Drifters’ blood. Jakor was murdering Drifters in the name of healing. All of the vanished Drifters—Taldo, who had saved my mother from the brink of death, and so many other unnamed victims—they were all dead, their blood lying thick and stagnant beneath the University. Jakor’s assistant was a Drifter too; when he no longer had a ready supply of blood within Baylore, would he turn to Samara next? Little though I had liked her, it twisted my stomach to know what could await her. Did she know?
The nausea subsided, and as it did my pulse quickened. I shut the journal with a snap and tucked it beneath my arm. Wrapping my cloak tighter about my shoulders, more for reassurance than for warmth, I strode out of The Queen’s Bed and into the crowded square.
My anger built with each step. Any trace of fear was pounded to dust on the cobblestones. As the University gates came into view, I straightened my shoulders.
The gates were closed, as always, but when I came to a halt before them, another student approached from the inside and unbolted the iron latch. I slipped through with a friendly nod in his direction, implying I recognized him from some class.
I made it ten steps across the courtyard before the gatekeeper saw me.
“Oi! Where do you think you’re going?”
My breath caught. Ducking my head, I quickened my pace. I just had to reach the end of the courtyard and race up the stairs, and from there Volandrik would sort everything out.
“Someone stop her,” the guard bellowed. “Arrest her!”
I snagged my skirts in one hand and broke into a run. Students were turning and gaping, some stepping out of my path, one or two making a halfhearted attempt to grab me. Someone shouted encouragement, and another whistled.
The commotion must have roused the administrator, because his door crashed open and he emerged, blinking at the sunlight and looking sourer by the moment.
“What is the meaning of this?” he growled. Then he saw me. “You have been banned from the grounds! Who let you in?”
At that exact moment, the gatekeeper hollered, “Seize her!”
“Volandrik,” I panted. “Just need to talk—to Volandrik.”
Before anyone could react, I sprinted past the final clump of students and skidded to the base of the stairs. I turned, ready to dash up to the first floor, and caught myself just in time. Someone was blocking my way.
Jakor.
“What a surprise,” he said icily.
I stumbled backward and nearly fell.
“You know what we said about trespassing.” His boot heel clicked as he stepped from the bottom stair onto the landing; only then did I notice the hush that had fallen over the courtyard.
I blinked at him, unable to think quickly enough to reply. Then I saw an opening. Doubling over, I darted for the space between his right shoulder and the stairwell.
Faster than a hawk, Jakor shot out an arm and clamped his talons about my wrist.
“Call the city guards.”
In the shifting silence, Jakor’s words reached every ear in the courtyard. Someone—likely the gatekeeper—slipped away to do the professor’s bidding, while Jakor gave my wrist a sharp tug and dragged me across the courtyard. When I tried to wrench my arm free, he twisted it back in such a fierce angle I thought my elbow might snap. Eyes stinging, I relented and shuffled along in his wake.
The city guards were already waiting for me past the gates. Efficient, I thought sourly. There were three of them, two sandy-haired young studs and an older, much shorter man who looked as though he gave the orders.
“She was banned from the University under penalty of arrest,” Jakor said smoothly, proffering my wrist. “She is yours.”
“It’s him you want to arrest,” I said desperately.
The guards acted as though they had not heard. Each of the young guards took hold of a shoulder and marched me away from the University. I could not believe this was happening to me. Surely Volandrik had noticed the hubbub in the courtyard, and would come to my aid. And why had the administrator said nothing? Jakor acted as though his was the voice of authority, and his declaration had gone unchallenged. Even the city guards should have questioned him! I was indignant and frightened and helpless, and it was all I could do to keep from tripping over the cobblestones as I shuffled along between the guards.
Once the first wave of panic had subsided, I began to worry about what would come next. “Will there be a trial? There has to be a trial. I was unfairly arrested.”
The guards did not deign to answer, so I babbled on.
“I have evidence. To convict Professor Jakor, I mean. He’s the one you were meant to arrest, not me. He killed Hunter.” The name stuck in my throat. Along with it came an itching feeling of shame. Hunter would not have pleaded or lost his wits like this; he would have charmed his way straight out of trouble.
“Am I to be put in the cells? The actual cells? Is anyone allowed to see me?”
At last the short, hard-faced man grunted. “Your family will be notified, if you so choose.”
“Oh, no!” They would kill me. Then an image flashed before me, of a body rotting in the corner of a dank cell, forgotten for years until rats had eaten away the wasted flesh. I swallowed. “I guess my parents would want to know.”
We had reached the central square. A few people cast curious glances my way, but most eyes slid right past. Nine plagues, what would the prince think if he saw me now?
Everyone knew about the cells beneath the palace, but until now I had been left to guess at the location of their entrance. The guards steered me past the palace, past the cathedral, and down the street of council blocks that formed the western wall of the cathedral grounds. Then we were approaching the palace from the rear. Halting before a nondescript brick wall, the short guard dug a key from his pocket and unlocked a sturdy-looking door I assumed would open onto the palace grounds.
It did not. Instead, the door led to a set of stairs descending into blackness. The prison depths exhaled a rank swirl of icy air, and goosebumps rippled up my arms.
Studying my expression, some of the hardness eased from the face of the short guard. “Your crime is minor,” he said. “We will arrange a quick trial, and you will be released shortly thereafter if someone comes forward to pay your bail.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. His unexpected kindness nearly brought me to tears.
One of the younger guards took a torch from a mangled wall sconce, lit it with a hiss, and led the way into the abyss. The door shut with a click behind us, plunging the stairwell into a darkness thicker and staler than night. One guard kept pace beside me, though he no longer had to restrain me, since I clutched his arm for balance. The dancing torchlight warped the stone steps; each footfall was an act of blind faith. For eons we descended, until all warmth had bled from the air and I smelled years of decay engulfing us. We were below the palace ballroom, below the storerooms and wine cellars beneath that, and below even the deep, musty royal crypt. Burial was reserved for kings and queens; it was the ritual that set them apart, entombed forever like a pirate’s bounty, where all others were released to the wind in grand funeral pyres.
Those royal bodies, preserved and undisturbed for eternity, put me in mind of Hunter’s sister, and I could not repress a single violent shiver. By all the powers of good, I hoped she remained dead.
Abruptly the stairs ended; my knees buckled when I tried to take another step down and collided instead with the ground. The short guard unlocked a barred door directly at the foot of the stairs—this I took as a good sign, since I was unlikely to be forgotten here—and escorted me into the cell.
Then the door clanged shut and the guards were gone. The lantern left burning beside me was their sole act of charity.
In the weak circle of light shed by the lantern, I could make out a sagging cot against the far wall. The light extended across half of the cell beside mine, though not to the extent that I could tell whether it was occupied. Imagining a bony pair of arms slithering from that cell and gropi
ng for me, I took the lantern and retreated to the back of the cell, where I sat at the exact center of the cot. Only rats could reach me here.
Wrapping my cloak snug about my throat and retracting my arms into its depths until nothing but my hands were exposed, I lay Hunter’s journal on my knees and let it fall open somewhere near the beginning. Even here, helpless and terrified as I was, Hunter’s words had power over me. I yearned for them as I yearned for the warmth of the afternoon sun.
The entry I had chosen was one from Borderville, back when we had yet to grow accustomed to one another’s company. From there I lost myself in Hunter’s writing, sitting hunched before the lantern, his memories merging with my own. As I read his more introspective entries, I could see him writing, pen held gracefully in his powerful hand, a rarely-seen solemnity intensifying his features.
Certain entries stood out to me, days I remembered vividly from his snatches of description.
Dear Cady,
I am such a blundering fool. I cannot believe how miserably I treated you last night! I am becoming a likeness of my father, and it makes me wish to spit in my own face. I get too wrapped up in this deception sometimes, truly I do. If I were allowed to cast off the falsehoods, I would tell you I loved you and wished to marry you and would treat you like a queen. Instead, I find myself flirting with the most obnoxious local girls and, upon seeing the hurt you try to hide, mocking you for it.
I am an ass. I don’t deserve you; even if I did propose to you, I half suspect you would kick me into the dirt.
Who prods me and dresses me and forces me to make it to my own shows on time? Who washes the clothes I have slopped food on? Who reminds me again and again not to get caught up in my arrogance?
I don’t deserve you.
Your unworthy
Hunter
At one point I moved to the floor to lean against the cot, my back stiff from hunching forward, and it was there I fell into a doze.
The rattling of keys startled me awake what felt like mere minutes later, and my head snapped forward. The cold emanating from the stone floor had seeped by degrees through my entire body; I could have been a statue carved from ice.
The door rasped open to admit a hulking man with a gnarled, lopsided face.
“Git up,” he barked.
I snapped the journal shut and stuffed it unnecessarily beneath the cot before struggling to my feet. My knees were so stiff they did not want to straighten properly. I wished to stretch out my shoulders and arch my aching back, but I did not dare.
“We’ve had no word of yer comin’,” the warden said, as though accusing me of dropping in unannounced. “Yers is the lucky cell. If there en’t no one here to speak for ye in five days, it’s the pit for ye.” His warped mouth stretched in a mocking leer. I hoped the pit was just a figure of speech. “Arms out t’ the side.”
“What?”
His leer widened. “Ye heard me.”
I felt very vulnerable as I did as commanded. Starting with my wrists, he patted my arms up to the shoulders in what was clearly a routine search for concealed weapons. But when he reached my torso, he gave my breasts a rougher squeeze than was necessary, and lower down he jammed his thumb between my legs. He looked up and caught my eye in that instant, and all traces of humor were wiped from his face. This is what happens if you cause trouble, he seemed to say. Every muscle in my body was screaming at me to run, but there was nowhere to go. A harsher law ruled these cells, and there was no authority higher than the warden.
At last he stood, kicked the journal farther beneath the cot, and turned on his heel. I did not dare let out my breath until he had locked the door and stumped down the hallway, his echoing footfalls dying in the gloom.
I did not realize how much I was shaking until I tried to kneel to retrieve Hunter’s journal and instead teetered sideways. I had to catch myself on the cot. Once I had the journal safe in my hands, I clutched it to my stomach and curled my knees to my chest. The warden had left me feeling slimy, sullied. I could take no more comfort from Hunter’s words. The man I had loved was gone, irretrievably lost. I was foolish to find solace in the knowledge that he had once loved me too. His love was irrelevant now. I comforted myself with the words of a dead man.
By clinging to his memory, refusing to relinquish his words, I was as delusional as Jakor. Some small, desperate part of me imagined that by redeeming Hunter’s legend, I could reawaken a piece of him.
I wanted to cry, but the cold and emptiness had penetrated so deep I had no tears to spare.
Chapter 20
M y life resolved itself into a barren consciousness of the passing of time. I had just five days in which I could be saved. Five wretched, interminable days.
I could not stomach the first few meals, but by dinnertime the second day I was so ravenous I was daydreaming about juicy rats roasting on a spit. I shoveled down the cold, lumpy meal when it came, a congealed gruel of millet and lard and scraps of gristly meat, and was already eager for breakfast by the time I had licked the bowl clean. As before, I wondered if some silent, lecherous old man was staring at me from the cell next door, privately mocking my desperation. Just to be safe, I made certain that my skirts covered me whenever I relieved myself in the hole in the corner. The boys I had grown up with liked to tell stories of men digging their way from prison through the latrine holes, but the thought made me gag.
Near the end of the fourth day, a flicker of light approaching in the stairwell jolted me from my gloom. I noticed it immediately—I had been sitting at the edge of the cot and staring at the cell door, useless thoughts chasing themselves in circles through my head. A hundred times I had resolved to forget Hunter and his diary, to move on with my life—what was left of it, that is—yet every night I fell asleep with the journal in my arms.
Now the guttering flame was accompanied by the soft click of footsteps. I twisted my hands in my lap, trying not to hope too desperately for salvation.
The first face to emerge from the shadows was that of the short, hard-faced city guard. Even that was such a relief it weakened me.
Then I saw my parents.
I couldn’t breathe. Had they actually come for me? My parents? Tears sprang to my eyes, and I felt like a child again. I no longer cared if they were angry with me. I was saved—that was the only thing that mattered.
“She’s there,” the guard muttered, nodding to my cell. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and leaned against the wall, wiping sweat from his forehead.
My parents hurried up to the bars.
“Cady?” my father said. “Are you holding out?” His voice was thin and betrayed a note of fear.
“Oh, thank the founders,” my mother said. She sagged to her knees in front of my cell, gripping the bars.
Cautiously, not trusting my legs, I walked to the bars and stood before my father. He appeared smaller and more careworn than I remembered, though it could have been the light.
“You okay?” he asked gently.
I nodded. “What did they tell you?”
“Only that you had been arrested. We just found out this morning, or we would have come sooner. They said your crime was minor. I think the trial is meant to be tomorrow.”
I put a fist to my forehead, trying to hold back tears. I was to be released.
“And then we’ll pay the bail, and you can come home,” my mother said. “Please. You should come live at home for a while. I want to take care of you. Make up for your time away.” She was still kneeling, and for once I believed her distress was genuine.
“What happened?” my father whispered, glancing back at the guard. “What have you done to offend the law?”
“I can’t explain everything now,” I said. I paused. “Maybe I should. It’s a long story, though.”
My father glanced again at the guard, who had now taken a seat on the bottom step. “He doesn’t seem in any hurry to leave. Explain away.”
Biting my lip, I nodded. I had never shared this part of my life w
ith anyone, least of all my parents, but Jakor had to be stopped, and I could not do it alone. “You saw that article about how I was…with Hunter.”
They nodded.
“He was trying to bring his sister back from the dead. She was young when she died, and Hunter always thought it was his fault. So he found a man—Professor Jakor—who claimed he could reawaken the dead. That’s what the whole event on Midsummer’s Day was about. Hunter was going to present his sister and fix things with his family.” I hugged my arms across my stomach. “Just before he died, Hunter learned how Professor Jakor’s magic was supposed to work. He’s been killing Drifters, and using their blood.”
My father’s eyes widened. “Are you certain?”
“Goodness,” my mother said faintly. “Is that where our neighbor went?”
I swallowed. “I think so. The only proof I have is Hunter’s journal, though. I enrolled at the University to see what Professor Jakor was up to, because I didn’t know until four days ago what he had been doing. I knew he’d been working with Hunter, and I thought he was the one who sabotaged Hunter’s flying coat.”
“Was he?” my father said quickly.
“I can’t prove that part, since Hunter didn’t notice anything was wrong with the coat, but I’m certain of it.” I rubbed at the goosebumps on my arms. “Anyway, I started looking around, and Professor Jakor caught me. I was suspended, and he said I would be arrested if I set foot in the University again.”
“And you did, of course,” my father said. “Well, I suppose that’s a relief. You have no idea what was going through our heads when we heard you’d been arrested! I thought you might have gotten tangled in one of those black-market trading schemes.”
I snorted. “Not quite. But the only reason I went back was because I wanted to talk to one of the professors. I had just found Hunter’s journal, and he described what Professor Jakor was doing. I wanted to tell the school straightaway, so he didn’t get a chance to hurt anyone else.”
“I doubt the diary would be evidence enough,” my father said. “Someone needs to go down to the University and find that secret room of his.”
Hunter's Legend_A Baylore High Fantasy Page 19
