The Silver Tongued Devil Chapter 6: Chapter 6 - Translation Comes at a Cost

Read chapter 6 of The Silver Tongued Devil by The Vilkas on NovelPedia.

The first breath inside tasted like old pennies. Cold, too, but not the clean kind. This was air that had been sitting in stone for a long time and only got stirred when someone opened the doors and dragged trouble through. The pressure changed the second my boots cleared the threshold. It felt like stepping from a roof in a stiff wind into an attic where all the heat had gone somewhere else. The sound of the outside—the not-wind over the trees, the low groan of the gates—cut off behind us like a door closing on a jobsite radio. I did not like being on the wrong side of that door. Tharel walked ahead with the same measured stride he'd had on the terrace, as if he'd done this a thousand times and none of those times had ended with the ceiling dropping on his head. Merrik and Serh flanked me, one at each elbow, like they didn't trust me not to try sprinting back out through the dangerous arch and into the wolves' dens. Which, to be fair, they shouldn't. The entry space was smaller than I'd expected after all that exterior theater. High ceiling, sure, rafters shadowed, but the footprint was just a long, narrow hall cut straight into the mountain. Stone floor. Stone walls. Iron fittings where sconces, hooks, and something like weapon racks had once lived. Most of them were empty now, outlines on the walls and lighter patches where dust had refused to settle. ​ A lantern burned near the far end, on a low table with scuff marks around it. Fresh boot tracks overlapped ancient ones in the dust. Somebody had been using this place as a real room, not just a museum. The building creaked around us. Not loud. Just little ticks and sighs in the stone and metal, like an old house breathing. My skin crawled. Somewhere overhead, a flake of grit let go and pattered down onto the floor, landing a few feet in front of me. Every instinct I had screamed that we were under too much load, and the joists had never been properly checked. "Great," I muttered. "From bad roof to worse basement." Merrik made a questioning grunt at that, but didn't ask. His hand tightened fractionally on my arm. Serh's fingers did the opposite, loosening just enough that I could feel the line between restraint and support. Tharel stopped near the lantern and turned. His eyes took me in again, now with the walls around us and the heavy doors at our backs. Tharel's gaze tracked over the cot, the table, the jug, then settled on me. His eyes paused on the half-healed bite, and the way I kept flicking glances toward the walls, and a small muscle jumped once in his jaw. Whatever else their customs demanded, nothing in his face suggested he liked this. He said a few words, tone flat as stone. The dub dragged up three scraps and shoved them at me, “…danger… watch… food…” The pain behind my left eye sharpened and then backed off, like a warning tap instead of a full swing. I grimaced. "Got it," I said under my breath. "Processing the weird foreigner is a group project." Tharel looked at me a heartbeat longer than was comfortable, then pointed down a narrower side corridor cut off from the main hall. The gesture was clear enough even without any language help. Merrik and Serh hustled me that way. The corridor had the same thick, overbuilt feel—too much stone for the amount of air. Doorways opened on either side, some with the doors gone, some with rough planks barring them. We passed one that smelled like old smoke and something sour. Another that just smelled like dust and time. At the third door on the right, Tharel stopped again. This one had actual hinges, and they croaked when he pushed it in. Inside was... simple. Maybe ten feet by twelve. One slit high on the outer wall let in a stripe of gray that did little more than prove the sun still existed. A narrow cot sat against the left wall, blanket folded on top in a way that said somebody had at least tried once. A small, sturdy table and two chairs took up most of the rest of the space. On the table: a clay jug, a cup, and a sma