Page 17 of The Sun King's Noon

Richard noticed Kaelen’s grimace. “A week of this?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. He heals quickly—some remnant of his sorcery, perhaps, that the rune-cuffs cannot suppress.”

Dain barked a laugh. “Or perhaps your touch has grown soft in your dotage.”

Morland’s lips curved into a grim smile. “You would be proven otherwise, Lord Commander, if it were you who sat in my chair. I know well the limits of my charges and how to extract information. This sorcerer believes in something, and it is strong enough to hold his tongue.”

Richard sighed. He had long doubted the efficacy of torture. Men and women in agony, he found, confessed to anything if only to make the pain cease.

His father had disagreed.“Pain has its place, son,”Haldric had said.“And this is a truth our enemies know all too well.”

Richard had been twenty-one when Haldric told him of their family’s ancient tradition. Upon coming of age, the crown prince or princess was kidnapped, dragged to the interrogation room blindfolded, and tortured by people they believed to be enemies, while their monarch parent watched.

“It is a test,”Haldric had said, accompanying Richard on a ride through the eastern forest.“To assess the future king or queen’s mettle. See if they will spill state secrets under duress.Your grandfather watched me scream and curse for three days, then embraced me once it was over. I’d never seen him so proud.”

Richard had stared, his mouth going dry.“You may test me the same, Father, if you wish.”

“No.”Haldric’s eyes had softened.“I find myself a weaker man than my father. For I could not bear to watch you hurt so.”

A rare tenderness had underlain his words—rare, for though Haldric smiled, counselled, and squeezed Richard’s nape often, there’d always been a distance. It had been clearest when Richard saw his father with the younger ones. Haldric had roared at Elara and Corwin aplenty—sometimes throwing things, and at one point, almost ordering Corwin to be flogged—but so too had Haldric laughed and joked and wrestled them into hugs with a lightness that always dimmed around Richard.

Now, with the crown encircling his head, Richard could understand why.

He rose from the throne. “I will speak to the sorcerer myself.”

Dain spluttered. “You cannot enter the interrogation chamber! You are the king?—”

“We have gone a week, Dain.” Richard descended the dais. “A week without answers while my sister flinches at my shadow. Clearly, torture does not work on this sorcerer.” He nodded at Morland. “Lead the way, Chief. I will gain the answers through other means.”

CHAPTER 8

The dungeons had always been a terrible place—deep within the castle’s innards, where the sole light came from torches. Cells lined both sides of the corridor, furnished with heaps of mouldering hay, dented buckets and worn blankets. Water dripped down the mould coating the walls, and rats darted across the passage.

As usual, only a handful were held today. Ardenia was not a realm that let people rot in cells for years. Men sentenced to life for grievous violence were sent north to the mines. Those caught stealing or committing petty disorder were usually kept a few nights before being made to repay through coin or labour. As for murderers or those who committed crimes so grave no amends could balance them, executions were carried out down here at dawn.

A pair of drunkards snored in one cell. A third prisoner, pink-eyed from drink, lurched up at the bars as the torchlight struck Richard’s face.

“Well now,” he slurred, gripping the iron. “Would y’look at that. Got a proud lord’s look about you. A beauty come to visit the scum, eh?”

Kaelen shifted closer, his pauldron brushing Richard’s shoulder with every step. Ahead, Dain walked alongside Morland.

In another cell farther down, a scrawny man dangled both arms through the bars and whistled at Kaelen.

“Saints above,” the man crooned. “Look at that one. I’d go meek as a lamb for a night with him.”

His companion behind him grinned. “Think he’d keep the armour on?”

Dain turned to growl at them, “Another word from either of you, and I’ll have your tongues cut before supper.”

Silence ensued, save for a few muttered obscenities.

The interrogation rooms lay in the farthest corner of the dungeon, beyond a tall gate flanked by two guards. Morland produced a key, and the gate swung open.

Richard had not been in this corridor in years. Not since the day Haldric brought him down to observe the questioning of a sorcerer who’d dabbled in necromancy. Richard had kept his face blank as the sorcerer screamed and pleaded, but on returning to his chambers, he had vomited and taken a sleeping draught.

Morland opened the final door. It was a different room from the one Richard had been in before—larger, with a sunken ceiling and a neatly laid-out table. Knives of varying lengths, pincers, coiled whips, a mallet, and a bowl of water.

Chained to the far wall was Lyell. He had been collared to a ring set low into the stone, the chain long enough to let him sit and stand and pace a little. Additional chains bound his hands, runed manacles scraping his wrists raw. With the Threads cut off from him, he had no way to guide or free himself.