Deleo — not that that was her real name — spoke for the first time. ‘You didn’t even recognise me, did you?’
‘If you’d called yourself Rachel, I would have.’
She looked away. ‘That’s not my name any more.’
Silence fell again as I went back to staring at Rachel. It’s a strange feeling, seeing someone after so long. When I’d first known Rachel, she’d been a teenager, pretty and thoughtful, always changing. In her face I could still recognise the person she’d once been, but her face was immobile now, mask-like. She was striking, even beautiful in a cold way, but ‘pretty’ didn’t describe her any more.
There had been four of us, back then. Me, Shireen, Tobruk and Rachel. Tobruk was dead. Shireen was probably dead. Rachel’s fate I’d never known. After that last battle, I’d never heard from her and she’d never come looking for me. I’d forgotten her, buried her in my memory along with everything else that had happened back then. Until now.
‘Why the mask?’ I said at last.
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Is this how you’ve been keeping yourself busy? Treasure-hunting?’
‘And you’ve been running a shop,’ Rachel said contemptuously.
I shrugged. I can’t say I like mages looking down on me for my day job, but I’m used to it. ‘Running a shop or treasure-hunting … it seems to have led us to the same place.’
Rachel didn’t answer. ‘Just out of curiosity,’ I said, ‘what were you planning to do with me and Luna after you got into that relic?’
‘Whatever I wanted.’
‘Modelling yourself on our old teacher?’
‘Fuck you,’ Rachel snapped. ‘We had you. You could never beat me.’
‘I wasn’t trying to beat you,’ I said. Rachel made a disgusted noise and stalked to the end of the room, her back turned.
Despite the violence in Rachel’s words I couldn’t sense any danger. With her mask off she seemed a different person. I could also tell she wasn’t going to answer any more questions, so I walked to the one-way glass and studied what was beyond.
The room on the other side of the glass was a torture chamber. Three small barbed cages were lined against the far wall, not quite tall enough to stand in and not quite wide enough to sit in. A rack was in one corner, and there was also a vagrant’s chair and an iron maiden with its spikes just visible inside its half open doors. In pride of place, at the centre of the room, was a ten-foot-tall agoniser. Its straps and metal plates had been polished, ready for use.
Although well equipped, I couldn’t help but notice that Morden’s torture chamber was a little on the primitive side compared to Richard’s. Richard had gone to special effort to select devices that inflicted pain without causing physical damage, so that they could be used over long periods of time without need of a healer. Maybe Morden was the old-fashioned type.
By the way, if you’re getting creeped out by me discussing the pros and cons of torture chambers, I’m not surprised. Just trust me when I say you’d understand if you’d ever been there. Treating it like it’s something normal helps to make it less scary. Of course, when you’re treating torture chambers as something normal, that’s also a sign that you should seriously re-examine your life.
‘Just like old times,’ I said. When Rachel didn’t reply, I looked at her. ‘Did Morden put you in there? Or was it just Cinder and Khazad?’
Rachel looked at me without expression. I leant back against the wall, watching her. ‘You wouldn’t take orders from anyone, back then,’ I said after a pause. ‘You were the one in charge; that was how you sold it. Now one day and you’re following Morden? What changed?’
Rachel turned her back on me again. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer, then she spoke. ‘A lot of things changed.’
‘One thing hasn’t.’ I smiled slightly. ‘We’re supposed to be working together again.’
‘No.’ Rachel turned to me. ‘I never wanted to see you. I wouldn’t have, if Cinder hadn’t sniffed you out. Then you had to get involved with that girl. Why couldn’t you hide like the rest? Just looking at you makes me-’ Rachel clenched her fists and took a breath. ‘I hate you more than I could ever hate Morden. He’s just another man. You’re-’
Rachel trailed off. ‘I’m what?’ I asked.
‘You’re a memory,’ Rachel said, her voice low and intense. ‘Every time I look at you I have to remember. Stay away from me. I’ll kill you if that’s what I have to do to stop seeing your face.’
The sound of an opening door made us both turn and look. From the other side of the one-way glass, three people had entered the torture chamber. As soon as I saw them I understood what was going to happen, and why Morden had told us to stay.
Morden was at the front. Behind him were the two girls who’d been accompanying him at the balclass="underline" Lisa and the brunette. The brunette’s face was blank and she was pulling Lisa along by one wrist. Lisa was crying and begging, tears streaming down her face. Despite the one-way glass, we could hear everything she said clearly. ‘No, master, please. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll do anything. I didn’t mean to. Master, please, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t. Don’t put me in there. Master, please-’
There’s a kind of horrible fascination to these things. Even when you know what’s going to happen, there’s something that makes you look. I’d seen what was going to happen, knew how this was going to end, yet somehow I found myself staring through the one-way glass. To one side, I was conscious of Rachel standing motionless, watching as well.
As the other girl started strapping Lisa into the agoniser, Lisa stopped pleading and just started crying. ‘Lisa,’ Morden said. ‘Do you understand why you are here?’
Lisa mumbled something. ‘Louder, please,’ Morden said.
Lisa sniffed. ‘Dis-disloyalty.’ Her voice was shaky.
‘To whom?’
‘To you. Please, Master, I didn’t-’
Morden raised a hand and Lisa fell silent. The other girl had finished with the straps, leaving Lisa spread-eagled. ‘This is the punishment for disloyalty,’ Morden said. He looked at the brunette and nodded. The other girl’s face was still blank. She turned and activated the device.
I’m not going to describe what an agoniser does. You don’t want to know. After the first sixty seconds I couldn’t watch any more. Lisa’s voice gave out somewhere around the second minute, but she still kept trying to scream.
Rachel didn’t look away. She stood by the window and her face was so still it could have been carved from marble. The light of the agoniser lit up her face in reflected blue-and-white flashes. She didn’t move throughout the whole thing, standing like a statue.
When it finally ended, Lisa was a weeping heap of bloody rags. Morden said something that I didn’t listen to while the other girl took Lisa down and led her out of the room, supporting her to keep her from collapsing. Morden switched off the lights as they left. He hadn’t looked through the window at us once. After the screams, the silence was frightening.
‘Morden likes sending messages,’ I said at last. My voice sounded strange in my ears. I don’t think Rachel heard the tremble, but it was a near thing.
‘You think that was a message?’
I looked at Rachel. ‘The “punishment for disloyalty”?’
‘That was half of the message,’ Rachel said distantly. ‘That’s what he’ll do if we upset him. If we betray him,’ Rachel looked at me with cold eyes, ‘he’ll just kill us.’
We were shown back to our rooms and I was left alone in the small bedroom in which I’d woken up. Outside, the rain was still coming down, and night had fallen. All I could see through the darkness and the rain was the dim outlines of trees. The room was warm and cosy, keeping out the cold, but I knew the shelter was an illusion. You might freeze to death outside, but you’d still be safer than in here.
At last I had a chance to think. I walked up and down the small room, collecting my thoughts as the rain beat against the glass and the last traces of light faded from the sky.