Two days later, Jake sat staring at three bodies draped in white shrouds. His fingers ached, wrapped tight in their stained bandages. Down here, so far from the sun, time lost its weight and it seemed to him that a miserable eternity had passed. It was equally possible that there had been no passage of days at all: that it had been scant minutes or hours since he’d watched the life go out of that woman’s eyes. He’d only caught little snatches of sleep, and the mechanical clocks everywhere were so quiet that he suspected them of being liars.

There was the droning and unceasing sound of work down here, and the work came in two unpalatable flavors: the mining and clearing and shoring work of the dwarves, and the far less tasteful labor performed by Radek. The fourth man - the last surviving assassin - was screaming. Just when it seemed that the victim’s voice was spent, the wolfish Salvarman apparently found some horrible new pain to explore, and the screams started anew.

Flint’s crew had managed to save only two of the assassins. The woman had been the first to die, since she had not relied on the poison at all. The one Flint stopped with the thrown knife had crawled after his lost capsule and stuffed it back into his mouth, and in an effort to stop him the brute had stomped on him. That had prevented him from ingesting the poison, but he nevertheless died from internal bleeding.

The third assassin had ingested some poison, but had vomited most of it up after the struggle. It was Radek’s attentions that ultimately ended him not long into the first night. Ironically, the last survivor was the leader, who had been the first to ingest his false tooth and got the largest dose of poison. Between a good constitution and the work of an Aleraran alchemist, he had the good fortune of surviving long after his followers had gone beyond pain.

...and the miserable fate to know Radek the longest.

No one, Jake included, thought there was much chance that the hapless assassin would live long enough to break. Lye trained his dogs well, or they simply feared the Hands more than unspeakable agony punctuated by an ignoble death. The demon hunter had opened another dark chapter in his life and, it seemed, would have nothing to show for it. Was this worth another black spot on his soul?

He was musing on this when the screaming stopped and, after a moment, the door to the makeshift torture chamber opened. Jake leaned around the corner just in time to watch Radek emerge, slam the door closed, and stalk down the hallway away from him. The lanky Salvarman was bare-chested and sweaty, smeared everywhere with blood and grime. His hands were shaking. Jake followed, at a distance.

He heard voices echoing down the hallway, interspersed between loud interjections from the miners and their equipment.

“...long left,” Radek was saying to someone. “...learned too late.”

“...time…” a woman’s voice replied. Roxanna, Jake decided. “...recover...another crack once his body is whole. He did just recover from a poisoning.”

Radek grunted in the negative. “...point. His mind is broken. Thought he was just tough, but it’s not that. This guy...Lichensith...twisted. Poor fucker’s indoctrinated. I broke him hours ago...just didn’t realize I’m not making him afraid of me. Making him...more...of his boss. Like it’s Lye in there instead of me, testing him. He’s babbling the same thing over and over. His mind wants to give me want I’m asking for, he just...can’t make his mouth do it. Imprisoned...own brain.”

There was a long silence.

“...have it right here. We should use it,” Roxanna said at last. “...heard what Radek just said. The answer is there...locked...and we have the key right here. We can read his mind.”

“No,” a new voice interjected immediately. It was Flint. “No magic. None of us are paying that cost.”

“...regenerate…” Roxanna said, insisting.

“It is not the same,” Flint growled. “Magic has its own rules, and they are harder to violate.”

“It’s not just magic,” Roxanna insisted, louder. “It’s mechanical. Alchemical. The magic is just a small part…”

“The answer is no,” Flint said with finality. “Give it to me. Leave it on the table. Now. Radek, go rest. I need to think. We can still use this assassin as a message, or a bargaining chip.”

Jake stepped back into the shadows of the hallway. He was still dressed in the outfit he’d chosen for his nocturnal mission two nights before, and it served well to obscure him in the unfinished tunnels. Radek stalked past looking exhausted, and was none the wiser to the half-elf’s presence.

“...was a mistake…” Roxanna was saying.

“It was a calculated risk,” Flint said. Jake could imagine the dismissive shrug that must have accompanied the statement. “We learned much about the Hands.”

“...about the boy?”

“...potential ally,” Flint mused.

“...dangerous…” Roxanna said, doubtful.

“No,” Flint said. “The Breaker already knows where I am, and Narmolanya is focused on Lye, not me. He isn’t tied to any of my enemies. He walks free. It will soon be irrelevant if he continues on this path. Lye is death.”

Roxanna said something more, but Jake couldn’t make it out over a large rumble from some distance down the tunnel.

“...to bed, Roxanna,” Flint was saying.

Moments later, the leather-clad woman exited Flint’s quarters with her shoulders drawn up. She slowed near the entrance to the hallway Jake was hiding in, paused with a pensive glance over her shoulder, and then she shook her head and continued on her way, muttering to herself. Jake lingered in the dark for a long time, musing on all of this, and felt a thrill when he heard Flint’s distinct, heavy footfalls retreating into the distance. The brute was leaving.

He felt the risk keenly, but he also felt the weight of the cost he’d already paid. He couldn’t walk away. Not now.

He sneaked into Flint’s sanctum, cautious, and found it as deserted as it sounded. There were the maps, the books, the exercise equipment...and something that hadn’t been there before.

It looked like a sailor’s spyglass, except that it was black and smooth and did not collapse or adjust in any way. There were wide openings on either end, and lenses set inside them, except that the lenses were bowed in on both sides and set too deep inside the tube. One end had six small, wicked claws splayed out around the edge, and it was clear that these were designed to close down around any eye placed against that end of the device. To the half-elf’s dismay, he discovered that the other end promised its own equally horrific attitude toward eyeballs: the lens had a hole in the center, through which a tiny glass spike emerged.

The thing had weight - not just physical, but magical. Roxanna had called it a key...a key to their prisoner’s mind. A key that exacted a cost Flint was not willing to pay...