Retribution Falls - Chris Wooding [155]
Crake looked up at the ceiling of the cell. “I deserve to be here,” he said.
Malvery shrugged. “Then so do I.”
“Ain’t no deserving or otherwise,” Silo said, his bass voice rolling out from deep in his chest. “There’s what is and what ain’t, and there’s what you do about it. Regret’s just a way to make you feel okay that you’re not makin’ amends. A man can waste a life with regrets.”
“Wise words,” said Malvery, tipping the Murthian a salute. “Wise words.”
In the distance, Frey screamed again.
FREY HAD BEEN SHOT twice in his life, beaten up multiple times by members of both sexes, bitten by dogs, and impaled through the gut by a Dakkadian bayonet, but until today he’d always been of the opinion that the worst pain in the world was cramp.
There was nothing quite so dreadful to Frey as waking up in the middle of the night with that telltale sense of tightness running like a blade down the length of his calf. It usually happened after a night on the rum or when he’d taken too many drops of Shine, but on the confined bunk in his quarters, he often lay awkwardly and cut off the circulation to one leg or the other, even when dead sober.
The worst moments were those few seconds before the agony hit. There was always time enough to try to twist out of it in such a way that the pain wouldn’t come. It never worked. The inevitable seizure that followed would leave him whooping breathlessly, writhing around in his bunk and clutching his leg. It invariably ended with him knocking multiple items of luggage from the hammock overhead, which crashed down onto him in a tumble of cases and dirty clothes.
Finally, after the chaos of bewildering, undeserved pain, would come a relief so sweet that it was almost worth going through the preceding trauma to get there. He’d lie half buried in the luggage, gasping and thanking whoever was listening that he was still alive.
Frey had learned long ago that the violent clenching of the muscles in his lower leg could send him wild with agony. Today, his torturer had introduced him to the joys of electrocution. Instead of just his leg seizing up, now it happened to his entire body at once.
If he survived this, Frey decided, he’d have to rethink his definition of pain.
Blinding, shocking torment; his back arching involuntarily; muscles tensed so hard they could break bone; teeth gritted and jaw pulled back in a grimace.
And then the pain was gone. The joy was enough to make him want to break down and weep. He slumped forward in the chair as much as his restraints would allow, sweat dripping off his brow, chest heaving.
“Do you want to be hurt? Is that it?” the torturer asked.
Frey raised his head with some difficulty. The torturer was looking at him earnestly, wide gray eyes sympathetic and understanding. He was a handsome fellow, square-jawed and neat, wearing a carefully pressed light blue uniform in the ducal colors of Lapin.
“You should have a go at this,” Frey said, forcing out a fierce grin. “Gives you quite a kick.”
The guard standing by the door—a burly man in an identical uniform to that of the torturer—smiled at that for a moment, before realizing he wasn’t supposed to. The torturer tutted and shook his head. He moved over to the machine that stood next to Frey’s chair. It was a forbidding metal contraption, the size of a cabinet, with a face of dials and semicircular gauges.
“Obviously it’s not kicking hard enough,” the torturer said, turning one of the dials a few notches.
Frey braced himself. It did no good.
The pain seemed as if it would never end, until it did. The room swam back into focus. He’d always pictured torture chambers as dank and dungeonlike, but this place was clean and clinical. More like a doctor’s surgery than a cell. The electric lights were bright and stark. There were all kinds of instruments in trays and cabinets, next to racks of bottles and drugs. Only the metal door, with a viewing slot set into it, gave away the true nature