The Chronicles of Nir

10 | Dungeon Deep

Ben opened his eyes and winced as bright light instantly blinded him. His head throbbed with a dull ache, and he squeezed his eyes shut again as he waited for the pain to fade.

The last thing he remembered was Brixby yelling in his face, telling him to pull his weight, and the despair that had seized his heart at those words.

Pull his weight. Contribute in some manner; don't be a burden.

His adoptive parents loved him—he knew that—and he knew they never meant to cause him pain; but every time Brixby or Nessa said something like 'pull your weight,' it made him feel like such a worthless sack of shit until all he wanted was to curl up and die, or hurl himself from the clifftop into the welcoming waves below.

The gods wouldn't judge him so harshly, he hoped.

Still, after nineteen years, he hadn't done it. Instead, he had done his best to please his adoptive parents, who had taken him in out of the kindness of their hearts, and to whom he owed his life.

So when Brixby told him to 'pull his weight,' he'd done the only thing he knew how, and went out again, seeking pockets to pick while tempting fate.

If he were caught and hanged, who would care, anyway?

"Ben! Oi, Ben—wait up, sweetling!"

Nessa ran after him down the lane from the Tularul, waving a bit of parchment in her hand, and Ben stopped to let her catch up.

"Put this up at the docks, will you?" she asked, handing him the flier he'd written up himself the day before, and which Brixby had dismissed as, "too much of an 'in-yer-face' advertisement."

Ben frowned. "Did Brixby say it was okay?"

Nessa reached out and touched the side of his face. "Yes. And it's lovely," she said, brushing a messy curl from his forehead. "You did a wonderful job. You always do."

Choosing to believe her, as the alternative was bursting into tears, Ben took the flier with a smile.

"Consider it done," he said, and set off for the docks.

There, he waited a while; seeking a mark that would impress Brixby, even. He was about to give up when the most beautiful man he'd ever seen stepped off a recently arrived ship and walked towards him along the docks: broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and silver hair flying loose. He was—

"Interesting, interesting!" A low chuckle shattered the dream like a dropped mirror, and Ben awoke again—this time, for real.

Lady Trinnian—as Ben had learned his first day in captivity—stood over him. Thick metal clamps made from the same alloy as his bracelets held him firmly to a table, trapping his wrists, ankles, chest, and neck. A single lamp bathed the sparse room in pale light, casting shadows on the stone walls.

Given the surroundings and cool temperature, Ben guessed he was underground. The only difference between this cell and the last was that the air was fresh, free from the rotting stench of discarded flesh.

Lady Trinnian brushed a sweaty lock of hair off his forehead, studying him with a manic gleam in her soulless eyes. "Tell me, what did you see?"

Ben had only patches of lucid memory since his capture, most of which were overlaid by a film of pure misery. At first he'd been sick from the tranquilizer, and then he'd woken up here, strapped to a cold stone table and forced to breathe strange, hallucinogenic smoke while the old lady interrogated him for hours.

In the spaces between, he'd gathered a few scraps of information, one of which was the woman's name. Another was that she was a noble of some kind, and that she was inordinately interested in his magic. Finally, he had learned that if he didn't want her to hurt him, he should answer her questions without straying too far from the truth. He could lie, he'd discovered, but only by omission, or by speaking partial truths.