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Ashi glanced into the cell. “Where are all the guards?” she asked in Goblin.

“Tuuk was bluffing,” answered one of the prisoners tremulously. “There were never that many and those there were left a while ago. Tariic led them out.”

Ashi didn’t like the sound of that. She turned away, pushed past Midian, and trotted down the stairs to another corridor. There was light at the bottom, but no sound. On the left and right were doors like those of the cells above, small barred windows set in heavy wood. At the end of the corridor was a larger, even heavier door.

The floor of the corridor was streaked with smeared trails of dried blood connecting the cell doors with the heavy door at the end. Ashi’s gut knotted. Her hand tightened on the sword.

Ekhaas touched her arm and pointed. Only one of the cell doors was closed and barred. Ashi crept closer. Through the barred window, she could hear a strangely pathetic sound. A soft, whimpering growl. But the cell was too deeply shadowed for her to see anything. Midian nudged her and held out a tiny everbright lantern, even smaller than the one that had been lost on the roof. She opened it only slightly and held it up to the window.

The cold, magical light fell on Geth’s curled and trembling form. He lay on his side, facing the door. He’d drawn his shirt over himself like a thin blanket. Where it gaped open, Ashi could see big patches of bare skin amid the thick hair of the shifter’s torso and arms. The hair had been burned away. The flesh beneath was ravaged by healed and healing scars. She directed the light to his face, frightened at what she might find.

Dirty. Haggard. But intact. Her heart skipped and her breath came sharp.

As if he’d heard it, Geth’s eyes snapped open, shining like an animal’s. The growl rose sharply and he pulled back, rolling up into a crouch. “Geth!” Ashi said. “Geth! It’s us!”

He jerked. “Ashi!” He jumped to his feet and charged at the door, sharp teeth bared. “Let me out! They’ve taken Tenquis!”

Ashi dropped the lantern to the floor and dragged at the heavy bolts that held the door. Geth stood on the other side, shaking the door and making the job harder. The thick nails of his fingers gouged at the wood. His eyes were very wide, the pupils as large and dark as a madman’s. Ashi could smell sweat, blood, and burned flesh on him. His savage growl rumbled and broke.

She pulled the last bolt just as he slammed especially hard against the door. It burst open, throwing her back into Ekhaas and Midian. Geth didn’t even glance at them, but just hurled himself down the corridor to the heavy door. He hit the door with a muscular shoulder and whatever latch held it closed on the other side tore right out of the frame. Running after him, Ashi caught a glimpse into the room beyond—

Shadows in deep corners. Dim, ruddy light glinting on sharp metal. A pale goblin jerking away from an angled table to which a dark-skinned tiefling was bound, arms and legs outstretched. Blood dripping from the table and pooling on the floor under it.

—then Geth slammed the door behind himself. A bestial roar rattled the broken wood. Metal crashed on stone. There was a hiss like hot coals spilled into water and a sudden, awful stench, then a thin, wordless cry.

Geth didn’t look at Tenquis—at what had been done to the tiefling—a second time. Flayed skin, glistening muscle, and exposed bone slid through his mind but the images were buried in the hot fury that fell over him. Fury at what Tenquis had suffered. Fury at what he had suffered.

His charge into the room had sent a brazier crashing to the ground. Blood on the floor quenched the hot coals, raising a haze of stinking smoke. The torturer cried out and tried to flee into the depths of the chamber but Geth’s hand closed on his skinny neck. The shifter whirled him off his feet and slammed him hard into the stained boards of an upright rack.

His free hand groped for and found one of the torturer’s knives. With another roar, he drove it through the pale goblin’s shoulder and into the wood beneath. The impact jolted his hand. The goblin