“You believed the girl was in Ractane’s harem,” he said. “That human—Novak—said his wife had disappeared after an attack, but when he saw the girl, he knew what had happened to his wife.”
“The girl is her daughter?” Kat asked.
Mayor Stuyvesant’s brows came together. “She never said she was actually one of Ractane’s women…” She stared at Marus with the first emotion she’d shown, a dawning horror. “Do you mean to say she’s his daughter?”
Marus glanced at Kat, and though she was halfway across the dining room, as if not wanting to get closer to him, she met his eyes. “Think like a Prince,” he said.
She grasped what he meant at once. “Why bother being responsible for a harem when so many women from a surviving settlement are willing to barter their bodies and go back to their lives until they’re called for again?” Her mouth twisted. “He didn’t keep a harem for his pleasure—well, not only for that. He did it to impregnate those women.”
Mayor Stuyvesant passed a hand over her face. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
Why not? Marus thought. The Princes were half human, as Kat had once pointed out, though none of the women he’d been with had told him they were pregnant. Still, taking pleasure from them was one thing and deliberately interbreeding with them was quite another. Our mother will want to kill him for this.
Mayor Stuyvesant lowered her hand. “But her eyes looked normal.”
Marus started to shrug, and winced. “Well, if I’m right, she’s only a quarter earth. It’s possible she has none of our power.”
“Would Ractane still want her under those circumstances?”
Think like a Prince. But before he could say so again, Kat nodded, her face set. “Yes. Because she’s his daughter.”
Exactly, Marus thought. It wouldn’t matter how weak the children resulting from such a union were, because Ractane would still consider them his to dispose of as he pleased. Though how many such children could there reasonably be? Surely Ractane had realized after a while that his…breeding scheme, for lack of a better term…had yielded no useful results.
Mayor Stuyvesant straightened up, her eyes distant and preoccupied. Marus shifted on the floor, not that that reduced the discomfort any. The silence stretched out, but from Kat’s unmoving posture, she was used to that, so perhaps it was protocol when dealing with the mayor. He had no choice but to wait as well.
He wondered what would happen to him now.
“I have to confirm this,” Mayor Stuyvesant said. “That means speaking to Novak and the girl. It’ll be evening soon, and I want to get home before nightfall.” She looked down at him. “We won’t take back any of the gifts we sent, but you should proceed on the assumption that you won’t receive any more.”
“I understand.” He hadn’t expected any leniency, let alone generosity, after they’d found out the truth.
“I won’t have you taken to the town. It would be easier for you to receive medical attention there, but half the population will want you dead for being a Prince and the other half will want you dead for deceiving us. So it’s up to you to recover as best you can here. I’ll send word if there’s anything else I want from you.”
He wasn’t sure whether she expected him to thank her, but fortunately Kat spoke. “What are your orders?” she said to Mayor Stuyvesant.
“Let’s go outside.”
Once they left, he struggled to a sitting position and used the table to pull himself to his feet. His face hurt fiercely, not just where he’d been struck but inside his mouth, where his teeth had sunk into his tongue rather than give that physician the satisfaction of knowing he was in pain.
He made it to the almost-empty bucket beside the fireplace, but by then he was so thirsty he forgot dignity and drank from the bucket rather than try to reach a cup. After that he moved the furs so the wall would be to his back when he lay down. If he slept, maybe he’d feel better afterwards.
Kat entered, put her rifle in a corner and took the bucket out. Marus lowered himself to the spread furs, moving carefully so he wouldn’t jar his arm. She came back in, water spilling from the bucket, and went to her hands and knees to clean off the mess on the floor.
Marus leaned against the wall, his gaze drawn to her despite himself. Physical pain was simple and direct compared to what he felt for her—he couldn’t begin to sort that out, especially not now.
“Kat?” he said. She kept working, scrubbing the floor until it gleamed. Dropping the rags into the bucket, she got up, drying her hands on the sides of her trousers.
Marus tried one last time. “I’d rather you tell me what’s on your mind and get it over with.”
That made her look at him. Either he’d grown more skilled at reading human expressions during their time together, or her state of mind was only too obvious in the hard stare and the set of her mouth. If she’d been a Prince, he’d have seen the most unnerving change in her eyes.
“You didn’t just lie to me.” Her voice was low, but resonant as if the tight control only amplified the anger in it. “You were two-faced enough to tell me you despised liars. You let me bow and scrape when you knew I was afraid of you. You let me beg you for help when you knew all along you were about as useful as a dog turd in the road.”
If she had been a Prince, he would be dead. Even if any other human had talked with such pent-up loathing, he would have braced for a bullet. Except the last thing he felt was fear—guilt and frustration, yes, but he knew she wouldn’t kill him.
Not that she’d spare him anything less, and she went on. “I could forget about that, but then you demanded tribute the second time. Do you know how we felt? Like we’d spent years building a home around us, but overnight it had turned to a tomb, with no way out. Do you have the slightest idea how we struggled to deal with the news of your presence, to keep everyone calm, to work out what we could afford to lose? And I gave up my position because I didn’t know if I’d come back alive.”
What was it the other human had called him? Low. At that moment Marus knew exactly what it meant to feel low. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about—”
“About the people who went hungry so you could eat.”
He didn’t know how to answer. The townsfolk had been a faceless crowd of humans, so like any Prince he’d dealt with the mass in predictable ways, keeping them at a distance while looking out for himself. It had never occurred to him to see them as real people.
“You’re wrong about one thing,” he said. “I do have an idea what it’s like to be helpless and afraid.”
“Then why didn’t you come to us?” For the first time since she’d started speaking, a tone of genuine bafflement stole through the anger. “When you saw our town, why didn’t you just talk to us?”
“And be killed out of hand?” His temper started to rise again; did she really think it was so simple? “You know that’s what half your people would have done the moment they realized I was a Prince. The other half would have kept me alive only to find out how I’d lost my power, and after that I would have been another mouth to feed. At best. The only advantage I had was no one knowing.”
“Advantage.” She said the word as if turning it over in her mouth to taste it. “Yes, your kind would think like that. Not in terms of common ground, just about how to get the better of us.”
“What did you expect me to do with humans I didn’t even know? Put my life in their hands? And I didn’t come to you in the first place—you came here. I would have been happy to leave you alone.”
“And starve to death?”
“Better than getting reamed out for being a Prince.”
Kat’s brows went up. “Oh, am I treating Your Highness without the fawning you’re used to? I can remedy that, and if you’d prefer to be alone, then we’ve both got what we want.” She snatched up her rifle.
“Thank you, now I can get so
me rest.” Marus lay down, because arguing with her had used up the last of his resources. “Close the door on your way out, would you?”
She slammed it.
Chapter Nine
When Marus opened his eyes, it was to darkness, and he wasn’t sure he was fully awake. A few embers in the fireplace smoldered sullenly, but they gave off no light and he guessed the candles had burned down, which was the only indication of how long he’d been asleep. There were more candles, but he lay still, listening for sounds. It was paranoid, but he couldn’t shake the fear that humans might creep up to kill him.
To hell with them. He was thirsty again, and he swayed when he pulled himself up. He held on to the wall and used that to edge his way to the fireplace.
There was water in the kettle, and he drained it, relieved he wasn’t hungry, but the water was cold in his stomach and made him shiver. He changed his mind about searching for candles in the dark, because when his left arm brushed against something, white light flared before his eyes. Stumbling a little, his arm curled against his body, he found his way back to the furs and waited to die.
He might have a reprieve, however temporary, from the humans, but his own body wouldn’t be so lenient. A slow fire beneath his skin seemed to be eating him from inside. His head spun and his arm throbbed with a heartbeat of its own, sending pulses of pain through him.
The place had been cold and empty as the tomb Kat had mentioned, but that changed. A young Copper Lake woman who’d shared his bed on the last morning of the town’s existence walked past, laughing soundlessly. Novak prised up the floorstones to reveal a jumble of bones beneath, and Kat went to her knees to pull the bones out, but for each she removed, a dozen more sprouted to take their place. Marus called to her, but his voice was a croak. The floor rippled and bulged as one of his brothers flowed beneath the surface in earth form.
And everywhere was the heat. The room became an oven, and it was only a matter of time before it cooked him alive.
Exhaustion finally took him down into a restless half-doze, but somewhere during it, the roof began to leak—or at least that was how he registered the wet coolness on his skin. It was only a moment’s relief, but it sent him into a deeper sleep.
He thought he woke after a long time to hear someone urging him to drink, but his senses were still hazy, and at the back of his mind was a warning of poison. But whatever he was being given, he was too thirsty to protest. A hand lifted his head, and when the rim of a cup touched his lips, he drank, liquid trickling down the side of his face. It was wiped away, and he slept again.
The next thing he saw was a faint light slanting in through the windows. He watched it for a long time while he took stock of his condition: sweat filmed his skin and the enervating heat had ebbed. His body felt as if his arms and legs had been wrenched off and put back on, so if he moved them wrong they’d fall off again. But he’d lived.
He turned his head and saw Kat, curled up on another spread of furs within arm’s reach.
She was asleep, her hair tousled, and for once she looked unguarded. Her mouth was relaxed rather than taut, her breathing slow and even. Marus let himself watch her, absorbing every last detail.
Though when she sighed and stirred, he immediately closed his eyes. Clothes rustled and joints popped as she stretched. Then a cool palm touched his forehead, and she smoothed his hair back before she moved away.
“Kat?” He looked then, just in time to see her stop with her back to him, shoulders going rigid as if he’d shot her. “I thought you’d gone.”
His voice was a rasping whisper and he couldn’t be sure she’d understood, because she went to the fireplace. Instead of wood, she laid on lumps of coal and stared into the flames.
“I wanted to,” she said at last, her voice stiff and reluctant.
Then why stay? But he knew the answer at once. When Kat had asked for orders, the mayor had taken her outside, and what was the one thing the mayor hadn’t asked him during her questioning?
“You’ve been told to stay here,” he said. “To find out how I got trapped in flesh form.”
Kat didn’t answer, which was acknowledgement enough. She went out instead and was back a little later with water; she’d taken the time to tidy her hair, though he liked the way it had looked earlier. The brass of a pot gleamed dully as she hung it in the hearth.
Then she came over to him and made a peremptory lift-up gesture. He sat, and the fur covering him fell to his waist; he was naked beneath it. When he looked down, a blue-purple discoloration spread over his side. He wondered why that was there, before he remembered the human kicking him.
“I need to see your arm,” Kat said. “Check if it’s infected.”
Infected with what? Marus could only hope it wasn’t maggots or something more disgusting that might lead to the limb being lopped off, and he braced himself as she put a hand on his wrist, carefully moving his arm away from his body. A twinge went through him, but it wasn’t as agonizing as he’d expected.
The bandages smelled sickly-sweet and rotting, but he refused to look away as she unwrapped them and peeled off the poultice. The flesh beneath was held together like a badly stitched seam, and if not for the pain, he could pretend he was looking at some human who’d suffered a bizarre torture. Kat pressed a clean folded cloth over the wound and bound it up again.
“It’s healing,” she said. “You’ll live.”
Marus let his head tip back until it rested against the wall. He’d live.
He didn’t understand humans at all. With his brothers and the Queen, he knew exactly where he stood and what to expect. But humans were so different. One of them had tried to kill him, but their physician had sewn him up despite clearly hating him and now Kat had helped save his life. Because the mayor ordered her to. Still, for whatever reason, she’d stayed; he wasn’t sure he’d have opened his eyes again if she hadn’t.
“I don’t know how,” he said.
She glanced up with her hands full of old bandages and crushed leaves, alert and listening. Marus went on. He owed her that. “It happened three weeks ago, in Copper Lake. One day at about noon I saw a huge mass of rock and mud approaching. I tried to take earth form to stop him, and nothing happened.”
“You couldn’t save anyone?”
He shook his head. Although the people hadn’t mattered to him as individuals, he’d had a responsibility to them, and that didn’t sit well at all. Kat went over to the fire.
“How long before that did you take earth form?” she asked.
“Perhaps half a day. I was in earth form the previous evening.”
She spooned steaming cooked grain into bowls and carried them over in her unprotected hands as though she didn’t notice the heat. “So you lost your power between then and noon, less than a day. Interesting that your brother attacked the town so soon after it happened.”
“I noticed the coincidence.” He took a bowl, and Kat brought them both water. She sat cross-legged beside him and they ate in silence; he was so hungry anything would have tasted good, but the grain was soft and laced with honey as well.
“Which of your brothers was it?” she asked.
“Couldn’t tell,” Marus said through a full mouth. “He was too far away, and one giant wave of earth looks a lot like another.”
“All right, we’ll have to figure out how it was done.”
He was too drained to laugh, but a quick breath escaped him, a shadow of humor. “Kat, I thought about it time and again, every night when I couldn’t sleep.” He held up an empty palm. “Nothing.”
Kat didn’t reply, though he knew very well that was by no means the end of the discussion. She handed him clean clothes and took the bowls away, giving him time to dress as best he could with one arm that couldn’t go into a sleeve. Even that effort tired him, and he was resting on the furs again when she returned.
“No one gave
you anything during that time, like a gift?” she asked.
Marus thought about that, because he’d been partial to gifts. The people of Copper Lake had given him woven mats, a chessboard, songbirds in glass cages where the hollow bars chimed softly with echoes. He hoped the birds had escaped somehow when his house had been destroyed.
“Not during that time, no.” And if whatever had stolen his power took such a tangible form, he’d have left it behind when he’d made the journey south to the outpost, because he’d arrived there empty-handed and naked.
“Maybe it’s some sort of curse.” Kat sounded doubtful, and the speculation was so vague Marus didn’t know how to reply, but she saw his reaction. “Like the magic binding the Queen. Obviously there’s something more powerful than even her, so maybe that magic is affecting you too.”
Whoever had trapped the Queen in that valley, Marus had the feeling it had been done centuries before his birth. Certainly long enough to drive her into raging insanity, assuming she hadn’t been deranged to begin with. He was fairly sure, though, that whoever had done it hadn’t been human, and had wielded a power humans couldn’t imagine, much less master. So if Kat was right about his condition being caused by magic, there might be nothing he or the humans could do about it. He was trapped.
For the first time, he had something in common with his mother apart from their power over earth. Though at least he wasn’t murderously crazy. Yet. And for the time being, he wasn’t alone, except Kat had only been ordered to stay there to discover how he’d been crippled.
“Will you leave now that I’ve told you?” He kept his voice neutral. At least if she stayed, she’d want to be with him, rather than because of her orders.
She gave him a quick sideways look. “You’re not well yet.”
That didn’t answer his real question, but he was too tired to push the matter. He lay back down and she left the room.
* * *
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