by Megan Hart
Rosten bent so close to me I could have counted the individual hairs of his eyelashes. He'd been smoking herb, and even in my pain I could be surprised. I hadn't thought Rosten indulged in such diversions. His hand came up to the back of my head and tangled in my hair, then pulled my head back until my throat stretched taut.
The nasty slime of his tongue slid on my skin just before he thrust his fingers between my legs. He groped me roughly and slid a hand up to pinch my nipple. Disgust made me gag, and he calmly stepped away.
"Get it dressed."
The soldier who held me forced me toward the table where a pile of clothes lay. He picked up a tunic, a shirt, some stockings. The garments were fine, of linen and velvet and lace. I could only stare at them without moving. I didn't know if I could ever move myself again, ever operate my arms and legs, ever walk without someone to hold me up.
"Now!" Rosten spat on the floor by my bare feet. "Oh, by Sinder's Arrow, I'll do it myself."
He yanked up the shirt and pulled it over my head, then forced my arms through the sleeves. "Damn you, you've soiled it."
He pressed the cloth against my back, and I screamed aloud. I don't know where I found my voice, but the strength of it made him stumble back. I sagged against the table. My back had turned to fire.
Rosten began to laugh while I wept. I hated him more than I had hated anything in my life. I shook from the force of it. His laughter filled my ears until I wanted to go mad from the sound of it.
"Shut up!" the cry wrenched from my mouth. "Book Monster!"
He was silenced as neatly as the closing of a door. His hand cracked against my cheek and sent me against the wall. When I woke again, I found myself in one of his chairs. I'd been fully dressed in garments that would have made Daelyn jealous with their ornamentation and quality. My hair had been brushed and braided. I was tied to my seat.
Rosten had sent away his soldiers. He hadn't bothered to cover his wound, which still seeped blood through half-clotted stripes. He sat in front of me, watching.
"You fight like a man."
I turned my head and spat to clear it of the blood from my bitten tongue. "I've been a man my entire life."
"You're not a man." Rosten glanced between my legs, and his mouth pursed. "You're a woman. Sinder's Folly. You're a bedamned folly playing at being what you can never be. And you're going to pay for that sin."
"It's not a sin," I managed to say, though by now my head was swimming again. "I've done nothing wrong."
"Nothing but live your life as a lie. I'd say that's a pretty big sin."
"And who are you to judge?" I thought I asked, but blackness had crept over me again and I might not have spoken aloud.
"Wake up!" He tapped my face. "'Tis time to go."
He undid the ties at my wrists and ankles and pulled me to my feet. I lost part of the journey upstairs, though I either walked of my own accord or Rosten dragged me, because the next I knew I stood, bound to a bar, on the platform in front of the House of the Book. It had been cleared of snow, as had the street in front, but the air was still bitterly cold.
The crowd murmured when Rosten stepped away from me and faced them. I remembered with alarm that the last time I'd been on this platform, it had been to watch a mother and her child burned alive. Would the same fate await me? Or would I hang from the gallows that had been set up in the crowd? Penryn, Moravian and Gilder had met their fate there, I saw, and despite my pain and the fact they had never been my friends, my heart wrenched.
"Good gentlemen!" Rosten addressed the crowd. "Some of you may know this person beside me. If you do not, let me introduce the Prince Regent's fetchencarry."
The murmur grew louder. Rosten held up his hands to hush the crowd, but it did little good. I could see it in their faces and the way they stood. They hated me already, and had not yet been told of my crime.
"A fine young man, is he not?" Rosten stroked my hair. "Fine clothes. Fine bearing. Handsome, is he not?"
"Sin is pretty on the outside, too!" Came a voice from the crowd.
Rosten acknowledged the shout with a nod. "Aye, and he's pretty enough, too. On the outside. But I ask you, my good lords. What about on the inside?"
"Show us!" I heard many voices cry.
I tried to struggle, but Rosten had two of his soldiers hold my arms still. He took a dagger with a jeweled hilt, and he slit my tunic and shirt from throat to waist, then yanked it off me. The crowd roared at the sight of my bare breasts. Next he tore off the fine trousers in which he'd dressed me, ripped the stockings from my legs, forced the shoes from my feet. I shuddered in the frigid air.
"This folly has committed a most grievous sin, my lords! This folly, this woman," and he spat at my feet, "has dared pretend to be a man!"
The crowd roared. They screamed. The force of their anger and hatred washed over me, and I was grateful for the height of the platform that kept them from attacking me. Rosten held up his hands. The crowd quieted, but not by much.
"My good lords, we've been living in troubled times. Pornography and violence, the stealing of our sons in the dead of night. And this. A folly dressed as, and living as, a man. Have I not promised you I would bring you the culprits?"
"Yes!" they roared as one.
"And did I not promise to return Alyria to the old ways? The proper ways?"
"Aye! You did! Yes!"
"My good lords, this is not a man. This is a folly. A sin. A woman. Let us then make her what she is."
The crowd erupted into furious shouts and cries. Rosten took up his dagger again. I waited for its bite on my throat. Instead, he held the blade to the base of my neck. He began to saw off my hair.
His touch was rough and it hurt me, but I didn't weep because of that. It was foolishness for me to cry about the strands of dark hair falling and being swept away by the wind. It was insanity to struggle against him with the dagger so close to my skin. I couldn't help myself. He cut my hair, he took my clothes, he stole my dignity. He made me ugly in the eyes of the crowd and gave them leave to hate me, not for any crime I had committed but for what I was.
At last he had shorn my head. He untied me and pushed me to the front of the platform. I thought he meant to toss me into the crowd, where I'd surely have been torn apart like a rabbit amongst hounds. At the last minute his hand pulled me back. He turned me to face him.
"You are a woman, Aeris Delaya. A folly. And you'll die a woman, with woman's hair and woman's garb."
He forced the kedalya over my head, and for a moment I was blind. The weight of the fabric forced me at first into a crouch. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see. He tugged the material until the eyeslit lined up with my gaze, and then he forced me upright again. He shoved me until I had turned my back to the crowd and faced the House of the Book.
"Here is one," I heard him say to the crowd now behind me. "And who is the other? Who has spent his days subverting our culture? Our history? Who has made a mockery of Alyria and of us?"
"No," I whispered, but nobody could have heard me through the heavy follyblanket. "Oh, Invisible Mother. Please, no."
I hadn't meant to betray him, but I had, not with words but with what Rosten discovered beneath my clothes. They brought him out, cuffed and tied as I had been, and dressed as elegantly. They'd beaten him as badly, too, but he moved forward on his own feet. His eyes looked dead. He didn't flinch when Rosten took the dagger and slit open his clothes, nor when the Book Monster tossed them into the crowd, which fell upon the scraps like starving beasts. His expression didn't change, not even when Rosten hacked his hair and gave that to the crowd as well.
"See your Prince now!" Rosten cried in triumph as he shoved Daelyn toward the platform's edge. "See the maggot which has squirmed in our midst for so long!"
Daelyn wavered on the platform's edge. He looked as though he were going to fall into the crowd, which surged toward him, but Rosten pulled him back at the last minute.
"No you don't," I heard Rosten say. "Not that way. That would be
too quick, my prince. My lovely folly prince."
He pulled Daelyn back. He turned him toward me, and I saw again how dead were his eyes. He had gone inside himself, like that day we'd watched the woman burn. He was far away, and I wished I could be with him.
A wagon had rolled up next to the platform. In its bed were two bars attached to the wagon floor, much like the one to which I'd been tied on the platform.
"Let's have you take a tour of your city, shall we, my prince?" Rosten stroked his finger down Daelyn's cheek. "Let's allow the people to view you as you really are. Let the whole of Alyria see their betrayer before I bring you back here and set you aflame."
Through it all, Daelyn didn't even blink. Rosten scowled and motioned for two of his soldiers to take the prince and tie him, standing, to the bar in the wagon. I was next. Rosten stripped me again, so I didn't even have the protection of the kedalya against the bitter wind. I stood hip to hip, thigh to thigh with Daelyn, whose skin was cold as the wind.
Rosten joined us and ordered the driver to start.
I worked at the knots at my wrists as we rode. The disgusting slime from the garbage they threw on us aided my twisting and turning, and I succeeded in loosening the rope enough to slip my hands free. I dared move my hand closer to Daelyn's, though I wasn't so bold as to do more than brush his finger with mine. I drew comfort from his closeness, but I couldn't tell if he got the same from me.
Rosten took us on a circuit of the city, reaching the merchant district when the riders came. Four of them, on steeds as black as night. Four warriors in helmets and armor, their blades flashing in the pale light of the winter sun.
Rosten's mouth opened in a shout drowned out by the noise from the following crowd. In that instant I pulled my wrists free of the ties. I lunged over the bar and grabbed for the dagger at Rosten's waist.
Diving Hawk. Striking Serpent. Leaping Buck. I was back next to Daelyn and slashing his bindings before Rosten could do more than swipe at me. We were free. The wagon lurched. We fell. I got us to our feet. Pulling Daelyn was like lifting a sack of stones.
The first rider plowed into the crowd without slowing. The men scattered like feathers in a draft. The horse wheeled, returned, and the rider's blade cut down the soldiers who had approached. The crowd fell back with more cries and moans.
The second rider reined in beside the horses drawing the wagon and reached for their harness. They bucked in their traces, and in the next moment were running free. The driver dove off the wagon, away from the rider.
The third rider came along and struck Rosten a great blow to the back of the head that knocked him sideways on the wagon seat. Then he came and reached for Daelyn, who did nothing to help his savior until I shoved him, hard. The rider scooped him up over the front of the saddle, then turned his horse and headed back toward the mountains.
The fourth rider came for me. I lost my breath. The world turned upside down. Pain ripped through my wounds at the ungracious handling, but I was free, I was away, and as the horse pounded beneath me, I gave myself up to the ride.
Chapter Forty-Five
I know now the journey was a long one through the mountains. All I knew then was the passing of hours by the sun's position overhead. Someone dressed me, someone fed me, someone kept me warm. At night I rested next to Daelyn and listened for the sound of his breathing, certain at any moment it would cease. Certain that at any moment, my own would too.
Someone tended my back with salve and sponged my head when the fever grew fierce. Someone held my head when I vomited even the thin broth they fed me. Someone carried me on his horse and held me there so I wouldn't fall off.
It wasn't until we came out of the mountains that I realized the someone was Lir. He, and Carinda, and Gerard and Galya were the riders who had rescued me and Daelyn. They had ridden from Elitan to save us and now had taken us back.
The days passed in a haze for me, but at last we reached a road. Then a village. And finally, the sight of a palace rose in the distance. They took us there. I slid from the horse, my every movement as stiff as though my bones were made of glass.
They took us inside to rooms as warm and fragrant as the Land Above. I couldn't stand on my own, and Lir's hands supported me as I goggled at the beauty surrounding me. I began to weep. He gathered me into his arms and took me to his quarters and into his bath chamber. Thanks to salve and bandages, my wounds had begun to heal despite the poor traveling conditions that could have allowed them to fester, but after so many days of riding, I could not sit. I could not lie down. Lir helped me stand with my hands on the rim of the tub, which was slowly filling with clear, steaming water. And then he undressed me.
"What did they do to you?"
His whispered question didn't seem to require an answer, and so I gave him none. Naked, I turned to face him, no longer able to hide. No longer willing to hide.
"I plead your mercy, Lir, for lying to you for so long. For not trusting you."Without a word, he took a soft cloth and wiped away the filth that remained on my skin. Each swipe made me bite my tongue in anguish, but I didn't pull away. I needed to be clean. He rinsed me with a bucket of warm water, which splashed his clothes.
Silently, he worked the buttons of his shirt while I watched. Then his trousers, until he stood as naked as I. Then Lir helped me slide into the tub and he cradled me there, my head pillowed on his chest. Together we floated without speaking, until the water cooled.
He wrapped me in a soft towel and carried me to his bed, where he laid down beside me and held me while the chills of fever made me shudder. And he slept beside me, so that when I woke to the first pearly gray light of dawn, the first thing I saw was his face.
Chapter Forty-Six
When I woke after my night in Lir's bed, I found again the bath chamber and soaked myself until my fingers wrinkled. I wasn't sure I'd ever truly feel clean after what Rosten and his men had done to me. My skin was healing. I wasn't sure about my soul.
I dressed in the clothes I felt most comfortable wearing, a tunic and trousers. My shorn head felt cold and light after so many years with the weight of my hair to cover it. I avoided looking in the mirror.
I paused to stare down at Lir, still abed. Even with his eyes closed, I could see dark circles shadowed them. He'd risked much to come for us. He'd been my enemy, my teacher, my friend, and now? What would he become? I couldn't think of it.
I had my hand on the door when he spoke to me. "Aeris."
I wasn't sure I could look at him, but I did. "I'm hungry."
"That's a good sign!" He scrubbed at his face and moved upward. The blankets fell away to reveal his bare chest.
Fire filled my cheeks. I'd spent the night with him that way, but in the morning light everything seemed different. I was different.
"What's wrong?" He got up from the bed and came toward me, naked, his face creased with concern. "Aeris, love, what's the matter?"
Love. Not lad. I backed away from him without meaning to and held up my hands. He stopped. He took a robe from the back of a chair, and he put it on.
"Are you all right?"
I shook my head, not trusting my voice not to shake.
Lir came close to me and reached to my face. Sinder help me, I couldn't help it. I shrank from his touch. What I had allowed in the darkness of night had become intolerable in the light of day. He touched me, and I remembered Rosten's men touching me.
When I pulled away, Lir dropped his hand. "Aeris, lass –"
"Stop." My voice was strangled. "Don't call me that."
"But that's what you are."
I shook my head and took another step back. "I am what I was in Alyria. Nothing has changed."
His gaze took in my shorn hair. "You don't believe that."
I yanked at the short strands. "Is this why you treat me with such tenderness?" I pulled open my tunic to expose my unbound breasts beneath. "Or is it these?"
He kept his stare locked on my face. "I treat you with tenderness because I care for you."
"Now?" I was irrational, and knew it, but couldn't stop myself from crying out. "What has changed? I don't want things to have changed, Lir! I don't want you to love me because of what you know I keep between my legs!"
Anger creased his brow. "Nothing about how I feel for you has changed. Don't be a fool."
"No?" I shook, still weak from the journey and trauma my body had undergone.
"I don't love you because you're suddenly a woman." Lir looked all at once at a loss for words. His gaze softened. "I love you because you are you. You have ever been lovely in my eyes, since the day in the marketplace when you chased down that thief who stole your uncle's melons. I don't even know how long I've loved you, only that I do."