to one of the Vürdmeisters. Sure, after how well they’ve treated me.
Looking at the other men working on the bridge and seeing that none were watching, he drew his sword, set it aside, and slid his prize into its sheath. Not a perfect fit, but good enough for the moment. The hilt was a problem, what with those dragons, but he’d wrap leather bindings around it soon enough. He was good with his hands. Give him a few hours, and this sword would look like any other.
The sword brightened his outlook considerably. It wasn’t really enough to repay his valor, but it was a start.
The meister walked down the last corridor to what the Southron barbarians called Hell’s Asshole. The nauseating-intoxicating wash of torment engulfed her. She missed a step and stumbled against the wall. The soldier accompanying her turned. He looked scared.
“It’s nothing,” she said. She walked to the grate covering the hole. A few words and red light burned in front of her.
The creatures in the Hole squinted and shrank back. She spoke again and the light descended into the Hole. She examined each prisoner. Ten men, one woman, and one simpleton with filed teeth. None of them could be the usurper.
She turned, slightly dizzy, and walked out, trying not to flee.
A minute later, a big man rolled out from an overhang carved in the stone.
The woman looked at him and shook her head. “You’re a fool. Nothing they could do to you would be as bad as staying here. Look at you. You’re soft. The Hole will break you, Thirteen.”
Logan stared at her flatly, a grimy woman with gaping holes in her dress, short a few teeth. The look on her face was the only thing approaching human kindness that was to be found in this hole. “Though all the detritus of humanity pass through this hole and all the fires of perdition rise from it, I will not be broken,” Logan said.
“He use a lotta big words, don’t he?” the big man named Fin said. He smiled a smile full of bloody gums, one of the first symptoms of scurvy, and wrapped his sinew rope back around his body. “Lotta meat on that big fucker. We’ll eat real good.”
Scurvy meant food deficiencies. Food deficiencies meant Fin had lived long enough to get sick from food deficiencies. Fin was a survivor. Logan turned his eyes to him and pulled out his knife—literally his only edge against these animals. “Let me make this real simple,” he said, having to stifle the impulse to say “really” instead of “real.” “You will not break me. The hole will not break me. I will not break. I. Will. Not. Be. Broken.”
“What’s your name, love?” the woman asked.
Logan found himself grinning. Something fierce and primal was rising inside him. Something inside him said, where others have failed, have faltered, have fallen, I will be triumphant; I am different; I am cut of a new cloth; I will rise. “Call me King,” he said, and he smiled a fuck-you through the angst and the sorrow, and he was potent.
That was it. That was survival. That was the secret. That was the living flame hidden in the ashes of his burned-out heart. If only he could hold it.
Epilogue
E lene knocked on the door of the cooper’s shop, her hair covered, back bent, and foot twisted sideways in the dust. The Khalidoran army had arrived yesterday and King Garoth Ursuul was rewarding his troops for their valor by allowing selected soldiers to take what they desired. It wasn’t a good day to be a pretty woman on the streets of Cenaria.
It had taken her two harrowing days to find this place. The cooper unbolted the door and signaled her in, gesturing to the back of the shop. Jarl was at a table covered with papers, fat sacks of money at his feet. “I’ve found your way out,” he said. “A Khalidoran caravan master has agreed to take you. You’ll have to lie in a compartment used to smuggle barush tea and worse things until you get outside the gates, but it’s big enough to hold you and the girl. You leave at nightfall.”
“You can trust this smuggler?” Elene asked.
“I can’t trust anyone,” Jarl said, exhausted. “He’s Khalidoran and you’re beautiful. But because he’s Khalidoran, he has the best chance of getting through the gates. And he’s worked with us for twenty years. I’ve made it in his best interest to take you safely.”