Page 84 of Queen of War and Ruin

“You aren’t fooling anyone,” a voice says softly, in a strange, clipped accent.

My body feels cold. Slowly, I try to lift my arm, expecting the tug of ropes around my wrists.

The ropes are gone. My eyes snap open, staring at my arm.

No ropes. I’m on something soft. A couch? A bed? The room comes slowly into focus. It’s enormous, with a high ceiling and tall windows. The sky beyond is a delicate gray; it’s either very early, or very late.

The drapes framing those windows look familiar. Hells, the windows look familiar.

“Vsenrog,” I mutter.

“Indeed.”

I turn. My body feels heavy, like there’s a weight on my chest. Several long, wooden tables are pressed against the wall behind me, making one massive wooden shelf filled with various strange devices. Large glass decanters, coils of metal, blocks of wood and iron.

I shift on the couch, trying to see where the voice came from. Boots click on the floor, and the man comes into view.

No. Not a man.

My mouth goes dry.

“Varitan,” I say.

My hand drops to my waist, feeling for my dagger. It’s not there, of course. It hasn’t been there since Ethiria.

Varitan woke me up four times on the trip between Ethiria and Vsenrog, each time to force me to eat and drink by making various colorful threats against Lilias. Shitty, but effective.

At least I got to see her. I was covered with thick ropes that were bound tightly around my wrists and ankles, but I was next to my wife. She was still breathing.

Now the ropes are gone. And she’s gone too.

“Where is she?” I ask. My voice sounds pinched and rusty from disuse.

Varitan makes that strange sound again, like he’s imitating a laugh.

“You’re not going to get me to obey without her,” I say.

“Now, that’s simply not true,” Varitan replies.

He turns his back to me and fusses with something on the massive table. Anger twists inside my chest. He thinks so little of me that he shows me his back? If I had a blade⁠—

But I don’t, of course. He made sure of that.

“I can bring her here to hurt her,” Varitan says casually, like he’s making plans for lunch. “Or, I can bring parts of her.”

I shiver. Varitan turns to face me, a strange expression on his face.

“Tell me,” he says, “do you think you would recognize your wife’s finger? Or her ear? Out of all the humans in this city, if I brought you, say, ten ears, do you think you could identify which one belonged to that particular woman?”

I feel like I’m going to throw up. I clench my jaw until the room stops spinning.

“It would be an interesting experiment,” Varitan finishes, before turning back to his table.

“What do you want?” I growl.

Varitan ignores me. He makes a strange, humming sound as he moves things around on the table. When he finally turns back to me, I’ve managed to sit up on the low couch. My feet are on the floor, my hands clutch the plush fabric cushion, and the beginning of a headache pulses behind my eyes.

“I want to learn what you can do,” Varitan finally says.