Jorrit had proven to be far more stubborn than Ragnar had initially given him credit for. Very little had managed to faze the man so far, not the knife driven clean through his thigh, not the slow, methodical removal of his fingernails, nor any of the other carefully administered torments Ragnar had subjected him to.
None of it had brought Ragnar any closer to extracting a full confession.
At first, he had been certain that pain would loosen the envoy's tongue, that suffering would pry open whatever secrets Jorrit held regarding Narfor and the elaborate network he served. That assumption, however, had been a miscalculation. Pain alone had only hardened the man's resolve.
And worse still, Ragnar had wasted precious time pursuing that avenue when his attention should have been focused elsewhere.
So he chose a different route.
Torture, after all, was not the only way to break a man.
