Chapter 40: WAITING FOR EXECUTION

Sio woke to the sound of water dripping somewhere close enough that every drop seemed determined to land directly inside his skull. For several seconds he stared at the dark stone ceiling without moving, trying to remember why his entire body hurt and why his mouth tasted like blood. When he shifted his hands, metal scraped across the wet floor, and the weight around his wrists brought everything from the mansion rushing back.

Baron had watched comfortably while half the room attacked them. Ordinary residents had crowded around Sio and Angle while three hidden Wayfarers used those same people to limit how hard they could fight, and once it was over Baron had calmly discussed tomorrow’s execution as though arranging a market inspection. Sio flexed his fingers and instinctively reached for the familiar pressure of his Claim. Nothing responded. He tried once more before letting his chained hands settle into his lap. "Yeah, still hate these."

"You’ve been awake for about five seconds and you already tried using your ability." Angle sat against the opposite wall with his knees raised and his own shackled hands resting over them. Dried blood marked one corner of his mouth, and the bruise spreading across his cheek had darkened considerably, but he seemed more interested in the metal around his wrists than any of his injuries.

"I had to confirm it," Sio said, tugging lightly against the short chain. When Angle reminded him that they had already confirmed the restraints worked while being dragged underground, Sio searched through the pieces of memory left after the fight and frowned. "I don’t remember much after we reached the stairs."

"You complained almost the entire way, so you were definitely conscious. You also told one of the guards his breath was making imprisonment worse." Angle gave him a tired look before returning his attention to the locking mechanism.

Sio considered that for a second. "Then clearly I wasn’t thinking properly. I would normally phrase that more politely."

The prison beneath Baron’s mansion was smaller than Sio had imagined. Damp stone divided the underground floor into several cells, weak lamps burned beyond the bars, and water leaked through cracks in the ceiling before collecting in shallow puddles across the uneven floor. The air smelled of wet stone, rust and something old enough that Sio decided he had no interest in identifying it.

Angle pulled carefully against the chain attached to the wall and studied the point where it disappeared into the stone. "There has to be something maintaining the suppression. Metal alone shouldn’t completely shut down both a Scar and a Claim." He ran his thumb around the edge of the restraint again, his expression tightening when it revealed nothing useful.

"You’re planning to dismantle it with your fingernails, aren’t you?" Sio shifted until his back found a slightly less miserable section of wall. "That sounds like something Arch would do before accidentally taking apart something expensive."

Angle’s fingers stopped against the chain, and Sio regretted the comparison almost immediately. Since Arch started behaving strangely, Angle had carried the fear underneath everything else. Anger at the innkeeper had covered it, irritation with Sio covered it even better, and fighting had at least given him somewhere useful to put it. Mentioning Arch directly peeled all of that away for a moment, leaving Angle staring at the shackles while his thumb pressed hard against the side of his index finger.

Sio watched the nervous habit before speaking more carefully. "He could still be fighting whatever Baron did. We don’t actually know how much control the contracts give him."

"You saw him yesterday." Angle kept his eyes lowered, but his voice tightened with every example. "He was ready to leave, then suddenly decided we should stay several days. He stopped checking things he normally checks. He slept through things he never sleeps through, and when I asked questions, he barely cared. I’ve spent my whole life around him, Sio. That wasn’t normal."

Sio couldn’t argue with that, and telling Angle everything would be fine sounded useless when neither of them knew whether it was true. He let his gaze move toward the corridor instead, and that was when he realized they weren’t alone.

Two prisoners occupied the cell opposite theirs. An older woman sat with her back against the wall, shoulders wrapped in a worn blanket, and even from across the corridor she looked exhausted in a way that had settled deeper than one bad night. Beside her sat a young woman who looked slightly older than Sio and Angle. Her clothes were dirty and torn in several places, bruises marked one exposed arm, and her hair looked like it hadn’t met anything resembling a brush in days.

Sio still noticed immediately that she was beautiful. Not polished beautiful, because nobody trapped beneath a mansion had enough energy for that. She looked tired, irritated and clearly uncomfortable, yet something about her kept his attention a little longer than he intended. Then another detail reached him: a faint scent around her that didn’t belong anywhere near the damp stone surrounding them, something like wet soil after rain mixed with a plant he couldn’t recognize.

He leaned slightly forward without realizing it, and the girl caught him looking. Sio immediately became extremely interested in the wall beside her while thinking, Great. Very subtle. When he glanced back, she was helping the older woman move farther from a puddle rather than calling him out. She adjusted the blanket around her shoulders, waited until the woman settled, then looked across the corridor.

"Did you two also do something Baron considered unacceptable?" she asked. Sio and Angle exchanged a quick glance, and neither answered. The girl seemed to understand the decision without taking offense. "Fair enough. I wouldn’t trust someone I met in Baron’s basement either. You can stop trying to force those open, though. It won’t work."

Angle immediately shifted closer to the bars. "You know what they are?"

"They suppress Wayfarer abilities. That much I’m sure about." She raised her own wrists enough for them to see identical dark metal. "Anything beyond that gets less clear. People who stay down here long enough sometimes start forgetting things, but I don’t know whether that comes from these, Baron’s Claim or something else they do to prisoners."

Sio looked down at his shackles with considerably less appreciation than before. "That sentence got worse every few words."

The girl gave him a faint smile. "I thought so too."

Angle stopped testing the lock and asked how long she had been imprisoned, but she hesitated long enough that the answer already seemed unpleasant. "Long enough that I don’t trust my answer anymore."

Something about the way she said it made Angle leave the question alone. Sio studied her for another moment before asking her name, and when she answered, "Rhea," he nodded toward himself and then toward Angle. "Sio. The one pretending he doesn’t want to introduce himself is Angle."

"I can introduce myself," Angle muttered.

"You weren’t going to."

Rhea’s mouth curved slightly as she watched them. "He does seem more talkative."

"That’s because silence makes him nervous," Angle said, earning an immediate frown from Sio.

"Silence gives people time to form opinions about me. That’s completely different."

Rhea laughed quietly, and Sio found himself liking the sound more than was sensible under the circumstances. She shifted a little closer to the bars afterward and asked what they had actually done to end up imprisoned, which made Sio glance toward Angle for some sign that he should keep his mouth shut.

"We followed an innkeeper into the mansion," Sio began, and Angle immediately turned toward him. "Because he was carrying Arch’s documents. You make it sound like we randomly stalk innkeepers."

"That part was obviously implied." Sio turned back toward Rhea before Angle could take control of the story and explained how Arch had signed agreements at the inn, how the innkeeper carried newer paperwork into Baron’s mansion, and how people inside seemed to react to Baron’s movements before they could possibly see them.

He kept plenty to himself. Rhea was easy to talk to, but easy wasn’t the same thing as trustworthy yet, and Sio had learned enough recently to know the difference. He didn’t mention the Impossible City, the entity or anything about the strange sphere. Instead, he focused on Baron’s town, the agreements and the way ordinary residents seemed to move together whenever Baron wanted them to.

Rhea listened without rushing him. When Sio paused because he realized he had been talking longer than intended, she asked why they thought the agreements mattered rather than simply asking whether Baron could control everyone inside the town.

Sio blinked at her. "You were actually following all of that?"

"Why wouldn’t I be?"

"Experience."

Angle gave him a look from beside the wall. "With you, that’s understandable."

Sio ignored him and continued explaining their theory in broader terms. He stopped short of pretending they had solved anything, and Rhea didn’t push when he deliberately skipped details. She seemed more interested in understanding how he reached an idea than proving him wrong, which Sio found unexpectedly comfortable.

Angle eventually abandoned the bars long enough to glance over. "Sio, perhaps we could spend some time figuring out how not to die tomorrow instead of making friends."

"I am gathering information," Sio replied, which made Angle glance between him and Rhea before pointing out that all he had gathered so far was her name and where she came from. Sio defended both as perfectly valid information, and Rhea covered a smile while Angle turned back toward the restraints with the expression of someone who had accepted that imprisonment had somehow become more tiring since Sio woke up.

Sio did ask where she came from, though Rhea kept her answer vague. She mentioned a tribe far from Baron’s territory and admitted that she hadn’t reached the town by choice. When Sio asked what happened between leaving home and arriving here, the little amusement in her expression disappeared.

"I remember parts of it," she said, looking down at the shackles. "Not enough to give you a clean story."

Sio noticed the way her fingers closed around the chain and decided not to keep digging. "Okay. You can tell me when you actually want to."

Rhea looked at him for a second longer than before, apparently surprised that he had stopped on his own. "Thanks."

The older woman beside her began coughing before either of them could say more. Rhea immediately moved closer, supported her shoulders and brought a small cup of water to her lips. She waited until the woman swallowed, wiped a little water from her chin with the edge of the blanket and adjusted the cloth around her again without needing to be asked.

Sio watched the care she took with her. Rhea looked exhausted herself, her wrists were bruised beneath the restraints, and she had probably been down here far longer than either of them. None of that stopped her from noticing every small movement the older woman made.

Once the coughing eased, the woman looked across the corridor toward Sio and Angle. "My son wasn’t always like this."

Angle straightened immediately. "Your son?"

The older woman gave them a tired smile. "Baron."

Sio’s eyebrows rose, while Rhea’s lack of surprise made it obvious she already knew. Angle moved closer to the bars, and the fear for Arch briefly gave way to something more focused. "You’re Baron’s mother. Then what happened to him?"

She looked toward the weak lamp outside the cells before answering. "His father ruled this town before him. He was strict, stubborn and difficult, but people respected him. After he died, Baron spent years strengthening his own connection to this territory until the town became part of his Claim."

Sio remembered the roads, buildings and synchronized residents. "Was he always using it like this?"

"No. At first he used what he had to protect the town." Some of the exhaustion disappeared from her face as older memories surfaced. "He repaired roads, expanded trade routes, made travelling safer and helped businesses survive difficult seasons. People chose to live here because he gave them reasons to stay."

Angle’s fingers tightened around one of the bars. "So when did that change?"

The woman’s expression darkened. "After he began meeting people from outside. I never learned their names, and Baron never told me who they represented. They were important enough that he insisted every meeting remain private."

Angle asked whether they belonged to the Wayfarer Nexus, but she rejected that immediately. She had asked Baron the same question years ago and had been told the visitors were connected to something else, though he refused to explain further.

Sio leaned forward slightly. "Did you ever meet them yourself?"

"Only from a distance. I wish I had pushed harder at the time." Her fingers tightened around the blanket. "After those meetings, the way Baron spoke began changing. He stopped talking about earning loyalty and started talking about preserving it."

She explained that the contracts had not begun as anything obviously threatening. Residency agreements, employment papers, business permits and other ordinary documents gradually became more important to how Baron governed the town. She knew repeated agreements somehow strengthened his influence over the people living there, but she couldn’t explain exactly how his Claim interpreted them or where that influence ended.

That uncertainty bothered Sio more than a neat explanation would have.

Angle looked toward the staircase beyond the cells. "And tomorrow they’re making Arch sign another one."

His voice had gone quieter again. His thumb returned to the side of his finger, pressing there until the skin changed color, and Sio recognized how much effort it was taking him not to imagine what tomorrow might look like.

"We’ll get out before that," Sio said.

Angle glanced at the shackles around both of them. "You have a plan?"

Sio followed his gaze toward the wet walls, the bars and the guards’ corridor beyond them. "I have the beginning of the desire to have one."

Rhea laughed under her breath, while Angle shut his eyes for a moment as though regretting asking.

Baron’s mother watched Angle afterward. "Your father may not be as lost as you think."

Angle turned so quickly that hope appeared on his face before he had time to hide it. "Why?"

"I said may." She raised one hand gently before he could build too much from the possibility. "Baron becomes careless once he believes somebody already belongs to him. If your father is as cautious as you say, perhaps there is still something my son has overlooked."

Angle didn’t answer, but his grip around the bars loosened slightly.

Sio looked back toward the older woman. "Baron always wanted control, though?"

"He was proud. He liked being obeyed more than he should have, even when he was young." Despite everything, affection survived beneath the disappointment in her voice. "But he loved this place. There was a time when he wanted people to stay because they trusted him."

Sio lowered his eyes while the thought settled into place. Baron had not suddenly become an entirely different person. The pride had already existed. The desire to protect the town had already existed. Maybe even the need to control things had always been there too, but somewhere after those visitors appeared, every part of him seemed to have been pushed in the same direction until protection and possession became almost indistinguishable.

Maybe they didn’t change him. Maybe they only found the worst direction he could go and kept nudging him toward it.

Sio kept the thought to himself. He didn’t know enough yet, and turning suspicion into a theory everyone shared would only make it harder to tell what was actually true later.

Across from him, Rhea helped Baron’s mother settle more comfortably against the wall while Angle returned to studying the restraints. Sio watched them for a moment before resting his head against the cold stone and staring toward the staircase, wondering what Baron was doing upstairs while they waited for morning.

Several floors above, the mansion remained awake long after most of the town had gone quiet. Baron sat at the long table while the innkeeper and two officials waited nearby, and a fresh contract rested open in front of him. It was considerably thicker than the agreements Arch had already signed, with additional sections written neatly between the original clauses.

Baron read through the final page before pressing the stack flat with one hand. "Have this ready before sunrise. I want no mistakes tomorrow."

The innkeeper gathered the papers carefully while one of the officials asked about the prisoners. Baron told him to keep the suppression restraints on Sio and Angle until they reached the execution platform, then instructed another man to inform the town that the execution would begin in the morning.

Outside the mansion, workers were already carrying timber, ropes and equipment toward the open ground near the entrance. Lamps illuminated the beginnings of a raised platform while guards cleared enough space for the crowd expected to gather around it.

Baron watched the preparations through the window for a moment before looking back at Arch’s final contract in the innkeeper’s hands. His earlier irritation had disappeared completely, replaced by the quiet confidence of someone who believed tomorrow had already been decided.

"Make sure their father is brought to me first," he said. "By the time those boys reach the platform, his final agreement should already be signed."