Page 95 of City of Stone and Silence

The cells are empty now, but no one has scrubbed away the bloodstains.

The basement under the Immortal safe house is divided into a dozen separate chambers, with a large space at either end. They’re more like cages than cells, with floor-to-ceiling steel bars for walls and no pretense of privacy. The place was overcrowded with prisoners from the hospital when we broke in, a dozen to a cage. They’re free, now, joining the crowds in the streets or lying on mats upstairs. All the cells are empty, except for one.

The Immortal captain is naked, shackled hand and foot to the stone wall. This isn’t for the sake of humiliation, or at least not only for humiliation. She’s a Tartak adept, and Blessed only knows what other Wells she might be hiding. Even chained hand and foot, she’s dangerous, and needs to be watched every moment. Clothes might conceal the telltale aura that means she’s making a move.

Two young women with makeshift spears are on guard duty, one sitting outside the cell, the other well back. The first to watch the captain and make sure she isn’t doing something subtle. The second to sound the alarm if the first gets torn to pieces. Hasaka suggested the arrangement, which makes me wonder what exactly he did in his stint in the Ward Guard.

Both girls stand up at the sight of me, though they don’t bar my path. Garo’s not wrong—people do respect me here, Blessed knows why. I take a breath to steady myself.

“I need to talk to her,” I say. “Alone.”

“It’s dangerous,” the guard says. “If you’re in there with her, we won’t be able to stop her from hurting you.”

“I promise to scream,” I tell her.

The pair look at each other, but neither seems to want to be the one to stop me. They open the cell door and I step inside. The Immortal captain raises her head at the sound of my footsteps.

She’s a tall, handsome woman, probably in her forties, with dark hair cut as short as a man’s and a surprisingly soft face under the sinister chain veil. There are scars on her arms, across her shoulders, the thin raised lines of cuts and the winding, shiny marks of repeated powerburn. Her breasts are heavy and sagging, and her belly bears stretch marks from pregnancy. Adepts breed, of course, for the benefit of the noble bloodlines. I wonder if she knows her children.

“You’re Tori, aren’t you,” she says. Her voice is the harsh rasp I remember from outside. “The sister.” She smiles. One of her teeth is missing. “You don’t look much like your picture.”

“You were looking for me,” I say. “In the raid. Why?”

The captain barks a laugh. “Does it matter?”

“Tell me.”

“Or what? You’ll kill me?” She makes an effort to shrug, which only jingles her chains. “You’ll have to do that sooner or later.”

“We could … hurt you.”

“You?” She laughs again.

“There are plenty of people who would welcome the opportunity.”

“Then give it to them,” she says. “I’m getting bored. But it won’t get you anywhere.”

I let my Kindre senses open, feel her mind. There’s fear there, but less than I expected. Determination, contempt, hatred, rage. It’s like looking into a sewer.

“Isoka,” I say. “What have you done with her?”

“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?” The captain’s grin widens. “Go rut yourself with a hot poker.”

“Then you did have her.”

The captain just shakes her head.

She knows. I can feel it, the satisfaction in her mind, the shape of the knowledge. I can’t read it. But I could reach out, take hold of her with my power, and squeeze. Eventually, she would tell me of her own accord. She’d want to.

Monster, Isoka whispers, slashed puppet-string dangling. Monster, monster, monster.

I take a deep breath, and ask a different question.

Back upstairs, Garo and the others are still going around in circles. They pause as I enter the room, waiting politely as I retake my seat at the table. Hasaka is about to start telling everyone for the dozenth time how pointless an assault on the gates would be, but I interrupt him.

“I know how to get past the walls,” I say. They go silent again, and I look at Garo. “That’s what we need, isn’t it? A way out of the lower wards, into the rest of the city?”

Garo nods cautiously. “You have an idea?”