by Lucia Ashta
“I’m sorry I had to knock you out,” Dolpheus said. Her eyes didn’t get smaller. She didn’t trust us. “But we really mean you no harm.”
“We’d like to talk with you and explain our situation. Perhaps you’ll understand why we’ve done what we have,” I said.
She doubted it. Her jaw hardened, even around the gag. Her nostrils flared.
“Look, we don’t want you tied up and gagged. But we have to be certain that you won’t expose us if we unbind your mouth,” I said.
So much for the effect we’d hoped to have over the woman. This woman didn’t seem persuaded by us as ladies’ men. Women usually reacted to us better than this. But they also weren’t usually bound.
“All right then. It’s your choice,” I said. “Whatever you choose, you’ll still have to hear us out. If at any time you decide that you’d prefer to continue listening in greater comfort, just let us know. If you don’t scream, we’ll untie your mouth. If you don’t run, we’ll untie you from the tree.” For some reason I couldn’t explain, I felt the strong urge to continue. If you believe us, we’ll set you free. If you want to join us, you can. If you want to help us, we’ll accept the help. If you want us to pleasure you, maybe something could be arranged.
My additional thoughts were of no use to anyone. I kept them to myself. But I wondered at them. Perhaps Ilara had been gone far too long, and that was all there was to it. No other woman measured up to Ilara in my heart. I’d longed only for her companionship in all these years since we first came together. It seemed that my body was now attempting to overrule my heart. That simply wouldn’t do. It was more urgent than ever that I get Ilara back.
The woman didn’t seem one bit open-minded, but we began anyway. I didn’t feel good about overruling her will, but there was no other way.
I didn’t know what we should say to her. We hadn’t bothered to strategize about the best explanation to sway her to our side. There were some things that weren’t helped by premeditation. When interrogating a war prisoner, an intruder, or a rebel, or a woman that happened to work in my father’s lab, the most effective path was the same. You began at a benign point in the story, and then you continued as your instincts guided you, constantly modifying your story in response to the emotional cues of your captive. Even tied and gagged as the woman was, her facial expressions and her general body tenseness would guide us as to when to continue, when to back off, and when to take a different turn entirely.
I suppose it was to her credit that, in the end, what I told her was the truth.
Twenty-Three
I hadn’t intended to tell her who I was; there was a chance she might not know. But when I did tell her, she didn’t act surprised. Either she’d known, or she was far more disingenuous than we suspected.
However, there came a time in the storytelling to our audience of one that the impact of having taken this woman hostage hit us more fully: There was no way we could free her to do as she pleased. The only way that we could let her live was if she would keep silent. And the only way we imagined she might keep silent was if we swayed her to our way of thinking.
I didn’t think it particularly fair that we were considering the necessity of killing one woman to return another one to O. I was trying very hard not to think of her as a person that I might like, as someone that might have a nice laugh and maybe a family waiting for her at home. I think Dolpheus was doing the same. As much as his reputation indicated that he had a way with women, that they would follow him anywhere and do anything he asked of them, I knew him better. The rumors were true, but as with most rumors, there was more to them. Dolpheus liked the ladies too. He liked femininity. He was drawn to the full curves of women’s bodies, to their flirtations, to the way his hands felt across their soft skin. He loved how their bodies bounced and jiggled when they walked, how their hips rocked, how their lips parted when they wanted more, speaking without words. But for Dolpheus, I knew, what most told him what he would experience with a woman was her eyes.
I noticed how Dolpheus avoided our captive’s eyes. He didn’t want to find anything within her eyes that made him lament the circumstances, and the seemingly inevitable threat we posed to her, any more than he already did.
On Origins, it was generally accepted that the life of a member of the royal Andaron family was worth more than that of any other. If our cause were judged just, we’d be justified in taking the life of one ordinary citizen to protect the life of a royal. In the history of O, this had been the case many times, and never was blood shed as profusely in the name of the Andaron line as when it first claimed the throne, waging a war to secure its power. It was before my time, but the legends of those battles tell that there were days toward the end when justice came down swiftly and upon great numbers. Blood colored the streets around what was the house of rule then. Those streets were mostly demolished later, to make way for the construction of the royal palace that stands now. Still, there are places where, if you know where to look, you can still discover bloodstains that haven’t washed away in thousands of years.
An understanding of how many might have died for the cause of royal welfare did nothing to make me feel better about the woman bound to the tree. She wasn’t a soldier. She hadn’t knowingly taken on the risk of her life by showing up to work today. Her eyes were those of an innocent, or else she put on a good show. Either way, she wasn’t a captive of war, yet the circumstances forced us to treat her as one.
We continued with our story, both Dolpheus and I avoiding her searching eyes as much as we could, wondering if she had realized the crux of her predicament. If she had, then she would know that the only way to get us to let her go was to convince us that our secrets were safe with her. But if she knew this, then we couldn’t trust what she said. And the only way to know whether someone spoke the truth was to look into her eyes.
I told her what I could without telling her what I couldn’t, with Dolpheus chiming in to fill in the story. We told her we were on a mission to help the King while omitting that I was also on a mission to help myself. Most Oers were loyalists by their nature, taught from the beginning to revere whoever wore the crown. But this woman worked for my father. When I told her we’d been asked by King Oderon himself to break into the lab, she didn’t seem as impressed as I’d hoped—and I just admitted to being a son willing to betray his father for the crown.
Before I was ready to, because the woman had given us no reason to trust her, except that she no longer thrashed against her bindings—although it was futile to do so—Dolpheus approached the woman. “I’d like to untie your mouth. As we’ve told you many times, we don’t want to hurt you and are as unhappy with your captivity as you are. Are you willing to speak with us to attempt to find a solution to our little problem here?”
The woman hesitated, then nodded, wide-eyed, with eyes that either held or effectively impersonated innocence.
“Do you promise not to scream?” Dolpheus asked, although it was a promise he knew she might not keep. Yet we were far enough away from the lab that if she were to scream, it was unlikely to draw my father’s security. The walls of the facility were thick, and all windows were closed. Knowing father, he probably never allowed them to remain open. When I was little, and he still behaved as a father should toward his son, he’d advised me never to speak of something private next to an open window. You never know who might be crouching under it, he’d said. That was my father then, before he gave paranoia power over him.
The woman nodded again, this time more enthusiastically. She’d keep her promise, knowing that she might only because the odds were stacked so heavily against her.
“All right. Bend your head forward.”
The woman wavered for a second, but only one, before she bowed her head to the man who’d struck her with the hilt of a knife last time she exposed the base of her skull to him. Dolpheus made quick work of it.
The woman moved her jaw, up and down at first, then side to side a few times. Surely, it was sore.
I stood next to Dolpheus. I hoped she thought it was mostly because we were friendly and not because I needed to be there in case she called for help. I smiled, attempting to express the appropriate measure of strength so that she’d cooperate and a simultaneous lack of it that would elicit sympathy from her for us.
“I really am sorry for this. We’ve never gagged and tied a woman to a tree before.” I hoped she didn’t realize why I specified to what she was tied. There were women who chose the path of soldier, especially among the rebels in the wild deserts. It wasn’t the first time we’d tied a woman up, nor the second. It was, however, the first time we’d done so outside of the terms of military engagement.
Her eyes didn’t appear particularly forgiving. Still, she hadn’t screamed.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She hesitated a moment too long. “Lila.” Her voice was rough from the gag.
Dolpheus smiled at Lila (or whoever she really was), and Lila turned her gaze toward him and seemed to soften. I took a mental step back and let Dolpheus take charge of the show. A lot depended on our persuasiveness. It appeared that Lila found Dolpheus more persuasive than me.
Dolpheus and I had been a team for a long time. He felt the shift in tides as easily as I. He took a step closer to Lila, leaving me a step behind. “Hello Lila.” He smiled at her, a real, genuine smile. She smiled back. It was a timid smile that doubted itself and whether it should or shouldn’t, but it was progress.
“I’d like to untie you all the way, if you’ll remain to speak with us,” Dolpheus said. “We bound you only because we wanted you to give us a chance to explain our position before you reacted. We wanted you to understand that we’re not bad guys”—But were we good ones? I wondered—“before you made any decisions. Would you like me to untie you?”
“Yes.” Her voice was already softer, after just two words.
It didn’t seem as if Lila was deceived by our casual stances. No matter whether our hands were at the ready to draw our swords or not, we looked like soldiers. I was starting to get the feeling that she was as astute as we were, I just didn’t know from where the feeling was coming.
Dolpheus made the unbinding of her seem somehow sensual. I watched every one of his steps, and yet I wasn’t certain what it was he was doing that made the motions of untying knots and unwinding ropes seem this way. But I sensed it, and it was obvious that she did as well.
I took another mental step back to allow Dolpheus to do his thing whether he was doing it intentionally or not.
Once he finished untying her, Dolpheus offered her a hand. Her hesitation was less already. She paused to consider for only a moment before taking it. He led her away from the tree, putting physical distance between memories of our treatment of her, and toward the grasses where we rested while waiting for her to wake. He took a seat and pulled her down with him. He bent a leg so that they very nearly touched, knee to knee.
I took my seat a few feet away from them. I stretched my legs out in front of me. I was closer to them this way, but not close in any way that would interfere.
“Lila,” Dolpheus began, “you’ve heard us speak for a while now. There’s more that we could share with you if you’d like. But first, do you have any questions for us? Or is there anything that you’d like to say?” My friend’s voice was soothing. It was calming even my own fraught nerves, tired of the senseless struggles of this world.
“Is he really Lord Brachius’ son?” Though she spoke of me, she didn’t spare me a look.
“Yes. He is. Although I believe that it’s been some time since Lord Brachius remembered that he has one.”
I cringed inwardly at the blunt truth of his statement. I was a private person. I rarely shared glimpses of my personal life. I had to trust Dolpheus now. Whatever he said would only be because he felt it necessary to secure this woman’s cooperation. If it led to Ilara, I had to bear it.
Dolpheus continued, “Lord Brachius thinks more of splicing than of his son.”
Lila flicked a glance toward me now. It was a fast one, too quick for me to see whether it held pity.
“Lord Brachius has shared little about his splicing with Lord Tanus, which is why we had to break into the facility to attempt to secure the information the King required of us. As you know, it’s a crime to deny the King a direct request.”
“And why did the King ask you to do this, if Lord Tanus wasn’t in possession of the details of splicing?”
I didn’t mind that they were speaking of me as if I wasn’t there. I was listening to every inflection of what they said. Lila was intelligent. Dolpheus would have to offer her most of the truth to convince her. She’d find the gaping hole, the lack in logic, in our story if not.
“Because he’s holding something over us.”
She leaned forward nearly imperceptibly. This was a believable motivator for our actions. Trade when one had something another wanted was the way things had been done for ages. Power and information were more valuable than sand.
“Blackmail?” she asked.
“No. He has something we want. Something that shouldn’t be bargained with, but that he’s bargaining with, nonetheless.” Already, what Dolpheus had said was dangerous, not just because it led directly to the question of what—or whom—did the King have that we might want, but also because it was dangerous to speak ill of the King, and Dolpheus was coming close to doing it. The King didn’t have ears here. But Dolpheus was giving Lila one more thing that could be used against us. On purpose. I waited. Dolpheus was a master at what he did.
He waited a few beats, long enough for the questions to mill around within Lila. “He has information on someone we care about deeply. We can’t hope to rescue this person without the King’s cooperation.”
“Who is it?” Lila whispered.
Dolpheus looked to me, but it was for mostly theatrical purposes. “I’m sorry. I can’t tell you yet. Perhaps I’ll be able to once we’re certain we can trust you. But you see, telling you would risk the person we wish to save. And it might also put you further at risk. We already lament having had to involve you at all.” Another pause. “Only the two of us know of our mission.” A final pause. “And the King.”
“I see. And the King wants information about splicing? Is that what he’s desiring to trade for?”
Dolpheus nodded with the calm of a man who knows what he’s doing and surrenders to the inevitable results. “It is. I’m sure you must know that Lord Brachius wants the throne. That he’s the one behind the assassination attempts.”
She didn’t bother to deny what he said even though not even the King had been able to prove it.
“If Lord Brachius were able to stage a successful coup, the courtiers would turn their favor his way. They’re all, or nearly all, clients of Lord Brachius. The insurance that splicing can afford the courtiers appeals to their vanity. He holds power over the courtiers, and the King knows this.”
“Does the King wish to forbid splicing? To abolish the practice?” Lila asked.
It was a question I hadn’t asked myself yet. I hadn’t questioned what the King wanted to do with the splicing information he ordered me to produce because what I cared about was Ilara.
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell us,” Dolpheus said.
For the first time since Dolpheus brought Lila to sit next to him, she looked away, into the thickness of the trees. Several minutes passed while Dolpheus waited. Then, she seemed to reach some sort of decision. “If you tell me the whole truth, I may help you.”
This startled even Dolpheus though he hid it better than I did. But Lila wasn’t looking at me. She was staring into Dolpheus’ bright brown eyes. Even for Dolpheus, this was fast work. “Why?” he asked.
“I have my reasons. I’ll share them with you if you convince me that I can trust you with them.”
“But how do we know we can trust you?”
“You have to trust me if I’m to trust you.”
He nodded. “I understand.” The
n he looked off into another section of the forest, coming to his own decision.
When he began, I knew that it was the complete truth that he’d decided to share with her. There was no way to imitate the whole truth. A person could always know when a story was incomplete—if she really looked, listened, and sensed what was being spoken. Dolpheus couldn’t withhold the truth now. Not even a master could weave a lie or a half-truth well enough for it to resound with the solidity it required to convince an astute audience.
I hoped then that Lila would prove herself worthy of the truth, of Ilara’s secret. Because if not, we’d have to kill her. We’d have no choice. I didn’t know whether Lila realized this as Dolpheus began. I also hoped that whatever she had to trade would be enough to win me favor with the King and bring me one step closer to bringing Ilara home.
Twenty-Four
Where I would have dragged out the big truth bomb, building suspense, making Lila really want it, perhaps even wait for her to offer something concrete in return for it, Dolpheus did the opposite. My two most consequential secrets were out in the open, hovering in front of a stranger.
She looked at me, with round eyes, eyebrows arched in surprise. “The Princess lives? And you two are lovers?” It didn’t sound as if she didn’t believe Dolpheus. But it did seem as if she hadn’t expected it, especially the second part. I did my best not to interpret the tone of her voice, looking for her incredulity that Ilara and I should be lovers; if I went looking for it, I would find it.
Why shouldn’t we be lovers? Granted, I wasn’t a descendant of one of the aristocratic bloodlines that had existed for as long as the Andaron Dynasty. But wasn’t marriage of a royal within certain repetitive bloodlines a bit outdated? As much as I might question my father’s splicing empire, its exorbitant wealth did buy me the prestige that might make me a worthy match to a princess, or at least as worthy as anyone else. Certainly more so than those pompous, costumed courtiers who looked like women as much as men with their makeup and wigs.
And I was handsome enough. Perhaps women didn’t turn their heads to watch me pass as they did Dolpheus, although I thought the attention he received was due to more than his looks, though I hadn’t yet been able to understand the complete reason for it. I could stand my own ground, even next to Dolpheus. So why was Lila so surprised?