“Let’s just say I have good reason to believe Ractane will resort to any kind of underhanded tactics when it comes to seizing an advantage,” he said.
Kat leaned forward. “Like what?”
That was the captain of security speaking, and Marus capitalized on it at once. “You tell me. If you were a Prince who wanted to defeat another Prince, what would you do?”
“Ally with other Princes.” Apparently she didn’t need to think for more than an instant about it. “Two or three of them against one should even the odds. You think he might do that?”
Marus’s stomach plunged as if he’d been pushed off a step unexpectedly. He hadn’t hoped Kat would miraculously figure out how his power had been stolen, but it hadn’t occurred to him that she would come up with another, perfectly valid way for him to be defeated. Wonderful, as if he didn’t have enough to worry about already.
“I don’t know what he’ll do,” he had to admit. “That’s one reason I’m living here and planning my next move. Maybe I should try forming an alliance first.”
“You wouldn’t need to go far for it.” She got to her feet. “I know you think of us as—as weaklings and slaves, but if you promise to defend us, we could be more to you.”
Marus thought if any of his brothers heard such an offer, they would burst out laughing. He couldn’t come close to amusement, though, not because of his own condition, but because of the steady, hopeful look in her face. If many of her people were like her, then no, they wouldn’t be willing slaves and they sure as hell weren’t weaklings.
“I’ll do what I can for your people,” he said, which sounded reasonable without making promises he couldn’t keep.
“That wasn’t a yes.”
Marus had always prided himself on his self-control compared to some of his brothers, but if she provoked him one more time, he was going to put his fist through something. Probably his head—that would end his troubles for good.
“You’re asking me to fight someone as powerful as I am to protect people I don’t even know,” he said.
“People who’ve given you food and the clothes you asked for. People who’ll give you anything you want.” She spread her hands. “You like women? We have those too.”
Marus closed his eyes and dug his knuckles between his brows until he felt the dull ache of bone ground against bone. Part of him whispered that humans giving Princes tribute was as natural and expected as the sun coming up in the morning. It wasn’t something the humans needed to be rewarded for. But another side of him wondered how he would have felt if he’d given Kat whatever she wanted, only for her to turn her back when he needed help.
“We’ll discuss this further tomorrow,” he said. “I—need to think.”
The silence ended when she said, “All right,” but she sounded resigned now, defeated. He didn’t want to see that any more than he wanted to see anger quietly seething below the surface, so he kept his eyes closed until she left the dining hall.
Then he lowered his hand. As if he didn’t have enough to deal with already, now he had to factor Ractane and the townsfolk—and Kat—into any plans he made. He hoped he’d have some peace for the rest of the night. Maybe she’d gone to the armory to sleep.
Her shadow slanted over the threshold, and she followed it back in, laden with packs. Marus went out to fetch the rest. More than he had expected, though now he knew what they hoped to get in return.
“I’ll start supper.” Kat spoke flatly, no color or life to her voice. “Your clothes are in…”
The words trailed off, and Marus looked at her sharply, half expecting she’d spotted some new danger. She stared at the piled firewood and the bucket of water, then looked around the room as though seeing it for the first time.
“Did you do this?” she said.
He wished he could think of some sarcastic reply, but he was too tired by then to do anything more than nod.
“Why?” she asked.
Because I’m a fool. “Just make supper.”
Thankfully she set to work, though first she brought in a large cloth-wrapped bundle. He guessed those were the clothes, and he opened the bundle while she started the fire and took a brass pot out of a pack.
He’d been prepared for worn patched garments like Kat’s, but obviously a Prince got clothes in the best condition, neatly folded with spice-leaves pressed between them. He wasted no time in wearing a linen shirt with a stagskin vest over it, and pulled dark trousers up around his hips. The clothes he’d worn occasionally in Copper Lake had been much finer, dyed in the vivid colors he liked, but he was just as happy with these.
He wouldn’t have felt self-conscious without them, partly because human standards didn’t apply to Princes and partly because clothes were ruined in the change to earth form. But he could tell Kat was uncomfortable with his nudity.
Besides, it had also occurred to him that anyone spying on the outpost from a distance might be unable to tell the difference between him and a human, if he wore clothes. Given the choice, he would rather be killed along with the humans by another Prince razing the town, than taken alive by that Prince for any reason.
Kat tipped dried meat and slices of despined cactus into the pot, added water and hung the pot over the flames before she unwrapped a loaf. He could have torn into that with his teeth, but the thought of her drawing the right conclusions from his hunger was more than enough to restrain him, so instead he put on the pair of boots that had been sent with the clothes. Walking on gravel and pretending it didn’t bother him had been the limit of even his capabilities.
“What else happened while you were in the town?” he asked.
“Wasn’t that enough?” Kat said without turning around.
“I meant, did you talk to people?” That would be so routine and normal compared to his life. He thought of asking if she had family there, but he had a feeling she wouldn’t want to discuss her family with a Prince. “Reassure them they’re safe for now?”
Kat gave him an odd look and nodded. Marus relapsed into silence. It hadn’t occurred to him that his conversational gambits were so limited. A rich scent drifted from the stewpot and his stomach rumbled.
“I have an idea,” he said. Anything to distract himself. “What if you bring the girl here?”
Her brows came together. “Why?”
“Because if Ractane wants her, I could protect her much more easily here, and then he won’t target your town.”
“Unless he threatens them anyway, to force us to hand her over.”
Us? In his entire life—admittedly not a long one and perhaps unlikely to be—Marus had never heard that word applied to himself and a human at the same time. He wondered if she’d heard herself, but she was busy adding careful pinches of some spice to the stewpot.
“Kat, think like a Prince,” he said.
Comprehension showed on her face. “Why would you give a damn about what happens to a human settlement as long as you’ve got what you want, in other words?” He nodded, and she frowned again, but this time as if thinking about his suggestion.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry, but no.”
He wasn’t used to having his offers rejected, even with regret. “Why not?”
Kat tasted the stew. “She’s not well enough to be moved. Dr. McKay is taking care of her, and we can’t ask him to come with her—he’s needed in town.” She placed bowls on the table, lining those up neatly. “But it’s more than that. She was in a Prince’s harem, and I don’t want to imagine what happened to her there.”
“You think I’ll rape her too?” He kept his voice neutral.
She glanced at him. “No. But you are a Prince, and she’s suffered enough without having to live with any more of those.”
“You seem to have survived the experience.”
“I’m thirty-five. She looks thirteen, at best. If she chooses
to come here, it would be different, but for now we’re just waiting to see if she recovers.”
He couldn’t argue with that, and she poured the stew into their bowls. It smelled wonderful but was so hot he couldn’t eat at first.
“Humans are so vulnerable,” he muttered.
Kat’s brows went up. “Your father was human,” she said. “To some extent.”
Marus hoped for her sake she didn’t talk like that to any other Princes, because some of them didn’t like being reminded they’d been fathered by a human, a creature as small and soft as an overripe fruit. Gone now—the Queen hadn’t endured him a moment longer than was necessary—but apparently not forgotten, although he had no idea what the man’s name was.
“I always wondered why he went to our mother,” he said.
Kat dipped a chunk of bread in her stew before she popped it into her mouth. “I heard he wanted to rule a city.” The words were a little muffled, before she swallowed and went on. “But when he was passed over for that position, he assassinated the person who was elected. When his role in the murder came to light, he was thrown out of the city, and every other settlement was informed, so he’d never have a home among us again.”
Marus found that fascinating. He wondered why he’d never known. Perhaps because even the people of Copper Lake hadn’t spoken to him as freely as Kat did. They had been like paintings or pets—useful and valuable, but not things he could have talked with, or listened to. Kat was the first person he’d met who he couldn’t think of as either a rival or a subordinate.
“Why didn’t you execute him?” he asked. “Not that I can regret your failure to do so.”
She lifted her bowl to drink from it, so he copied her. “From what I’ve heard,” she said after she had lowered the bowl and licked her lips, “there wasn’t enough evidence that he was responsible. The assassination was carried out in secret. Maybe no one could justify killing him. But what he did after that was proof enough. Anyone with a shred of decency would never have gone to the Queen.”
Marus chuckled and wiped his bowl clean with bread.
She looked at him askance. “What’s so funny?”
“One of my parents was a cowardly murderer and the other one is an insane sadist. I’m starting to see why we all turned out like this.”
“You don’t strike me as being too much like either of them.”
Was that a compliment? He wasn’t used to those. Oh, he’d heard plenty of lavish praise from humans in his service, but that had been expected, part of the established routine. With Kat, nothing went as planned. And although his cynical side told him she’d only said that because all she’d seen was his flesh form—she sure as hell wouldn’t have any good words if he’d been otherwise—he couldn’t help feeling a little better.
* * *
Janice unrolled the scrap of paper and read it. “Tom Novak asks if the bracelet has hollow segments. Farlander suicide rig.” The message was signed by the head of the splintertown near the mines.
She glanced at Stephen Waverly; communications went to him and through him, and he made sure at least one literate person was stationed in each settlement. “Tom Novak,” she said, cudgeling her memory until it gave up the goods—a bear of a man in his late forties, who had been married to a Farlander called Raina. He’d been one of the founders of the splintertown, working in the mines by day and sleeping in a shack at night.
Suicide rig. It made sense—the hollow segments could contain poison—and she wasn’t surprised a Farlander might need it. Their founder had had a revelation that destroying the Queen would open a way back to the world they’d left nearly a hundred years ago.
That made the Farlanders a potential danger to their own people, and they were tolerated in Solstice Harbor only because they’d given their word to clear any regicide attempts with the town council. The suicide rigs weren’t just to protect them from the Princes; Janice knew of one Farlander who’d died at the hands of other humans. She wondered in irritation if any Farlanders in the crowd she’d spoken to had recognized her description of the bracelet but said nothing.
“Reply?” Stephen said.
“Confirm, add the girl’s description and ask what he knows.” Then she returned to her other work, and it was late by the time she went to the infirmary. Dr. McKay told her there was no change in the girl’s condition.
Janice stood by the bedside, preparing herself for the possibility that the girl would die—without a chance to tell them why she’d run to them. Not a Farlander herself; they might have accepted someone barely out of her teens, but she didn’t have their tattoo. Hopefully Tom Novak would have more to say.
Though now that she came to think about it, she wasn’t sure why he’d said anything in the first place. The Farlanders were secretive about their practices, their plans—hell, everything—and when they married outside their cadre, they tended to select people who were likewise close-mouthed.
And yet Tom Novak had given up the goods with no prodding on her part. She wondered if there was a reason he’d done so, if the girl meant anything to him. Could they be related? Novak was in his forties, old enough to have fathered a child this age.
The girl stirred restlessly, her eyes half-open. Janice was used to people who’d never had three meals a day in their entire lives, but the girl was thinner, her voice drawn fine as a thread. “Don’t…” she whispered.
I won’t be happier for hearing this. Pleas for mercy would make it that much more difficult to sleep as she imagined what the girl had gone through. But she took a small hot hand in hers. “Don’t what?”
The girl’s breath rasped. “Send me to him.”
Janice leaned down. “Who is he?”
“Don’t—I don’t—” A tremor ran beneath the stretched-taut skin of her face. “Marus.”
Chapter Seven
Kat was up just before dawn, and after she had dressed, she went out to see to the ponies. She had brought a net of hay from the town for them, but she also fed them crusts she’d kept from supper—saving food for lean times was a habit—as she thought about what she would do that day. It was strange to have free time with no defined duties.
If she was Marus’s personal guard, would all her days be spent like this? No, if she didn’t need be concerned about sheer survival, there was so much she could learn instead, like how to read. Most people couldn’t, so it hadn’t mattered before.
But becoming one of Janice’s inner circle had exposed her to people like Stephen Waverly, who could not only make sense of writing but could do so in multiple languages. It bothered her that she couldn’t even speak her great-grandparents’ native tongue, but when she’d confided that to Ranj Blake, he’d asked her why it mattered. She wasn’t likely to see Japan, wherever that was, any more than he would grow wings and fly.
She went out of the stable, breathing deeply in the cool fresh air. The sun edged over the horizon and gave enough light for her to see the boulder on the edge of the path.
That was something to be dealt with. As she’d led the ponies and their cart up the trail, she’d watched the projecting rock, afraid it might roll loose and crush her. Best push it down while the trail was empty, and after breakfast she’d repair the holes in the roof.
Maybe Marus would help. She rarely smiled—that came so much easier to him—but an unaccustomed amusement made the corners of her mouth curve up before she could help it. He’d cleaned the dining room, taken the broken glass out of the barracks, and brought in wood. She’d never dreamed a Prince would sink to doing that kind of work.
It went to show he wasn’t completely selfish. That was a strange thing to think about a Prince, but until she’d come to stay in the outpost, she’d seen them all as a single faceless mass. Some might enslave humans while others preferred to kill, but that wasn’t much of a difference compared to their shared greed and cruelty. It was getting more and more
difficult to see Marus that way, though.
She’d even started to think of his patronage as something that might benefit both him and the town, rather than yet another burden her people had to bear. Which made her determined to win that patronage.
It wasn’t impossible. Best not to push him for an answer, but if she could get him to do small things to help, that might be the first step. Perhaps he’d sink a well close at hand, so they didn’t have to depend on the cistern. A Prince could easily split rock down to the waterline. But she’d deal with the boulder first.
Humming, she went to look for something to wedge beneath it as a lever. She remembered the tools that had clattered in the shed on her first night there, and among them was a hoe, its head covered with dirt. She pulled it out of the shed and the tuneless hum stopped.
In the dry earth that caked the hoe were small leaves, yellow with wilt, part of a plant that had been torn up. She pulled the leaves free, one by one. That hoe had been used recently, but by who? Marus? What in the world could he have dug up, and why bother?
Slowly she replaced the hoe, then went inside to make breakfast. Marus had built up the fire, though he obviously had no experience in sweeping the ashes out of the hearth first. Kat opened her mouth, not sure what she was going to say, and closed it again.
He didn’t like being questioned too much, she knew, and yet she couldn’t guess why he’d needed a hoe. And she was the only human in the outpost. Someone as secretive as Marus might certainly have another human working for him—that might explain his reluctance to give her town his patronage, if it was already spoken for somehow—but why not just tell her so?
She said nothing as they ate, and although he gave her a look she couldn’t decipher, he didn’t speak either. After the meal, she wanted some brutally hard physical activity that would be simple and clear, nothing like whatever was going on with him, so she took an axe and went in search of firewood.
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