consciousness he had never, living or dead, imagined.
Strat was going to be tortured; was going to be systematically stripped of every
image his memory held. Death would spare him nothing but the pain and, for
Strat, the pain would not be the true torture. Stilcho remembered his own
torture at Moruth’s hands. He shrank with the knowledge that no little heroics,
like a slash to the carotid, would spare this man. He had never, at his best,
risen above little heroics but he would now, for Straton. The determination came
instantaneously and suffused the resurrected man with a glow that would have
chilled the Nisi witches beyond the door-had they seen it.
“It won’t work. Ace,” he informed the Stepson as he contrived to make him a bit
more comfortable on the floor. “Think of something else. Think of lies until you
believe them. Haught can’t see the truth; he can only see what you believe is
the truth.” He ripped a comer from Strat’s blood-soaked tunic and tucked it up
his sleeve. “Don’t fight them; just lie.”
Strat blinked and groaned. Stilcho hoped he’d understood. There wasn’t time for
more. The door was opening. He prayed he wouldn’t have to watch.
“I said the table,” Haught said in his soft, malice-laden voice.
Stilcho shrugged and thought, carefully, about being dead. But Haught had no
energy for the likes of him, not with Roxane-Stilcho’s empty eye saw Roxane, not
Tasfalen-hovering behind him and Strat helpless at his feet.
“Find me Tempus’s secrets,” a man’s voice with strange, menacing inflections