by Cara Witter
Lukos locked the cell again, and Perchaya shut her eyes against the darkness. Her blood. The flash of light. Protection. She ran her fingers over the runes, feeling their impression.
Had the ring itself protected her from whatever he’d tried to do with her blood? If it was still controlling the call, it made sense that it would prevent her from removing it, but—
All too quickly, the boots were returning. This time, outside the cell, Perchaya heard a deep, almost soothing voice. “Restrain her,” it said. “And bring her out where I can see.”
A key clinked in the lock and the cell door opened again. Lukos stepped in, seizing Perchaya by the back of the neck and forcing her to her knees in the doorway.
A red-haired man stood in the hall, wearing a crisp black Sevairnese uniform, though without the breastplate or bracers worn by the guards. His eyes bored into her, and Perchaya wanted to shrink away.
Lord General Diamis. She would have questioned what she’d done to deserve his personal presence, but she could only surmise that by seeing the ring, they knew. She wasn’t some woman who had offended the wrong people, falsely accused of being a Drim.
Never in her life had Perchaya wished more to be unimportant.
“Show me,” Diamis said.
Perchaya expected Lukos to try to wrench the ring from her finger—to stop the call of the bearers, to thwart the gods’ failsafe against what he was trying to do. But instead Lukos stood over her and produced the vial of blood from his pocket. He spilled another drop of blood onto his fingers and chanted the horrible words again.
The light flashed, as did the Lord General’s eyes. “Interesting,” he said. He looked down at her hand, at the ring. “And it won’t come off.”
“I tried,” Lukos said. “She says she can’t remove it.”
“Very well,” Diamis said. “Cut off her finger.”
Perchaya whimpered, her vision spotting black, but had no chance to react as Lukos snatched her wrist and forced it against the door frame.He drew a curved, ceremonial blade and stabbed at the base of her ring finger with exact precision. Perchaya cried out and squeezed her eyes shut, but even through her closed lids, she could see the flash of light. She opened them again to find the knife sunk into the wood of the door frame, her finger still intact.
“Clever,” Diamis said.
Lukos pulled the knife from the door frame. “Shall I try her arm?”
Diamis gave him a harsh look. “No. We need her alive, until we can collect the other one.”
Perchaya’s heart beat in her ears. Kenton. They hadn’t captured him, then, when he came to the castle for Sayvil. But they knew he was here, and they meant to.
Gods, Kenton was right. Diamis did need them. He was collecting the Drim, executing them as some dark part of his plan to release Maldorath.
“That’ll be all,” Diamis said. “For now.”
Without warning, Lukos tossed her back into the cell again, locking the door behind him. Perchaya lay still on the cold floor, clutching the ring with her other hand. It hadn’t protected her from violence—Lukos had been able to take her blood easily enough. But when they tried to remove it, the ring resisted.
It had stopped them from controlling her body, stopped them from invading her mind and using her as a spy. She should be grateful for it, for these particular runes. Protection. But it was also the ring that landed her here, to be held until Diamis was able to use her to get at Kenton.
But if Diamis knew what it did—besides protect her from their blood magic—he surely would have killed her to get it off her finger. Lukos might not have been able to cut her finger, but what of her throat? What of her heart? No doubt Diamis was going back to his extensive library to research such rings—perhaps even to find the same book Kenton had smuggled to learn of its purpose.
Perchaya only prayed that she could find a way out of this dungeon before Diamis figured out exactly what he stood to gain by killing her outright, even if it meant he could no longer use her as bait.
Twenty-six
As the sun dawned over the rooftops of the cloth district, Kenton stood watching the dark windows of Paulus’ house. A candle flickered from the upper windows, then the room darkened again. Kenton gripped the bone of the leg of lamb in his hand, grease dripping down onto the stones. Someone was awake, moving around in there.
Someone who, if he knew what was good for him, would be up early this morning, fleeing for his life.
Too late.
The candle flickered again, this time near the back of the shop.
Kenton set out with a steady step, moving through the narrow alley around the rear of the building, waiting quietly against the wall behind the back door.
Paulus emerged a few moments later, dressed for travel in a long wool coat and cap, a large sack thrown over his back. As Kenton had predicted, Rumsocks darted between Paulus’ feet, springing toward Kenton with an energetic yip before his master had made it a single pace from the door of his shop.
Kenton threw the leg of lamb against the back wall of the alley, and Rumsocks caught it on the rebound, securing it under one paw and greedily tearing at the meat. Paulus had just enough time to drop his sack in the doorway of the shop and turn to run before Kenton caught him by the back of the neck and slammed him against the wall, planting one knee squarely on the old man’s spine.
Paulus eyed Kenton as well as he could with one side of his face smashed against the stone.
“You look surprised,” Kenton said. “Didn’t expect me to come back from the castle, did you? Didn’t expect me to know that the moment my back was turned, you sold out the friend I left in your protection.”
Paulus tried to shake his head, but only managed to scrape his face against the wall. “No,” he said, his words slurred from the way his mouth was pressed. “No, I swear. I didn’t have a choice.”
Kenton pushed harder on Paulus’ spine. “Didn’t you?” he asked. “Didn’t you have the choice not to take her to Diamis? Because my personal record of not turning people over to the Lord General is—”
“I didn’t want to!” Paulus said. “It was the others. They saw her ring. They wanted to use her as a distraction, and if I defended her, they’d—”
Kenton leaned so close to Paulus’ face that the man would be able to feel his breath on his cheek. “Is that the state of your petty resistance? So desperate you’re willing to send innocent people to their deaths? Tell me, how exactly does that make you better than him?”
Paulus babbled incomprehensibly. “You—” he said finally, “you have to understand how much pressure I’ve been under. We’ve been preparing this move for years. I couldn’t have the resistance fracture to protect you or her. The resources we’ve accumulated, the connections and the assets—”
“I hope it was worth it,” Kenton said, twisting the man’s arm behind his back with force, “because they’re going to be finding pieces of your assets in the bay for years.”
Paulus cried out, loud enough that Kenton looked both ways down the alley to make sure they hadn’t drawn any attention. The alley was empty, save for Rumsocks’ greedy gobbling of the last of the lamb meat. The dog had made quick work of the flesh, but the bone could take him hours. Rumsocks wasn’t what Kenton would describe as a guard dog.
Kenton let up slightly on Paulus’ arm, not enough to seem as though he was hesitating, but enough that Paulus stopped groaning.
“Please,” Paulus said. “Please, I have children. I have grandchildren. Let me go and I swear, you’ll never see or hear from me again.”
Kenton pretended to consider this long enough to make Paulus squirm beneath his hold. The old man didn’t even try to get loose—he knew he was no match for Kenton.
He was probably telling the truth about the others wanting to turn in Perchaya, because Paulus didn’t have the guts to have tried it himself.
“It
’s your lucky day,” Kenton said at last. “Because I’m not going to kill you.”
Paulus let out a high-pitched sound of relief, and Kenton pushed the man’s cheek harder into the grit of the wall.
“Be grateful,” Kenton said.
“I am,” Paulus said. “Thank you. Thank you!”
“Not to me. This is no act of mercy. If you cross me again, you won’t even see me coming. But I’m not going to kill you today, Paulus. Do you know why?”
Paulus didn’t respond, and Kenton allowed a long pause and a final twist of Paulus’ arm before answering his own question.
“I’m not going to kill you because you have something I need.”
If Daniella hadn’t already started doubting her sanity in agreeing to be a hostage, the first five minutes locked in the upright coffin would have done it. She’d known Sayvil for less than a day—and Daniella’s history with Kenton was hardly reassuring.
Outside the coffin, Daniella could hear the scraping of metal on wood as Sayvil and Kenton pried the door frame off the closet that held the coffin. They’d fitted the casket inside and used an extra bit of wood to make the small space look like just an ordinary closet and allowed Daniella to climb in unblindfolded.
It was all for her father’s benefit, Kenton said. He was probably watching through Daniella’s eyes. He would see her enter the closet. He would believe she was being detained in the small house inside the city, as Kenton had indicated in the missive he’d sent to the castle.
Both Daniella and Kenton agreed from their separate research that without taking full control, a blood mage wouldn’t be able to hear what she heard or feel what she felt, only look through her eyes. Daniella had insisted repeatedly that he couldn’t do any of it to her, that she was different somehow. But she had no proof to offer Kenton, and really, no proof to be absolutely sure of that herself. So she’d agreed that this precautionary plan was for the best.
She regretted that now in the dark, confined box—the type that bodies of those who could afford it would be transported in to the private pyres outside the city where they would receive proper rites and burning. Even with the calmweed powder Sayvil had given her starting to take effect, being trapped like this made her skin clammy. Her arms scraped the bare wood of the inside, and she felt slivers come off in her skin.
Daniella could only hope that this gamble worked, that Sayvil would protect her long enough that she could . . . what? Get away from them both? That had been her original plan.
But her father might very well be trying to release the banished God of Blood. The one who could bring about the kind of horror and devastation that had required the sacrifice of four other gods to stop him. And though it chilled her very soul to consider, she might be the weapon Diamis needed to accomplish this. She couldn’t let that happen. Not to herself, and not to the world. She had to help, if there was a way for her to do so.
The cracking of wood paused for a moment, and Daniella heard a scraping sound, like the trim was being pried away.
The coffin tipped slightly, the bottom edge scraping against the floor with a vibration Daniella could feel deep in her bones. And then, slowly at first, Sayvil and Kenton slid the casket along the floor and lowered it to the ground. Daniella pressed herself against the back of the box to avoid falling, but she still bumped her head as the coffin hit the floor with a thump. Her elbows burned from scraping abruptly against the rough wood.
“Watch it!” she heard Sayvil shout from outside, and some kind of non-apologetic grunt that she assumed came from Kenton.
Still better than being in the castle, she told herself, closing her eyes against the darkness. She fought to keep her breathing even as pounding on the outside shook the casket. That would be one of them, Kenton most likely, nailing the outside shut. They couldn’t take the risk that Diamis would take control of her and make her kick free of the coffin.
Though it did limit Daniella’s own ability to escape, if that’s what she decided to do. Daniella would also have liked larger air holes than the ones Kenton had punched in the top of the box, but even with forged paperwork for delivering a dead body out of the city—forgery apparently being another of Kenton’s less-than-scrupulous skills—they couldn’t risk a guard checking the casket.
Daniella’s part in the plan was done. She’d seen the neighborhood they took her to, the house, both inside and out. She’d been threatened and had her finger sliced so Kenton could send a sample of her blood along with the lock of her hair and terms of hostage exchange, both delivered by a city courier who had no idea the kind of message he would be delivering to the castle. Then she’d been forced into the casket, waiting for the exchange to take place and Sayvil to come free her.
Her father would no doubt have Lukos or another blood reader examine the vial—or else do it himself, if he had the skill. He would be able to tell that the blood came from Daniella. The hair was only for rhetorical effect.
Sayvil had pointed out that if Diamis didn’t already have her blood, now he certainly would. But Kenton was right. Her father would have collected her blood when she was a child—and the fact that she was more his weapon than his daughter only strengthened her belief that was true.
The casket jostled as they loaded her into the back of a wagon, and then there was the light bump of the cart being pulled along the cobblestone streets. Despite the roughness of the ride, Daniella’s muscles were starting to relax against the hard wood beneath her, while at the same time she felt like she was floating. The calmweed, hopefully, and not some strange response to not having enough air.
Eventually, even the gentle movement of the casket stopped, and she heard some voices, but they were faint. Removed from the world.
The casket rocked again as the wagon moved on, past the guards and outside the city walls. She fought back a hysterical giggle.
Even with the calmweed slowly making the fright flutter from her mind as gently as butterfly wings, she wished for some sign from Sayvil that she was still watching out for her. A soft tap on the coffin lid, perhaps, some sign she wouldn’t be alone out here for long, trapped in the narrow dark.
She waited and waited, but there was only silence. Now all she could do was pray that Kenton and Sayvil would keep their word and not send her back to her father. And that they wouldn’t leave her here to die.
Erich’s words slithered through her mind. You killed people, Ella. Lots of them.
Would the Four even hear the prayers of someone like her?
Twenty-seven
Each bump of the wagon on the cobblestones sent a sharp pain up Perchaya’s spine, and the rope that bound her hands continued to chafe at her wrists, which were already rubbed raw. It was dark out—probably late at night, which meant she’d been in the dungeon for a full day—and she was being taken somewhere outside the castle gates. She had no idea where, but she feared she knew why.
They were going to keep her alive until they found the other one, Diamis had said. So if she was being moved, likely the Lord General had figured a way to use her against Kenton. She could only hope that Kenton was one step ahead of him, that he would figure out a way to save her or at least escape with his own life.
The expression of the man sitting silently across from her in the wagon didn’t betray any further information. Then again, this was General Erich Dektrian. Another man she’d never expected to see in the flesh—a legend in his own right, albeit one who had made that name while conquering her nation. She didn’t imagine he gave much away he didn’t intend to.
As she swayed and shook with each bump of the wagon, she looked desperately around for any way to free herself, anything to use on the ropes that tied her hands together and hobbled them to her bound feet. Nothing obvious, but that wasn’t a surprise. This cart was used for transporting prisoners, and therefore wasn’t rife with bits of jagged metal that might be used for escape.
; But it didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. After all, even if Kenton had a plan, General Dektrian had brought at least a dozen soldiers. Through the gap in the back of the leather wagon cover she could see several of them, all well-armed and with helmets and breastplates that gleamed in the light of the lanterns hanging from the wagon. She had a great deal of faith in Kenton’s skills after what she’d seen in Drepaine, but even he wouldn’t be a match for so many.
“You probably think he must care about you a great deal to go to all this trouble,” General Dektrian said, his tone even, leaning back against the wagon’s high wall in a pose that appeared deliberately casual.
Perchaya knew instinctively that there was nothing casual about General Dekrian, no way he wasn’t ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any situation.
His words, though, sparked hope. Perhaps it was Kenton who had instigated her removal from the prison. If he was the one with the plan, Diamis might be reacting to him.
Though the Lord General could still be leading him into a trap.
“More likely,” the general continued, removing his steel helmet just long enough to brush back his dark hair, “he has some use for you. The Kenton I knew cared about no one but himself. I doubt much has changed.”
Perchaya kept her face calm. She knew she shouldn’t say a single word, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Then you don’t know him.” The words came out raspy and ached in her throat. She’d had far too little water in the last day.
“I did,” the general said. “We were new soldiers together, a long time ago.”
She tried to imagine Kenton in a crisp Sevairnese military uniform and couldn’t. The Kenton she knew now could never have followed orders.
Still, she was afraid to say more. In her battered and dehydrated state, she would surely give away more than she meant to. Perhaps she already had.
She shifted her wrists against the ropes, trying not to wince at the pain, to further test whether she could pull her hands free.