Taking prisoners, save for those of political importance, is a waste of resources. Feeding and guarding them will only strain the capabilities of an army, while there always remains the risk of an escape. Better to summarily execute them immediately.

* The Campaign Journals of General Aurelius, volume I

☀

15th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

Two nights in a cage made Trist long for the comfort of Claire’s bed, back in her father’s keep at Rocher de la Garde. He hadn’t slept well, it seemed, for a week or more. Before the cage it had been the siege, with missiles from Sir Moriaen’s engines bombarding the city walls at all hours. Before that, the desperate ride east to the city, and then north into the Arden, where his father had been killed.

Now, he leaned against linen-wrapped iron bars that still itched his skin worse than coarse wool, and left a red rash. There was no help for it: the cage, suspended from the ceiling of the great hall in Cheverny, did not give him enough room to even stretch his legs, nevermind lie down. To avoid burning himself, he’d torn his linen underwear to shreds and wound the strips around the bars. The first light of torches, used to mark the difference between morning and endless night, was just now spilling in from the corridor into the great hall, and he knew there was no point in trying to go back to sleep.

As carefully as he could, so as not to jostle the cage or make any noise, Trist turned around so that he could see Acrasia. The faerie had stopped weeping sometime during the night, and now simply hung from the stone wall where she’d been spiked through the arms. Instead of iron, they had used steel spikes, so as to keep her alive and tormented, rather than let her die.

“Acrasia,” Trist hissed, but there was no response. Instead, the woman in the cage next to his stirred.

“Don’t let them hear you talking,” Margaret, Exarch of Rahab, warned him. “They’ll hurt you even worse.”

Trist turned to face her. Margaret was even more filthy than he was, after over a moon locked in a cage, and starved besides. Her brown hair was matted and dull, her lips dry and cracked, her nails long and filthy. Just as they’d stripped Trist, the daemons must have torn her clothes off, as well, for beneath the sweat and grime of her captivity flashed glimpses of a pale thigh, or the shadow of her ribs. There was no room for embarrassment or self consciousness here: they were at the mercy of Avitus and his daemons, and far worse awaited them.

“Like Bruin,” Trist whispered back, and Margaret nodded. The story of that Exarch’s fate - how Avitus had consumed him and all his Tithes - had been the first she’d told him, in the long hours of the night.

Servants bustled in, bringing fresh wood for the two great hearths at either end of the hall. Trist settled back into silence, and watched them at their work; by the time they’d brought in ladders to light fresh candles in the chandeliers overhead, he could tell the other captive Exarchs were stirring. There wasn’t much chance to talk to those on the other side of the throne, but he knew that one was Sir Lorengel, the King’s cousin and the Exarch of Veischax. The last, Margaret had told him, was Sir Cynric, Exarch of Theliel.

It was, Trist considered, a mark of Avitus’ arrogance to have kept them all alive and displayed as trophies. Four Exarchs in one place would cause a lot of trouble, if only they could get free: and while the three knights who had been in captivity since the fall of Lutetia might have given up their hope of escape, he had not.

What Avitus did not know - what Trist had told no one, since being captured - was that both he and Acrasia had a single Tithe yet unspent, from the end of the siege. He’d cut down Kimmerians on the wall, and then at the last, leaped down into the courtyard and killed a man there, as well. After accounting for Auberon’s portion, he had one Tithe to spend - but he needed Acrasia to be awake and able to use it.

Around the prisoners, the keep woke. Once the great hall was lit, and the fires in the hearths stoked, servants arrived in a line from the castle’s kitchens, bearing platter after platter of food, which they set down at the high table. The smell of it was worse torture than being beaten: freshly baked loaves of brioche, heaps of juicy bacon, and pots of various fruit jams all taunted his nose. There were wheels of cheese, as well, and carafes of freshly squeezed juices, and creamy butter for spreading.

The prisoners, of course, were fed only every other day, and only on kitchen scraps that had already been picked over by the servants.

It all sat, untouched, until Avitus arrived. Trist couldn’t have said how long that took, but when the daemonic Exarch finally entered the hall, he did not come alone. Two women came with him, one laughing and leaning into his arm, the other quietly following behind, eyes downcast. The first, Trist did not recognize, but the second, he did.

He wasn’t certain how Enid de Lancey had been taken captive by the usurper, but Trist guessed that it meant the late Sir Tor’s knight’s fee had been seized. So far as he could recall, La Colline Isolé was located north of Havre de Paix, and inland, a quarry town not far from the eastern edge of the Ardenwood, where men dug granite out of the hillsides. Avitus would doubtless be using the stone to repair Lutetia’s fortifications in preparation for defending the city.

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“Come, sit with us, Enid,” Avitus urged, sprawling himself into a chair at the center of the high table. The smiling lady sat with him, and immediately began serving, filling the Exarch’s plate. “You need to put a bit of meat on you. Give her some bacon, Amélie,” he urged.

“As the Emperor commands,” Amélie said with a grin, and piled the meat on Enid De Lancey’s plate.

Just eat it, Trist urged her silently. Do not say anything to make him angry, and eat it.

Instead, Enid spread butter and jam over a slice of bread, and took a small bite of that. “I said eat the damned bacon,” Avitus shouted at her, and let loose with a back-handed slap to her face that sent Enid tumbling out of her chair and to the floor. Her long hair fell in her face, and Trist could see her shoulders trembling even from in his cage.

“You’re too skinny for my bed,” Avitus complained. “If you don’t eat, you’re no use to me at all. Do you know what I do with weeping women who are no use to me?”

“Don’t waste your time on her,” Amélie crooned, leaning in to nuzzle the usurper’s cheek. “She’s frigid, anyway. I can keep your bed more than warm enough.”

“She is defying me,” Avitus groused. “I cannot have someone defy me. Enid De Lancey, sit in your chair and eat everything on your plate, or I will give you to my Kimmerian mercenaries. By the time they are done, you will be begging me to take your head.”

“Yes, m’lord,” Enid said, in a small voice that made Trist sick to her stomach. When she took her seat and pulled her hair back out of her face, he could see her cheek already swelling from the slap. Avitus could have killed her with that blow, Trist knew - he had held back.

Enid took up a piece of bacon, brought it to her mouth, and wretched. I don’t usually eat meat, she had told him years before, in his father’s hall.

“Enough of this,” Avitus said, pushing Amélie off his lap and rising. “Where is my sword?”

“I will fight for you if you do two things,” Tor de Lancey’s ghost had told Trist. “First, call me to no battle that is not worthy of my vow as a knight. See that my daughter is safe…”

“If you want to practice fencing,” Trist called to the usurper, “let me out of this cage and give me a blade. I at least will make you sweat for it. Only a weak man hits a woman who cannot defend herself.” Margaret shot him a wide-eyed look, and huddled in on herself, making her body as small as she could at the bottom of her cage.

Quick as a wildcat, Avitus sprung out of his chair and closed the distance from the high table to Trist. Amélie and Enid gasped, but Trist smiled. He’s slower than I am. Trist had already known that the Boons given by faeries emphasized speed and reflexes, while the daemons he had fought always held the edge in raw strength, but it was a pleasant surprise to find that for as many souls as he must have Tithed over the centuries, Avitus was still not invincible. If Trist was faster than someone, he could beat them, with time and skill.

“Perhaps I was mistaken to leave you a tongue,” the daemonic Exarch said, with a scowl. “I can correct my mistake, and take it from you now.”

“Easy to do while I am locked in a cage,” Trist shot back. “Unarmed and unarmored.” He needed to make the man angry enough with him that Avitus would forget about Enid De Lancey.

“No,” Avitus mused. “Not the tongue, I think. I would much prefer hearing you scream and beg when I break you, Sir Trist. You have troubled me enough that I want to take my time doing that. Perhaps I should begin now. Amélie, dear, bring me one of those torches from the wall.”

Trist gritted his teeth. Whatever Avitus did to him, he’d kept his promise to the ghost of Tor De Lancey. Better that he be tortured, than an innocent girl. Amélie rose from her chair and strode over to the east wall of the great hall, toward one of the torches lit in a sconce.

The door to the corridor slammed open, and Sir Moriaen entered. The knight marched forward, took a knee, and lowered his head. “As you ordered, Emperor,” he said, “I come.”

Avitus was close enough that Trist was able to observe his cheek twitch. “Two days ago, Moriaen, I commanded you to attend me and to report on your failure at Rocher de la Garde. Two days, and you only present yourself now. Did you finally overcome your cowardice?”

“No, Emperor,” Moriaen answered. “I came as soon as I had seen to the retreat from Rocher de la Garde, and once I was confident there would be no immediate pursuit. Now that my men are encamped safely, I came as soon as the Serpent of Gates would open a portal.”

“Your defeat is unacceptable,” Avitus said, raising his voice so that it echoed around the great hall. “You had four daemons to support you, Kimmerian mercenaries. Superior numbers. Against a garrison force of old men and young boys, a city stripped of its best fighters.”

Moriaen looked up, his eyes meeting Trist’s. “You have the cause here in a cage,” the knight said.

“One Exarch,” Avitus chided him. “You claim all of this is the fault of a single Exarch.”

“He killed Zepar and Vinea, and drove Forneus back,” Moriaen said. “Killed Alyosha Nikitich. Sir Gareth could never have held the city without him. We would have secured the walls before Lionel ever came.”

“It is time to make adjustments,” Avitus said. “Sammāʾēl will starve them. You will pull your men back to Lutetia, and bring every scrap of grain, every barrel of ale, each chicken or cow you can find with you. Pick the countryside clean. Leave them nothing.”

Moriaen bowed his head.

“As for the Exarch who has caused us so much trouble,” Avistus said, turning back to Trist in his cage. “I will ensure that he never opposes us again.”

Avitus was slower than Trist, but stronger. When he reached a hand through the bars, Trist tried to fight the usurper off, but had nowhere to go. Avitus caught him by the neck and squeezed. Trist, choking, reached up to pry the fingers from his throat, but he couldn’t move them. He couldn’t breath, and his vision began to fade.

“Never again,” Avitus said, and with his other hand ripped Trist’s eyes out, one after the other, as fast as a chicken pecking at seed. The great hall echoed with the sound of screams.