The House of Gaian

Chapter 39

Ubel nursed his hatred until it was a living thing crawling inside him.

They had chained him—him! The Master Inquisitor's Assistant!—as if he were an animal. The shackles around his ankles and wrists jangled with every movement, dragged the straw that had been put down on the warehouse floor as rough bedding under the thin blankets they'd been given. A handful of chamberpots, emptied twice a day, kept the men who had survived the destruction of Wolfram's great warships from living in their own filth, but there was no privacy. Every time a man unbuttoned his pants to squat over one of those pots, those bastards—those cold-eyed, silent Fae—watched him.

Their prison inside the warehouse had no walls, just crates no more than waist high to mark the perimeter. Even in chains, it wouldn't take much effort to get over the crates, but any man who tried to escape was dead before he'd taken two steps, arrows bristling out of his chest and back. The Fae didn't warn or wound. They simply killed. Baron's son, minor gentry, soldier, sailor, Inquisitor. It didn't matter to them.

There was no way past these cold-eyed Fae. They didn't speak, not even among themselves, while they stood guard. His men couldn't get close enough to fight them, and his Inquisitor's Gift of persuasion had no effect on them. Humans didn't come into the warehouse—at least, they didn't come in far enough to be useful to him. And the one time he'd managed to snare a human youth's will by raising his voice as if to offer encouragement to his fellow prisoners, the young man was pulled out of the warehouse as soon as the Fae realized the human had been ensnared—and a Fae Lord with eyes colder and more dangerous than the sea came in a little while later and told him that if he raised his voice again, they would cut out his tongue and feed it to him.

He believed the bastard.

So he nursed his hatred and waited, waited, waited for the enemy to come to him. Because there were barons' sons and minor gentry among the prisoners, because the baron who ruled this piece of Sylvalan was so young and inexperienced in doling out harsh punishment, a message had been sent to Padrick, the Baron of Breton, to assess the prisoners, to pass judgment.

The enemy he had failed to punish the last time was coming within his reach. He wasn't a fool. Killing Padrick would guarantee his own death, but destroying Padrick would be a deep wound to western Sylvalan. And when the Master Inquisitor conquered this part of Sylvalan, Adolfo would hear of it and know his Assistant had served him well to the last breath.