An Heir to Thorns and Steel

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  The second laughed... and on the next pass his hands ripped me open and spilled something vital and he gathered it and gathered it and it was like being flayed of a skin I didn’t even know I had and I screamed, oh how I screamed—

  “How is it?”

  “Not much, but it refills quickly. Mmm. Very quickly.”

  “Blood from a stone.”

  Laughter, like the harsh cries of carrion birds. And still the violation went on, stripping me until I wept.

  I was not surprised when the demons came.

  How do you like our gift, O Prince? Do the elves not use it well? Is this not better than being eaten alive? one of them asked, licking my ear. I could not twitch away, so consumed was I by the madness of what they did to me, for now they were both at my body, stroking, cutting, hurting.

  “Make it stop,” I whispered. “Oh God. Kill them. Kill me. Something. Anything.”

  We obey the commands of the Prince, the demon said with a mocking grin... and then he dragged his claws up my spine and I convulsed. And then again. The pain woke and found invaders in its demesne and it roared defiance, devouring me to forbid me from them. Mine, it hissed in the voices of demons. MINE, MINE FOREVER.

  Yes, I thought—screamed—no, yes ANYTHING STOP—

  “Did we overdo it?”

  “Not sure. What a mess. You clean up.”

  “You were the one who pushed it too far.”

  “He still producing?”

  “Yes, still.”

  “Stupid. Get a human in here to clean it up.”

  “Fine, fine.” A pause. “He alive?”

  “Breathing...” A hand brushed my face, traced my cheekbone. “Mmm, still full even after all that. You have to take it slowly, but it never seems to end.”

  I discovered then that I had never hated anyone in my life... because in that moment, I hated the elves, hated them and wanted nothing more than to feel them die beneath my hands.

  “She’ll be pleased. We can replace the one we just used up.”

  I tried to rise so I could get my hands around their throats, but I couldn’t find my arms. I couldn’t find my body even, until one of them nudged my ribs with the tip of a sandal. “Let’s go tell her, then.”

  “Right.”

  And there they left me, like an unfinished meal they’d lost interest in, spilled on the floor in all my helplessness and hatred. I thought of Kelu’s curled lip and flattened ears and understood at last. A collar around the throat or a mark stained on the skin, it didn’t matter. These creatures treated us all the same. I struggled to rise and found I couldn’t; they had... done something to me, something indescribable. Just making the attempt brought tears to my eyes and I wept them past my gritted teeth and clenched jaw. I hated crying. I hated crying for pain even more. And I hated my body for not only betraying me, but for apparently having some new and special way of being violated that I’d never even imagined.

  Before I could gather myself, the door opened again for a human, another man. He did not meet my eyes, nor move with any confidence or energy. He looked much as I’d felt... or as I would if the elves did what they’d done to me over and over, past cowed and well into exanimate. He shifted me to one side and applied himself to mopping the floor; had I vomited? I didn’t remember. I hadn’t eaten in so long it hadn’t mattered much. I watched in dismay as the man finished cleaning... and approached me. He looped my arm over his shoulder and heaved me up without so much as a by-your-leave and dragged me out the door.

  “I should very much like to escape,” I told him conversationally. He did not reply.

  “Or to kill my captors,” I offered.

  Nothing.

  “Do you even speak?” I asked. I switched to Lit, though by now my native language felt ungainly. “Or do you prefer a civilized tongue?”

  That made him flick his eyes toward mine, but there was nothing in them. No approval, no curiosity, no censure. Nothing.

  He brought me to a room off a narrow, poorly lit hallway; no, calling it a room dignified it too much. It was a closet, just large enough for the thin bunk. The man dropped me there, ungently.

  “You can’t possibly be leaving me here,” I said.

  He shut the door on me. Closing it revealed two bowls. One was empty; one had water.

  “No,” I murmured, stunned.

  The door remained shut. The bowls did not vanish. The room remained tiny and crude, with its too-thin bunk and scratchy sheets.

  “No,” I said. I was not trapped. I was not a prisoner. I was not doomed to become a drudge who bowed his head to the will of his masters, the masters who abused and stole his essence whenever they pleased.

  I was not going to become a human Kelu.

  I was NOT!

  I threw myself against the door and struck it with my fists and my entire world was a NO screamed through my aching body and raw throat and bleeding soul. But I had the fortitude only for that one sad attempt. I was nothing but pain, a ruin of limbs and broken grace crumpled at the threshold of a lifetime of slavery. The demons crawled over my skin and licked at my invisible wounds and their mocking laughter blocked my hearing. I closed my eyes and managed to curl into an awkward ball, hiding my face against my knees.

  I breathed. Breathed through suffering and agony, through the sense of helplessness. Breathed through terror. And when I came out the other side, I found the door opening, the sliver of light falling across my cheek sharp as a cut.

  “Morgan,” Kelu hissed.

  I squinted past the tear-stiffened skin around my eyes.

  “Are you awake?” she asked in Lit.

  “Yesss,” I managed, hoarse.

  “Can you walk?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know,” I said. The effort of talking woke stabbing pains in my throat.

  “I’m getting you out of here,” she whispered.

  I looked at her. “Why?”

  “Because,” she hissed, “I hate them, and doing anything that hurts them pleases me.”

  I knew the source of her vitriol now, felt it seething in me. But something nagged me about her motivations anyway. Why me? Why didn’t she choose some other way to hurt them? “I’m sure there’s an easier way.”

  She shrugged. “You’re the one that occurred to me. Besides, we dragged you into this, we should get you out.”

  “I’m having trouble imagining you professing to altruism on the behalf of an elf in human’s skin.”

  Kelu sighed. “I don’t have time to argue with you. The truth is that Almond thinks you’re the prince, and she believes it so much she never once recanted even while they were punishing her. So... yes. I am breaking you out of your cell and smuggling you out of here. Maybe you are the prince. Maybe if I free you, you’ll turn the whole Archipelago upside-down. But even if you don’t, it’ll upset Amoret and that makes me happy. So are you coming or not?”

  “What about Almond?” I asked.

  “She’s elsewhere,” Kelu said.

  The image of Almond bearing some hideous torture because of me was more than I could stand. “We have to take her with us.”

  Kelu scowled at me. “I was going to go back for her once I get you out of the way.”

  “And if she’s taken while you’re busy with me?” I forced my recalcitrant body to its knees.

  “No, no,” she said, irritated. “Stop that! You’ll make things worse! If you want her to come now, I’ll go get her alone. They’ll notice you limping after me. And you’ll slow me down. Which is why I wanted to get rid of you first!”

  “It’s both of us or neither,” I said. “I’m not leaving without her.”

  She sighed and shut the door on me.

  I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the cold stone floor. I had to rise. I had to escape this place. And I had to get Almond away from them. And yes, even broken Kelu. Perhaps I could take them home with me, keep them safe from the depredations of elves forever. Gant was waiting somewhere; Gant was under the protection of
a different elf, one who didn’t apparently use every human as food. Surely escape could be accomplished.

  I tried to stand and fell. Sprawled on the ground, I remembered that part of my plan had been to find someone to heal me. I couldn’t imagine any elf ever consenting to do something beneficent, but I also found myself forced to admit that I was becoming an invalid faster than I’d planned, faster than I’d dreamed in my cruelest nightmares.

  God, I couldn’t afford to be this weak. Not here.

  By the time Kelu returned I had used the wall to drag myself upright and was leaning heavily against it. Seeing her made me glad... but seeing Almond...

  “What did they do to you?” I hissed.

  She bowed her head, embarrassed. “It is nothing, Master.”

  “What did they do to you!”

  “Later,” Kelu said, dragging my attention away from the macabre embrace of the bandages wrapping the smaller genet’s torso. “We have to go now.”

  “Very well,” I said, and took my first step. My heel landed, the shock traveled up to my ankle and my leg tried to continue through the stirrup of bone and muscle. Kelu snatched for my arm. She snarled. “Almond! Get his other side.”

  The smaller genet set her shoulder under my armpit and the two of them together managed to bolster me. But I was weeping again, with frustration and the sheer brilliance of the pain, so blinding.

  “What happened to you, Master?” Almond asked, her voice twisted with worry. “You smell so wrong.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, panting and trying to help them but it was hard, so hard to coordinate my limbs. “They touched me, they ripped me open, and now it’s bad, it’s very bad.”

  “You smell like agony,” Almond said softly. “Like screaming.”

  “Screaming... why, yes, I do seem to recall screaming,” I said. Mordant humor was all I had left.

  “Sssh,” Kelu said. “Just concentrate. We have to get you to the stables.”

  I wondered what poor souls they kept in stables, if they kept humans in kennels. I feared to ask, and it needed too much of my effort to remain conscious. Whatever they’d done, whatever they’d taken from me, it made my body worse. I felt as if I was grinding my bones to powder and my muscles were tearing apart. My sweat dampened their arms where they propped me up. The hall we traversed stretched on toward infinity... like a nightmare, as difficult to apprehend.

  “Not far now, Master,” Almond whispered, and perhaps she licked my cheek.

  A cool breeze... we were outside? It smelled like storms. Blindly I sought the sea. I could feel it pounding against my skin as if I had become the strand.

  “This way,” Kelu said, tugging me, and I realized I’d been straining toward it.

  I strangled my protest and let her guide me until we passed a threshold and I found the light warm and dim. I squinted into the real and found a long row of stalls, lit by lanterns and dense with sepia shadows. The musty warmth of the place felt good, felt right. Dry and full of living things.

  “There are... horses here?” I asked.

  “What did you expect?” Kelu said.

  I managed a twisted smile. “Some sentient race forced into eternal servitude on hands and knees.”

  She flashed her teeth at me. “You’re learning.”

  Almond flattened her ears.

  I remembered an important point then. “I can’t ride horses.”

  “Then it’s good we’re not stealing a horse,” Kelu said, disappearing into the maw of the shadows, the black ones at the end of the corridor. I waited, leaning heavily on Almond.

  Eyes first out of that dark. Giant eyes, bright as embers. Visceral memory: alchemical fires burning, talons, the hiss of a phantom, ancient anger. I backed away, stumbling.

  “No, no, Master,” Almond said, grabbing my arm. “It’s just a drake, it won’t harm you.”

  The shadows drained off the rest of the animal as it stepped toward me, a creature as tall as a draft horse but sleek and hard as a greyhound and scaled like a serpent. It extended its narrow, pointed head toward me, those cabochon eyes focused on mine.

  “Give it your hand,” Almond whispered.

  I extended my aching arm, palm up. It lowered its head, nostrils flared; its breath when it blew on my skin was hot, hot and dry, like the draft off a fire. I didn’t realize until a long tress tumbled over its head to tickle my wrist that it had a black mane to complement its two swept-back horns.

  “At least it likes you,” Kelu said, throwing a saddle over its back. She had to stand on her toes to reach over it.

  “A... a drake?” I said, looking at Almond. “Like a dragon?”

  “It’s not a dragon,” she said. “This is a rare riding beast, Master. Fit only for kings and princes.”

  “Should we be stealing something so rarified?” I asked. “Won’t they notice?”

  “We don’t have a choice,” Kelu said, tugging the girth taut. “We have to make the best time possible. This is the fastest thing in the stable, and it’s also the only thing that’s not going to balk at the smell of me or Almond.”

  “Still—” I began, and then... it stretched its long neck out and pressed its smooth cheek against mine.

  A sense of well-being flooded me, so intense I froze. It chafed its face against my cheek, against my neck, took a step forward until it could press its chest against mine. Shocked, I put both my arms around its muscled neck, my fingers tangling in that soft, long mane as it snuffed at my back.

  Both genets were staring at me. I wanted to protest that I hadn’t planned any of this, but... God, it was such a warm animal, and it felt good, good to touch it. So I gave up and buried my face in its hair.

  “It knows him,” Kelu said, sounding shaken.

  “Of course,” Almond said. “He’s the prince.”

  Kelu said, “Ah... rrr. Yes. Come on, Morgan, get on.”

  She wanted me to pull myself onto an animal this tall when I could barely walk. I laughed, weakly, bitterly.

  “Try, Master,” Almond said, petting my shoulder. “We’ll help.”

  “Just hurry,” Kelu growled.

  I drew in a deep breath of the drake’s scent: musty and musky and spiced, the sweat of snakes and predators touched with sparks. I steadied myself on the creature’s body, moving to its side, and there confronted the saddle. I reached for the pommel and managed to lock my fingers around it and then closed my eyes and heaved myself upward.

  And I almost made it.

  I fell, the genets lunged for me, and the drake... swerved under me. I found the saddle beneath my chest and blinked at the tooling on its leather edge. Very elegant. How had I gotten here?

  Without warning, Kelu shoved her shoulder into my backside, pushing me up into the saddle. Almond steadied me and the taller genet pulled my leg over the back of the drake, which had folded itself beneath me, tucked neatly on the ground like a cat.

  “At least it’s cooperating,” Kelu said. “There.”

  “Do we need a bridle?” Almond asked, hesitant.

  “Yes,” Kelu said. “I’ll get that. You get up behind him. We have to hurry. Someone might want to take a midnight ride.”

  I held onto the saddle. So many things going on around me and I felt like the master of none of it. It was humiliating. But... the drake beneath me was warm and very alive. I almost wished the saddle away, so I could feel its smooth skin against my legs.

  “All right,” Kelu said, throwing the reins over the creature’s long neck and pulling herself into the saddle in front of me. “Let’s go!”

  The moment I’d been dreading... the moment we actually moved. At home in Evertrue I’d often longed to take part in the equestrian sports my peers did, but every time I’d ridden a horse had involved an agony of jarred muscles and white pain shot straight up the column of my spine. I closed my eyes and braced myself with a reminder that there would be no liberty without pain, that I could live through it, must.

  Muscles glided beneath my legs, growing
hot enough to feel through the thin leather of the saddle. Startled, I opened my eyes to find the drake standing, and as I gaped it took its first few steps.

  “Does it even have bones?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Kelu said, and though I couldn’t see her face I could almost hear her rolling her eyes. “Hold on to me, will you? I don’t need you falling off.”

  I slipped my arms around her thin waist; behind me, Almond did the same. The drake glided forward, like shadows spilling across the ground. I was so lost in the wonder of it that I didn’t notice that we’d stopped at the door to the courtyard until Almond gasped behind me.

  A bewildered human servant stood at the door. A night watchman? A stablehand? I waited for the inevitable cry of discovery, but the man didn’t move, didn’t speak, did nothing. I wondered if he had been so hollowed out by the elves’ appetites that he had no intelligence left until I realized he was staring at the drake’s face, like a thing mesmerized.

  No... like prey.

  The drake prowled toward him, one liquid step at a time, and the human did nothing but gaze unblinking and begin at last to shake. When we were so close the drake could nudge him, he slid to his knees in a swoon and the drake brushed past.

  “My God,” I whispered.

  Kelu leaned forward and patted the drake on its chest. “Nicely done... but that won’t last long. When he recovers his wits he’ll tell someone we’re gone. So... hang on.”

  I renewed my grasp on her as she slapped the reins against the drake’s neck. It accelerated from a walk into a full run so smoothly I didn’t feel the transition, and then we were pouring into the most incredible leaps, as if the ground could not keep us. And it moved almost without sound, great clawed feet scraping against the earth before leaving it. I bent close against Kelu’s shoulder and laughed, laughed because I had never felt anything like it, like the heat that radiated from its body as its skin glided smooth and loose over its wet muscles; never felt anything like the ease and grace with which it moved and brought us with it. Never felt anything like the speed at which we traveled, whipping my face with my hair and I didn’t mind the sting, not at all, nor the cold.

  We fled out the courtyard and through gardens that registered only as a confusion of topiaries and spicy perfumes. My impression of Amoret’s estate was one of extraordinary wealth, open spaces and the knife-edged silhouettes of palms.