A burden of love, p.26
A Burden of Love, page 26
With a clanking noise that was deafening after however many minutes of silence, the door to the room opened and let in the glow of lantern light. A short woman flanked by two Guards walked into the room.
“Oh dear, they’ve tied you up.” The woman said to the Guards, “Unbind her. Search her if you must.”
The Guards began by running their hands along Yonah’s limbs and torso, removing the blades she had concealed in her uniform as they went. Once satisfied with their search, they unbuckled the leather that bound Yonah’s wrists and ankles.
Now that the room was lit, Yonah could tell she was in a torture chamber. Panic returned as she took in the blades of various sizes and shapes that hung on the wall, the tongs and tweezers, the mallets and nails. Yonah didn’t want to imagine the kind of harm these tools could inflict.
A horrible thought struck Yonah as she recalled that Naris had told her Sayzia had been brought here for interrogation. She imagined her sister strapped into this very chair.
“You are the fugitive known as Yonah, correct?”
Yonah hadn’t noticed the woman’s stare. The woman had cropped hair and wily pale brown eyes. Her face was all sharp angles, from her thin jaw to her pointed nose.
Yonah knew there was no point in trying to deny her identity. The scar on her lip prevented that. She nodded in affirmation.
“You must be looking for your sister, Sayzia.”
Yonah didn’t respond. That was one connection she could try to deny.
“It will please you to hear,” the woman continued, “that she was among the prisoners that escaped during tonight’s commotion.”
If that was true, she had finally done something right for her siblings.
“Speaking of which,” the woman placed her hands on the arms of the chair Yonah sat in, bringing her face-to-face with Yonah, “how did you manage that? We know you had an accomplice.”
Despite her trembling insides, Yonah remained silent. The interrogator sighed and stood upright.
“You do realize where we are right now,” she said, gesturing to the room. “I can make you answer my questions one way or another.”
Yonah’s eyes shifted to the tools on the wall.
“Who is your accomplice?”
Did he escape, too? Or was he also in an interrogation room?
“Yonah…”
She couldn’t risk giving anything away if he was still here.
The woman strolled over to the wall, her hand raised, poised to grab whatever struck her fancy. She moved along the wall as if she were shopping for food and not in pursuit of a torture device.
“Who are you working with?”
She remembered the burning sensation as Naris pressed a knife to her lip and sawed through it.
“He’s just a friend,” she said.
The woman continued eyeing the tools on the wall. “From a rebel group?”
“It doesn’t exist anymore. Most of them were arrested by the Guard.”
“Where was this?”
“Why does that matter?”
The woman took a plain knife from the wall and turned around. “I’ll be asking the questions, Yonah. Where were your friends arrested?”
“Kirash.” Something in Yonah told her to lie, to keep Thari and the others as far from this as possible.
“And what is your accomplice’s connection to your sister?”
“Nothing. He was just helping me.”
“Oh, Yonah,” the woman sighed. She went to one of the lanterns hanging from the wall, opened its small door, and held the knife up to the flame. “I know you’re lying.”
Yonah shook her head. “I’m not.”
“There haven’t been any arrests in Kirash this entire season. And either your accomplice knows Sayzia, or you’re also here for the rebels who recently arrived from Kelab. I know you were there at the time of a massive arrest.” The woman held the now hot knife up. “Would you like to try again?”
Sweat was gathering on Yonah’s face. “Yes, those are the rebels I was with, but I didn’t know they were here. I just came for my sister.” She was speaking very quickly.
“Then your accomplice knows her.” The woman stepped close to Yonah and held the knife so close that Yonah could feel its heat. “What is his name?”
If Thari had escaped with Sayzia, giving his name to the authorities would only make it easier to find them again.
Despite her visibly shaking body, Yonah resolutely kept her mouth shut. Her interrogator’s eyes went from a cool, inquiring look to fiery annoyance. The woman pressed the flat edge of the knife to Yonah’s neck.
With a terrifying hissing sound, searing heat burned at her skin. Yonah couldn’t help but emit a closed-lipped whine as she quickly withdrew from the heat, pressing her body deeper into the chair. The hot knife had only been to her skin for a second at most, but the pain of it left her gritting her teeth as she tried not to yelp out loud.
“What is your accomplice’s name?”
Tears filled Yonah’s eyes. There was no way out of this. She would either hurt Thari and Sayzia’s chances at survival or send herself to a painful death.
The interrogator bent over so she could look into Yonah’s face. Her brows were furrowed, and her eyes inquisitive. “Do you break so easily?”
Yonah turned hatred-filled eyes up to the woman. She would not break. Love for her sister would stop that.
“Oh, not quite,” the interrogator said with a little giddiness in her voice. “Your sister wasn’t easy, either. She put up a good long fight.” She returned to the open lantern to reheat the knife. “But they always eventually tell me what I need to know, your sister included.”
Sayzia knew more about the rebellion than Yonah. She would have provided far more useful information. Yonah couldn’t figure out what they wanted from her.
“So, let’s try again.” The woman brought the reheated knife close to Yonah’s neck. Yonah leaned away, but the chair back stopped her from going very far. Every centimetre of her skin was screaming for the heat to go away. “What is your accomplice’s name?”
“Leave me alone.”
The blistering heat returned. This time, Yonah couldn’t help but yell. She tried to pull away again but was trapped in the chair. Her pain and rage took over and Yonah’s hands went to the interrogator’s wrist. She wrenched the weapon from her interrogator’s hand, sustaining a cut on one hand that her adrenaline helped her to ignore, leaped out of the chair, and ran straight for the door.
The two Guards standing at the door easily stopped her attempted escape with a swift punch to the gut that sent Yonah to the floor, releasing the knife and holding her stomach. Nausea sent the world spinning again as she folded herself into a ball.
“Bind her.”
She was lifted from the floor and placed into the chair, where the leather straps were again put to use to restrain her arms. Yonah was still recovering from the blow to her stomach. She could feel the gash on her right palm burning.
“Your sister didn’t try anything like that,” the woman said. She picked the knife up from the floor and set it on the table at the side of the room. “She just quietly took her punishment.”
“Punishment for what?” Yonah gasped.
“For betraying the government.”
The familiar flame that burned within Yonah found new life. “What kind of government tortures and enslaves its people?”
“One that understands the importance of discipline and consequences.” The woman removed a tiny, serrated blade from the wall. “And doing what’s best for the greater good.”
Although the new weapon sent a shiver of fear through Yonah, her most prominent feeling at the moment was the urge to vomit from the numbing pain in her stomach.
“Yonah, do you remember what it was like when your husband split your lip?”
Yonah’s skin prickled at the memory. It had been the first time Naris hurt her. He had accused her of rebel activity when she had really been searching for her brother, but she never told him the truth about that.
She remembered the feel of the blade ripping through her skin, of Naris towering over her, of her panic as she tried to writhe away, of warm blood flowing down her chin.
The tiny blade was suddenly pressed against Yonah’s lip.
“What is the name of your accomplice, and where is he going with Sayzia?”
She had survived this once before; she could surely survive it again. Admittedly, the estate healer had stitched her up afterwards, but she could survive the pain of it. She knew it.
The corner of the interrogator’s mouth crept just a few centimetres upwards, and she applied pressure to the blade, splitting Yonah’s scarred lip open once more.
At first, Yonah pressed her eyes shut as tears burst forth as if the pain would leave her alone if she placed herself in darkness. She whimpered in pain as she felt the serrated edge of the knife saw through the tough skin of her scar. Her fists clenched. Her entire body clenched.
Then she opened her eyes and met with her torturer’s face. As the woman registered Yonah’s look, an expression of admiration lit up her face.
“Now, that is more like your sister.”
Yonah pulled her face away from the knife and said in a low voice and with clenched teeth, “Stop talking about her.”
“Why? Does it bother you to think about all the things I’ve done to her? Do you, perhaps, blame yourself for that?”
Yonah tried to keep her face still, but it seemed this woman was very skilled in the art of reading people because her lips curled into a disgustingly coy smile.
“Maybe I’ll finish this,” the woman used the knife to tap on Yonah’s partially cut lip, sending Yonah into a recoil, “another time. Instead, I’ll show you how I got what I needed from your sister.”
If Sayzia could survive whatever was coming, so could Yonah.
Unless this woman was lying about her sister being alive. About her having escaped.
No, she was being tortured for information on who Sayzia was with and where she was going. Sayzia was safe for now. As long as Yonah could keep her mouth shut.
“Now, I started with some light burns with Sayzia, as well,” the woman said in a tone that belonged to someone instructing someone on how to bake, not what torture techniques they’d been using. “And while I waited for them to blister a little bit, I used…” Her hand drifted along the wall as she searched for the tool. “This!” she said brightly, plucking a pair of tweezers.
Yonah willed her quivering lip to still, both at wanting to appear fearless and the fact that it hurt her cut lip for it to move so much.
The woman took Yonah’s fingers and laid them flat on the armrest. “You,” she said to one of the Guards. “Hold her down.”
The Guard came over and pressed Yonah’s hand flat, immobilizing it. The woman used the tweezers to grab hold of one of Yonah’s fingernails.
“This can be a little tricky at first,” the woman muttered. Keeping hold of Yonah’s fingernail, she started to wiggle the tweezers. The tug at her nail was distinctly uncomfortable, but Yonah knew a far worse pain was coming.
The tweezers slipped from Yonah’s nail, and she let out a sigh of relief. The woman grinned. “I know, the anticipation is worse than the pain.”
Yonah felt her nose wrinkle with disgust, but all she did otherwise was still herself for the next bout of pain.
The tweezers were back on her nail, and the interrogator started to tug. Yonah clenched her teeth, closed her eyes, tried to keep her breathing steady.
Her nail gave way and tore from the nailbed. Yonah let out an exclamation of pain. She looked down at her nail and saw half of it was still attached to her finger, but it was oozing blood.
“And the best part,” said the woman, “is that there are nine more to go.”
She started to lower the tweezers to the next finger on Yonah’s hand, but Yonah lifted her legs and gave the woman a powerful kick to her hips. The woman stumbled backwards, falling into the second Guard’s arms. The Guard holding Yonah’s hand down gave her another punch to the stomach that sent her gagging.
“Yonah,” the woman sighed. “We can move you to the table if you like.”
She didn’t have anything to say. This woman would do what she wanted with her.
“Will you be good, or do we have to restrain you further?”
Yonah sent the woman her dirtiest glare. The woman bent over to bring herself level with Yonah’s face and watched her like she was an animal in a cage.
“Move her.”
The two Guards undid the leather straps around her wrists, then dragged her to the table at the side of the room. They placed her on the table, not bothering to be gentle with her, and proceeded to strap her arms at her sides and her ankles below.
“There’s a head strap, too, Yonah,” the woman said. “Do we need to use that as well?”
“Use your best judgment,” Yonah snarled, wincing as her lips touched together with the ‘b’ and the ‘m’ in her sentence.
The woman rested her hands on the table as she leaned over Yonah. She whispered, “I will break you. Just like I broke your sister.”
Sayzia was alive. Sayzia had survived this. She could, too.
For the next several minutes, the woman plucked at each nail on Yonah’s right hand. Yonah writhed away from the pain, but it stayed with her no matter what she did, no matter how she tried to distract herself. When the job was done, her whole hand felt like it was on fire. A slow wave of tears dribbled from her eyes to the table.
The interrogator paused and watched Yonah in silence. Yonah turned her face away from the woman, but she grabbed Yonah’s chin and forced her head towards her.
“Who’s your accomplice?”
All Yonah was thinking about was that she could work through five more fingernails. It would be terrible and enraging, but she would survive. She would not break.
As if hearing Yonah’s thoughts, the woman said, “Perhaps we’ll move on to something else. What did I do to Sayzia after the nails?” She picked up the first knife she had used to burn Yonah’s neck. It had cooled by now. “Unless you’re ready to talk?”
Her lip had been re-split, her neck burned, half of her nails ripped from their beds, and she had cut her palm in an attempted escape, but, no, Yonah wasn’t ready to talk. Every second she made her interrogator waste in here was another second closer to safety for Sayzia and Thari. She slowly shook her head.
“That’s fine.” The woman brought the knife’s edge to Yonah’s neck and gently dragged it along the burn. Sharp pain atop a throbbing one. Yonah exhaled to stop herself from crying out.
“Aren’t you worried,” Yonah said, though it was a struggle to keep her voice even, “you’ll hit a fatal vein?”
“Oh, I know exactly how to kill you, Yonah. But don’t worry. I’m strictly prohibited from doing that. A good government doesn’t kill its citizens.”
“Just tortures them.”
“This is a last resort. We don’t want to hurt you.”
A laugh that sounded more like a cough escaped Yonah’s lips.
“Why are you laughing?” The woman’s voice was gentle.
“Ever since I was ten years old the government’s been doing nothing but hurting my family and me.”
“If you’re referring to the labour program–”
“I’m referring to enslavement laws dressed up as a source of social and economic protection for the country when, really, it’s just a way to keep the upper class pacified and the rest of us distracted while Althu tries to stay in power.”
“My goodness, you’ve been reading a lot, haven’t you? With fancy words like that, you’d think you were university-educated.”
“I would have been if it weren’t for people like you.”
“I’m just a cog in the machine, Yonah.”
“You’re willingly enabling this corruption. Partially because you’re a sadist, but that’s a different kind of problem.” She looked at the two Guards standing at the door. “You’re part of the problem, too.”
“Don’t engage with them,” the woman said sharply.
“Afraid that they’ll realize if all the Guards in Harasa joined the rebellion, they could help overthrow this government?”
“Is that your plan? Try to turn the Guards into rebels?”
“I have no plan. I was just here to rescue my sister, and I was successful. That’s it.”
“Then what is your sister’s plan?”
“Probably find a way to rebuild the rebel group.”
“In Kelab?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t had a chance to chat with her in a while, you see.”
“Yonah, I need you to be a little more helpful if you want to leave this room with your limbs intact.”
“You need me in good enough shape to labour after this, though, right?”
“Accidents can happen. Knives slip. Prisoners try to attack their captors.”
“I’m bound to a table.”
“President Althu doesn’t know that.”
Yonah ignored the terrifying implications the woman was making and said, “So you report directly to the president?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
Keep her talking. The longer they spoke, the less torture.
“Then you must be in charge here,” Yonah said.
The woman didn’t answer as she removed a coil of rope from the wall. She uncoiled it as she walked back to the table and threaded it through a pair of holes Yonah hadn’t noticed before. Yonah quickly realized that she was about to be strangled.
One of the Guards crawled under the table and Yonah felt the two ends of the rope move as he took hold of them.
“So, Yonah, you’ve probably figured out how this works by now. I ask you a question, and you either answer me, or the rope gets pulled. You have all the power.”
