Adrian Tchaikovsky - The Scarab Path

Corcoran kicked his boots off. The ship was listing at a sick angle, the port rail almost under water. The men who threw themselves into the river from there were providing targets for the crossbowmen, whose bolts skipped across the waves towards them. Corcoran scrabbled and slipped, trying to reach the higher starboard rail to throw himself clear there with the ship's bulk to shield him. There was an escalating shriek from the engines, and he knew that whatever damage they had sustained had not prevented the boiler pressure rising: they would blow at any moment.

With a supreme effort he grasped a strut of the starboard railing. A crossbow bolt struck the slanting deck nearby and fell back into the river.

Sorry, my love , he mentally addressed the dying ship, but it's time we were parting . He bunched himself for the effort of hauling himself over the rail, but then the engine went with an enormous crack, shaking him loose, and the stern half of the Iteration tore itself to pieces in a hail of splinters and shrapnel that scattered even the Scorpions on the bank.

The interrogation room was filled with the sound of engines, the hiss of the steam boiler below and the whine and rumble of the tools above her. She could barely hear one word in three of the careful conversation that Thalric was holding with the engineer, Aagen. It was some convoluted piece of Wasp politics involving the governor and the Butterfly-kinden Grief in Chains. She strained her ears to catch it, since any information would be useful.

Thalric had now finished, telling Aagen, 'Now, dispatch it straight,' and the engineer left them swiftly. She felt the straps taut about her wrists and ankles. The mechanical drills and blades vibrated on their extending arms, spread above her like the limbs of a spider. Thalric had gone to the levers and was regarding them cautiously. She realized that he was not artificer enough to know how to turn the device off.

'The one at the end!' she shouted out to him. 'The red band!'

He turned to regard her, with a slight smile on his face. His hand found another lever and pulled it, in a brutal, brief motion, and the tool assembly dropped three feet, until it hovered right above her.

'Thalric!' she yelled, and he headed over, still smiling. One of his hands brushed against the surgical tools laid out beside her, and as it came away he was holding a narrow blade.

'Thalric, listen to me!' she said quickly. 'I'll talk. I'll tell you. Please …'

'The time for that has passed,' he said. 'I thought you understood as much. You cannot claim that I have not given you sufficient opportunity to speak voluntarily.' The light glinted on the scalpel blade as he dipped it to caress her cheek. 'Fortunate, really, that your kinden are not such a comely people. I had cause to interrogate a Spider once, and they have so much more to lose.' There was a dreadful reasonableness in his voice and expression that was more terrifying than outright anger could ever be. She felt her breath catch and shudder as sheer terror started building inside her. Don't cut me. Please, don't cut me .

'Thalric, listen to me. You don't want to do this. Not when you can just … just ask. Just ask and I'll say. You might … you might have a use for me later. For me whole. Please …'

'There is an economy of information, in the intelligencer's trade,' he told her, reaching up and bringing down a mechanical separator on its jointed arm. 'Information freely given is debased coinage. How can it be trusted, after all? However, when I have excruciated you until you beg and scream and plead, until you would betray everything and anything you have ever loved for a moment's cessation of pain, then you shall give me information of purest gold. There is a point when everyone, be they ever so strong or wilful or honour-bound, crosses over into the realm of pure honesty. We shall find where your point lies. Similarly with your future service, when I have put my mark upon you in sufficient detail, the very memory of it shall keep you loyal, for you will know in full what shall await you if you betray me. You are right-handed, are you not? I shall start with your left hand.'

She stared at him in horrified fascination. 'Please …'

His smile only broadened, becoming sharp as the blade he held. He touched the point to the back of her hand, holding her fingers flat.

He cut. The pain was short, sharp, almost lost in her bucking, twitching reaction to it. A shallow incision, but now he lowered the separator towards it, inserting the cold spars of the device between the lips of the wound, and then jabbing down. She screamed for real this time, though it was nothing more than preparation, sliding the machine's fingers between the bones of her hand. There was a delicate clockwork motor contained in the fist of it, and he wound it carefully so that she could hear its contented ticking.

She felt the slightest pressure affecting the bones of her hand. Amid the welter of pain, it meant little to her, but the prongs of the separator would slowly grind their way apart whilst Thalric worked on other parts of her — or even left the room entirely. It would torture her by infinitesimal degrees, all by its mindless self.

She was babbling by then, trying to tell him all sorts of things, about Stenwold, about Collegium, about anything she could imagine the Empire might be interested in. There was a sickness welling inside her, above and beyond the pain. She had not realized, before this moment, just how weak she had always been.

'Now,' said Thalric, ignoring her rush of words entirely, 'nature has gifted you with two eyes. One might almost think this was so that the loss of one would serve as an irresistible inducement to cooperate, lest you face the loss of the other.'

He brought the scalpel up and cleaned it meticulously, as though the intrusion of her own blood might cause her some infection. The pressure against the bones of her hand was noticeably intensifying. She clenched her teeth vainly against it.

His smile as he brought the razor-edge of the blade towards her face was fond, almost doting. She jerked her head back, shrieking at him, twisting as he pulled a strap tight across her forehead to hold her still.

'Now,' he said.

The interrogation room was filled with the sound of engines, the hiss of the the steam boiler below and the whine and rumble of the tools above her. She could barely hear one word in three of the careful conversation that Thalric was holding with the engineer, Aagen. It was some convoluted piece of Wasp politics involving the governor and the Butterfly-kinden Grief in Chains. She strained her ears to catch it. Any information would be useful.

Hold on-

Thalric had finished, telling Aagen, 'Now dispatch it straight,' and the engineer left them swiftly. She felt the straps taut about her wrists and ankles. No, wait a moment… The mechanical drills and blades vibrated on their arms, spread above her like the limbs of a spider. Thalric had gone over to the levers and was regarding them cautiously. She realized that he was not artificer enough to know how to turn the device off.

'The one at the end!' she shouted out to him. 'The red band!'

He turned to regard her — Haven't I been here before? — and there was a slight smile on his face. His hand found another lever and pulled it, in a brutal, brief motion, and the tool assembly dropped three feet until it hovered right above her.

'Thalric!' she yelled. His tongue touched his lips, wetting them, as he regarded her, eyes flicking to the tool assembly, spoiled for choice. When they rested on her again they were blank white, like milk.

'The interrogator is in an admirable position amongst all trades,' he said to her, one hand coming to touch her cheek lightly. 'There are so very many tools he may employ, and no restraints on him whatsoever. So long as he can turn out his goods, meaning information, he is very much left to his own devices.' His hands found the collar of her tunic and, in a single savage motion, he ripped it down the front all the way to the waist.