"Do! Not!
FUCKING! LIE TO ME!"
He didn't even try to be subtle. Not with so much at stake. He didn't need her frightened, he needed her terrified into submission. He wasn't a stranger to the rage and lust of combat, the red glare that seemed to surround him as he fought and killed. Nor was intimidation a new exercise for him, enforcer and executioner as he often was. But he would struggle to remember, arcs afterwards, when he had been so...
Unhinged.
The woman shrunk and sobbed as he buffeted her with screams. They echoed long and loud through the tunnels, and always after there was the following sound of her muted crying. He circled her like a wolf and snarled his questions. Who had she told? When had she told them? Who had they told? Did she think he was an idiot? Did she think he wouldn't learn the
truth?
"I-I-I-I don't, I haven't, I swear, please,
please, Kas-"
"
Don't call me that like you
fucking know me," the words came out dripping with anger, spittle flying with each one, a bare inch from her ear. "You will tell me, woman. You will fucking
tell me!"
On it went. Until he was almost watching himself doing this. Like he was seated in a corner of the room and watching this vulture sliding around a braying calf, ruining her, threatening her, cajoling her. He was so far into this that... that it was not him. All his life, only one, terrible time had he laid about himself with bloody intent purely for personal reasons. He saw now what that could make him into. How brutal and coarse, without the pretense or veneer of a mercenary's sensibilities.
Only for coin. That was the unwritten rule. You shed blood for nels, and nothing else. Or you were just another murderer.
Kasoria would never believe that again.
"One more
time, then-" He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face up, so she could see the fury stamped on his face. The glittering blade was under her chin and tears ran off and onto it. "You know what I'll do? I'll put you under again. Dose of that stuff on my rag, leave you down here tied up and gagged. And when you wake up, first thing you'll see will be your grand kids-"
He pointed at a bare spot on the floor as Sally moaned low and strangled. Let her mind conjure Jules and Bryce and Hannah on the ground.
"-trussed up like pigs. And you will
watch as I gut them, one by one, until-"
"I swear I haven't told anyone!" She wailed now, all desperation and anguish in a place never touched by the suns. "I haven't! I-I-I-I went home, I went-went-went home and-and-and I didn't, please, I didn't..."
The rest trailed off into gibberish and prayers and tears that seemed to suck all the life from her spine. She bent over nearly double, crying into her hands and leaving Kasoria standing there. Looking down at the brave, fine work he'd done to an old woman who'd given him a son. Who'd sweated and strained along with his wife, eyes flinty and determined, as much as his had been wracked with doubt. He stood in the shadows cast by that lamp and he saw no lie in her words. He knew the truth. He was sure of it.
"Look at me, woman.
LOOK AT ME!"
She did, eyes puffy and face wet. Kasoria's heart faltered. He'd lost count of all the men he'd killed, and women, too. They all blended together in a whirl of faces and screams and curses, ten years worth, working the will of rich, evil men who had use for his talents. But it was all business. It was never for the sake of murder alone. And it told him much that even then, even now, he drew a line. Between killing and murder. Between guilty and innocent. He looked at Sally and saw innocence, and fear, and a life that delivered life.
That did not break him. What he knew he had to do, though... that came close.
"... seven trials ago, you were
home. Do you understand me? You were at home, all night, you did not leave, not for
anything. That's what you tell
anyone who asks."
He was nodding through her tears, jerky movement showering salty water onto her palms. Hope. That was the cruelest thing of all. It would haunt him. He kept moving as he talked, walking around and stopping behind her.
"And if you don't... if even a whisper, a rumor, a ghost of a story or a lie comes to my ears... that Kasoria has a son-"
"It won't, it-it-it just... Kas, please... I swear..."
There was no answer from him. She kept staring straight forward and there were no images of her life or family flashing before her eyes. Fear had hollowed them out and left nothing but the glassy, broken resignation of the condemned. He could imagine hope growing there, now. The beast sated, satisfied that her silence had been purchased.
There was no sound save for the sputtering lamp and the shuddering breaths from the woman. Kasoria swallowed, and squared his feet.
"You may stand," he said, words muffling the movement of his limbs. "And you may go. Speak nothing of this night."
Sally started to rise. A smile, careful and cracked, started to form on her face-
-the blade swung. It was a skinny neck on an old body. Kasoria barely felt the crunch of bone as it went through. He wanted it to be perfect. Over in a blink, so fast she'd not even know she was dead. He didn't want her to see the blow coming. To have that terror etched on her soul when it went to... wherever.
She slumped like a dropped puppet, abandoned and forgotten. Her head smacked onto the dry stones and did not roll. Kasoria peered over her carcass and saw that same look of sadness he'd been staring at for the better part of a break. Maybe she knew. Maybe the shadows told her. Maybe she realized, in some corner of her terrified mind, that a man like him knew only one way to be sure.
He stared at those eyes in silence. He had to be sure. Now the list was down to three. Two who would never harm the boy... and one who knew what his favored killer would do if he ever tried to. Vorund had already put in motions plans to move mother and child from the city, covering their tracks so well that it would appear a mage had just snapped his fingers and, poof, they were gone.
They would be far from here by the start of the next season. Far from the gutters and the grime. The killers and their masters. The father who had just lopped the head off a woman far into her seventies.
Kasoria closed his eyes, and nodded.
Now you're sure.
He sheathed his sword, picked up the oil lamp and smashed it atop her carcass. Fire, livid and liquid and greedy, spread across her clothes and her flesh like a ravenous daemon. Kasoria watched it turn the colors black, keeping his distance as he got to the door. Which would burn, too. Everything in the room would burn. But the fire would find no feasting on the stone, or the rock, or the cement. There would be smoke pouring down the tunnels, but no risk of the Blackkjack sending men down to combat the blaze.
No-one would find her. Not for quite a while. When they did, it would be charred bones and nothing else. That was why he brought the lamp: Sally didn't just have to die, she needed to disappear.
The stink of burning fat rose into the air and Kasoria closed the door behind him. The smell lingered as he walked, a wraith in the darkness, leaving the deed behind.
Thanks for Jade for the template
