Well of the Damned

Chapter 6





The lordover’s office was tidy, almost to the point of being stark. He had neither paintings of his family on the walls nor honors he’d received in his youth for bravery or intellect or skill with a weapon. The deep red cherry desk was wide and heavy, possibly built or assembled in the sizable room, for it looked too big to carry through the doorway. In fact, everything looked bigger than usual — the chairs, the bookcase, even the oil lamp on the desk looked large compared to similar items in other homes and offices.

“Couldn’t you have cleaned her up before bringing her into my office?” the lordover asked. He wiped the dark ink from the tip of his quill and set the pen on a wooden plate as he looked Cirang over.

Dashel Celónd was a lean redhead with light-blue eyes under highly-arched brows. His finely chiseled features made him a handsome man by any standard, but his age showed plainly in the deep-set squint lines, the worry lines on his forehead, and frown lines framing his chin. He had an admirable set of square shoulders that added to the determined look of him. Cirang wondered whether he could be seduced.

The notion of willingly lying with a man shocked her. As the Nilmarion man Sithral Tyr, she’d never thought of men in an intimate way, yet as Cirang, the thought had come naturally. She didn’t know whether she could bring herself to lie with one now.

“I did, my lord,” the guard said. “She refused to wear the dress, and so the stink in her clothes follows her.”

Then again, seducing him could give her the advantage of extortion to win back her freedom. It was an idea worth considering further, though now she wished she’d worn the dress. He was apparently one of those men who believed a woman had no business in men’s clothing or carrying a sword, and so, regardless of her smell, he’d surely find her entirely unappealing dressed as she was.

The lordover scrunched his face in disgust. “Next time, put it on her yourself or bring her naked.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his belly. “So the mighty Viragon Sister falls from grace. I remember you. You’re the sharp-tongued shrew who wanted my guard towers for free. You should have let your companion do the talking.”

Cirang remembered it differently. She and fellow Sister JiNese had tried to negotiate a lease on behalf of the Sisterhood for the guard towers at the city gate, which he wasn’t even using at the time. He’d been rude and arrogant, refusing to hear their proposal. She’d lost her temper, it was true, but by then, he wasn’t going to listen to reason anyway. An apology now would sound disingenuous.

“Now, Cirang,” he said, “it’s to your advantage to tell the truth. I’ve brought in someone who can discern your lies.” Celónd gestured to a man standing behind her.

He was a wisp of a fellow without a single hair on his head or face, not even eyebrows or lashes. Drab beige clothes hung on his frame like rags over a line. Even from where she stood a full two paces away, she could smell the man’s foul breath. She didn’t know any diseases that caused loss of hair and flesh or sour breath, but she inched closer to the lordover’s desk, not wanting to chance catching it.

“If you lie, I’ll tell the king,” Celónd said, “and that will only serve to harshen your sentence.”

Cirang was unconcerned. She had two sets of memories, and both were real and accurate. She considered using only Cirang’s memory because she was in Cirang’s body, but those recollections were just as false for Sithral Tyr as his were for Cirang, and, in truth, she wasn’t Cirang Deathsblade, despite appearances. The best approach, she reasoned, was to choose the truth that made her look less culpable for whatever crime he accused her of committing. No matter which she chose, the shadow reader shouldn’t take her words for a lie because they would be true. Cirang spread her hands. “Ask your questions. I’ll tell the truth. With the help of your shadow reader, you’ll see I’m innocent of the charges against me. Before we begin, however, I have a complaint.”

The lordover sighed. “What is your complaint?”

“Your warden tried to ravish me,” she said. “I want charges brought against him and his puppet there. The two of them attacked me while I was asleep and overpowered me. If they were real men, they would take me on one at a time and see how well they managed against a woman in a fair fight.”

Celónd looked at black-beard. “Is this true?”

The warden feigned shock. “No, my lord. I would never. She’s either mad or a liar.”

“It’s the truth.” She raised her shackled hands and pointed at the man behind her. “Ask your shadow reader.”

The scowl on the lordover’s face deepened, and a red flush entered his cheeks. “Do not presume to instruct me on how to investigate my own men. I’ll look into the matter. Now mind your tongue or I’ll send you back to the gaol.”

“It’s the truth,” Cirang said again under her breath, shooting the warden a dark glare. “If you dare touch me again, don’t doubt you’ll be the one to pay.” He couldn’t very well do his job if he were blinded. If she were to be taken, it would be on her own terms and by the man of her choosing.

“Don’t threaten me, wench,” the black-beard said with a growl in his voice.

“Now,” the lordover said, “we’ll start with a simple question.” Celónd deftly rolled a gold coin over the tops of his fingers back and forth across his hand as he studied Cirang with his icy blue eyes. “Who are you?”

Cirang scrunched her brow for a moment while she thought. The answer to his question was more complicated than he expected, and she didn’t care to explain. “I’m Cirang Deathsblade, of the— formerly of the Viragon Sisterhood.”

She expected to feel a prickling sensation on the back of her neck, but she felt nothing. As Tyr, she’d had the ability to sense when a mage was reading her shadow. Apparently, as Cirang she didn’t — yet another inconvenience of living in this female body.

“State your real name, not your epithet.”

Cirang sighed. “Cirana Delusiol.” She’d changed her given name when she joined the Sisterhood because it sounded too girlish to her ear.

The lordover’s eyes darted to the man behind her. He knitted his brow momentarily and flicked his eyes back to her. “What part did you play in the murder of Rogan Kinshield?”

“Pardon, who?”

“King Gavin’s brother.”

Although the original Cirang had been present for the beheading, she hadn’t helped kill him. In fact, she’d tried to reason with Ravenkind to spare the man’s life. Still, she chanced telling Tyr’s tale so as not to be implicated at all. “I wasn’t present, and therefore I didn’t witness the murder.”

When Celónd’s eyes went to the shadow reader, Cirang started to turn in order to see him, curious whether he sensed a lie.

“Ah-ah!” Celónd said. “Face forward and don’t look back. When did you first meet Brodas Ravenkind?”

Because both Tyr and Cirang had known Ravenkind, she thought it best to relate the story of Tyr’s first meeting because it occurred first. “It was seven years ago when I sought a cure for the illness to save my son and the other children of my village.”

“Which village is that?”

Inwardly, she cringed, wishing she could take back her previous answer. If Celónd was going to dig that far into her past, he might find out Cirang had no children, but to name a Nilmarion village would be confusing and suspicious. Instead, she named Cirang’s birthplace of Ivarr Ness and hoped he left it at that.

“I’m not familiar with Ivarr Ness. Where’s it located?”

“It’s a paltry, fetid fishing village on the coast south of Delam. Is that what you wanted to talk about? Where I was born? If that’s so, I’d rather rot in my cell. Gnawing my own arm off would be more interesting.”

“What was that you just did?” Celónd asked.

“Hmm?”

“The accent with which you’d been speaking just vanished. How do you explain that?”

Cirang’s mouth dropped open. It hadn’t occurred to her she’d been using Tyr’s accent and speech habits when answering questions from his perspective, and Cirang’s when answering from hers. She supposed it would be wiser to speak like a swordswoman of Thendylath rather than a carver from Nilmaria. “I’ve been trying to sound more highbrow like your daughter, Daia— oh, sorry. Dashielle, is it?” In the Nilmarion accent, she added, “Am I not doing it properly?”

His face turned redder than his hair. “You’re a contemptible, common-born wench with no understanding of noble society. Keep to what you know.”

“The king’s a commoner,” Cirang said. “Maybe he’d understand me better. Because I’m his prisoner, shouldn’t I be answering his questions and not yours?”

“The king has better things to do than to listen to you prattle. Mind your tongue, or I’ll conclude this hearing now and recommend you be kept in gaol indefinitely. Let’s talk about the kidnappings. You brought Liera Kinshield and her three sons as well as Feanna Kinshield and her three daughters, and two Viragon Sisters against their will to...” He referred back to the paper on his desk. “...be fed to a demon. How do you justify that?”

Cirang was, indeed, guilty of those kidnappings, and all of them would speak against her if she denied it. Well, all but the two Sisters who were slain by Ravenkind’s henchman and fed to the demon. “Brodas Ravenkind had given magical necklaces to the Viragon Sisters under his control. They compelled us to obey him. To remove them was to commit suicide. If he commanded me to do something, I was powerless against him.”

“I understand King Gavin severed the magical tie that held your will captive, yet you still followed Ravenkind. Why?”

Cirang knew she was on unsteady ground here, but when she’d first awoken in this body, she was wearing the necklace that had bound her to him. “I don’t understand it, but I believed the tie to my necklace was somehow still intact. All I can tell you is the compulsion to obey Ravenkind was too strong to resist. Every day, I tried to sever my ties with him and get away.” While that wasn’t true for Cirang, it was true for Tyr. During the years Ravenkind had kept Tyr’s soulcele token, the porcelain cat figurine housing his soul, Tyr had worked tirelessly as the wizard’s indentured servant, trying to earn his freedom back through thefts, murders, kidnappings, and anything else Ravenkind asked of him. If his soul hadn’t already been irreparably fouled by the first murder he’d committed at Ravenkind’s behest, the one that rewarded him with the cure for his son’s illness, it surely would have been by all the other crimes.

Celónd looked past her at the shadow reader. His face reddened again, and his eyes narrowed. “How did Ravenkind die?” He went around to the front of his desk, leaned against it with his backside and crossed his arms.

She had to draw upon Cirang’s memories of the day, as Tyr had none. “I knew he had a secret and a plan, but I didn’t know what it was until that day. Ravenkind used some kind of rune to summon a demon. When the demon killed Red, it became clear he didn’t have it under control as he pretended to. He yelled at it, tried to command it, but it turned on him. I tried to escape, but it caught me...” Her throat swelled with the memory of Cirang’s horrible death, choking off her words. The muscles in her back cramped in response, and the pain in her hip and shoulder flared. She coughed. “I must have got knocked out. The next thing I knew, King Gavin was squatting beside me, healing my injuries.”

What she didn’t mention was the smashed soulcele token on the floor, the only explanation for why Sithral Tyr’s spirit now occupied Cirang Deathsblade’s body.

Celónd looked back at the shadow reader. Every muscle in his face and neck tensed. “How in the hell can you not know if she’s lying?” he hollered. “What kind of worthless mage are you, anyway?”

Unable to resist, Cirang turned to look at the little man. On his face was an apologetic wariness. “I’m sorry, Your Grace. Her shadow is... different from any other I’ve seen. I cannot read it for good or bad. It’s just dark. I’m sorry.”

Cirang smirked. How interesting. All this time, she could have said anything, and he wouldn’t have been able to discern a lie. If only the lordover had tipped his hand earlier.

“You,” Celónd said, pointing to the shadow reader. “Out.”

“My fee—”

“You’ll receive no payment for no work. Out.” Celónd returned to his desk chair, picked up a quill and opened a jar of ink.

“What about my complaint?” Cirang asked. “You have to ask him about the warden attacking me.”

“I don’t take orders from prisoners,” Celónd spat. He made a brushing-off gesture in Cirang’s direction. “Get her out of here. Take her back to the cell.”

“Let me go before the king now,” she said. “I have the right to face my accuser.”

The warden latched his iron grip onto her upper arm and started to pull her towards the door.

Celónd didn’t even look up from his writing. “I have every confidence he’ll impose a fair sentence based on my findings. I’ll communicate it to you after he makes a decision.”

She started to argue and struggle, to stay and convince him to set her free, but the guard held fast. “Wait,” she cried at the door. It swung shut, and the only sounds remaining were her boots dragging across the polished floor as the guard hauled her back outside. Back to the wet, lonely cell and those terrible nightmares of claws and pain.