Their captor took them down a set of stairs, waiting with surprising patience while they negotiated it without full use of their hands. The Sail operative on the end was slower than the rest, which gave Marguerite time to examine their surroundings. Big place, but not all of a piece. They’ve been adding bits on here and there. The mortar and the size of the stones changed from one wall to the next, and the depth of the stairs seemed to alter almost at random. This is an old keep, and whoever lived here had money, once upon a time.
Judging by the smell of cheap tallow and the flicker of rushlights, that time had passed.
The cell was, as advertised, a cell. It was about the size of an ordinary bedroom, with three stone walls and iron bars across the front. Marguerite suspected that it had probably been part of a stable once, since they passed by several deep alcoves that looked suspiciously like horse stalls. Rushlights burned in metal holders, illuminating a long wooden bench along the back wall, and a chamber pot in the corner. Incongruously, the pot was blush pink.
Erlick opened the cell door and gestured them inside.
“May we be untied?” asked Marguerite, with as much courtesy as she could muster under the circumstances.
“Once you’re inside.”
Lacking other options, Marguerite stepped inside. “Oh good, a prison,” said Davith. One of the Sail operatives snorted. Shane and Wren were still as silent as the grave.
When they were inside, Erlick shut the door. The guard at the back of the line, who was carrying a crossbow, pointed it into the cell.
“Hold your hands out,” Erlick said, “politely.”
Marguerite offered her hands through the bars. The man untied her wrists with a few quick motions, then moved to the next. Marguerite thanked him, despite the pain of pins and needles in her
hands. So did Davith and one of the Sail. The paladins did not.
“Right.” Erlick looped the rope around his shoulder. “You lot behave yourselves, and there’ll be water and as much food as we can spare. You don’t, and there’ll still be water, but we’ll take the light with us. Understood?”
“Perfectly,” said Marguerite, massaging her wrists. “Please tell Wisdom that I would be happy to negotiate any kind of settlement she wishes.” She did not actually want to say ransom, even if it was accurate.
Erlick eyed her, snorted, then motioned to the other guard and walked away.
“Well,” said Marguerite.
“That woman was creepy,” said Davith, as the sound of footsteps faded.
“She’s obviously got some kind of cult,” said Marguerite, “what did you expect? Normalcy?”
Shane showed expression at last, shaking his head and turning away from the door. “It’s worse than that,” he said grimly. “There’s a demon in her.”
“ARE YOU SURE?” Davith asked.
A hard, humorless bark of laughter came from Shane’s throat. “I served in the Dreaming God’s Temple until I was seventeen. Yes. I’m sure.”
“…fuck,” said Davith eloquently, tried to walk away, found the wall only two paces away, and dropped into the corner.
“She must be very strong,” said Marguerite.
Shane rubbed his face. “Strong doesn’t begin to cover it.” He had felt the creature that called itself Wisdom tugging at him, reaching out with invisible hands to touch the shape of his mind. It was as far beyond the poor mad thing in the steer as Shane was beyond a mouse. “Strong and old and smart and…just… more.”
“I thought you couldn’t sense the smart ones.”
“You can’t if they try to hide it. This one isn’t bothering. I think it was amused that I knew about it.”
“This is the cult then,” Marguerite said. “The one that the Dreaming God’s people warned us about.”
“It must be.” Shane felt his throat work around another humorless bark. “There couldn’t possibly be two like this.” He looked over at Wren, who had her arms wrapped around herself. “Did it try to talk to you?”
Wren shook her head. “I could feel it,” she said, almost inaudibly. “It was like…like standing next to someone when the tide takes them. You feel it rising in them, even if they don’t move. Except this wasn’t just the tide.” She looked up at Shane, her face very pale. “This felt almost like the god.”
Shane nodded. The Saint of Steel had been infinitely greater than a demon, but He had only
poured so much into His paladins as mortal flesh could bear. The demon had no such concerns. That woman it’s riding must be as hollow as an egg by now.
How long until it chooses another steed?
Shane was very afraid that he knew the answer.
Marguerite turned and looked at the two Red Sail operatives. One was a young man with a face like a shovel and a goose-egg turning purple between his eyes, and the other was an older woman who looked as if she should be running a bed and breakfast somewhere. Shane had watched her put a crossbow bolt two inches from his head. At a distance of at least forty yards.
“Soooo…” said Marguerite. “I realize you’ve both been hired to kill us, but given that we’ve been captured by a cult run by a demon, do you think we could set that aside for the moment?”
The younger one looked at the older one, who snorted. “Honey, we are not getting paid enough for this.” She swept her arm in a general motion that took in the keep, the cult, and presumably the demon. “So far as I’m concerned, bygones are bygones, at least until we’re out of here.”
“Which is exactly what you’d say if you were still planning to kill us,” Davith pointed out.
“Nobody wants to kill you,” said the older woman, a bit rudely.
“Well, now I feel rejected.”
“Anyway, I’m a sharpshooter, so unless they return our weapons, I’m reduced to hurling insults.”
She leaned back against the wall in the corner and closed her eyes. “Wake me when they come to kill us horribly.”
There didn’t seem to be much to say to that. Everyone took a piece of floor. The cell wasn’t really large enough for six people, so there was a great deal of negotiating of leg placement.
Marguerite decided that discretion could go hang and leaned against Shane’s chest. He looked down at her and she saw a brief flash of gratification cross through his unease.
“Can you exorcise her?” she asked.
Shane shook his head. “No priest or paladin would try to tackle this one alone. They’d send a small army, and expect to take losses. You see one like this once or twice in a generation.”
Marguerite rubbed her face wearily. “Can we negotiate with it?”
She felt him stiffen against her back. “We don’t negotiate with demons.”
“We do if we don’t want to all die horribly possessed,” Davith snapped. Marguerite was glad that he’d said it so that she didn’t have to.
“Realistically,” said Wren, “I don’t think we have anything that it wants. I mean, it’s already got us.”
“Bribes?” asked Marguerite, without much hope.
Shane was silent for a long moment. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “Though, I suppose if it’s this smart, it probably understands money. But it could just possess one of us, take our knowledge, and get whatever it wants that way.”