The Husband Poisoning Society, Chapter 18

Duke Xander rose to collect quill pen and paper. Somebody screamed in the corridor outside the prison. I looked up. Duke Xander drew his sword. Another scream. And then a rattling of keys. 

The door burst in and Fiona stepped through the doorway, saber drawn and bloody. She had changed from her evening gown, back into her usual breeches and claw hammer jacket. The two royal guards moved to draw their own weapons. But Fiona drew a flintlock in her left hand and dropped the first guard before he could draw his sword. The second guard got his sword out of its scabbard. Fiona, meanwhile, had dropped her flintlock and drawn a second one. She aimed and fired as the second guard began to charge towards her. He dropped and rolled to a stop in front of her. 

The torturer grabbed me and grappled me into a headlock. He then placed a bizarre and very sharp looking instrument against my cheek. I got the message. 

“This is madness. What are you thinking?” Duke Xander said, his voice rising.

Fiona didn’t answer. Instead she drew a throwing knife and launched it at Xander. The knife hit him, pommel first, between the eyes. The duke crumpled to the ground, unconscious. 

“I am thinking that she is my fiance.” Fiona answered, retrieving her flintlock pistols and throwing knife from the stone floor. 

“Stay where you are.” The torturer said. He pressed the instrument against my cheek, and blood dripped from the point of contact. 

Vincent came through the door as the torturer spoke. “Bad idea, taking hostages. What can you do now? If you kill her, you lose your only bargaining chip. If you don’t, you have no threat. Really bad strategy.”

“Move and I will kill her.”

I spotted Amy and, to my surprise, Laila waiting at the door. They peered in, eyes wide. 

“I’m not bluffing.”

“Drop the weapon. Do this, and I will merely knock you unconscious.” Fiona said.

Fiona took a step forward.

“Stop moving.” He drew a delicate line across my cheek, opening up the flesh. I gasped in pain and flinched, making the line ragged as it reached my lip. 

Fiona stopped and sheathed her sword. 

“Better.” The torturer said. “Now you will surrender and wait for new guards to arrive.”

Fiona moved. Both hands disappeared into her jacket. They emerged each holding throwing knives. She released the knives and they spun through the air. One buried itself in the torturer’s shoulder. The other hit him in his left hip that poked out from behind me. He staggered and dropped, but managed to hold on to me. I tried to resist. But I remained weak from the recent vision, and I was still in agony from the torture. My left arm hung at an impossible angle, and my back was still bleeding with five pins in it. I fell with the torturer and crashed to the ground beside him. 

“I warned you.” The torturer yelled. He transferred the instrument to his off hand and plunged it into my throat. I gagged and nearly lost consciousness from the pain. I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning in my own blood. I tried to call for help, and managed a wet gurgle. 

Fiona stepped in and drew her saber again. She lopped off the hand holding the instrument, and then kicked the man away from me. Then she stepped forward and lopped off the other hand. 

Vincent stepped forward and knelt beside me. “That was your only leverage, and you killed her.”

Fiona lopped off the torturer’s left foot, splitting his boot open. “That is my wife. And you will regret that for the rest of your life.”

Amy rushed in and knelt beside me as well. I could feel consciousness slipping away. 

I wanted to say “I love you” to them. But I kept coughing up blood instead. I couldn’t hear what they were saying any longer. And my vision was becoming a mass of blurred shapes. I could smell and taste nothing but the blood in my mouth. And that became my world. 

Blood and pain.

I was dying.