Darkness Girl: Trickster God

Chapter Fifteen: Unspeakably Ugly Methods

A bucket of water brought Regan to her senses. The water dripped off her hair, matted with blood and sweat, and ran down into the drain below her. They'd taken her down and given her a chair, which was nice of them. She couldn't see out of one eye anymore; one of Pyotr's punches had broken the bone just under her cheek, but she couldn't remember the punch that had done it. She shifted slightly in her chair and gave a halting gasp as a sharp stab of pain shot up from her shattered ribs. She wondered how long Pyotr had kept hitting her after she'd passed out. As she curled over in pain, she discovered that her wrists were handcuffed to the sides of the chair.

'You were more brutal than usual,' Trevellian observed. 

'She was energetic.' 

Regan suppressed a shudder at the sound of Pyotr's deep, musical voice. When they were alone together he couldn't seem to stop talking. His words came in a constant, quiet stream as he gripped and twisted and hit. Now Trevellian was in the room though, he was suddenly reticent again. 

Regan raised her head and looked at the two men through a lattice of her own wet hair. Trevellian was dressed fastidiously in a grey suit and pressed white shirt. Pyotr placed a chair behind him carefully and Trevellian sat down. With his open collar and relaxed attitude he looked like a young millionaire. 

'You can go,' Trevellian dismissed the torturer. 

Pyotr hesitated, like an artist leaving an unfinished work, as if his departure would somehow put everything he'd done so far at risk. 

'Leave.' Trevellian's voice was tinged with irritation. 

Pyotr left the room with a hurried glance back. 

'I don't know what ice cave you found him in,' said Regan. 'But you should put him back.' 

'He's more complicated than he first seems.' 

'No he's not. He's a petty sadist with a thin veneer on the surface.' 

'You mean he's a man with hidden shallows?' 

'Ha ha,' said Regan gravely. 'If he didn't have someone to hurt, he'd find a dog or a cat or a fly. Anything that can feel pain.' 

'Thankfully, working for Unity, the supply of victims has not yet come up as an issue. Personally, I find his methods unspeakably ugly, but then again the velvet glove approach only really works with the iron fist inside.' Trevellian grinned. 'You should hear him play the piano though.' 

'Did you have something to say to me, or are you just here to make snide comments and admire Pyotr's handiwork?' 

'I'm here to offer you a way out again. If you let us into your mind, then I promise you won't have to see Pyotr again. Scouts' honour,' he held up three fingers. 

Regan let out a short, cynical laugh that crackled like burning plastic. 

'You want me to promise not to smash your psychic's mind like a cheap mirror if you bring her in again. What are you hoping to get out of this?' 

'I'm hoping to find out how your craft works.' 

For a moment Regan went silent. Trevellian simply sat watching her. 

'Who ever said I had a craft?' 

Trevellian leaned back in his chair and picked some lint off his thigh. 

'We can play this game if you want,' he said. 'But I warn you, I'm better at it than you are.' 

Regan glared at him. 'Your self satisfied smirking makes me sick. Some day I'm going to drive a blade right into your guts just to watch your expression as you die.' 

'Somehow your threats lack punch when you're chained to a chair.' 

'Okay, unchain me and I'll give it another go.' 

Trevellian smiled. 'You have no idea how pointless it is to keep resisting. It will be easier for us, and it will hurt less for you, if you let us in willingly.' 

'Why are you so keen to get inside my head? If you're starting a fan club, my favourite colour is red.' 

'A revelation that completely fails to shock me. Perhaps I should be more honest with you.' 

'I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for it to happen.' 

'Would there be any advantage in deceiving you at this juncture? I've got you tied up and disarmed, and honestly, after a day with Pyotr, you're a lot less pretty than the first time we met.' 

Regan shifted her weight slightly. She was chained securely to the chair, but the chair itself hadn't been bolted to the floor. Interesting. 

'Jordan's craft isn't psychic powers,' said Trevellian. 'At least not in the carnival way that people think of when they use the word. She's just ultra-sensitive to the electrical impulses in people's brains. It's not like she can read your thoughts as such, most thoughts are too complex and instinctual for that, but she can skim strong intentions from the surface.' 

'I wonder how you pushed her buttons. You obviously managed to wrap her around your finger somehow. It must have been hard to sell her that good-guy-surrounded-by-evil routine when you're such a natural bastard.' 

'I was the one who opened her mind to her true power,' said Trevellian. 'I gave her a sense of purpose. Before that she was just a lonely girl who couldn't connect with anyone because of her gift.' 

'Yeah, you're one great guy.' 

'Do you know what makes it impossible to steal a craft? It's not the physical properties. Unity cracked that a long time ago. Take our disgusting former-friend Lewis, for example: with some skilled healers and bit of ingenuity it wouldn't be too hard to rip that powerful bile duct out of him and graft it into another person, but you still wouldn't end up with your own mucus slinging freak show.' 

'Why you'd even want one is another question.' 

'Of course you'd want one. Crafts are power.' 

Trevellian stood up and paced around his chair distractedly. He lent on the back of it and drummed his fingers on the burnished aluminium, looking past Regan into the corner of the room. Regan leaned forward slightly and started to transfer her weight to the balls of her feet. The back legs of the chair lifted slightly off the ground. 

'It took us a long time to work out what was going on, embarrassingly long really,' Trevellian said, still distracted. 'We'd remove all the physical parts of a craft and transplant them into one of our people, but once the transplant was done, all of the new parts became just so much useless meat. They couldn't control it. You know why?' 

'Tell me,' said Regan, as she casually gripped the sides of her chair.