text: Saradyn, the big fat man, came to her when the stump of her left hand was nearly healed. The white-frocked shit face of a "doctor" was happy to care for her wounds now that he had inflicted them. She gleefully bit off the tip of his nose during one of his checkups. He sent a younger man the next time, who wore a helmet with a face guard, as if he had come to do battle with her.
  
  But when Saradyn finally came to see her – after how many weeks? – he brought only his dogs, two ugly runty dogs that stank terribly.
  
  The room they put her in was something like a dining hall, a piss-poor place for an interrogation, if that's what this was.
  
  Saradyn pulled up a chair at the table across from her. It was a vast table, and could seat over thirty people. They sat at the middle, leaving a broad length of the knotty table between them. One of the dogs came up and sniffed at her. She kicked it. It whined.
  
  Saradyn called the dog back.
  
  "You speak real Dorinah?" Zezili asked, "Or are you too fucking stupid for it? Everyone in this country is a fucking stupid butcher. Is that all you can do? Shit in buckets and–"
  
  Saradyn gestured to one of his men, some little one that Zezili hadn't seen before. He held a large book. He dipped his head at Saradyn a few times, then once at her, as if he wasn't sure how to greet her. It felt like some absurd parody. She flexed the phantom of her left hand.
  
  "King Saradyn of Lind," the man said, in passable Dorinah, "Laine's Fist of–"
  
  "Oh, get the fuck on with it," Zezili said.
  
  The man said something to Saradyn in Tordinian.
  
  Saradyn spoke, not to him, but to her. He had a deep voice and odd eyes, hazel, maybe, yellow-brown. His thick, black hair fell into his face. He paused once to push it aside and stroke at his beard, as if from long habit.
  
  His translator said, "King Saradyn wants to know why you brought a force into Tordin, and whether or not this is the Empress's command, or yours."
  
  "I'm a rogue," Zezili said. "Look at my face." She leaned forward, sneering at him.
  
  The translator prattled on.
  
  Zezili leaned back, watching Saradyn's face. Hard to believe this was the King the Empress once fucked. They said it's why he thought so highly of himself. She had come down for Penelodyn's body. He was nothing back then, just some petty lord that amused her, but he took the fucking to mean something it hadn't. A lot of people around him had, too, and this is what it made him. Some mad, petty tyrant thinking he had tamed a woman who fucked anyone she fancied because she could.
  
  "I heard you gave up your own family after she fucked you," Zezili said. "I heard you murdered them in your bed because you heard voices, saw things, after she touched you. Women drive you mad? Is that why you had them cut my hand off? Because if that's the worst you can think of, you're a fucking fool."
  
  Saradyn glanced at the translator, whose expression was pained. They argued for a few minutes before Saradyn appeared to peel the translation out of him. Zezili could tell it was mostly accurate because Saradyn's expression darkened. He made a retort.
  
  "You forget that we have your husband," the translator said.
  
  "I've heard that, but I haven't seen him. You chop something off him too? You can't break me, you old fool. I've survived worse than you."
  
  Call and response. He said, "We'll be happy to bring him in here and cut strips off him for every further question you refuse to answer."
  
  She grimaced, sat back. "Why should one more dead man matter to me?"
  
  "Because you have come a good long distance to find him, have you not?"
  
  "I don't go mad over a good fuck the way you do."
  
  A pause. Smattering of words. Then, "Perhaps we can come to a more amicable agreement."
  
  "We can," Zezili said, and for the first time in weeks she found the long thread of her advantage. She was not a clever person. She preferred brute force. But she had not come here to do the Empress's bidding. She had come here to thwart her. And if she was killed here in this little dining hall, then she was dead for nothing, and the Empress would get away with what she'd done to her, and the dajians, and the whole bloody country. It went on and on. Death without revenge was just death.
  
  "If I tell you what she's here to do," Zezili said, "you release me and Anavha. You can wait until you verify the story, that's fine. But you release us."
  
  "Of course."
  
  His warm, bright eyes met hers as he said the equivalent in Tordinian. He even smiled, like a playful predator. A lie, she knew. She had been on the other side of the table enough times to know it was a lie. She and Anavha would both die, tortured and buried in some anonymous grave, because they were too uncivilized to burn their dead. She hoped only he would bury them together.
  
  "She's sent us to uncover some secret of hers, some weapon she buried out here," Zezili said. "I came here because I fucking hate her. You understand what that's like, don't you? I could have said no, fucked off into my little life. But Anavha was gone, and half the dajians in the country were dead, and I knew I was going to be next, people like me. She was powerful as ever. I don't know the exact location or what it is, but it's north east of here, hidden in some anomaly on the map. A ring of mountains? Something like that. That's where Storm, the other legion commander, is taking them."
  
  "So there's no other army coming?"
  
  "Not that I know about."
  
  "And there is another legion commander. Your force still has a leader?"
  
  "The Empress doesn't mind redundancies. She needs them, with the kind of place this is."
  
  Saradyn watched her in silence for some time. He steepled his fingers. It took a great deal of will not to look away, but she refused to be first. Fuck him.
  
  "You'll go back to your army," the translator said once Saradyn broke his silence. "But you'll take two of our people. We want you embedded with the army again."
  
  Zezili thought a long moment. "What's to keep me from killing your two men?"
  
  Saradyn laughed, and the translator interpreted his next words, "You have one useless hand. We have the other. You could bite them to death, of course. I'll be sure to tell them to cover their faces, like Saiduan children." Saradyn laughed the whole time the translator said this, as if the entire idea was the funniest thing he'd ever heard.
  
  Heat bloomed on Zezili's face. Is that what they thought of her now? They thought her impotent. She wanted to tell them she wasn't so easily hobbled, but thought better of it. This was her only way to leave this shithole instead of being buried in it. Buried in the dirt, like refuse.
  
  "I want to see my husband," Zezili said.
  
  Saradyn stood, said something to the translator, and whistled at the dogs.
  
  The translator bowed his head. "We will return with your husband, of course," he said. He left her there in the massive room with only two men at the doors on the other side of it for company.
  
  She wanted to seethe, but she had been testing her bonds during the interview, and already worked her stump loose. It was difficult to secure someone with just one hand. She twisted her other hand free, but kept both behind her, looking for some kind of weapon.
  
  Directly across from her was a huge hearth, big enough to stand in. Inside were two iron prongs for setting a roasting hunk of meat, and a skewer at the center fixed with curved metal tongs to hold the meat. Beside it was a metal container and what looked like a couple of fire pokers. She glanced again at the guards. Flexed her bad right hand. The remaining fingers barely curled into her fist. How to pick it up, and once she held it, keep hold of it while bashing someone in the face?
  
  She yelled at the guards. "Hey! Hey!"
  
  They ignored her, and it occurred to her that they wouldn't be able to speak Dorinah. She could yell at them a lot, make a fuss, but they weren't going to come over. She assessed their weapons. Swords and daggers. No ranged weapons.
  
  Zezili rocked once in her chair. She steeled herself for a painful fall, then threw the chair over onto her right side. Pain jolted up her arm.
  
  The guards came running. She stayed down until they were nearly on top of her, then crawled swiftly under the table, kicking the chair back at them.
  
  She heaved herself onto the table and came right up on top of the nearest guard before his sword was out of its sheath. She headbutted him in the face so hard she saw a bank of static blur across her vision. She hooked the thumb and pointer finger of her right hand under the hilt of his sword and yanked it out the rest of the way. She braced it against her stomach, knowing her hand could not provide the needed pressure, and leaned into the chest of the second guard just as he brought up his dagger.
  
  They both slammed into the ground. The hilt of the sword jammed badly into her ribs. She used the stump of her other hand to help get leverage on the hilt and pulled the sword out. The first guard was still hunched over, blood gushing down his face from his shattered nose. She kicked his legs out from under him.
  
  He fell. Punched her hard. Her head whipped back. She headbutted him again.
  
  He howled.
  
  They flailed on the floor in a tangle of limbs and blood. She got the sword flat against his neck. She pressed a knee on either side of the sword, balancing herself on her toes, her ass on his chest, using her body weight to strangle him.
  
  He kicked. She drooled in his bloody face.
  
  Her right hand ached. She stared into his face, some fat bearded face, and she imagined Storm's face there, and she pressed harder, because she would have to kill Storm too, she would have to kill them all if she was going to stop whatever this all was, whatever dark thing the Empress had planned for the Dhai, for the Dorinah, for the Tai Mora, for the world.
  
  The guard kicked one last time. He went limp, his tongue lolling from his mouth.
  
  She continued sitting over him, panting, for a full minute. The edges of the blade had bit into the bottom of his throat, making a red line. His face was bug-eyed, the eyes reddened. He was starved of oxygen, his windpipe crushed. The other man was bleeding out from the belly wound six paces away. She didn't care to bother with him.
  
  Zezili was trembling. She crawled to her feet, steadying herself on the table. There was no way out of here that wasn't walking out the front door, and to do that... She stared at the dead man. Both men wore helms; though they didn't cover their faces – making them terribly vulnerable to headbutting – it might get her out the door.
  
  It so happened she knew a certain doctor who had a far better helmet for her purposes, and she knew where to find him. Without her left hand, she had no way to knot a weapon to her right. They didn't leave her with a lot of options. She glanced over at the fireplace again, and the roasting spit at its center with the iron teeth on it. What was the stump of her left arm now, but a hunk of meat?
  
  She put her left arm on the spit and painfully twisted the tongs to tighten them, so the metal closed over the top of her arm like teeth. It was heavy, and cumbersome, but she wasn't going out into that hall without a weapon.
  
  Zezili pulled on the padded leather armor of one of the dead men, sweating and swearing as she did it. How long did she have? Two minutes? Thirty?
  
  She put the padded armor over her head without tightening it. All she needed was the padded bit over her chest where she could rest the blunt end of the spit. If she held her left arm low and tight next to her side, the spit turned to her chest, she could use the armor to leverage a good thrust.
  
  Zezili strode to the doors, bleeding pain with every step. Her vision still swam. Her face ached from smashing the man's nose, and her phantom fingers hurt twice as bad, as if someone had mashed the whole hand under a boot.
  
  As she stepped up to the door, she heard footsteps in the hall – too few for an army of guards. Maybe she still had a chance. She braced her weapon, caught the door with her working fingers, and threw it open. Lunged forward.
  
  A young man ran headlong into her, body thumping directly into the spitted weapon. The weight of him sent her reeling back. She landed with a huff on the floor, the man on top of her. She smacked her head on the stone. Her stump thumped into his body, preventing him from sliding all the way to her shoulder, launched there with the weight of his own momentum.
  
  The breath left her body, knocked cleanly out of her. She tried to roll clear. He moved first, pushing himself up on his hands. His dark hair hung into his face. Blood bloomed across his tunic.
  
  Zezili thought she was dreaming. The square jaw, hollowed cheekbones, the delicate face and features – she knew him, knew him like she knew the hand she had lost.
  
  But she could not say his name.
  
  Anavha rolled off her, grabbing at the bloody hole in his chest.
  
  Zezili gasped for breath and clawed toward him. She pushed her right hand under his head, pulled him close to her, and stared down at him with wonderment.
  
  His mouth moved.
  
  "Ah, my love," Zezili said.
  
  More footsteps, a gaggle of men, led by Natanial Thorne.
  
  Zezili bared her teeth. "Don't you touch him," she said. "He's mine."
  
  Natanial punched her square in the face.