"We aren't quite sure what happened," said Chenaol immediately.
"We know only a little," added Taybur.
"Well, tell me what you do know." said Dove.
"We know that this was a mission that she didn't trust to the members of her pack. So it was either very important and extremely close to the throne, or she had to go visit an informant that could not speak to anyone else." Said Fesgao. He nodded at Taybur.
If it were close to the throne, she would have told one of us, if not all of us. signed Ysul.
Everyone nodded in ascent. They all believed that Aly would have told someone if whatever she had been doing had been a threat to the throne.
"She was going to see an informant," stated Nawat softly.
All in the room turned to look at him, and he continued even softer. There was no other sound in the room besides Nawat's voice and breathing.
"She told me the night before she left. She explained it to me. He is a cousin. He has important information that Aly never trusted to anyone else. I couldn't even get her to hint at what kind of information he provided. All she would say was that it was very important, and that she could send someone else, but they would end up dead or come back with nothing."
Everyone was silent as this sunk in. He was a cousin. That meant he was a crow. A crow turned human? Must be, or else the crow would just fly to Aly instead of Aly going to it. Could it have been a trap? Set by the crow? Or did someone else just know where she was going to be? Was it a lucky accident for the enemy?
"There are too many ways this could have gone," said Taybur quietly. Fesgao, Chenaol, and Ysul nodded in agreement. Nawat just stared at the tabletop, hands clasped between his legs.
"Who's in charge of Aly's network?" asked Dove.
"Her pack. She must have drilled them on this too. They've already split up the duties and everything," answered Taybur.
Dove smiled slightly and put her head on her arms. That sounds like Aly, she thought.
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(1 week later, with Aly)
Aly was still chained to the wall. More blood dripped from her body. They had switched the cuffs that cut for normal ones. Her captors must have known that they couldn't keep those while making her bleed.
It had been a week since her capture. The guards in the hall counted for her and made very loud comments about when they thought she was going to break. But they didn't bet. Which meant that they really didn't know.
Aly floated between consciousness and unconsciousness. She always heard what day she was on, but nothing much else.
She missed Nawat with a fierce passion that burned her heart every moment with longing. She knew that he would be looking for her. She knew her best friend would be looking for her, but that did little to comfort her.
She had made sure that no one knew where she was going. She had told Nawat and her pack what she had so that they would know what to do in this situation, and so they would have a place to start looking for her.
She had left small clues where she thought they might look if they got desperate. Not where they would be discovered if she wasn't in trouble.
She thought of her flock in Tortall. They wouldn't even know she was in danger. Dove trusted them, but with her spymaster missing she was going to have her hands full with people trying to tell her that she should do this or that about it.
She resolved to talk more with her family if she got out of this.
She heard a man whistling and walking toward her cell. Shit, what is he going to try now?
The cell door opened to reveal the man she had seen on her first conscious day. He hadn't changed much. The perpetual cheerfulness that he seemed to have gained stemmed from the fact that he was having trouble trying to get Aly to talk.
He wasn't doing so well with that. But he thought it was fun so it really didn't bother him much.
He had already tried conventional forms of torture, so he had to get creative. Today, he had a switch in one hand and a cane in another.
"Are you going to tell me something of use, little bird?" he asked.
"No," Aly answered. She kept her eyes way from his face.
Aly heard the cane fall to the ground, and then felt gentle hands lift her face up, "Why, you said something, little bird. Am I breaking you?"
He was speaking in a mocking singsong voice.
"Why do you call me 'little bird'?" Aly asked.
"I call you that because you want to fly away, but we have you chained in a cage." His eyes glazed over with lust as he traced Aly's lips with his thumb.
"It's a terrible shame that I can't have you yet. I'm told that I'm too rough, and that I should wait and see if I get anything out of you through torture. And then I have to wait through truthspell and the like." His voice was thick with want.
Aly froze. She had known he wanted her, but she hadn't known that he was happy because the more she held out, the closer she was to his bed.
Her torturer felt her freeze, and laughed, eyes clearing. "Now you know what is in store for you, are you going to remain loyal to your false queen?"
Aly made eye contact, fear showing through. His eyes were exactly what she thought they would be like. Full of want, laughter, and madness. Her fear melted into anger. "Yes," she said, and spit in his eye.
His hand fell from her face and went to his eye. The switch in his hand was brought down on her again and again. Until Aly could no longer take the pain of his blows and started to scream. Her old wounds opened and he made those targets.
At Aly's first scream, he dropped the switch and took up the cane, and began to beat her with that. Again, he made the reopened wounds targets. He made sure not to touch her face, breasts, and ass. He never touched her where he thought he would take pleasure from later.
But he beat the rest of her body soundly, refusing to let her drop into unconsciousness.
The guards from the hallway were finally forced to enter, disarm him, and forcefully pull him from his rage. If they had let it go on, he would have beaten her to death.