by Grace Martin
When it was finally over, even Aine ran out of tears. She’d cried and cried and now she just lay there. I worried that she was dead. I told myself that it wasn’t even the worst thing that had happened to me, but deep inside me there was a part of me that was screaming. I wasn’t sure if I would ever stop screaming.
Chapter Twenty
They didn’t leave us there or let us go. They didn’t even kill us, which was what I was expecting. They picked us up, still bound and gagged and carried us over their shoulders to a camp where at least thirty other men were relaxing around a small fire. Inside me, I screamed louder. Aine still hadn’t made a noise. She was dead and I was going mad. The screaming was nearly louder than my own voice in my mind.
They dumped us in a cart next to the body of a dead man and went to join their friends. I couldn’t hear what they were saying because the screaming was so loud in my ears, but I could hear the laughing. Hearing your captors laughing isn’t a good sign when you’re bound and gagged.
The cart was like a cage with bars on the sides and a roof above it. We were in a prison.
In the morning they struck camp and started travelling, going north, not that it made any difference to me. It was the first time in my life that I gave up. There was nothing I could do. There was no point trying to do anything. I didn’t even know if they realised I was still alive and I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to know I was alive or not. I didn’t know if I wanted to be alive or not.
Around midmorning I heard Aine make a noise. I was so relieved that I wept. I turned my face into the dead man’s jacket and sobbed. From the other side of the cart, I heard Aine crying too and it was the most welcome sound in the world, because it meant she was alive.
The group stopped at midday for a break. They came over to the cart and pulled the dead man out of it, then they threw blankets over us. One of them reached through the bars and cut the bonds on our wrists.
I sat up. They’d seen that I was alive. There was no point pretending. I didn’t say anything, just pulled down the gag and looked at the man who was now cutting Aine’s bonds. I’d seen him before. He was the one we’d seen in the Camiri prince’s memories, the handsome guard. His smile was gone today and he looked incredibly grim. I wondered if it was because he was going to kill us.
Aine just lay where she was. New tears seeped from her eyes when the guard cut her bonds. I think she thought he was going to cut her wrists. He climbed into the cart with us and closed the gate at the back behind him. He sat on the floor of the cart, facing me. Aine closed her eyes so she didn’t have to look at him.
What did I have to lose? I said, dully, ‘Take me, she can’t bear any more.’
He turned his head away sharply and cried, ‘No!’ He looked back at me. His face was so hard, he might have been capable of anything just then. ‘No,’ he said softer. ‘We aren’t all animals. I am Camiri, but I am not a monster. I am a mage. I am here to heal you, if you will allow me.’
‘I would sooner die,’ I said slowly.
He looked down, his lips compressed into a tight line. ‘I understand,’ he said.
I laughed like he was genuinely hilarious and he had the grace to look ashamed of himself. He turned to Aine. ‘May I heal you?’ he asked.
She didn’t say anything. If I was screaming inside, what must it be like inside Aine’s head right now? There was no space for words anymore.
He turned to me. ‘Please, I can help,’ he said.
‘Who cares what we think?’ I asked. ‘You do whatever you want to do. And when you’re done, we’ll be here for your friends.’
‘I had nothing to do with that! They were scouts ‒ when they brought you back they said you were spies. It wasn’t until this morning,’ he swallowed hard, ‘not until we stopped and I saw that your clothes-’ He looked down and finished speaking in a whisper. ‘I saw that there’s blood on your legs.’
I hadn’t even realised. They’d taken our trousers and we were lying there with bare legs under our knee-length tunics. That was why they’d thrown us some blankets ‒ to cover our shame. I wanted to laugh again, but the screaming inside me kept me silent.
The man turned away from me and started to heal Aine. She didn’t make another sound, just lay there, but she curled up a little more beneath her blanket. He turned to me. ‘Please let me heal you,’ he said softly. ‘I know I can never take away what they did to you, but at least let me heal your wounds.’
I nodded curtly and leaned my head back against the bars. The pain went away, leaving only the grief and horror. Only.
After he had healed us, the man went away for a moment and came back with some food. A moment later, another guard arrived with more blankets and proceeded to hang them up around the sides of the cart. A bucket was passed into the cart, too and I realised that they were giving us some privacy to wash the blood off ourselves. Two pairs of men’s trousers were brought. The last blanket was strung up and we were hidden from view.
Aine looked up at me. ‘Oh, Emer!’ she cried. I scooted along the cart to sit next to her. She pulled herself up into a sitting position and threw her arms around me. She sobbed into my shoulder and I held her like I’d held Sparrow under very similar circumstances. There had been one unspoken kindness the man had done for us. He had made sure we weren’t pregnant. I couldn’t have gone through that again.
I gave Aine the cloth to wash herself first and turned my back on her. She had stopped weeping, but she cried afresh when she saw the stains on her legs. I took the cloth and bucket after she did and cleaned off the dried blood. I pulled on a pair of trousers. We still had belts around our tunics so we could use those at least to hold up the trousers, which were obviously from one of the soldiers. Neither of us was of large stature and none of the soldiers were small.
When we were dressed, Aine sat up very close to me, pressed against my side while we ate. After what must have been nearly an hour, there was the sound of knuckles rapping against the wood of the cart. I suppose it was the nearest we had to a door. Aine cried out in fright and pushed closer to me. I put my arm around her and she huddled into it, putting her head down so she wouldn’t be able to see whoever it was come in.
‘You might as well come in,’ I said, ‘we can’t stop you.’
The guard was there again. ‘Are you feeling any better?’ he asked.
‘Fantastic,’ I replied sarcastically.
He ignored the sarcasm. ‘And you, my lady?’
Aine didn’t answer, just pressed herself against me and whimpered.
‘My name is Andras,’ he said. ‘I am an officer in the King’s Cavalry. What are your names? My lady?’ He looked at Aine first. She dared a peep at him, then looked back at me in surprise. She had recognised him too.
‘My name is Adara,’ she whispered, showing that she wasn’t silly, even though she must be frightened out of her wits. It was clever. I had plenty of experience in having a new name and I knew how hard it was to adjust to a different sounding name ‒ the trick is to find a name similar enough to your own that you can still respond when someone calls your name unexpectedly ‒ or if you use the wrong one you can just pretend they didn’t hear you properly the first time.
‘And you, my lady?’ Andras asked.
‘Meriel,’ I replied. It wasn’t the first time I’d used the name. If anything, it felt weirdly appropriate.
‘Really?’ Andras asked. I didn’t know why my name was singled out for suspicion until he said, ‘I thought she called you by another name just now?’
‘Sisters have pet names,’ I replied. I shouldn’t have said that, but someone would have noticed sooner or later that we were practically identical. His gaze went from my face to Aine’s and analysed the differences between us.
‘Adara and Meriel,’ Andras repeated. ‘I am honoured to meet you.’ He even made a small bow, difficult within the confines of the cart. When he rose up to face us again, he looked stern. ‘You are under my direct protection. Anyone who harms you will ans
wer directly to me.’
‘So, the six of them last night who had a go at us,’ I said, not bothering to sugar-coat the horror of what had happened. ‘I suppose they’ve all been strung up, have they? Or did you just tell them they were naughty boys?’
‘They are alive,’ he said. ‘They will be returned to Ce’Branna for trial and punishment. Camaria is ruled by law, not by terror.’
‘I wouldn’t mind spreading a little terror,’ I muttered.
‘Still, that is not the law in our land.’
‘Are you going to let us go?’ I asked. I didn’t care what the law was Camaria.
‘I regret that is not within my power, Meriel.’
‘Of course not. What are you going to do with us? We’re neither of us very decorative and the cart doesn’t really need prettying up.’
‘I’m afraid that you must remain our prisoners. We are on a dangerous and important mission here in Meistria and we cannot afford to jeopardise that mission for the sake of two people, no matter what your circumstances. We will be moving again soon. I came to ask your permission for two things.’
‘Permission?’ It was the first thing Aine had said since she lied about her name. Even Aine could see the ridiculous side of it.
‘First, I would request that we may remove the blankets from the outside of the cart. Second, the man who was in here with you earlier is still not well enough to travel on horseback.’
‘Probably not, no,’ I said, sarcasm alive and well in my voice. ‘I thought he was dead.’
‘His wounds were severe and it will take some time for him to be healed. I request that you allow him to travel in here with you until he is well enough to ride.’
I looked at Aine. This felt like a big request. She just hid her face against me. ‘Sure,’ I said, dismissively, ‘so long as you know that if he lays a hand on either of us, I’m going to snap his neck.’
‘You need have no fear of that. He was greatly concerned for you. He was barely conscious, but he heard your weeping this morning. It was he who insisted that we care for you today.’
‘It’s nice to know that gallantry comes naturally to the Camiri,’ I said snarkily, making it quite clear what I thought about the flower of Camiri manhood.
Andras replied sharply. ‘Gallantry comes naturally to him,’ he said. ‘You may find that he offers you even more gracious courtesy than you deserve.’
He left the cart. A moment later the blankets came down. The back door of the cart opened and the man who had lain like the dead in the cart overnight was carried gently inside. Aine and I sat at the end of the cart, our legs drawn up so we didn’t have to touch him. It was one thing to be lying half on top of him when I thought he was dead, quite another to even touch his skin when he was alive.
Andras was right, the man was certainly in no condition to ride. He could barely open his eyes or lift his head, but he still struggled to make eye contact with Aine and me. I was closest to him, so he spoke to me. He could barely make his voice rise above a whisper. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘You were weeping. I told Andras to help…’ His eyes drifted shut, despite his efforts to keep them open.
I moved down the cart a little bit, and even put a hand on his shoulder for a moment. He was still so injured, I knew what he’d done for us. Andras wasn’t much of a healer, but it seemed that he was the only one among the soldiers with any healing skill at all. This man, a Camiri prince, had insisted that Andras heal us before himself and that was why he wasn’t fully recovered.
‘Thank you, Gwydion,’ I said. ‘We appreciate everything you’ve done for us.’
The ghost of a smile flitted across his mouth before he relaxed into unconsciousness again. Aine and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the cart with the Camiri prince. Neither of us said it out loud, but I was pretty sure this man was Aine’s half brother.
We seemed to be in the cart forever. Every time we stopped, Andras would have another go at healing Gwydion and bit by bit the prince recovered. I thought of how easily Caradoc had healed me when Darragh beat me into a bloody mess, all that time ago when I was still a featherskin. I’d thought I’d had trouble then. I’d had no idea of what I had in store or I would have been quicker in stepping off the roof.
Later that day, we were transferred onto a ship. Andras carried Gwydion first and bade us wait, as if we had any choice in the matter. When he returned, he offered to carry Aine onto the ship. She just lifted her arms for him to carry her.
I got out of the cart behind them. No one was going to carry me until I was dead and cold.
Andras looked over his shoulder at me. ‘Meriel, you don’t have to-’
‘While I’ve got two legs, I’ll walk,’ I said.
We were given our own cabin aboard the ship. It was small, but well appointed and it made me feel even worse to say that I almost felt comfortable. Our door wasn’t even guarded. I suppose either they didn’t know we were magi, or they knew we’d been bled dry. We weren’t about to swim to shore, were we? We were allowed to walk around the ship, encouraged to join the others for meals. I noticed that none of the faces I’d memorised in the dark forest appeared around the breakfast table and not once did anyone mention the men who had abused us.
Gwydion was decent and kind. He and Aine were similar in temperament and within a few days they were spending their time talking softly together, reclining on comfortable couches on the upper deck. Gwydion was a year younger than Aine, but it wasn’t long before they were almost as close as if they had grown up together. Aine didn’t tell him that the Dark King was also her father and I was surprised that no one noticed the resemblance between them.
Andras was unfailingly gentle with Aine. Even though she’d given her name as Adara, he called her ‘my Lady,’ gave her his hand to help her down every single stair she descended and bowed when he first greeted her in the morning.
He wasn’t nearly as gallant to me. Perhaps, because I was stronger than Aine, he assumed I hadn’t been hurt as badly. Maybe he was angry that I spoke back to him. This, in turn, made me angry because I needed kindness too and I didn’t know Aine’s ways to make people be kind to me. I got more and more irritable, more and more snarky, until even Gwydion gave me a wide berth until at least midmorning every day.
I didn’t bother to count the days. What did they matter? I’d been removed from everything I loved so many times that there didn’t seem to be any point in recording time. I’d had Sparrow stolen from me, just when we were within reach of a life that was happy and free. I’d been taken from Caradoc just when I’d mustered up enough courage to consider that we might have a happy life together.
I tried to be nicer, tried to be more like Aine, but it didn’t come naturally. And I hated her sometimes when I realised that she didn’t talk about home. It was like she was mentally preparing to make her home in Camaria. There was nothing for her back in Meistria except for another forced marriage to whoever else was politically expedient. There was never going to be a happy ending for her back in Rheged. She was pinning all her hopes on her father and the Camiri. What kind of happy ending she thought awaited her there I didn’t choose to discuss with her. I didn’t have the heart to ruin her happy fantasies.
I had to get back to Meistria. Caradoc was there. The Portal was there. Sooner or later, I would be able to find my way back to Sparrow and then I’d come back to Caradoc and we’d be happy. Sometimes I went out on the deck at night when I couldn’t sleep and stood at the railing, beneath the moon.
Andras, surprisingly, often joined me. We didn’t talk, didn’t share meaningful confidences in the dark. He kept me company, and it was only when we didn’t speak at all that we didn’t fight.
We never spoke about it, but I wondered what Aine planned to do once we reached our destination, though. Was she going to turn to Gwydion, open her arms and cry ‘Brother!’?
I wondered what was going to happen to me, once we reached our destination. I was the reason that the king had sent Gwydion to M
eistria in the first place. He had sent Gwydion to find out information about me since he was concerned that there was a link between me and Umbra starting to glow. I wondered what he was going to do when he found out that, although Gwydion had not brought back information about the new, mysterious Bach Chwaer, instead he had simply brought her back with him.
As it turned out, it appeared that Aine hadn’t put very much thought into this at all. The ship docked in Ce’Branna and we were put back into the cart to travel to the castle. Blankets were laid over the sides again and tied down so we couldn’t get a good look at the city.
When we arrived at the keep, the cart stopped in a central courtyard. The blankets were raised and we caught sight of Gwydion and Andras riding away. They were heading towards one stable, the scouts who were under guard were taken in another direction and most of the other soldiers headed towards another set of stables. We were left with only two soldiers to guard us, neither of whom we had even spoken with before.
‘Wait!’ Aine cried, stretching her hand out between the bars towards Andras and Gwydion as they rode away. ‘Where are you going? You can’t just leave us here!’
They both looked puzzled. Gwydion rode on at a small word from Andras, and Andras returned to the cart.
‘I apologise, my lady, I took it for granted that you would know what would happen once we arrived here at the castle. As a Meistri spy you and your sister are going to be confined to a cell. You will be given food and water and the basic necessities of life. Periodically, as your health permits, a mage will come to your cell and will harvest your memories. Your memories and the information that you will be able to give us about the Meistri will be of invaluable use to the Camiri cause.’
‘But aren’t we going to see you and Gwydion again?’
‘That is highly unlikely, my lady. As you already know, I am an officer in the King’s Cavalry. What you do not perhaps realise is that Gwydion, while he is also cavalry officer, is also the son of the Dark King. While both of us carry out a wide range of duties, neither of us are in any way engaged with the keeping of prisoners.’
