Jumping into the river from this height was utter folly. If he didn’t hit the bottom hard enough to shatter his bones, there was a good chance he would drown. Of course, there was the slimmest of chances that he would survive.
He jumped, of course.
The air whistled past him as he fell, as fast as the proverbial stone. He could see nothing-it all flashed past him so quickly-and he could barely tell which direction was up. Somehow he managed to get his legs pointed downward with the toes extended so he hit the water like a knife blade.
Still, he hit it hard enough to jar every bone in his body. The shock of immersion in the cold river nearly stopped his heart. The breath exploded out of him in a torrent of silver bubbles. His brains reeled with the impact and his legs stung as if the skin had been flayed from them. Then he opened his mouth to inhale-he had no choice, his body was not accepting the commands of his will-and his lungs flooded with water. He flailed blindly, trying to swim up, unable to tell what direction he was facing, barely cognizant of the difference between right and left.
His head collided with something hard and wooden, adding injury to injury. His vision spun with blackness and he knew he was about to die. He nearly gave up then and there-if this was the time the Lady had appointed for his death, who was he to gainsay Her wish? Yet there was something in Croy that failed to stop even when lesser men could do naught but yield. He grasped at the wooden obstruction above him and pulled himself up and over it. His face hit the night air with a gasp and he sucked in breath-then turned his head sideways and coughed up a great gout of cold water. He shook his head to clear his eyes and finally looked at where he was and what he was holding onto. It was the rail of a tiny boat.
Sitting at its oars was Cythera.
The woman he’d risked all to find. The woman whose love he would defy even death to beseech.
Surely only one explanation could satisfy this great coincidence. The Lady had smiled on him. Far from choosing this night to bring him to Her bosom, She had let him live, so that he could see Cythera once more. He nearly let go of the boat, wanting to raise his hands to the heavens in thankful prayer.
“You’d better get in, as we’re going to be spotted any minute,” Cythera said. “Stop playing around and- Hold. You’re not Malden.”
She made no attempt to help him. She did not reach for him. But then, it would be his death if she embraced him. Her curse made it so. She peered over the gunwale, searching his face with wide eyes.
“Croy?” she asked, looking horrified.
He pulled himself over the rail and into the boat. For a while he could do nothing but lie there gasping, looking up at the sky. At the top of the wall tiny faces were peering down at him, tiny arms pointing with urgency at the little boat.
“Row, Cyth. Row away from here,” he panted. He couldn’t help but smile.
“I’m supposed to meet someone-”
A rock hit the river, not three feet from the boat, and sent up a great column of water that splashed them both.
“I don’t think they have boiling oil,” Croy told Cythera. “But I know they have plenty of archers.”
“Let us away, then,” she said, and bent to her oars.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
As a child growing up in a brothel, Malden had possessed few friends his own age or sex. Yet whenever he chanced to find himself in the company of other boys, one of the favorite topics of conversation had concerned this very room-the torture chamber of the Burgrave. The boys would name and describe all the instruments of torture they could, and speculate wildly on their possible applications. One frequent debate was held over which device one would least like to be subjected to. It had all been in good fun, of course, a gruesome contest of oneupmanship. He had never considered the idea he would actually be in this room, or see its true inventory.
“O’er here, lad, and sharpish! I can’t take much more. Oh, oh, I’ll kiss the Bloodgod on the lips for this, when I meet him,” the prisoner announced.
As Malden headed through the arch to the torture chamber proper, he was more afraid than he had been facing down the demon above, or when he first climbed into Cutbill’s coffin. On every side were the nightmares of his youth. The boot, and also its cruel if prosaically named cousin, the instep borer-which drove a screw through the fleshy part of a man’s foot. The tramp chair, which didn’t look so bad until you realized you would be locked inside it, unable to stand. The heretic’s fork lay on an anvil where the torturer had been sharpening its prongs. Iron- rimmed breaking wheels lined the walls, while a selection of bone-breaking hammers hung by straps from the ceiling. Close by the arch, leaning up against one wall, was the scavenger’s daughter (sometimes called the reversed rack). In pride of place stood the dread crocodile shears, which were only ever used on the slayers of nobility, for that which they took away could not be seen. At least not while the victim wore breeches. There were at least three sets of branks, or witch’s bridles-specially designed headgear with an iron spur arranged in such a way that it projected into the mouth and placed a spike against the tongue. Any sorcerer who tried to speak a curse or cast a spell while wearing such a bridle would shred their tongue instead. A handy appliance to have, Malden thought, in a place like the Free City, where wizards vied with Burgraves and sent thieves to do their mischief.
“I heard yer voice, I know ye’re still there. Come on, boy!”
But of all the things that could be done to a human body, all the bits of iron that could be plunged into soft parts, all the different ways to stretch sinews and ligaments until they burst, one device was always rated the worst. None could really say why-it did not seem half so horrible as the choke pear. Yet generations of boys had passed down the sure and certain knowledge that the paragon of suffering-inducing machines had to be the strap.
The prisoner’s hands had been bound behind his back, then a hook inserted between his wrists. He had then been hauled up on a pulley until he dangled from the ceiling. His arms were twisted around behind him, and as a result his chest thrust forward at an awkward angle. To make this worse, a chain was wrapped around his feet, and from this chain depended a large, round stone. The weight pulled down on joints already strained by the strap that held the man aloft.
“Ah, and there ye are, ye clever son. There, over there-that knot!”
Malden stared with gaping mouth at the prisoner, and not only because of his state of distress. The man was naked, gaunt, and haggard of expression. He was also someone he recognized. It was the vagabond he’d seen in Cutbill’s lair, the one who’d claimed right of sanctuary.
“You’re the thief Kemper, are you not?” Malden asked.
“For the nonce. Sooner’n I’d like, I’ll go by a different name,” Kemper agreed.
“I’m… sorry?”
“They’ll be calling me ‘the late’ thief Kemper, if’n you don’t get me down.”
Malden recovered his wits with a start. “Of course, at once,” he said. He hurried to the wall where the other end of the strap was tied around an iron hook. He undid the knot with shaking fingers and lowered Kemper carefully to the floor.
For a while the vagabond merely rolled about on the flagstones, his face split by a piteous grin.
“Oh, I’ve never found such happiness at the bottom of a flagon, nor between a girl’s legs,” Kemper moaned. “Ye’ll never know such ecstasy, lad, and ye should be thankful for that.”
Malden had many questions for the man. “How did you come to be here? It was just this morning I saw you, at Cutbill’s. You were safe enough there-how were you taken so soon after?”
Kemper grimaced. “A man can only abide so much stale bread and water. Cutbill gave me sanctuary, to be sure, but his hospitality was a mite lacking, if you catch me. Of all things, water to drink, ye’d think I was a horse! If I wanted real victuals, I decided I must go abroad. I snuck forth just afore dawn, made right for the Smoke, where I knew I could catch a game.”
Kemper rolled over onto his side and moaned in pleasure. “Found it easy enough. Didn’t reckon one o’ the players was a cloak-of-eyes on his off-shift. The bastard recognized me just fine and tried to haul me out o’ there. Figured I was safe enough, as I’ve always been. Been caught more times’n you’ve kissed a girl, I figure, and always got free again before. Never thought they’d ken out me one weakness. Now, if ye please, me hands and
