You Said You Would Let Them Go / Literature

"You Said You Would Let Them Go!" moments in Literature.

---

• The "killing a prisoner Mook" version occurs with War-Prince Alloran in The Andalite Chronicles, complete with the line "you said you would let me go" and Alloran's retort that throwing the Mook out of the ship is "letting him go."
• In Brotherband, this is used by Zavac in order to get the information about the Andomal out of a Skandian. The Skandian's overconfidence about the Andomal had him say more than he ought.
• The Discworld novel Interesting Times has Lord Hong's mole, having failed to set up La Résistance to take the fall for his own assassination of the Emperor, remind Lord Hong that he promised he would never speak or write any order to harm him. He gets around this by making a little origami figure of a headless man.
• Done in The Dresden Files twice.
  • First to Thomas in Grave Peril: Harry's White Court vampire half brother, who, until the relationship is explained in Blood Rites, is inexplicably helpful who betrays Michael and Harry to get Justine back, she being the love of his life and someone who had turned down Bianca, the Big Bad, so being in serious trouble. He explains it as he wanted to get her back then double cross Bianca. All that stops Harry and Michael killing him on the spot when he turns up again is the fact he has Amoracchius/Excalibur undamaged. He later helps Harry by holding off Lea with Michael.
  • Later after Harry's duel with Duchess Arianna in Changes, when the Red King double crosses him on a technicality, something of an irony, as Harry is a Guile Hero and pulls this on assorted villains.
  • This is also the faeries primary form of contract screw: they will abide by the letter of the deal, but never the spirit. If you make a deal with a fairy to have them let you go, alive, they will do so, but beating you to near death is perfectly valid, as long as you're alive when they do let you go. Suffice to say that you need to word your deals with faeries very carefully.
• Elantris modifies this slightly: Ahan believes the rebellion he was part of was doomed to failure, and so sells out his co-conspirators to Telrii in exchange for a promise that they would be merely imprisoned for it. Telrii shows up and orders his guards to kill them all, anyway.
• The Executioner. In "Brothers in Blood", Bolan is told to surrender in exchange for a captive. Realising Bolan won't give himself up without a guarantee, the Big Bad moves into an exposed position where Bolan can shoot him, though the muzzle flash would give away Bolan's position and get him killed in turn. In this case it's Bolan who breaks the agreement, as he has no intention of handing himself over for torture and execution.
• In The Guardians, Deacon makes a Deal with the Devil to protect his hostage lovers. The demon does return them afterwards, but he never promised he'd return them alive.
• In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Voldemort promises to let Harry's friend go free, if Harry surrenders. Harry duly surrenders, Voldemort duly sets Neville on fire. Nobody is surprised, not even Harry.
  • The standard was set even earlier when Snape tries to make Voldemort promise not to kill Lily Potter. He is seemingly aware that Voldemort will not likely keep his word and as a back-up plan goes to Dumbledore to help save her. In the end, alas, Voldemort manages to anyway.
    • Voldemort did make a token gesture towards his promise by asking Lily to stand aside when she tried to get between him and his intended target (a favor he did not extend to her husband), but when she refuses, he simply kills her. Instead of, say, stunning her, or magically forcing her to obey him. This gesture and his failure to follow through on it is ironically the very thing that causes Voldemort's first downfall.
• In book seven of the H.I.V.E. Series, Laura's family is taken hostage in exchange for the location of the Hunt. Once the information is delivered, her parents are ordered to be killed, and her younger brother put in the Glasshouse.
• Variation in the first Malus Darkblade book. The titular character, a Druichi slaver, has a hold full of hostages. In order to spread the word of his raid, he offers to let any one of them, as chosen by the rest, go free unharmed. The prisoners unanimously vote to have the only woman aboard freed. She then offers anything in order to have her betrothed freed as well, an offer which Malus takes up. The anything, in this case, being a combination of brutal rape and slow, careful torture. The man to which this unfortunate girl was betrothed is then brought up on deck, and informed that the deal was to let the girl go unharmed. She's no longer unharmed, therefore the deal is off. There is a bright side, though, as Malus has a present for the poor present boy. "After all these exquisite tortures, she did recant, but by then it was too late, she was harmed. I did save you a token though, to remember her by". Malus then holds out the preserved face of the girl, removed from her corpse and dried with salt. Then, according to the best Joker traditions, Malus hoists the peasant boy up and throws him overboard, letting him off the ship into the siren-filled waters below.
• Casetti, alias Ratchett, from Murder on the Orient Express had kidnapped a child for ransom. Some time after the money had been paid, the child's remains were found, and the rest of the family died one by one. And Casetti skipped the country. The surviving relatives and the servants tracked him down and conspired to kill him, and no one shed any tears, least of all Poirot.
• Inverted in Adam Hall's Quiller novel The Sinkiang Executive where it's the supposed 'good guy' who didn't keep his side of the bargain.
  "You failed to keep this 'deal' of yours," Parkis said.
  "So did they."
  "Did you ever imagine they'd keep to it?"
  "I think they would have."
  "If you had. So the blame was yours."
  "Indirectly. But I didn't kill her. They did."
  • In Quiller Balalaika, The Mafiya boss who's captured Quiller tells him he can go free if he survives a Russian Roulette. To his shock Quiller does, implying no-one's done that before. So he just orders his mooks to take Quiller to the forest and shoot him.
• The Mooks in the Redwall book Legend of Luke reminisce about past instances their captain Vilu Daskar has done this. One notable occasion involved the prisoners being sewn up in sacks full of rocks and thrown overboard, with the words "You leave my ship alive, free to go where you will!" He's also fond of making worn-out slaves walk the plank or "setting them free" over the edges of cliffs.
• In Angie Sage's Septimus Heap book Darke, Linda goes to do this to the lovebirds, after one brought back Jenna in return for its mate. The Witch Mother stops her because a witch must not renege on a Darke agreement — it isn't good for her.
• Used a couple times in The Silmarillion: After seeing that his wife is held captive, Gorlim agrees to betray Barahir if Sauron reunites them and sets his wife free. Unfortunately, the wife was just an illusion—she was really dead—but Sauron still "reunites" them by killing Gorlim. Later, Mîm the Petty-Dwarf agrees to betray Túrin's location to the Orcs if they let Túrin go; they still take Túrin captive. Similar offers are made fairly frequently in The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings, but most of the other times either the offer is refused (Gandalf & co. when Frodo is captured, Húrin when he's captured, the Sons of Fëanor when Maedhros is captured) or the character is killed some other way. In general, if an evil (demi-)god makes this kind of offer, don't listen to him.
• In A Song of Ice and Fire, Magnificent Bastard Petyr Baelish, after apparently having tried to cheat on his wife Lysa with Sansa, promises he will never leave Lysa for as long as she lives. Then he immediately kills her.
  • Immediately after that Merrett Frey runs afoul of a variation this trope:
    Merrett Frey: (who is about to be hanged) NO, DON'T, I gave you your answer, you said you would let me go!
    Tom: Seems to me that what I said was I'd tell them to let you go ... Lem, let him go.
    Lem: Go bugger yourself.
    Tom: (Shrugs)
  • Cersei and Sansa ask Joffrey to be merciful and let Eddard Stark join the Night's Watch. He agrees, but then he changes his mind and has him executed by decapitation. Sansa calls him out on this, but Joffrey coldly points out that he never promised to spare him, only that he’d be merciful. Because "merciful" to him translates as "not having him drawn and quartered".
• The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel The Big Game contains a rare example of the the good guy, Sisko, breaking a promise to one of the villains: to spare him arrest and let him finish the big poker game in exchange for information about the other villains. After he gives it, Sisko orders him arrested anyway. Though since the villain is a poker player, to his indignant "You said I could keep playing," Sisko gets to respond, "I was bluffing." And he was ready to bluff the other villains by the end, too.
• This happens once in The Tenets of Futilism. Frank, the son of two cult leaders, becomes appalled by his parent's refusal to release Sasha as promised upon Joe completing the trial they gave him. So appalled, in fact, that he turns on them, effectively saving Sasha's life. Frank had always been taught honesty. Seeing his parents act dishonestly must have really made something click, considering he was perfectly fine with their torturing Sasha with old medical instruments. Horrific torture? That's cool. Breaking a promise? Now that's just taking it too far.
• Trapped on Draconica: Apparently there was a miscommunication. Yusef was under the impression that the cavalry would be killed but the infantry spared because they were little more than farmers with pitchforks; the cavalry would go first and then the infantry would give up and Gothon would 'let them go'. Gothon's plan was all or nothing. He gave the entire the army chance to surrender and join him and face no further aggression from him. Kazem turned this down on principle and the entire Eastern Alliance was slaughtered.

---