Chapter 39: A Brief Loss of Patience

"Oh, you really should have done this right from the very beginning!"

Lioren’s smile blossomed back onto his face like a sudden beam of sun cutting through storm clouds. He let out a light chuckle. "I mean, just look at us now! I’ve wasted all my breath and energy bouncing around on barrels, and you’ve gone and bled out half a pint of good blood into your boots. Unnecessary, right? Completely unnecessary."

With a casual flick of his wrist, Lioren tossed the small, red-stained iron knife over his shoulder. The weapon clattered against a pile of discarded wine crates, rolling away into the damp shadow.

The spy thrashed his head weakly, his breath coming in shallow, shuddering gasps as he slumped against the brick. "Please..." he wheezed out, his eyes darting toward Caldrin’s heavy leather arm still crushing his collarbone into the stone. "Please... ask your man to ease up on the grip. I can’t... I can hardly draw air to speak, Your Grace. I swear I’m not trying to cause any more trouble. I just want to explain myself properly. Just let me breathe."

Lioren tilted his head, watching the man’s chest heave. The threat seemed entirely broken out of him, his legs ruined and shaking violently under his own weight.

"Fair enough," Lioren sighed, waving a hand toward his captain. "Ease off him a fraction, Caldrin. Hard to get a clean confession out of a corpse, and I really don’t feel like dragging dead weight all the way back through the capital."

"My lord..." Caldrin began, his brow furrowing under his iron helm.

"Just drop him," Lioren said softly, stepping back an inch and shaking out his wrists. "He’s not running anywhere with those legs."

Caldrin grunted, his heavy jaw setting hard, but he obeyed. He loosened his vice-like hold on the man’s coat collar and stepped back a pace, his hand remaining firmly anchored to his broadsword hilt.

The moment the crushing weight left his shoulders, the stranger dropped like a sack of damp grain, his knees hitting the cobblestones with a heavy, wet thud. He doubled over, groaning softly, clutching at his bleeding thighs with both trembling hands.

Lioren relaxed his posture. He took a slow breath, reaching up with one hand to adjust the silk collar of his vest, his guard dropping just an inch as he prepared to listen to whatever name the spy was finally about to cough up.

It was a mistake. A small, human slip of judgment.

In a fraction of a second, faster than a man with two punctured legs had any right to move, the man’s tear-filled, weeping face transformed into a mask of pure, frantic ferocity.

He didn’t reach for his boots. He didn’t reach for his coat.

Tucked beneath the dirty bandage around his left forearm was a thin iron dagger, sharp enough to slip between the links of chainmail. With a desperate roar of rage, the man drove himself upward off his sound knee, lunging straight for Lioren’s exposed throat with the hidden spike.

"Die, you northern dog...!"

The strike was vicious, born of pure desperation, aimed to catch Lioren completely off guard while his hands were at his neck.

He didn’t catch Lioren off guard.

Lioren’s eyes didn’t even widen. The relaxed, cheerful slouch vanished instantly, replaced by the instinct of a man who had spent ten years dodging ambushes in mountain passes. He didn’t even bother drawing his sword. Lioren simply leaned his upper body backward by two inches, just far enough for the sharp iron point to whistle harmlessly through the empty air, grazing his silk collar without touching skin.

Before the spy could recover his balance or pull the bodkin back for a second jab, Lioren’s right hand shot out like an iron trap.

CRACK

Lioren’s long, leather-gloved fingers clamped violently around the man’s throat.

The sheer momentum of the man’s lunge was completely reversed. With a single, explosive burst of northern muscle, Lioren slammed the man backward, driving his spine and the back of his skull straight into the solid warehouse wall with a dull, sickening BOOM.

Dust rattled down from the brick above. The hidden iron dagger slipped from the man’s numb fingers, clattering uselessly onto the cobblestones.

The cheerful, foolish Grand Duke was completely gone.

Lioren stood pinned to the man’s chest, his tall frame blocking out the fading evening light, his arm locked straight as a steel bar. His eyes, usually so full of ridiculous, sparkling energy, were pitch-black with a cold, terrifying fury that made the narrow alley feel ten degrees colder.

"You know," Lioren said, his voice dangerously low, smooth, and entirely devoid of heat, "there are plenty of people in this world I thoroughly despise. Traitors, corrupt tax collectors, lords who starve their people..."

He tightened his fingers around the spy’s windpipe, forcing the man onto his tiptoes as his boots scraped frantically against the wall.

"...but men who give their word only to break it the second a back is turned? Men who weep and beg for mercy like a dog, only to pull a hidden needle?" Lioren leaned in closer, his face inches from the thrashing spy’s bloodshot eyes. "They are, without a doubt, among the absolute worst."

The stranger clawed frantically at Lioren’s wrist, his fingernails tearing uselessly against the heavy leather of the Duke’s glove. His face turned a deep, mottling purple, his chest heaving for air that simply wouldn’t come.

"Did you genuinely believe," Lioren whispered, his grip tightening until the cartilage in the man’s neck groaned, "that this pathetic little act would work on me? Did you think I survived years of wars and conflicts by trusting the word of a hired rat in a alleyway?"

For five long, agonizing seconds, Lioren held him there, letting the man suffocate in the dark shadow of the warehouse wall. He watched the light slowly begin to fade from the spy’s eye, watched the frantic thrashing turn into weak, pathetic twitches.

Then, with a cold flick of his shoulder, Lioren released his grip.

The man collapsed forward onto all fours, slamming his forehead against the wet stones as he gasped violently for air, retching and coughing up thin trails of saliva. He curled into a tight ball, shivering, his fingers digging into the gaps between the cobblestones as he tried to pull oxygen back into his burning lungs.

Lioren didn’t step back this time. He stood over the writhing figure, looking down with an expression of cold, detached disgust.

"Don’t you dare complain about what happens next," Lioren warned softly, his voice cutting through the man’s ragged coughing. "You had your chances. I gave you four separate opportunities to act like a human being and talk to me like a man. You chose to waste every single one of them."

Lioren pivoted on his heel, walking two paces down the alley to where the stranger’s original shortsword lay resting in the damp gutter. He picked it up by the hilt, turning the weapon over in his hand. It was a decent blade, heavy iron, double-edged, balanced for close-quarters gutting.

"My lord," Caldrin said quietly, his voice heavy with caution. "We still need him conscious enough to name his handler."

"Oh, he’ll stay conscious, Caldrin," Lioren replied, his tone chillingly matter-of-fact. "Or he’ll wake up very quickly."

Lioren walked back to where the spy was half-sitting, half-sprawled against the damp wall. The man looked up through his tangled, sweaty hair, his eyes widening in pure, unadulterated horror as he saw the shortsword resting in Lioren’s hand.

"No..." the man croaked out, trying to drag himself backward on his elbows, his ruined legs trailing uselessly behind him. "No, please... wait... I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you who paid..."

"Too late," Lioren said simply.

Before the man could pull his arms back, Lioren stepped hard onto the spy’s right wrist, pinning his hand flat against a heavy timber wine crate resting on the ground. The man shrieked, thrashing his left hand wildly to push Lioren off...

Lioren caught the left wrist mid-air, slamming it down flat over the right hand, stacking both palms squarely on top of each other over the thick wood of the crate.

"You wanted to use your hands so badly," Lioren murmured.

With an effortless, terrifying movement, Lioren raised the shortsword high above his head with both hands, the steel catching the final, dying red ray of the setting sun.

He didn’t hesitate for a single heartbeats.

SHING

Lioren brought the sword down with the full, crushing weight of his shoulders.

The heavy steel blade drove straight through the back of the top palm, biting cleanly through flesh, sinew, and bone, tearing through the lower hand, and embedding itself three full inches deep into the solid oak wood of the wine crate beneath.

A scream erupted from the man’s throat, a sound so loud, raw, and agonizing it shattered the quiet evening air of the river district, echoing off the high brick walls like the baying of a slaughtered beast. The man’s back arched violently, his eyes rolling back into his head as he thrashed against the steel spike pinning both of his hands squarely to the heavy timber.

Lioren didn’t even blink. He let go of the sword hilt, leaving the blade standing straight up out of the man’s stacked hands like a bloody iron fence post.

He stepped back, taking out a clean handkerchief from his vest pocket and meticulously wiping a tiny speck of blood off his left thumb.

"Caldrin," Lioren ordered calmly, tossing the soiled handkerchief onto the screaming man’s face.

"Yes, my lord?"

"Fetch two of the perimeter guards from the lower street. Have them bring a heavy canvas tarp and a iron-reinforced stretcher." Lioren adjusted his silk sleeves, his tone returning to its breezy, casual rhythm as if he were ordering a second pot of tea at a café. "Throw him into the back of a covered supply wagon and take him directly to the lower cells at the estate."

Caldrin looked down at the sobbing, broken spy pinned to the wooden crate, then back to his lord. "And the wound, my lord? He’ll bleed out if we don’t bind those legs."

"Stop the bleeding in his legs and wrap his hands," Lioren replied smoothly, turning his back on the scene and walking toward the alley entrance. "I don’t want him dying of blood loss before midnight. I intend to come down to the dungeons and have another proper conversation with our guest later tonight, once he’s had a few hours in the dark to reflect on his life choices."

Lioren paused near the edge of the avenue, the noise of the capital market drifting back into his ears. He smoothed down his hair, checked his collar in a glass shopfront window, and forced a bright, sunny smile back onto his face.

He had a betrothed waiting for him, after all, and he certainly didn’t want Xavion to worry about a few dark shadows in the alleyway.