The burst of green illuminates the room for a second, and then winks out. I see dank walls, bars, human refuse. Then darkness, complete and overpowering.

“Father?” I whisper.

Noises come in response to my summons, but it origins from beyond the little rectangle of this cell. I feel suddenly very weak as the potion leaves my blood, making me see spots in the darkness. The rattle of chains, then a voice.

“Who’s there?” a ragged whisper.

I remain silent.

Rue, I hesitate, remembering Rue twisting in the air to bury itself in the guard’s flesh. A Godtouched, but still. What do you see? Is Medrein here?

No, Malco, says Rue, perfectly composed. I don’t see him.

“Please,” the voice says again, pleading. “Is that my husband? Are you there, Baront?” Growing louder.

“I’m not your husband,” I whisper. “Please be quiet.”

I touch the bars to orient myself, then swipe a foot on the floor behind me. The cell is minuscule. There’s no chance I simply overlooked Medrein. He really isn’t here, but that makes no sense. The human smell is overpowering and recognizable. The green flash illuminated enough for me to confirm this is the place Lagos brought me to.

“No, no,” the woman says. A string of no’s turns into a gasp, and then a wail. “No, no, no, no, no, no…”

Did they take him away? Put him in another place, another prison?

Did they kill him?

The woman’s wail is attracting unwanted attention. Other bodies stir in their cells and rise on unsteady legs, shaking against the bars.

“I’ve served my time,” says a weak but dignified voice from a cell directly in front of mine, wearied by the passage of the years. “I’ve been here long, too long. Please,” he asks the darkness. “Please let me go home to my family.”

Before I can ask him to be silent, someone bangs on the shared wall between my cell and the next.

“I told you!” the voice yells. Smack. “I told you where the dragon is!” Smack. “I told you, I told you.” Smack, smack. “Let me go! LET ME GO!” SMACK.

Other voices wake in the darkness. Scared and demanding and infinitely pitiful cries rise in the close space, climbing on each other to a terrifying, senseless din.

And then the clack of a key on a latch. A door swings open on oiled hinges, and a beam of light slices down the corridor, landing on the elaborate iron door that waits between the two final cells.

“What’s this?” yells a slurry, slobbering voice. “What are you sorry lot wagging on about? Be quiet, I say. QUIET!”

Though I cannot see him, I know the jailer is making his way down the corridor from the sting of his lash on any bit of skin it can reach. He punishes outstretched fingers and faces pressed too hard against bars, sends the prisoners back with yelps and cries of pain. I throw myself down to the darkest corner of the cell and wrap into a ball.

Immobile, observing from the disgusting cell floor, I see only the jailer’s shadow as he appears between the bars, lashing the old man pleading to be allowed to return to his family. He’s carrying no light, so when he turns, snarling, searching for disobedience, his eyes pass through my cell and see nothing but shadows. A moment later he paces up the corridor, striking bars at random.

“I’ve told ye time and time again,” he slurs. “You’s not more than dirt in this place. You’s got no fam’lies, no names. By t’ grace of m’lord Valkas only are ye still alive. Hear? HEAR?”

The small revolt quenched, his job done, he takes a final trip up to the elaborate iron door, which his shadow caresses with soft, reverent fingers. I hide my head between my arms, so that not even the glimmer of my eyes can make it to him.

“When it’s yet time, it’s yet time. ‘til thin ye’ll wait and be content. HEAR?”

Shaking his head, the man prepares to leave, but he’s barely taken a couple steps before he stops.

“You there,” he says.

No.

“Oy.”

Tense, ready to order Rue to turn into a dagger as soon as I’m up, I lift my head. But the man isn’t standing in front of my cell, but on the next one over.

“Gods mess it all,” the jailer mutters to himself.

He scurries out of the corridor, then walks back, increasing the light in the little row of cells. He fetched his own light. By it, I can distinguish the lines on the face of my front neighbor, a wizened man with leathery skin and dark, deep-sunk eyes with a wound on his forehead.

Before it can latch on to more worrying problems, my mind curls around that small detail. Medrein had a wound like that one when I saw him. An angry, spreading red, a wound which had not been allowed to scab over, but reopened again and again.

And then the old man sees me too, and his brow furrows.

I shake my head very slowly. Hiding behind the stone wall separating me from my neighbor, the jailer is busy fiddling with keys that tinkle jarringly in the darkness. One word, one sound, and all he has to do to spot me is to lean over.

The leather-skinned man doesn’t capable of indiscretion. His eyes swim back and forth, taking me in, maybe realizing I’m not the same person who used to occupy this space. He’s about to say something. His mouth opens.

And the ornate iron door swings in.

Sounds of effort come from the space beyond as someone carrying a heavy load sets it down.

“What’s happening here?” asks a voice. A familiar one. “Why are they all awake?”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Rao. I sink lower into myself. Pick up bits of trash and discarded food and place them over my prone body, hoping against hope to go unnoticed.

“Dunno, m’lord,” says the jailer. The light in the corridor bobs up and down as, I imagine, he bows. “Came in cuz there’s a racket, found this one like so.”

Rao passes in front of my cell. In the brief moment I see him, he looks gaunt and unbalanced. His full white hair was shaved until only a fuzz remains.

“Fuck,” he mutters.

“’appens,” says the jailer. “They go insane wit’ guilt, end it their own selves.”

A moment.

“What do we do about it?”

“There’s a chute in yon sacred room, lord,” says the jailer. “I’m glad carrying the man, but I’ll need your permission, o’course. Can’t go in by own self, merry as you please.”

“Yes,” Rao says. “Fine. Do it, whatever.”

“Per’aps we put that body in its cell first, lord?” the jailer suggests, gentle as a nurse. “So it’s not in the way, I mean.”

Rao doesn’t answer, but the two move together to lift someone off the ground just beyond the limit of the ornate iron door. They have trouble. The person is large, with still-thick arms that I recognize immediately just before I tighten more, more, more.

Should we kill them? Asks Rue.

Yes.

I feel Rue tighten himself. The oily, slithering mass he’s made of turns to a short blade, perfect for tight quarters. My hand grips his handle.

Huffing, the jailer props the body with his knees and strains to open the cell. My body tenses just a little more, a spring ready to burst.

“Come on, old man,” Rao says. “I don’t have all night.”

“Yes, lord, yes,” the jailer mutters apologetically.

I deflate.

We can’t kill them.

Why not? Rue asks. They deserve it. One locked your father away. The other tried to kill you.

If Rao sees me, he’ll warn the keep. Right now, they don’t know where we are. Maybe they think we left to meet Lysander, maybe they’re searching. But we’ve got the upper hand.

Rue holds a moment longer, angry and unsure, before relaxing too, letting softness overcome his weapon shape.

The lock turns, the cell door swings open. Holding the head, the jailer is the only one to walk in, and I squeeze my feet in. With the candle just out of sight, the shadows made deeper by its presence, I hope to the gods I’m safe.

Medrein is dropped down. The jailer steps wide over him as Rao kicks the legs into the cell, and then the door is closed, the lock turned.

“About done, methinks,” says the jailer philosophically. I don’t dare to look. “Your man, I mean.”

“I don’t care,” Rao says. I can’t place the emotion in his voice. I’m not sure there is one. “I’m off. You can drag the body in yourself.”

“Yes, lord, yes,” the jailer says. Then he continues, almost regretful. “Only, lord Valkas said you was to remain here until the schedule was cleared for the night, lord.”

“I don’t c—” Rao stops himself. Now there’s anger, now there’s rage there. “Who’s left?”

“There was this poor sod,” says the jailer.

“He’s dead. Do you want it to feed on a dead man?”

“No, no, lord, not I. But I thought, maybe we ought to pass another bastid along, so as it doesn’t go hungry?”

Rao barks out a laugh.

“I don’t give a flying fuck if the thing starves,” he snarls. “The schedule is emptied. Is it not?”

A pause.

“It is, lord.”

“Then I’m off. Here’s the key. I want the cell cleaned out before morning.”

With a jangle of metal, Rao strides out of the catacombs, large steps taking him deeper and deeper into the keep until he’s gone completely.

“Dirty bastid,” the jailer mutters quietly, to himself. Then he sighs, and with much turning of locks and grunting, he drags a body from the cell next to mine to the ornate iron door, opens that one, and, after a quick bow, pulls the dead prisoner inside. The door swings closed.

“Father?” I whisper.

Medrein doesn’t answer. His tree-like arms lie to both sides of him. His forehead bleeds profusely and his eyes are open, focused on the dark arched ceiling above.

“Father…”

He breathes. Convulses, more like, each ragged pull of air the ailing gasp of a dying man. Sending care to the wind, I rise shaking from my hiding place in the shadows and lift my father’s head off the floor. The pink heath potion drip drops past his cracked and bloodied lips. His face is red with gore, his beard and hair stained and clumped together with dried blood. He coughs a little at first, but then his mouth moves and he swallows, draining the small amount of liquid in a gulp.

“I’ll get you out of here,” I whisper. “I can open the lock. But need to walk, Father. I can’t carry you.”

Medrein coughs up a little more. His eyes flutter, and he mumbles a word, soft as wind and just as unknowable.

“Father, please, I…”

Steps outside, coming closer to the edge of the iron door. Cutting my words short, I lie back down on my cluster of shadows and freeze.

The jailer walks out walking backwards, head bowed, and facing the inside of the room.

“Yes, lord,” he says. “I will, lord, yes. Anything, lord.”

In the dingy corridor, he stands looking into Medrein’s cell.

“It’s your bad luck, sire,” he mutters to himself. “My lord is hungry for more. It would be a shame were ye to die in the night, wot’s likely to happen either way. This way we’ll both be happier. Me that lord is fed, you that your stuff does not go to waste.”

He jangles the door open at the same time that I grip Rue again, reformed into a dagger. But instead of coming in range, the jailer grabs my father’s legs and begins pulling him out, one grunt at a time.

I panic. Rising on instinct alone, I dash for the man, the shadows concealing my movements for the second I require to jump over Medrein, Rue held high, and plunge my Familiar into the jailer’s chest.

Or at least, that’s what should have happened. Instead, my thrust, weakened from the recent imbibing of a strength potion, finds resistance, armor under the man’s dirty rags. The strike still pushes him out into the corridor and against the bars of the cell in front, but unharmed. Before the jailer can recover from his surprise, the cell’s elder occupant jumps and grabs the man’s neck through the bars, screaming senseless things.

“Rage of the ocean gods upon you!”

Choking, the jailer is incapable of answering. I step forward, between furious and shocked, using the momentum to kill, kill now before I regret the impulse. And then a grunt from behind, Medrein’s, grabs my attention, distracts me for one instant. It’s enough.

The jailer’s hand flies to his breast and pulls out a vial. I get a glimpse of color: ruddy red in candlelight, familiar and dangerous. Without hesitation, the jailer brings it to his mouth and downs the contents of the potion.

The strength potion.

The effect courses through him like a wave. I watch as his bloodshot eyes light up from within, filled with a terrible power, and the jailer reaches back, grabs the arm that is still clinging to his neck, and rips it out from the socket.

“Dirty bastid,” the jailer spits among the prisoner’s screams. He grips the man’s arm by the wrist like a club. “Thought you could pull one over old Bolo, eh?”

I don’t answer, and the arm swings. I dodge, and the limb splits against the bars of an empty cell, spilling blood and gore everywhere.

Keep him busy, I think. Just keep him busy until the potion wears off.

But the jailer isn’t having it. He charges, yelling like a warrior, swinging his makeshift club in front of himself as he draws a real club from his belt. I’m too slow. One swing flies over me, but the next, clumsy as it is, hits me square on the shoulder and sends me flying.

“I know you,” the jailer says. There’s blood on his mouth, running from his lips onto his grimy armored chest. “You made much trouble for lord Valkas, for all the good lords of the Black Sword. I’ll be ‘appy to present your corpse, you dirty bastid.”

He raises his jailer’s club, the arm reduced to a bloody carcass. I put Rue up, sure that if it comes to that, the jailer’s strike will break my arm and my head in the same swing. I’m too weak. Too weak.

A grunt, and the club stops on the apogee of its arc. The jailer chokes, his bloodshot eyes bulge out as he is lifted off the ground.

Behind him is Medrein. Enormous, terrible, his red face locked into an empty, merciless waste. His great hand is wrapped around the jailer’s neck.

Both arm and club fall to the floor. The jailer tries to pry Father’s thick fingers from his throat. His potion-enhanced nails draw deep gauges in Medrein’s flesh, but he doesn’t relent for a second, for an instant.

Instead, he squeezes. There is a crack as something inside the jailer, something vital, gives way. The man pleads with eyes alone, uselessly. Blood spurts from between Medrein’s fingers and cascades to the floor in a terminal torrent. With a final crush, the jailer’s eyes go vacant. The body is allowed to drop to the floor, to begin staining it with the last dregs of life it can muster.

And then Medrein looks down, and in his dark, terrifying eyes, a light rekindles.

“Malco,” he whispers. Like he can’t believe it.