Free Web NovelChapter 640: Chapter 640: The Hand Behind the Cage
Trafalgar kept Maledicta against Esmond’s throat for one breath longer, watching the old man’s skin crease around the blade. Esmond had stopped struggling, but that meant very little. Men like him never truly surrendered. They simply changed the shape of the knife in their hand.
Trafalgar glanced toward Caelum.
Caelum understood at once. He shifted one hand from Matteo’s wound long enough to draw a potion from inside his coat, uncorked it with his teeth, and pressed the vial against Matteo’s mouth.
"A healing potion," Caelum said, forcing the old scholar’s chin up. "Swallow."
Matteo made a rough sound, half protest and half pain, but Caelum did not give him the dignity of refusing. The potion slid down his throat in a pale red shimmer, and Matteo coughed once before the tension drained from his face. His eyes fluttered, his fingers scraped weakly against Caelum’s sleeve, and a moment later his body went slack.
Selara’s pistol dipped. "Is Matteo all right?"
"He is asleep," Caelum replied, checking Matteo’s pulse with two fingers. "Wounded, exhausted, and better kept that way. If he wakes up now, he’ll try to argue with the bleeding."
Trafalgar returned his attention to Esmond. "Good. Now we can begin properly."
Esmond’s mouth twitched, the edge of humor returning through the blood on his lip. "It appears you had this prepared for longer than I expected. I admit, I am surprised."
His eyes flicked past Selara, toward the homunculus standing near the broken pillar.
"My masterpiece!" he shouted, the name tearing out of him with sudden venom. "Kill them and save me!"
The homunculus did not move.
Her head turned a fraction, not toward Esmond, but toward the sound itself, as if the word had reached the surface of her body and found no door beneath it. Dark fluid continued to trail down her side. The broken line at the base of her neck glimmered faintly under the ruined skin, severed and useless.
Selara stepped closer to the homunculus, pistol lowered but ready. "It’s useless, Esmond. Trafalgar cut your link to her."
Esmond’s jaw tightened.
Selara moved slowly, careful not to crowd the wounded creation. "I am not going to command you," she said, voice low enough that only those nearby could hear. "Do you understand? No orders."
The homunculus stared at her.
There was no answer. No nod or fear either, at least not in any way Selara could easily read. That was worse somehow. Fear would have meant there was a person inside who understood danger. This quiet emptiness looked like a room stripped of furniture, walls bare, floor cold, waiting for someone to decide what it was allowed to become.
Selara removed a folded cloth from her coat and pressed it gently near the wound in the homunculus’s side. "Hold this there." freёwebnovel.com
The homunculus looked at the cloth.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Selara’s fingers tightened around it. "Not an order," she added, her throat working around the words. "A choice."
Slowly, awkwardly, the homunculus raised one hand and pressed the cloth against her own wound.
Selara’s face hardened, but her anger had changed direction. It no longer burned only at Esmond. It burned at every room, every method, every pair of hands that had allowed something like this to exist.
Trafalgar felt Esmond breathe under him and drove his fist into the old man’s ribs.
The sound was ugly. Esmond’s body bucked beneath the armor pinning him, a choked gasp scraping from his throat. Trafalgar did not move the sword away. The blade remained at his neck, patient and intimate.
"Let’s start with the obvious," Trafalgar said. "Why did you help someone like Icarus get what he wanted?"
Esmond coughed, smiled through it, and spat a thread of blood onto the cracked floor. "Why did I agree?"
Trafalgar’s fist hovered over his ribs again.
Esmond gave a breathless little laugh. "The real question is why I would refuse. A Void Creature. A living specimen. Restrained, accessible, and still breathing. Do you understand what that means to someone with my work?"
Selara’s hand went white around the pistol.
Esmond went on, drunk on his own answer now that the pain had opened his mouth. "And when Icarus told me his intention was not only to study it, but to grant it intelligence? Oh, that was exquisite. Obscene, impossible, irresistible. I helped him because I wanted to see whether it could be done. I learned a great deal. He received what he needed. Everyone left satisfied."
Trafalgar hit him again.
This time Esmond’s laugh broke into a wet groan. The floor beneath his cheek trembled as Trafalgar leaned closer.
"You don’t feel guilty?" Trafalgar asked. "A Great Family was almost wiped off the map because of this."
Esmond turned his face enough to show one bright, contemptuous eye. "Guilty? Over the Thal’zar? Please. You people from the Eight Great Families are nauseating. You speak as though the world collapses whenever one of your banners catches fire."
Trafalgar’s expression did not change.
Esmond swallowed blood and continued. "What did they lose? A patriarch? Territory? Soldiers? They remain one of the eight. Their name survives. Their estates survive. Their children will still grow up believing the sun was forged to warm their dining halls. A few dead nobles, a few broken armies, a border redrawn with tears. How tragic."
The mockery in his voice scratched through the room.
"You think soldiers aren’t used that way by every house?" Esmond asked. "Bodies pushed into war so heirs can make speeches afterward? Spare me your family grief. The Thal’zar are wounded, not erased."
Trafalgar’s third punch struck lower, into the stomach. Esmond folded around it as much as the armor allowed, breath bursting from his mouth.
"And what about everyone else?" Trafalgar asked. His voice had gone colder. "The people who aren’t born with crests? The merchants whose routes died overnight? The families caught between armies? The servants, farmers, traders, towns that lost protection because Icarus wanted a laboratory and you wanted a toy?"
Esmond dragged in air, face twisting.
Trafalgar pressed Maledicta a hair deeper. "Did any of them enter your calculation, or were they inconvenient numbers under the ink?"
For the first time, Esmond did not answer at once.
Selara did instead.
"Of course they didn’t," she said, eyes fixed on her former master. "He never counted people unless their bodies could teach him something." fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm
Esmond’s gaze slid toward her. "You wound me, Selara."
"I hope so."
Her voice carried no heat. That made it worse.
Selara stepped closer, leaving the homunculus behind her with the cloth pressed to her side. "Where were you all these years, Esmond?"
His face softened into something almost pleased. "Ah. There it is."
"Answer."
"A very broad question. A century is a long road." Esmond licked blood from his teeth. "Here and there. Working, if you want the honest version. I was employed. Busy. Well supplied, too. Resources, money, laboratories, assistants, specimens. I had time. I had freedom enough to follow difficult ideas to their end."
Selara stared at him as if he had insulted the dead in front of her. "You expect me to believe someone hired you openly?"
"Openly? No. I do have manners."
"You were captured by the Vaelion," Selara said. "Because you experimented on their bloodline. You kidnapped their people, killed one from a secondary branch, and forced them to punish you. That was the end of your work."
Esmond smiled wider.
Selara’s voice sharpened. "Who would hire you after that?"
"You might be surprised how many people hate the Vaelion," Esmond replied. "Enemies with money. Houses with grudges. Scholars with no courage to dirty their own hands. The world is full of patrons when the work is useful and the name can be buried."
Trafalgar watched his face.
The answer was smooth. Esmond’s breathing had changed when Selara named the Vaelion. Not fear exactly. Recognition. A flinch buried under performance.
Trafalgar narrowed his eyes.
"No," he said.
Esmond went quiet.
"You didn’t escape," Trafalgar continued. "Not at first."
Esmond’s smile faltered by a hair. "What makes you think that?"
"Because killing you would have been easier," Trafalgar said. "Safer, and far more satisfying for everyone involved. You killed one of theirs. You touched their bloodline. A family like Vaelion doesn’t forget that, and they don’t leave a creature like you lying around unless they have a use for him."
Selara looked at Trafalgar slowly.
Caelum’s eyes shifted from Matteo to Esmond.
Trafalgar lowered his voice. "You weren’t rotting in a cell for a hundred years. They put you to work."
Esmond’s tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek. His fingers twitched beneath Trafalgar’s knee.
"There are many prisons," he said lightly.
"And yours had a laboratory."
No answer.
Trafalgar leaned in until Esmond could feel the heat of his breath and the bite of Maledicta at the same time. "You worked for the Vaelion. Later, you slipped the chain. Fine. That part I can believe. But now I want to know what they wanted from you."
Esmond’s eye glimmered with something unpleasant.
Trafalgar did not blink. "How did the Vaelion know about Icarus? How did you end up close enough to a Void Creature project to help him? And what were they really looking for?"
The room held its breath around the question.
Trafalgar pressed the blade until fresh blood welled against steel.
"Am I right, Esmond?"
