With the apartment now lit, Nicolai could see the full extent of the damage that he had inflicted on the assailant. The man’s hands were tied behind the chair he sat in, still flushed and sweaty from their fight. His left shoulder sagged a bit lower than the other, indicating that the rest of his arm had lost strength due to the knife slash. His jawbone, which at one point must have had smooth, clean edges, now sported four distinct pieces, parts of which stuck out from the skin. Brown trickles of dried blood painted his face and neck, interrupted only by the fresh streams of red which still seeped from his wounds.
Yet as badly as he was hurt, Nicolai, and his assailant, knew that the worst was to come. Before the intruder, sitting only two feet away, sat Boris, with two equally large Chenians flanking him. With his elbows on his knees, Boris leaned forward, cradling his fighting knife in his hands. It was a spectacularly simple blade. Six inches from tip to hilt. Lightweight but strong, with smooth sides that gave way to an edge that appeared more like a shard of broken glass than a fashioned weapon. As clean as the blade was, it was obvious that the knife was not for show but had seen combat, for the leather straps that wrapped around the handle had the same deep reddish-brown color that streaked across the intruder’s face.
Boris and the two Chenians had arrived thirty minutes earlier. Mrs. Fletching had sent one of the neighborhood boys to bring them. Due to Nicolai’s earlier visit, and the news he brought, Boris had not even bothered to check in with Mrs. Fletching first or any of the other tenants. He headed straight for Nicolai’s flat, without pause or interruption.
Yet despite Boris’ haste, he did not arrive empty handed. He brought with him a Chenian specialty, a truth serum, or what they called “wailer’s syrup” in the taverns of the motherland. In truth, it was little more than an alcoholic brew mixed with stewed angelino flowers. But the hallucinogenic affect of the flowers, coupled with mind-numbing agents of the alcohol, could make even the quietest of people babble on for hours.
Boris and Nicolai knew that the intruder, whom they could only assume was a Czarian Guard, would try to resist the temptation to tell. They had tried to make him drink the wailer’s syrup. When he refused, they forced his mouth open and poured it down. As a precaution to their pending interrogation, they even cleaned his wounds with the serum, in the hope that it would be absorbed into his bloodstream.
Minutes later, they idly waited for the wailer’s syrup to take effect. Nicolai, Boris and the two others watched their nemesis with intense scrutiny, as if their stares would hasten the effects of the serum.
The intruder, his gaze on the knife, said nothing. The shattered jaw left him a mute, a fortunate advantage for one who had ingested truth serum. Boris knew this. Still, he addressed him as though he could speak.
“The salt air isn’t good for metal. Which is why I never bring out my knife unless I know I’m going to use it.”
The man across from him could do nothing more than stare. And that was enough. With each new threat, his eyes widened. Not by much, for it was obvious by his physique that he had had some professional military training, and thus was schooled in how to react during an interrogation. But his recent beating had left him in shock, so much so that his resistance to further bullying tactics was beginning to wear down.
“I knew a Czarian once, who looked just like you. It was here, in this very city. One night, after a long day on the docks, I was walking home when I stopped at a tavern for a pint of ale. It was really late, and this was when taverns used to serve both Czarians and Chenians after a certain hour, when the Shavice had gone home, so as to make a little money on the side.
“So, I walked in, sat and drank. There were only four other men besides the barkeep. One of them looked just like you. Big man, blue eyes, blond hair. Drunk like a fish. He was talking up a storm, but no one was listening to him, until he paid attention to me. He saw me, at the end of the bar, by myself. He pointed, said some drunken slur, then laughed. Then he stood up. He stood up, made his way over and began shoving me, yelling at the top of his lungs, about how because of people like me he couldn’t find work.
“What he said must have struck a chord with the other three men, because soon, they were all pushing and hitting me, as if I was somehow responsible for their bad turn of events. The barkeep just stood by and watched, so I knew I couldn’t count on him to get help. That’s when I reached back for my knife. I whipped it from behind my back, out to the four of them, who jumped back like frightened prey. I wielded that knife in every direction until I reached the door and left.
“But it wasn’t over. As I pulled my coat collar around my neck, that drunken idiot, the one who looked just like you, came stumbling out of the tavern, saying how he wasn’t afraid of any Chenian with a knife. I would have kept walking away, that is, had I not noticed the blade in his own hand. So, he swung at me, and I in turn swung back.
“Guess which one of us walked away and which one bled to death in a gutter?”
That was all the man across from him could take. He began to wriggle in his chair, a vain attempt to try to free himself from his bindings. The two Chenians next to Boris chuckled in amusement while Boris grinned. Nicolai, who had been standing behind them all along watching the interrogation unfold, stepped forward.
“Enough. We need answers,” Nicolai said.
“The young one is getting fussy,” Boris replied.
“Why are you here?!” Nicolai yelled at the intruder.
“You won’t get anywhere like that,” Boris said.
He stood up from his chair with his knife firmly in his right hand. Nicolai moved back. The Czarian intruder sat straight up.
Boris walked behind him, to where his hands were bound to the chair. He gripped his blond hair with his one free hand and pulled his head back, so that he was able to look Boris straight in the eyes.
“I’m going to cut your right arm free. We’re going to pull up a table with some paper, a quill and an ink well. You’re going to write down an answer to every one of our questions. If you don’t, you can say good-bye to your left arm for good. Understood?”
The Czarian nodded. Boris released his hair. Then he slipped his knife under one of the ropes to cut his right arm loose just as his two friends moved a table beside him. Boris gripped his right arm and slammed it on the table beside the quill. He turned to Nicolai.
“Go ahead.”
Nicolai, put off by Boris’ brash tone, but still wanting answers, approached the Czarian. The Czarian, still reeling from his injuries, looked up at Nicolai. It was clear from the glazed look in his eyes and his slumped shoulders that Nicolai did not elicit the same fear that Boris did. How could he? Boris, thirty years his senior, had all the makings of an ex-soldier who had survived too many winters on his grit and strength alone. While Nicolai was no weakling, he was no rough-shaven fighter either. He knew that to make the Czarian write the truth, he had to convince him that it was in his best interest, not anyone else's.
Nicolai circled around behind him. He leaned in close, all the while keeping an eye on the assailant's right arm, so as to make sure that he would not make some vain attempt to strike him.
"Listen, and listen well," Nicolai said, not in Chenian, but in Czarian.
Nicolai leaned in further, just far enough to catch a glimpse of his eyes. The intruder looked up and over his shoulder. Their eyes met. Nicolai knew he understood.
"You see those three men there? They know a bit of Czarian too, but not enough to know what I'm saying. So what I say now stays between you and me.
"You have to understand that they are the first to hear of news from Chenia, about the atrocities on the Frontier. They listen and read on helplessly as they learn that their comrades are being slaughtered. They hunger for revenge but have not been able to act. Until now. You are the first Czarian they have seen in years. You stepped onto their territory, the ghetto, here in Knight’s Harbor. That’s nothing less than a declaration of war.
“They’ll make an example out of you. Not with an execution. No, there are too many here that want the pleasure of killing a Czarian. They’ll evenly distribute the task of torture, allowing any able-bodied Chenian with a blade to cut away at you. In small pieces. Just large enough to take away like a souvenir. For days on end. That’s the fate that awaits you.”
Nicolai circled around the Czarian slowly, never removing his gaze from his face. While the intruder had remained still through the whole of Nicolai’s promise, his eyes had managed to reveal his anxiety. They looked forward, at nothing in particular, the way a man does when he is in a room with others but his mind has wandered.
Nicolai stepped between him and the three Chenians. He wrapped his hand around the Czarian’s chin. The man winced as Nicolai lifted his head.
“The best you can hope for is to confess. If there are others from the Guard here, and we know there are, then perhaps we’ll keep you alive long enough to negotiate an exchange.”
The Czarian blinked a few times. Perfect, Nicolai thought. We've broken him.
Nicolai reached for the quill and dipped the tip into the inkwell. He laid it beside the Czarian’s hand, which rested on the table. Nicolai stepped back.
“Now write.” 58Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSBZWJdtinZ
