To the left was where the commoners were sent. The cells smaller, filled with more than one man (or woman), with naught but blankets, no heating irons, chairs, mattresses or tables.
And the upper cells had views of the city’s dump, cess-swamp, and the shanty village filled with vagrants, uncommitted lunatics, hopeless addicts of ashesh and koekah and other varied disenfranchised elements.
This would change, this separation of criminals.
Soon.
But not now.
Now was the time for something else.
“Where are the others?” True asked, his mantle caressing the corner at the winding stairwell as he swept into it to ascend.
“Down,” Cassius answered.
True was unsurprised at this as well.
For it was as he’d ordered.
The Down was where the worst offenders were kept. Convicted murderers, rapists, and the abusers of the elderly, women and children were locked there in small cells with no light. Communication between prisoners or with guards was forbidden and only the barest necessities for survival were offered for as long as their sentence lasted, or their life ended, whichever came first.
If they survived, they were released into the Shanty, one class of the varied disenfranchised who existed there.
The Down was also where the ancient torture chambers were.
They’d been closed four generations ago after a public outcry became a riot that saw a goodly amount of the city burned, a larger amount looted, and Birchlire Castle had been in danger of both. This, after two young men, neither of them even twenty, were tortured to death for a crime it was eventually proved they did not commit. It was simply the fact that the lord of the manor didn’t like them. Therefore, he’d accused them of a rape that one of his own vassals had committed.
The Down, after nearly two hundred years of being locked, was now open.
True would be going there.
Very soon.
But not in the now.
He stopped walking swiftly up the steps and started jogging, hearing the boots of the men behind him striking the stone treads in a quick cadence, following him.
He ceased doing this when he made the fourth landing, where Carrington was being kept.
But he did stride purposefully down the hall.
There was one guard at the top of the steps, two guards at the end of the hall, two at the door.
One of them moved immediately, putting his hand to his belt to procure the key and open the door.
True, with his assemblage behind him, stopped at it, and he caught the other guard not at work opening the door, bowing to him.
“If you bow to me again, twenty lashes,” he spat.
The guard shot up, and the air in the hall went static.
“I-I’m sorry, Your Grace?” the guard stammered.
“You are a citizen of this realm and in service to it. You may salute me as your superior officer. You may salute me as a citizen of this land, and I am in a position of authority. But you do not bow to me. Ever,” True replied.
The guard’s eyes slid to his compatriot but then he looked back to his prince, nodded sharply, lifted his hand to his forehead and gave a smart salute.
True dipped his chin, turned his gaze impatiently to the other man who seemed frozen in his duties of opening the door.
When he caught True’s attention, he swiftly went about finishing his task.
He threw open the heavy, studded door.
True strode in, and Carrington, writing something at the table, his iron lit, the room cozy warm, his clothing his own—well-tailored trousers and waistcoat made of worsted wool, shirt of fine linen, what looked to be a cashmere rug thrown about his shoulders (also likely from his own home)—stood from his chair, his lips quirking in a triumphant smile.
True wasted no time wiping it from his face.
His knuckles were split and two of Carrington’s teeth were embedded in them before Aramus pulled him off and tugged him away, Apollo Ulfr needing to assist him with this effort.
Cassius stayed close to his struggling brothers while Mars took position before a prone Carrington on the floor and Frey Drakkar approached the traitor, staring down at him with distaste.
“This is not you, my brother,” Aramus said in his ear, grappling to keep control of True at the same time Cassius and Mars were positioning to stop Wallace and Luther from assisting their prince in getting free. “Do not allow him to take away who you are. Keep hold, man.” His grip under True’s arms tightened. “Keep hold.”
It was the last that got through to True.
He stopped fighting against his friend and drew in a deep breath.
When Aramus sensed he had control, he let him go and he and Ulfr stepped away.
True took another deep breath and jerked his head side to side in an ineffectual effort to ease some of the tension there.
“Aramus speaks true, it’s not you,” Mars stated offhandedly. “But also, he cannot talk if he’s unconscious, and we cannot torture him to any kind of success, again, if he’s unconscious.”
“Get him up in the chair,” True bit out.
Wallace and Luther moved.
Carrington groaned as they did as ordered.
His face was a mangled mess. His jaw might even be broken.
True did not call for a physician.
He moved toward him and stopped.
True then bent his head to look down at his hand, dug out one, then the other, of Carrington’s teeth and tossed them to the stone floor under the man’s lax feet.
They made a quiet clatter as they skittered toward his boot.
Carrington’s head was lolling on his shoulders to such an extent, he did not notice this.
“Do you know what they do to traitors in the necropolis of Firenze?” he asked.
Carrington’s swelling eyelids fluttered.
But his split, bloody lips said, “Long live The Rising.”
He said this with a lisp.
True was far from amused or even gratified by the sound.
Sensing this, Mars got close.
Cassius did too.
But Aramus stayed where he was and simply said, “My friend.”
True drew in another deep breath.
“You’ll be moved to the Down,” he shared with his prisoner.
“Long live The Rising,” Carrington replied.
True crossed his arms on his chest.
“I see,” he whispered.
Carrington’s head twitched at this in surprise.
True moved closer to him.
Carrington winced as his body braced.
Cassius and Mars stayed close.
But True only crouched beside the odious man.
“My mother told me you urged my father to tax the Go’Doan. With this show of loyalty to them, was that subterfuge?”
“There are many followers of Go’Doan in Wodell, Your Grace.”
“And a tax against their religion would not be well regarded.”
Carrington said nothing.
But if it could be credited, he smirked.
In other words, another plan to create dissension and reduce the popularity of the monarch.
True did not resort to his earlier method to wipe that smirk off his face.
“I’m claiming regent,” he said softly.
Carrington’s mangled face managed to show some shock before he blanked it.
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied.
“You did not wish that, but I see it doesn’t alarm you,” True remarked. “What will alarm you is that I will claim regent for only a very short time. That time being as long as it takes for the papers to be drawn up and my father to sign his abdication.”