Ring glared at him. When Oswi- Middle had informed her Raimie had recovered his memories, she hadn’t realized how much of an annoyance it would prove her.
“Where is Ren, by the way?” she asked.
“She went to bed,” Raimie replied. “Something, something, baby’s making her throat burn.”
“Nasty,” Middle said with distaste, and Ring lightly punched him.
“Don’t let your dislike of children ruin the King’s time of happiness,” she hissed.
“It is a bit gross,” Raimie agreed with Middle.
They both dissolved into snickers at her disgusted glare. Ring rolled her eyes, waiting for them to expend their laughter. Until it was out of their systems, she’d not receive a sensible statement from either of them. The music faded again, and Raimie perked up, laughter abruptly dying.
“That’s my cue. Oswin’s told me you’re from the Southern Kingdoms, Ring, something you failed to mention in the past. You should especially enjoy this.”
He took a few steps forward, raising his arms. “If I can have everyone’s attention please,” he called, waiting for the noise to become more manageable before he continued. “We’ll now begin the night’s festivities with a performance from one of our newest citizens. Hailing from Hanif in the Southern Kingdoms, she’s come to show us northerners how to really dance.”
Ring tensed while indulgent chuckles roiled over her. The woman she’d previously seen, in sheers and jangling bracelets, stepped onto the dance floor, and Ring’s hand drifted to her pistol. After a tensely excited beat of quiet, a wild, fast-paced melody burst from the musicians, and the dancer moved, and the pistol was out, she pointed it at the back of Raimie’s head, and the hammer was fully cocked, and a hand was on her forearm, and a mouth pressed against her ear.
“Remember-”
“-your family,” Nasifin said. “If you don’t perform as expected, I’ll ensure they die in debtor’s prison.”
He flung her forward, her ankle shackles already removed, and she managed to gracefully come to a stop before the Little Lord’s throne. She sprawled, forehead to tile and arms stretched overhead.
“At least this one’s pretty, Nasifin,” the Little Lord said. “Let’s see how well she dances.”
A double snap preceded the mournful tone which signaled the beginning of the dancer’s art. She slowly drifted up, hands reaching for the ceiling, and back until her skull touched her heels. Then around in a sweeping circle.
‘Make sure you accent your breasts, butterfly,’ Papi’s voice echoed in her head.
She corkscrewed up, her hips her center point, and arched her back on the final circle which brought her completely upright.
The tone cut off, and she set the beat, clapping her hands overhead so her steel and chain bracelets jingled. Now that the pace was set, the song began in earnest, but she rose slowly, sensually, defying the beat. She met the Little Lord’s eyes.
‘This is the most important part, butterfly. Make them see what they want to see,’ Papi whispered.
The Little Lord hungrily eyed her, and she tossed him a knowing smile before beginning her dance. She made it her best, undulating and whirling and rolling in ever more eye-pleasing movements. Desperation nipped at her heels, and she kicked it away. No time to indulge it. For she was the essence of a dancer. She lived and breathed for the dance, and this was to be her last.
She wasn’t sure how long it lasted. Time lost its meaning when she plunged into the rhythm’s flow.
‘Don’t become too immersed, butterfly. It’s bad for your health.’
She kicked Papi away as well. His advice was well and good when applause and accolades came next, but what followed this…
She danced. Her feet stuck to the floor, but she adjusted to account for it. The music stopped, so she composed more in her head.
“Beautiful, talented, and determined,” the Little Lord rumbled. “I’ll take her, Nasifin. Someone see him paid, and stop her. I want her in my bedchamber this instant.”
Her stomach dropped. She’d hoped her dance wouldn’t impress the Little Lord despite knowing her skill. He was the Little Lord, after all. What wonders must he see every day! She’d hoped… but hope was dead.
Reluctantly, she murdered the musicians in her mind, and her body stopped. She turned herself off.
Despite how hard she tried, small things snuck into her hiding place. Sounds. Scents. Some touch.
“She’s gone doll, poor thing,” someone said.
“Don’t worry. He won’t care.”
Cool silks under her back. The sounds of ripping organza and satin. Grunts and tugging and nothing for a very long time. Finally, a snore.
She sat up, gazing dead-eyed at her surroundings. A room so lavish it made her sick. A bed with a man lying beside her.
She tried to stand, to drift away, but winced when applying pressure to her feet. Lifting them, she nodded with satisfaction to see their soles’ skin mangled and torn. Reaching for what remained of her clothes, she wrapped satin around her feet.
Standing, she began hobbling away when liquid trickled down her leg. Curious, she followed its trail to its origin point between her legs, and her hand came away bloody. Heaving, she flung the hand over her mouth to keep the nastiness inside, but it beat down her defenses, and she couldn’t hold it back, she couldn’t…
When the fit concluded, she registered a dull surprise that she hadn’t woken the Little Lord, relief because that would have ruined the plan.
She forced herself to sit beside him and reached for the pin binding her hair in place. It emerged from her curls sharp, shiny, and deadly. At this point, she was supposed to be a good, little slave. She was supposed to plunge the dagger into her heart and fall so that, in the morning, the Little Lord was caught in bed with a prostitute’s corpse. All part of the day to day politics of what the northerners called the ‘Southern Kingdoms’.
The dagger’s point hovered over her breast. She must do this. Her family needed her to do this else they were sentenced to debtor’s prison. Mami, Papi, Mosfaika, Rinata, even little Levi starving in that dark hole…
Fuck them. She’d suffered enough.
Stretching over the body of the sleeping bastard who’d raped her, she slit his throat. While he gurgled his death cries, she dragged the sheet out from under him. How on earth was she to escape this place?
Circling the room, she stopped beneath a decorative grate the nobility employed to bring fresh air into their homes. It was so high up. Could she…yes.
Drag the heavy desk into place to reach it. Break fingernails to pry the grate off. Dislocate a shoulder so she could fit through, but on the other side, lay freedom.
She could do it. And once she’d wrestled her freedom to the ground and claimed it, she’d never let it go.
“-it’s in the past, Ring,” Middle whispered in her ear. “You’re pointing a gun at your little Raimie. Will you shoot the only boy who could make you laugh when we were kids?”
She blinked, returning to the present, and the pistol slipped from her fingers. Fortunately, Middle caught it before it hit the ground, returning the hammer to a half-cocked position. He offered it to her, and she shakily accepted.
Ring furtively scanned the room. The entire exchange had gone unnoticed. Her legs gave out, and once again, Middle was there to catch her. After helping her to a chair, he lowered her into it. She propped her elbows on her thighs, hiding her face in her hands.
“It was the Little Lord, wasn’t it?” Middle asked.
Ring nodded, and he said not a word, merely placed a hand on her shoulder. A single point of warmth to keep her firmly grounded in the now.
When the once loved music culminated in a final crescendo and polite applause rewarded the dancer’s efforts, Ring relaxed. She should stay in control now.
“What was that?! Anyone other than Ring, and you’d be reaming us for dereliction of duty. I bet you don’t even plan to reprimand her for it.”
Pee
king through her fingers at Little, Ring cringed. What had she been thinking? At least three other people had witnessed what she’d done.
She found Thumb and Pointer standing near the royal couple, and they stared at her with no condemnation. Instead, disappointment lit their eyes. Every member of the King’s Hand was damaged in some way, except, perhaps, for their leader. They were supposed to be resilient enough to keep those wounds from impairing their abilities as spies, and she’d failed in that regard.
“What she’s experiencing is more than enough punishment,” Middle proclaimed.
“I let Raimie investigate a tear by himself at his insistence, and you’ve made me complete the Hand’s paperwork ever since. She points a gun at the King, and her consequence is to sit there feeling sorry for herself?!” Little asked.
“With your lapse, Raimie almost died! With hers, no one was hurt, and no one saw,” Middle said.
Alouin bless him for coming to her defense, both when she desperately needed it and when she truly didn’t. His hand remained on her shoulder, and she followed the line of his arm to his face. He answered his adoptive son so calmly, but Ring could see the wrinkles of worry and anger creasing the corners of his eyes.
They met hers, and she was, as usual, swept in a wave of uncontrollable-
-hunger. Her body was an unwieldy sack of brittle bones and paper-thin skin. The cost of dragging that sack to her corner had finally outweighed the gain she’d wrought from begging there. Something needed to change.
She’d no marketable skills besides dancing, and employing her talent wasn’t an option. She’d never dance again, not like that, even if it meant she starved.
If she became desperate enough, she could rent her body to sex-starved men to use in whatever way they wished. She thought she could stomach the indignity, used goods that she was, but first, she’d attempt a slightly riskier plan.
For the last few months, she’d begged in an out of the way city sector, changing her spot every day. With the hunt for the Little Lord’s assassin cooling, however, she thought she might try a spot closer to the alcazar, somewhere passersby were more likely to part with their chits.
Settling in the grand structure’s shadow, she pulled her bowl into her lap and waited. She couldn’t cry out and draw attention to herself like the other beggars. What would happen if she attracted a guard or alcazar staff member? With her pretty face and gaunt figure, however, chits soon clinked into her bowl without any supplication on her part. Faster than she’d thought possible, its shallow depths filled, and she readied to return to the rag pile she’d begun to call home.
A pair of silver chits dropped into her bowl as she drew her shawl around her head, and she lifted her face to cheerily thank the generous donor. Fear froze her solid.
The guards had almost turned away to resume their patrol, but one paused when he caught sight of her face.
“Say, Rafichi, isn’t that-?”
She didn’t wait for them to confirm their suspicions. Flinging the bowl at them, she was up and fleeing before it and her precious chits clinked to the ground. Shouts of surprise rose behind her, and as she rounded onto the closest cross street, a bell pealed the alarm to every guard in the vicinity.
She couldn’t stop and blend into the crowds. Slapping feet followed too closely behind her. She tried everything she could to lose them: diving through merchant stalls, knocking obstacles into their path, nimbly vaulting short fences. Nothing seemed to help. In fact, the noise of pursuit increased in volume with every minute of the chase.
They caught her in a dead-end alley she’d thought would lead into the busy market on the other side. Back plastered against the wall, her chest heaved as they drew closer with leery smiles.
“They say she lulled the Little Lord into sleep with the power of her sex,” one of them whispered.
“Do you think they’ll mind if we use her before bringing the body back?” another asked.
The voice of terror wordlessly screeched in her head. She’d been so careful, always watchful for guard patrols, but her hunger had been all-conquering…
That hunger would get her raped again before they murdered her.
A loud bang split the alley’s air, and a guard fell to the side, clutching his knee and howling. The others stared at the enormous hole his hands covered, the shin and foot dangling by strings of skin and muscle from the thigh.
She darted past them while they were distracted, toward the boy pointing a smoking, metal tube their way. He extended his free hand to her.
“Follow me, Silivren!”
There was no hesitation, no worry of a trap or danger. She took the stranger’s hand and ran.
What rode her now wasn’t true hunger like the time, long ago, when they’d been lost teenagers. It was more desire or incredible need.
Ring had unreservedly followed Middle on the day he’d rescued her and on every subsequent day until she’d come to understand why she became a nervous wreck around him. After the realization, she’d considered running from him, even though she was Ring for the Hand at which he played spymaster. At the time, she’d thought it likely she could avoid the search which would surely accompany her dereliction of duty. Fear for her life hadn’t restrained her flight.
The reason she’d stayed had tightened her steps ever closer to his heels. She’d been the first assenter to his crazy plan of forming a Hand for a boy destined to be king, the most eager to hop on the boat which would transport them to Auden. She’d accepted every assignment, completed every favor. All in the hopes he’d notice her.
Their tale, if it was ever to be told, needed to be perfect, a gloriously fitting reward for her suffering, but the timing was never right. Always, some new danger, some urgently required project, some new fear interfered with them.
As she sat, listening to Midd- Oswin once again coming to her defense, Ring realized the timing would never be completely perfect. As Middle and Ring of Raimie’s Hand, danger and fear would always tail them. If she wanted a story of Oswin and Silivren, she’d need to carve it out for herself.
Why it had taken her so long to come to this conclusion, Oswin would wonder for years to come.
“Little’s right,” Ring interrupted their petty argument. “You favor me too much. My actions this evening have been inexcusable. Come. Let’s discuss what my punishment should be.”
Rising, she floated toward the ballroom’s exit.
Was she doing this? Really? Yes, shut up, doubt. Was he following? Don’t turn around to check, stupid.
The party and its loud noise fell behind her, and Ring smiled to hear him hurrying to catch up.
“You don’t think you need a sanction, do you?” he asked once he’d drawn even with her.
“No but I couldn’t devise a better way to separate you from Little. You two would have argued all night if I hadn’t intervened,” Ring replied. “Plus, the kid’s right, Oswin. You do favor me. Why?”
“Ring… it’s Middle between the members of the Hand. You know that.”
She shoved him sideways, pinning him to the wall. At the hall’s end, a pair of guests gasped and skittered away.
“Oswin,” Ring insisted, body demanding answers. “Why?”
He stiffened into rock beneath her immobilizing arm. “You know why,” he ground out.
She did? Thinking back, Ring carefully analyzed their interactions’ typical rhythm. Oswin was so… formal with her. He tiptoed around her, as if afraid of breaking her, but no. Oswin knew she wasn’t easily hurt. If he wasn’t concerned with hurting her, who else could he fear for? Their interactions only included the two of them. Did he fear for himself?
Shock turned Ring to glass. The insistence on fixing his eyes to her face whenever she tried to tempt him. The shoulders which drifted to his ears whenever he learned she’d used her body to successfully complete a mission. The eyes burning into hers now… How had she been so stupid?
In a daze, she reached for the door handle which had almost dug into Os
win’s back and pulled him with her into the room behind it. Inside, they found a storage closet filled with brooms, mops, buckets, an assortment of folded tablecloths, and an extensive list of other items staff might need to keep the palace maintained. Ring lifted a mop, threaded it through the door handle, and angled it so it blocked the door.
“What are you doing, Ring?” Oswin asked with genuine confusion, poor dear. “I know we’re technically free of our responsibilities this night, but-”
Her finger on his lips silenced the protest. Ring took a shuddering breath. “I need you to say it,” she whispered.
“Say what?” he asked. “I don’t-”
She pressed the finger harder against his lips. “Don’t play ignorant with me.” She wanly smiled. “We’ve known each other far too long for that to work.”
She lifted the finger, and he uncertainly eyed her.
“You first.”
Ring couldn’t say the words first, couldn’t bear the pressure, but she’d other ways to convey what she meant. Lifting trembling hands, she traced them over his face, over every longed after speck of it, and then, she rose to her toes and kissed him.
This wasn’t the hungry, passionate kiss she gave away, like cheap sweets, to every man her job required her to seduce. It was gentle. Slow. But firm enough he would know exactly what she told him.
“Now you,” she said when she pulled away.
Oswin cleared his throat. “How long-? How blind have I-? What about the others?”
“They meant nothing. You should know after fifteen years as spymaster that sex is merely a tool in a spy’s hands.” Ring shook her head at his continued hesitation. “Now you.”
“A-are you sure? I’m not the easiest person to deal with once you get to know me,” Oswin stammered, gaze flicking around the supply closet. “And look at this place, Ring! It’s not exactly romantic.”
Her spirits sank. Maybe she’d been wrong, only reading what she’d wanted from him.
“A spy’s life is short, especially one who’s in a Hand. That none of us have died yet is a wonder. Every other kingdom’s Ring is replaced within a five-year period, and yet, I’ve served seventeen. Such a length is unprecedented, but we shouldn’t allow our luck to make us cocky, Oswin. Our lives are in service to a primeancer King. Death could come for your five-person family at any moment.”
A King's Caution (The Eternal War Book 2) Page 59
