Necrem soaked his mask in a small bowl of water that he held. He sat extremely still, not risking a needlessly twitch a single time. The small bunk bed was fragile and creaked simply by him breathing. The frame barely contained him, forcing his legs to hang off the foot of the bed at his knees when he laid down.
He had broken one bed already, and the guards warned him he wouldn’t get another if this one collapsed, too. Sleeping on the floor of the musky, damp cell gave Necrem chills. As did the rats. The fat, black balls of fur scuttled about on the cell blocks. One never saw them in the gloom until they squeaked when someone nearly stepped on them. He didn’t want to lose his last bed and sleep on the floor with them. Not with the scars on his face still healing after splitting open.
The only blessed thing the cramp, cool cell offered was the dark. After endless hours of sunslight, Necrem had welcomed it at first. Now, however, it was starting to drain him just like the suns constantly beating down on him.
How many days has it been? he wondered. The Exchange is bound to be over by now.
He shuddered, knowing what that meant, and squeezed his eyes shut.
Savior, he prayed, please let Eulalia and Bayona be all right. His big hands trembled holding the bowl. Please! They can do whatever they want with me, but let my family be all right.
Bang!
Necrem jumped from the slam of wood against metal. His grip slipped, and the bowl fell between his hands, crashing on the stone floor and sending water everywhere.
“Necrem Oso!” a guard shouted.
Necrem gasped in panic from a key turning his cell’s iron lock.
My mask!
He fell to his knees, heedless of the water soaking his pants while he groped in the dark for his mask. His fingertips found the drenched cord just as the guards pushed the cell door in and flooded the room with lantern light. He slapped the mask to his face and squinted against the light, barely making out two figures. He ignored how heavy with water the mask was. Having it on was all that mattered.
“Get up, Oso,” one of the guards ordered. “The commandant wants to speak with you.”
Necrem grunted, pushing off his knees and rising to his feet. The top of his head lightly grazed the cell’s ceiling, and he stooped. His knees bent and wobbled in protest. Everything about the cramped space gave him the feeling the walls were closing in on him. A chance to get out of it, even briefly, was a welcome.
The guards jumped back, flanking either side of him and keeping plenty of distance. The one with the lantern raised his club next to his face while his partner readied his spear.
Necrem stood there and waited. He knew any sudden move could set the guards off, and any assurances or promises that he meant no harm would fall on deaf ears. So, he waited, with his head hung and hands folded in front of him until they were satisfied.
“This way, big man,” the guard with the lantern said, motioning with the lantern to follow.
Necrem did. Quietly. There was no use asking questions or starting anything the guards might take as trouble.
The squat, two-story jailhouse was quiet, but Necrem knew it was full. A few of the inmates stared out of the small, barred windows of their cell doors. The haunted sights of the lantern light flickered against the pale whites of their wide eyes following his every step.
The guards led him down a tight, twisting staircase. Necrem had to pull in his shoulders and hunch his back to squeeze between the walls’ clay bricks.
The room they brought him to was smaller. He ducked his head to enter the windowless, square room lit by candles mounted on the walls that cast shadows off the legs of the square, battered table and two chairs in the middle of the room.
“Sit!” the guard with the lantern ordered, setting the lantern down on the end of the table and pointing at a chair with his club.
Necrem drew the chair out and eased down into it. The immediate groans and creaks of the wood proved his suspicions right. People in jail don’t need anything but flimsy furniture.
A boisterous, almost mocking laugh broke the enforced quiet. A tall shadow spilled in through the doorway and cut across the table.
“Wait out here,” a too pleased voice instructed before the man outside stooped under the door.
“Sir Necrem Oso!” the man said, taking a big draw of his thick cigar between his teeth and snorting out light-blue smoke. “I am Commandant Forell. It’s my privilege to meet you.”
Necrem cautiously watched him, unsure of how to respond to that.
The commandant strolled into the room with an easy-going stride. Beyond the doorway, Necrem could tell he was middle-aged by the gray sprinkling his beard and thinning hair. He was tall, but not muscular. He had the beginnings of a pot belly showing by the curve in the front of his dark, velvet suit.
Commandant Forell pulled back his chair, scraping its legs across the floor, and flopped down in it.
Necrem sat up a little straighter, expecting to see it collapse and send the man sprawling onto the floor, but the chair sadly held.
“Yes, sir, Sir Oso!” Commandant Forell took another drag of his cigar, careless of the ashes sprinkling on his suit. He leaned forward over the table, smiling with a twinkle in his eyes. “Gives us a change from having to deal with pickpockets and drunks, the regular dregs you see out there. It really means something to have a known killer in one of my cells.”
Necrem threw his head up. His blood ran cold, and goosebumps ran down his arms. “Sanjaro!” he gasped. “Is Sanjaro well?”
“Sanjaro?” Forell’s thick eyebrows scrunched together, and he took his cigar out of his teeth and turned toward the guards. “Who’s Sanjaro?”
“The man the prisoner assaulted,” the guard with the club replied.
“Oh!” Forell dismissively waved, flinging ashes and smoke in the air. “No. He’s fine. If he wasn’t, this would be a whole different conversation.” Forell made an exaggerated face, stretching lips out and tightening his neck until all his veins stuck out. It was there and gone in an instant. The commandant chuckled and chewed on the end of his cigar some more.
Necrem snorted from the cigar’s heavy, rotten scent bleeding through his mask’s nose hole. He coughed, swallowing his impulse to gag, and shifted in his chair.
“No,” Forell said, propping his elbows on the table, “it’s a real honor. You know we get all kinds of troublemakers brought in here this time of year—thieves, tax avoiders, conscription dodgers, extortionists . . .” The commandant’s eyes flickered, and Necrem stared back at him. The bluish haze of cigar smoke lingered between them as silence settled around the room.
Necrem kept his breathing calm, his shoulders slouched. He didn’t want to appear threatening or hint he might have been riled. He kept quiet, voicing no denial. It wouldn’t do him any good.
He just stared back.
Forell finally blinked and shrugged. “But nope”—he rolled his cigar between his fingers— “we don’t get many killers here. Si Don’s Cubiertas get to have fun with them.”
Only if someone important is involved. Necrem bit his tongue to keep the snide remark back.
The Cubiertas were the Marqués’s special police. They only took interest in crimes happening to or around important people. Yet, should a man be stabbed in the back alley of the slums, Necrem knew not even the guards around him would come around asking questions. They wouldn’t come around to bury the body.
“Excuse me, Commandant,” Necrem said wearily, lowering his head to appear he meant no disrespect, “but what does—”
“Ah!” The commandant pointed at him. “Don’t spoil it. It’s hardly ever I get to talk with a better class of people. Especially those I can reminisce with.” He chuckled and took another drag on his cigar, filling the room with even more blue smoke and stench.
“Reminisce?” Necrem blinked, both from his eyes watering from the smoke and confusion. What does reminisce mean?
“Yes!” Forell laughed. “I was on campaign ten years back, same as you. Although I was a sergeant then with a company of foot at the time, but I was there all the same.” Forell grinned crookedly and leaned forward, his breath as horrible as his cigar. “I knew a guy that said he saw what’s under that mask. He said it was a gruesome sight. Probably the most eloquent thing he ever said.” The commandant threw his head back and laughed. It rang sharply in Necrem’s ears.
He squinted and squeezed his hands together under the table. There was something grating about the man’s laugh. Something mocking.
Necrem knew what his face looked like now. It was terrifying. It was the whole reason he had to wear a mask to even step out of his bedroom! As horrible as he looked, though, it was nothing compared to what Eulalia had suffered.
Still, he kept quiet.
“But, at least you got to keep your head, eh?” Forell smirked.
Necrem shifted uncomfortably and wrapped his arms around himself, gripping his elbows. “What’s going to happen now?” Please, don’t take my family’s home, he prayed. And please! Anything but the sioneros reserve.
He’d been dreading that the most ever since his arrest. It was the marqués’s special punishment, which everyone—from the barons on down—were eager to oblige. Instead of sacrificing their soldiers, the marqués had created a force labor pool of criminals made to work until traded to other marcs as sioneros.
However, the marqués hadn’t been forced to trade any sioneros to another marc for several years now. That didn’t stem the rumors flowing through the slums that the sioneros reserve was still being filled with men. The implications were clear—men were being forced to work and imprisoned just in case. Necrem would never see his family again if that was his sentence.
“You didn’t have to go and ruin it,” Forell complained. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. The fragile wood creaked, but the commandant ignored it and chewed on the end of his cigar. “You were arrested, having assaulted a man after demanding he give you money and was destroying his shop. Do you deny it?”
“I didn’t demand money,” Necrem replied. “I was asking for help.”
“And when he refused, you hit him and began rampaging through his shop.”
“No!” Necrem shook his head. “I didn’t hit—”
“Then, why were you trying to tear up his shop?”
“I didn’t mean to!”
“But you were!” Forell pointed his cigar at him. “You were found destroying a man’s shop and him bloody on the ground. Do you deny it?”
Necrem dug his fingernails into his elbows, scratching his skin. His teeth ground together, and his face muscles went taut, against his best effort. His scars began to pull, stinging his cheeks. For a second, red bled into the sides of his vision.
No! he gasped, driving it away. I need to . . . stay calm. Tempered. Nothing I say will help, anyway.
He took in a few more deep breaths. Air whistled and hissed through the gaps exposing his teeth.
“I was only asking for help to pay the tax,” he replied, hanging his head.
“I was wondering when we’d get to that,” Forell said. “Come in, Impuesto.”
Necrem looked up to see Sir Luca step into the room. The young tax collector glared sharply down his nose at him, a far cry from the timid, shaking man who stood in Necrem’s shopfront days ago.
“That’s him,” Sir Luca said, pointing at him.
“Of course it’s him,” Forell barked. “There’s no mistaking Sir Oso here with anybody else.” He laughed at the man, enjoying his little joke alone.
Sir Luca blinked down at the commandant. “I thought you wanted me to identify the tax dodger?”
“Huh?” Forell frowned up at Sir Luca. Then his eyes went wide. “Oh! Yes, yes. Got to keep all the formalities. Go on then.”
“This man refused to pay the campaign tax,” Sir Luca said.
Liar! Necrem bit his tongue and gripped his elbows tighter.
“And as I was leaving,” Sir Luca continued, “he said I should ‘have more guards with me next time.’”
Forell snorted another cloud of cigar smoke. “Is that true?”
“I was told the tax was due at the end of the Exchange,” Necrem replied as calmly as he forcibly could. “Then, seeing how few guards Sir Luca had protecting him, I thought it well to warn him he need more protection in the slums. The Impuesto isn’t well liked, especially the lying ones.”
The room fell silent, and everyone stared at him. The guards shuffled on their feet, sharing confused and unsure glances at each other, Necrem, and their commandant. They were likely expecting more curses and threats, easy excuses to put him in his place.
Sir Luca’s face went white with a shine of sweat glistening in the candlelight. His eyes were wide and blank, stunned.
Forell’s jaw dropped, making his face longer. His lips barely held on to the end of his cigar, just a nub hanging from his mouth, threating to fall into his lap. He snatched it before it slipped and slammed it on the table. Everyone jumped, but the commandant let out a throaty laugh.
“You still have stones of iron under that mask, don’t you?” Forell laughed some more and pounded his fist on the table.
Necrem hunched back in his chair. None of this is funny.
Forell threw his head back. “Oh yes, this is much more fun than the usual rabble they bring me.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “But you know, Sir Oso, I’m going to have to take Sir Luca’s word over yours.”
Necrem never doubted that. He nodded with a grunt.
“And with this assault and extortion issue, things don’t look good for you.”
Necrem nodded again.
“Usually”—Forell leaned back and folded his arms—“the order would be to make an example out of you—a public lashing or sending you to the reserve to show the rest of the rabble what happens when they make trouble not paying the campaign tax. But you are already an example, aren’t you?”
Necrem’s grip was so tight his biceps stretched the sleeves of his shirt. His forearms pressed into him, threating to fold him over. His back ached from being hunched.
“However!” Forell threw his hands up with a broad, near gleeful grin. “This season, Si Don has great plans, as great as ten years ago. And me and every other poor commandant have a certain quota to reach. Kind of like our tax collector here. Only, instead of deberes, I require men.” He stood up and leaned over the table, hoovering over him. “I can make all these charges and the taxes go away, if you join Si Don’s army.”
Necrem stared blankly up at the commandant. “Conscription,” he grumbled. His throat swelled at getting the word out.
“Think of it as enlisting.” Forell shrugged.
Memories flooded him of old army camps. The pounding and hurried shaping of metal. Constant demands for more repairs, more armor, more weapons. Men and women working in the camps, mingling and avoiding the soldiers. The cries of wounded and dying men.
Three darker memories came to the forefront. A woman wailing in torturous agony. A man bellowing demands for justice. Both were cut off by boisterous, uncaring laughter.
Red began to seep into the corners of his eyes.
“I . . . can’t,” Necrem hissed, trembling.
“Then you’ll be sent to the sioneros reserve,” Sir Luca said.
The tax collector was smirking now. A glance between him and Forell told Necrem all he needed to know.
They planned this.
The red began to grow. He sucked air through his mask, trying to keep calm, but his breathing became labored. His chair creaked from his shaking.
“Think of your family,” Forell said.
The red instantly vanished.
Forell sniffed and rolled the cigar stub between his fingers. “Enlisting may sound bad—you’ll be away all season, may have to fight—but it is better than the reserve. You’ll probably never see them again then.” The commandant’s low chuckle echoed menacingly in Necrem’s ears.
I can’t go on campaign! he inwardly reeled. I can’t be a soldier. Not with . . .. Who’s going to take care of Eulalia and Bayona?
The looks on Forell’s and Luca’s faces showed they didn’t care about his concerns. They had quotas to fill, and they were going to fill them. It was just like smithing on campaign. The sergeants gave you quotas of repairs to meet, and the smith had to meet them or not get their commission.
“Can I . . . see my family before I go?” Necrem asked. He swallowed his pride and gave Forell a pleading look. “I need to tell them and make sure they’re taken care of before I go.”
“Absolutely not,” Sir Luca said coldly, shaking his head.
Forell raised a hand, a deep frown on his face. “Is your wife the same . . . from ten years ago?”
Necrem swallowed and nodded.
Forell studied him, rolling his cigar stub between his fingers. “You can see them,” he said, flicking his cigar away.
“Commandant!” Sir Luca protested. “You can’t do that! He’ll run.”
“No, he won’t.” Forell rubbed his nose. “But you’ll stay here a couple more days. We have to deliver our recruits in four days. I’ll give you parole for a day to settle your business. If you don’t show up on the fourth day or try to run, we’ll hunt you down and send you to the reserve. You got that, killer?” Forell smirked crookedly.
“Yes, sir,” Necrem replied.
“Return Sir Oso to his cell,” Forell ordered the guards. “He’s tired and got a lot of things to think about.”
Necrem followed the guards out the same way they had led him in, with his shoulders hunched, his stride slow, and movement unthreatening. This time, however, Commandant Forell’s mocking laughter haunted him each step of the way, blessedly cut off only by his cell door slamming shut behind him.