"What Was Mine" 3
At some point, somebody had brought me in clothes. They were simple grey work-garments. My skin still stung with constant pain, but it was more subliminal now, more tolerable. The clothes irritated a bit, but I was tired of being naked. I was standing in the middle of the room. It had been a couple days, during which I had determined that I could stand, and that the room was locked. I was also eating heartily, and I was brought regular servings of potato stew and a spiny fruit that seemed like it came from some sort of cactus. Based on this food, the accents I’d heard, and the heat, I estimated that I was in one of the south-western principalities, perhaps Colostor, which was sparsely populated and had a high concentration of prisons.
And this was a prison. It was a prison that I appeared to be locked in, though I had no memory of a trial. I’m not going to pretend like I was innocent, but I was careful, and to my awareness nobody had enough on me to put me away.Unless, of course, this was one of those renegade prisons, the ones that took private contracts and didn’t much care who they locked up. I’d heard that the feds had been stamping out that practice, but there were always people who sneered at any flexing of federal power. They were treating me well enough, but it was obvious that I wasn’t a guest. When they brought food, there were always a couple of well-armed guards. I might have tried to make a move on them in prime condition, but I was nowhere near that, and they were armed with early-model Break-Smythe Quickhammer revolvers. The guns were introduced in the middle years of the Vildalian War, so they were old and cheap, but still highly valued among those who prefer reliability and accuracy to the latest flashy innovation. My own sidearm was a Break-Smythe, an even earlier, single-action generation, and I longed to feel its well-worn walnut grip in my hand again. The hammer under my thumb, the trigger against my index finger, the roar, the acrid gunpowder reek, the lightning and blood. I wasn’t a psychopath, but I had long made my peace with the fact that the only time I felt truly at ease is when I was dealing death. Some people liked collecting stamps for relaxation; some preferred blasting holes in other men. In other, bad men. The kind who deserved a quick burial and a half-assed eulogy.The kind, I was sure of it, that had put me here.My left hand lingered near my thigh and pantomimed the action of unsnapping the holster, cocking the hammer back. The ritual of death.The door lock clicked and it started to swing open. I dropped my hand casually and gave an indifferent look as an older man entered, his spine stiff, his brown-and-grey uniform impeccable, his moustache military and his eyes steely. So this was the man who ran the place.