NOVEL NEXT Chapter 103: Inheriting Intentions
Kess had none of Rowan's subtlety. Her first tiny experiments with his Fulminancy proved that none of the finesse she'd developed over months of practice transferred to Rowan's powers. Then again, her mind was thick and sluggish, whether that was because they laced her drinks, or because of the repeated blows of her daily sessions with Northmont.
Fortunately, some lucidity returned to Kess along with a plan of escape, and she could tell from Northmont's increasingly violent tendencies that she'd said nothing useful to the man yet. For once, Kess was glad she'd left most of the scholarship to Rowan.
Kess hoped that today would be her last session with Northmont, for she'd developed just enough control that she thought an attack might work. She'd wait for shift change and then attack both smaller guards with something akin to how Rowan had knocked her out a month ago. Still, she found it hard to concentrate on her escape as blood trickled down her face.
"Where is it?" Northmont hissed after the brute—Conal, she'd learned his name was—swung. Over time, he'd learned to temper his blows just enough to hurt Kess, but not enough to knock her out. Initially, anyway.
"Where's what?" she asked.
"The locket."
"I don't know." A slap which sent her flying, this time from Northmont himself. She smiled, though she couldn't really see the man through the blood in her vision. "Not so different from me after all, are you?" she asked. She'd long given up on keeping her mouth shut. There was no point to it, and as long as she kept talking, Northmont seemed satisfied. Still, there was haste in his actions as he grilled her today.
"You had it with you when you came into the palace, so where is it now?"
"How would I know?"
"Because it's gone missing, and it belongs to us." Kess snorted at this. The locket no more belonged to the Council than it belonged to some beggar on the street. Northmont locked eyes with her. "Do you find this funny?"
She got to her feet, weaving slightly. "You searched me when I came in, and you searched my cell. How would I have conjured a locket from thin air?" His eyes raked up and down her body again, assessing.
"Search her again." He sat down at the desk as Conal ran his hands up and down Kess's clothing, his actions disinterested. If Kess hadn't been so exhausted, she'd have been insulted. How foolish did Northmont think she was to bring the locket with her to an interrogation? She was sure the guards searched her cell when she left, but she purposefully stayed away from the cot and had tucked the locket up in a corner of the wood that held the frame aloft. Part of the wood there was rotted, which meant she could slip the locket into the alcove without problems. Staying away from the cot meant for bad sleep, but it wasn't like she was sleeping well, anyway. Each time, the guards barely checked the cot. They seemed annoyed with the task to begin with.
Rowan's father scribbled something on a page as Conal finished, then held her eyes again from behind the desk. "What of the others? The ones you pilfered from the Seats you murdered?" Kess frowned. She clenched her left fist in front of her chest, shaking the numbness out of it.
"That was almost six years ago. I don't—"
"Break her arm."
Kess closed her eyes. She'd known she was on borrowed time, but she hadn't been able to figure out Rowan's Fulminancy until just earlier that day. She braced herself as Conal raised her right arm, then held her breath and looked away.
"Wait." Northmont paused. "The other one." Kess's eyes snapped open, and since she was terrible at controlling her facial expressions, she tried to pull away from Conal as he grabbed at her other arm. The man slammed her head into the stone table behind her, and while she was too dazed to move, she heard a snap.
The pain followed, white-hot and blazing. Tears ran down her cheeks as she crumpled to the ground in agony, holding her arm. Her body shook, but inside, she felt a sick sense of triumph. For days now, she'd been favoring her left hand, using it more often, leaving her right one limp. Kess was good with both her hands if she needed to fight, but if she ended up with a sword during her escape, she'd be useless left handed. It appeared that her tactic had paid off in its own strange way.
Stolen story; please report.
It didn't help with the pain, or the knowledge that her escape would now be done with one arm, if it happened at all. She huddled against one of the legs of the table as Rowan's father walked over to her, nudging her with his boot.
"I am not a patient man, Kess."
"I told you I don't know. Just because it's an answer you don't want doesn't mean it isn't true," she ground out. Her arm was loose and unnatural by her side as a knifing pain pulsed through it, but she hadn't expected the shaking weakness that came with the break.
"Perhaps," Northmont said, watching her. He paused, crouching just out of her reach. "You want to stop that storm, don't you?" His voice was a low murmur—almost soothing. Kess scowled at him, still clutching her arm.
"I can't do it from in here."
"You can't do it at all."
"You're wrong."
Northmont cocked his head to the side, a predator eying his prey. "You, an untrained Fulminancer, are going to march into the storm and stop it? Tell me, what credentials do you have that the Council doesn't? Do you think we haven't dealt with something like this before?"
"If you had, then you wouldn't need anything from me, now would you?"
Something soured in his face, and Kess knew she'd hit the mark. Northmont's eyes flashed, and he snatched for her arm. Agony struck, the pain like a thousand knives all at once. He didn't smile as he pressed his thumb into the break, and Kess's world frayed at the edges.
The pressure let up, and gasping, Kess was able to hold on to a shred of consciousness. "We don't need you at all," Northmont snapped, his voice echoing strangely in her ears. "We need the lockets. I don't think you understand—this isn't about your petty squabbles with the Council. It isn't about your personal vendettas. It's about survival. You might think of us the enemy, but this city, this very rock, only exists because of centuries of sacrifice, and now you'd have us throw it all away."
He kept his thumb pressed firmly into Kess's arm as he spoke, and she saw stars. Still, she managed to choke out a response.
"It's designed to be thrown away—it wasn't supposed to last."
His grip tightened. Kess gritted her teeth until they creaked, trying to avoid giving the man the satisfaction of a cry of pain. He simply shook his head, looking bored. "Mariel left us with an out. One you and my son so brazenly destroyed when you were playing God down at the Archives. Information, conduits, all of it lost. The only memories here—" He touched the locket against his chest. "And here." A gesture towards Kess's head.
The pressure didn't let up on her arm, and Kess finally found she'd had enough. One way or another, she needed back in her cell—if it was because she pissed Northmont off enough to render her unconscious, then so be it.
"I shattered them," Kess spat, meeting his mirthless eyes. "I shattered them that night and threw them into the river. There's not a scrap of them left. They—"
Northmont released her arm, and Kess almost sobbed in relief. Far from looking furious, he simply looked thoughtful as he took a step back to lean against the desk again. "That's impossible. We would have felt something—a release, a sense of Fulminancy scattering back to the wind. It would have unraveled, its stability compromised."
Kess watched his face carefully, trying to decipher something. He seemed…relieved. Like a man trying to justify that something abhorrent hadn't come to pass yet. For some reason, he wanted those lockets to be safe. He wanted her statement to be a lie. Kess filed it away as she winced at the deep bruises already flowering on her arm.
"Fulminancy is inherently unstable," she finally said. "What difference would the lockets make?"
Northmont gave her a snakelike smile as she tried to pull herself to a sitting position. "Been reading my son's research, have you?" Kess flushed. "If you think it's unstable now, you should read what it was like in Mariel's time—though that might be difficult given what you've done to the Archives."
And given she'd likely be dead by the next morning. Northmont straightened, checking the time on his locket.
"Hate the Council if you wish, but we're striving for stability. Mariel didn't intend for the powers to pass to someone who would wield them like an angry toddler. She packaged them away to avoid individuals like you. Lies won't protect you or my son from what's coming."
"It's easy to talk about someone's intentions when they're long dead," Kess spat, trying to shove herself to her feet with one hand. Northmont smiled humorlessly.
"It will certainly be easier to talk about yours soon, then."