Hostage

by Rachel Manija Brown

Santiago followed Kerry out. The moment the door was shut, she took his hand. He walked beside her quietly. He was obviously too upset for the reunion kisses she had hardly dared to imagine until she’d heard that he was safe.

  Safe. Nobody in Gold Point was safe. She squeezed his fingers as she sorted out her goals. She had to get Ross out immediately, so they could get a head start before Father noticed they were missing. She had to protect Santiago, and Santiago’s family.

  By the time they reached her bedroom, she had a plan. She set Kogatana and the gauntlet on the bed, beckoned Santiago inside, closed the door, and pulled the curtains. Pru’s hawks didn’t fly at night, but there was no point in taking chances.

  They locked their arms around each other and lost themselves in kisses, every bit as sweet and wild as she’d hoped. More. But his body was tense, and his breathing stuttered from more than passion.

  She forced herself to break away and set her hands on his shoulders. He instantly dropped his arms.

  “My team’s dead, aren’t they?” He spoke flatly, clearly already knowing the answer.

  Kerry nodded, feeling guilty for not breaking it to him gently, as she’d planned.

  A tear overflowed and ran down his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away, or even seem to notice. “I knew they’d rather fight to the death than come back and report that they failed to rescue you. I wanted to go with them, but the king wouldn’t let me. And now . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Santiago, what happened with Ross? Why did he try to kill Father? Was he trying to escape?”

  He shook his head. Kerry listened in amazement as he explained how Ross had nearly killed himself to prevent her father from getting weapons.

  “I knew the king had seen everything. I told Ross to confess and beg for mercy.” Santiago sounded as if he was confessing himself.

  No hawk could see inside the ruined city, with its impenetrable canopy of green. From the sound of it, if Santiago had known that, he would have covered up the entire thing.

  But what the king could and couldn’t see was a royal secret. It had never occurred to Kerry to tell Santiago, no matter how much it annoyed her to see him nervously glancing over his shoulder.

  Santiago was rushing on, somewhat incoherently. “Ross pulled me out of the lake! He offered to take me to Las Anclas! He saved my life three times—four times—I don’t even know how many times! I tried my best to save him, but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t save him, I couldn’t save my team, I couldn’t save you! I wish—”

  He looked around wildly, then said, louder, “But of course your father is doing the right thing.”

  “What Father’s doing is terrible,” Kerry said bluntly. “You don’t need to pretend it’s all right. Everything here is wrong. I have to leave Gold Point.”

  “What are you saying? Don’t talk about things like that!” He made a wide gesture, as if spies were hidden all over the room.

  “Father can’t hear us at night or indoors.” She meant to tell him the details, but the habit of secrecy stopped her. “You know that if you ever ran away, Father would kill someone in your family. You can’t tell me you agree with that.”

  Santiago looked around again. “Are you sure no one’s listening?” When she nodded, he whispered, “Of course I know that’s not right. What happened to you?”

  “I got away from this.” She gestured widely, like he had. “I got away from people being afraid for their families. Afraid to speak up, afraid of the truth. I got away from heads on pikes. And sending armies to kill people in towns that didn’t do anything to us. I don’t want to live that way anymore, Santiago. And I want you to go with me.”

  He jumped up, then sank back down again, whispering, “I can’t.”

  “You can,” she whispered back. “I have a plan. All those lessons Father gave me about strategy and tactics were really useful. Here’s what we’ll do. First, I’ll get travel supplies. Then I’ll take Ross out of the hell cell.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I’m the crown princess. I can do anything I want.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Santiago said. “The guards beat the hell out of him, and the king had them break his arm. They had to drag him out. He couldn’t even stand up. He’s not going anywhere.”

  “I’m getting him out if I have to carry him.”

  “Forget it, Kerry. It’s impossible.”

  “You don’t tell me what to do.” She didn’t speak in anger, but she heard the icy threat in her own voice.

  Santiago froze, then cautiously stood up backed away. Suddenly they were no longer boyfriend and girlfriend, but princess and subject. Had that always been what they were, and she’d just never noticed?

  She caught his hands, drawing him back. “I promised, Santiago. I gave my word, and I mean to keep it. I can’t let him die. Especially after he saved you.” With him sitting beside her again, she went on. “I have a plan to protect you and your family. You can’t come with us right away. It’ll look suspicious. I’ll leave a note saying that I fell in love with Ross and I’m running away with him.”

  Santiago exclaimed, “You think the king will believe that?”

  “I think he’ll find it easier to believe than the truth. I have to convince him that I don’t love you any more, and he won’t have any trouble believing that I fell for someone new. Think how many stepmothers I’ve got!”

  Santiago grimaced.

  “It’ll work,” Kerry insisted. “Father is pleased with you, and if he thinks I don’t love you any more, then he won’t need to make an example out of you. Wait a couple months, then disappear while you’re on patrol. People will think some animal got you. If it seems like an accident, Father won’t blame your family.”

  Santiago was shaking his head slowly.

  “You want us to be together, don’t you?” Kerry asked, doubtful and uneasy. Everything seemed unreal. Santiago had never argued with her before.

  “More than anything,” he replied, and she knew he meant it. “But you’re not the first person to think of staging an accident. A patroller disappeared last year. The king thought she’d run away, and he put her husband’s head on a pike. A couple months later, we found her body in a crevasse. She’d died in an accident. But we were ordered not to tell anyone. I can’t risk it.”

  Santiago squeezed her hands so hard it hurt, but she didn’t care. “Kerry, let’s pretend this conversation never happened. You’re the princess. Some day you’ll be the queen, and you can change things. You could allow people to leave. You could make it the sort of place no one would want to leave.”

  Kerry looked away from his pleading gaze. Here was her room, with her bed turned down. Here was her bathroom, with steam curling up from her bathtub, the only scent fresh water. Here were her shelves of ancient books and wardrobe of clothes that she’d designed herself.

  If she left, she’d be giving it all up. Even if she and Ross made it to Las Anclas, she’d never be a princess again. Worst of all, she’d never see Santiago again.

  Her eyes burned. “I made a promise.”

  Santiago leaned closer, his breath warm on her cheek. “You didn’t see what they did to Ross. I did. If you try to escape with him, you’ll both end up dead. I hate to say it, Kerry, but the kindest thing you could do for him would be to go to his cell and kill him yourself.”

  Santiago’s hands gripped hers. Kogatana cuddled trustingly against her hip. Images blew through her mind like leaves in the wind. Yuki’s grim face as he shouted at her to run. Ross curled up in a corner, shivering in a hot room. Mia reaching out to touch Ross’s old shirt hanging over a chair. Becky dabbing witch hazel on her bruised face. Townspeople yelling at each other without a single one looking up at the sky or making the silver hair gesture, because none of them feared being executed for their opinions.

  Father gesturing at the headman to let the axe fall, with all of Gold Point gathered to watch.

  “I have to go.”

  Santiago fli
nched as if she’d hit him. She held him tight, pressing kisses to his eyes, his forehead, his soft, warm lips.

  “I broke up with you, Santiago.” For the first time, her voice was not under her control, but she didn’t care. “And that’s all you know. Go home. Stay in your room. When someone comes to find you, tell them you loved me and I broke your heart. Be mad at me, call me names, do whatever you have to do to stay safe. Got it?”

  “Got it.” He wiped his eyes. “I loved you. You broke my heart.”

  “Go,” she said fiercely, pushing him toward the door.

  He hesitated in the doorway. “But if I’m ordered out and we find you . . .”

  Kerry clenched her fists. “Shoot me first.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven. Gold Point.

  Ross

  Ross squeezed his eyes shut. An electric bulb glared bright from behind a mesh in the ceiling of the hell cell. Even with his eyes closed, he saw a dull red glow. The walls were so close that he couldn’t lie flat, and the ceiling so low that he couldn’t sit up straight. He sat hunched in the corner, trying to support his broken arm and ribs with his knees. Every breath was agony.

  The only thing worse than the pain was the regret. He should have waited for a better opportunity to get at Voske. What he’d done had only made things worse, like smashing a wasp’s nest. Voske would once again attack Las Anclas, and Ross had completely failed to protect it. He’d have no chance at fighting back when they took him from the cell at dawn to . . .

  He tried not to think of what might last all day. Voske had to have said it so Ross would imagine the worst, but he couldn’t stop imagining it. Hot coals. Electric shock. Scorpions. Fire ants. Acid. Drowning. Buried alive. Tortured with all those tools in the room the guards had made sure to show him on his way to the hell cell.

  He had to stop thinking about that. He should imagine himself somewhere else. He had the power to actually put himself somewhere else, if he could reach the crystal trees outside of Gold Point.

  Ross reached out with his mind, feeling for the bright sparks in the darkness. He could barely sense the five singing trees outside the walls. Desperately, he tried to push his mind into them, to leave his own body behind. But he was too far away, and his link with them wasn’t strong enough. All he could get from them was a sense of their presence.

  There was no escape inside his mind. He was trapped here, in this box of stone.

  The air whistled in his throat. Every breath was a fight. If the swelling got any worse, he could choke to death. Panic gripped him at the thought. But why should he fight it? It would be a better way to die than whatever Voske had planned.

  Voices. The clink of keys, and the creak of iron. Footsteps. The wooden door to his cell opened, but there was no rattle of metal. The iron grid between Ross and the door was in place, allowing whoever was in the adjoining room to reach into Ross’s cell.

  Already dawn? Fine. Get it over with.

  “No, leave me alone with him. I’ll knock when I’m done.”

  Ross recognized that voice. It was Luis.

  The door closed. Luis said in a low voice, “I’m sorry, Ross. The king ordered me to . . .” He sighed. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. There’s so much blood already, he won’t notice if I don’t. I’ll just sit here for a while.”

  Maybe Ross was already in so much pain that Luis burning him wouldn’t make that much of a difference. But even as he thought it, Ross knew it wasn’t true. Pain could always get worse. Still, nothing Luis could do to him now could be as bad as what Voske had planned for him tomorrow.

  A breath of air tore its way down his throat. Ross wished he could simply stop breathing. He could bear any amount of pain if he had some hope of making it through to the other side. But he was hurt far too badly to fight or run. He’d given everything he had in his attempt to kill Voske, and he had nothing left. If anyone from Las Anclas had ever tried to rescue him, they’d failed, just as he had failed them. There was no hope, and Ross had come to the end of his endurance.

  Ross forced the words out. “Kill me.”

  “What?” Luis said.

  Ross made himself peel an eye open. He flinched away from the sight of the hell cell’s close walls, and tried to focus through the iron grid. Luis’s silhouette loomed within arm’s reach, surrounded by glaring light. Then Ross caught a glimpse of the stone ceiling, so close overhead, and shut his eyes again.

  “Kill me.” With his left hand, he tapped the artery at the side of his throat. “Burn. Here.”

  “I can’t do that,” Luis protested. “I have strict orders.”

  “Say. Accident. I fought.” Talking hurt even more than breathing. Ross didn’t recognize his own voice. “Please.”

  Ross heard Luis draw in an unsteady breath. “You know I don’t want to hurt you.” There was a silence. Ross hoped Luis was thinking of what would be done to him at dawn. “All right.”

  Ross tipped his head back, giving Luis easy access to his throat. He was afraid, but the fear felt distant and small, smothered under a crushing, numb exhaustion. If there was anything else he could have done, he was too tired to think of it.

  He did regret that he couldn’t at least die outside, under the sky. He tried to imagine himself into a desert night, but his mind went straight to the image he’d called up so many times since his capture: sitting on his bed with Mia and Jennie holding his hands, looking up through the skylight at the stars blazing white in a perfect night sky.

  Cloth rustled. He braced himself, but the burn of Luis’s fingers across his throat made him flinch. Luis jerked his hand back.

  “Do it,” Ross whispered.

  The cell was silent except for Luis’s long sigh. Then he pressed his hand into the side of Ross’s neck. It burned like it was made of flame.

  In Ross’s mind, Jennie and Mia held his hands tight. He clenched his teeth, forcing himself not to move as he dragged in a long, harsh breath. It would be over soon. Another breath. That one didn’t hurt quite as much. The third breath didn’t hurt at all. His skin burned where Luis’s hand rested, but the inside of his throat felt as if he’d taken a gulp of cool water. His breathing no longer struggled.

  Luis took his hand away.

  Ross tried a deep breath, and winced. His broken ribs were still excruciatingly painful. He could only take shallow breaths. But he could breathe.

  He opened his eyes. Luis’s eyes were wide, his forehead dappled with sweat. He rubbed the fingers of his bare hand together. “That felt different. It felt . . . Did you get hit in the throat?”

  “Yeah.” Ross was still short of breath, but his voice sounded like himself again. “It’s better.”

  “It was like I could feel inside your body. I knew when I had to take my hand away.” Luis leaned forward. “Where else are you hurt?”

  Ross indicated his swollen forearm. His hand was mottled purple, each finger like an overstuffed sausage.

  Luis rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know about this. I’ve only ever been able to hurt people. Maybe we’re both imagining things.”

  Ross wasn’t imagining the air that moved so easily in and out of his throat, though the skin still burned where Luis had touched it. “Try. Can’t get worse.”

  Luis reached through the bars, and set his fingers lightly on the black bruise over the break. It was like having five hot coals held to his arm, but the sensation that spread from there was like cool water flowing under his skin.

  “The bone’s in the wrong place,” Luis muttered. He reached out with his gloved hand and twisted Ross’s forearm. To Ross’s surprise, it didn’t hurt. Luis continued moving Ross’s arm until he said, with satisfaction, “There.”

  Luis let go, leaving five stinging, bloody fingerprints. But the terrible pain had faded to a dull ache, and the swelling was visibly going down.

  “You didn’t . . .” Ross took a shallow breath. “. . . know?”

  Luis shook his head. “This must be what my power is supposed to do. I can feel it, now.
But the king always had me practice on healthy criminals. He said they’d be best able to appreciate it.”

  Ross pushed up his shirt, his left hand clumsy. “Got kicked. Here. Broke my ribs.”

  Luis reached in more confidently, then stopped with his hand an inch away from Ross’s side. “I think . . . No, I know it. Your skin is a barrier. I have to get through it to reach inside. If there’s no injury, my power keeps burning, searching for something that isn’t there. But I don’t think I have to touch quite so much.”

  He laid one fingertip on Ross’s side. Ross gritted his teeth as the burning pain slowly intensified.

  “A little more.” Luis let his other fingertips touch.

  Ross was thankful when Luis did no more, though if it would ease that stabbing pain in his side, Ross would have invited him to lay down his entire hand. Once again, coolness flowed out from beneath the surface burn of his touch. Ross took a cautious, shallow breath, and then a deeper one. It didn’t hurt. The relief of pain was as intense as the pain itself. Ross felt dizzy with it.

  But Luis didn’t move his hand. His forehead was creased in concentration. “It’s not just the ribs. You’re bleeding inside.”

  He pressed the first joints of his fingers into Ross’s side. Ross forced himself not to pull away. Sweat beaded on Luis’s forehead, then began to drip down. The cool sensation flowed outward from Ross’s side, filling his chest, as if he’d taken a deep breath on a cold night.

  “Got it.” Luis sat back, panting, and wiped the sweat from his eyes with a shaking hand.

  Ross felt better, stronger, clear-headed. He hadn’t even realized how sick and faint he’d been until Luis had finished healing him.

  He sat upright, forgetting the low ceiling. His head thunked into stone. “Ow.” He reached up with his right hand and rubbed his scalp. His fingers ached as if someone had stamped on his hand, but he could use them. “That was amazing. Thanks.”

  For the first time, Ross saw Luis smile. Then it fell away. “I know that wasn’t what you wanted me to do.”

  “I don’t want that any more.” Though the situation was almost as hopeless as it had been before, Ross’s numbing misery had vanished. Almost hopeless wasn’t completely hopeless. At least now he could go down fighting.