by Tanya Huff
…and she froze.
Not back to the darkness. To the stone and the damp and the smells and the hunger. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t…
They dragged her out of the hall. Closed and locked the door behind them.
Danika knew herself a heartbeat away from begging when they turned her toward the open door on the right—the door to the water room.
She found her feet, shook off their hands, and walked in.
No woman waited inside this time, but, this time, she knew what to do. After days in the same clothes, in the woods, in the mail coaches, in the hole, hot water was the next best thing to freedom.
Back in her room—no, her cell. No matter how comfortable it seemed in comparison, it was still a cell. Back in her cell, the commode had been emptied and cleaned, the bed made, and the robe hung from a hook that hadn’t been there previously. A wide-toothed comb had been left on the small table, and a high-waisted, long-sleeved dress of blue cotton had been laid out on the end of the bed.
Danika turned as the bolts slammed into place behind her and dropped to the floor, listening to discover if the other women were to be treated the same way. She heard the bolts pulled back on the door next to hers. Heard the door opened. Heard Annalyse’s voice, young and frightened, heard her bare feet against the slate floor in the hall, not moving freely but shoved along. Heard the door open at the end of the hall.
As Annalyse entered the water room—Danika couldn’t hear either Annalyse or water, but she had to believe that was where the younger mage had been taken—much lighter footsteps—leather shoes not boots—hurried down the hall and turned into Annalyse’s empty room. The sounds from the room were the familiar sounds of a maid at work.
Danika dressed while she waited for Annalyse to return. The fabric was coarser than any she’d ever worn, but the style was Aydori. The front panels of the dress crossed over themselves, support built into the bodice, a double panel of fabric down the center front. Undoing the two buttons in the band tucked up under her breasts would allow her to step out of it. Lady Berin had been wearing a nearly identical style in the carriage, although Lady Berin’s dress had been of significantly better quality. She wondered if Leopald realized the Mage-pack was not actually Pack and couldn’t change.
When Annalyse was returned to her cell, she thanked the guards in stiff Imperial before they closed and bolted her door. Danika smiled. The shield of manners.
Kirstin, next to Annalyse, refused to leave her cell. To Danika’s surprise, the guards left her and moved on.
Jesine and Stina went with the guards in turn. Stina was unusually quiet, but neither of them sounded as though they had to be forced. The maid attended to their housekeeping while their cells were empty.
When Stina returned, the boots marched down the hall to Danika’s door, and she scrambled up onto her feet as the bolts were thrown. Bruised-thumb beckoned her out into the hall. Mole-under-ear stood with his pistol aimed into Kirstin’s cell. Without waiting for instruction, Danika hurried down the hall.
Still in the robe, Kirstin had curled into a nest of bedding in the far corner of the room between the bed and the wall. The room smelled like vomit. No, not quite vomit. Like bile that remained when there was nothing left to throw up. Wishing she had Jesine with her, Danika stepped farther into the room and softly called Kirstin’s name.
Kirstin looked up, her eyes widened, and any fear Danika had that she’d been injured fled as she suddenly found herself with an armful of her ex-rival. Danika sank to her knees, holding on as Kirstin crumpled with her, sobbing over and over against her shoulder. “I thought I was alone.” There were bruises wrapped purple and green around pale wrists and another that looked like a handprint just visible where the robe pulled away from her shoulder.
I am Alpha, Danika reminded herself, and somehow kept her voice from wobbling. She would lend Kirstin her certainty because that was all she had right now to offer. “No, dearling, no. We’re all here. You’re not alone.” When one of the guards made an impatient noise behind her, she freed an arm and gently lifted Kirstin’s head so that blue-flecked dark eyes met hers. There was more of Kirstin in them now than there had been at any time since they’d been taken. “The guards are here to escort you to the water room. And that’s all they want. When you return, your cell will have been cleaned and there’ll be clean clothes left for you. Granted, not clothes even approaching fashionable, but…”
“Where we lead, fashion follows.” Kirstin found the strength for a half smile and Danika mirrored it.
“Exactly, and fashion will follow.” It was as close as she could get to declaring they’d find a way to escape. It was unlikely the guards spoke Aydori, but they already had evidence that it was spoken here, so they had to assume every word would be overheard. Except…
Heard you in the coach. Kirstin exhaled the words. Sniffed, pulled back a little, and added, Only one dead. Sad. She frowned when she felt Danika tense, but there was no way Danika could explain how that one death had made her feel with the guards in the room.
Shielded by Danika’s body, Kirstin took a moment to slide on an approximation of her best society face, then she stepped away and said in broken but passable Imperial, “My apologies for the delay. I found myself indisposed timely.” Hopefully, only Danika heard how brittle her voice was. How easy it would be to break her again.
Bruised-thumb raised a hand and held Kirstin in place, while Mole-under-ear beckoned Danika out into the hall and escorted her back to her room. Cell, she corrected herself again. Not a house, not a dorm, not a hotel: a prison.
As her door began to close, she heard Kirstin say, “That is a Deni pistol, yes? The brass work is very distinct. Sloppy action on old style. Single shot, yes? Too bad.”
Kirstin’s uncle was a Metals-mage who developed weapons for the army. Officers among the volunteers carried a double shot pistol, and Danika remembered either Ryder or Jaspyr saying he was working on a rotating something or other that would shoot up to six rounds.
She dropped to the floor, mouth to the crack under the door. Harmless. Only Kirstin, she sighed to herself, as she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, could go from heartbreaking mess to making enemies so quickly. None of the others had spoken to the guards. None of the others had insulted their weaponry. She didn’t even want to think about why, among her limited vocabulary, Kirstin knew the Imperial word for sloppy.
While she waited for Kirstin to return, Danika used the comb to tug her hair into some kind of order, although she had a feeling she’d left it too long and it was now sticking up in an irredeemable spiky mess. Both Kirstin with her thick, dark waves, and Jesine with her auburn curls, had hair more suited to the short style of the Mage-pack. After a moment’s reflection, she took a deep breath, hooked a few teeth under the net, and pulled.
She was still dry heaving into the commode when her door opened. She straightened and wiped her mouth on a corner of the robe as a new guard came into the room. He beckoned, the gesture already familiar. By the time she reached the hall, Danika’d decided to call him Mouth-breather and his partner, Hairy-knuckles. It seemed Mole-under-ear and Bruised-thumb had been assigned exclusively to water room duty.
They took her back into the vestibule and through the door in the opposite wall.
It led to a large, high-ceilinged room. Danika’s gaze skipped over the table set with five places, over the guards standing along two walls, and locked on the other four women of her Mage-pack. They stood a little apart from each other. Not talking. Not touching. Waiting.
Danika spread her arms.
The next few minutes were a frenzy of touch and tears. Everyone’s cheeks were wet, and Annalyse was still crying when they finally pulled a little apart. Kirstin wasn’t the only one with new bruises, but none of them were badly hurt and, more importantly, they were together.
Although too conscious of the guards to say much.
Kirstin swept a disdainful gaze along the walls. “I’ve never really liked those
households that keep too many footmen,” she sighed. “It’s pretentious.”
Jesine shot Danika a look that clearly stated, “She’s back.”
Danika smiled and, when no one objected to Kirstin’s declaration, added, “They’re well trained, though. Seen but not heard.”
“Only the best,” Jesine agreed, and directed her smile at the line of uniformed men. Jesine was beautiful. Unless they were guarded only by men who solely enjoyed men, that had to have caused a reaction—even in the plain, deep yellow dress that she’d somehow managed to make look better than the identical piece of clothing worn by all of the others.
Danika and Kirstin were in blue, Annalyse in green, Stina in brown, Jesine in yellow. They’d been color coded to match their mage marks, a style that went in and out of fashion in Aydori, usually among the young and the not terribly powerful.
“Who came up with the theory that simple and comfortable has to be unattractive?” Stina pulled a bit of heavy brown cotton away from her body and sighed with exaggerated frustration. “A little embroidery would have killed them?”
Annalyse stared at her for a long moment, then sputtered with laughter.
“That’s my chick.” She put her arm around the younger woman’s shoulders and pulled her in for a hug. “Don’t give them the gift of your grieving.”
As Stina clearly had Annalyse in hand, Danika turned her attention back to Jesine and Kirstin, hoping Kirstin hadn’t made it all the way back to her old self. Fighting among themselves would help only Leopald.
“I’m better,” Kirstin was saying. “The pain from trying to remove the net has faded, I promise.” The white lines still marked her fingers, but she pulled them from Jesine’s grip a little impatiently. “They don’t hurt. I just couldn’t cope for a while, so I went away. I’m sorry if I frightened you.”
She sounded sincere, but Danika couldn’t shake the feeling that when it came to Kirstin, nothing was that simple. Unfortunately, her stomach chose that moment to growl.
Annalyse giggled and covered her mouth when it started to get out of control. “What do we do about the food, Lady…I mean, Danika?”
They all had to be hungry.
“We eat.”
“Is it safe?”
She didn’t blame Kirstin for being suspicious. “Yes, it’s safe. We’ve had the stick. This is the carrot.”
The porridge had grown cold, but that didn’t matter. There was honey to put on it and butter and cream. There were large, fluffy biscuits warm in a napkin cocoon, with more honey and butter and jam to put on them. There was no tea, but there was water that didn’t taste of rust.
Danika caught Annalyse’s gaze and nodded, ever so slightly, toward the pitcher.
The younger woman reached for it and frowned over at Stina who’d kicked her under the table. Her green-flecked eyes widened as she realized what was expected of her. She lifted the pitcher with shaking hands and took a deep breath, braced for pain as she poured the first glass. “Oh. It doesn’t…look like there’s anything but water,” she amended hurriedly, cheeks flushed. “I’d very much love a cup of tea.”
“So would I.” Reaching across the table, Danika squeezed her hand. Annalyse clearly hadn’t used any low-level mage-craft since being netted but had still been willing to try and purify the water. How could Leopald hold them with such women as these?
“This is a banana.” Jesine waved a long yellow fruit. “Sirin and I…”
Sirin Hagen was Ryder’s third cousin, silver-furred like Jaspyr and at forty, eighteen years older than Jesine. Danika had seen them together, and it was clear Sirin’s nose had known what it was about. Ryder had sent Sirin and Kirstin’s husband Neils to the front with the 2nd. Annalyse’s husband Geoffrey was Hunt Pack and Torvin Menkyzck, Stina’s husband was a senior officer. Tomas had said the Hunt Pack was dead. Annalyse was a widow at twenty. Stina at thirty-seven, her three children left in Aydori without a father.
But they couldn’t all be dead. Looking around the table, Danika saw every woman there thinking, He can’t be dead.
“Sirin and I,” Jesine repeated defiantly, “had them on that trade trip Ryder sent him on to Abyek last spring. You eat them like this.” She peeled the thick skin down, pushed her chair away from the table, and slid the end of the fruit into the perfect circle of plush lips.
Not one of the guards made a sound, but over half of them shifted in place.
Annalyse turned her giggle into a cough and hid it in a napkin.
“It’s an interesting sort of prison.” Stina pushed back from the table, one hand gently stroking circles over her stomach. “Someone has put a lot of thought into it. We’ve seen the worst, we’ve seen the best, and they can control us by sliding us up and down the scale depending on how we behave.”
“Shut up,” Kirstin snapped.
“The voice this morning, it spoke Aydori.” Annalyse twisted the napkin with both hands. “Are they listening to us?”
“Count on it.”
“Then I imagine,” Stina said calmly, “that they’ll be pleased we understand what’s going on. It’ll save them a lot of time.”
“And we will be model prisoners.” Danika cut off Kirstin’s response. “We have more than ourselves to think about.” She dropped her hand to mirror Stina’s and glared at Kirstin, exhaling. Lull to false security!
Escape!
Absolutely.
Kirstin’s cheeks were dark as she dropped her head, but Danika knew her well enough to recognize it as anger not embarrassment. She swept a gaze around the table, breathing Lull to false security directly at each woman, aware that Kirstin would hear it each time. The reemphasis couldn’t hurt. From the outside, it would seem that she was demanding compliance with her call to be model prisoners and as she was, in a way, she had no fear of discovery.
The sound of trumpets filled the room. Danika barely stopped herself from searching for speakers in the ceiling and kicked Kirstin under the table when her chin started to rise. Credit where credit was due, Kirstin wasn’t stupid and she followed Danika’s lead, searching around for the source of the noise rather than up.
No need to let their watchers know they’d found the speakers in their rooms.
The guards snapped to attention.
Danika had seen more military reviews over the last year than in the rest of her life combined, but she’d never seen anyone come to attention with such fervent precision.
High on the inside wall, a double section of wallboard swung open to lie flat, exposing a small chamber lined in flowing panels of Imperial purple fabric. The chamber contained only a single high-backed chair positioned close enough to the edge of the wall that when the man sitting in it shifted his foot where it was resting on what looked like a roll of carpet, the toe of one highly polished boot jutted out into the room. Above the boots, he wore cream-colored pantaloons, and a dark coat cut in a military style, gold cord looped over and around one shoulder, gold buttons gleaming. He wasn’t a large man, but, as far as the angle allowed, Danika thought he filled out both pantaloons and coat without resorting to padding. He had thick brown hair, eyes so blue they seemed mage marked, and his full lips were surprisingly red against his pale skin. His age was common knowledge, even in Aydori, and he looked to be a full decade younger than his thirty-four years.
One last flurry of trumpets, then: “His Imperial Majesty, Leopald. By the light of the Sun and the strength of his people, Exalted Ruler of the Kresentian Empire, Commander in Truth of the Imperial army, Supreme Protector of the Holy Church of the One True Sun.”
That was new. The Prelate had always been the Church of the Sun’s highest office.
Smiling, eyes shining, Leopald leaned forward. “I know, the sixth mage hasn’t arrived yet, has she, but I couldn’t wait. I needed to see you. You’ll just have to tell her everything when she arrives tomorrow, or the next day at the latest. You know how Soothsayers are. It’s so hard to get an exact time out of them.”
Danika was reminded
how professors sounded when students they were mentoring did something clever. Friendly and proprietary sounded dangerously similar. And she still had no idea who this sixth mage could be. For all his smiles, she very much doubted Leopald would tell her if she asked.
“It’s unfortunate that you’re not all capable of understanding Imperial, but I’m sure that those of you who are will explain to the rest when I’m done. You’re fascinating, all of you, actual high-level mages, and I wish I could trust you enough to discover what you’re capable of, as our records concerning mages could definitely use updating, but, regretfully, no.” He sounded as though he did honestly regret the lost opportunity for study. “Let me explain why you’re here. When wild and mage together come, one in six or six in one. Empires rise or empires fall, the unborn child begins it all. Soothsayers, obviously.” His smile was a friendly request to share a common reaction to such ridiculous poetry. “There were also a lot of numbers, eventually determined to refer to time and location, but that needn’t concern you. The prophecy suggests that one of your offspring will bring the empire down, so, for purely nationalistic reasons, I should have you killed before you whelp. Now, I would honestly hate to have to do that because that same prophecy also suggests that one of your offspring will make the empire greater than it is. That interpretation argues for your lives. As it happens…” Sitting back, he crossed his feet at the ankle, leaving them still propped on the rolled carpet. “…one doesn’t rule the world’s greatest empire by leaving things to chance, does one? If I control the offspring of the prophecy, I control the effect they have on the empire. It’s simple really. If your offspring is a beast, it will be a favored pet and trained to kill at my command. Eventually, if things go well, I’ll have the last of the abominations under my control. If your offspring is a mage, it will learn to use its powers to my benefit. They’ll live useful lives, unable to move against me or the empire.” Leopald had a strong, reassuring voice. He spoke as though what he said was so obviously inarguable that any reasonable person would have to agree with him. “But what of you, the bearers of these offspring? Neutered as you are by ancient technology, you’ll live quietly here until your offspring are whelped. Fed. Exercised. Kept clean. All your needs seen to. However, a bitch can whelp in any kennel and, as you’ve discovered, there are less pleasant places prepared for you.” Still smiling, he uncrossed his legs and kicked the roll of carpet at his feet.
