Free The Sorcerer's Abyss (The Sorcerer's Path) by Brock Deskins Page B

Jake?” Ellyssa asked.
     
The man gasped loudly as the rope loosened enough for him to speak. “I don’t know, I swear! I don’t know Captain Jake!”
     
“Wrong answer,” Ellyssa informed him without emotion.
     
The rope retightened its grip, hoisted him several feet farther up the wall, and then dropped him. The rope snapped taut three feet short of the man’s feet touching the ground. The crack of his neck was audible in the dark alley and his struggles immediately ceased. Ellyssa looked at the next hanging man and repeated the question.
     
“H-he ships out of the Isles of Ash ever since he got himself a whole lot of gold. Bought himself a new ship and everything. I don’t sail with him. Never have! I don’t know where he is now, I swear!”
     
“Do you know how he got his gold?”
     
“N-no, I don’t,” the man croaked hoarsely.
     
“He got it by selling me,” Ellyssa informed the slaver. “But he hasn’t been paid in full, and I need to make sure he gets everything he has coming to him. What is the name of your ship, scum?”
     
The slaver whined pitifully. “ S-sea Phoenix !”
     
“Is it at the dock now?”
     
“P-please, I can’t say nothin’!”
     
With a twitch of her finger, the rope hauled the man a couple feet higher up the wall.
     
“Dock three! Please I don’t wanna die!”
     
“How many of your captives begged for their lives, slaver? How many begged for their freedom? How many did you let go?”
     
The man dropped and ceased his struggles and pleading. Ellyssa stepped toward the last man still alive. The aroma of his soiling himself was almost overpowering, but Ellyssa refused to balk.
     
“Please, I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” the man said.
     
“I want to know where Captain Jake is,” Ellyssa said once again.
     
“T-the Isles of Ash! Black Harbor!”
     
“You know for certain he is there now?”
     
“Yes! Yes, he’s there now! You can get him!”
     
Ellyssa smiled a humorless smile. “You’re lying to me aren’t you? You don’t know Captain Jake or where he’s at.”
     
The slaver tried to think through his panic and grasped at any straw to save his pitiful life. “ Sea Phoenix ! Our ship is the Sea Phoenix !”
     
   “He already told me that. You have no useful information for me, do you?”
     
Ellyssa turned away and proceeded to walk out of the alley, the slavers pleas for mercy following her out until they abruptly cut off with the punctuating snap of the rope. “No remorse,” she whispered into the night.
     
It did not take Ellyssa long to reach the docks since slavers rarely travelled far from their ship. Carrying trussed and bundled captives through the city was a tricky endeavor, especially with the Watch actually enforcing the King’s law. It was not a great hindrance since most work in the city was found near the dock ward. Many of the desperate called it home even if that home was in an alley or wooden crate.
     
Given the small size of North Haven’s harbor, finding the slave ship was quite easy. It sat moored at the end of the long pier where several men stood guard, watching for the City Guard and the rival thieves’ guild. Ellyssa did not understand why the slavers and the thieves’ guild were unable or unwilling to work together, but she was thankful for it. Slavers were largely thugs and brutes with little skill beyond sailing and preying upon the helpless. The thieves were far better organized and employed a host of skills that would have made Ellyssa’s job much harder and much more dangerous.
     
Ellyssa was furious these scum operated right in the open with no shame and little fear. Whatever plan or tactic she had thought up vanished as she watched the men on the dock and crawling about the ship. All she saw was Captain Jake, Sonjay, and the rest of the slaver crew who had captured her, tormented her, and delivered her into the hands of those sadistic wizards in Bakhtaran.
     
The men on the dock