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Evvy kicked and caught hiely bit one of the soldiers who held her He cuffed her so hard she saw light flashes inside her head The s and tied them
"Who else is with you?" he demanded
She fell back on Chammuri to tell him what his mother ate for breakfast He lifted her and dumped her over his ar hard and said in tiyon, "Silence, or you’ll wish you were as dead as an to fall Men shrieked as they were battered by the stony rain
"Well," soot to You will talk eventually, Evu" A hand thrust a bottle of so smelly under her nose Evvy tried to turn her face away, but the bottle was too close Fog traveled up her nose and into her brain
When she awoke, aover her She yanked away only to discover she could not move from the neck down They had taken her clothes and tied her to a table Her legs were raised on a board above her hips and tied at the ankles so her bare toes pointed back toward her head She couldn’t move her feet
Her mouth was dry She wanted to screaive these snot-suckers neither of those things
The soldier who leaned over her wore the tan tunic and breeches of a regular foot soldier in the Yanjingyi army "Here’s water" He supported her head as he put a cup to her lips Evvy drank the liquid greedily "If you want irl, you’ll answer any questions you’re asked Otherwise they’ll torture you Nobody is hard enough to take that"
"Why do you baby her?" Another soldier sat on a chair by Evvy’s feet He stood Like the other man, he wore the tan uniform This one had an untidyto get the full treatment sooner or later" He drew back his arm and slapped the soles of Evvy’s feet with the strap, hard
The pain shot through her like fire She gasped, then bit her lip
"Please, take my advice," the soldier next to her head whispered "Tell him what he wants to know" He looked at the other irl! Ask your questions -- you don’t have to hit her!"
"You’re an idiot, Musheng Why are we here if we don’t teach them respect for the eainst hizai?" He struck Evvy’s feet with his strap again She screaine a stone where she could keep her secrets She had done so before Another blow, or two,i that Rosethorn carried That was the probleue Soht She couldn’t do that now
The soldier Musheng took Evvy’s hand and clasped it tightly "Dawei, she could be your daughter!" He looked at Evvy "Please, child You caerous slave, Parahan Tell us where they are We’ll have a e see to your feet --"
"Let them heal likeoil on it!" snapped Dawei He drew the strap lightly across Evvy’s burning, bleeding feet,said with a glare at Dawei "But my captain won’t allow it unless you tell us e need to know These people abandoned you here when they knew trouble was co"
Evvy didn’t listen She had the stone in her mind Inside it she hid her cats, and her friends and where they went: Rosethorn and the thing she carried, Briar and the soldiers ers to safety, Dokyi and his lonely journey to Gar Souda vanished inside the stone as well Maybe these zernaxe with two hundred soldiers Finally she blinked at Musheng "What people?"
Dawei snorted "That’s what you get for your kindness! Insolence! A Zhanzhi gutter rat lies to you about information she knows perfectly well you already have!" He slapped the strap harder over the soles of Evvy’s feet twice, grinning at her screaize!"
"I don’t know their nahed "Why don’t you know their nae student," Dawei said "She did soic for a student," Musheng said "I think you’re lying to us Girl, you don’t help yourself this way"
Evvy didn’t answer Now she was trying to think her feet to stone She had done it before Soine herself as stone, though he’d woken her just as she had it worked out That part she re of stone Pain washed up her legs in bloodred waves
"Tell the emperor you have me," she whispered She reave me a cinnabar cat"
"Who do you think sent us in search of you and your friends?" Musheng wiped her face with a cold cloth "Where are they, Evumeimei?"