Warlords, Witches and Wolves: A Fantasy Realms Anthology

by Michelle Diener

  “And if he's escaped?”

  “The door was locked, remember? Chances are the general demanded to see him.” Juni sounded like he was trying to convince himself, but his words had the desired effect.

  “That's true, it was locked.” The soldier with him gave a nervous laugh. “Still, let's get out of here.”

  They moved away, with none of the laughter and joking they'd shared coming down, their boots ringing a quick staccato.

  When they were gone, Luc eased a little away from Ava and looked down at her. “All right?” He was pressed up close to her, and he could see the sweep of her eyelashes in the flickering torchlight.

  He moved aside and she stepped around him.

  He must be cold, he realized. He felt a physical ache as she moved away. His shirt had long been ripped off him, and as they'd pressed together in the small crevice, her body heat had helped to warm him.

  Ava looked in the direction of the stairs. “Let's try the other way first.”

  He nodded, turning to lead the way. The stone floor was icy on his bare feet, and he shivered.

  “I should have brought a blanket for you. I'm sorry.” Her words were soft behind him, and he gave a grunt in response.

  A bit of cold was nothing.

  Freedom was worth any price.

  They neither heard nor saw anyone as they walked the unlit corridor.

  Ava worried they would find themselves at a dead end and be caught, unable to evade whoever came to look for them.

  Luc must have worried about that, too, because she ran in to him a few times in the darkness, standing with his head tilted back the way they had come, listening for signs of pursuit.

  His torso looked terrible, black and red, swollen where he'd been hit.

  “They didn't just use their fists, did they?” She reached out to touch him, but withdrew her hand before her fingertips made contact.

  He glanced back, his eyes widening at the sight of her outstretched hand. Shook his head. “Sticks.”

  She had been beaten only once, when she'd escaped the first time, and that had been because Herron had been in residence and he had been so angry, he had grabbed a sword from one of his guards and hit her with the pommel.

  That was when she'd had to stitch herself above her eye.

  She'd been told her legs would be broken if she escaped again, but Herron hadn't been around the second time, and no one had had the nerve to do it, in case Herron had changed his mind.

  He'd told the general in charge of the fortress she was being kept as an alliance-maker-in-waiting. To be married off to someone useful to the kingdom.

  Herron even had a list of husbands under consideration.

  The guards had decided some of them might object to a crippled bride and wouldn't take the risk of being blamed later.

  Of course, that wasn't why she was locked up. Herron would never risk letting her free.

  If she wouldn't help him—and she wouldn’t—he couldn’t allow her to go free to help anyone else.

  Which meant she had to die.

  She had no worries about being given in marriage in some grubby exchange for military support or trade routes.

  Herron was sure she'd turn whoever her husband was against him and her aunt within weeks.

  And he wasn't wrong.

  In front of her, Luc slowed, and she noticed he was limping. She worried that he was flagging.

  His feet were bare, and he stooped slightly in the chill air.

  When she’d rescued him from the question room, she'd noticed his back was mottled with bruises and cuts, on skin that was latticed with long-healed scars.

  It was impossible to see his injuries in the darkness now, but he was moving carefully, and his breath came in shallow inhalations.

  He made a sudden sound, a shocked grunt, and she tensed as she came alongside him.

  They had reached an archway.

  It had no doors—it opened into another space that was bigger than the passageway they stood in.

  There was a small amount of gloomy light filtering into the space, coming from a tiny window set high in the wall and overgrown, it looked like, by vines.

  It took Ava a moment to find what Luc had obviously seen straight away.

  A body.

  Or rather, skeletal remains.

  They lay on a stone bench which had a pallet on top, wrapped in clothing that was rotting in the damp, musty air. A long, thick chain attached to the wall beside the bench spilled onto the floor, and then back up to end in a bracelet around the skeleton's ankle.

  Luc approached carefully, his gaze taking in the whole room.

  He had exceptional eyesight she realized as he avoided a small table she hadn't seen herself. He moved as if he were aware of the location of everything in his environment.

  “A woman,” he said, looking back at her.

  She followed him slowly, careful not to touch anything as she made her way to his side and looked down at the almost clean bones.

  She didn't realize she'd stopped breathing until he shook her, his voice soft but clear in her ear as he held her waist, forcing her head down toward her knees.

  “You know her.” He crooned the words to her, as if she were a crying baby, and the way he did it told her he had done so a thousand times before.

  Comforted babies.

  Most likely, there were a lot of crying babies and children in Chosen camps.

  She gasped in some air at last, and coughed, turning away from the sight.

  “I think that is my mother.”

  There was a long silence, and at last she turned back, saw his eyes had never left her. Shock was in his expression.

  “You think, but you're not sure?”

  She nodded, and finally steeled herself to approach the body again. “While I was imprisoned here, I was told both my parents had been killed crossing the mountains. But the cloak is familiar. Although . . .” It had originally been covered in black silk embroidery. She bent closer in the dim green light and saw where the thread had been unpicked from the complex design. There didn't appear to be a single stitch left.

  “It is just the cloak that's familiar?”

  She forced herself to look more carefully. The shoes . . . the shoes were her mother's favorite. Warm slippers for inside. She remembered those shoes, and the light blue stone ring on her mother's finger was where it had always been.

  The skull still had hair attached, and it was the same golden brown hue as her own, though streaked through with white.

  She thought . . . She thought they had died coming to save her. Herron would taunt her with that. Say they had tried but failed. That all hope was lost.

  And all that time, had her mother been here?

  The rage that rose up in her was so hot, so very white hot, that she had to close her eyes and swallow before she could speak again.

  “Can you see how she died?” She looked over at Luc, but he was still watching her, not looking at her mother's remains.

  She wondered what he had seen on her face.

  He turned slowly from her at last to look, shook his head. “If she was murdered, the evidence is long gone. She may have died of illness, she wasn't necessarily killed.”

  “If she died down here without help, I would still consider it murder.” She could not say more. Her throat closed up.

  Ava had been here for nearly two years, and her mother had been down here from perhaps a few months after that. She had been told her parents had been captured and killed by bandits while crossing the mountains into Kassia, but perhaps her father had been killed, and Herron had her mother brought here.

  The single biggest fear her mother had had her whole life, for Ava and herself, had come true. They had both been captured and imprisoned for their talents.

  Her mother had been dead for a while. Ava didn't know how long it would take a body to look like her mother's did, but the fact remained she had been alive and right here while Ava was imprisoned above.

 
And then, she suddenly knew . . .

  She felt Luc's hands grab her as her legs gave way beneath her.

  This was why Herron stopped trying to get her to embroider for him. She had thought she had managed to outwit him. Instead, her mother had been down here, picking the threads from her cloak to embroider items for Herron in her place.

  Perhaps with a threat to Ava's life as the incentive.

  And when her mother had died, that's when the orders for Ava to sew for him had come again. And when it became clear she would never bend, the harsher treatment, the edging to murder, had begun.

  “I'm all right.” She was still held up by Luc, his strength seemingly endless, and she struggled to get her feet back under her. “We need to go.”

  They really did need to go, and yet he looked back at her calmly. “Is there something of your mother's that you want to take with you?”

  She felt a sudden rush of tears at his thoughtful question. “This cloak was a gift from my grandmother to my mother.” She stared down at the clasp resting on her mother's breastbone. “But I will not disturb her body.”

  Instead, she crouched beside the bench and carefully removed the ring from her mother's finger. It was the only piece of jewelry she could see.

  “Now we need to go.” Luc's attention was focused down the passage.

  “You can hear something?”

  He nodded, and she followed him out of the room, glancing back one last time to imprint the horror of it on her memory. The chain on the wall, the unpicked cloak.

  The body, lying discarded and forgotten.

  But not by her. She would not forget.

  Chapter 4

  They were at a dead end.

  It had always been a possibility, but Luc knew they had nothing to lose trying their luck.

  There was only one more chamber down from where Ava's mother's body lay, a storeroom with boxes and barrels rotting in the shadows, and a dust-covered table where it looked like someone had once sat pouring over ledgers and papers, a plate and cup visible amongst the clutter.

  The window in here was the same as the one in the other chamber, high and small, with bars across it.

  The voices Luc had heard as merely a rumble of sound earlier were more distinct now.

  Galvanized, he lifted the lid of a worm-ridden wooden crate, and it crumbled to pieces in his hands.

  Inside was a collection of knives, and with a smile that bloomed all the way through him, warming him like a fire on a cold night, he pulled out one, handed it to Ava, and then stuck two in his belt.

  Ava moved to another box of a similar size, but he ignored the square ones, looking for something longer. Narrower.

  When he found one, he had to pry the lid with stiff fingers, and couldn't help the snap of sound the wood made as it gave.

  Ava froze, and they both turned to look beyond the door.

  The voices went silent.

  Ah, well. They would have come this way, noise or no noise.

  They had lost the element of surprise, but he didn't know how much that counted for, as the guards would have been expecting him to be down here anyway.

  He looked into the box, caught the gleam of gold and metal, and lifted the sword out without even looking at it properly. He strode to the wall beside the chamber's entrance, and flicked his fingers at Ava to take the other side.

  She complied, her face serious, the knife held in her hand in a way that told him she knew what she was doing with it.

  Interesting.

  She moved well. He'd noticed that from the first.

  It was possible she had been trained, and if she had, that would only help them.

  He lifted the sword up and to the left, liking the balance and weight of it, his focus on the sound of footsteps.

  The voices had started up again.

  “ . . . sounded like bones snapping.”

  “You think something down here is eating our savage?” The answering voice was jeering. “Some monster? Or maybe it’s the ghost Banyon goes on about?”

  “Shut up and get moving,” a third voice said, and Luc recognized it as Garmand's. “As it is, the general is disobeying the Herald, sending us down here.”

  There was sudden silence.

  They had just found the chamber with Ava's mother, Luc guessed. And it was interesting that they were surprised by it.

  “Rudig,” someone whispered. “The Herald had him coming down here every day. When he died . . .”

  “Fuck me.” Garmand's voice was just as low. “She starved to death because no one knew she was here.”

  Luc's gaze flicked to Ava, but her full attention was on the conversation happening just one chamber down. Her face was agony to look at.

  Her hands were clasped together, and then she slowly lifted a piece of fabric out of her pocket that looked like the sheeting she'd used to bandage his wounds. Her fingers burrowed under the rag over her hair and she yanked, pulling out a needle already threaded with a strand of cotton and began to sew in quick, sure movements.

  He frowned, because she had slipped the knife he'd given her into a pocket to free up her hands.

  Sewing was not going to help them.

  He didn't understand what she was doing, but then he shrugged. He hadn't expected her to know how to fight anyway.

  He'd told her she would do well to bring him with her on her escape because he had a good sword arm.

  She had upheld her part of the bargain. He would be happy to do the same.

  “Where does this lead?” one of the guards asked, and Luc guessed they were talking about the arch into the storage room.

  “I don't know.” Garmand's answer was tight and sharp. “This whole place is out of bounds. By order of the Herald.”

  “You're saying the general has never come down here himself? Or sent someone else?” The third person scoffed.

  “As far as I'm aware.” There was something considering in Garmand's voice.

  Footsteps approached, then came to a stop just under the archway.

  He waited, hoping they would walk inside a little way and give him their backs. Before they could do that, though, Ava suddenly stepped out, eliciting a gasp of surprise from one of the guards.

  It wasn't what he would have chosen, but a distraction wasn't a bad thing.

  “That is my mother,” she said, pointing, and one of the guards shuffled back a step. “She was here almost the whole time I was imprisoned upstairs. Can you believe that?” Her voice was high and thin, the most discomposed Luc had heard her.

  He could not blame her for it.

  “What is that in your hand?” Garmand sounded nervous, and Luc frowned in confusion. Because clearly what was in her hand was a strip of sheet.

  He couldn't see what she'd stitched into it. The thread was the same color as the fabric itself.

  She looked down at it, and then, just briefly—a mere flick of her gaze—at Luc, before she raised her head again. “Your death.”

  Her voice was no longer so thin, and there was a calm to it, but at face value, she had lost her mind.

  It was nothing but a piece of cotton.

  “We had nothing to do with your mother's death. We didn't even know she was here.” Garmand sounded afraid. As if she might actually be holding his death in her hand.

  “You support the Herald. You kept me prisoner. You are here, and the Herald is not.” She said it simply, and then stepped forward.

  Luc moved then, because he assumed the guards would take the opportunity to grab her, but as he stepped beside her, sword raised high, the guards were not where he thought they would be.

  They were retreating.

  The guard closest to Ava paused at the sight of him, gaze flickering up to meet his, and in that tick of the clock, Ava darted forward and shoved her little scrap of fabric down the front of his jacket.

  He looked at her in horror, and began scrabbling at his clothes, eyes wide in panic, and then he went still, turning his head toward his fellow guards,
as if Ava and Luc weren't standing right in front of him.

  “What have you done to him?” Garmand hissed, his gaze fixed on Ava.

  “Now you believe the stories the Herald tells about me?” Ava laughed at him, and Luc wondered if she understood their situation. If any of them did.

  He was standing right here, sword raised, and they were having a conversation. Ignoring him.

  The most dangerous person in the room.

  He shook his head and swung at the nearest guard, catching him in the shoulder. Beside him, he thought he heard Ava gasp.

  The guard cried out in pain, sword clattering to the ground, and Luc shoved one of the knives into his heart as he pushed him out of the way. He cut the neck of the guard beyond, and then brought it up again to engage Garmand.

  At last the guard was focused on him. Almost shocked to see him.

  Garmand was much better at swordwork than the other two, and Luc was not at his best. His ribs were on fire, but his arm was strong enough, and there seemed to be a warmth emanating from the cut on his forearm which Ava had sewn for him.

  In a sudden flight of fancy, he imagined the warmth as extra strength and accuracy, helping guide his arm as he fought, and once it was in his head, he couldn't shake it.

  He gasped with pain as he ducked down to avoid Garmand's swing, his ribs lighting up in agony, but it was worth it to set up the counter swing, coming up from below. He felt the sword bite through the thick fabric of Garmand's tunic, into the flesh and muscle of his side, and then he was standing over Garmand's body, breath sawing in and out of his lungs.

  Garmand stared up at him from the ground, eyes dulling.

  Ava came to stand beside him.

  “They thought they were clever. That he would . . .” Garmand coughed. “Kill. You.”

  Ava said nothing.

  “Why would I kill her?” Luc had wondered at this logic from the start.

  “They think everyone is like them,” Ava said.

  “Dangerous . . .” Garmand's eyelids flickered and then he stopped talking.

  “Let's take their cloaks, use them to slip out of the castle.” Ava turned to the first guard Luc had killed. She crouched beside him, unpinning his cloak, and delving into his tunic to retrieve her scrap of fabric.