The Warden, flanked by guards, waits by Faria’s hut the next morning. Faria, Jinam Shank, and Bruul Vaarkson, sporting a fat lip and a few missing teeth stand alongside him. My face remains calm—I’m not sorry for what I’ve done.
“Edmon Leontes,” says The Warden as he strokes his mustache. “You’re coming with us.”
“Where are you going to put me? Prison?” I ask wryly.
The Warden’s face flushes, and Faria shakes his head. I’ve disappointed him by aggravating the situation. “What’s the charge?” I ask more seriously.
“We don’t need a reason. You’re ours, worm,” Greelo squawks. He and Sookah step forward to bind my wrists.
Faria shakes his head again at me. Do not try anything, he silently indicates.
“Inciting riot,” The Warden says gleefully.
“I was defending myself!” I protest.
“We have it on good authority that you attacked three members of the Hauler Gang, including the foreman. Violence is against all regulations of my prison, Leontes.”
“Violence like whipping a man in front of a crowd?” I ask.
Faria purses his lips.
Just shut up, Edmon.
“One man against three, and I’m to be punished?” I ask more calmly.
Public punishment didn’t go well for The Warden. Inflicting public pain again would only strengthen me and weaken his own position.
“The Citadel.” The Warden smiles. “One year.”
A year in darkness! “I’ve done nothing but help keep your workforce strong, help you bring in the haul,” I say.
“We can do without your help, Leontes. You’re no noble son here.” He stalks forward until his face is centimeters from my own. “You’re nothing.”
“Let me be judged by my peers. Call witnesses. I didn’t start the riot.”
The Warden hoots. “This isn’t the College of Electors. You aren’t a Combat champion. You haven’t earned judicial reprieve! If I say you go in the tower”—his laughter ends abruptly and his voice drops low and menacing—“you go.”
Faria is utterly impotent to prevent this. I’m on my own, as I have always been.
“Besides, we have asked witnesses,” The Warden says. “Those who did not implicate you were easily convinced of the error of their ways.”
I want to spit into The Warden’s smug, fat face and watch my spittle run down his chin. Yet even if he’s been told by my father to keep me alive, even if he fears making me a symbol of rebellion, such an action might not stay his hand. Pride can only be diminished so much in a man before he breaks.
Death or the Citadel. I cling to my rage, shield it like a candle against the winds of the Nightside. I look The Warden in the eye. My words come slowly and deliberately. “I understand, Warden. I’m sorry for any infraction. I accept my punishment willingly.” I bow in abject humbleness, just as I did to Old Wusong as a child.
The Warden’s beady eyes swivel in his porcine face. “Take him away,” he says.
My back stings from the caning they gave before they hauled me to the surface and into the dark tower. We walk down its corridors by torchlight. I hear the moans of prisoners from the surrounding cells as the light of the guards passes their grates. It’s the only spark of illumination in the place, this black monolith that protrudes from the barren landscape of ice. Here they send the worst of the worst to live in solitary confinement. Here they’ve sent me.
Greelo and Sookah open a heavy metallic door and toss me inside a small stone room. I fall to the slick wet floor. “Enjoy your time in the black, worm,” Greelo says, guffawing. “Goth will be by for dinners. See you in a year.” The iron slams behind them, and the light of the torch fades down the hallway.
Cold. Freezing. Left in the pitch. Somehow there’s at least a little heat pumping through a vent in the ceiling to warm me. I huddle close to its airstream. They need to keep us thawed just enough to live. The Citadel isn’t about sending prisoners to die; it’s about breaking us. Time spent in such sensory deprivation would turn anyone mad. Almost anyone.
My first hour passes. Then another. I crawl on all fours, circumnavigating the confines of the cell. I feel the edges, trying to discern my surroundings. Two meters or so up the wall, there’s some kind of a portal, smaller than the size of my head, that looks upon the open Nightside. I stand on tiptoes to peer at utter blackness, but for sapphire pinpricks in the velvet sky. So many stars, so little light. It makes me feel more alone.
Terror creeps in. There are moments of unspeakable fear that every man feels in silence—a moment before slumber that confronts him with who he truly is in the heart; a lucid moment when he separates from his body and looks at himself from the outside. That is when he is faced with the true, pathetic ugliness of who he is, what he has become. That’s the fear I feel now, the fear that stares me in the face. It is inescapable, like the monster of the sea. It is the eel that burrows into my skull with razor teeth and a malevolent laugh. I cry out in panic.
“Don’t worry,” the darkness whispers back. I spin, searching for the source, but see nothing. “When the light of the moons of Chang and Hou pass overhead in six months’ time, you will see for a full diurnal cycle.”
“Who are you?” I hiss.
I hear the scraping of metal above me. The heating grate, I realize. There is a sharp bang. The grate pops loose, and someone drops from above, landing softly on the dungeon floor. Startled, I fall backward onto my rear. I yelp as I still feel the sting of the caning I’ve recently received.
“Quiet,” the man hisses. “Goth will not be on this level for a while, but I don’t want to risk it.”
I know that voice!
“Master?”
I can almost hear the dark man nod. Then he’s beside me. His strong and gentle hands peel the rags away to examine my oozing back. “It’s fortunate that I’m used to doing my work without the benefit of sight.” He strikes my neck with his fingertips. I’m numbed from the neck down. He gently places me on the icy stone floor while he probes the wounds. “Not good, but not as bad as the first time,” he says, clucking. “Still, with some rest and care, you’ll survive. You always do.”
“Faria? How did you—?”
“Part of the plan, Edmon,” he reassures me. “When The Warden punished you, I was also partly responsible for your crime. The Warden needs my services to keep the camp running, but with some well-placed anger on my part, I convinced him that I’d broken the agreement to keep you out of trouble. He was unwilling to part with me for longer than a six-month stint, however, so we won’t have as much time as I would’ve liked.”