The Husband Poisoning Society, Chapter 17

“I see that we have already begun.” A man’s voice said.

I looked up. The torturer was a slim short man with a bald head and prominent nose. He looked like he belonged in an accounting firm. He had set up a folding table and placed a case on it at some point.

The two guards brought in a weird contraption. It looked like a clothing rack but for a person. They locked me into it, arms spread, feet dangling inches about the floor. The thing put all my weight on my shoulders, and the pain felt agonizing. 

I don’t remember the guards leaving. Perhaps they didn’t and I didn’t notice. 

I hung there in the middle of the room. 

“Get on with it.” Duke Xander said. 

“A moment.” He put a hand on my shoulder. “This has been painful so far. Yes? You should know, I will be worse. I see auras. I will not merely break your body. Do you understand?”

I considered this. I’d been talking myself into confessing a moment ago. But would that actually fix things? Would it save anything? I wouldn’t stop Fiona and Amy from getting arrested. I had seen that in my vision. Which meant that would happen. Without fail. It would happen. Which meant I survived this, at least to that point. 

“You see auras?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“I see the future. And I have seen myself beyond this room. So do your worst.”

“Interesting. How much have you seen? Seers rarely get clear sustained visions. I think you’re guessing from fragments. Let us test my theory.”

He reached into the case and retrieved a hypodermic needle. My eyes widened.

“What are you planning?” I asked. 

He approached and grabbed my wrist. I struggled, but he was strong. I hadn’t expected that, and he injected the potion into my arm. 

“This is a truth alchemical. It will act on your conscious mind and make you want to tell me anything and everything.”

“That doesn’t seem sporting.” I said.

The torturer waited. I don’t know how long. But the pain in my arms made it seem like an eternity. Finally he spoke. 

“Let’s see how the potion is working. What is your greatest shame?”

“Betraying my father.” I said before I had time to think. I caught myself. I had meant the time I told the hospital staff that my father back on earth had broken my arm. I couldn’t reveal that I was from another world. What would they do to me then?

“So the She-Wolf does feel shame.” Duke Xander chuckled.

“My father was betraying Ys. I had to stop him.” I said. Focusing on my memories of betraying my father here in Ossedei. 

“But you are still ashamed of your actions? Interesting.” The Torturer said. 

Don’t ask about my mother, I thought to myself. Don’t ask about my mother.

“How did your mother take the betrayal?”

“It killed her.” I spoke in halting bursts as I struggled for a way to say the truth that wouldn’t give me away. “She couldn’t take it. She broke.”

“You are trying to hide something. Interesting. We will start there.” 

I shook my head trying to clear my mind. 

“What are you trying to hide?” He asked. 

“My past. My childhood.” I couldn’t stop myself from talking.

“You are ashamed of your past?”

This I could answer, “Yes. I hate who I was. I hate Lady Karen.”

It was true, and it might throw him off the original topic.

“So you have turned over a new leaf? You are trying to be a good person?”

“I’ll never be a good person. I’m trying to be better.” Damn. Had I said that out loud?

“And is assassinating your enemies how you try to be better?”

“I didn’t kill Lord Siggis. I don’t know who did.”

“And yet you did kill Prince Wulfric. Why stop at one Hyperborean?”

“Siggis wasn’t marrying Lynn. Wulfric was.”

“The Baroness Octavian? You do this for her?”

“I killed Wulfric for her. I mean I helped kill him. I provided the silver potion. So I didn’t even do much. Not really. Siggis meant nothing to me, good or bad.” I was rambling. Babbling.

“Tell me about your relationship to the Baroness.”

“She’s my best friend. I used to say my only friend. But I’ve got friends now. Which is strange. I’m not used to having friends. Even my roommates weren’t really my friends. But I’ve known Lynn my whole life. She’s always been there for me, even when she was mad at me. Which I always deserved. She saved me when I had a bad drug trip. Alchemical trip that is. She was the only reason I came through it, still sane.”

I shouldn’t be saying this stuff. I was talking about my time back on Earth. I prayed they wouldn’t catch it. 

“We’re losing the thread here. The point is to obtain a confession.” Duke Xander said.

“Yes, your grace. I believe she is ready now. First the obvious question. Did you kill his grace, Duke Siggis?” 

“You know I didn’t.”

“Ah. but that is the wrong answer.” 

He reached into the case and drew out what looked like a long curved hat pin. Then he walked around behind me. A minute passed, and then I felt something pierce the skin on my back. I gasped. This wasn’t like getting a piercing. He had driven the hat pin deep into my flesh. I could feel as it pushed through my back muscles. Then it pierced an exit wound as the curve of the pin led it out. 

I gasped in pain. I felt my eyes watering. 

From behind me, the torturer spoke. “Did you kill his grace, Duke Siggis?” 

I was about to blurt out another denial, but I stopped myself and considered. Again, I could see no good reason to be their scapegoat.

“Go ahead and frame me without the confession.” I said.

“His Majesty has requested a confession.” Duke Xander said. “We must provide one.”

The torturer retrieved another pin. Again he walked behind me. And again I felt the pin pierce my back muscles. I bit my lip in an attempt to distract myself from the pain.

“Isn’t the truth potion going to work against obtaining my confession?” I asked. “Since we all know I didn’t do it?”

“The truth potion makes you more likely to say whatever you are thinking. And when the pain becomes too much, you will find it hard to stop yourself from saying the thing that will stop the pain.”

“So it’s not a truth potion. It’s a gossip potion.”

“In the end we will make the truth we wish to see.” The torturer said.

Three more times the torturer added the curved pins to my back. And I stopped responding at all. After the fifth pin, the torturer nodded and exited the room.

“I will be back.” He said as he left.

“You can make the pain stop by admitting to the murders.” Duke Xander said. “It is the only way to prevent the war. I trust that you do not wish to see your country devastated?”

“My team will find the real killer.” I said, gritting my teeth through the pain. 

“If they do, that will likely make things worse. The wrong culprit could guarantee war.”

The torturer returned with a sledgehammer. My eyes widened. 

"We have tried precise. Now that ends."

The torturer looked at Xander, who paused. “Please. I do not wish to do this.”

I stared at the sledgehammer. The torturer could do enormous damage with that. I closed my eyes, and then shook my head. 

“I’m not going to make this easy on your conscience.” I answered. 

I opened my eyes and Duke Xander nodded. The torturer raised the hammer and brought it swinging down on my forearm. I felt the bones in that arm snap like twin masts in a hurricane. And I recognized the pain. I’d felt it before, years ago when I was a child and still on Earth. With the recognition of the pain, memories flooded back to the surface. These were memories that I poured a great deal of alcohol into repressing. I remembered my father hitting me, and swinging me by my arm. I remembered slamming into the fridge and my arm breaking. I remembered the hospital staff coaxing me to tell them the truth about how I’d been injured. I remembered police arresting my father. And I remembered my mother and how I’d found her with the empty bottle of sleeping pills after father’s arrest. 

I screamed, and began to cry. I couldn’t control myself. It was too much.

Xander stepped forward, “Do this for the other two. I understand that you three are to be married. Do not let them die in a pointless war. The tiny one is fierce. I expect she will die on the front lines. And the meek one, I do not like to think what Hyperborean soldiers might do when they find her.”

I hadn’t considered that. I didn’t like the sound of that. And, I realized, I had done this before. I’d stuck to the truth for the wrong reason. And as a result of that, my mother died. I couldn’t do it again. Hang the truth. 

“I’ll do it.” I managed between hiccupping gasps. “I’ll be your scapegoat. But I want your word that you will do everything in your power to stop this war. Everything.”

“Of course.” Duke Xander said.

“No. Not of course. I want your sworn word.”

Xander considered this and then nodded. “I swear as Duke of Clan Vosling. I swear on my honor as a Hyperborean. I swear that I will do everything in my power to prevent a war between Hyperborea and Ys.”

I nodded, and let my head slump. “Get me a pen. At least you left me my writing hand.”