Josef continues laughing, a madman's cackle.
The Iron Legion rips open a portal and shoves him through it. Josef is still caught in the hysteria, the laughing shaking him all over. He laughs so hard it hurts, so long he can't tell if the tears streaming from his eyes are out of joy or pain or grief or madness. One thing he does know though, something the Iron Legion does not, something he will keep from the man no matter what is done to him. Josef can feel it, deep down within himself, within his soul. He can feel Eska. He can feel that she's still alive.
Chapter 28
How long had it had been? I forget. Time lost meaning down in the Red Cells. Days bled into one another, punctuated only by those hours spent with the Emperor and his ministrations. He varied his methods, and I will not go into them. I have no wish to relive them all, and you have no need to know what was done to me. Torture is a harsh word for a reason.
At the end of each day I was escorted back to my cell, carried, more often than not, and I would find food and water waiting for me, my bucket emptied. Each day I would eat and drink, and then bereft of anything to do, I would stare up at the noose in my cell, trying to summon the courage to use it. Some people would call it cowardice instead. It is not that. It is never that. It is simply the effect of having nothing left to give, of seeing no way out but death. The only end to the pain.
Each night one of my ghosts would come to me. I think I summoned them, dredging them up from the throng that followed me, to provide some measure of companionship and comfort. They were all people I had killed, or at least those I was responsible for. Many of them I recognised; scabs from the Pit, Ishtar's mercenaries, Terrelan soldiers who died because of my little rebellion. I understood my innate Necromancy better because of those nights. I came to understand that I was using it to raise my ghosts, using it to sustain them, without even realising. My guilt over their deaths manifested through a magic I had not, until recently, even known I possessed. Looking inside and studying that power passed some time, and I had a lot of time. Each night one of my ghosts would come to me, and each night I would unravel it, giving the poor soul the final rest I had unwittingly denied from them. I like to think of it as a form of penance. Mistakes are ever easy to make, and paying for them always more difficult. Each one left something with, something of themselves, or at least who they used to be. Memories. I learned to absorb memories from the dead.
It was not quite like the memories of the Djinn I absorbed through lightning. That had been like a vision forced upon me. I could do nothing but experience it in the moment, feeling as though I were living it. The memories I absorbed from the dead were different. They were impressions, a picture and the emotion imprinted upon it. One of the old huntsmen from the Forest of Ten left me a memory of his father and the way he used to smell of woodsmoke and leather. A Terrelan soldier left me a memory of her first child stubbing his toe and wailing for his mother. One of Ishtar's mercenaries gave me a memory of the whole company drunk in a tavern singing bawdy songs and drinking until their whiskers curled.
Magic was in me, I realised. Part of me. Whatever the Iron Legion had done to Josef and I, it had given us both something. I realised now that I absorbed magic. I call my Necromancy innate, as I had been changed using a Necromancy Source, but I had absorbed an Arcstorm and the magic that powered it. Or at least, I had absorbed a part of the storm. It was in me still, though so diminished it was barely a flicker. My eyes no longer flashed, and all I could find when I looked within was the shadow of the storm, the memory of it. But it was not gone. Nor, too, was the Geomancy I had absorbed when I pulled a city from the earth. Though the magic had been seconds from killing me, I somehow retained some of it inside, enough to move my stone arm. It was not much, though I think that was more because of weakness and condition, but I had enough strength left in me to curl and uncurl my fingers. It gave me hope, of a sort. The only hope I had. That one day, should I somehow survive the Red Cells, I might have full use of my arm once more, even if I would never be able to feel it again. It was not gone, only changed.
The loneliness ate away at my resolve. I realise now I have never been good at being alone. I had never been alone before. Not since leaving Keshin all those years ago. I was alone now. Ssserakis continued to ignore me, but my horror was there. I could feel it, feel the chill of it. It was not gone, but it had abandoned me. That loneliness did more to break me than anything the Emperor ever tortured me with. Almost. That statement is almost true.
How long had it been? Long enough that my nails, ripped from my hand on that first day, had grown back. That the sky and sun and moons were a fading memory. My clothes had turned to sweat stained rags that barely covered me. Long enough that the Emperor had torn all but one of his precious screams from me. He seemed disappointed every day. Every day he couldn't find that final scream, and every day it made him more vicious.
The Grave Watch escorted me to my torture chamber once more. I knew their names now. Rork, the tall one with a bushy moustache. Picklesten, the man of few words and few teeth. Clews, the shortest of the three and the one with the quickest tongue. They no longer joked at my expense. I think, in some way, I had earned their respect. I never tried to run from them or fight them, mostly because I knew it would do no good. I did not attempt to bargain or threaten. I did not make their job any more difficult. Each day I walked to my torture, and some days, those I could, I walked away from it. It really depended on what the Emperor had done to me. Despite the torture, despite the scars and the injuries that have never fully healed, despite the pain and humiliation. Despite it all, I persevered. How long had it been? I do not know. Long enough to earn the respect of some of the most hardened soldiers in the Terrelan military. Long enough their mocking stares turned to pitying looks. They strapped me into my chair, as they did every day, and then took their positions. They might have learned to respect me, but they were still my captors, and I was still a prisoner in the process of being tortured to death.
Torture is a delicate art, or so I've been told by those with the knowledge of it. Everyone breaks, given enough time and pain to do so. But in order to extract information from someone, it is important to take just enough from them. They need to give up, to lose themselves and all hope of escape, but they cannot lose the will to live. It's important to leave them with that, or they have no reason to give the torturer what they want. Of course, that's a moot point when information is not the goal. When the goal is to convince the subject to take their own life, the torturer can take as much as they want, do as much as they want. All they need to leave the poor soul with, is enough of themselves left to take the final act of release.
Prena entered the room first, as always. Her position as First Sword was lost to her when the Iron Legion took Neverthere. Now she was the Emperor's bodyguard, following him around and paying witness to every monstrous action the man took. Aras Terrelan swept in behind her, a frown on his rugged features.
"The people are restless, Eska," the Emperor said. "That's what your friends call you, isn't it? I had a wonderful chat with that big one earlier. He resisted, I'll give him that, but somewhere in all the screams his tongue loosened. Oh, the things he told me about you."
A younger version of myself would have damned Hardt for the betrayal, for revealing my secrets to the worst of my enemies. I was not that young, foolish girl anymore. "You have me. Let Hardt go." I didn't bother straining against my restraints, there was simply no point.