My dear Zann,

My plan got results in just a few hours. I was crouching in the middle of the cell, surrounded by unhappy people, when the door opened again. We all shielded our eyes from the sudden glare. Four men were there.

“Which one is it?” Ladal said.

“That one,” a guard told him, pointing at me.

I backed up. “I already said, I’m not saying anything. You might as well let me go now.”

“Heh,” Ladal said. “I know this fellow. I’m not interested in him. But… if he’s trying to keep secrets, maybe we should take them from him. Men, put him in Knarrett’s room. Make sure he’s tied well; he’s a strange one.”

They advanced on me.

I had a choice: go with them, or fight back.

I probably couldn’t win if I fought. But I had just decided to stop lying down every time some pissard with a sword gave me the cold eye. Besides, there was a cellful of people here who might help, and they couldn’t beat all of us.

The first guard reached out for my arm. I knocked his hand aside and punched him in the face. “Help me!” I said to my cellmates. “We can beat them!”

The guard I hit fell on some other prisoners. They boosted him up to his feet. Two other men shoved me forward. “We’re not with him!” one of them said. “We don’t know him!”

“Hey!” I said.

Ladal grabbed me by the hair and pulled me through the door. Guards and prisoners alike helped him get me under control. “Lesson for you, Ygar,” he said to me. “People don’t like troublemakers. So stop making trouble.” And he punched me in the stomach, I guess to take the fight out of me. It worked pretty well.

They hauled me up out of the cellar while I was doubled over in pain. Weren’t too careful about not banging my head against things. I had control of myself pretty well by the time they got me to the ground floor, and figured I had a better chance now than I would when they tied me up. I tried tangling up the two men carrying me by bringing my arms together, but it didn’t work. They roughed me up a little and took me upstairs to one of the traveler’s rooms.

Inside the room was a greasy blond man, lying on a bed, eating a roasted duck leg. “What?” he said when we entered. I figured this was Knarrett.

“This one says he won’t talk,” Ladal said. “See if he’s got anything worth not saying.”

Knarrett threw the duck bone out into the hall and wiped his hands on the bed. “Won’t talk?” he said. “Who asked him to talk?”

Ladal shrugged. “Might as well check.”

Meanwhile the other two guards had found a wooden chair and some rope and were doing actually a pretty thorough job of making sure I wouldn’t go anywhere. They even tied the chair to the wall so I couldn’t fling myself out the window still tied up.

“All right,” Knarrett said. “You all piss off, I can’t do anything with a big crowd like this.”

Ladal sauntered off, followed by his guards. “If it turns out he doesn’t have anything, don’t bother putting him back in the cell. Just kill him. In fact maybe just kill him anyway. It’s not like anybody’s going to pay for him.”

“Got it,” Knarrett said, and the door closed. “All right. What’s your name? I don’t suppose you want to tell me all your secrets and save us both some trouble?”

“I might,” I said. “What kinds of things do you want to know about?”

“Forget it. I’d rather do it the hard way than dance with some fellow who thinks he’s smart.” And he opened a small sack and dumped some objects on his bed.

I had been expecting some kind of torture tools, but that’s not what it was. There were five brass hemispheres. He put one on the floor behind me, one in front of me. One on the floor to his left, one on the floor to his right. Fifth one held in his hand between our faces, flat side down. He whistled five notes, and the brassware began to glow white. He concentrated, and stared at my eyes.

“Your name’s Ybel,” he said. “You’re a palace guard. That’s nice. What else is here… your woman’s gone, who cares…” I tried to stop him from reading my mind, tried to think about songs or Srix’s training or anything, but it didn’t help. “Oh, here’s some interesting… what?” Knarrett blinked and almost lost control of the spell. “You’re–“

“So what? Lots of people are.”

“Yes, but–“

“Are you finished? Have you seen everything you need?”

“Gods, no. This is interesting. I don’t know if Ladal cares about any of it, but… Gods. Zann, and the sauce, and the mud pit, and–“

“Stop it! Those memories are personal. They’re not for you.”

“Should have thought of that before you got caught,” Knarrett said. “Everything’s ours now. Here, what’s this, this looks like a good one.”

And this time I could feel him opening up a specific memory, one that I would have been happy never to remember again.

Love,

Ybel