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Ragnar snorted. “That’s a lot of words to say there’s something wrong with the bastard.”
Amelia shifted her weight, and her brows drew together; her voice became firmer, sterner, rather than frightened. “If there’s an extra precaution we should take, do you know what it might be?”
Leif shook his head. “Silver, maybe?” He spared a glance for Ragnar’s torq. “But maybe that’s only if it’s been enchanted. I don’t know. But he’s…he’s fine, probably. You have him in irons?”
“Bound hand and foot and chained to the wall,” she confirmed.
“Your men are armed?”
With her free hand, she reached to her belt, and drew the wicked length of hunting knife she kept there. “As am I.”
He nodded. “We’ll go, then. Just…be cautious. I don’t know what’s afoot, but he’s been in the presence of magic. It’s left some sort of impression upon him.”
Amelia nodded, sheathed her knife, and proceeded down the rest of the stairs.
“I don’t like this,” Ragnar muttered.
“You have my express permission to rip his throat out should the need arise.”
“Hm.” He wasn’t mollified, but he stopped growling, at least.
The cellar, when they arrived, proved to be floored with crushed rock, and walled with old stones that gleamed wetly in the wash of candlelight. Lanterns had been set up around the perimeter of the space, and dishes of candles set on top of the casks, which were housed in a rack on their sides, their lids pried off and their insides yawning, empty caverns. An arched doorway gave way to darkness at either end of the space, and a cool draft of water-scented air proved the cellars continued on for some way, and likely led up to the surface.
A space had been cleared in the immediate vicinity, wooden bottle racks dragged to the side in order to access the metal rings set in the stone wall. A man sat like a crumpled pile of linen beneath them, stripped down to his underclothes, which were no longer white, and no longer in good repair. His hair, by contrast, fell in milk-white snarls across both shoulders, and his face, which lifted at the sound of their arrival, was all of cut-glass angles and fine lines beneath a layer of grime and dried sweat. The candlelight turned his nearly-colorless Sel eyes to a twilight shade of lavender, and Leif felt the back of his neck tighten at sight of them.
Someone had decided the best way to restrain the man was to hoist his arms up and out, so they were chained level with his head on either side. A cruel means of restraint, and one for which Leif didn’t feel the slightest sympathy.
The Sel’s gaze was flat, unreadable, though his expression bore the slackness of exhaustion. It sharpened, however, when it landed on the two of them, side-by-side at the bottom of the stairs, Ragnar’s steadying hand at his back. A gaze that fixed on their faces, and then traveled down, taking in details. He’d spotted that they were Northerners, and Leif wondered if he had any ideawhichNortherners.
The others stood farther back, but Reginald was perched on a low stool in front of the prisoner, a lantern at his feet shuttered on three sides so the light beamed into the Sel’s face, but left Reginald wreathed in shadow. A clever trick…if you were the sort who wasn’t going to use eye contact and explicit threats to pry the answers out of your captive. Leif found himself thinking of Erik, of the way he kept the light equidistant between himself and the man he questioned, his face an unscalable cliff, the barest offering of hope in his words quickly seized by whatever poor soul had landed in his dungeon.
Ragnar started growling again.
“Hush,” Leif told him, and plucked at his tunic, urging him to the place where Amelia motioned for them to stand.
In this underground, enclosed space, the whisper of breeze from deeper tunnels didn’t do much to alleviate the overwhelming crush of smells. The last time Leif had been in a cell, it had been Ragnar’s, and he had smelled of wolf things, and of pack, and of a possession. This, though, the unwashed stink of the enemy, burned his sinuses and left his wolf pacing tight circles in his chest.
When they were settled, Reginald shifted on his stool, leaning forward so his elbows rested on his thighs, and said, “I know you speak Continental, so you might as well stop pretending that you don’t.”
The prisoner’s gaze had followed Amelia, and Leif, and Ragnar’s progress across the room, rested on them where they’d taken up positions in front of a row of stripped-down casks, and it slid back, with obvious reluctance, to Reginald’s shadowed face. It was an intelligent gaze, keen with comprehension, despite the obvious fatigue dragging at him. He spoke their language all right.
Reginald said something in Selesee that caused the man’s white brows to draw together. Then, in Continental: “You bore the marks of a captain on your uniform. Does that mean it was your stupid idea to take a group of scouts hostage? Or was such a decision beneath your notice, and left up to moronic underlings?”
Leif leaned down toward Amelia and whispered, “Hostages?”
Amelia whispered back, “We didn’t take this one from the road ambush – all those men were killed. This one was captured a few days earlier, at a watchtower ten miles from here. It had been long-abandoned, and half-ruined to start. They captured a group of scouts and sent one back to ransom the rest.”
Leif frowned. From Erik’s stories of the last war, and Olaf and Birger’s teaching, from his own experiences with the enemy, he couldn’t recall a story of Selesee hostage-taking. They didn’t want to negotiate, and their numbers so vast, their weapons so exquisite they never had to. Sels conquered, and that was all.
When he glanced at her, she shook her head to indicate that she didn’t understand, either.
From the stool, Reginald said, “I’m not sure you realize how this works, friend. We have you here, at our mercy. When I ask you a question, I expect an answer. If you don’t answer…” He lifted his left arm, and metal winked in the wavering light of the candles and lantern.
It was a knife. A rather nasty one.
But Leif doubted Reginald’s willingness to use it against the man.
As if sharing the sentiment, Edward said, “This is a waste of time.”
