The Guild of the Cowry Catchers, Book 1: Embers Page 3

  Chapter 3. The Prisoners

  Those with paws eat those with hooves. Just as pegasus are food for griffins, so fauns are food for grishnards. This is right and natural.

  —Morchella, Sacred Text

  As Gerard suspected, Silveo had already come to have a look at the prisoners. Gerard found him in the hallway of the temple dungeons, haranguing the unfortunate guard. “Have you been living under a rock for the last ten years?” demanded Silveo. “Do you not know who I am?”

  “I know who you are, and I cannot allow you to enter. The Priestess has forbidden you access to these prisoners.”

  “Can you let me in?” asked Gerard.

  Silveo spun around to glare at him. He was a silver-furred fox shelt with hair of the same color and pale blue eyes. He was a vain creature with a plume of a tail, braided frequently with ribbon or gold thread. His eyes were lined with more kohl than Gerard thought seemly or necessary to reduce the glare of the sun. In apparel, Silveo had the unfortunate tastes of the newly wealthy. His clothes were frequently heavy with cloth of silver, pearls, and exotic furs. Gerard’s taste for elegant understatement seemed to annoy him.

  In fact, nearly everything about Gerard seemed to annoy Silveo. Fox shelts were one of the little races. Adults stood no taller than a ten year old grishnard child. Silveo had to look up at most grishnards, but with Gerard, he had to look even higher. Gerard suspected this had been the original source of Silveo’s enmity. However, they hadn’t taken long finding other reasons to dislike each other.

  Gerard spoke to the guard at the cell door. “My name is Gerard Holovar, and I think you’re supposed to let me interrogate the prisoners.”

  “That is correct,” said the guard. “Her Highness left instructions.”

  Gerard glanced at Silveo’s confused expression. “I have been made captain of Police,” he explained.

  Silveo started to laugh. “You? Taking Montpir’s place?”

  “Me.”

  “Congratulations. As a failure, you seem to be a great success.”

  Before Silveo could say anything else, Gerard unbolted the cell door. The guard stepped forward with a torch as he pushed it open. The stale air inside reeked of urine and sweat. Gerard drew his sword—a long, elegant blade that had been in his family for years and which he’d been ordered to give to his brother before he left. “If they want it,” he’d told Thessalyn, “they can come and get it.”

  He followed the guard into the cell. Silveo came behind them and shut the door. The guard glanced at him, but seemed to accept Gerard’s tacit sanction of Silveo’s presence. About thirty prisoners stood or sat in the cell. They’d been stripped of all but their undershirts and most were huddled together against the underground chill. Only two of the group were grishnards. Most were shavier fauns, with densely feathered lower bodies, hooves, and feathery tails. One of the group was a gazumelle. Gerard glanced at him curiously. Gazumelle were gazelle shelts, and they were rare outside the island of Maijha Minor. The gazumelle stood only a little taller than Silveo, with delicate features and wide, liquid black eyes.

  “On your feet,” growled Gerard.

  They obeyed slowly, sullenly. “I am the captain of the Temple Police,” he said and watched their faces. He saw anger, hatred, and fear, but nothing at all like respect. “I am looking for information about a place called Sky Town,” he continued.

  Somebody snorted. “You and everyone else.”

  Gerard moved to stand in front of the speaker, an older shavier with grizzled hair and creamy white feathers below his naval. “You’re their leader, aren’t you?”

  It was Silveo who answered. “His name is Samarin Mel. He’s a smuggler and a friend of the pirates. We’ve been trying to catch him for years.”

  “Looks like someone did catch him once,” said Gerard. He was referring to the scars of a terrible flogging on the faun’s shoulders and back. Samarin Mel met Gerard’s eyes without a flicker. You’re setting an example for the others, thought Gerard. Unfortunately for them, it will not be the example you expect.

  Behind him, the guard cleared his throat. “Do you require assistants, sir? Any…equipment?”

  Gerard said nothing. His father had never believed in torture. Criminals on Holovarus were either killed or fined. As a child, Gerard and his brother had occasionally wandered down to the small cluster of cells beneath the castle and formed elaborate theories about the use of the rusty machines full of teeth and chains.

  Silveo sniffed. “He doesn’t know what he requires, but I do.” He rattled off a list that included a rack and pliers.

  Gerard let him finish, never taking his eyes off the old faun. “Where is Sky Town?” he asked quietly. “Who is in charge there? How do they communicate with you?”

  “Your kind have always tried to frighten and humiliate other shelts into submission,” said Samarin. “Now there’s something out there that frightens you. You can’t control it. You can’t bully it. You can’t even find it.”

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” said Gerard and lopped off the faun’s head. He stepped back from the spray of blood and the twitching corpse. He was already scanning the cell, watching the prisoner’s faces. Behind him, Silveo gasped and then started to curse. Gerard moved to a faun two paces away, also an older shelt, who had remained calm during his companion’s execution.

  “And you?” he asked. “Do you have anything to tell me?”

  By the time Gerard stepped from the cell and shut the door, he’d killed half the prisoners, and the floor was slick with their blood. Silveo looked ready to explode. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” he snarled.

  “I think so,” said Gerard, shaking blood from a sleeve.

  “You’ve killed the most valuable prisoners we’ve caught in the last year.”

  I caught them, thought Gerard, not you. But he said nothing.

  “A few days on the rack, a few hours with the fire and tongs—”

  “Would have produced nothing,” interrupted Gerard. “They wouldn’t have talked, or they would have told you lies.”

  Lamire wasn’t listening. “You killed the best of them! Those shelts knew more about the Cowry Catchers than you know about your minstrel girl’s tail hole, and now you’ve wasted them!”

  “I killed the useless ones,” snapped Gerard, his temper finally piqued. “What they know doesn’t matter. It’s whether they will tell us that matters. The message I just sent is this: none of you are too valuable to kill, and you may not get a second or third chance to talk. Some of them are young. Let them think on death without their leaders to advise and encourage them.”

  “You’re young,” raged Lamire. “It might behoove you to think on death.”

  “Are you threatening me?” asked Gerard.

  “I’m still your superior officer. I don’t need to threaten.”

  Gerard bit back a retort. He turned to the guard, standing with eyes downcast against the wall. “Do I have an office?” he demanded.

  The guard smiled. “You do.”

  “Then let’s go see it.”

  He was relieved that Lamire did not try to follow.