by Ellyn, Court
Delight squeezed at Kethlyn’s throat. His father had come to him in the dark after all, and wouldn’t let him be alone. “How long have you been there?”
Da rose, set the papers beside the lantern, and leaned a shoulder against the iron door. It was as close as he could get without putting himself inside the cell. “A while. It’s almost dawn.”
“Couldn’t you sleep?”
With a burdened sigh, Da shook his head. “I woke thinking about your sister.”
“Don’t worry, Da. Uncle Thorn will find her.”
Da looked surprised. “Is that where he’s gone? Of course. I should’ve known. If he were here, I’d strangle him. Riding off like that, leaving me with a madman who tinkers with gadgets day and night and expects me to … do you need anything?”
“No, Da.”
“They fed you?”
Kethlyn nodded.
Da replied with a nod of his own and pondered in uneasy silence. “Do you remember when you were six or seven, you and Valryk accidentally locked yourselves in the dungeon?”
“I wondered if you remembered. I think of it all the time. Seems I’m still in that cell. Don’t suppose you can let me out this time, too.” He’d meant it to sound lighthearted, a joke at his own expense, but Da was too troubled to appreciate the humor.
“There’s to be a hearing. A trial. I tried to talk your mother out of it. She won’t have it any other way.”
At least Kethlyn would have the chance to speak for himself. “It’s all right, Da. It’s as it should be. If the duchess shows her son favor, then her court has no credibility. She has to do this. I’m no different than those rioters I hanged. Would you see justice mean something only among the commoners?”
Da scuffed his boot toe against the floor. “No, of course not.”
“When?”
“Today at noon.”
Noon. Only a few more hours. Kethlyn remembered the thieves he had ordered hauled from the Magister’s Hall to have their hands lopped off, and wondered if his mother’s justice would be as swift.
Da gestured at the papers on the table. “I’ve spoken with Malkym Leng and with Alyster, and anyone who might step forward in your defense. I’ve been going over their testimonies. I don’t know what good it will do, but at least you’ll have an advocate or two.”
“Alyster will speak for me?”
Da shrugged, the gesture heavy with exhaustion and despair. “I don’t know if your mother will summon him to testify, but yes, Alyster vowed to tell the truth.” That, of all things, coaxed laughter from him. “And he will, too. Whether it helps or hurts your case, well…”
Kethlyn supposed it was the wrong time to ask for Da’s views on his illegitimate son. Instead, he dug inside his pocket and fished out the sweat-stained parchment bearing the Black Falcon’s seal. “Give this to Mum.” He passed it through the bars. “She’ll want it for evidence.”
Da opened the edict and read. After a while his head snapped up. “Does Valryk have the right to do this? Evaronna isn’t Aralorr, no matter how unified they may be—but if naming you duke was a lawful move on his part, your mother has no case against you.”
In all his studies, Kethlyn had never read any such law. “If it was unlawful, that paper is my death warrant.” How calm he sounded. Strange, but he felt no fear. He felt no hope, either.
Da closed his eyes, staving off his fears. “I’ll see she gets it.”
~~~~
21
Carah had fallen asleep without realizing. Seemed the only way to escape the horror of the Pit was to sleep, to hope one’s dreams were of sunshine, of lovers, of chains sloughing off like unwanted skin.
She dreamt of her father. He had been waiting for her, she knew, and upon seeing her he smiled, as if her absence hadn’t meant what he’d feared. He showed her to a banquet prepared in her honor. Nearly everyone was there. Even Doc and Jaedren. Frogtongue’s head was the table’s centerpiece. But Rhian was still missing, and now Uncle Thorn too. Didn’t he know she had returned home? And somehow she knew King Arryk was dead, but he couldn’t be, she had saved him. Her chest ached with loss.
“There you are, coz,” said a voice. Before Carah turned, she knew it was Valryk who spoke. Father had invited this murderer to her banquet? He stood beside the high table, smiling at her, and the smile belonged to Kethlyn, not Valryk, but there he was, waving her toward the dais, while his other hand rested atop Frogtongue’s hairless head, patting it as if it were a suckling pig worthy of a boast.
Carah sat at the table, alone. Everyone stared at her. They worried she wouldn’t like the fare they offered. Valryk blithely gestured at the centerpiece, saying, “This is for you,” but it wasn’t Frogtongue’s head anymore. A bleached skull occupied the platter. Oh, Goddess, whose skull was it? Thorn’s? Alyster’s? No, it’s mine. It’s mine!
She woke, choking in the reeking air. Her cheeks were stiff with dried tears, and her bladder was full. She curled into a ball on the merciless stone, trying to relieve the discomfort, put it off as long as possible. No good. She reached for the bucket Frogtongue had deposited and slunk deeper into the darkness of her alcove.
When she emerged again, readjusting her clothes and her dignity, she found Doc sitting in his customary spot. His knees were drawn up, support for his elbows as he rested his head in his hands. He frowned in concentration, eyes squinched shut, and he whispered to himself, some mantra or passage from a book. Anything to occupy his mind.
Beyond, Jaedren was curled on his side; he was smaller when he slept, the brief spike of excitement drained from his bones.
“How long did I sleep?” she asked.
Recitation interrupted, Doc scowled at her. “Doesn’t matter. The hours will never be returned to you.”
Jaedren’s body gave a sudden jerk. A whimper squeezed from his throat. One hand reached tentatively, grasping at air.
“Having that dream again,” Doc said. “Poor kid. He’s afraid to sleep. Talks my ear off trying to stay awake.”
Even while they watched the tormented little movements, Jaedren’s eyes popped open and he began to sob.
Carah reached for him, but he lay too far away. Instead, Doc lowered a hand and jostled the boy’s foot.
“What it is, dearest?” Carah asked.
“My … my brother … he’s dead.”
How could he know? Had Rhian told him? “No, it’s just a nightmare.” Carah didn’t know why she lied.
Jaedren pushed himself up, drew his knees to his chin. “I saw him. Andy died. He was holding my da’s dagger.” He wiped his eyes on his forearms. “Does Da know? And Mum?”
Someone must’ve told him. He was utterly certain. “Yes, dearest, they know. They were with him. Andy wasn’t alone.”
His hunched shoulders relaxed at the news, and he nodded in a weary, relieved sort of way.
A shuffling step brought Frogtongue from the tunnel. She carried a large tin tub mounded high with bones. The madman’s bones. Hardly a scrap of meat had been left on them.
Carah threw her hands over her face. But with the revulsion came irresistible curiosity. She watched through her fingers as the ogre stomped down the steps to the main floor, as offhandedly as a maid carrying the washing. Frogtongue set the tub near the rim of the pit and lifted out the skull. Ever so carefully, she rearranged the skulls in the ring to make room for their new companion. Conspicuously, the crown of the madman’s skull remained intact. The ogres had no interest in his brain. Satisfied with the arrangement, Frogtongue gained her feet again and dumped the rest of the bones into the pit. The femurs and spinal column and the rest thunked wetly atop the mound, creating a clacking cascade of older, drier bones. Rats scurried away from the avalanche, only to regroup, noses raised, sniffing out the fresh pickings.
Without a word, Frogtongue carried the tub out again.
Carah turned into her alcove and retched into her bucket.
Her stomach had barely settled when Frogtongue returned. This time she hefted an iron cauldron. S
team rose. All along the shelf, tin plates began to tap in rhythm. Carah let her plate lie at her feet. She was no mongrel who begged for supper. Not yet.
Frogtongue ladled a whitish lumpy liquid onto each plate. Jaedren, then Doc, raised their plates high for the ogre’s convenience, then lapped at the gruel with their tongues and spooned chunks with filth-caked fingers. When Frogtongue reached Carah, she barely troubled herself to lean over but poured the soup in a thin white stream. The gruel spattered, precious drops wasted on the stone. Carah saw why the prisoners raised their plates like offerings. Then she noted shreds of meat swimming in the liquid. This was no chicken or pork.
“You disgusting swine!” she blurted and kicked the plate away. Droplets struck Frogtongue in the face. The plate somersaulted off the shelf, landed on its rim, and teetered across the lower floor like a broken wheel. It bumped to a stop against one of the skulls, an empty plate for an empty mouth.
Frogtongue’s wide muzzle broadened in a grin. A pale sticky-looking tongue emerged from her mouth like mucus and licked the gruel off her cheek, then retracted with a wet snap. “Dat’s one, wench.” She stepped down from the shelf and retrieved the plate.
“One what, you walking mass of shit?”
Frogtongue slapped the plate down at Carah’s feet and waddled off without refilling it.
Doc hissed, “Girl! Don’t be a fool. One chance, that’s all you get. The Captain expects defiance. He ordered these bastards to let the first offense go. But the second time, they take the plate away for good. Then you’re done for.”
Carah stuck out her chin. “Why prolong Lothiar’s enjoyment?”
“Hnh, you’ll do as you like, but I’ve warned you.”
Spectacle over, the tapping of tin resumed. The clamor slowly died as each plate was raised and filled.
“You shouldn’t have wasted it, m’ lady. It was potato today. Much better than the turnip muck they feed us most times.”
Doc spoke over his shoulder. “Remember, boy. Only two bites of meat. Hide the rest in your bucket.”
“But, Doc, I’m hungry.”
“You want to get the shakes, eh?”
Carah watched Jaedren reluctantly pluck out the smaller chunks of meat and pile them on the rim of his plate, then stuff two larger pieces into his mouth.
With the silence of the plates, a strange sort of contentment invaded the cavern.
Across the hill of bones, movement from Rhian’s alcove caught Carah’s eye. He had emerged like a turtle from its shell. An arm extended to snatch his plate off the floor. His eyes flicked toward Carah, then he ducked into the dark again. In that brief exchange of eye contact, she glimpsed desperation. Rhian was hungry, and he didn’t care what filled his belly.
A short while later, a younger, smaller ogre followed in Frogtongue’s footsteps. He wielded a sloshing leather bag and squirted water into each of the tin cups. Carah gulped down a mouthful, then gagged on the aftertaste. The water actually tasted gray. A drowned fly floated in the bottom of her cup. She spat and wiped her tongue on the inside of her suede jerkin. The ogres must’ve drawn the water from a marshy pool rather than a proper well.
Carah was contemplating the diseases and parasites residing in her cup when commotion stirred beyond the cavern. For the first time, orange light brightened the tunnel’s dark gullet. It bobbed closer. Voices echoed. One was the guttural grunting of an ogre; the other, the intelligible, silken speech of an Elari.
“Ach, vile bastard,” Doc grumbled. “Here he comes.”
Jaedren scurried into his alcove, out of sight.
“Who?” asked Carah.
“The Captain, of course.”
As soon as the Elari emerged from the tunnel, Carah was sure Laniel Falconeye had found her and come to rescue her from the dragon. She almost cried out. But the lurching light of the torch revealed stark differences. His hair was paler, almost white. The planes of his face were hollowed out, all softness and excess peeled away, as if he too had been chained to a wall.
Carah didn’t know what she had expected, but her enemy was not the grandiose nightmarish monster she had envisioned. No roiling auras of sinister power or billowing black robes hung with mementos of countless victims. He was just an Elari.
Lothiar looked at nothing but Carah. He’d known precisely where she would be, and she realized that no other avedra had used this alcove. She wasn’t a replacement. This place, these chains, had been reserved especially for her.
He wore the blank, intent stare of the awed, of a man enamored at the first sight of his true love. Carah sought a way to escape his gaze, to press herself so deep into the stone that she vanished. But the chains mocked her, held her fast, forbade her even the thin disguise of the veil.
Jeers, hisses, spit hurled toward Lothiar from every corner of the cavern, but as far as he was concerned, the insults were empty wind. He was impervious.
Without averting that enrapt gaze, he shoved the torch at Frogtongue, then descended the steps to the main floor. He was so certain of his sovereignty here that he wore no armor. A fitted silk tunic the color of ash slithered against his skin. He stopped directly below Carah and snapped his fingers. One of the sentries shuffled to his side and dropped to his hands and knees, no questions needed. Lothiar stepped onto the ogre’s back, then onto the shelf where he loomed over her, owning the air she breathed.
She refused to look any higher than his boots.
“I was beginning to believe Ruvion couldn’t do it,” he said. His voice was scarred somehow. From shouting at ogres, likely. Maybe he had nightmares that made him scream. Though Carah doubted his conscience troubled him much. “Looks like his hunch was sound after all.” Lothiar glanced over his shoulder, toward Rhian’s alcove.
Carah opened her mouth to declare that she wasn’t a doe or a dove to be hunted, but decided to ignore him. She clenched her jaw in stubborn silence.
Lothiar reached for her chains, slid them through his hands to remove the slack. A slow, inevitable exertion of control. Carah’s arms rose like those of a wooden puppet. She had little choice but to stand up.
Lothiar’s fingers caged her jaw, gentle but undeniable, forcing her to look at him. His eyes were steel, blunt and brutal. They were not Laniel’s eyes, or Lyrienn’s, at all.
“By the Mother, you look like him,” he said. Surely he referred to her uncle. “It’s a pleasure to see you before you wane.” How soft, how intimate, his voice. “I thought you might like to know, your brother made it safely to Tírandon. You showed extraordinary initiative going after him. I applaud you. Reshuffling the pieces keeps me on my toes. Of course, the duke may not be a problem for long, once his people get their hands on him.” He grinned a nasty taunt.
Carah could play that game. “You made your biggest mistake, bringing me here.”
He nodded, granting her that much. “That possibility crossed my mind. And it’s not only Dathiel who gives me concern. There’s a certain … dragon … who’s been pestering me. When he learned you’d been taken, well … I know what it’s like when a dragon throws a tantrum. Rather terrifying. He seems to favor you for reasons he won’t explain.”
A glowing silver gate, a timeless voice booming. Are you the one?
“Rashén can protest all he likes,” Lothiar added. “He can break this cavern to pebbles in an attempt to free you, but these chains would thwart even him. Anathema.” He shrugged hard shoulders well-suited to the weight of armor. “Folly or not, that’s the very reason you’re here. To draw Dathiel. To shake him. Until he makes a mistake.”
“He’s not stupid,” Carah retorted. “He won’t be lured.”
“Stupid? No, I’ve never thought Dathiel stupid. But he’ll come. As surely as the moons rise. He loves you. Maybe a little too much.”
Carah swept a hand to slap him, but the chain announced her intent, and Lothiar caught her wrist. The shackle protected her skin from his grip, but his thumb pressed into her palm, an eerily carnal touch. “You think I don’t know? I�
�ve watched you since you were a child. Every year on the same day he came to you.”
What kind of diseased mind cultivated such an obsession? Carah tried to pull her hand free.
“It’s as if there’s a string tied between the two of you. You give a tug and he comes running. This will be no different.”
How matter-of-factly he said it, how certain. And he was right.
Carah shook her head, determined to deny it. “You’re mad,” she muttered before she realized what she was saying. But she felt Lothiar’s stance go rigid. “You’re mad,” she said with more conviction. Then shouted it. “You’re mad! You’re mad!” The words echoed against the ceiling, skittered across the floor, and bounced away down the tunnel.
He shoved her into the wall, his forearm across her throat. “Don’t push me, little girl.”
“You won’t hurt me,” she said, half-strangled under the pressure of his arm. “Not until you have Thorn, and he won’t be caught. He won’t let you.”
Lothiar expelled a breath of laughter, delighted at the cat-and-mouse game she offered. “I’ll catch him. And then I’ll hurt you. I’ll hurt you every way you can be hurt. Right in front of him.” He pressed closer, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. “Understand what I mean?”
A whimper broke from her throat. Terror swiftly crowded out defiance.
The pressure of his arm, the unbearable heat of his body, receded. His fingers lifted a curl from her shoulder, gave it a playful tug. “That’s how you’ll serve me, pretty Carah. By staying right where you are.”
How complacently he smiled as he stepped down from the shelf. Without a backward glance he strode from the cavern. Frogtongue waddled after him, bearing the torch. Carah didn’t move until she was sure he was gone for good. Then she let out a quaking breath and wilted to her hands and knees.
All around the shelf, chains clattered as prisoners stirred. “She’s the one the Captain wants!” someone cried.
“Why didn’t he spare the rest of us?” asked another. “We’re nothing to him.”
