Confessor: Chainfire Trilogy Part 3

She heard the lock in the outer door clang open, the metallic sound echoing through the network of low corridors. She could hear someone grunting as they tugged in a series of muscular pulls, forcing the door bound up on rusty hinges to open enough to get through. When she saw shadows through the small opening in the door to her inner cell, Nicci blew out the flame on the lamp beside her on the stone bench that was the room's bed and only furnishing.

A key scraped and then the lock to her cell sprang open. After being in complete silence for so long, she found the strident sound exceptionally loud. As the door grated open the light from a lantern flooded in. Dust from the rusty door floated up in that harsh yellow light.

Emperor Jagang ducked down as he stepped over the high sill to squeeze in through the doorway. Nicci stood.

He was wearing his sleeveless vest so as to display his muscular bulk. His shaved head reflected the single flame of the lantern he'd brought. His black eyes looked entirely at home in the depths of the dark hole in the rock. Those black eyes gleamed as he took in the sight of her. She had made sure to loosen the top of her dress so that he would have something to catch his attention. It worked.

"I've been dreaming of you, darlin'," he said as if he thought it would impress her.

He always had believed that his lust proved something to her, as if his lack of civility or restraint only demonstrated how overwhelmingly appealing she was to him. To Nicci it only served to prove that he was an unprincipled savage.

Nicci stood tall, saying nothing, refusing to shy away as Jagang moved in close. He circled his muscular arm around her waist, pulling her tight against his powerful bulk, demonstrating his command of her, his virility, his unchallenged authority.

Nicci had no desire to drag it out.

She casually reached her arms up around him and snapped the Rada'Han closed around his bull neck.

He staggered back a step in confusion.

She knew that he would feel the power of the collar piercing into every fiber of his being.

"What have you done?" he asked in a tone of anger bordering on a kind of horror she had never heard out of him before.

She had no desire to discuss the matter, so she simply exerted her control through the collar to prevent him from talking. If she knew Jagang, and she did, then Sister Ulicia would be up in the Garden of Life working to open the right box of Orden. She didn't want Ulicia to realize what had just happened.

Jagang would have been impatient to get at Nicci. The nightmares Richard had sent had plagued him, but the dreams Richard had given him of Nicci had turned his obsession for her into a passion, a mania, that had slowly grown to the point where it was nearly intolerable. Jagang had always desired her, but after the dreams Richard had crafted, Jagang could think of little else but possessing her.

He had even been willing to leave Sister Ulicia to her work to come down to the dungeon and personally recover her.

It was a small gift Richard had given her. When Nathan had locked her in the cell, he had explained, from behind the shields that protected his words from the ears of any spies, that Richard had devised the scheme as his last gift for Nicci. Richard knew that they would have to surrender the palace. He knew that they were all going to die. The one thing he could give Nicci was Jagang.

The Rada'Han had been in the cell. It was the collar that Ann had left there when she had been imprisoned by Nathan for a time. That was what had been so important that Ann had been trying to tell Nicci before she had been killed.

Nathan had known that the Rada'Han was in the cell, behind the shields of the room. Richard wanted Nicci to have it, and to have a way to bring final justice to Jagang the Just.

Richard had no illusions that it defeated the Imperial Order. The corrupt beliefs of the Order tainted the minds of millions. Jagang was not its architect. That communal hatred would burn on without one man.

Nicci understood that as well. She had grown up with the teachings of the Order. She knew how they attempted to perform the alchemy turning suffering into virtue, wrongdoing into righteousness, death into salvation.

Such beliefs were born in man's willful refusal to use his mind, in his lust for the unearned, his wish for success without effort. Such beliefs were the embodiment of hatred for all that was good, a hatred for virtue, hatred for value. It was ultimately a hatred of themselves, of life, of existence. It was that hate, that dedication to death, that was the true manifestation of evil.

Killing Jagang would not cure mankind of such irrational zealotry. The beliefs of the Order were not driven by one man. The Order would go on without Jagang.