Yves only needed to flutter his lashes and preen a little for the guards to let them through. Charon wanted to make Yves stay in the main office, but now that Yves had introduced them as Sabre’s agents, he couldn’t do so without arousing suspicion. Knowing Yves, he’d probably planned for that.
“Don’t look so grim,” Yves whispered, as they headed down the stairs to the holding cells. “What is he going to do, tremble at me?”
Charon wasn’t concerned about Yves’ safety. He was worried about what Yves might notice about him—the way he recognized injuries from torture, the way he knew how to speak to terrified young men desperate for a comforting voice. But it was too late now.
Charon stepped into the spacious, barely-protected holding cells. They were lightly furnished for their noble “visitors,” butthe boy wasn’t even sitting on the cot set up at the far end of the room. He was curled up on the floor next to a chair with his knees to his chest, staring into the middle distance.
When Yves explained why they were there, the guard at the desk shrugged.
“They just brought him in,” he said. “If you asked me, I’d say he looks more like a victim of a fire than someone who started it. Get a name out of him if you can, will you?”
Charon didn’t make any promises. He asked for bandages and clean water, which the guard gave him with a befuddled look. He opened the gate to the cell—unlocked, because no noble wanted to think they were actually being detained. The boy shuffled toward the corner of the wall.
“Your dominance isn’t just a part of your voice,” Haris had said, when he’d first trained Nikos in interrogation. “It’s in how you move. If a sorry bastard can’t stand after I’m done with them, you don’t stand either. It makes them think you’re on their side.”
He hadn’t let Nikos speak at all, at first. Nikos had to comfort terrified prisoners without saying a word, fumbling awkwardly through using his dominance in a way he’d never considered before. It became a tool, something he could use and put away like the rest of an interrogator’s instruments. It had taken months before Haris had been satisfied enough to let Nikos use his voice again.
Charon sat down a few paces from the boy. Behind him, he could hear Yves getting to his knees. Charon didn’t speak. He unwound the bandages he’d taken and set the jug of water on the floor between him and the boy. The boy stared at the jug before he looked at Charon’s hands—which meant he was more thirsty than afraid.
The boy lasted five minutes before he started inching forward. He half crawled toward the water, but froze when Yvesmade a sympathetic sound, a habit that Nikos had learned to suppress early on.
“I can bandage your hands,” Charon said, and the boy stared up at him, too afraid to follow his submissive instinct to look down. “Yves, sit next to me so I can show him how it’s done.”
Yves gingerly sat next to Charon, and Charon turned to start wrapping Yves’ fingers.
“If your finger is broken,” Charon said, “it will need a splint. It will hurt at first, but it is a good pain. Like drinking water when your throat is scraped dry. I have felt that before, in the mountains. Are you thirsty?”
The boy stared at him.
“Yves, show him your hand.” Yves held up his bandaged hand. “That is all that I will do to you, if you allow me.” Charon started unwinding the bandages. He kept his dominance strong in his voice and his slow, assured movements, but it wasn’t the intimate call of command that he used at the House of Onyx. There was no expectation in it, just a slow, quiet promise of safety. Yves was blinking heavily at his side, clearly influenced. “Would you like me to bandage your hands?”
“Can’t…” the boy glanced at the water jug.
“I will help you with that, as well.”
The boy kept looking at the jug. Charon finished unwrapping Yves’ fingers and approached, keeping low. He took the jug and held it up, and the boy crept forward like a stray animal.
“When they come to you,” Haris had said, “you’ve already won.”
Charon held the water jug to the boy’s lips, watching as he struggled to swallow even the faintest trickle. He’d been without water for some time, then. He hadn’t eaten much, either, and by the way he sat, favoring his left leg, his foot was injured as well.
“Careful,” Charon said. “You’ll have more when I’ve seen your hands.”
The boy was so lulled by Charon’s dominance by now that he placidly held out his hands when Charon set down the jug. Charon had been right—someone had been torturing the boy, albeit without the rigid structure of the Arkoudai interrogators. The boy hissed in pain once or twice, but by the time Charon was done wrapping his swollen fingers, some of the panic had ebbed in his eyes.
Charon fed him a little more water, then set the jug down again. “Tell me who you are.”
“Jesse.”
“That’s good, Jesse. How old are you?”
“Fifteen,” Jesse said. Yves made another sound, and Charon kept his expression neutral.
“They say you set fire to the House of Silver,” Charon said.
“Was trying for the rest.” Jesse looked down at his hands. “It ain’t right, what they do.”
“They? Courtesans?”
