The woman dropped down to the stone floor, landing with a neatness Emily could only admire. Her cowl had fallen back, and her clothes were mussed, but otherwise she didn’t seem to have exerted herself. Emily was painfully aware of the sweat running down her back and the throbbing pain at the back of her head. The wards were largely down. She could teleport out, if she had the power. But her mind was scrambled. She didn’t think she could teleport without risking complete disaster. And her opponent knew it too.
She forced herself to think, considering her options. She might be able to blast her way out of the Tower, now the wards were gone. Her magic would go through most of the guards like a knife through butter, but...but she didn’t think she had the power. Even if she made it out, she would run straight into the king’s other sorcerers. Randor would be dispatching every sorcerer and soldier under his command to the Tower, unless half of them were trying to track down the portal’s origin point. Jade and the others would have bare seconds to grab what they needed and teleport out. And the longer she could keep her enemies busy, the better.
Stall, Emily thought. Play for time.
She found her voice. “Who are you?”
The woman eyed her through her dark eyes. “Lady Matilda, Custodian of the Tower of Alexis,” she said. “And you’re the famous Emily.”
Emily nodded, curtly. The Custodian of the Tower of Alexis was a woman? It was the one thing she’d never expected from Randor. Randor might not be a complete misogynist, but he certainly seemed dismissive of women. And yet, in hindsight, he’d hired Lady Barb for a few years. Putting the Tower in a woman’s hands was a masterstroke. Even Emily hadn’t realized that the Custodian might be a woman. She’d automatically dismissed Matilda, along with every other woman at court, right from the start.
She tried to remember if she’d ever even heard of Matilda. There were hundreds–no, thousands–of noblewomen passing through Randor’s Court, from women who had power in their own right to women who were desperate to snag a husband or even become a mistress to a powerful man. Zangaria really had too many noblemen for its size, just like Pre-Revolutionary France. Alassa had openly admitted that she planned to have a cull, once she became Queen. And Matilda...if she’d ever been mentioned, Emily didn’t remember.
“The king has gone mad,” she said, carefully. Perhaps she could talk Matilda into letting her go. “Imprisoning his daughter...”
“Who committed an act of treachery against her father,” Matilda cut her off. She pointed a long finger at Emily. “You don’t know what you’ve done, do you?”
“I came to help a friend,” Emily said, silently measuring her power. Did she have enough to teleport out? Or should she try to fight? Or simply flee? If she could get out of sight, she could hide long enough to recuperate. “Why are you helping the king?”
“He’s my liege lord,” Matilda said. “Now...will you surrender?”
Emily summoned her magic and threw it at Matilda, splitting it into two streams; one to slam into her wards directly, the other to attack the ground under her feet. The noblewoman laughed–Emily shivered at the sound–and jumped up, spinning through the air like a Jedi Knight. Emily barely had a second to react before Matilda slammed a hex into her wards, throwing her back...and over the edge. She fell, trying desperately to catch herself with magic. But all she managed to do was land on her feet...
Emily screamed as she felt her leg break. She tottered, trying to cast a healing spell despite the risks of using such a spell on herself. But it wasn’t enough...she fell, crashing into the ground hard enough to hurt her arm too. She wasn’t sure if it was broken or not, but it didn’t matter. The haze of pain was so overwhelming, she could barely keep herself from blacking out. Her mental disciplines didn’t seem to be working.
“You fight well,” Matilda said. Emily was vaguely aware that she was nearby, but she couldn’t tell where. Her body was aching, her thoughts starting to fragment...she wondered, just for a moment, if she was dying. “But it’s over.”
They made it out, Emily thought, vindictively. They’d succeeded. She might have been killed–or captured–but they’d succeeded. They’d broken someone out of an inescapable prison. The world would take note. Alassa is free and her father will tremble.
Something slammed into her jaw. There was a flash of pain, almost unnoticeable in the sea of pain that was trying to drag her down, then...
Darkness.
Chapter Thirty-Two
SHE WAS DREAMING, WASN’T SHE?
Someone was talking, someone close to her. She could feel hands touching her, but...but she felt no alarm. She was adrift in a sea of...something, washing around her as she moved in and out of sleep. Her entire body felt as if she was sleeping, her thoughts calm and composed and...
Emily snapped awake, her mind falling back into her body with what felt like a physical impact. Her memories caught up with her a second later. They’d freed Alassa and Imaiqah, but...but she’d been captured. She tried to keep her eyes closed as she assessed the situation. Her body ached all over, making it hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t, but she was fairly sure that she was sitting up, pressed against a wooden board with her hands manacled behind her back. Her ankles, too, were chained together. And there was a foul taste in her mouth.
She reached for her magic. Not entirely to her surprise, it didn’t come.
Potion, she thought. She’d been knocked out...and someone had fed her magic-dampening potion while she slept. The taste of Durian was almost overwhelming. It was impossible to believe that anyone actually willingly ate the fruit. Where am I?
Cold water splashed over her. She yelped, her eyes snapping open. She was in a stone cell, illuminated by a faint light that filtered down from high overhead. A woman–Matilda–and a man stood in front of her, the latter holding a wooden bucket. Emily looked down at herself and wished she hadn’t. Someone had removed her clothes and replaced them with a long white dress that was alarmingly translucent. The damp cloth was clinging to her skin. Her leg looked intact...
I broke my leg, she thought, dazed. Didn’t I?
She looked at the man and wished she hadn’t. He was grinning, a sadistic grin. His face was rough and ready, his teeth blackened and foul. She knew, instinctively, that he not only wanted to hurt her, he was going to enjoy himself hurting her. He wore a belt lined with tools that looked like they could have come out of a medieval dentist’s office, but she knew they weren’t designed for anything so benevolent as removing rotten teeth. Her lips twitched as she desperately tried to distract herself. The line between medieval dentist and torturer was so thin it practically didn’t exist. No anaesthetic, no sterility...only the truly desperate went to a medieval dentist. The kingdom’s torturer probably moonlighted as the kingdom’s dentist.
A distant bloodcurdling scream ran through the air. Emily flinched, despite herself. Ice washed down her spine. Someone was getting tortured, someone was getting hurt...she swallowed hard, remembering Lady Barb’s lectures. It wasn’t uncommon for captors to try to psychologically break their captives before they started physical torture. The scream might not have been real...worse, it might have been real. Someone might be being tortured simply to encourage her to talk.
The man snickered. Emily looked up at him and shuddered. He looked...odd...even by the standards of the Nameless World. His flesh was cracked and broken, one hand looked to have been badly scarred...and he was a dwarf. She couldn’t help feeling a little sick. The proportions were all wrong, as if he were a twisted child rather than an adult. She didn’t want to even look at him.
“Well,” Matilda said. Heavy irony hung in her voice. “Welcome.”
Emily shifted, testing the bonds. They were expertly designed, preventing her from moving without cutting off blood to her hands and feet. The wooden board behind her was utterly immobile, as far as she could tell. She’d need to push it harder, when there weren’t so many watching eyes. She could feel her bracelet against her bare skin–Mati
lda hadn’t tried to remove it, for better or worse–but she couldn’t make contact with the spells holding the snake in place. She gritted her teeth in frustration. She would have an ally if only she could free him from the spells.
She must have placed new spells on the bracelet, Emily thought. I can’t release the snake!
“We took the liberty of healing you,” Matilda added. Her short companion giggled, unpleasantly. “You were quite badly injured by the fight.”
“Oh,” Emily said, sourly. Somehow, she was sure they hadn’t done it out of the goodness of their hearts. “How long was I unconscious?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” the dwarf said. “Or where you are, for that matter.”
Emily scowled. The dwarf had a sing-song voice that grated on Emily’s nerves. She wondered, sourly, where Randor had found him. A dwarf would have little hope of gainful employment–or even survival–unless he had magic. Zangaria wasn’t quite as harsh as the Cairngorms, where a child with a birth defect would be left out in the snow to die, but a dwarf would be lucky if he was employed as anything more than a court jester. Perhaps that was where Randor had found him. A man who spent most of his adult life being treated as a figure of fun–or pity–for something beyond his control would make an ideal torturer. He’d certainly have plenty of reasons to want to make people suffer.
She looked down at herself. The garment was still partly translucent, allowing her to see her legs. They looked intact, as did her arm. Matilda had either healed Emily herself or had summoned a proper Healer. Emily wondered, absently, which one was worse. Matilda might have picked up a few advanced healing spells of her own–Emily was living proof it was possible–but it was also possible that Randor had a Healer who was skirting his oaths. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t offer vast rewards to anyone who rationalized their way around an oath that should, technically, kill him.
The dwarf took a step forward. “Do you know what we could do to you?”
He plucked a device that looked like a screwdriver off his belt and held it up. “You’d be amazed at all the ways someone can be made to suffer with this, my dear. I could take out one of your teeth, or insert it into one of your orifices...oh, the possibilities are endless. And then we would heal you and start again. Or...”
Matilda smacked the back of his head, not gently. “The king commands that you be held, for the moment,” she said. “Suffice it to say that you are not in the Tower. Your friends will not be bursting in to rescue you.”
Emily had already guessed as much. The Tower of Alexis had been broken. It would take Randor’s magicians weeks to replace the wards she’d torn down, assuming the building itself could be repaired. There was even a very real possibility that the parchment she’d used to hack the wards was still inside the building, although there was no way anyone could count on it. No, Randor would want her somewhere else. And that means she was probably in the castle. The dungeons were as close to impregnable as possible.
Alassa knows about the secret passageways, she thought, feeling a flicker of hope. But her father knows about them too.
She wondered, sourly, why she was still alive. Matilda could have killed her on the spot or simply slit her throat while she was unconscious. She didn’t even know how long she’d been unconscious! A Healer could heal her in...how long? A day? Two days? They’d want to be sure the potion had dampened her magic before allowing her to regain conscious...two to three days seemed about right. But it could have been longer. It wouldn’t have been that hard to force-feed her a nutrient potion while she was unconscious. She could have been out for a week or two weeks...she reminded herself, silently, that her period had been due in a week. If it happened, if she felt it, she’d know she couldn’t have been kept unconscious for more than a couple of days.
Matilda reached forward and placed a finger under Emily’s chin, slowly lifting her face until their eyes met. “Perhaps you could answer me a question,” she said. “How did you open a portal into the Tower?”
“Magic,” Emily said, dryly.
She swallowed, hard. Randor knew what she’d done...and he knew enough about magic to know how remarkable it was. Of course he did. He might not be that powerful, himself, but he’d studied extensively. He’d want to know what she’d done, how she’d done it and how it could be used to benefit himself. Emily cursed under her breath. No wonder she’d been kept alive. Randor wanted–needed–an edge in the war. He thought she could give it to him.
“We have ways of making you talk,” the dwarf said.
Emily scowled. The tired old cliché would have been funny, except...except there was nothing funny about her situation. She was a prisoner–she was manacled and drained of magic–completely at their mercy. Lady Barb had warned her to expect everything from direct mental interrogation and truth potions to beatings and outright rape. She didn’t think Randor would normally order a noblewoman raped–even his closest supporters would be outraged, although they wouldn’t give a damn about a commoner woman who was raped by their soldiers–but the king was desperate. Who knew what he’d do to get answers?
“Magic,” Matilda replied. “What kind of magic?”
Don’t say a word, Emily told herself. Lady Barb had warned her about this, too. Her captors would try to develop a rapport with her, eventually lulling her into revealing a little bit too much. The wrong piece of information could be used to put the whole picture together. Emily doubted they had any other pieces–Jade and Cat would have made sure to destroy the spellware and set fire to the warehouse–but she could be wrong. Matilda must have sensed the spells holding the portal together...
Matilda let out a sigh. “You do realize you will be made to talk?”
Emily met her eyes, willing her to believe. “You do realize that my thoughts are protected?”
“They all say that,” Matilda told her, curtly. “And they all fall, in the end.”
“Brave words,” the dwarf added. “I’ve heard them before, from a thousand rebels and traitors and common criminals. They have all told me they will never talk. And, in the end, they have all broken. I will break you too, in time.”
“My thoughts are protected,” Emily repeated. She wasn’t entirely sure that was true. Her mental defenses were strong–Lady Barb and Sergeant Miles had seen to that–but they weren’t unbreakable. The spell that had once shielded her thoughts from being ripped out of her head was gone. “You will not be able to force me to talk.”
Matilda shrugged. “We will see.”
Her voice hardened. “You are alone, Lady Emily. Your companions have fled the city, leaving you to your fate. They don’t care about you.”
Emily gritted her teeth, trying to ignore the little voice in the back of her head that suggested Matilda had a point. She’d told Jade and Cat to flee with the librated prisoners. They’d planned to teleport out as soon as they escaped the Tower...although none of their contingency plans had suggested that one of them would be taken prisoner during the breakout. In hindsight, she told herself, that was a rather careless oversight. How would her friends react? They didn’t know where to find her, they didn’t know how to get her out...
...And, if they wanted to overthrow Randor, they’d need to get Alassa and Imaiqah to Swanhaven and Cockatrice as quickly as possible.
Her heart sank. Her friends would beat themselves up over the prospect of leaving Emily behind, but they would have no choice. They couldn’t let Randor have the time he’d need to secure the two baronies and ensure they couldn’t be turned into a base for civil war. Alassa and Jade would have to go to Swanhaven, Imaiqah would have to go to Cockatrice...and Cat would have to go with them. They couldn’t take the risk of hanging around long enough to plot another rescue.
They do care about me, she thought. It was a bitter thought. But the needs of the many–the need to overthrow a mad king–outweigh the needs of the one.
Matilda smiled, coldly. “No one will blame you for switching sides, now you’ve been captured. The king
might even accept your parole.”
Emily doubted it. She wasn’t bound by the formalities. Randor knew, perfectly well, that she hadn’t been born in Zangaria. She was no nobleman who spoke loudly of his honor when the situation called for it. Besides, the damage had already been done. Alassa was free and on her way to Swanhaven. Randor wouldn’t trust Emily to remain on the sidelines, no matter what oaths she gave him, and it didn’t matter anyway. The civil war was already starting.
“And if you don’t, I get to have fun,” the dwarf said. He reached out and took hold of Emily’s hair, tugging it hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. “Do you know what fun we’ll have together?”
Emily ignored him. Instead, she looked at Matilda. “The king is mad,” she said. “How long do you think it will be until he throws you aside?”
“The king is loyal to his supporters and faithful to those who are faithful to him,” Matilda told her. “And you were neither loyal nor faithful.”
“Hah,” Emily said. She wasn’t a noblewoman, nor had she ever wanted to be one. King Randor had practically tricked her into accepting the barony, although that had blown up in his face. “Who trained you? I know you didn’t go to Whitehall.”
Matilda shrugged. “I had private tutors. Some of us...prefer to remain out of the broadsheets.”
A secret weapon, Emily thought. If no one knows about her, no one can prepare for her.
She looked down at the stone floor. There was no law against magicians having private tutors, not if they didn’t want to go to school. It was rare, particularly for someone as powerful as Matilda appeared to be, but...she could see some advantages to it. No one saw Matilda as anything other than a drab lady of the court, a woman who had dawdled too long when it came to searching for a decent husband and found herself unable to make a good match. How many people had sneered at Matilda over the years, mocking her for waiting too long? And how many of them had guessed, in their wildest dreams, that she could kill them with a thought?
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