Read Online Tortured by Caragh M. O'brien - Free Book Online

 

    “I’m not going to fix him up if the Protectorat is just going to have him worked over again,” Myrna said from the doorway of V cell. “I won’t be part of that.”
    Leon heard her dimly through a haze of pain, and stirred in his chains.
    “If we can get him out of here before Miles changes his mind, it’ll be over,” Genevieve said. “Please, Myrna. You have to help me. Give him something, please.”
    Kneeling, Leon lifted his head to see Genevieve, his stepmother, working the catch on the metal cuff that held his left wrist, and then she caught his arm when it fell. She retrieved his white shirt from the corner of the cell and wrapped his hand in the makeshift bandage. He tried to straighten, not to sag his torso’s weight by his other chained wrist, and the doctor, Myrna Silk, came forward to help support him. A second later, he felt a sting in his shoulder, and Myrna withdrew a syringe.
    He swallowed thickly, working his dry throat. “Did they find Gaia?” he asked.
    “Your father’s searched all of Wharfton and can’t find her,” Genevieve said. “They’ve tracked down her old neighbors and her friends but she isn’t with any of them.”
    “So she got away?” Leon asked. If so, it would be the first good news he’d had in four days.
    “Yes. So far, at least,” Genevieve said. “Guards are looking for her in the wasteland. Why? Did you think we’d found her?”
    “Iris told me at one point that they did. I didn’t know what to believe,” Leon said.
    “She’ll have to come back,” Myrna said. “She can’t keep that baby alive in the wasteland.”
    His other wrist came loose, and with the lowering of his arm, tiny explosions of new pain stretched across his back. Shirtless, he surveyed his bare arms and torso, finding the raw streaks in his skin where the whiplashes on his back trailed around his sides.
    The two women helped him to his feet, supporting his arms over their shoulders.
    “Watch his back,” Genevieve said.
    “I know,” Myrna replied.
    Leon struggled to coordinate his feet, clenching his body as each step triggered pain upward through his muscles.
    “Buck up,” Myrna said. “No fainting, now. Hear me?”
    He focused all his concentration on the cement floor before him, and then the steps as the women guided him down. Disoriented, he began to fear it was only a nightmare, that they were leading him deeper into the prison or a stone tomb where he’d awaken to another round of torture. His instinct was to struggle.
    “Leon, please,” Genevieve insisted. “You’ll be all right, but you have to let us help you.”
    “You let them do this to me,” he said.
    “I made them stop,” Genevieve said, plainly stricken. “I’ve been pleading with your father ever since I learned he turned you over to Mabrother Iris.”
    They reached a tunnel next, and lights that were thinly spaced down the rugged corridor came on one by one as they approached. Though the air was cool, Leon was sweating from effort, and by the time they reached another staircase leading upward, he couldn’t go farther. He sank to the steps, breathing hard, grasping his wounded hand with the other to apply pressure. The fabric was saturating with blood.
    “Get Mabrother Cho for me, Myrna,” Genevieve said, urging the doctor onward past Leon. “He’s in the kitchen. Quickly.”
    Myrna’s footsteps vanished up the stairs.
    “I’m sorry, Leon,” Genevieve said.
    Her apologies didn’t interest him. “Tell me what have I’ve missed.”
    “They’ve focused in on a Wharfton girl named Emily who was a friend of Gaia’s, and she verified that Gaia went into the wasteland.”
    “Emily wouldn’t volunteer that information.”
    “She was interrogated last night.” Genevieve’s lips tightened. “Miles gave her baby to Masister Khol. They intend to recover the ledgers you stole, unless Gaia took them with her. If she did, they won’t rest until they find her. Does she have them?”
    He looked