Thread of Gold

Ch. 7: the bottom of the sea

The bruised man knelt in front of him, his wrists bound.

Isaac frowned. In retrospect, he wished they had gagged him, too; the Nightweaver had been mouthing off for the last hour. But Aedyon had been clear that they were interrogating the man first — and as the Commander, Aedyon outranked him.

So no gag.

Sadly.

"I'll ask again," Aedyon said. "Where are your children?"

The man's eyes shone. "I have no children."

Aedyon backhanded him. There was a sharp crack as the man's head flew back. He let out a broken laugh, spitting blood on to the grass.

"We searched your house," Aedyon growled. "You're telling me that those little pink boots belong to you?"

The man's lip curled. "I have delicate feet."

Aedyon hit him again. Isaac forced himself to watch. Forced himself to go numb to the man's cry, to the sting of the wind, to the long grass tickling his legs. In the distance, he could see the tavern where they had picked the man up. Smoke was curling out of the chimney.

He had crept out of Elsie's bed early this morning, riding through the darkness to Valonde. But they should have left last night; by the time they arrived, it was too late. The tavern owner was lying on a bar table, his face twisted in a scream.

Dead.

A terrified patron had explained the whole thing. The owner had a reputation for seducing men's wives. Yesterday, the Nightweaver had stormed in, pinned the man to a table, and spent the better part of an hour torturing the man to death.

When they reached the house, the wife had fled with the children.

The children, who were probably Nightweavers, too.

"I'll only ask once more." Aedyon's eyes gleamed. "Where. Are. Your. Children?"

The man gave a raspy laugh. "If you're going to cut off fingers, you can start with my wedding ring. Doesn't mean all that much to me, anymore."

"This is pointless." Tarquin — their third-in-command — shifted, his hand on his sword. "Let's just kill him and get it over with."

Isaac half-expected Aedyon to argue, but the older man sighed. "I'm inclined to agree." Aedyon stepped back. "Do it, Isaac."

Isaac hesitated.

It was stupid. So stupid. He had heard of what Nightweavers were like before the War: soulless monsters that killed and plundered and raped, drunk on their own power. He knew the stories of them descending on villages, torturing people into madness, and then seizing their gold. Laughing as the people jumped off roofs. Driving parents so insane that they killed their own children.

Aedyon had lost his best friend Marxon in the War. The two of them had been captured by Nightweavers and kept in a cage for two weeks. On the first day, their captor had given Aedyon a bone-handle knife.

"You can use this," he'd said, "when you've had enough of his screams."

Their captor had tortured Marxon for twelve days. Showed him visions of birds pecking out his eyes, and his wife bleeding out on the floor. Aedyon had to hold his best friend down to keep him from clawing at his skin.

Marxon had come around just long enough to beg Aedyon to kill him. And when Aedyon had refused to do it, Marxon took the blade and ran it through his own heart.

Two days later, Aedyon was rescued. He hadn't stopped hunting down Nightweavers since, and he still wore that bone-handle knife strapped to his thigh. A reminder, he'd said, of what they were capable of.