CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
He sat on the stone floor of the warehouse, his back hugging a bare wall, with heavy iron shackles and chains clamped on his wrists keeping him tightly pinned to the wall and floor. In front of him was a tall brazier filled with the cold embers of freshly consumed wood and an assortment of branding irons. The bloody figure propped against the wall had suffered hours of torture. Hours of pain. Blood covered his tunic. His bare shoulders and arms exhibited all the marking of a man who was an expert in inflicting pain onto a helpless prisoner with a white-hot iron.
Caius Septimus looked more dead than alive. His face had been beaten savagely. His left eye was swollen shut. His nose nothing more than a red mass of broken cartilage and dried blood. Yet the man lived. Even
