Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Kahlan didn't want them to know she had heard them call her by the title Mother Confessor. She stretched a little, as if trying to escape the bounds of unconsciousness while she tried to imagine what such a title could possibly mean.

"Where are we?" she mumbled, feigning a groggy voice.

"I am confident that it will soon enough become all too clear to you." Sister Ulicia forcefully jabbed Kahlan's shoulder. "Now, wake up."

"What is it? Do you wish something, Sister?" Kahlan rubbed her eyes with the backs of her knuckles, trying to look uncoordinated and dazed. "Where are we?"

Sister Ulicia hooked a finger through the collar around Kahlan's neck and jerked her upright.

Before Sister Ulicia could say anything more, Jagang's meaty hand grabbed her arm and drew her back out of his way. He was intent on Kahlan. His fists seized her shirt at her throat. He lifted her clear of the ground.

"You killed two trusted guards," he said through gritted teeth. "You killed Sister Cecilia." His face was going red with rapidly building rage. His brow drew down over his dark eyes. It seemed that lightning might flicker in the cloudy shapes drifting through those black eyes. "What made you think that you could get away with killing them?"

"I didn't think I could get away with it," Kahlan said as calmly as she could manage. As she had suspected, her calm only served to provoke his fury.

He roared in unleashed anger and shook her so violently that it felt like it might have torn muscles in her neck. It was obvious that he was a man who at the slightest provocation flew into fits of uncontrollable rage. He was on the brink of murder.

Kahlan didn't want to die, but she knew that a swift death might be preferable to what he had promised her for later. She couldn't really do anything to stop it, anyway.

"If you didn't think you could get away with it, then why would you dare to do such a thing!"

"What difference does it make?" Kahlan asked with calm indifference as his fists on her shirt held her up so that her boots were clear of the ground.

"What are you talking about!"

"Well, you've already told me that your treatment of me will be terrible beyond anything I have ever experienced. I believe you; that's the only way people like you can ever win — by threats and brutality. Because you are such a pompous fool, you made the mistake of telling me that I could not begin to imagine all the terrible things you intend to do to me. That was your big mistake."

"Mistake? What are you talking about?" He drew her up against his muscled body. "What mistake?"

"You've made a tactical error, Emperor," Kahlan said, managing to stress his title in a way that made it sound like a mocking insult. She wanted him angry, and she could see that it was working.

Despite hanging from his white-knuckled fists, Kahlan tried to sound composed, even aloof. "You see, you have made it clear to me that no matter what I do I have nothing to lose. You've made it clear that you can't be reasoned with. You said that you are going to do your worst to me. That empowers me because I am no longer bound by any hope for mercy from you. In revealing that I have no hope whatsoever for any mercy, you have given me an advantage I didn't previously have.

"You see, by making that mistake, you showed me that I had nothing to lose by killing your guards and, since I'm to be subjected to your worst anyway, I might as well have my revenge on Sister Cecilia. By making such a tactical mistake, you have shown me that you are not so smart after all, that you are just a brute and can be bested."

He relaxed his grip just enough for Kahlan to touch the toes of her boots to the ground so that she could gain some leverage.

"You really are something," he said as a slow, cunning smile overcame his rage. "I'm going to enjoy what I have planned for you."

"I've already told you your mistake, and you repeat it? Apparently, you don't learn very well, either, do you?"

Before, when he'd pulled her up against him in a rage and had brought her face close to his, when his hands had been firmly occupied holding her in a threatening manner, Kahlan had used the distraction to gingerly slip his knife from the sheath on his belt. With two fingers she'd worked it up into her hand. He had been so angry he hadn't noticed.

Rather than get worked up into another fit of rage at her latest insult, he began to laugh.

Kahlan already had his knife gripped tightly in her fist.

Without ceremony or warning, she thrust it at him as hard as she could.

Her intention had been to drive the blade up under his ribs, to cut open vital organs, maybe even his heart if she could get it in that far. The way he was holding her, though, hampered her movement just enough so that she missed her mark by a fraction of an inch and instead struck his lowest rib. The point stuck in bone.