His smile only broadened, becoming sharp as the blade he held. He touched the point to the back of her hand, holding her fingers flat.
He cut. The pain was short, sharp, almost lost in her bucking, twitching reaction to it. A shallow incision, but now he lowered the separator towards it, inserting the cold spars of the device between the lips of the wound, and then jabbing down. She screamed for real this time, though it was nothing more than preparation, sliding the machine's fingers between the bones of her hand. There was a delicate clockwork motor contained in the fist of it, and he wound it carefully so that she could hear its contented ticking.
She felt the slightest pressure affecting the bones of her hand. Amid the welter of pain, it meant little to her, but the prongs of the separator would slowly grind their way apart whilst Thalric worked on other parts of her – or even left the room entirely. It would torture her by infinitesimal degrees, all by its mindless self.
She was babbling by then, trying to tell him all sorts of things, about Stenwold, about Collegium, about anything she could imagine the Empire might be interested in. There was a sickness welling inside her, above and beyond the pain. She had not realized, before this moment, just how weak she had always been.
'Now,' said Thalric, ignoring her rush of words entirely, 'nature has gifted you with two eyes. One might almost think this was so that the loss of one would serve as an irresistible inducement to cooperate, lest you face the loss of the other.'
He brought the scalpel up and cleaned it meticulously, as though the intrusion of her own blood might cause her some infection. The pressure against the bones of her hand was noticeably intensifying. She clenched her teeth vainly against it.
His smile as he brought the razor-edge of the blade towards her face was fond, almost doting. She jerked her head back, shrieking at him, twisting as he pulled a strap tight across her forehead to hold her still.
'Now,' he said.
*
The interrogation room was filled with the sound of engines, the hiss of the the steam boiler below and the whine and rumble of the tools above her. She could barely hear one word in three of the careful conversation that Thalric was holding with the engineer, Aagen. It was some convoluted piece of Wasp politics involving the governor and the Butterfly-kinden Grief in Chains. She strained her ears to catch it. Any information would be useful.
Hold on-
Thalric had finished, telling Aagen, 'Now dispatch it straight,' and the engineer left them swiftly. She felt the straps taut about her wrists and ankles. No, wait a moment… The mechanical drills and blades vibrated on their arms, spread above her like the limbs of a spider. Thalric had gone over to the levers and was regarding them cautiously. She realized that he was not artificer enough to know how to turn the device off.
'The one at the end!' she shouted out to him. 'The red band!'
He turned to regard her -Haven't I been here before? – and there was a slight smile on his face. His hand found another lever and pulled it, in a brutal, brief motion, and the tool assembly dropped three feet until it hovered right above her.
'Thalric!' she yelled. His tongue touched his lips, wetting them, as he regarded her, eyes flicking to the tool assembly, spoiled for choice. When they rested on her again they were blank white, like milk.
'The interrogator is in an admirable position amongst all trades,' he said to her, one hand coming to touch her cheek lightly. 'There are so very many tools he may employ, and no restraints on him whatsoever. So long as he can turn out his goods, meaning information, he is very much left to his own devices.' His hands found the collar of her tunic and, in a single savage motion, he ripped it down the front all the way to the waist.
This is wrong – Wrong, of course it's wrong -I've been here before. This is the room in Myna…
She was feeling a bizarre doubling in her mind, of image over image. Thalric, with his blank Moth eyes, was trailing his hand across her breasts, whilst the other reached up for some tool of torture. Part of her was reacting with fear and revulsion, terrified of the pain and shame, but on another level she was watching everything as though from behind a pane of glass – or some clever Spider mirror that served as a window from one side. But this isn't the way it happened the first time. This isn't the way it happened last time.
First time? Last time?
How many times?
'Now,' said Thalric… The interrogation room was filled with the sound of engines, the hiss of the steam boiler below and the whine and rumble of the tools above her. Wasn't I just here…? She could barely hear one word in three of the careful conversation that Thalric was having with the engineer, Aagen. But Aagen just left… It was some convoluted piece of Wasp politics involving the governor and the Butterfly-kinden Grief in Chains. She strained her ears to catch it. Any information would be useful.
Thalric had finished, telling Aagen, 'Now, dispatch it straight,' and the engineer left them swiftly. There was something wrong with Thalric's face. It was pallid, greying, changing. He was slighter than she remembered.
She felt the straps taut about her wrists and ankles. The mechanical drills and blades vibrated on their arms, spread above her like the limbs of a spider. Thalric had gone to the levers and was regarding them cautiously. She realized that he was not artificer enough to know how to turn the device off. And neither am I for that matter. So why do I say:
'The one at the end!' she shouted out to him. 'The red band!'
He turned to regard her, and his face rent her more than the knives could ever do: the pointed, grey-skinned visage of a Moth she had once known. His hand found another lever and pulled it, in a brutal, brief motion, and the tool assembly dropped three feet until it hovered right above her.
'The true interrogator,' he informed her, 'can extend a moment into a lifetime. He can stretch time as easily as flesh, denying the subject any chance of escape…'
'Achaeos?' Wrong, all wrong. I know it's wrong. I've been here before, and before that, and before that, and…
He reached up for the tools and she felt cracks all around her, her mind fragmenting into lens after distorting lens, one beyond the other, reaching further and further out. She stared up at the machinery above her. I don't know how this works. I don't remember how it works. I only remember that I once remembered.
And Achaeos could never know.
I dreamt this. This is my dream, one of many. What did he say?
What did he say in my dream?
That I was doing this to myself…
That I was…
That I was using him to torture myself.
That I was…
She opened her eyes. From the steady lamps of that remembered cell in Myna to the dancing bluish flames of the tombs beneath Khanaphes: Che blinked, aware that she was lying awkwardly on one arm, and for a moment unsure where she was. She registered some cool, damp place where the stone beneath her was gluey with slime.
Now she remembered, the pieces falling into her head out of order: the Wasps, the halls, the carvings, the sarcophagi.
The Masters of Khanaphes.
She sat up suddenly, becoming aware of her surroundings. The vaulted halls seemed to lean in on her, each alcove hosting its own stone memorial.
Thalric…? But he was there. They all were. Strewn around her were three bodies, not dead but not sleeping either. Their eyes were open but unseeing, and they twitched and kicked in the grip of whatever memory or thought was tormenting them. Thalric kept pulling his hands in as though avoiding something, his expression racked and unrecognizable. The other Wasp's fingers flexed over and over as though he was in the midst of loosing his sting. Accius of Vek had an expression only of concentration, moving not at all save for the shivers that pulsed through his muscles. And what is he here for? What is his part in all this?