Legacy Of Blood

Chapter 4

The cell door opened before sunrise, hinges groaned against the damp stone.

"Get up." A guard's boot nudged Larry's leg.

"You're wanted outside."

Larry rose slowly, his ribs were still aching from Joshua's men the night before, and followed the guard up the narrow stairwell into the gray light of early morning.

A maid he didn't recognize stood waiting near the servant's entrance, a plate of stale bread and a cup of water held out toward him without a word.

She didn't meet his eyes.

She just set the food down on a stone ledge and walked away before he could ask her anything.

It was not Lira.

He scanned the courtyard as he ate, searching for any sign of his sister among the staff moving between the kitchen and the laundry house, but she wasn't among them.

It was not that morning and not through the long hours of labor that followed either.

He hauled stones for a garden wall Damon had decided needed rebuilding.

His hands blistered under work he hadn't done in years, ten years of money and comfort stripped away in a single day.

He kept his head down through most of it, playing the part, but every few minutes his eyes drifted back toward the main house, searching windows, searching doorways, finding nothing.

Around midday, Damon crossed the courtyard with Joshua beside him, deep in conversation about dinner arrangements for the evening.

Larry kept working, his shoulders wes bent over a stone he was setting into the wall, but he felt Damon's gaze land on him and stay there a moment too long.

Damon slowed his walk, studying Larry's hands, his posture, the way he lifted the stone.

"You," Damon said.

Larry straightened, forcing his expression into something dull and tired.

"Yes, sir?"

"You handle that stone like a man who's never done manual labor a day in his life."

"I'm learning fast, sir, I need the work badly enough."

Damon stepped closer, close enough that Larry caught the smell of expensive cologne mixed with something colder underneath it.

"Where are you from?"

"North, small town, nothing you'd know."

"And you came here how?"

"I walked most of it because I heard there was work out this way."

Damon's eyes narrowed, moving over Larry's face like he was searching for something familiar and not quite finding it.

For one terrible second Larry thought the disguise had failed, thought recognition was about to bloom behind Damon's eyes.

Instead Damon just grunted and turned to Joshua.

"Keep an eye on him."

Joshua nodded once, and Damon walked on without another word.

Two hours later, as the sun dropped lower and the work crew began packing up their tools, a guard approached Larry directly.

"Come with me."

"I've still got wall to finish…."

"Now." He barked.

Larry set his tools down and followed, and the direction they walked wasn't toward the servant quarters.

It was toward a low outbuilding near the estate's back wall, a thick metal door, no windows, the kind of building meant to hide whatever happened inside it.

Inside, pipes ran along the ceiling, old machinery lined one wall, oil stains dark across the concrete floor.

A single chair sat bolted to the center of the room, it had thick leather straps hanging loose from its arms.

Larry's stomach dropped.

"Sit," the guard said.

"What is this? I haven't done anything…."

The guard didn't answer, he just shoved him down into the chair and began fastening the straps, tight across his wrists, his chest, his ankles, until he couldn't move more than an inch in any direction.

The door opened again and Damon walked in, calm, unhurried, hands folded behind his back like a man inspecting a factory floor rather than a prisoner.

"I don't like being wrong about people," Damon said.

"And something about you bothers me."

"I'm just a wanderer looking for a job," Larry said, keeping his voice steady despite the fear climbing up his throat. "I told you already, sir. I don't know what you think I am, but…."

"Who sent you?"

"Nobody sent me."

Damon nodded to someone standing near the wall, and Larry heard a switch flip, heard machinery hum to life somewhere behind him.

"Last chance," Damon said. "Who sent you?"

"Nobody, I swear it, I'm just….."

The current hit him before he finished the sentence, tearing through his body from the metal contacts fixed into the arms of the chair, every muscle locking rigid at once.

His back arched hard against the straps and the scream that ripped out of him didn't sound like anything he recognized as his own voice.

It stopped as suddenly as it started, leaving him gasping, sweat soaking through his shirt, vision swimming.

"Who sent you?" Damon asked again, voice not changing, like he hadn't just watched a man convulse in front of him.

"Nobody!" Larry's voice cracked. "I told you the truth! I'm just looking for work!"

The current hit again, longer this time, and his scream tore through the walls of the outbuilding.

It was loud enough that it must have carried across the courtyard, loud enough that somewhere in the house other people surely heard it and knew exactly what it meant.

"What the hell," Larry gasped between waves of pain, barely able to form the words, "do you want from me?"

"The truth," Damon said simply.

"That is the truth!"

A third jolt, shorter but sharper, and Larry's whole body convulsed against the restraints, teeth clenched so hard he tasted blood where he had bitten his own tongue.

Damon studied him closely through all of it, watching his face, watching his eyes, the way a man studies something to determine whether it's lying or simply broken.

After the third jolt, Damon raised a hand, and the guard by the wall cut the current.

Silence settled over the room except for Larry's ragged breathing, chest heaving, body slick with sweat, muscles twitching involuntarily from the aftershocks.

Damon crouched down in front of him, studying his face for a long moment.

"You're not a spy," he said finally, almost disappointed.

"A spy would have broken by now with a story ready. You've got nothing because there's nothing to have."

He straightened, nodding to the guard.

"Release him."

The straps came off one at a time, and Larry slumped forward the moment his wrists were free, barely able to hold himself upright in the chair.

"Get him cleaned up," Damon said, already turning toward the door.

"He starts in my garden tomorrow like Joshua said and someone should tell the kitchen to feed him properly, I can't have him collapsing over a shovel."

He walked out without another glance back, and Larry sat there trembling, his chest burning, his throat raw from screaming, staring at the door Damon had disappeared through.

He'd survived it.

The disguise had held.

But somewhere close by, hidden inside these same walls, Lira had almost certainly heard every scream.