Shadows Return - Lynn Flewelling [80]
“It” was probably going to involve the horseman’s crop Ilar was holding under one arm, Seregil decided with a certain weary resignation.
The numbness spread through him, different than what he’d felt earlier. He couldn’t move, but unfortunately, he could still feel perfectly well as Ilar drew his head into his lap and stroked the hair back from Seregil’s eyes. “I must admit, I had begun to have thoughts of taming you nicely, as my master suggested. When you were asleep all those days, I was taken in by that face of yours, just as before. But you’ve shown your true colors again, haven’t you? I should thank you for bringing me back to my senses.”
“’r welcome,” Seregil whispered, trying to summon a decent sneer. His lips wouldn’t cooperate.
Ilar laughed. “Do you know what I dreamed of, through all these years of shame? I hoped that one day you would suffer as I have suffered, and, my dear Haba, that day has come.” He smiled and stroked Seregil’s cheek again. “You’re lucky I don’t want to mark that fine skin of yours any more than it already has been.”
Seregil could not fight back when the men turned him over, and his screams were weak and hoarse as Ilar beat the soles of his feet with the crop. It went on for some time, until the pain cut through the effect of the drug and he finally managed to struggle a little, trying to escape the torture.
Ilar relented and tossed the crop to one of his men. “That’s enough to start. Know, my dear Seregil, that I’ve endured far worse. And so shall you, before I’m done.”
Seregil was feeling remarkably clearheaded now, and full of the strange elation that comes when pain ceases. “You want fear from me, or sympathy?” he slurred thickly. “Go fuck a dog.”
Ilar kicked him onto his back and rested a slipper-clad foot heavily on Seregil’s chest, making it hard to breathe. “Fucking is something else they took from me, Haba, long before I came to this house. Will your friend still want you when you’ve been gelded, I wonder? What will you have to offer him then?”
With that he swept out of the cell, leaving Seregil to curl up in a ball in the darkness, hands clenched protectively between his thighs.
Gelded? Panic cut through the pain and lingering effects of the drugging, and an hysterical little laugh escaped his lips. Poor bastard. No wonder you’re so bitter. Slavery was bad enough, and the abuse, but to have your manhood taken, too? And now he’s planning the same for me. He knew it was no idle threat.
He was cold, and still too numb to get himself under the covers. His feet burned and felt like they might be bleeding. With a little flailing and grabbing, he managed to pull a corner of the quilt over his chest and looked for comfort in Alec’s fading scent on the fabric. What would you do, talí, if they did do that to me? The thought was sickening, but even so, he knew in his heart that Alec would never turn his back on him, any more than he would if Alec had suffered the same plight. Not that it made the thought of having his own favorite parts cut off any less horrifying.
But even that fear paled in comparison to the sight of Alec hanging in that cellar. Regardless of the alchemist’s reassurances, it looked like they were slowly bleeding him to death.
Sleep wouldn’t come, and so he had no defense from his own wandering thoughts.
If it weren’t for you, Haba, I’d never have known he existed.
Remorse overwhelmed him again, closing a fist around his heart. It was true. He’d put Alec on the road to that cage the night he’d found him in that northern dungeon. Seregil had always claimed not to believe in fate, but now he wasn’t so certain. And if that had been fate, then what of the rest of his life?
Ilar said I wasn’t meant to kill that Hamani. And if I hadn’t? He lay there a long time, cold and sad and aching, pondering the question in a way he hadn’t before. The Haman had drawn steel first. If he’d only shouted, or grabbed for him,