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Logan opened his eyes and becaawking The white-green lines etched in his forear-sleeved tunic?" Kaldrosa asked

"Always Thank you"

The sun was rising as Logan and his retinue arrived at the platforears and the hiss of the floaters of the Plith, and the shifting strains of Kylar’s weight on the straps holding him were the only sounds Blood dripped from his sides where blades pierced his arms, his armpits, his ribs, missed his waist because the belt held hihs and calves Blood dribbled from fists clenched around spiked handholds Blood flowed freely fro to clot because every revolution dipped his head underwater He was a man limned in blood And still he breathed

There was another ht, too It was Lantano Garuwashi He didn’t turn as Logan approached

The wheel turned Kylar sideways Lacking the strength anymore to hold his body in place, he slid onto the points on the down side As he inhaled, that er Blood welled up on the opposite side, and as he turned upside down, he made a feeble effort to hold hiainst three spikes and dozens more stabbed into his shoulders and arms He took a deeper breath before his head went under water

Logan’s stomach clenched It ith difficulty that he didn’t throw up He’d come to take his friend’s body away, not to watch hiiven way only o It was i So Logan stood with Lantano Garuwashi and looked at what he had done for a minute, five minutes Five minutes stretched to an unbearable ten, and still Kylar showed no signs of weakening further It was unbelievable, impossible

"Look at his feet," Garuwashi whispered

For aabout There was nothing remarkable about Kylar’s feet They, at least, were spared injury Then Logan remeged him because a stone had crushed one of his feet Another had blinded one eye Now both feet and both eyes hole Logan’s fleeting disbelief became wonder and then horror

The wheel was intended as an excruciating death for traitors It usually took hours Kylar, however, was healing at an incredible rate The wheel would kill him eventually, but after a day, he seemed like a an had never intended such cruelty This ht," Kylar said, startling Logan His eyes were open, clear "Go, an abruptly began weeping "How do I end this?"

Agon Brant cleared his throat "Your Majesty, in tiious festival and a ruler wished to avoid defiling the city by having athe festival, they would break the condes so they’d be impaled more deeply on the spikes and die faster" He cleared his throat onceat Kylar "I ht aer"

Logan closed his eyes and breathed deeply, slowly He wiped his eyes and blinked Looking up the ht aan said "Let him approach Set up my chair and desk here" He’d deliberately leaked to the a the an had meant to meet with the an could be But in his wildest night while theyKylar until Agon Brant, acting as his impromptu chamberlain, announced the ambassador "Your Majesty, Tertulus Martus, Questor of the Twelfth Arht, attaché to Overlord Julus Rotans"

Logan turned and sat at the field desk Tertulus Martus’s eyes flicked past hie of death Sitting, it fra aware of thebehind him on the wheel

"Your Majesty," Tertulus said "Thank you for welcoratulations on your recent ascension to the throne and your lorious victories If half the tales are true, your name shall live forever" He went on for soht’s Twelfth Army was their diploht armies since before the Alitaeran Accords Today, there were perhaps three--and iven the massacre of the five thousand in Ezra’s Wood But Tertulus Martus had set the rudder before he began speaking, and he didn’t even have to think as he spoke His body was si He stood with his feet fairly close together, so as not to appear combative His hands were kept loose, so as to neither point nor clench into fists His gestures were s hih he would surely soon offer soan as quickly as possible came only froan was a threat They had recently lost five thousand nificant, corrupt kingdos had done for twenty years: nothing

Still saying nothing, Logan rose in the middle of the diplomat’s sentence With perfect cal blank parch with a crash He stepped on the desk and ripped off a leg

With two s at the shins

Kylar screaainst a dozen blades under his arleaain as the wheel turned sideways and the sides of his legs were pierced much more deeply His head dunked under water in the

His arht and his screaan looked at the depth of the cuts and looked Kylar in the eye There was great suffering, but there was no fear

With two an broke Kylar’s forearidity of those bones, his body sank unnaturally far, gravity stretching his arhed blood with every breath, and blood streaan heard several of his attendants throwing up, but he never turned away

After seven revolutions, Kylar stopped coughing The flow of blood slowed, and the tension in the distorted ’s Guard The wheel stopped They checked for a pulse There was none They began rean turned to Tertulus Martus, who for all his diplo mouth or narrow his wide eyes