And then he began to flail. Anger coursed through the frustration, through the stinging of the sweat and the ache of muscles. Anger at Walter, at the Proprietor, at Portstown, at his father for dragging them across the Diermani-cursed Arduon to this bloody coast. He gritted his teeth and thrashed in the lock, jerked back and forth, the wood creaking, a growl starting low in his throat, catching fire with the anger and growing, rising into a bellow of rage as he fought the lock, as it refused to budge. Fresh sweat plastered his shirt and breeches to his sides, stuck tendrils of hair to his forehead. He threw himself back and forth, tortured muscles seizing, cramping, sending white-hot flares through his calves, his sides, his neck and thighs. Jaw clenched, the bellow rose into a cracked roar, rose higher still as he heaved against his constraints And then it broke, trailing down into broken sobs as he collapsed against the lock, heaving, exhausted, sweat streaming from his chin.
When he’d calmed himself, he heard one of the guards chuckling, the sound low, barely audible. Colin tensed, breathing harshly through his nose.
The niggling sensation in his back hadn’t gone away.
He struggled with the lock twice more before sunset, tried to break free, to move, and each time he collapsed at the end in exhaustion, his roar of hatred dying down into painful sobs. When the guards laughed the third time, he didn’t even react. He was too tired. His throat was raw, his mouth dry. It tasted of dirt and sweat, sour with dust.
Night fell, and with it the temperature. The patrol that had stood around him all day decreased to a single guard. Colin didn’t think he could sleep in such an awkward position, but around midnight he woke to someone whispering his name.
“Colin. Colin, it’s me, Karen.”
He moaned, blinked his eyes against the moonlit darkness, tried to shift his head but cried out at the twinge in his neck. “Karen?” he croaked, the name nothing more than a wheeze.
“Yes.” Her hands touched his face, his cracked lips. She swore, her hands retreating, returning again with a wet cloth. She scrubbed at the sweat and dirt that had dried against his skin, the pressure increasing as she grew angry.
“Guard,” he managed in warning, and heard someone else kneeling down beside Karen, could barely pick out the second figure in the darkness.
“I found her watching during the day, from the corner of one of the mercantiles,” the guard said, and Colin recognized the unshaven guard’s voice. “Told her to come back tonight, while I was on duty.”
Colin would have wept, but Karen set the cloth aside and produced a skin filled with water. “Here,” she said, tipping it up and squeezing it, a stream of water splashing Colin in the face. “Drink.”
Colin swallowed as much of the water as he could, greedily, most of it dribbling off his chin to the dusty ground below. He drank as if he hadn’t had water in months. It tasted sweet. Cold and wet and delicious.
Until his stomach started to cramp.
“Careful,” the guard said, his hand pulling the skin away a moment before Colin puked everything he’d just drunk into the dirt. Spasms shook Colin’s body, aches shooting warning pangs through his stomach, back, and shoulders.
When the urge to vomit subsided, the guard said, “Now let him drink again, but slowly this time. And not too much. He won’t be able to keep it down otherwise.”
Karen wiped Colin’s face again, then let him drink again. She took the skin away before he was ready. Satisfied, the guard grunted, then stood. Colin heard him moving away in the dark.
Water sloshed as Karen set the skin aside. He heard her settling back onto her heels. Her voice was further away when she spoke.
“Is it true?”
“Is what true?” he asked, his throat still raw, voice gravelly.
“Did you attack Walter?”
He would have shifted uncomfortably if he hadn’t been closed up in the lock. He wanted to lie to her, tell her it was a mistake.
“Yes,” he said finally, and hung his head.
He expected her to leave. He expected her to be disappointed with him, as his mother had been.
Instead, she shifted forward, raised his head, and after a careful moment, leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.
It was awkward, and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
When Karen withdrew, Colin blushed. He listened as she began to gather up the cloth, the waterskin, her motions quick, nervous. She stood.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, when they release you,” she said.
She hesitated a moment, then left, footsteps receding in the darkness.
He fell back asleep with his cheeks still burning.
And woke hours later, abruptly, when someone punched him on the back of the head, hard. He cried out, jerked back, forgetting that he was trapped in the lock. Wood brought him up short, scraping his wrists, his neck, drawing blood. He spat a curse, one he’d heard his father using on a regular basis. Someone laughed, was joined by a few others. Colin listened carefully, picked out four people in the darkness.
Walter and his gang.
His eyes narrowed and he clenched his jaw.
“Hello, Colin,” Walter said, flicking Colin’s ear with one finger. Colin flinched, but refused to react in any other way. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind for you when I summoned the Armory. But my father needed something from your father, and, as usual, his needs came first. I wanted something more damaging, perhaps even more permanent, like what the others got.”
Colin wondered where the guard had gone, realized that Walter had probably ordered the guard away.
“Oh, well,” Walter said, standing with an exaggerated sigh. “It was fun watching you shake in terror on the gallows. However, Brunt and Gregor haven’t had their fun yet, so we brought you a little present.” He heard Walter retreat, heard fumbling, the rustle of cloth, low anticipatory chuckling.
And then something struck him in the face, a stream of liquid, joined a moment later by another, then two more. He spluttered, tried to pull away, then realized it wasn’t water and pressed his lips tight, closed his eyes, ducked his head, and breathed in tight, infuriated heaves through his nose, hands groping the darkness uselessly. The laughter rose with the stench of piss, until all four streams trickled off and died. He shook his head like a wet dog, felt a momentary thrill of satisfaction when Walter and the rest cursed and leaped back out of range. But the satisfaction didn’t last.
He thought they’d return again, try something else to humiliate him, but even as he tensed he heard their voices fading into the distance.
The guard returned a short time later but said nothing, even though the reek of urine was obvious.
No one else visited him that night or the next morning. When the time came to release him, his parents were waiting, along with Karen and her father, Sam and Paul, a few others from Lean-to, and Patris Brindisi. The guard who had allowed Karen to help him and the commander of the Armory released the lock, sharing a dark glance when they got close enough to smell the piss, the priest presiding over it all. Colin couldn’t stand, his muscles cramping. He cried out and fell to the ground, his mother at his side instantly. His father and Sam finally made a seat by clasping hands, lifting Colin and carrying him from the square back to Lean-to, his arms over their shoulders, escorted by a covey of grumbling supporters.
Once home, his mother washed off the urine, the dust, and cleaned the wounds on his neck and wrists, the water burning the scrapes and cuts. She fed him, slowly, in small doses, and massaged his arms and legs, shoulders and back, until the cramps subsided. Colin moaned and cried out as she did so, and tremors shook his body.
But he did not weep. He buried that urge beneath the anger, beneath the hatred.
He buried the tears deep.
5
