He was sitting in a sturdy metal chair in the centre of the room, above the large drain hole, his wrists bound to the sides of the chair with thick rope. The sorcerer's band I'd put on his wrist was still there. His face was bloody and swollen, but he still managed to grin when he saw me. "Matthew couldn't get it done, so he sends you, that right?"
"Oh, I'm not here to hit you. I don't really feel that punching people does anyone any favours. In the long run, all it does is hurt your hand and make you tired."
"So what are you going to do?" Elijah sneered.
I remained silent, unfolding the chair and placing it in front of him, before leaving the room. I returned with Elijah's tray of exquisite knives, each made from silver with a mahogany handle and a golden E engraved on the hilt. I also brought in a small table, placing it next to Elijah who grinned when he saw the knives.
"Those aren't going to help you. You might as well start punching again."
"You do jump to a lot of conclusions," I pointed out as I sat in front of Elijah. "I'm here to tell you a story."
Elijah spat a lump of red blood onto the floor beside me. "You can go fuck yourself."
"It's just a story, there's no need to get upset about it. If you'd like, I can gag you while I tell it."
Elijah forced a smile. "Feel free to continue."
I nodded my thanks. "It was roughly 440 A. D when Merlin took me to China for the first time. I was around thirty years old, give or take a few years, and Merlin had described the trip as training. So, I trekked for thousands of miles to a strange land. I learnt the language on the way and was left on my own within a year to work with a warlord. I lived and worked there for half a century, and it was good training, but that's not the story. You see, after those fifty years had passed, Merlin re-appeared and told me I had a new assignment, a new task to explore. So, I was taken south and introduced to the lord of the area. I assumed at the time that I was going to be working for the new warlord in a fighting capacity. Instead I was introduced to a baker by the name of Xiao Jing.
"I spent three months living with Jing, his wife and family-two young girls and an older boy, helping bake bread. That's all I did for three months. Bake bread. I actually got pretty good at it, in fact I'm still pretty good at it, but after that length of time I began to wonder what Merlin's point had been. Merlin had already left to go who knows where, so I just continued baking, and living my life with Jing's family.
"And then one day, Jing was called to the warlord's palace, and I was asked to accompany him. I followed Jing through the palace and down into the basement where I started to notice that the guards gave us a wide berth. We walked down dark corridors and opened a door at the end. Inside was a man strapped to a chair in the centre of a room, much as you are in this one. Like you, his face was bloody. The guards had beaten the shit out of him for hours."
I grabbed my glass of ice water and took a long drink, leaving the second glass full without asking Elijah if he wanted any. "There was no one-way mirror like the one behind me. Instead, there were little slots inside the wall that people could open from a room on the other side and watch what was happening."
"Is there a point to this?"
I slapped Elijah across the face hard enough to snap his head to the side. "Don't be rude, I'm getting there. You see, Jing wasn't just a baker; he was also a very specialised information gatherer. In fact, his skills at torture were used all over the south of the country.
"In this instance, the man in the room was accused of raping and murdering a thirteen-year-old girl, the daughter of a prominent member of the higher class that lived near the palace. At first I thought that Jing would start cutting on him, or breaking bones. But instead, he just sat and talked to him for hours. He explained what was going to happen, and asked the man if he was going to tell them who had committed the crime, but the man refused to speak. So Jing had the man's son, a fifteen-year-old boy, brought in to sit beside him. And Jing tortured that boy for an hour. He used sharp pins to cause the boy to scream in pain, and the man broke. He told Jing that it was his other son who had raped and murdered the girl. That he was just trying to protect his older son.
"I'll never forget what happened next. The boy got down from the chair he was in, hugged his father and walked out. It had all been a ruse. The boy had gone to the warlord and begged for his father to be released, saying that it was his older brother who had committed the crime and that he'd done it before. Jing had hatched the plan to get the father to try and protect his innocent son, by giving up the guilty one. That's why Jing spoke to the man before anything happened; he wanted to know what kind of man he was. You see, Jing had this extraordinary ability to tell when someone was lying."
"So what happened to the older boy?"
"Oh, the man was released and the older son brought in. Jing made him confess to half a dozen similar crimes over the next few hours. Then he had the boy taken outside and beheaded. It was the first time of many that I would spend in the palace with Jing. Over the coming years, Jing taught me how to torture someone. Not always with pain and brute force, but with psychology, knowing what works for what person. The ability to read someone and know, just know, how to break them. I studied with him for a long time."
"And what kind of man am I?"
"You see, now, there's the problem. I don't have time to sit and chat with you for hours. I can't afford to do that. So here's what's going to happen. You have one chance. Right now. You tell me where Peter took Tommy and his daughter."
Elijah laughed. "Who the fuck do you think you are? When I get out of here, I'm going to have you and everyone you care about flayed."
I sighed. "My name is Nathan Garrett. I worked for Merlin doing the things that needed to be done. You might know me by another name." I leaned toward Elijah. "You can call me Hellequin."
Elijah's eyes never left mine, and I saw the utter fear in them at the mention of my old name. But he soon covered it with bravado. "Bullshit, he's a myth. He never existed. Avalon created him to scare children."
"I figured you might say that." I grabbed a four inch knife and drove it into Elijah's knee just above the joint until it hit the bone.
I walked over to the glass as Elijah screamed in pain while the silver caused the wound to burn. "Can we get some bandages?"
A few seconds later the door opened, and one of guards brought me a selection of still wrapped bandages. He gave me an odd glance, he'd probably heard my old name, but I ignored it and took the bandages back over to Elijah.
"This is going to hurt," I said and removed the knife.
Elijah screamed obscenities at me as I opened a bandage and wrapped it around his leg. It took two bandages before the blood no longer seeped through, by which point Elijah was panting as the pain subsided.
I held the last part of the bandage in place. "You plan on telling me now?"
"There's nothing you can do, that would make me tell you."
I raised my eyebrows in shock. "Nothing? Nothing at all? Oh, dear Elijah. Everyone breaks. Everyone. It's just a matter of stimulus and time. But I don't have the latter. So, one last chance."
"Go to hell, you fucking prick."
"We don't seem to have any pins for the bandage. It's not much use without one." I turned back to the glass. "Can we get a pin in here?"
"Turns out Hellequin's a pussy," Elijah sneered.
"No pins?" I said to the mirror. "That's okay, I've got one." I grabbed a six inch, but incredibly thin blade from the tray, and plunged it through the bandaged knee. "There we go, we can use that."