Mind and Muscle

“Has he said anything?”

The hulking form of the black-draped High Executioner turned from the manacles he’d been affixing, the demon and dragon inked onto his back shifting with the ruddy light and sinuous movement. Hidden eyes set themselves on the nun so nonchalantly leaning against the doorframe, and his mammoth torso bent to offer her a creaky, muscle-bound bow.

“Your Excellence,” his Hellish, impossibly deep voice greeted. “Not a word,” underneath the hood, the slow spread of a malignant smile stretched across his lips. “But we’ll soon remedy that.” One of his gauntleted, oversized hands gestured to one of his dwarfed-by-comparison dungeon-lurkers, two fingers scraping over the visual of a chair and mentally dragging it towards the table he habitually kept his tools on. “Have a seat.”

The dark habit shifted, black gloved fingertips rising to push back the wimple and settle it like a cowl around her shoulders. Flames lit mahogany into a striking red, mimicking the nature of those bloody surroundings in an oddly suitable twist of half-ringlets. Even in the bowels of the castle, her movements remained delicate, providing a stark contrast to the monster of a man before her.

Van Gatt turned back to his ‘subject’, who presently had his mouth stuffed with a filth ridden rag and sported a single wound to the forehead. He remained otherwise unharmed, slouching against his steel bonds. The Executioner’s face bore an almost feral snarl above that black goatee when he turned, dealing the dangling fellow a hefty smack to the side of the knee with a wooden panel. “You will stand properly in the presence of a lady, shitforbrains,” he rumbled, hauling him up by the front of his ripped purple doublet and looking him over. “He won’t tell us his name yet, but he has a ring.”

“Give it to me,” was his very directly placed order. The nun-come-Advisor’s elbow leaned against the table, middle finger propped against her temple.

One heavy gauntlet took hold of a curved knife from the table, and his trunk-like torso obscured the much smaller man from view a moment. Squelch, trickle, crack; and she had her ring. He tossed the knife down, ignoring the stumbling and howling form behind him, and worked it loose from the dismembered finger. She held out her palm, and he deposited the bloody item against the satin layer overtop her skin. She turned it towards her eyes, which remained as black, flame-licked spheres, and quirked a brow.

“Make him eat it,” she commanded, turning to lay the ring down against the parchment and quill-pot that were always, without fail, on this table when she came to ‘visit’.

Morcant bowed once to her, and turned with the digit in hand. It twitched once, and the prisoner’s eyes widened. The Executioner plucked the rag out of his mouth, and grasped either side of his jaw. “Sorry, mate,” he thundered, lowering the bloodstained fingertip to the captive’s tongue. “Lady’s orders.”

The Advisor very slowly looked back up whilst the process was undertaken, unflinching. Her expression remained characteristically neutral, any disgust or remorse suppressed into ice. One of the lesser minions of the torture chamber brought her a cup of tea, slinking back into the darkness once she’d taken it with a quiet murmur of thanks.

“Any particular reason for that, Lady?” he enquired, turning to pick up his nutcracker.

“According to this,” she answered, turning her attention from blowing gingerly on the surface of her tea and looping the tip of her forefinger through her acquired piece of jewellery. “He’s part of an anti-Valenti syndicate that collided into being a few years ago. I’m sure you understand my rancour.”

“Entirely, your Excellence,” he agreed, flexing the nutcracker some and turning back to the prisoner on hand. “You are here,” he boomed, shoulders warming themselves up with several cloaked clenches. “Because you are known to have committed crimes against the Valenti Crown, more specifically of conspiring against her Majesty, Queen Danele Valenti. This good lady here,” he turned, nodding once in the habit-wearing woman’s direction. “Is her Majesty’s personal Advisor. Any mercy you receive will be on her terms. Beg pretty enough, she might be nice to you.”

The man with the missing finger trembled, his good hand fisting and his lips receding a moment, before he promptly spat on the floor nearby to the Advisor.

Van Gatt’s reaction was one of predictable brutality. Within the space of an hour (or three cups of tea, whichever time marker proved more accurate), the clinking prisoner had been reduced to a bloody pulp. A combination of gauntlet-backs, the nutcracker, several blades and a small, pointed hammer intended for the sole purpose of cracking knuckles, elbows and kneecaps rendered him conscious and suffering. The Advisor had remained wordless, neither protesting or offering up pleas for mercy. She sipped her tea, occasionally taking down a piece of information on her parchment.

There came the point of begging for reprieve, and it was that point, that the Advisor rose from her chair, and moved forwards to place one hand lightly on the much taller man’s bicep. “Enough,” she murmured, eyes sweeping over the battered mess in front of her. He’d crumpled to the floor, hands stretched above himself and forced into a foppish bend by the shackles. Her hands lowered to gather her skirts, until she descended into a crouch, and one fingertip scooped that mahogany mane back behind one ear. That symbol-tipped earring of the Church dangled, glinting against the glower of a brazier.

Her palm turned in against the miscreant’s cheek, directing it to look at her. “Have you had enough, darling?” she enquired, ignoring the warm sensation of wet leaking through her glove. A bath would be entirely necessary.

There came a slow nod, and she looked up towards his hands. “He’s left you one good hand, how nice,” she commented, eyes lowering to his smeared face. His own gaze moved to that earring. The Church. He could trust the Church. A desperate thought, but one he fell into readily. “Now, you’re going to be a wonderfully co-operative fellow, aren’t you?” she continued. He nodded once, slowly. “Good man.”

She reached one hand behind her, and Van Gatt lowered a wooden board, parchment and a propped inkpot down to her, quill slotted into a curled holder. He leaned forwards to unpin the shackle holding his hand to the wall, watching it flop with some satisfaction.

The Advisor pressed the quill into his hand, working the digits carefully around it. “I don’t want him to kill you, darling,” she confessed, turning the wood and parchment in his direction. “Give me six names, and I assure you, I will be merciful.”

He clenched his hand around the feather pen, dunking it ungraciously into the ink and beginning to scratch out names. She straightened, turning aside to the Executioner, and lifting her teacup.

“Define ‘merciful’,” he grunted in a hushed tone, arms folding over his chest.

“Make it swift,” she answered, glancing up from her teacup. “I won’t have enemies of the Queen running around, examples have to be made.”

He nodded once, glancing back as the man’s outstretched hand trembled, and offered them the parchment. The Advisor took it, scanning over it, and then offered it back. “Sign it, darling,” she told him. He stared at her, and promptly shook his head. That hadn’t been part of the deal. A light, regal shrug touched her shoulders, and she turned back to the table, quill in hand. She gave Morcant a single nod almost as an afterthought, continuing to write.

She ignored the shrieks that came thereafter. Her part in such things was so often kept quiet. She wrote out a separate piece of parchment, signed both, and then turned back to offer quill and paper to the working Executioner. He signed both, and she glanced down contemptuously at the now all-but-dead prisoner. “Cut out his tongue, and send his head to the address I’ve left you on the table,” she commanded. “Do not, under any circumstances, burn his body. Find a convenient river, or dump him with the next cartload of hangings.” She picked up the ring, slotting the rolled parchment she’d taken from the man into it, and turned to head for the door. She stopped, and looked over her shoulder. “Your help in this matter is, as ever, appreciated.”

The gargantuan man creaked another bow, nodding once. “She’s my Queen, too, your Excellence,” he answered. “We understand each other.”