The pain in Kara’s head was awful. At the centre-point – right behind her eyes – the aching was too much to bare. Simultaneously every one of her muscles screamed as if she had ran, climbed and swam all night. Even her bones felt tired, as if they’d been bent and warped and only now were permitted to rest. She tried to stretch, but something around her wrists stopped her arms from rising. She tried again, but they wouldn’t budge. She moved to look down, to see what held her arms, but could not bring her head forward either. Something was holding that back too.

The wizard’s tower. I never left. Oh no. Oh no, oh no.

Fear set in. Instinctively she fought against her bonds, but the leather restraints around her wrists, ankles, temple and waist would not give an inch. Drained as she was, it felt a vain attempt. She could do nothing but stare at the stone ceiling above her. Unable to move her body, her mind set off at a racing speed, working through the pain her head was in.

It must have been the wizard. I’m still in the tower. Unless I’m in the keep. They don’t do this in a regular jail. Do they? Probably the tower. Why wouldn’t he take me to the jail? Why…

She searched her memory of before, and landed upon the shelves inside the laboratory.

The… parts the wizard had up there.

She imagined what parts a wizard might want from a Warith, and felt as though she would faint. The whine of a heavy door opening brought her back to the here and now.

“I have some questions for you.”

The voice was devoid of emotion, an almost drab tone lacking inflection. Kara held her tongue. She attempted to fabricate some story explaining why she would be in a wizard’s tower, at night, dressed all in black. Nothing legal came to mind.

“How did you do it?”

It was not the first question she was expecting.

“Don’t you dare have the gall to look surprised. You know what you did. Tell me how.”

There was a tinge of irritation now; only the slightest of tints, but from that voice it demanded an answer.

“I climbed the tower.”

She couldn’t see his face, but a palpable change in the air told her it was the wrong answer.

“I used acid. To melt through the window.”

“How did you destroy my golem?”

He raised his voice only a little, not even enough to fill the room, but the rage in it was tangible.

“I…”

She couldn’t tell him. Not that. She had told no one, she could not tell this stranger.

“How did you do it?”

He almost paused between each word, making her own silence excruciating. The voice sighed, and she feared what that meant.

“A simpler question then. What are you?”

If he didn’t know she was a Warith, then she was in no hurry to inform him of that. Especially after having a good look at his collection upstairs.

“How about this; I will list things that I know you are not. Thereby anything left unlisted, we can deduce as possibility.”

Another uncomfortable pause followed. Those must be his speciality.

“You are not a fellow wizard. You have no implement, and you have thus far failed to brag about your accomplishment.”

Kara gulped, which was difficult with her head held in its current position.

“You are not an assassin; you have brought no weapon. At least… not any weapon I can perceive. You could be a very gifted assassin, but then I wouldn’t have found you unconscious inside what is left of my laboratory.”

Contrary to her circumstance, Kara actually felt guilty about that part. Until she remembered the jars with the parts in them.

“As for your vocation, the most reasonable explanation is thief. Not a good thief, as you failed both to note the presence of a golem and to collect any of a number of valuable scrolls you passed in my study.”

Yet another pause. As he spoke she could hear the source of the voice was not stationary, but circling around her, like a shark around a stranded swimmer.

“Then again you did manage to pass the keep walls and scale my tower undetected. Perhaps a good thief, yes, but definitely not a smart one.”

“Hey!”

“Ah, so our thief speaks. For it is the thief alone who takes no offence at being called a thief, but is irked when called an idiot.”

You’re the idiot, she thought. Silently.

“So we know you are a thief. We also know you are an unarmed thief. An unarmed thief who destroyed a stone-golem.”

Another pause.

“I can see from your expression that everything I just said was correct.”

Kara didn’t realise she was making any expression. She focused her efforts on remaining inscrutable, like Bull taught her when they played Thrones.

“A young girl, unarmed, thieving, capable of destroying golems. You are not human, are you?”

Another pause, while the wizard continued to circle and watch, like he had all the time in the world.

“I thought not.”

Damn.

Kara redoubled her efforts to not let her Thrones-face slip.

“You’re not an elf, you’re not a dwarf, you’re not a Vanaran, you’re not a gnome, you’re not a lizardfolk…” he trailed on.

“You’re not a dragon assuming human form; you would have escaped by now. You’re not on Oretdeus, for the same reason. I suspected you might be a smaller creature disguised as a human girl by an illusion. Hence your peculiar weight. I was able to lift you and bring you down here all by myself.”

He said down here. I must be under the wizard’s tower.

“However I attempted some rather potent anti-magic before you awoke. Any such illusions would have been broken.”

If he keeps pausing like this…

“Thus, I’m at a loss. Once more I must ask; what are you?”

Kara said nothing, tried keeping her expression unfazed. The wizard sighed once more, heavily this time. Every little resistance seemed to stretch his patience ever and ever thinner.

I think that’s what he wants me to think. He wants me to fear what will happen when it snaps. Turner used to do that. Before he learned screaming and hitting were equally as effective.

“Very well. If you won’t tell me, I won’t ask you. I’ll ask your blood.”

Against her intentions, Kara’s eyes widened and she felt herself strain to lift her head and look at him when he said that.

“Oh, now she listens. Yes your blood. Haematology doesn’t lie. I will test your blood and it will betray to me your secrets.”

She heard him stepping closer. Her fear rose once more and she resumed struggling against her bonds, knowing full-well how futile a gesture it was.

I could use it. That might work. No, I can’t.

She had never used it twice in such close succession before; the exertion could kill her. As the wizard loomed over her she could see him clearly. He was tanned, more so than she expected from a wizard. He had a tall face, creased with wrinkles, though his hair and closely-kept beard were black without a single grey or white hair. He reached down to a tray beside her and pulled up a small knife.

Had that always been there. Had he planned on using it?

“Now hold still, I wouldn’t want to hurt you” he smiled.

He brought the knife to her shoulder and, deftly, cut across the length of the arm of her satin suit, from the shoulder to her wrist. She winced, but no pain came. As the material fell away, goose-prickles formed where her arm was exposed to the chill of the underground chamber. She moved to raise her head and look, but the leather strip taut over her forehead dashed any hopes of that.

The wizard put the knife down deftly, and she heard the sound of a glass topper leaving a jar. The sight of something wriggling in her peripherals immediately had her trying to raise her head again. The wizard lifted a pair of forceps, small enough to fit in one hand, over her face. Held between the grips was a leech.

“Meet my assistant. He and his colleagues will be performing the imperative task of removing some of your blood. Then again, you could save us all a lot of time and effort and simply tell me what you are. No? Very well.”

With the forceps he placed the leech, gently but deliberately, onto her upper arm. She felt a pinch as it bit into her. Then he placed another, and another. There must have been at least eight in total. She wanted to scream, but under the gaze of the wizard she only whimpered. After a short time he took the forceps once again and picked off each of the leeches in the order they were attached. They apparently were not satisfied with their bloodmeal, and each had to be jerked away with another snap of pain.

“All done. Now, if you will excuse me. I will return, eventually, with news of whatever it is that you are.”

The wizard turned, tray in hand, and left her to her table under the wizard’s tower. Her thoughts turned immediately to escape. She could not break out of her bonds, and using it would be disastrous, especially now she had less blood than she was accustomed to having. She thought about Lo’ffen and Bull, and the others at the troupe.

They’ll come back for me. They have to.

As she resigned to waiting the adrenaline left her, and a crashing wave of fatigue reminded her of her body’s exhausted state. The leeches had actually served to dull her headache, but every other part of her felt entirely spent. Whether she fell asleep or passed out, she couldn’t say. But rest came in one form or another.