Page 13 of These Divided Shores
A lie of surrender curled Ben’s tongue like bark shriveling off kindling. His mouth opened with a primal drive to protect Gunnar, consequences be damned—
Gunnar’s eyes found Ben’s across the hall, blueness hardened with determination and beautiful resolve. He shook his head, once, and Ben’s fire went out.
He couldn’t surrender. He couldn’t work for his father again.
He couldn’t save Gunnar.
“You can stop this too, barbarian,” the defensor said with a sneer. “Tell us how to make Eye of the Sun permanent, and we’ll leave. Well, we’ll leavesooner.”
Ben yanked on the iron bars. Lu’s breath came in quick gasps behind him.
He had known for six years what would happen if he revealed his true loyalties: his father would imprison him until he changed his mind. That had always been the threat, thathewould be harmed, and it had been enough to keep him silent.
Had Ben known Elazar would break him through someone else’s torture, he wouldn’t have spent the past six years silent. He would have spent them comatose.
One defensor ripped off Gunnar’s shirt. The other gave the whip a threatening crack on the floor.
“Stop!” Ben cried. “God, don’t do this!”
Jakes turned away as though Ben’s pain hurt him. As though he couldfeel.
“The Pious God doesn’t hear you,” a monxe spat. “Let this act chase the Devil from your hearts. Defensors, save these wretched souls.”
He waved at them to start.
Gunnar was a warrior. He had undergone whatever Mecht ceremony had given him Eye of the Sun; his rigid bearing said he knew how to endure pain.
But after thirty-seven cracks of the whip, he broke with a whimper.
The defensors left, satisfied by that quaking moan from the strong Mecht warrior. Monxes sopped the blood off the floor and wrapped bandages around Gunnar’s wounds but left him hanging, his hands a dark purple-red from his weight on the manacles.
His hoarse breathing was the only sign he was alive.
Lu’s pulse clawed at her veins. Knees to her chest on the floor, she gulped at the thick air. The metal tongs she had in her sleeve were the only thing solid in a world gone to liquid.
Ben, his back to the bars, didn’t move. She couldn’t bring herself to see his face, the stain of agony that would unravel her.
“Have you... have you tried to escape?” Lu whispered in Argridian. She knew Argridian as most on GraceLoray did—the Grace Lorayan dialect had developed from Argridian over centuries. Lu’s parents—her father, particularly—had made sure she was fluent to better serve on her missions during the war.
Speaking it so much felt like wearing an ill-fitting gown. One she wanted to rip off.
Ben was silent for a long while. “Once while we were on theAstuto.Once here. This prison is... disorienting. And Gunnar—sometimes, he seems drugged. I think my father is giving him something to weaken his mind. The defensors insist I drink certain water to stay unaffected should I choose to work. It must contain the antidote.”
Lu looked at him out of a dread-laced shock. “When you came down here, did the walls move?” She hadn’t noticed that when the defensors brought her from the upper room, but—
Bloodshot veins reddened Ben’s dark eyes. “I thought I had imagined it.”
“No. It’s Emerdian.” Surely the Argridian prince had heard of Emerdian masonry. Argrid was neighbors with Emerdon on the Mainland.
The horror on Ben’s face said he had. “We can’t be in Emerdon.”
“Port Camden. The Emerdian syndicate’s territory.”
The city that sat in Grace Loray’s northwestern corner. Thanks to its prison, the revolutionaries hadn’t been able to wrest control of Port Camden away from Argrid untilthe war was won. The Emerdians had built it as their fortress when they first settled on Grace Loray, centuries ago. Masonry was a prized Emerdian skill—intricate brickwork made up every important building in Emerdon, its most feared penitentiaries being no exception. Walls moved to rearrange halls; doors disappeared into the bricks; whole wings could be cut off and reopened.
Three inescapable prisons stood in Emerdon. One was on Grace Loray.
During the war, the revolutionaries had intercepted people released from the prison. They spoke of a fraying place that made you question your own mind:“Magic. In the food, the water, the air—wherever it comes from, you can’t escape it.”
