It was almost as if he savored his work, like a fine craftsman at the bench.
If he didn’t have a part in the right size or shape, he’d pieced together bits of bone, tendons, metal, and leather until he had created a functioning replacement. Every piece was stitched with thread that seemed to spool directly from his razor-sharp fingertips. And every incision he sealed with a smear of glim and tin.
A quarter of the men hadn’t made it through Mr. Shunt’s ministrations. But that was a small price to pay for the rewards reaped by the others.
Of course, Mr. Shunt had seen to it that the freshly dead had not gone to waste. He was as unflinching and clever of a field surgeon as the general had ever seen, and harvested fresh bone, muscle, and flesh at the last rattle of a man’s breath. These he wrapped in clean cotton to add to his supply, or straightaway put them to use.
The Saint did not trust him, did not like him, and did not want to be in debt to him. But he wanted an eye. Wanted the sight that Marshal Cage had taken from him. Wanted two good eyes to see when Marshal Cage suffered in kind.
Six of his most loyal men stood in the cramped tent. Well armed, well rested, three of them having had parts and pieces replaced.
If Mr. Shunt did anything beyond their agreement, he would be dead. Instantly.
The general pressed his shoulders against the chair. Mr. Shunt seemed unconcerned of the men in the room. Unconcerned of the Saint. He sipped water and watched Alabaster over the brim of the cup.
On the table between them was a line of bloody instruments: bone saws, fillet knives, awls, and crimping tools. Just off to one side, nearest Alabaster, was a square piece of white cloth. And in the very center of that cloth was an eye. The yellowing orb had been soaking in glim and tin. Moist and sticky green-gray, the globule looked like it was eaten by rot, even though it was whole, and perfectly round.
Slender bloodred tendrils attached at one end of the eye and curled like mealworms against the white cloth.
The Saint lifted the patch from over the hole in his face and tossed it on the table next to the eye. “Let’s get on with it, Mr. Shunt. There’s people we’d both like to see dead.”
Mr. Shunt placed the spectacular tin cup on the table as if he were handling fine china and then glided over to the general. He bent and leaned in so close to study the hole where Alabaster’s eye had been that the Saint could smell the oiled leather and bitter stink of him.
“Yes,” Shunt whispered, his fingers probing gently around the eye hole. “Such hatred you have for him. And he for you. Joined in nightmare, drenched in blood. Beautiful.”
And then he reached over and plucked the eyeball off the cloth, delicately dangling it by its red strands. He turned back to Alabaster.
There was not even the faintest hint of humanity in his shadowed features.
“If you cannot hold your head still, General Alabaster Saint,” he said. “I will steady it for you.”
He withdrew the small vial of glim and tin and flicked the hinged cork off with his thumb. Then he tipped the vial, his thumb over the mouth to catch a small pool of the odd green and silver mixture.
He recorked the vial, keeping glim balanced on his thumb. Then pressed his fingers across the top of the general’s head and poised his thumb in front of the general’s empty eye socket.
“Now you will know pain.”
The general set his teeth and inhaled through his nose. He had been tortured, maimed, and worse. He was no stranger to pain.
And he’d be damned if he was going to yell in front of his men.
Mr. Shunt shoved his thumb into the general’s eye hole.
The agony was staggering. Alabaster held his breath against the moan building in his chest as time dragged from one tick to the next.
Mr. Shunt took his time scraping his thumb inside Alabaster’s eye socket until the scarred flesh was raw and alive again.
And all the while he hummed and smiled.
Shunt drew his bloody thumb out of the hole, allowing Alabaster a small reprieve from the pain. Not for long. Not even long enough for Alabaster to release one breath and inhale the next.
Shunt forced his head back, clamped it still, and was over him again.
The general’s chest clenched in fear. His neck was exposed to a madman with blades for fingertips and no humanity behind those eyes.
It had been many long years since Alabaster Saint had feared any man.
Mr. Shunt was not any man.
Monster. Nightmare. Madness. Alabaster’s head squirmed with memories of every horror he had endured, every failure that had brought him to his knees.
The general wanted a gun in his hand, a knife in Shunt’s throat. He wanted out from under the vise of Shunt’s grip, out from under the damp heat of his breath, out from under these memories that choked him.