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The screams echoed underneath King Foltest's castle in a high-pitched frenzy of broken syllables and spit curses.
The other prisoners confined in the dungeon below the inner keep shifted away from the iron bars and circles of light cast by torches, to curl up in the darkest corners of their tiny and dank cells. Straw rustled and chains dragged along the stone as they moved to cover their ears.
The air was a foul haze of unwashed skin, sour sweat, the ammonia sting of piss, vomit, puss and old blood. The reek of fear, madness, and impending death.
And yet they were the fortunate ones, both those here for crimes committed and the wrongly accused, for at least they were not left to the tender mercies of the Temerian Special Forces, unlike the non-humans and Scoia'tael.
Geralt leaned against a part of the wall that was less moist and covered with lichen. His heightened senses forced him to listen as skin was separated from flesh and muscles with a visceral, sticky-wet noise, the scraping of a knife, and a bloodcurdling scream.
It choked on a whimper, the babbling and pleading of a shattered mind that could no longer rave and rage. All that bravado and defiance, carved straight out of the proud elf.
The door opened on rusty hinges and Vernon Roche emerged, his uniform remarkably clean, but fingers and nails stained vermillion. The rag he was using to try and clean them was already saturated with blood; it dripped on the floor, marking his approach.
"Witcher," Roche greeted with a polite incline of his head. "You are early."
"Vernon."
Geralt watched the water turn red as Roche washed his hands in a basin someone had placed on an empty wine barrel. There was also soap and a washcloth, both smelling faintly of Ves and lime. He could hear Vernon's heartbeat, slow and steady.
"He tell you anything about Iorveth?"
Roche frowned and tossed his towel aside. "He knew nothing."
Geralt pushed away from the wall, armor and leather scraping softly over the granite. "Then why continue?"
"Because I have my orders, and the King wished to make an example of him." Roche gestured for the guards and handed one the key to the interrogation room. "Does that bother you?"
"No."
A clean-cut answer, yet a compromise. Geralt had taken the measure of Vernon Roche a long time ago, seen the true color of his skin, blue and white, knew that his past as the son of a whore haunted his nightmares where brutal torture didn't, that he was Foltest's man, through and through. Those were the parts that defined him, and Geralt had come to terms with them, would not try to change them, the same way he never made much of a fuss when it came to Triss and Yen. Simply wasn't how this worked, the give and take of something more than mere fucking.
"I had hoped not," Roche said, with a faint smile. "Hungry?"
"Hm." Geralt nodded. "I could eat."