ARC: Stolen Songbird

by Danielle L. Jensen

  I nodded, not fooled by his flippancy. I had taken a chance and struck gold. Of all the things I could have asked for, this was the one he wanted to give up the least, which meant it was valuable. Within his answer lay the truth, the heart of his politics. Yes, I could have asked for him to help me escape, but I’d seen how easy it would be to get around that promise. A bird in hand was worth two on the fly, and if he gave me what I wanted, I was certain I would have something valuable indeed.

  “Just because I can’t kill you doesn’t mean I can’t hurt you,” he said, stepping forward.

  I shook my head. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “You should be.” His hand slid around my throat, thumb resting against my fluttering pulse. “I could hurt you in ways that might make you wish for death.”

  “You won’t.”

  Breath hissed between his teeth. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because if it was in you to torture the information out of me,” I said, “you’d have done it already.” I leaned towards him, and his hand slipped from my throat to cup the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my curls. “You hate the way your father is, how he treats the half-bloods. I heard it in your voice yesterday, but more than that, I felt it.” I pressed a hand against his chest and for the first time ever, he did not recoil at my touch. “You aren’t like him.”

  His heart thudded rapidly, the heat of his skin warming my hand through his shirt.

  “Life would be much easier if I were,” he said softly. Sighing, he moved back, putting an arm’s length of distance between us. “You drive a hard bargain, but I suppose I have no choice.”

  “You do have a choice,” I said. “That’s what makes this difficult.”

  A faint smile brushed his lips.

  “Tell me,” I urged.

  He rested his head against the bars above my head and I felt the great burden of his misery press down on my shoulders, words bursting out of him in a wild torrent: “I didn’t want you brought here. I fought my father’s decision at every turn, but he wouldn’t listen. All he cares about is breaking the curse. He will stop at nothing to get free.”

  “I could help you,” I said, watching the rapid rise and fall of his chest. “If I broke the curse, your father would have no reason not to let me go.” I knew his feelings about the curse were complex, and it was high time I got to the bottom of them.

  “No!” Tristan jerked away from me, eyes wide. “I mean…” He held up one hand. “Breaking the curse has consequences.”

  “You don’t say.” I crossed my arms.

  Tristan grimaced. “Do you want my father released on the world?”

  “Hardly,” I snapped. “I’d like to see him dead, but fat as he is, I don’t suspect he intends on keeling over for a long time.”

  “What he intends may not matter,” he replied softly. “If everything goes according to plan. My plan.”

  An odd sense of relief went through me at his admission. “You’re a sympathizer. You’re their leader, aren’t you?”

  He nodded and took hold of my shoulders, giving me a gentle shake. “If you betray me to Angoulême, he’ll tell my father. And my father won’t just kill me. He’ll kill Zoé and Élise, and countless others you haven’t even met. And even if by some miracle you survive my death, he’ll make sure it isn’t for long.”

  “I understand,” I said. “You have my word that I won’t say anything.”

  Still gripping my shoulders, he said, “In a year, I’ll be eighteen, which is when troll magic matures and reaches its full strength. I’m…” He hesitated. “I’m already a match for him now. By then, I’ll be stronger. Stronger than any troll alive; and in Trollus, power is king.”

  I gasped. “You intend to depose your own father?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and let go of me. “In a manner of speaking.”

  Coldness swept over me. “You plan to kill him.”

  “Sometimes,” he said, so quietly I could barely hear him, “one must do the unthinkable.”

  “It’s treason.” Worse than treason, what he was contemplating was patricide. The murder of his own father.

  “Yes.”

  “What about your mother? If you kill your father, won’t she die too?” I thought about it for a minute. “And your aunt?”

  Tristan looked sick and felt worse. “It’s a possibility, but my aunt believes she can keep my mother alive.”

  “She knows then? What about your mother?”

  He gave a slight nod. “Only my aunt – it is easy enough to muffle our conversations with magic. My mother isn’t the suspicious sort.” He rolled his shoulders, the movement reflecting his discomfort. “It was my aunt’s plan from the beginning. She despises him and how he rules Trollus.”

  There had to be more to it than that. “Why?”

  “She had a… a friend. He was a half-blood and they were very close.” Tristan grimaced in discomfort. “Because of the conjoined nature of my mother and aunt, my father has a tendency to consider them both his. When he found out about my aunt’s… friendship, he had the man flayed in public. Twice.” He closed his eyes. “Even a half-blood can survive a great deal of torture. I believe the executioner deliberately sliced the artery in the man’s leg for fear that if he survived, my father would order him flayed a third time. And a fourth.”

  My knees wobbled at thought of enduring so much torture – if there was a downside to the troll’s near-invincibility, this was surely it.

  Tristan continued. “He’s never ordered the execution of a full-blooded troll – there are too few of us left – but he orders the deaths of half-bloods for the slightest offence. And they are never clean deaths.”

  Gruesome, horrible deeds, but such is the nature of kings – human or troll. I could understand the Duchesse wanting to see him dead because of what had been done to her friend, but what had pushed Tristan over the edge so that he would consider killing his own father?

  As though anticipating the question, Tristan said, “I had a human friend, once. He was old and wore funny clothes. He always brought me candy and told me stories. He never treated me like I was a prince or even like I was a troll – he treated me like I was just a boy. My father killed him to punish me.” He lowered his head. “I couldn’t do anything to stop him. I was young and helpless against him. But I’m not anymore.”

  Closing my eyes, I shuffled through his emotions. Fear. Shame. Doubt. And how did I feel about becoming an accomplice in a murder plot? I hated his father – he’d arranged for my kidnapping, ruined my life. To him, I was a tool here to serve a purpose, and ultimately, disposable. But could I stand by and see a man killed? I didn’t need to think long or hard. In this case, not only would I willingly stand by, I’d stick the knife in myself. If that made me a bad person, then so be it. But even with the King dead, one fundamental problem remained.

  “The sympathizers,” I said. “They don’t just want to be rid of your father – they want to be rid of all the troll nobility so that there’s no one powerful enough left to lord over them. What’s to stop them from killing all your friends, all your family, other than the fact they need you to keep Forsaken Mountain off their heads?” Then the realization dawned on me: he was waiting until he was in power before breaking the curse. Not only would he be king, he’d be a hero to his people. I opened my mouth to say as much, but then snapped it shut again. Withholding freedom from a city full of people was certainly a dangerous secret, but knowing he was doing so did nothing to explain the purpose of his diagrams. “Well?” I finally asked.

  He took a deep breath. “Are we in agreement then? You will tell me the location of all my papers in exchange for me explaining their contents?”

  “Yes,” I said. What could be more important than the knowledge he was purposefully keeping the curse in place? “I agree.”

  “You must understand: Marc, Anaïs, and the twins are the only ones who know. And I only trust them because I have their true…” He broke off. “Why I tru
st them is irrelevant. My point is, I have no such assurance from you.”

  I said nothing. Telling him he could trust me wouldn’t make a difference. I could lie.

  Tristan took a deep breath. “The documents contain the plans for building a structure that would support the rock.”

  “No magic required,” I whispered.

  “Not after I finish building it.”

  “But to what purpose?” I demanded. “Once you are king, won’t you just do what is necessary to break the curse? With it gone, couldn’t you fling off all the rock, or… or, leave this place?”

  “That is a possibility.” There was no emotion in his voice, but I could see the forced rise and fall of his chest. He was controlling his breathing, trying to control his emotions so that I couldn’t read him. But why? What more was he hiding?

  I bit my lip. “You don’t think the curse can be broken, do you?”

  He sucked in a deep breath and sighed. “It may be too much to ask for.”

  “Low expectations, right?”

  “You’ve a good memory,” he said. “I know I can build. I have no such certainty about how to end our imprisonment.”

  Which was just as well for me. Once I escaped this place, I’d sleep far better at night knowing the trolls could not get out. Pushing aside those thoughts, I turned my attention back to his plans.

  “But if you build this for the half-bloods, they wouldn’t need you anymore,” I said. “What’s to stop them from killing you? Get you out of the way rather than risk future enslavement?”

  “Goodwill?” he said, a faint smile touching his lips. “They could call me Tristan the Liberator and compose songs in my honor.”

  “My question was serious, Tristan,” I replied. “And what of all the full-blooded trolls? Will they kill them all?”

  “Hardly,” he said. “I’ve negotiated the safety of most. There is a list of names they have sworn not to harm.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t see all of them thanking you for freeing their servants. For diminishing their power.”

  “And there lies the rub,” he said softly. “In freeing thousands from servitude, I will be gaining many powerful enemies. I have no doubt the attempts on my life will come often and regularly. But the benefits of the many are worth the risks to myself.”

  I bit my lip. “You don’t seem as concerned as you should.”

  The corner of his mouth turned up. “I’m exceedingly difficult to kill.”

  “But I’m not.”

  Tristan’s smirk fell away. “No,” he said. “You are not. Which is why I didn’t want you brought here. I am very sorry for that.”

  I’d saved him from one death only to allow him to walk freely towards the promise of another. And not just his death, mine too. Sharp tears stung in my eyes, blurring my vision so that I did not see him reach over until he tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “It will take years to build, Cécile, and I promise, the instant I have control over Trollus, I will send you away and pay as many humans as I must to keep you safe. To go and live how and where you might wish.”

  Forever fearing the assassin that would come for me in order to kill him.

  “I know this is a great deal to take in, and likely not the answer you were expecting,” he said in a low voice. “But don’t focus on what might happen years down the road – focus on the now. If I am discovered before I am ready to strike, we will both be dead. I must keep up the ruse that I am loyal to my father and, in order to do that, I must make people continue to believe that I view humanity with contempt.”

  My chin jerked up and down with understanding.

  “I will ignore you. Be cruel to you. And you must play along. Act sad and unhappy. Never give anyone a reason to think I’ve shown you a moment’s kindness or that I’ve confided in you in any way. And above all, never let anyone suspect that I care one way or another whether you live or die, beyond how it might impact me.”

  “Do you?” I asked, stepping towards him before I knew what I was doing. We were nearly touching now, and he smelled clean, of soap, with a faint hint of leather and steel – like a boy should.

  “So many questions,” he said, smoothing my disheveled hair back from my face, his hand running down the length of it until it rested at the small of my back. I trembled beneath his touch: not from fear, but something else. Something that made the blood in my veins boil while raising goose bumps along my skin. His hand tightened around my waist. My lips parted slightly and the overwhelming need to have him pull me closer flooded over me like an ocean wave. My eyes drifted up his chest, past his throat, coming to rest on his face. He was watching me through long black lashes, his eyes half closed; and in them, I thought I saw something, knew I felt something…

  Abruptly a veil fell over his eyes, hiding whatever it was I thought I’d seen, if it had ever been there at all. His face resumed the mask of indifference he always wore, callous and arrogant. And he was angry. “Where did you hide my plans, Cécile?”

  “Sewn into the draperies in your bedroom.” The words came out without my bidding them to do so, as though I had no control over my own tongue. Be careful making promises to a troll.

  I blinked once and he was gone, the thunder of the waterfall deafening my ears once more.

  CHAPTER 15

  CéCILE

  I did not let the momentum that came from my encounter with Tristan go to waste. I had hope now – and something to look forward to. Most of all, I had an ally, and a powerful one at that. But Tristan’s plan would take time to enact – time that I had no intention of wasting by moping around in my bedroom.

  “Élise,” I said, having found her making the bed. “If I wanted to speak with the Duchesse, how would I go about doing so?”

  Élise smoothed a hand over the blankets. “You could send her a card requesting an audience.”

  I frowned, not at all fond of the idea of waiting around for a response to an invitation.

  “Or I could take you to see her now,” she said, a smile touching the corner of her lips. “The Duchesse is not a stickler for formality – or of anything she considers an inefficient use of time. She’ll not mind you dropping by unannounced.”

  “You seem to know a great deal about her,” I murmured as we walked through the corridors. Now that I had my own light, I was able to pause and examine the artwork lining the endless corridors of the palace. I tried to find little details to remember to help mark my way.

  “She was my first charge, when I turned fifteen.”

  “Really?” I stopped in my tracks and turned to her in surprise, accidentally blinding her with my light in the process. “I wouldn’t have thought someone so young would…” I trailed off.

  “Have the privileged position to empty the chamber pots of the Duchesse and the Queen?”

  I flushed, because that was precisely what I’d been thinking.

  “She knew my mother,” Élise continued. “She purchased the rights to Zoé and me when we were quite young, so we had many years to prepare for serving royalty.”

  There was an edge to her voice that I could not help but notice. “Sorry,” I muttered, certain that I had offended her.

  “Why?” she asked, knocking firmly on a door. “It wasn’t any of your doing, and besides, there are worse things than being a lady’s maid. I could be dredging sewers or working in the mines.”

  Choice. The word came swiftly to my mind although I did not speak it aloud. Until these last few days, I had not truly appreciated what it meant to have control over one’s own life. The right to choose mattered – and it was a right none of the half-bloods had.

  “What do you want?” shrieked a voice from inside the room.

  “It’s me!” I shouted back. “Cécile!” Squaring my shoulders, I turned the handle and went inside.

  “Cécile!” the Queen exclaimed as she caught sight of me. Rising to her feet, she hurried over and kissed me on both cheeks while I was still mid-curtsey. I wheezed as she pulled me into
a hug that made my ribs creak.

  “Don’t break her, Matilde,” the Duchesse shouted over her shoulder. “She’s positively fragile.”

  “I’m not really,” I said, smiling awkwardly at the Queen as she led me towards a sitting area surrounded by mirrors. “I did grow up on a farm, you know.”

  “These things, as is often the case, are relative,” the Duchesse replied.

  “Your hair is positively tangles,” the Queen declared, seemingly oblivious to our conversation. Picking up a hairbrush, she pushed me down on a stool in the middle of the circle of benches and began to work the snags out of my hair.

  “Just let her,” the Duchesse said, the soft tone of her voice out of character. “She is better when she has someone to mother.”

  I nodded into the reflection of the mirrors, which had clearly been set up for this purpose.

  “Why are you here?”

  Élise had been right – Tristan’s aunt was not one for wasting time.

  I cleared my throat. “Before, you said there were opportunities for me here in Trollus – that little would be denied me. I’d… I’d like to take advantage of that.”

  She took a mouthful of tea and watched me in the mirror. I waited for her to ask me what had changed, but she only nodded. “Is there something in particular you wish to pursue?”

  Knowledge. “I’m not sure,” I replied.

  “Music?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Not that.” My singing was my own – the thing I was best at, that I cared about most. I did not want them interfering in that.

  “Art? Literature? History? Language?” She rattled off a series of topics.

  “All of those things,” I agreed.

  The Duchesse bit her lower lip and then smiled. “Things to pass the time.”

  I realized then that she didn’t need to ask what had changed – somehow, she already knew. And it became just as clear to me that the matter of Tristan’s politics and plans was not something that would be overtly discussed between us.

  “The game you play,” I pointed towards the boards hovering in the corner. “Will you teach it to me?”