by Shannon Hale
"Untie me."
He frowned, as though the suggestion wounded him. "I think I will assist you first. You can stretch after."
She realized then that even if she had free hands, she probably could not hold a spoon. She could not even hold herself up. Perhaps he had thought of that and wanted her to keep some dignity. She felt very little dignity just then with her face pressed to the ground. She was certain she had soiled herself while in the drugged sleep.
"Let me see," said Sileph, looking around. There was no hard wall to prop Enna up against. He sat on the ground beside her and pulled her upright, leaning her back against his chest. She had to rest her head on his neck to keep it upright.
"Now, my lady, if you do not mind, I will bring the food to your lips. I assure you there is nothing in here but barley, potatoes, venison, water, and salt. I brought it from my own fire. All right?"
She nodded, ashamed that she would have eaten the stew no matter what was in it. Just to smell food was agonizing. Her stomach twisted smaller, and she was afraid it would growl embarrassingly. Why should she be embarrassed? she suddenly wondered. She was a captive warrior, ruthlessly tied and drugged. But Sileph's manners made her feel in his debt. Her head buzzed and her stomach snapped. She would try to think on this later.
Sileph lifted a steaming spoonful, blew on it, and held it to her lips. She nearly swallowed the spoon with the stew.
"It has been some time since you ate. I should think you would want to take it slowly."
In truth, Enna wanted the entire bowl upended in her mouth. But as she swallowed the third spoonful, her stomach lurched. She bolted forward, constricting her throat, shaking with little convulsions. He pulled her back against him and put a hand on her forehead.
"Easy. Relax. It will be better if you can relax. Breathe."
She took slow, deep breaths, trying to keep the food down. He slipped his hand from her forehead to her stomach and rubbed her softly. She twisted under his hold.
"Don't," she said.
He took away his hand and was quiet for several moments. She began to wonder if she had offended him. She could smell him—beef soap, leather, greenwood smoke. And another smell, maybe sweat, that she associated with men.
After a time, he began to talk. His voice was calm and confident, and it soothed her. She liked the sound of the deep tones she heard vibrating through his neck. She nodded at the spoon, and he began to feed her again. His voice and the food made her feel sleepy and safe. You're not safe, she reminded herself, but her body eased.
"I wonder if you remember, but we have met before. My name is Sileph. I saw you in that Bayern prince's council in Ostekin. Enna, isn't it? I remember you well. How you stared at me! As though you wished to light me on fire with your gaze. How could I forget that expression? Your mistress the queen just looked down and didn't say moo. There is not much to her, is there? But not so with her maiden. I will admit I was struck with you. And I wondered what hair you hid up under that scarf."
She felt him finger a strand of her hair.
"Black as night. I've seen you three times at night. I don't think you know that, do you? First was in a snowstorm, and you burned our tent. It was dark, and I did not see your face well." He laughed lightly, and she could feel the rumble through her back. "We were mighty cold that night.
"Another time, I watched you in the woods outside this town. You crept up alone, hiding from tree to tree. You were fascinating. I found I would much rather watch you than stop you. I don't know how you do what you do, but I could see in your face that you enjoyed it. Would you like to set a fire right now?"
Even the suggestion of it filled Enna with hope, and she nodded breathlessly.
"Not on me, I hope. Why don't you set just a little one? Just this spoon?"
He held out the wooden spoon an arm's length in front of her face. She knew it yearned to be given life again, all those tiny, empty spaces inside it void of living juices, perfect to give root to flame. But she could not even feel that—not heat, not the lack of heat. Nothing. He's trying to find out how much I can do, she thought. But his voice and the food loosened her resolve to keep him ignorant.
"I can't," she said.
"Ah. The drugs. They are powerful. What they are giving you is a mixture of several herbs, but it is the king's-tongue that is the key. So named, says the tale, for its insidious use on King Husilef, four kings before the present. His daughter fed it to him subtly for months. His mind slowed, his body weakened, and the damage after all that time was permanent. His daughter had him declared incompetent and became ruler in his stead. It could be rumor, I suppose, but there have not been any queens since, just in case."
The word permanent rang in her head like a ball in a bell. Sileph put down the empty bowl and continued to hold her. His head moved a little closer to hers, his jaw pressing lightly against her brow. It rubbed against her as he talked, and she felt herself drowsing.
"Have you always had this gift with fire?"
"No," she said.
"Of course. I've thought of something you said in the war council with your king, that the fire worker had taught no one his arts. It seems to me, then, that this is a gift that one can be taught, no? Enna, I want you to teach me."
Enna opened her eyes, and fear returned with a jolt.
"It would help your position here if you could be a teacher," he said. "Just to me. Show me how you do it and I can protect you."
An arrow of thought whipped through her drugged mind. War. She was forgetting the war. She had entered an enemy camp in an attempt to cripple them, and instead they were wrestling her weapon away for their own use.
And it would be even easier than they knew. Her eyes darted to the right side of her skirt. There, sewn inside the wide hem, was the vellum. She had wanted it to be safe, and instead she had walked right into the enemy's home, bringing the means to destroy Bayern. She had no idea how many Tiran would have the ability she and Leifer shared. Maybe hundreds, maybe none. But as Leifer had proved, even one could be devastating on the battlefield. Enna realized grimly that she had thought she could end the war herself, but she had not considered that she could do it from either side.
Her thoughts looped around one another, and she blinked hard to try to still them. He was waiting for her to speak, so she said, "I can't," again because it was the easiest thing to say.
"Do you mean you won't?"
"I don't think it's possible."
Sileph took a breath. "Was that you out there burning on the battlefield?"
"No, my brother."
"And he taught you?"
"No," Enna said firmly. "He didn't teach me. It just happened."
In frustration, she had been trying to sit up and convince him with her effort that it was impossible. But the tent and ground tilted queasily, and she found herself back in his arms, her cheek pressed against his chest.
"I can't," she said into his shirt. "I can't think."
"Yes. With a clear mind you might find a way."
"The drug." Perhaps with that incentive, they would find a reason not to feed her the king's-tongue anymore. Then she could have her mind back and think a way out of there.
Sileph patted her hand. "Soon, I hope. Now I think you would like to stretch and wash. Tiedan wants a look at you tomorrow, and we should have you in some clean clothes."
Enna stiffened. They would take away her skirt. They could find the vellum.
"Don't worry, I will send in a woman to take your things," he said, mistaking the reason of her reaction.
"I'd rather not," she said, but he ignored her. He lowered her to the ground, pulled a knife from his boot, and sliced through her wrist and ankle binds. With the sudden release, slivers of pain drove into her arms and legs and ran in sharp shivers all over her body. She cried out. Sileph stopped and looked at her.
"You . . . you should not suffer." His voice trembled a little at the end. Enna stared up at him, mouth agape. She believed that he honestly felt for h
er. But a moment later when he called out to a sentry, his voice was low and commanding again.
Before she could test her strength enough to try to dispose of the vellum, Sileph returned with two guards and a Bayern woman wearing a blue sash. Sileph gave orders so quickly that Enna's slowed mind did not catch them completely, and then he left. The two guards stayed in the tent with their backs turned to Enna, ostensibly to make sure no illicit communication passed between the two prisoners.
The woman clucked and tsked as she undressed Enna, but her eyes were tender. Though perhaps only ten years Enna's senior, her face was lined and sun scarred. Eylbold was a farming town, and Enna imagined the years working fields were rough. She stared at the woman, caught up by her eyes, blue as the high, lonely sky. It was good to see someone's eyes. Enna wanted to tell her with her own eyes to ignore what she might feel inside the skirt hem, to just return it without a word. She shook her head in a silent plea. The woman surely did not understand the warning, but she returned a comforting nod.
Once Enna was stripped down, the woman washed her with a rag and warm water in quick strokes. Enna wanted to protest and say she could do it herself, then realized that she could not. So she just kept the woman's blue eyes, felt like a kitten washed by its mother's rough tongue, and thought of what she would do later, when she was free.
The woman wrapped Enna in a large wool blanket that vaguely itched against her bare skin and left the tent with the dirty clothes. The two guards followed her out. Enna could see they kept post just outside the tent door.
It was quiet. The tent got darker. Outside, she could hear campfires pop and hiss. She wanted that sound to feel comforting, like the voice of an old friend, but it seemed so far away. She did not want to be alone to feel how cold and untouchable the world was now, to feel the absence of the heat like heavy grief. Alone, her thoughts would catch and fling her back to the moment with Isi, the unforgivable moment. She winced again and again at the memory, and dark regret rode with her into sleep.
She heard a voice and woke slowly. The air and darkness felt like deeper night. The voice that had awakened her still vibrated inside her head. She listened to it again. A voice she did not know. A man's. She opened her eyes.
"There you are." It was one of the guards. He had removed his helmet, and his yellowish hair stuck up in a way that reminded her of Razo. He was in the tent, alone, looking at her.
"All nice and comfortable, are you? For a moment I thought you might be dead. Were you dead?" He smiled.
"No," said Enna, since he seemed to be waiting for an answer.
"Good, because I'm curious." He took slow steps toward her. "I wondered what a girl looks like who cooks people alive. A friend of mine, Duris, he was sleeping in a tent just like this one when it caught fire somehow. Do you know how?"
She did not answer this time. In the near darkness, his face was disturbingly shadowed. That empty place inside her that she used to fill with heat was now sick with dread.
"You must be too good to answer to me, yes? Our precious little prisoner. Our resident fire-witch. Deserves death, but instead is washed and fed and guarded like a prized puppy. You took something away from me that night. Do I not get something in return?"
Ah, she thought, ah, that. He came toward her, and she fought rolling pains of disgust and the nauseating realization of her own powerlessness. Her limbs felt like stripped corpses. Her mind swayed like a motion-sick child rolling around in the back of a wagon. She concentrated on the pit of dread inside her and how to change it to anger, and how that anger could free her, wake her skin to awareness of heat again, loose the sleeping fire. He knelt over her, and his hands touched her blanket where she gripped it closed.
His voice was soft and mocking. "I just want to see what a fire-witch looks like."
She could feel the heat of his wet breath on her face. Good. Heat. Go ahead, she thought, go ahead and touch me and let's see what happens. But she held the blanket even tighter, a maddening grip that reminded her just how weak she was. She sobbed once and felt a little heat bubble inside her. His face leered over her, and she could see pale glints of his teeth. With his bony finger he stabbed her a few times in her side as though he were prodding meat or teasing a sibling. Then he grabbed the corners of her blanket and said, "Hush."
She heard the sound of the tent flap whipping aside.
The guard sprang to his feet. "Captain," he said with an effort at normalcy.
Sileph looked around wildly, at him, at Enna, back at him. Enna pulled a loosed corner of the blanket tight over her chest. Her hand shook like a baby's gourd-rattle.
Sileph's face tightened in rage. He rushed forward and released his fist into the guard's face. The punch sent the guard spinning to the ground. Sileph swore, looked down, and hit him again. And then again, and again, cursing him and his family and his stench and his greasy heart. The guard covered his head with his arms and whined like a beaten dog. Sileph seemed unwilling to stop, and his fists shook with unspent fury, but he grabbed the man by his neck and the back of his tunic, ran him through the tent, and flung him out the door.
Sileph put a hand over his face and breathed hard through his nose, his entire body clenched up in a reluctant effort to calm. His forehead shone with perspiration.
Enna pushed herself up a little on her elbow. "You should've let him try." Her voice shook more than she thought it would. "He would've . . . I would've found a way . . . to burn . . . " She stopped, angry and humiliated, aware that even in anger the fire was a stranger to her drugged mind.
Sileph tightened his fists and looked around as though wishing for something new to hit. He pointed at her, and his voice trembled with rage.
"Nobody touches you." He paced a moment, put a fist to his mouth, discovered a trickle of blood from where he had bitten his own lip, and wiped it away angrily. "Nobody."
After a moment, when his breathing slowed, he sat beside her. Enna watched his face, amazed that this was the same man from the war council in Ostekin. She thought unexpectedly, He's nothing like Finn.
He sat for a few moments just looking at her, then said, "I am sorry, Enna," and stood to go.
"Wait," she said.
He turned back to her, his expression almost hopeful. She realized that she was going to ask him to stay and that was ridiculous, so she curled back up on the ground and said no more. Sileph waited a moment and then left.
Enna tried to keep her eyes open for as long as possible. Under her blanket, she rubbed her bare arms and tried to still her shivering muscles. She had never felt so empty.
Chapter 13
Early, when the tent walls began to brighten with shaded light, the tent flap moved again. Enna jumped, but it was only the blue-eyed woman with her clothes. The skinny man with his hard finger and hot breath and sneer was not among the guards who accompanied her. The woman dressed Enna tenderly. Her clothes smelled of beef soap and wood smoke. Enna ran her weak hand along the hem—the vellum was still there.
Sileph waited outside the tent until the woman departed, then entered quietly, a small water skin in his hand. Enna nearly sobbed.
"Please," she said, pride combating the pleading tone in her voice. "I want to be able to think and move again."
"I wish I did not have to. Tiedan spoke with me this morning. His orders are that you remain drugged." He uncapped a flask and held it to her lips. With his other hand he smoothed her brow. "Just a little. Just enough to hold the fire back. It won't be forever, not if they can find another way to protect themselves from you."
He began to pour and she gagged on the bitter water, her hands gripping his wrist. She coughed, gulped one, two, three swallows; then he allowed her to push his hand away. He wiped the dribbled water from her cheek with a corner of his shirt.
"You are very brave, Enna."
That one word was too much. Brave. She choked on it, clutched his wrist tighter, and started to cry. The fear and powerlessness were so overwhelming, Enna could scarcely remember who s
he had been. Sileph held her against his chest, smoothing her hair and rocking her slightly. His voice changed again, softer, lighter.
"You are, Enna. You are amazing. This is temporary. You will shine again, I promise. I will see you burn again."
"Why?" she asked.
He did not speak, just held her while the king's-tongue spread through her body, pressed down her hands and feet, and cooled her skin so that it felt dead. The pit inside her was empty and cold, and it weighed down her chest. Soon she was aware of Sileph but could not feel him. Only her sense of smell remained completely keen. She pondered the smell of his leather vest—dust, smoke, oil, animal.
She looked at the dark hairs on the back of his hand and thought of him last night in his rage. What had he done to the hard-fingered guard? Was that guard now dead? Finn would not have killed him, but Sileph might. She wanted to ask him these questions, as well as others that would start with "Why?" But she was comfortable against him in her nearly numb body. And she liked his smell.
Smell was her only strong sense for days, as Sileph and the king's-tongue became her only companions. When the drug began to wear itself out, Sileph was there. She leaned against him and told him of home, of the Forest and being a worker in the city, of Leifer's death and how the queen tried to stop Enna from burning. She told him because she wanted his trust, sure that he was the best hope she had of someday escaping. And she told him because she wanted to. Those moments with Sileph, the grip of the king's-tongue loosening, were the times she felt a little like Enna.
She left the tent only to go to the privy. Sileph picked her up, one arm under her knees, one supporting her back, and carried her into the winter sun. She closed her eyes, leaned back her head, and let the light touch her entire face. The warmth and light made her feel pretty. Her skin tingled and her heart swelled, and she breathed deeply of the cool air that brought the tang of pine trees and warming earth. She had spent most of her life out of doors, and just leaving the confines of the tent felt like going home.
It also made her ache. Inside the plain, windowless white tent, her numb state seemed almost natural. Outside, with the sun and wind and colors and people and fires, she remembered dimly how much she used to feel.