(Book 6) Hayden Mackay and The Third-Eye of the Pancharatna

40. Epilogue

Singh

The three accused arrested near Daulat Haat in the murder case of a twenty-three-year-old woman named Susan Ansari had been sent to the King of Rawat in prison for further interrogation. The Seargent appointed to the post at Rawat states that the accused were performing Almourah on the poor woman for a week straight, and she died of blood loss and severe signs of struggle. The suspects were booked in the Panchayat and extradited to Rawat, where they were detained and are awaiting a hearing from the King.

Hayden sighed and used a finger to mop his bushy brow that dripped sweat. He scratched his dirty, long beard and ran his fingers through his long hair locks falling past his jawline. Sitting on a sculptural stone chair, he stretched his neck to the left and right, rubbed his nape, and then allowed his body to slump into a position approaching comfort.

The ceiling of the cell, which housed the King for the past five years, was too low for Singh to ever know. The room was too gloomily lit by a simple candle lamp perched at a corner. Damp was creeping out from other corners, and the plaster had erupted with flaking blisters, speckled with black mold. There were dried blood marks and a long bloodstain over the four walls, which had come from all the culprits the King had tortured in this cell. The cell, that he considered his sanctuary.

The Noble Knight of the Rawat Dynasty, the boy Yuvan, all grown up and robustly healthy, walked in and stood on the other side of the room with his big arms folded across his broad chest. A knight, who called himself a Sergeant, was standing next to Yuvan. He gave the Paramarashtrian hello gesture to the King and Hayden, with the emotion of a stone, acknowledged with a nod.

Between them crouching on the floor and shivering like mice were three naked fat men with their hands tightly bound behind them with a thorny rope. Their quick, muffled breathing was the only sound reverberating in the cell. It was pleasant and warm down here, but the men were sweating like overdriven pigs in a sauna. There were dark bruises across their cheeks, necks, and down their bodies. The man crouched in the middle of the three had his watering eyes adjusted as he looked up to the King sitting opposite to him, and his face once again filled with fear and anxiety.

"You're wasting time, and I'm not getting any younger," Hayden said, with his strident cold voice. "But I have nothing else to do, nowhere else to be, so...I can do this all day, every day until you confess." He leaned forward, placing his elbows over his knees before he continued, "Say it. Now!"

"It was just for once," the man said, words rushing out in a mumbling mess.

"What?"

The man winced, and the pitch of his voice rose towards panic. "Just once, we did it just once. It wasn't for a week. We're wrongly accused."

"Is that so?" Hayden said. "You mauled and pawned the girl with your teeth just for once, so I guess... it's okay to torture a girl ever so slightly, am I right?"

The man said nothing, but stared unblinking and licked his lower lip.

Hayden paused for a moment and then shifted suddenly. Flaming up his hand, he raised and landed a swift open-handed blow across the man's cheek. It was powerful enough to knock the man down and burn the skin of his face entirely. He writhed and struggled, groping on the floor for something to soothe the stinging pain. His cries reverberated across the cell and outside.

The rest of the two men at the back looked pathetic in their sobbing and sniveling.

"Do you want to know how a girl feels when you perform Almourah on her, even if it's just for once?" Hayden said with his tightened jaw, then flicked his eyes and saw pointedly at Yuvan. The noble knight came forward and forcefully made the man sit who was drooling and sweating, his charred skin reeking of smoke. Yuvan pulled off the rope and lifted the man's bleeding hand up by his wrist.