of the half-drowned while the bucket waited, amputate one charred limb while the fire was stoked for the other. He would loathe every second and he would loathe himself, but that didn’t matter. He had to stay in the Seneschal’s good graces. He had to have access to Judah.
One of the man’s eyes opened as much as it could. All Nate could see was a tiny slit of blue and black and bloodred. The man must have been in incredible pain. Nate didn’t even know if he understood what was going on. Reflexively, he gave the man a reassuring smile. The opium bottle was still cool in his hand.
He turned back to the Interrogator. “Can I give him anything for the pain?”
“Not much point,” the Interrogator said.
Nate nodded, and put the syrup away. He carefully cleaned and bound the oozing sores where the man’s fingernails had once been. The bones in the hand were not broken so much as obliterated. Judging by the bruising, the damage was several days old. He splinted and bandaged the fingers as well as he could. The courtier moaned at first, low and ragged, but soon the moans stopped and Nate knew he’d passed out.
Finished, he closed his satchel and went back to the Interrogator. “Leave that hand alone from now on. And let him rest until morning.”
The Interrogator eyed the courtier with distaste. “Will he live that long?”
“I think so. But call me earlier next time.”
“Thanks, magus,” the Interrogator said, clearly relieved. “Without your help, might be me in his place next.”
And then it would be the Interrogator that Nate put back together. He didn’t think that would bother him; but he said he was happy to help, and followed the guard out.
At the manor, all was quiet. Charles, thankfully, was asleep in Arkady’s room. Bindy had left Nate a piece of roasted meat, which he ate between two pieces of bread. He drank a beer that might as well have been water. He washed and shaved, and took the dirty water out into the garden to dump it.
Night had fallen. The moon was full and the garden was silvery and unreal. Carefully, he poured the water at the roots of some ferns that needed it. The air was warm and soft and damp, and it made Nate think of planting, and burial and renewal. It made him think of his mother.
Suddenly the ice inside him broke, and all the walled-away horror of the prison flooded through him. He smelled again the fetid cell and the courtier’s wounds and saw every single torture device in bitter, detailed clarity; and he was appalled. Who am I, he thought numbly. What have I done; what will I do? The memory of the courtier suffering in the Interrogator’s cell hurt him, ached in him like a bad tooth; like the worst tooth, like a tooth you would knock out with a rock rather than suffer with it for one second more. The Work Derie had done on him had not lasted. It happened sometimes. Things reordered themselves. He could go to her and tell her; he could ask her to redo it.
But he remembered, with a shudder, the feel of that unconquerable paralysis she’d put him under, his complete powerlessness in her grip, and something in him rebelled. He would go to the prison when summoned, and he would do the Seneschal’s disgusting bidding, because that was what he needed to do. Derie would do what she wanted to him, whenever she wanted, because that was what she’d always done. And he would let her, because that was what he’d always done—just as Charles let Nate practice the paralyzing Work on him, because Derie had ordered it—but he would not invite her attention, and he would not beg for it.
Still, without the numbness she’d Worked on him to shield him from what he’d done, sleep would be impossible. He went into the lab and mixed a strong draught: valerian, opium, anything that might wall the dying courtier away for a few hours. It tasted like acid and burned going down. By the time he made it to his pallet he was already stumbling, but it took several minutes of lying there, clenching and unclenching his fists, for oblivion to come.
* * *
He woke early. His brain felt a little tender, as if it had stumbled into a tavern brawl the night before, but the sky was clear, one of Highfall’s rare cloudless days. As Nate made tea,