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Felittle’s swaying backside, and then he returned his attention to the two strangers, and raised his sword. “Am I going to need this out, gentlemen? Or will you come along peacefully?”
    “We are great believers in peace,” said Bauchelain. “By all means, sheathe your sword, sir. We are looking forward to meeting your sorceror lord, I assure you.”
    Hordilo hesitated, and then, since he could no longer feel his fingers, he slid his sword back into its scabbard. “Right. Follow me, and smartly now.”
     
     
    Scribe Coingood watched Warmet Humble writhe in his chains. The chamber reeked of human waste, forcing Coingood to hold a scented handkerchief to his nose. But at least it was warm, with the huge three-legged bronze brazier sizzling and crackling and hissing and throwing up sparks every time his lord decided it was time to heat up the branding iron.
    Weeping, spasms clawing their way through his broken body that hung so hapless from the chains, Warmet Humble was a sorry sight. This was what came of brotherly disputes that never saw resolution. Misunderstandings escalated, positions grew entrenched; argument fell away into deadly silence across the breakfast table, and before too long one of them ended up drugged and waking up in chains in a torture chamber. Coingood was relieved that he had been an only child, and the few times he’d ended up in chains was just his father teaching him a lesson about staying out after dark or cheating on his letters and numbers. In any case, if he’d had a brother, why, he’d never use a bhederin branding iron on him, which could brand a five year old from toe to head in a single go. Surely an ear-puncher would do; the kind the shepherds used on their goats and sheep?
    Poor Warmet’s face bore one end of the brand’s mark, melted straight across the nose and both cheeks. Fangatooth had then angled it to sear first one ear and then the other. The horrid, red weal more or less divided Warmet’s once-handsome face into an upper half and a lower half.
    Brothers.
    Humming under his breath, Fangatooth stirred the coals. “The effect is lost,” he then said, lifting up the branding iron with both hands and a soft grunt and then frowning at the burning bits of flesh snagged on it, “when it is scar tissue being scarred anew. Scribe! Feed my imagination, damn you!”
    “Perhaps, milord, a return to something more delicate.”
    Fangatooth glanced over. “Delicate?”
    “Exquisite, milord. Tiny and precise, but excruciatingly painful?”
    “Oh, I like that notion. Go on!”
    “Fingernails—”
    “Done that. Are you blind?”
    “They’re growing back, milord. Tender and pink.”
    “Hmm. What else?”
    “Strips of skin?”
    “He barely has any skin worthy of the name, Scribe. No, that would be pointless.”
    Warmet ceased his weeping and lifted his head. “I beg you, brother! No more! My mind is snapped, my body ruined. My future is one of terrible pain and torment. My past is memories of the same. My present is an ending howl of agony. I cannot sleep, I cannot rest my limbs—see how my head trembles in the effort to raise it? I beg you, Simplet—”
    “That is no longer my name!” shrieked Fangatooth. He stabbed the branding iron into the coals. “I will burn out your tongue for that!”
    “Milord,” Coingood said, “by your own rules, he must be able to speak, and see and indeed, hear.”
    “Oh, that! Well, I’m of a mind to change my mind! I can do that, can’t I? Am I not the lord of this keep? Do I not command life and death over thousands?”
    Well, hundreds, but why quibble? “You do indeed, milord. The world quakes at your feet. The sky weeps, the wind screams, the seas thrash, the very ground beneath us groans.”
    Fangatooth spun round to face Coingood. “That’s good, Scribe. That’s very good. Write that down!”
    “At once, milord.” Coingood collected up his tablet and bone graver. But the heat had melted the wax and he watched the letters