Page 164 of The Fifth Life of Alicia
“I can say what I want. My lack of trust in anything related to the Empress is hardly a secret, least of all to you and my father.” I motioned to the lock. “Open it.”
He stepped forwards and unlocked the cell door, pulling it open for me.
I stepped inside the musty box of a room and glared at the man before me. He really was nothing special. There were mercenaries like him riddled through the empire, and he didn’t seem to have any special talent that set him apart from anyone else.
He was, in a word, disposable.
“Roderick Coleman, twenty-six-years-old, born in the town of Lurdnors to a prostitute mother and unknown father,” I said, reading his profile off the report Ezra had provided me. “Grew up in the red-light district and apprenticed as a blacksmith as a teenager before being kicked out for stealing. You’ve drifted from job to job ever since.”
Roderick tilted his head to the side and peered at me through a swollen eye that was coloured with shades of blue and purple. “Yeah, and?”
I chuckled. “You’re pretty cocky for someone who has no control over his life right now.”
“What does it matter? I already know you’re going to kill me.”
I was.
And it was going to hurt.
He was going to beg me for every last miserable second of his pathetic life.
I shrugged and leant against the bars behind me. “Maybe, maybe not. That depends how much information you’re going to give me. If you talk, I’ll let you have a fair trial.”
“If you don’t kill me, she will.”
“Who’s ‘she?’”
He said nothing.
Ha. So, that’s how this was going to go. “Let’s talk about the wraithhusk. Where did you get it?”
His shoulder twitched. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“I don’t believe you. I’ll ask you again—where did you get the monster?”
“It was there when I arrived.” He coughed, leaning as far forwards as his restraints would let him.
“You expect me to believe that you, a man with no particular talents, was able to coerce a wraithhusk into doing what you wanted it to?”
He shook his head. “It was knocked out. All I had to do was wake it up at the right time.”
“What about the mudlung blood? Are you the one who marked out the path to the rest area?”
Roderick nodded. “I didn’t know where it was leading to. I was given a hand drawn map with it on and told to put it on the trees on that path.”
“But you knew when to wake it up. That it’d be during the hunt.”
“I didn’t! I swear.”
I drew my sword and pointed it at him, just slicing his neck with the tip of the blade so that the barest dribble of blood beaded on his skin. “I don’t like liars, Roderick,” I said coldly. “I’ve been quite kind to you given that my fiancée is unconscious because of the beast you set free. Don’t you think it’s unfair that you’re sitting here lying to me while I don’t know when she’s going to wake up?”
Panic flashed in his eyes, and he tried to lean away from my sword, but I stepped forwards, increasing the pressure on his neck as a drop of blood trickled down his neck. “I knew, I knew! But I thought it would be over when I released it. That’s what she said.”
“She?” Anger crept its way through my veins. “Who?”
“I—I don’t know! Please! Please s-sto—”
“Please? You have the audacity to beg me after knowing what you’ve done?” I pulled back my sword and plunged it into his uninjured shoulder. His raw scream reverberated off the walls, even making Sir Chester wince behind me, and I pulled it back out, watching as his blood soaked his thin cotton shirt.
