Finally, Captain Kael rose, his knee joints popping softly in the silence. He remained facing the goddess for a moment longer, his head slightly bowed, before he turned.
Those calculating eyes swept across the shrine's interior, across his men pressed against carved walls, across the polished floor now stained with Eliot's blood and the impossible water, across Eliot himself kneeling in that spreading puddle of water and blood and his own terror-loosened piss.
One corner of his mouth lifted. Not quite a smile. Something far worse.
"Joram, Ralven—take the hounds back outside." His voice matched his appearance—deep, rough-edged, carrying the absolute certainty of command. The words echoed off the rose-red walls, multiplying, filling the chamber. "Chain them beyond the facade. Their work is done, and we wouldn't want to anger Her by letting the beasts foul Her sacred space with their stink and their pissing."
Joram saluted, fist to chest in the manner of the Watch. "Yes, Captain."
"And Joram—" Kael's voice stopped the man mid-turn. "Send word to Watchman Erran at the eastern pit. Tell him to increase the water ration for the settlement tonight. If She is pleased with our offering, She may bless the stone with greater flow."
"Captain." Joram's acknowledgment was crisp, professional. He moved toward the entrance passage, Ralven following, the war hounds' claws clicking against polished stone. Their sounds faded slowly, swallowed by distance and rock, leaving only the breathing of three men and the faint drip-drip-drip of water falling from Eliot's soaked clothing.
Captain Kael's gaze settled on Eliot like a falling stone.
"Boy."
That single word held more menace than all Petran's kicks and screams combined. It echoed from the coffered ceiling, whispered from the carved walls, seemed to emanate from the goddess herself.
The Captain began to circle, moving with the unhurried confidence of a predator that knows its prey has nowhere to run. His boots clicked against the polished floor with metronomic precision, each step measured, each one bringing him closer and then farther and then closer again. The sound bounced off the carved surfaces, creating a rhythm like a heartbeat, like a drum counting down to execution.
"You've committed the gravest sin in our law, entering this sacred place with your slave-born feet and touching the water that belongs to Her." He paused, standing directly in a shaft of golden light that made his shadow stretch long and dark across the rose-red floor. "Do you understand what you've done? Do you comprehend the magnitude of your blasphemy?"
Eliot tried to speak, but his throat had closed to a pinhole. Only a thin wheeze emerged, pathetic, broken.
"Of course you don't." Captain Kael resumed his circling, passing through light and shadow, appearing and disappearing as he moved behind carved columns. "Slaves like you never do. You scuttle through life concerned only with your next meal, your next moment of safety. You see this—" He gestured at the carved walls, the ornate ceiling, the goddess in her niche. "—and you see only stone. Pretty stone, old stone, but just stone."
He stopped beside one of the carved scenes—the one showing the goddess placing her hand upon barren rock, water beginning to flow from beneath her palm, dying people lifting their faces to receive that blessed liquid.
"You don't see what this means. You don't understand that everything—every settlement, every life, every breath of air we draw in this forsaken desert—exists because of Her gift. The water-stones are Her miracle, Her mercy, Her covenant with our people. Without them, we die. Without Her blessing, the pits run dry and we return to being nothing but bleached bones in the sand."
He resumed his slow circle. "My grandfather's grandfather was there when the first water-stone was discovered. A scout, dying of thirst, crawled into a cave seeking shade to die in. And he found it—rock that wept. Rock that bled water. Rock that should have been as dry as everything else in this gods-cursed desert, but wasn't. And beside it, carved into the cave wall, was Her mark. The same mark you see here—" He pointed to a symbol carved above the goddess's niche, a circle with radiating lines that might have been water flowing outward or light emanating from a source. "—the sign of Her blessing."
Captain Kael stopped directly behind Eliot. The boy could feel the man's presence like heat from a forge, could smell weapon oil and old sweat and something else—something like cinnamon and rust, like dried blood and spices.
"Since that day, we've found seventeen water-stones scattered across the territories. Seventeen places where the rock weeps, where we can extract enough water to survive. Seventeen miracles that keep three thousand souls alive in a land that should kill us all. And every single one bears Her mark. Every single one requires the old prayers, the old rituals, the old respect. Break the covenant, abuse the gift, and the stone stops weeping. The water dries up. People die."
His voice dropped to something quieter, more dangerous. "I've seen it happen, boy. The rebellion at Red Wells—they thought they could take the water-stone for themselves, thought they didn't need the priests or the prayers or the proper rituals. Within a month, the stone went dry. Completely dry. Not a drop. Two hundred people died before they surrendered, and even then, even after we restored the proper worship, it took three years before the stone wept again."
His hand fell on Eliot's shoulder—not roughly, but with a terrible gentleness that made the boy's skin crawl. The grip was firm, inescapable as a shackle, fingers pressing into the hollow above his collarbone.
"So you see, I take the First Law very seriously. No one touches the water near the shrines. No one profanes the places She has blessed. No one breaks the covenant that keeps us all alive."
The hand on Eliot's shoulder tightened until the bones ground together. Eliot bit back a whimper, but a small sound escaped anyway—a mouse's squeak of pain that echoed shamefully from the carved walls.
"Normally," Captain Kael continued, his voice returning to its measured, almost conversational tone, "I don't waste valuable property through quick execution. A man who dies on the ax loses the settlement perhaps fifteen years of labor. Fifteen years of maintaining the water-pits, clearing the channels, hauling supplies, all the brutal work that keeps our civilization functioning. I prefer to work slaves until they're used up properly—until their bodies give out naturally and I can extract every drop of value from them."