Chapter 23: THE TORTURE 3

Vise returned from the hidden recess with the small metal instrument still concealed in one hand, and for several seconds Sio noticed only because his eyes were still open. His gaze followed Vise several beats behind every movement, losing him whenever the room blurred and finding him again only after considerable effort.

Blood had dried through Sio’s hair and beneath the restraint around his left wrist. His breathing had become so shallow and irregular that Mira had started counting the seconds between each rise of his chest without realizing it, terrified that one of those pauses would simply continue.

Sio’s fingers twitched against the platform when Vise stopped beside him. The movement barely shifted his hand, but Mira had already watched him attempt the same thing several times and knew he was still reaching for whatever strange ability he had refused to explain.

His eyes narrowed faintly, as though he were forcing himself to hold some invisible point inside his mind. Whatever he was trying to grasp broke apart almost immediately, leaving behind another hitch in his breathing and a little less awareness in his eyes.

Vise watched him fail without frustration. Whatever resistance remained inside Sio had become trapped behind a body that no longer possessed enough strength to express it, and Vise seemed perfectly content to wait for the body to lose the argument.

"Enough," Mira said, her voice raw from crying and shouting but still carrying enough anger to keep it from breaking. "Whatever answer you think he still has, look at him properly. He can barely keep his eyes open." Her fingers tightened against the arms of the chair while she waited for some sign that the sight of him mattered.

Vise did exactly that, which frightened her more than being ignored would have. His gaze travelled over Sio’s bloodied face, the damaged wrists, the slackness beginning to creep into his limbs and the eyes that remained open through what seemed like sheer stubbornness.

"They’re open," Vise said quietly. Mira stared at him for several seconds before asking whether that had really become his standard for continuing, but he offered no answer and simply turned away from Sio.

The floor changed beneath them. Stone rose several feet from Mira’s chair and unfolded into a narrow table, followed by two plain chairs positioned carefully across from one another.

Mira watched the room rearrange itself with growing confusion. Nothing about the new shapes resembled anything needed for an examination, and somehow that frightened her more than another instrument would have because she could not understand what Vise wanted them for.

Vise used the narrow instrument to release the restraints around her wrists, then placed it on the table. Mira surged from the chair immediately and reached toward Sio, but stone tightened around her ankles before she completed the first step, holding her firmly without causing enough pain to distract from the fact that she simply could not move.

"Sio, can you hear me?" Mira leaned toward him as far as the stone allowed, and his eyes shifted slowly toward her voice. The response was weak, but it was enough to make her pull harder against the floor even though she already knew it would not release her.

A shallow basin formed in the middle of the table. Clear water filled it from somewhere inside the room, and a drinking cup rose beside it while Vise calmly settled into one of the newly formed chairs.

The casualness unsettled Mira immediately. He rested one arm against the table as though they had arrived for a conversation he had anticipated for years rather than sitting inside a torture chamber with her son barely conscious a few steps away.

Mira reached for the cup without thinking, but stone folded over it before her fingers touched the handle. The sudden barrier forced her attention back toward Vise, who looked toward Sio before calmly telling her that the boy needed water.

"Then let me give it to him." Mira’s anger sharpened when the stone remained firmly closed over the cup, and the fact that Vise offered no explanation only made the purpose of the silence more obvious.

Vise waited without saying anything further. Mira waited too, until understanding finally settled over her face and made her hands begin to shake again.

"No. You dragged my son here, beat him until he can’t speak, and now you want me to ask your permission before I’m allowed to give him water." Mira stared at him while Vise answered with only a slight nod, and somehow the lack of mockery made the humiliation worse because he behaved as though what he demanded were perfectly ordinary.

Mira turned toward Sio again. His lips were cracked, his breathing uneven, and his eyes had drifted shut for several seconds before opening again when she said his name.

One of Sio’s fingers moved faintly against the platform. It looked like another attempt to summon the Claim, but whatever intention survived inside him died somewhere between thought and movement, and his hand went still again.

Vise watched Mira watching him. That was when she understood why the table existed, why the cup had been placed in front of her and why Vise had stopped asking Sio questions directly.

The interrogation had changed, though information still mattered. Vise had found something he wanted almost as much.

Mira’s eyes moved toward the empty chair opposite him. It had been formed deliberately and positioned as carefully as Vise’s own, yet nobody occupied it.

"Who is that for?" she asked. Vise’s attention moved toward the empty chair, and the silence that followed lasted long enough to make her wish she had never asked.

"Silas," he said at last. Across the room, Sio’s breathing changed faintly at his father’s name, though exhaustion smothered whatever reaction tried to rise with it.

Mira stared between Vise and the empty chair. "You’re insane. Whatever happened between you and my husband ended when he died."

Vise’s expression remained strangely peaceful when he told her Silas should have been there. The sentence carried far more history than Mira understood, but she did not need the details to recognize resentment that had survived long after the person who caused it was gone.

She slowly shook her head. "You carried this all these years and he wasn’t even alive to know it. Whatever victory you imagined getting from him died before my son was born."

Something tightened behind Vise’s eyes. Mira noticed immediately and realized she had finally reached somewhere beneath the calm surface he had maintained since entering the room.

Vise looked toward Sio again. "He left enough behind."

Mira followed his gaze, and the empty chair, the covered water and Sio’s restraints finally became pieces of the same ugly picture. Her disgust deepened as she understood what Vise was trying to replace.

"You think hurting his son counts as hurting him," she said. "And I suppose controlling me is close enough too."

Vise did not correct her, and he did not need to because the room had already answered. Silas had died before Vise could force whatever acknowledgment he had wanted from him, leaving Vise unable to make the man sit across from him, ask for mercy, admit defeat or watch helplessly while someone important suffered beyond his reach.

So he had built substitutes instead. Silas’s wife stood beside his table, Silas’s son lay bleeding within sight of it, and Vise controlled whether that son was even allowed water.

Mira looked toward the covered cup again. Every part of her wanted to refuse simply because saying the words Vise wanted would make his little fantasy feel real, but then Sio tried to move.

His wrist strained against the restraint for barely a second before his strength disappeared. His mouth opened as though he were trying to tell Mira something, though only a broken breath passed between his lips before his head settled back against the platform.

Mira’s anger collapsed beneath terror. Sio had spent the entire interrogation choosing pain over giving Vise what he wanted, but she could not keep making that choice for him now that he barely possessed enough consciousness to understand what was being decided.

She turned back toward Vise with humiliation burning through her face. Asking another person for water should have meant nothing, yet he had arranged the room until the request carried every piece of authority he wanted from it.

"Please let me give my son some water," she said. The stone withdrew immediately, and Mira hated him even more for how easily he granted something that should never have required his permission.

The floor released her ankles only enough to let her approach Sio. She grabbed the cup and crossed the few steps between them so quickly that water spilled over her fingers and scattered across the stone.

"Sio, look at me. I need you to swallow a little." Mira slid one hand behind his head and felt immediately how little strength remained in his neck, forcing her to support almost all of its weight herself.

His eyes found her slowly. The first attempt at drinking failed and sent water along the side of his mouth, but on the second he managed a small swallow that loosened something inside Mira’s chest.

"That’s enough for now," she said, wiping the water away with her sleeve. "Stay with me. You don’t have to do anything else."

Sio’s gaze drifted past her shoulder toward Vise. His fingers moved again beneath Mira’s hand, and she realized with horror that he was still trying.

For perhaps a heartbeat, concentration gathered behind his unfocused eyes. A faint pressure seemed to touch the air beside his hand before disappearing so quickly that Mira could not tell whether she had truly felt it.

Sio’s gaze slipped out of focus afterward. Mira caught his face between both hands, fear overwhelming whatever gentleness she had been trying to preserve.

"Whatever you’re trying to do, leave it alone. You can barely swallow water." His lips moved uselessly in response, and Mira understood enough to know that even now he was still trying to help her.

She rested her forehead briefly against his. "You stupid boy. You’re allowed to be the one who needs help sometimes."

Vise watched from the table without interrupting. He felt no urgency to end the moment because allowing Mira to comfort Sio was itself another privilege he had chosen to permit.

Silas had always occupied more space in Vise’s mind than Vise believed he deserved. Arch carried memories of him, Mira had loved him, and even the son who had never known him still provided Vise with something Silas himself no longer could.

For years Vise had imagined the balance reversed. He had imagined Silas helpless, unable to protect someone important and forced to ask for something Vise alone possessed the authority to grant.

Death had stolen that moment from him. Now Mira had asked, and although Vise knew she was not Silas and that the request was not the victory he had once imagined, for the moment he allowed himself to accept the resemblance.

Mira eventually lowered Sio’s head back onto the platform and returned the cup to the table. She refused to return to her chair and remained as close to Sio as the room allowed, keeping one hand against the edge of the platform because even that small proximity seemed to be holding her together.

Vise rose and crossed the short distance between them. He placed both hands on Mira’s shoulders, the pressure steady and unhurried, keeping them there for several seconds even though there was no practical reason to touch her at all.

Mira stiffened beneath his hands. Before she could tell him to stop, one of his hands moved to her cheek and remained there while he studied her expression with unsettling calm, as though he were confirming that the substitute he had constructed was real enough to satisfy him.

"Take your hand off me," Mira said. Her disgust was immediate, but Vise let another second pass before finally lowering his hand, making sure even her demand ended according to his timing.

Stone rose around Mira’s ankles again and locked her beside the platform. Vise returned his attention to the empty chair, and when Mira followed his gaze, another piece of the fantasy became clear.

"You wanted him to beg you," she said. Vise’s eyes settled on her, and the absence of denial gave her enough courage to keep going.

"That’s what this is, isn’t it? You wanted Silas alive long enough to see you in control, and because he died before you got your moment, you’ve been carrying it around ever since." Mira kept her eyes on him after the accusation, unwilling to give him the relief of looking away first.

His expression revealed almost nothing, but almost was enough. Mira saw the slight tightening around his eyes and knew she had found the wound beneath everything else.

A bitter laugh escaped her, though there was no humour in it. "You spent years dreaming about a man who died before my son was born, and somehow you still think he was the one controlled by the past."

Vise’s posture changed before his expression did. The satisfaction that had rested comfortably over him thinned, and the silence that followed suddenly felt much less controlled.

He approached without hurrying, though Mira had spent long enough watching him now to recognize that his quietest moments were often where his worst impulses lived. When he stopped near her again, there was none of the earlier satisfaction in his face.

"You remember Silas as something he wasn’t," Vise said. Mira answered that she remembered her husband, and his expression sharpened before he told her she remembered only what Silas allowed her to see.

Mira looked toward Sio before returning her attention to Vise. "Maybe. But you remember him through whatever he did to your pride, and somehow that seems to have lasted longer than anything he actually did to you."

That landed harder than anything she had said before. Vise stopped moving, and for several seconds the entire room seemed to become quiet with him before the restraints around Sio’s wrists tightened.

Mira spun toward the platform and grabbed Sio’s hand as much as the restraint allowed. His body jerked once, far weaker than before, while his eyes remained open without fully managing to focus on her.

"Don’t hurt him because I said something you didn’t like," Mira said. "That only proves I was right."

Vise watched her grip Sio’s hand. His composure returned gradually, but whatever calm settled over him now had to be deliberately maintained rather than simply existing.

"Ask," he said. Mira looked over her shoulder already understanding what he wanted, and knowing made this demand somehow worse than the first.

"You want me to ask you to stop hurting him." When Vise confirmed it, Mira’s mouth trembled despite every effort to keep it still.

The water had been rehearsal, and Mira finally understood exactly what Vise wanted from these little rituals. He wanted requests, permission and acknowledgment, each small act of authority standing in for something he had once wanted from Silas himself.

Mira looked toward the empty chair and then toward Sio. His fingers barely responded inside her hand now, and his breathing had become shallow enough that whatever pride remained in the room stopped mattering.

"Please stop hurting my son," Mira said. The restraints loosened immediately, and she gripped Sio’s hand as the last tension drained from his fingers.

"Sio?" Mira leaned closer when he did not react, searching his face for the smallest response. She called his name again, quieter this time, but his eyes finally closed and did not reopen.

Mira pressed trembling fingers against his neck and found a pulse, weak but present. Relief barely had time to reach her before she noticed Vise watching him with a different kind of attention.

"He’s unconscious," Mira said, keeping one hand against Sio as though removing it might somehow let him slip farther away. "Whatever you wanted from him, you pushed too far."

Vise studied Sio for several seconds before his attention shifted toward Mira. The change was small, but she understood it immediately and felt the remaining relief disappear.

"No." Mira’s voice came quieter now, exhaustion taking the place of panic. "Leave him alone, and leave me out of whatever else you think you’re proving."

Vise looked back toward Sio before answering. "Pain stopped being useful once he stopped responding." His attention returned to Mira as stone began creeping around her wrists.

Mira looked down at the forming restraints and understood where his thinking had gone. "Then you’re finished," she said, though neither of them believed it.

Vise settled his attention on the unconscious boy. "I want to know what makes him respond." The stone around Mira’s arm tightened before she had time to prepare herself.

Pain tore through her, and her body jerked against the restraint before she forced herself still. The sound that tried to escape her throat died behind clenched teeth as she lowered her eyes toward Sio.

He did not move. His breathing was still there, faint enough that Mira had to watch his chest carefully to reassure herself of it, but there was no strength left in him to answer anything happening around them.

Mira understood what Vise wanted now. He expected fear, pleading or another desperate attempt to wake her son, but she had already watched Sio destroy himself trying to protect her and refused to drag him back toward consciousness just so Vise could hurt him again.

She lifted her eyes toward Vise and said nothing. Whatever fear remained had settled into something quieter, because if he had decided she was the next instrument he would use against Sio, then she would endure as much of it as she could without helping him.

Vise watched her silence for several seconds before increasing the pressure. Mira closed her eyes and held herself as still as the pain allowed while stone elsewhere in the room began shifting with a low grinding sound, telling her without explanation that he was already preparing something worse.