Angelfire | The Whispering Wall #3

Seventy: Fools

I've been in better positions.

Jeorge shuffled around in the tiny crate of a room he'd been dumped in and winced at the cramp in his wings.

Worse, too.

In his seeming lifelong tour of the dungeons of Nictaven, he'd been in worse. Lucifer's, for one, and Harkenn's had been no luxury tavern room, either. Marick Silversong's tiny wooden box covered with stale straw was far from the worst accommodations Jeorge had been in, but it did take the cake in every other godsdamned respect.

Mercy Novae was in the Reach. Working with the Devils. And Jeorge had no idea where he was, or how good his chances were of getting out of this. He had no cards to play, not with Ilan in the fray. He was back where he was when he'd escaped the Annexe with an axe hanging over his head, hoping he could gather enough dirt on Lucifer's plans to win him Harkenn's protection. It hadn't worked out as neatly as he'd hoped, but he'd got close. Harkenn had started to trust him with his own tasks, like patrolling for new portals and investigating Orthan, and had threatened him less as the weeks wore on and Jeorge continued to do everything he was told. They didn't like each other, but Harkenn at least saw his uses.

This whole episode was probably going to ruin every plan he'd laid since he set foot in this city.

Nictaven burbled with its usual persistence in the back of his mind. The only small mercy of this whole ordeal was that, wherever he was, Nictaven was further away and a damned sight quieter. His ribs were bruised black from Ilan's questioning, and his knees and palms were still raw, but at least there was that.

Though clarity of thought wasn't a massive help, either. No plan he'd come up with so far had a hope of working, and he really didn't want to see if Marick Silversong had meant what he'd said about Jeorge's wings.

He became aware of a presence on the other side of the wall and sat up a little straighter, wings shivering involuntarily at the sound of a key in the lock. The door cracked open. Jeorge shrank back from the light glaring from a handheld lantern that greeted him, but it soon moved so that he could see who had opened the door.

He swallowed.

"Good evening, Mr Nerahardt," Marick Silversong said, blank and bland, as if it was every day he opened a store cupboard and found a person tied up inside. Perhaps it was. "I wondered if we could have a chat."

"Do I have a choice?"

The man's face didn't so much as flicker. "I'm afraid not. But I feel it's always polite to give warning."

He stepped away, and in his place a huge bald Varthian thug shouldered his way through the door and heaved Jeorge over his shoulder as if he were nothing more than a sack of potatoes. He only had time to scream in a highly undignified manner as his ribs took his weight and sent black stars shooting across his vision, before he was dumped just as unceremoniously in a chair, hands wrenched behind him before he could gather his wits and roped together painfully tight.

Marick sat down on another chair opposite, one ankle propped on his knee, as the Varthian stepped back into the shadows of a larger room. It was empty of all furniture, though the floor beneath them was varnished wood, and the walls in good condition. By the chill in the air and the slight staleness, Jeorge guessed he was in a cellar, and that his quarters had been a store cupboard after all.

"Apologies for the rough treatment in our last meeting," Marick said. "I'm afraid Ilan doesn't see the value in patience. I like to give people a chance to...come around." He tilted his head. Jeorge imagined demon victims must feel similarly right before being eaten. "You and Ilan are very familiar already, I'm to understand."