Lesser Weevils

“I absolutely will not hear of it.” Captain Guillaume gently pushed the woman away and strode to the window, the metal plates of his armour clanking quietly with each long step. He rested his gloved fingertips on the stone sill and cast his gaze over the dark and rainy Vertwind capital. “Your methods may be accepted by the gaoler but I refuse to stoop to such measures.”

Remi Guillaume’s voice was rich and deep. He spoke in his native tongue, Versch; a syrupy language with delicate consonants and smooth, plunging vowels.

A cold shiver brushed itself along his spine as the woman stepped up behind him and wrapped her fingers around his shoulder. Even through the layers of shaped metal, padding and cloth he could feel the ice of her touch. He clenched his jaw, focused his dark mahogany eyes on the lazy plume of smoke drifting upwards from one of the houses just outside the castle wall.

“You will eventually, you know,” she murmured into his ear and he felt her fingertips lightly playing with the the overgrown curls at the back of his neck. Guillaume made a mental note to visit the barber as soon as he had left the castle.

“I will not,” he steeled himself and replied. “There are other, more humane ways to extract information from those who possess it.”

The woman chuckled, a million fragments of shattered glass tinkling onto the stone floor. “That’s not what I meant.”

He chanced to glance down at her, his gaze flicking quickly over her bronze skin, gleaming black eyes, succulent sanguine lips. He shrugged her hand from his shoulder and turned away, making for the door.

“Cosette,” He grumbled back to her as he left the room. “There are other, more humane ways to do that, too.”

The Guard Captain closed the door solidly behind him. He leaned back against the wall in the darkness of the corridor, tilted his head back until he felt the cool stone on the skin of his neck, and closed his eyes. He heard the fabric of her skirts swooshing around her ankles as she crossed the room in his pursuit and braced himself for another emotional onslaught. His breath was ragged, his cheeks hot. He heard her pause on the other side of the door, saw the handle move just slightly as she rested her hand upon it, but she did not continue the action.

Guillaume took that as his sign to leave while he still could. He pushed away from the wall and let the shadows of the corridor engulf him further. The torches hadn’t yet been lit – the rain had come over suddenly and plunged the place into gloom – but he had trodden these halls for years and didn’t need light to find his way. He took the steps, descending to the scullery and passing through the room with only a cursory glance towards the maids that busied about. Once outside in the courtyard he paused again, let the heavy rain soak his dark hair until it was flat against his head and run in freezing rivulets down his neck and back.

He could feel her eyes on him from the window above. Didn’t matter that he hadn’t stayed, or that she hadn’t followed – she was still under his skin. An image of her polished nails clawing against his naked flesh fluttered across his mind and he shivered and scowled.

He kicked up splashes of rainwater from the puddles that had formed on the gravel as he trudged to the armory. The castle was quiet; he passed not a single soul as he walked through the gardens and beneath the sheltered archways that stretched along the outside of the great hall. It would likely remain quiet until this whole business with the assassination was over, Guillaume mused – and that would not be any time soon.

The castle sat now beneath the dark shadows of a cloud of melancholy. The city outside was similarly affected, but not quite to the extent that had plunged the fort into the awkward mourning silence that permeated its grey stone walls and turned its hallways to naves and corridors to cloisters. Nobody wanted to visit.

Guillaume scooped up a pair of brass knucks from the armory and continued through to the heavy iron door at the back. He lifted the bar and heaved the door open; it swung on smooth hinges, bottom corner skirting the silvery smooth line in the stone that marked years of frequent use. It clanked closed behind him as he descended the polished, narrow stone stairway and took  the passage to a second heavy door.

“Captain Guillaume,” he called through the grated faceplate. A scuffle from behind the door and then it opened from the other side. The gaoler stepped back to let the Captain pass.

“You got ‘er smell on you again,” the runt of a man noted with a gap-toothed grin and a twinkle in his grey eyes.

Guillaume ignored the remark and continued into the depths of the jail, but he could still hear the gaoler’s nasal chortling behind him. The Captain navigated the maze of corridors until finally he came to the torture chamber at the back of the compound. There was no gilding this lily – the chamber had one sole purpose, and was well equipped for it.

His prisoner was shackled at the wrists from chains fixed to the ceiling in the middle of the room. He was half-standing, angry red bracelets on his arms where his legs had been too weak to take his weight.

“I trust you slept well,” Guillaume greeted the man as he removed his gloves and placed them on a nearby table. “I’d hate for us to continue this with you not feeling at your best.”

The man snorted.

“Pity,” Guillaume slid the knucks over his fingers. “We’re continuing regardless.”

“Sound carries well through these bloodied walls,” the prisoner croaked dryly. “That sorceress is lovely, isn’t she?”

Guillaume swung a heavy uppercut into the man’s stomach, lifting him off his feet and rattling the chains that held him.

“Where are they hiding?” He caught his shoulders and set the coughing man gently back on his feet.

The prisoner spat blood onto the floor. “Does your wife know?”

Guillaume jabbed his armoured knuckles into the prisoner’s ribs, causing him to draw up into a standing foetal curl, teetering on one foot as he tried to back away from the Captain.

“Out the moors? In the woods to the north?” Guillaume flexed his fingers and shifted the position of the knucks a little.

The prisoner recovered his composure, managed a damning laugh. “No, of course not. I’d keep it quiet too if I had a sultry little vixen like that on the side.”

The Captain of the Vertwind Guard slammed his bronze-weighted fist into the man’s jaw. The prisoner slumped, manacles cutting into his hands as they took his full unconscious weight. Guillaume scooped up a bucket, filled it with water from a pump and emptied it over the prisoner’s head. He spluttered, scrabbled to stand, blood pouring from an open gash across his face.

Guillaume took him by the collar of his dirty rags and pulled his face close to his own. “That sorceress wants me to let her visit you. Ah, you think you’d like that, don’t you?” he hissed, face contorted in an angry grimace. “Let me tell you that you won’t. She will set her fingers gently against your temples, her plump, scarlet lips close enough that you can smell her sweet perfume, and you will think that she is kind, and soft, and gentle – and then, when she has you under her enchanting embrace, she will claw her fingers into your skull and rip out every thought you hold dear, leaving you an empty shell that sees and feels nothing but an unending blackness.”

The Captain let the prisoner go and turned away, pulling the knucks from his fingers and running his bloodied hands under the water.

“The moors,” the prisoner’s voice was weak. “I don’t know which one, but one of the watchtowers.”

Guillaume smiled wryly.

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