BLUEMANTLE by Karen Langston (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud TXT) 📕

know where to go. He stood in the vast hall, blind to the reality of his surroundings, and waited. In time, a uniformed official approached him. “What is the nature of your business?” said a voice.

Weldon blinked and swallowed hard. “I have something to trade,” he said.

“What have you got?”

“A name.”

Chapter Eighteen

“I see my colleagues have worked their powers of persuasion. And yet…” Wulfwin sighed with theatrical exaggeration. He circled the slumped figure on the cell’s blood-splattered floor. More blood was smeared at head height on one wall. The cell was small, bare, apart from a waste bucket in one corner. This lone consideration of basic need was redundant; it was clear from the stench and stains that the man had urinated and defecated where he lay.

Weldon was barely conscious. He sensed that someone else was in the cell with him. A man, saying something. Who it was or what he was saying, Weldon did not care. He had moved past the point of caring several hours ago.

During that time, Weldon’s understanding of pain had changed. It ceased to be a sensation with definition or parameter. At the start, it had been something physical, excruciating, that was exerted upon him. Then, gradually, it had become all-consuming, obliterating all else. That was when he thought he would die.

But he didn’t die. And the pain morphed again, merging with his consciousness to become part of him. Pain had come to define him; he could not feel, think or know anything else. Pain was everything. He was pain. And with nothing else to measure it against, nothing beside it to give it form, to demonstrate that this is what it is because this is what it is not, pain ceased to mean anything. And if it meant nothing, Weldon decided he could feel nothing.

His consciousness clung on to the precipice of existence by its trembling fingertips.

Wulfwin kicked the heap of soiled rags with his boot. “What good is this?” he hissed, striding to the cell door. “The idiots have gone too far.”

He left the cell and returned a few minutes later with a bucket of water and a wooden chair. He hauled the deadweight body, arms bound behind its back, legs strapped together, onto the chair. He pushed the head back, chucked water into its swollen, purple-patched face and waited.

The shock grabbed Weldon’s consciousness by the wrists and hauled it back from the chasm’s brink. He coughed and spluttered, head lolling.

“Welcome back,” said Wulfwin, standing in front of Weldon, legs astride and arms crossed. “My colleagues can be a little heavy-handed when they don’t get their way. And, as I understand it, you haven’t played ball. A shame, really. For all involved.” Weldon’s head tipped forward. Grabbing hair in his fist, Wulfwin tugged it back. “Now, stay with me. We’ve only just met.”

As his consciousness began to take hold, Weldon felt stabs of searing pain in his chest, in his abdomen, across his face. Panic’s adrenalin shot through his veins. He had thought it was over; he had so desperately wanted it to be over. And now the pain was back. A tear leaked through bruise-buried eyes.

“But it’s your lucky day,” continued Wulfwin. “Although, granted, it might not feel like that. You see, I’m more restrained. I’m prepared to give verbal persuasion a fair crack at the whip before resorting to a little arm-twisting. You might be wondering why we didn’t meet sooner. Save you some of the discomfort. If you are, I wouldn’t blame you. You don’t look at all well. Maybe that could have been avoided if we had met sooner. Perhaps. Or maybe if you’d only fucking talked.” He punctuated the word with a right jab across the face, releasing the hair from his other fist a moment too late so that he was left holding a handful. He picked up the bucket and splashed more water into Weldon’s face. “But you seem reluctant to do that. And I don’t understand why.” Weldon groaned. “Pardon me? Speak, you fucker.”

“No more… Know no more…”

“Yes, so you keep telling us. Only, we don’t believe you.”

“S’true. No more…”

“You give us a name, but you can’t tell us her surname. Where she lives. Where she works. What she even fucking looks like. But despite your piss-poor efforts to elaborate, we run a few checks. And guess what? There’s no fucking Ursel on state records. As far as we can gather, she doesn’t exist. So, either you’re playing some sort of ill-advised game, or there’s something you’re not telling us. Either way, it’s not going down well this end.

“So, this is the deal, my friend. You either talk to me now or I finish the job. If this is all some stupid prank, then you deserve what’s coming. If, on the other hand, you have more to share about this mysterious Ursel, then I suggest you do so now whilst you’re still able to speak. My patience is my greatest weakness. Already it’s beyond thin.”

“Please…” Weldon writhed in the chair, desperation trumping the pain. “I don’t know. I swear…”

“Disappointing.” Wulfwin pulled a piece of paper from his coat pocket and slowly unfolded it. “Found this in your wallet, by the way.”

Weldon froze.

“Just so you know,” said Wulfwin, “I’m a man who doesn’t like to lose. So, this is how it’s going to play out. I’m going to go and pay your friend a little visit.” He made a point of reading from the scrap of paper, despite his audience’s inability to see the gesture. “Tin-a-she. Is that how you pronounce it? I’m going to call in on Tinashe. See if she can be a little more forthcoming.”

“No!” Weldon screamed.

“Oh? You don’t like that idea?”

“Leave her. She doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what?”

Weldon howled, wracked by terror at what might happen.

“Last chance,” said Wulfwin, sneering at the blind, quivering heap.

Loathing himself, yet torn in despair, Weldon broke. “…Chase… Newell…”

–

Chase had triggered the Code S first thing that morning.

Among the shadows at the rendezvous point, he waited.

He had