I, Night Angel

The big man is tied face in to a tun barrel as tall as he is, arms spread like a child begging for a hug. The best torture is imagination.

The tun is lying on its side, full of wine, and it's as heavy as any ten or twelve men put together. The way Ugh's tied, he could push off from his toes and roll it—if he wanted to crush his own head when it continued rolling him down on the other side. Tied with hands and feet close against the barrel, though, he can't get the leverage to do anything else.

"Ugh, I admire your courage. I was once tied up like you are now. Scary. But courage should be put in the service of good. Duchess Jadwin is a murderer and worse. Why protect her?"

"Oh, so you're the good guy now?" he asks. They're the first words he's spoken since his first ugh when I broke his nose and gave him that blood mustache.

"Good guy?" I ask. "Huh." I start unfolding a package on top of a hogshead barrel I upended for the purpose. We're in an empty cellar in a noblewoman's house that's under construction. It's dark in here.

I forget. I can see perfectly in darkness. I see that the darkness is there, but I simply see through it. When I've had to describe it, I've said the darkness welcomes my eyes. Nonsense descriptions have to do, sometimes, when you have to describe that which is like nothing else.

I light a single candle so Ugh can see. What fear he was going to feel from being with a creature like me in the perfect darkness has already been juiced from his flesh.

Now to give his imagination some pulp for new nightmares.

He can now see the torture implements laid out on the smaller hogshead barrel, barely, if he cranes his jowly head back as far as he can.

I peel off my tunic. Carefully turn it right side out. Carefully fold it. That I'm of medium height and medium build is generally an asset in my work, but it does mean big men don't find me threatening. As if something small can't kill. 

People are irrational. You can't change it, so you work with it. I've been training for hours every day since I was perhaps eleven years old. It's not pride to note that I've an impressive physique. 

But I don't act as if he's supposed to be impressed. He'll pretend not to be. Machismo is irrational, too. Instead, I move the hogshead forward a bit so he can see it better.

I unfold the cloths on the table to reveal a graduated hollow metal cylinder, some olive oil, a live mole trapped in an open bottle, and a length of rope.

 I bow over the table, reverent. I light another candle.

"Ch'torathi sigwye h'e banath so sikamon to vathari. Vennadosh chi tomethigara. Horgathal mu tolethara. Veni, soli, fali, deachi. Vol lessara dei." I do my best to make it sound like a prayer to some dark god. It's actually the blessing Durzo spoke over me. I'd never heard the language before, and haven't heard it since, and while my memory is very good, it needs refreshing now and again.

I sigh.

I really don't want to do this.

I bow my head again as in prayer, tenting my hands in front of my chest. Ugh's head is cranked as far toward me as possible. He's gonna have a crick in his neck tomorrow if he keeps that up. And lives.

I take a dab of the olive oil on my fingertips and take a deep breath, as if bracing myself.

~I love this part.~ the ka'kari says in my head.

Quiet.

I draw the oil in a strip across my chest.

Steam escapes. I grunt, pursing my lips. The skin bubbles, and jet-black metal is revealed beneath torn skin.