“It wasn’t me.” It almost sounded true. It couldn’t have been me. “I don’t know.”
Snorri shrugged. “Calm down. I’m not one of your Roma Inquisitors. Just thought it might be useful with Goggle there.” He pointed his knife at Meegan.
I looked at my hands and wondered. It’s often said that cowards make the best torturers. Cowards have good imaginations, imaginations that torment them with all the worst stuff of nightmare, all the horrors that could befall them. This provides an excellent arsenal when it comes to inflicting misery on others. And their final qualification is that they understand the fears of their victim better than the victim does himself.
All this might be true, but I’ve always found myself too scared that somehow, some way, any victim of mine might escape, turn the tables, and work the same horrors on me. Basically the cowards who make good torturers are less cowardly than me. Even so, Meegan did need some encouragement and I needed to understand what had happened with the corpse-man. Snorri had mentioned the Roma Inquisitors, without doubt the most accomplished torturers in the Broken Empire. If I wanted to avoid discussing “my witchcraft” with those monsters, then I would be best advised to understand it myself so as to be rid of it as quickly as feasible and to be able to hide it as effectively as possible.
Meegan had an ugly-looking cut on his arm, just below the shoulder. Some edge of the rock had ripped through his padded jerkin and chewed on into his flesh. I reached out towards it. Always start with a weak point.
“Myltorc! Myltorcdammu!” He chewed at the gag trying to get the words out.
I have to admit a small thrill at having the upper hand after what seemed like weeks of nothing but running, sleeping in ditches, and being terrified. Here at last was a foe I could handle.
“Oh, you’ll talk all right!” I used the menacing voice I used to scare my younger cousins with when they were small enough to push around. “You’ll talk.” And I slapped my palm to his wound, willing him to burn!
The results were . . . underwhelming. At first I felt nothing but the decidedly unpleasant squishiness of his injury as he writhed and jerked beneath my touch. I had to press hard to keep him from twisting away. At least it seemed to be hurting him, but that turned out to be more by way of anticipation than anything else, and he quieted down soon enough. I tried harder. Who knows what working magic is supposed to feel like? In the games we used to play in the palace, the sorcerer—always Martus, by dint of being the eldest brother—cast his spells with a strained face, as if constipated, squeezing his reluctant magic into the world through a small . . . well, you get the picture. Lacking any better instruction, I put into practice what I’d learned as a child. I crouched there on the mountain, one hand on my hopefully terrified victim, my face constipated with the awesome power I was straining to release.
When it actually happened, nobody there was more surprised than me. My hand tingled. I’m sure all magic tingles—though it may have been pins and needles—then a peculiar brittle feeling stole from each fingertip, joining and spreading to the wrist. What I first took to be a paling of the flesh became a faint but unmistakable glow. Light started to leak around my fingers as if I were concealing something brighter than the sun within my grip, and a faint warmth rolled beneath my palm. Meegan stopped struggling and stared at me in horror, straining at his bonds. I pushed harder, willing hurt into the little bastard. Bright fracture lines started to spread across the back of my hand.
The light and the warmth seemed to draw on me, flow from my core to the single extremity where they burned. The day grew colder, the rocks harder, the pain in my ankle and throat sharp and insistent. The spreading cracks frightened me, too strong a reminder of the fissure that had chased me when I broke the Silent Sister’s spell.
“No!” I jerked my hand back, and the weight of exhaustion that settled on me nearly pressed me to the rocks.
A shadow loomed across us. “Have you broken him yet?” Snorri squatted beside me, wincing.
I lifted my head. It weighed several times more than it should. The rip in Meegan’s jerkin showed pale and unbroken skin beneath the blackening smears of blood, a faint scar recording where his wound had been. “Shit.”
Snorri tugged at the man’s gag. “Ready to talk?”
“I been ready since I came round,” Meegan said, trying to roll back into a sitting position. “I was trying to tell that one. No need for any rough stuff. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Oh,” I said, vaguely disappointed, though it was exactly what I would have done in his position. “And we’re supposed to let you go after that, are we?”
Meegan swallowed. “It’d be right fair of you.” He had a nervous, sweaty way about him.