windows gaped like missing teeth in each street. Some of them had been burned. There were blackened places on the cobblestones, too, and at the bases of some of the lampposts: bonfires, or worse. Whatever had been burned had already been cleared away. He saw lots of white sashes, embroidered with different symbols and different colors, but he also saw a number of matching white caps. He asked the guard what they were.
“Work enforcement. Making sure everyone who can work, does. No work, no scrip.”
“Scrip?”
“Companies keep their own stores now. Scrip’s what they take. Stops the price gouging at the markets.”
It made perfect sense. But Nate found himself asking, “What about the old and the sick?”
“Most people can do something, if they try hard enough,” the guard said.
Highfall Prison was a crumbling brick tower crammed onto a lump of land in the Brake that could barely be called an island. It wasn’t a large building; Elban hadn’t favored lengthy prison sentences. The same guard who’d hung off the phaeton rowed Nate over in a tiny boat, greasy green water splitting sluggishly around the prow. At the best of times, a person didn’t want to look too closely at things floating in the Brake. These were not the best of times. Nate kept his eyes straight ahead.
The guard led Nate into a dingy hallway. Through open doors on either side, he could see two reception rooms, one fairly nice and the other less so; they were meant for important visitors, which Nate wasn’t. He was taken instead to a dank staircase at the end of the hall. The walls of the staircase wept and the stone steps were slick with dampness. At the bottom was a similarly damp corridor, or rather, a wet corridor. As they walked, the guard directed Nate around puddles of standing water that had seeped up through the floor. Occasionally, these were deep enough to warrant planks of moldy wood lying across them as bridges.
The cell doors were solid, with hinged slots permitting the passage of food. There was no way to tell if a cell was inhabited or not, but as Nate passed one cell in particular, the back of his neck broke out in prickles. Power, but an unfamiliar sort. He paused by the door. The guard stopped, too.
“Hear something? That’s where they keep that Nali they brought back.” A smile crept over the guard’s face. “Doesn’t say much. He cries a lot, though.”
Reflection, the Seneschal had called it. Nate nodded, and resumed walking.
Eventually they came to a room that was more or less dry, which held a table, a chair and a small, hard cot. Yet another door in the far wall bristled with locks, to which the guard applied keys from a large ring until it swung open. The room beyond stank of many unpleasant things—all the fluids that could be taken or expelled from the human body, as well as char and meat—but they all added up to suffering. Iron-barred cells lined both sides, and the large space in the middle was full of devices that Nate chose not to consider. A man greeted them, clothed in a heavy apron of stained leather. Nate chose not to consider the stains, either.
“Here’s the magus, Interrogator,” the guard said.
“Pleased to meet you, magus. This way.” The Interrogator spoke pleasantly enough, but Nate could feel invisible blades of malevolence radiating from him. He couldn’t tell if the blades or the job had come first, but he supposed it didn’t matter. The aproned man led Nate to one of the cells. The door was open and unlocked; inside, Nate understood why. The man who lay on the floor had two brutally broken legs. His toes, knees and hips all pointed in contrary directions. He was extremely unlikely to stand up and walk away.
Nate knelt next to the prisoner and saw that his hands were mutilated, too. The man’s breathing was loud and ragged. Both of his ears had been cut off, the wounds crudely cauterized to black char. Nate found a bit of uninjured skin on the man’s throat. It felt cold and clammy, the pulse erratic.
Nate stood up, grateful for whatever it was that Derie had numbed in his brain. “Where would you like me to start?”
The Interrogator seemed vaguely embarrassed. “Well, magus, I’m not exactly used to this sort of thing.”
“It looks like you’re used to it.”
“Trying to get information, I mean. Under Lord—under Elban, rather—we just killed ’em, however slow he wanted. But