Chapter 1004: Two Scribes

At first, Cossot thought she was fortunate. All Dame Sybyll asked of her was that she sat in the cell and wrote down Ian Hanrahan’s confession. She didn’t even have to watch what was happening before her. She could just focus on the sheet of parchment, the well of ink, and the quill pen in her hand.

She’d helped her father take notes while he worked on numerous occasions when she was still learning her letters. A whitesmith had to have skilled, steady hands as he poured molten tin, or worked carefully with his snips to refine initial castings. Rather than take his hands away from the work, he had told a much younger Cossot that he needed her to write down a list of molds that he used, the number of castings that failed, and all manner of other details.

It was only later that she realized he’d been doing it as a way of helping her practice what she’d learned from the expensive tutor that he and a few other wealthy merchants had hired to teach their children in a small, private class. He wanted to make sure that she could keep up with the other children, especially her closest friend Roseen, and so he made sure there was still work to be done after her lessons ended, just so she could ’help him out’ in the shop.

The small chair that Cossot occupied in the corner of the cell, along with the scholar’s lapdesk, couldn’t be more familiar to her, but once Ian Hanrahan started speaking, the task became several times more difficult than she thought it would be.

The litany of women’s names was bad enough. Dame Sybyll had been right that Ian had started long ago, so long ago, in fact, that it had been Baron Aiden who helped conceal matters the first time his son had pressed matters too far with a woman who intended to remain chaste until her parents arranged a match for her.

At first, Ian seemed to latch on to the idea that he could stay alive longer as long as he could keep talking, so he launched into lurid details about his sordid conquests. The things he boasted about were so vile that Cossot nearly snapped her quill pen just listening to them.

"Talk faster, cousin," Sybyll encouraged, grasping his left arm and drawing a long, crimson line down the back of his forearm with the point of a fingernail. The cut wasn’t very deep, but as she pressed her thumb against the wound, Ian’s mind flashed back to the image of his crimson-haired cousin tearing Lord Loman’s arm off the same way he’d pull the leg off a roasted duck.

"AAaahhh!" the former baron cried as, for the first time, he contemplated trying to run for the door. But it was impossible with Sybyll’s steel grip on his bleeding arm! "I’ll talk faster, I, I’m sorry..." he pleaded, willing to say anything to make the pain stop.

"I know how ye treat women, cousin," Sybyll said, running her tongue over her fangs and suppressing the familiar surge of hunger that came with being so close to freshly spilled blood. "They aren’t but sacks of grain in yer storehouse ta’ ye, so list them out like that. Who were they? What did ye do ta’ them, and how did ye hide it?"

"Don’t waste me time," she added, giving a final squeeze to the wound on his forearm before dropping it as if it were something foul and unclean. "I still need ta’ hear about yer theivin’, yer murderin’ and yer dealings wit’ tha’ men who raided Airgead Mountain fer gemstones an’ gold..."

In the cell across the aisle, the task Roseen faced should have been easier. After all, she wasn’t sitting within a pace or two of Ian Hanrahan while Dame Sybyll tortured him into confessing his crimes. Yet for Roseen, this was anything but easy.

No matter how ’good at it’ she had been as a student, she’d never appreciated the lessons her parents sent her to. She could read well, and her sums were all in order, but she rarely practiced any of the things she learned. Instead, much to her father’s dismay, she rushed through her lessons before dashing off to one of her father’s saw mills, where she would dig around in the bins of scrap wood for small bits and pieces that she could craft into something more artistic.

Her windowsill at home was covered with chunks of branches or small splintered logs that looked like a sparrow was emerging from the wood to take flight, or that a kitten had curled up amidst the bark in order to take a nap. She was a person who thrived on the freedom to roam where she wished and create what she wanted. Just sitting in the cramped cell with cold stone walls and iron bars around her made it difficult to focus on the litany of crimes that tumbled from Bastian Hanrahan’s mouth.

"... gave patrol routes to the Broken Hoof gang so they could raid ranches he thought were holding out on him when... Hey, hey, are you even getting this, you stupid sow?" Bastian shouted when he realized that Roseen had become distracted by what was happening to Ian Hanrahan in the cell across the aisle. "This is important, you dumb peasant! My life in exile depends on- OOF!"

Sybyll’s fist slammed into Bastian’s midriff, driving the air from his lungs and cracking several ribs in the process. No one had even seen her move. One second, she’d been pressing Ian Hanrahan about the luxuries she’d found in his bedchambers, and the very next instant, she was standing over Bastian Hanrahan’s gasping figure, clutching a fistful of his tunic.

"Listen here, little lord," she said, placing an intense, disdainful emphasis on ’little lord.’ "If ye don’t want ta’ go in ta’ exile as a eunuch, ye’ll mind yer words an’ treat tha’ lass wit’ respect. If she’s troubled, a gentleman waits his turn till she’s ready ta’ pay him attention again," she said sharply.

"An’ Roseen," Sybyll said. "If he mocks ye again," she said with a dark grin. "Ye just call on me ta’ set him straight..."

"Now," she said, as she returned to Ian’s cell with inhuman speed. "Yer son just said somethin’ interesting about a ’Broken Hoof gang,’" she said as she drew a sharp fingernail just above the surface of her cousin’s skin. By now, she didn’t even need to cut him in order for the mere memory of pain to send shivers down his spine. "I think they serve a visit from tha’ new ruler of Hanrahan, or at least a visit from me soldiers. So tell me, cousin," she said with a dark smile on her crimson lips. "Where can I find this gang of raiders?"

There wasn’t much time left before the sun rose, less than an hour now, but Sybyll wasn’t willing to compromise in her work.

Her mentor had been right all along, she’d realized. There had been a brief moment of satisfaction when she ground her heel into Ian Hanrahan’s foot and let him feel the sort of suffering her mother had endured, but after that... more cruelty didn’t bring her any more relief, or satisfaction.

Ian Hanrahan was a dead man, all but swinging from the gallows. She knew it, he knew it, and every moment of agony between now and when he met his fate only delayed her escape from the need to see him die. Prolonging his agony would do nothing for her.

The answers to her questions, however, would do a great deal to help her heal the deep wounds that had been inflicted on the people of Hanrahan. And, as cruel as the experience was for her two little scribes, it would help her decide if her hunch had been right, and they would be worth taking on, or if she should cut them loose now, and find other people who could fill the gaps in the life she hoped to build in her father’s homeland.