Free The Emperor's Edge by Lindsay Buroker Page A

first. Excellent.”
    The pin on the left side of his collar proclaimed him a colonel; the pin on the right bore a needle, the symbol for a surgeon.
    A shiver raised the hair along her arms. “First for what?”
    “I’ll show you.” The surgeon hummed and tapped his clipboard against his thigh as he led the way down the stark, white corridor. “Come along, come along.”
    The guards forced Amaranthe to follow. If her hands had not been bound behind her, she might have tried for one of the swords or pistols hanging from their belts, but she had no hope of reaching them.
    Cells lined either side of the corridor, each secured by steel bars and locked gates. Male prisoners occupied most. Some stood and watched her pass, but most lay prone and unresponsive. One had black fingers and toes, symptoms of the advanced stages of frostbite. Another had pox marks all over his skin. Occasionally, medics in military fatigues surrounded the prisoners. One would hold a clipboard and pen while others stabbed and prodded at their victims.
    In one cell, a man was stretched facedown on a metal table with a surgeon poking around several inches of exposed vertebrae. He screamed with each prod, and blood flowed from his back. It splashed the floor, ran down a slight slope, and poured into a central drain. Amaranthe experienced the unwelcome insight that someone had angled the floors and placed the drains with exactly that purpose in mind.
    Torture, but more methodical than the simple cuts and burns designed to extract information. They were performing medical experiments on these people. She shuddered.
    “The emperor might not like the idea of a lady being dissected in his dungeon,” one of the guards holding Amaranthe whispered to the other as they traveled deeper into the tunnels.
    “This was
his
idea,” the other said. “He wanted more money to go into medical research, right?”
    “He has no idea what’s going on down here, and I’m sure this isn’t the kind of research he meant.”
    “That’s ‘cause he’s soft, and you are too if you listen to him. Hollowcrest is smart to keep his thumb on the boy. The Nurians would be mauling us if they had any idea how weak-minded our supposed emperor is.”
    Amaranthe wondered how many men in the Imperial Barracks were loyal to Sespian and how many to Hollowcrest. If these two were representative of the whole, Hollowcrest’s supporters were more vocal.
    The surgeon turned into a large room with four occupied cots against the back wall. A counter with upper and lower cabinets stood along one side and a coal stove along the other. No fire burned in it, and the room was cold. The men on the cots were inert, flushed faces and wheezing breaths the only indications of life. A bumpy red rash covered their skin.
    The surgeon paused by a cot. “Ah, good. This one’s dead. Take him to my examination room. A few more dissections and we ought to make some headway.” He rapped his knuckles on his clipboard. “It’s not right that those magic-throwing Kendorian shamans can cure this while sound imperial medicine lags behind.”
    The guard who had spoken up for Sespian left Amaranthe to obey the surgeon’s orders. He touched her shoulder briefly, eyes sad, before he dragged the corpse away. The pity unnerved her more than the callous attitudes of the others.
    “Magic-throwing shamans?” Amaranthe asked. The empire’s stance was that magic did not exist. Of course, the empire also forbade its use, so one tended to wonder about the truth of the first statement. Either way, she had never seen any evidence of magic in her life.
    “Yes, their healers sacrifice chickens, wave their hands, and cure the disease.” The surgeon sniffed disdainfully. “Fear not. Your sacrifice will help us find a legitimate cure and distribute it to our troops along the southern border.”
    “Oh, good.” Amaranthe swallowed. “What is the disease?”
    “Hysintunga.”
    “And it’s always deadly?”
    “Oh,