A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes #2) - Sabaa Tahir Page 0,105

might have lost interest in me.”

“Ah, Elias.” The Warden clucks his tongue. “You served here. You know my methods. True suffering lies in the expectation of pain as much as in the pain itself.”

“Who said that?” I snort. “You?”

“Oprian Dominicus.” He paces back and forth, just out of my reach. “He was Warden here during the reign of Taius the Fourth. Required reading at Blackcliff in my day.”

The Warden holds up the Tellis extract. “Why don’t we start with this?” At my silence, he sighs. “Why were you carrying it, Elias?”

Use the truths your interrogators want, the Commandant’s voice hisses in my ear. But use them sparingly.

“A wound went bad.” I tap the scar on my arm. “The blood cleanser was the only thing I could find to treat it.”

“Your right forefinger twitches ever so slightly when you lie,” the Warden informs me. “Go on, try to stop doing it. You won’t be able to. The body does not lie, even if the mind does.”

“I’m telling the truth.” A version of it, anyway.

The Warden shrugs and pulls on a lever beside the door. A mechanism in the wall behind me grinds, and the chains attached to my hands and feet pull tighter and tighter, until I am flush against the wall, my body yanked into a taut X.

“Did you know,” the Warden says, “that a single set of pliers can be used to break every bone in the human hand if pressure is applied in the correct manner?”

It takes four hours, ten mangled fingernails, and skies know how many broken bones for the Warden to get the truth about the Tellis out of me. Though I know I could last longer, I eventually let him have the information. Better that he think me weak.

“Most strange,” he says when I confess that the Commandant poisoned me. “But, ah”—understanding lights his face—“Keris wanted the little Shrike out of the way so she could whisper what she liked to whomever she liked without interference. But she didn’t want to risk leaving you alive. Clever. A bit too risky for my taste, but …” He shrugs.

I twist my face in pain so that he doesn’t see my surprise. I’ve wondered for weeks why the Commandant poisoned me instead of killing me outright. I’d finally decided she simply wanted me to suffer.

The Warden opens the cell door and pulls on the lever to loosen my chains. I thud gratefully to the floor. Moments later, the Scholar boy enters.

“Clean the prisoner,” the Warden says to the child. “I don’t want infection.” The old man cocks his head. “This time, Elias, I let you play your games. I found them fascinating. This invincibility syndrome you seem to have: How long will it take to break it? Under what circumstances? Will it require more physical pain, or will I be forced to delve into the weaknesses of your mind? So much to discover. I look forward to it.”

He disappears, and the boy approaches, weighed down by a clay pitcher and a crate of clinking jars. His eyes flicker to my hand and widen. He crouches beside me, his fingers as light as a butterfly as he applies various pastes to clean the wounds.

“It’s true what they say then,” he whispers. “Masks don’t feel pain.”

“We feel pain,” I say. “We’re just trained to withstand it.”

“But he—he had you for hours.” The boy’s brow furrows. He reminds me of a lost starling, alone in the darkness, searching for something familiar, something that makes sense. “I always cry.” He dips a cloth in water and wipes away the blood on my hands. “Even when I try not to.”

Damn you, Sisellius. I think of Darin, suffering down here, tormented like this boy, like me. What horror did the Warden unleash upon Laia’s brother before he finally died? My hands burn for a scim so I can separate the old man’s insectile head from his body.

“You’re young,” I say gruffly. “I cried too when I was your age.” I offer him my good hand to shake. “My name is Elias, by the way.”

His hand is strong, if small. He lets go of me quickly.

“The Warden says names have power.” The boy’s eyes flit to mine. “All of us children are Slave. Because we are all the same. Though my friend Bee—she named herself.”

“I won’t call you Slave,” I say. “Do—do you want your own name? In the Tribal lands, families sometimes don’t name children until years after they are born. Or maybe you