gave a small, tired sigh, and her gaze drifted away to peer up at the dark stone ceiling, its shadows traced with the faintest touch of flickering firelight from the lanterns. “I have no idea at all. My husband has so many enemies—it might be any one of them, or none at all. Handsome might just as well be acting alone, for his own benefit.”

“I don’t think he’s acting alone,” Will said.

“What makes you say that?”

“With what you’ve told me about the man, I’ve only just realized something about him. Most people address Brimstone as ‘my lord’. Handsome just calls him ‘lord’. Maybe it’s a coincidence, an innocent eccentricity, but maybe…”

“Maybe he can’t call Brimstone ‘his’ lord, because he serves another,” Dawn guessed.

“Yes.”

Will felt queasy. In his head, he went through every interaction he’d had with Brimstone; every lie, big and small, that he had told in front of the innocuous little advisor. Had Handsome simply not noticed? Will couldn’t acquit himself quite that good of a liar. He had to know some part of Will’s intent, at the very least.

And he had told Brimstone nothing. If he had, Will was utterly certain that he would already be a charred corpse at the bottom of a midden heap.

Which meant that Handsome, at the very least, had quite a selective sense of loyalty. It supported Dawn’s theory.

For now, though, Handsome was a lesser problem. A riddle he would have to solve as he went. Brimstone himself was the main concern.

“Whatever the case may be,” Will said, “Handsome is a lesser problem for now. He’s a riddle I’ll solve as I go, but your husband is the main concern. I commend you on your kind heart, Dawn, but there is nothing left in him to be redeemed.”

Dawn closed her eyes. “I…” She swallowed hard, as though the words caught in her throat. “Yes. I believe you’re right.”

“Then you’ll talk?”

“I’ll talk.”

Will nodded in grim satisfaction, and moved closer as the lady-consort began to speak.

* * *

Number Two

“Hurry,” the master had told him. “Go as fast as you can.”

Number Two had obeyed, rushing through the forest as quick as he dared without drawing the attention of bad monsters. He nearly collapsed as he stumbled into the big open place that surrounded his home.

He went inside the big house, slamming the door in his haste, which the master’s master would have been upset about if he had been there. But he was not, so Number Two did not need to worry.

Big Brother One soon hobbled out of the useless room of many things when he heard Number Two come in, holding one of the square paper things the master called a ‘book’ in his hand.

‘What happen?’ Number One signed one-handed, much concern on his face. ‘Why you breathe so much?’

‘Big important mission from the master,’ Number Two explained, even though he really did not have the time. ‘Very big, he say. Very important.’

‘What important?’

‘He bet big. All-in, he say.’

‘You speak truth, brother?’

‘I speak truth!’ Number Two signed insistently, boldly, to get his emotion across. ‘Big true!’

Big Brother left very slowly and oldly to put his book thing back with the other book things, and to put away the delicate things that the master called ‘glasses’ on a small table. When he returned, Number Two was practically hopping up and down with urgency, despite his heavy limbs.

‘What the master want you do?’ Big Brother asked, with much too much calmness.

‘He want everything,’ Number Two said. ‘All the paper monies. The master’s master’s monies, too.”

Big Brother went stiff at that. ‘But the master’s master will be angry.’

‘Master say he pay it back.’

‘What if lose?’

‘He say he win for sure.’

Big Brother peeled his lips back like he tasted something sour. ‘Human game never work like this. Sometimes lose, sometimes win. What if lose?’

Number Two shrugged. He did not know.

Big Brother clapped a hand to his forehead, chattering softly with much fear. ‘Master sometimes think stupid. We must protect master from stupid.’

Number Two snarled. ‘A good boy follow orders!’ His signs were angry, now; fingers flashing, hands clapping together with much loudness. ‘Want papers, he say! Very important, he say! He say, and we obey!’

Big Brother bared his teeth and smacked Number Two on the shoulder. Number two smacked him back, and then they were rolling on the floor, hitting and kicking and snarling in each other’s faces. Number Two was younger and stronger—Big Brother was old and had weak muscles.

But Big Brother was a wise ape, and he twisted himself in very strange ways that Number Two could not follow, and eventually Number Two found himself on his back, with Big Brother standing over him, his gray chest heaving.

Then Big Brother stopped looking angry, and he stepped back, signing: ‘Sorry.’

Number Two stood up, trying not to show how much he hurt all over, especially at his side, where Big Brother had torn out a big clump of fur. ‘No worry,’ he said, wanting to make peace again.

‘You are right,’ Big Brother admitted. ‘We obey. We must.’

Number Two nodded, scratching at the bleeding bald spot. ‘Good,’ he signed one-handed.

‘But I don’t like what master think.’

Number Two shrugged. He didn’t care. Paper monies meant nothing to him—they were useful to get tasty treats from human food makers, but an ape did not need many papers to get all the treats he could possibly eat.

But humans were obsessed with getting more papers all the time. Why? He did not know. They only put them in big piles to not use. It was one of many strange things humans did. Number Two accepted that he would never understand these things, and so made no attempt to, but Big Brother was different. He was more human than ape, sometimes, and he thought in ways that were not ape-like.

Big Brother’s brow was furrowed with much worry, but he did not try to argue anymore. Having reached an agreement, Number Two told him again that they needed to go fast, so they split up and began taking all the paper monies out of their secret hiding places in the big house. There was the master’s secret pile, hidden under the floor of his bed, which was small. Then there were the many secret piles that the master’s master kept all around the house, the ones he thought the apes did not know about. But the apes had built the house, and they knew all things in it.

The master’s master’s piles were pretty big, and when they were finished there was a bulging backsack of papers for him to carry. Big Brother offered to come with to the city, but they both knew he was too slow—he would stay.

‘If human ask what in sack,’ Big Brother signed as he followed Number Two onto the porch, ‘what I tell you to say?’

‘Potato in sack,’ Number Two replied one-handed, the other holding the sack slung over his shoulder. ‘Take potato to human food maker.’

Big Brother nodded, and patted him on the back. ‘Good boy. Now hurry, and be quiet. Let not guard man on wall see you. He will take sack and throw you in prison, and the master’s master will hurt the master.’

Number Two nodded soberly. He did not know what prison was, except that it was a bad place where bad humans went so they would suffer for a long time without food or friends or sunlight. He did not want to go there.

Number Two left into the dark forest, and the backsack on his shoulder was very heavy, even though there were only papers inside.