by Lisa Daniels
Then they both went down. Without thinking, I ran forward, quickly moving pieces of the gargoyle out of the way. The captain was already issuing orders, one of which finally registered.
“Take him to the dungeons. Make sure he is kept far away from his leader in case this was some bizarre attempt to break him out.”
I got down close to the pair and noticed that apart from being unconscious, the man was unscathed. The woman was still breathing, and the amount of blood suggested that she wasn’t nearly as badly hurt as she would have been if he had not protected her. Reaching out a hand, I felt her neck for a pulse. My father had taught me a bit about taking care of people, which he had learned during the Bleak War. I didn’t even think about whether I should be doing anything—I was going on instinct and a desire not to let the man’s protection go to waste.
The problem was that I would have to talk to the captain. Uncertain of how to start, I looked up. “What of the woman?”
He didn’t even look at me as he responded, “I imagine the idiot can be chucked into the next mass grave.”
I could feel the anger beginning to rise. This had happened far too often; the woman was nothing more than something to be disposed of. My parents had thought sending me here would show me that it was not the case everywhere. Why they had thought it would be better was unclear to me. At the palace, the only women who weren’t treated as disposable were either royal or like Mrs. Teasdon. Biting back what I wanted to say, I spoke again, “Um. She’s still alive.”
The captain spun around, a flash in his eyes. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought it was concern. He closed his eyes for a moment and tilted his head to the side as if what he was about to say caused him pain, “If he really did spare her life, the laws are very clear that she belongs to him.” He opened his eyes and the order he was trying to give came through in the words that he spoke. “It would be far best if she were dead, and it would not take much to make sure she did not breathe long enough to become his plaything.”
“No! Absolutely not!” A shrill voice startled me and I turned around to see the princess storming over to us, several people trailing behind her, trying to get her to stop. She moved her arm violently when one of the guards tried to detain her. “Unhand me! Falmen, is this how you train your men to deal with the princess?”
Those cold eyes became almost unreadable, “No, your majesty. I will have him punished.” He moved his hand and a couple of other guards stepped forward and ushered the offending man away. I had my doubts that anything would happen, as did the princess.
She folded her arms across her chest, “How dare you, after everything. This is unacceptable.”
“Which part, my lady? The part where I apprehended a known criminal? Or did you mean the part where I disregarded your soft heart, which allowed him to get this close to the royal family?”
“I shall tell my father about this, and there will be consequences.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” There was something in the captain’s voice that suggested he did not think it was going to go the way the princess expected.
Turning from her, he realized that I had not moved since his last words about the injured woman. He knew that I could not go through with killing her, even if I had a weapon to do it. His mouth narrowed just before he spoke, “It appears that the fate of the foolish girl has been decided. She will need to be deposited wherever the prisoner goes. Then I have a different assignment for you as you clearly do not understand the gravity of what you have done.”
He marched off, issuing orders to the other guards, leaving me staring at his back wondering just what transgression I had committed.
And uncertain of what would happen to me now that I had angered the person responsible for me. Whatever Mrs. Teasdon had been trying to protect me from, it could not have been half as bad as the world into which she had thrown me.
Chapter 1
An Unforgivable Transgression and the Punishment
By the time things had settled down, someone had figured out what to do with me.
I had stood off to the side as they cleaned up the mess and took the prisoners down into the dungeon. It is difficult to know how much time passed just standing there, but at some point, one of the guards who had called the captain out approached me.
“Are you the girl who was assigned to the captain this morning?”
“Woman,” the word was out of my mouth before I had a chance to think about it. Trying not to look mortified, I simply looked at the guard.
He stared at me for a moment, his eyes never leaving my face. For a second, I thought a smile flashed across his lips. Then he moved his head to indicate the dungeon. Turning, he headed toward the door. The motion was more than enough to tell me that I needed to follow him. What wasn’t clear was what he planned to do with me. I had no idea who he was, but I knew better than to question him.
Hurrying after him, I had caught up by the time he reached the door. Inside were several sets of staircases, one leading up, and the rest down to what I had heard was one of the biggest dungeons on the continent. Hoping that I wasn’t about to find out from the other side of the bars, I tried not to let my steps betray my increasing discomfort with the lack of explanation.
I lost count of the number of flights that we went down by the time we reached the floor where he left the winding staircase.
My head was spinning a little as we headed down a large, dimly lit hallway.
We didn’t go far before we reached a door. He turned and began to speak as he entered.
“This is a kitchen that we haven’t had much use for. Considering you are a woman, there really isn’t much you can do for us. The captain figured the best way to get you out of the way and make you more useful to Mrs. Teasdon would be to have you cooking down here.”
He stopped talking by a table near a large fireplace. His eyes looked directly at my face.
I looked around and tried to process everything. None of it was said in a way that could be taken as offensive, but considering the word choices, it was difficult not to take some offense. Turning this into a small smile, I nodded, “I am to cook for the prisoners on this floor.”
“What?” His question caused me to look up. “No. There aren’t any prisoners on this floor or any of the floors beneath it.”
I stared at him, trying to figure out just what I was supposed to do.
His eyes moved around the room. “We will send you regular supplies, then guards will be around to pick them up to deliver them to the prisoners. You only need to cook. And you won’t need to make it extravagant. Just make as much as you can with what you are given.”
“So, I’m basically a prisoner down here?” Again, my mouth moved without me thinking first. This was not a normal problem for me, but the day had gotten progressively worse.
One of his eyebrows went up. “You should certainly think of it that way.”
“Why? What did I do?”
He gave me a look almost like he didn’t believe that I was unaware of why I was being punished. Finally, he said, “I will just say that the captain does not look kindly on women who loathe other women.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head, trying to process this. After realizing that I heard him right, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“Are you serious?” He gave me an incredulous look. “You condemned a woman to be the slave of a shifter. Obviously, you hate other women because there really isn’t a crueler fate.”
“But, I don’t—”
Suddenly, he got a look on his face as if he suddenly solved a puzzle, “Oh, you are a northerner, so you have no idea, do you.” It was not a question.
I shrugged, my bafflement clear on my face.
He folded his arms. “She is his slave. We cannot stop him from doing anything he wants to her. If she is lucky, he will kill her. If not…” His eyes bore into mine as he let me imagine what would happen to the poor woman. Once he knew that my imagination had started to go wild,
he nodded, then continued, “And if the royals decide to kill him, they will kill her as well. Using the same method. And the way to kill a shifter is… far more violent than for a human. And if he manages to escape—which is highly likely—no one will see her again.”
I swallowed hard, hoping that he was just trying to scare me. Trying to smile, I managed to say, “Sur-surely h-he, uh...”
The guard gave me a look of pity. “I understand that you didn’t know, so what you did was done out of ignorance, not malice. But it is still unforgivable. Until Mrs. Teasdon calls you back, you will be stationed down here. If you can stay sane, you will be wiser the next time you encounter a shifter.” He gave me a slight nod, then began to cross the room to leave.
Desperate to learn more, I took a few steps behind him. “But, can’t you just let her go? I mean if he—”
The guard’s shoulders sagged a little and he muttered something under his breath. When he turned to look at me, the shadows made it impossible to read his expression. “The law is the law. If we make one exception, then more will follow. Even if that happened to the princess, the law would be followed.”
“But… but.. what if it happened to the king?”
The guard gave a derisive laugh, “It only applies to women. You are weaker and lesser than men.”
“But there are guards who protect the princess!” The words started to flood out. “If they save her, then—”
“They are paid to.”
“I thought—”
“It must be voluntary.”
“Then couldn’t someone pay for the woman—”
“It wasn’t agreed to before she wandered into the courtyard. The shifter saved her, and there is now nothing anyone can do for her.”
I bit my lip. My understanding of shifters was incredibly limited, but I still had some hope that things wouldn’t be as bad as the guard made it sound. “What if he doesn’t want to keep her and decides to let her go?”
“Then he will kill her.”
“But he saved her!”
“There is no such thing as a civilized shifter. When they start to act up and visit our towns, it is always for blood.”
“How do you people just let them get away with it?”
“What makes you think we have a choice?” he shot back at me. Running a hand over his face, he turned away. “We don’t control them. At best, we contain them while they contaminate our city. They never stay for long, and they do not visit often. We learned long ago that we don’t stand a chance against them outside of the city.”
“But—”
“Best of luck to you.” He quickly left without telling me anything else about my position.
Then I realized that I had never asked him about what I should do first—there was no food—or where I should sleep. Apart from being trapped on a floor a long way from the surface, I knew nothing about my situation.
Then I realized that no one was likely to care.
I stood there listening to his footsteps as my mind tried to process the day. As much as I wanted to sit down and ponder what had just happened, I knew that would be worse for me. If I started thinking about my current predicament, I would very likely start to cry. It was best to be busy than to be pathetic.
With no one on my floor or any of the ones below me (I briefly wondered how many floors were beneath me before realizing it did not matter), I knew that I had to get busy. As long as I stayed busy, everything would turn out alright.
Right?
It was obvious that no one had been down here for a while. Months. Perhaps even years. The layer of dust on the items in the kitchen was worse than the layer of flour on the cook’s counter when she was making dumplings for a feast. That comparison immediately began to make me feel more relaxed.
Looking around, I wondered aloud, “Why even have such a big dungeon if you don’t use it? They have entire floors that are empty. What purpose does that serve? It sounds more like a liability than anything.”
With a shrug, I decided that it really did not matter to me. I just needed to make it through this until Mrs. Teasdon finished teaching those girls a lesson. Most people would probably be angry to find themselves in such a predicament. After the initial shock, I found myself beginning to warm up to the idea.
For the first time since I had been assigned a position at the palace, I knew that no one would make my life difficult. There was no one to be jealous of my looks. No one trying to get me in bed with them. No one getting angry at me for working hard.
A smile spread across my face as I looked around the room. For the first time that day, I knew what I could do and how I could contribute. The circumstances weren’t ideal, and I felt a knot in my stomach every time I thought about the woman who was now the slave of a shifter. Still, he had saved her, and from the look I saw in his eyes, I found it difficult to believe that he would treat her as badly as the guards were saying.
My hands hardly needed me to think about what I was doing as they set to work cleaning up the room.
Looking at the fireplace, I knew that I had my work cut out for me to make it functional. There was so much soot and debris that I couldn’t even think about lighting it. The room was gloomy and the torch that the guard had left made the room look very creepy. Taking the torch, I began to clean off the older torches. Assessing them to make sure that they wouldn’t burn out of control (some were clearly a hazard), I lit a few more. Turning to inspect the room, I saw that things were much worse than they had appeared. It would take at least one full day, probably two, before I would be able to do much cooking.
I pushed my sleeves up and stepped over to a small spigot. The thing had not been used in so long that I had to use both hands to twist it. When it finally budged, a dark liquid came out of it. I placed a bucket under it and left it to run. I looked around the room for a drainage area, not sure what it would look like so far underground. Maybe they wouldn’t have one.
“Then how would they cook down here?” I muttered to myself. “They have a way to get water, so there must be a way to get rid of it.”
I continued hunting until I found a little grate in the corner. The grate had been almost hidden by a table with pots and pans stacked on top of it, none of which were clean. Ignoring the mess on top of the table, I returned to the spigot and saw that the water almost looked like water again. Taking a dirty cup, I scooped out some of the black water and returned to the table. I got down and crawled under it to the grate. Carefully, I poured the water down it and was pleased to hear the soft sound of water hitting stone some distance away.
“Good,” I said, looking at it before backing up. “I have running water and a place to dump the waste.”
Taking some of the coals from the fireplace, I set them in an empty part of the room. Grabbing some loose stones, I blocked in a small circular area. The hardest part was finding something to burn, but finally this was achieved by throwing the front of my servant outfit on the fire. We had to wear so much clothing I was not sad to get rid of that part. Soon, I had a small fire going. Setting a cauldron over it, I poured some clean water into it, then waited for it to boil. Moving over to the table covered in dishes, I began to sort them. Some were either so broken or so dirty that they would never be functional again. Placing them to the side, I sorted the rest. Once the cauldron was ready, I moved it to a nearby area and dropped some of the dirtiest pots and pans in to start soaking. Hours passed, and never once did I feel the need to hide or watch my back.
It was amazing, and I began to sing as I worked. When I realized what I was doing, I laughed aloud for the first time since leaving home.
I felt liberated and happy for the first time in my life.
My attention was fully focused on my tasks and a growing sense of comfort that I didn’t pay attention to anything else. That was why I didn’t see the greenish-yellow eyes watching me from just outside the door.
Chapter 2
A Task Well Done and a Nightmare Soothed
Without
a window or any way to see what time of day it was, I had no idea how much time passed as I worked. Not being the kind of person who could simply stop without meeting my goal, I was fairly exhausted by the time the room looked like it had been inhabited within the last couple of weeks. There was still a long way to go. However, I had managed to clean out the fireplace, all of the counter tops, and three of the seven tables. The larder door taunted me, but curiosity was not one of my faults. I wasn’t going to tackle that until the rest of the room was cleaned up. My only consolation was that there was no overpowering smell of rot, giving me hope that perhaps there wasn’t much spoiled food left behind those doors.
There was a pile of broken dishes, rags, trash, and broken furniture lining the wall near the door. I could occasionally hear sounds from above, so I knew that the floor above me had people. Perhaps I would go up tomorrow to see if I could find a guard to tell me what to do with the rubbish.
I surveyed the room and gave a firm nod. “Good enough for one day. Now…” Ready to get some sleep, I realized too late that I should probably have stopped a little sooner. There was a very good chance that any bed I could use was going to be in very bad shape. Fighting back the urge to sigh, I picked up the nearest torch and headed out the door.
The layout was fairly simple. There were three main corridors forming something like a capital H. The stairs were located on the shortest hallway, and the kitchen was to the left of the stairs. I was not entirely surprised to see that apart from the stairs and the kitchen, every other room was a cell. Most looked like they had never been used. I doubted that any servants came down here and straightened them up. This was a bit surprising as it was obvious that the kitchen had been used a lot at some point. It was possible, or maybe probable, that they had someone cooking, just like they were having me do.
