Smoke and Shadow: The Fireweaver, Book 1

Chapter 2. NARROW

"I know what you are." Bald stopped a few feet in front of the prisoner, took a pack of cigarettes from a front pocket and tapped one out. Brought the lighter to it. The prisoner didn't even blink when the guard blew smoke into his face. "You tell me the truth and I'll get you out of here. That's a promise."

The live-ink lizard tattoo writhed around Bald's temple and flicked its tongue. He held the red-hot end of his cigarette up to the prisoner's jaw, grizzled with the start of a beard. A scar ran down the base of the prisoner's neck, disappearing under the front dip of his tunic. The same baggy tunic she was in. The prisoner remained silent, not a hint of movement.

Bald laughed, then looked to Dimarrah. 

"You watchin' this?" 

She sat in the shadowed corner of her cell, cringing that he'd called her out. 

"Witchy here don't talk much either. But I know she's watchin'." He was slurring. Vitriol drunk. And he was just getting started. Drinking only greased his wheels.

"We got fifteen minutes," said Nerves, glancing at his wristscreen. 

Bald took a long, languorous drag off his cigarette, tapping the ashes to the cement floor.

Nerves licked his lips. "Look at that nasty scar. He can't be one of 'em."

"Scars don't mean nothin'," Bald said, "just means they're harder to kill. These fuckers, they're like cockroaches." He made a full circle around the prisoner and stopped again in front of him, tracing the long scar with the cigarette. "Probably fake. I seen them do it before. Think they can fool everyone."

"How we gonna know for sure?"

"Looks like he ain't feelin' too chatty." Bald gave a satisfied grin. "Didn't want to do this the hard way." 

Nerves swallowed audibly. "Boss said not to—"

"Boss ain't here now, is he?" He tilted his head and took a deeper drag off the cigarette. Hovered the red hot end right over the prisoner's scarred collarbone. 

 "You tell me, where should I put this and we get this over nice and easy?"

The prisoner stared into the guard's eyes, then spoke deliberately, enunciating each syllable.

"Stehke von yon assei."

Dimarrah sucked in her breath. Wanachiean. He'd spoken in the lost language. She hadn't heard it since childhood.

Foreign or not, the prisoner's meaning was clear. He'd just told Bald to stick it up his—

"He say what I think he just said?" Bald looked back to Nerves, who nodded, needlessly.

Turning back to the prisoner, Bald wore a smugness she knew too well, when she'd fought back. In the beginning. 

Don't taunt him you fool, she thought. It's what he wants. 

She swore she saw the prisoner's head turn her way by the smallest amount. Might have even seen the slightest curve of a grin. Bald must have seen it too. He sucked on the cigarette, then slowly, so slowly, pressed the hot end into the prisoner's skin, twisting it on his collarbone, watching him. The prisoner's jaw clenched, but he made no sound or movement.

Bald spoke, unhurried as he pulled the hot end off. "That's me being magnanimous. For now."

The mark of the burn stood out from the other scar. Nerves shifted in the shadows. Waiting for something to happen. "Ain't it supposed to disappear or something?"

Bald let the cigarette drop, undeterred. "I know what I saw yesterday. He ain't just an Anomaly." He took a step closer to the prisoner. "You got anything more to say?"