Will

  “My husband is a very guarded man,” Dawn said in a hushed whisper. “Even I don’t actually know all that much about him,

  “I’d guessed as much,” Will replied, nodding. “Just tell me what you do know. Anything at all.”

  The bandaged woman let her head slide sideways so that she could peek around Will’s shoulder. He glanced back as well. The guards were still busy gaming at the other end of the room, but one who had been eliminated was looking their way with altogether too much interest, leaning against one of the rusted cages that decorated the room.

  I probably need to hurry this up, before they start to suspect that I’m doing something other than my job.

  “It’s all right,” he prompted, and prodded Dawn’s arm a bit more firmly with the three fingers he kept on her to maintain the Light Touch passive. “They can’t hear.”

  “Well…” She gave a tiny shrug, then winced at the gesture. “It’s true what they say about Brimstone—that he never sleeps.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “I’m telling you what I know. We don’t sleep in the same room—he doesn’t even own a bed. He just sits on a pillow in the middle of an empty room. His eyes are closed, but I don’t think he’s really sleeping since he will open his eyes almost instantly once I walk into the room. It seems more like a sort of meditation or trance. I don’t know what ability might make that possible, though.”

  “Hmm…” Will went over all the abilities he had memorized, but none of them struck him as applicable. There was Low Maintenance, which reduced the user's need to eat, drink, and rest, but he didn't think even a whole bunch of ranks in that passive would entirely dispense with the need to sleep. “I’ll have to think about that one for a while. What else do you know?”

  “I’m sure you’re already aware that his build relies on Spark to create fire.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, he also makes use of the lesser-known skill called Heat. It doesn’t scale as easily with Amplify, but it’s got a bigger range, and…” She shuddered. “It can make people spontaneously combust from the heat alone, or… boil them from the inside.”

  “I see.”

  As a Cook-Laborer, this meant he would need to have taken his second specialization in Cook, as Heat and Chill were the second-tier premier abilities for that Profession. He'd never really heard of anyone making use of it in combat. Good to know.

  “I do know that Brimstone boasts incredible AP regeneration during combat,” Will said. “Do you know how this is possible?”

  Dawn gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.

  “That’s a shame. What about his semblance, then? I know it’s called Hell Visor, which suggests a regalia-type, but I don’t have any information beyond that. None of the challengers who have dueled him in recent years have given him enough trouble to make him use it, so the old second-hand accounts I’ve come across describing its function are suspect at best and at worst completely fantastical.”

  “I’ve seen it once, when he took me on a hunt,” Dawn replied. “We were ambushed by monsters, terrible things with too many eyes, and…” She shook her head to clear herself of the memory. “All the others in our party were killed, and Brimstone made me hide behind a log while he used his semblance.

  “He took on the appearance of a demon clad in blood-red armor, and he threw fire all about him, breathed it from his mouth, even. I couldn’t see him too clearly because of the steam and heat given off by his armor. The monsters that got close to him withered and died, and soon he’d killed them all on his own. The smell… I can’t even describe it.

  “Aside from that, I don’t know much. My husband is vigilant at all times, expecting an attack that might come from anywhere. I think it will be hard to find an opportunity to strike at him.”

  “Let me worry about that,” Will said, and tried to put on a reassuring smile despite the queasiness bubbling in his gut. “You just worry about keeping it together until you can be set free. Now, when Brimstone used his semblance, how long did it—”

  “Hey!” called a voice from behind, accompanied by approaching footsteps that echoed off the damp stone walls.

  Will took his hand off the woman’s arm. He stood, forcing calm, and faced the guard coming his way. The Level 6 Laborer wore an amicable smile, and he was toying with the hilt of a dagger on his belt.

  “Can I help you?” Will asked in a neutral tone.

  “Lady Dawn’s been awful quiet,” the man replied. “She isn’t dead, is she? The lord said not to let you go too far with the, uh…” He sucked his teeth, looking for the right word.

  “Torture,” Will supplied.

  The guard shrugged uncomfortably. “That, yes. He wants her alive.”

  “I’m aware. Rest assured, she’s quite alive. See for yourself.” He reached down and tilted Dawn’s face up by her chin, had her groaning as his fingers dug into the burned flesh around her neck. “Happy?”

  “Suppose so,” the man said, still thumbing at his weapon. He seemed to be having some trouble holding Will’s gaze, looking down at his boots as often as not. “Just…” He cleared his throat awkwardly.

  “Just what?”

  “Pedro!” one of the other guards called from the lantern-lit huddle of men. “Quit fucking around! The next round’s up, and we’re all keen to take some more glories off your hands!”

  “One second!” Pedro yelled back. He turned his attention back to Will, and spread his arms in a helpless gesture. “Just don’t hurt her worse than you have to, that’s all. No disrespect to the lord or nothing, but whatever she’s done, I don’t reckon she deserves all this. She always treated us boys good. Remembered our names and all. Baked us cookies on Godsnight. Maybe it was the servants that did it and she only handed ‘em out, but I appreciated it anyways.”

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  “Fascinating anecdotes,” Will said in a low, dull voice, “but let’s agree that you don’t give me advice on how to take people apart, and I won’t give you advice on… guarding the cookie jar, or whatever it is you do. Of course, if you’d like to swap first-hand demonstrations, I’m sure I could spare a minute or two.”

  The man swallowed, and held up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “Right. Of course. As you were. Uh, sir.” Then he scurried off to join his friends, and they laughed at his cowardly display while he kept his focus intently trained on his dice.

  Will felt a little bit bad. That Pedro fellow seemed like a good one, all things considered. It was heartening to know that there were potentially militiamen who were willing to defy Brimstone’s orders—behind his back if not to his face.

  Be that as it may, Will had a character to play, and until Brimstone was dead and buried, he couldn’t allow his mask to slip for a moment. If Handsome the unassuming advisor was the opponent Dawn had made him out to be, Will did not put it past him to plant people inside the keep to fish for information—such as tripping up the court assassin to say something he shouldn’t, for instance.

  With the intruder gone, Will crouched back down with a sigh and re-established the Light Touch muffling effect by touching the lady-consort’s arm. “I’m sorry, did that hurt?” he asked, looking over where he’d grabbed her around the jawline.

  “Only a little,” Dawn replied through gritted teeth. There were tears quivering at the corners of her eyes—whether from pain or despair or smoke irritation, he could not tell.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to do worse to you. I need to make Brimstone think I’ve done a good job of torturing you.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll make it as light as I can.” He took out his medicine bag and had her drink a vial of a powerful analgesic. “That will take away the worst of your pain,” he explained, “but it won’t render you unconscious. Hopefully this won’t hurt at all, but I’m gonna have to ask you to scream a little regardless.”

  Dawn’s big eyes widened, and her nostrils flared with panic. Then she gave a tiny, barely perceptible nod.

  “Good.”

  Will drew his sharpest knife—the one he used to cut flesh—and began wiping it down with disinfectant.

  * * *

  Handsome’s study was modestly sized and modestly decorated. Behind a modest desk sat its modest owner, scribbling away in a ledger by candlelight. He closed it when Will came in, set his pen aside, and looked up with a polite smile.

  “Master One-Eye,” he said with an almost-bow that suggested he thought himself a rung below Will on the social ladder, despite the fact that it was more like the other way around. “It seems you've had a very eventful evening. How did it go with the lady-consort?”

  Wiping his hands on a rag that he had begged off one of the servants, Will plopped down in a chair opposite the desk. The solution he had added to the rag was doing a passable job at removing the blood, but there was still a stubborn pinkish residue up to his forearms that wouldn’t quite go away, and there was more red-brown mess under his nails. “She didn’t say as much as I would have liked,” Will replied, speaking carefully to avoid lying. “She maintains her innocence. I’ll try again later.”

  “I see.” It didn’t sound like Handsome had any feelings about it one way or another. The prune-faced little man nodded toward Will’s left arm. “I see you’ve reached Level 15. Congratulations on the achievement.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I suppose that means you’ve chosen a semblance.”

  “I have.”

  Handsome removed a pair of wire-frame glasses from his nose and set them down beside the pen, fiddling with them both until they were perfectly straight and parallel with each other. “I’d imagine it must be something exciting, considering your line of work.”

  “Don’t know, exactly—haven’t gotten the chance to use it yet. I have high hopes, though.” Will finished with the rag, balled it up, and tossed it into the advisor’s crackling fireplace. “What about yours? Anything to write home about?”

  Handsome tittered behind his hand, but there was no sign of mirth in his hawkish eyes, which were unerringly fixed on Will. “Oh, it’s nothing violent or spectacular. I hardly ever need to use it, sitting in an office all day.” He sighed wistfully. “I’m more interested in yours, Master One-Eye. As I said, I’m no expert in such things, but as your senior in the noble ways of semblance arts, I’m sure I could give you some pointers on its usage, if you provide me with details.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Master Handsome.”

  “But you’re not interested.”

  Will shrugged with an apologetic tightening of his mouth. “Sorry.”

  Handsome splayed his spidery hands. “Oh, well. I can’t say I’m not disappointed, I understand that a man’s semblance is a thing he must hold most precious. Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to assist you. We’re all in this together, after all.”

  “I’ll do that.” Will leaned back in his chair, affecting calm he did not feel, and hoping that the advisor could not pick up on his anxiety, though that was probably a vain hope with the man’s supposedly extreme Empathy score.

  Handsome gave nothing away through his expression, which was perfectly neutral and serene. It was probably a bad idea, but Will felt that he needed to push a little. “You’re not from Octant Six, are you? What is it that made you come here and serve Brimstone in the first place?”

  The smile Handsome gave then was a thin, predatory thing. For the first time, a hint of actual enjoyment shone through those sunken eyes. “To make a difference, of course,” he said. His tone was casual, as though he had just flung out the first thing that came to mind, but just like Dawn had said, Will got the vague feeling that Handsome was choosing his words very carefully.

  “Interesting,” Will said. “And toward that end, I suppose you’re committed to ensuring Lord Brimstone’s continued prosperity?”

  Handsome’s smile widened. He did not say anything for several seconds, and Will could almost see the gears turning in his head, cranking out the blandest, most inoffensive, technically true answer possible. “I am committed to ensuring Lord Brimstone’s continued reign, yes,” he said at last.

  That’s not exactly what I asked, Will thought, but didn’t comment on it. He was now convinced that Handsome was a man to be contended with, but he did not want to make an enemy out of him if he could avoid it. Best not to push too far just yet.

  When the conversation lapsed, the advisor eventually cleared his throat and pulled out a drawer, producing a fat paper envelope. Handing it across the desk, he said: “Here is your payment for the latest contract, along with the lord’s compliments. He appreciates your services greatly.”

  Will riffled the stack of glories inside. A sizable harvest, this time. He never haggled with the lord on payments, as he valued keeping his head on his shoulders where it belonged, but he’d never found any reason to complain over Brimstone’s patronage. The killing work was hell on the conscience, but bliss to the wallet.

  “Thank you,” Will said, and stood to leave. “You should get some sleep, Master Handsome—it’s quite late, you know.”

  “I’d say it’s early by now,” Handsome said, maintaining his bland smile. “Don’t worry about me—I have Low Maintenance, so sleep is not as valuable a commodity for me. I’d like to throw your advice back at you, though, if I may. After a night like this, I’d wager you could use a good rest.”

  “Probably.”

  “I could have some rooms made ready for you.”

  “That’s very generous, but I have places to be.”

  “I see. In that case, I wish you safe travels, Master One-Eye.”

  “And you, Master Handsome.”

  Handsome began scribbling in his ledger again. Will was turning for the door when the advisor idly said: “You know, I’ve always liked you a fair bit. I’d like us to be friends, if possible.”

  Will offered no reply to that.

  He left the keep with his blood money safely tucked inside a coat pocket. He should have hurried back to the farm to see Sam, but without thinking, he found his steps steered toward The Lucky Lady.

  He could really use a drink, he decided.