The underground stone chamber of Frostspear Castle was damp and cold. The smell of searing iron mingled with blood, like some twisted purgatory.
Kalan hung upside down from a torture post, his body smeared with blood. His once strong, upright frame had been reduced to a skeleton wracked by spasms.
The interrogator pressed a red-hot iron needle into a junction of nerves in his calf, drawing an agonized howl that set teeth on edge.
He screamed in collapse, his voice like the whimpering of a trapped beast, repeating what he had already said: "It was Joseph! Joseph Caradi! He approached us first... he offered the maps himself!
"He gave us the deployment maps for the Empire's southwest! He even wrote down the shift changes at the southwestern watchtowers..."
Duke Edmund stood silently before the torture rack, leafing through the Silver Plate Guild's ledger and notebook.
The pages had curled slightly from the damp bloodstains, but the writing remained clear. Even Joseph's scrawled signature was unmistakably genuine.
He stared hard at the words, his thoughts unreadable.
Kalan panted violently. "I... I was just a middleman... transport, allocations, delivering people and medicinal ingredients as needed... Joseph was the one... he wanted to be the Federation's 'bridgehead'...
"He said his family had sidelined him, that he wanted to use the mess in your Empire to build himself up... please, please let me die... make it quick..."
His once cold, piercing eyes were now unfocused and yellowed, riddled with blood vessels. Sobs and whimpers caught in his throat until it was impossible to tell whether he was pleading or cursing.
"Why won't you kill me..." he whispered shakily. "You people of the Empire are more vicious than the Federation..."
Edmund said nothing. He merely turned to the next page of the notebook.
A list