Draken couldn’t fight, unsure he could stomach more killing at the moment, much less magic. He spun to face the guards, lifted Seaborn, and flung it as hard as he could over their heads. If he never saw the thing again, it would be too soon. Slicked with blood, it silhouetted against the golden panes of horn before disappearing among the tallest trees and thickest foliage.
The guards flinched, which seemed to fuel their anger. One tackled him and they beat their fists on his back and head until flecks of light sparked in his eyes. He groaned and tried to lay limp as if he’d passed out so they’d stop, but they seemed to cease despite it. Shouts penetrated his pain. He dragged his head up to stare blearily toward them.
One of the guards was going for the king, seax in hand. It struck Draken as vaguely incongruous: royal guards were trained to the sword and didn’t carry common weapons. Galbrait leapt forward and tackled him from the side. They tumbled into the ashy foliage, rolling on the dirt. Another guard strode forward and dragged the guard up, pulling him from the Prince’s grip. Draken squinted. A crooked nose, plush, feminine lips, the right frame … gods, it was a son of House Rinwar, given to His Majesty as a guard. A solid strike to the temple made Rinwar fall limp. After Galbrait opened the doors and called out, more guards poured into the Solarium to see to the king and drag Rinwar away. There were plenty left over to give Draken a thorough beating.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Gloom shrouded him as the door to his cell clanged shut and the guards carried off the torches. Draken closed his eyes, just breathing as the discomfort from the cuts and bruises turned to painful prickles and subsided into tingles as his wounds healed. The ground seemed to rock beneath him and his head spun sickeningly. He lay on his bad shoulder, rolled over onto his back to ease the chronic ache, and stared up into darkness. It was near nightfall, he thought. He wondered if any of the Seven were rising to see what had happened to their godsworn.
The gods had given him the sword. They had let Elena anoint him as Khel Szi. And then they’d sent him back here. They had ripped his life apart again, just as he’d settled a little, and let the shreds flutter down over the whole world. And now his sister and the others were in danger…. Aarinnaie must be frantic by now
Or killing someone.
Or already dead.
He groaned. His newfound ability to heal himself did nothing for the frustration that ached in his head like a spike.
“When we meet, Khellian, I will challenge you and you may destroy my soul for good.” He cast a glare upward into the darkness over his head. “Or you never know. I might just destroy you.”
A choked laugh answered his petulant growl. “What an amusing little flyfish you are.”
Draken pushed to a sit. The effort made him pant. “Yramantha. How badly did they torture you?”
A beat. “Stop talking. They’ll hear you.”
“No one is down here.” He strained to see in the blackness. “No one will come until it’s time for a feeding.”
“They don’t often bring food down to this ruddy place.”
He tried work out how long she must’ve been down here. Some nights, not quite seven, he reckoned. “Interrogations come more often. The King employs old prisoners to question his newer ones. I’m certain Grym earned his way out of chains on my back alone.” He shifted his sore shoulder again, remembering.
“Stop. Just … stop talking.”
Draken ran his hand over his face. He hated this, hated baiting her. But he had to make himself of some use to the King, had to prove he wasn’t part of the rebellion if he had any hope at surviving. “Of course last time I was here, there were no traitors to distract them. They’ll likely be far more interested in you.”
Water dripped. Generations of damp running down cold stone walls. The incessant plink plink plink driving him mad as he lay beaten and broken in his cell. Licking the walls for a drink.
He pulled up his knees and rested his forearm on them. “Why did they suspect you? Because you came to Brîn?”
“No. They accused me of killing the Princes. Someone lied. But I wasn’t even in Monoea.”
He frowned. Killing the Princes? “Were the Princes in the Sea Swallow?”
“Shouldn’t it be called Sea Swallowed by now?” Another voice filtered through the darkness, low and far away. “Don’t talk to him. He has magicks to trick you.”
Draken frowned. “Rinwar? Is that you?”
“You know me?”
“I know your father. Why did you try to kill King Aissyth?”
A rough laugh. “Why did you save him?”
“I have a Queen and a country who needs me. His death does not serve them.”
“Nor you, I assume,” Yramantha said.
“I don’t think my death serves anyone at the moment.” Draken slid forward slowly so he didn’t bang against the bars in the darkness. His eyes strained with trying to see. “There’s a chance they’ll take me first for questioning. Rinwar, if you tell me something, anything, perhaps I can spare you some pain. Better it come from me than you.”
“Why would you do that?” Rinwar demanded. But there was a tremor behind his anger.
Because he was too difficult to kill. “Because you’re too young and foolish to know what a real interrogation is, what real pain is.” What true rebellion was. He bowed his head, letting the muscles stretch. They tugged painfully down his shoulder. He drew a deep breath, and then another. But they wouldn’t release. Thom often rubbed his back and bad shoulder for him when it was sore with strain from the lists. He wished for his firm, capable hands now.
“I’m no child. I know what I’m doing—”
“No. You’ve no idea at all, or you never would have attacked the King. The very least difficult thing of all that can happen to you today is dying.”
“The King was supposed to be dead. You were supposed to kill him.”
“Why me?”
“I don’t know. There was no time, no discussion. Father was adamant …” Rinwar’s voice faded.
“Shut it, Rinwar!” Yramantha hissed. Draken heard Rinwar taking slow, careful breaths and gave the darkness a grim smile. Who needs magicks with a craven young lordling? He was under the boy’s skin now, and hers. “Did your father know the Khel Szi is me?”
“An upstart Prince,” Yramantha said. “Who won a civil war for your Queen. That’s what they thought you were.”
Not so far from the truth. “But then Lord Rinwar saw me come into Sevenfel with the Prince.”
“He sent for me straightaway. There was no time to plan, to argue … Not that Father would listen anyway.”
And here the lad sat waiting for torture.
Yramantha snorted softly and anger flared in Draken. “I saved Queen Elena. For that she demanded my loyalty. As well my father demanded I take his throne.” Not to mention the gods and their bloody sword. “I know what it is to have your actions dictated by the whims of others, lad.”
He heard a bit of shuffling: maybe Rinwar moving closer to the bars of his cell. That they each rated their own cell surprised Draken, and for the first time he realized the dungeon … this corridor at any rate, was oddly empty. “Where are all the prisoners?”
Another rustling of clothes; a shrug, maybe. Yramantha spoke. “Exiled. In the quarries. Working the King’s Roads.” She paused. “Executed.”
Draken lifted his head. “The King is executing criminals?”
“We shouldn’t be talking,” Rinwar said.
“We’re all as good as dead,” Draken said. “Speak.”
There was another long pause before Rinwar’s rough voice came out of the darkness again. “Only those suspected of killing the Princes.”
“Shut up!” A violent hiss. Chains clinked against bars in Yramantha’s cell.
“Who killed the Princes? Which ones?”
“Prince Tryvann was found hanging in his rooms. His wife, too, and their children.”
Draken’s middle hollowed out. Assassination inside Pal
ace Ashwyc? “What of Aissyth’Ae?”
“Missing these last three sevennight.”
“His family? His wife?”
“All dead at the country Palace. But Prince Aissyth’Ae was just gone. It’s said he must have gone off with someone he trusts.”
Or he’d run … no. It wasn’t in Aissyth’Ae to do that. He was not the most pleasant man, but he’d never been craven. Draken rubbed his head. Two attacks in palaces. No wonder Aissyth was mad with paranoia. “Who is doing this? Besides your father, who is involved in the rebellion?”
Yramantha made a warning growl. But she needn’t have bothered.
“I don’t know, all right? I don’t know enough. Do you understand? It wasn’t supposed to be like this, all that blood and Kupsyr on the ground without his head and … You cut his head off! Why did you do that? Kupsyr. He had only eighteen Sohalias and you cut his … head … it could have been me, it could have been …” Rinwar’s shouts dissolved into blubbering tears.
Draken sank against the bars, listening to his wet sobbing. Gods, he wasn’t made for this, questioning boys whose worst scandals should be with eligible girls at balls. But even as he let guilt overcome him, he took note: Kupsyr—the man he’d executed on Seakeep Tower. And now another son wasted by rebellion. Another Landed to add to the list of those King Aissyth would have to eradicate. Except there was no love lost between House Kupsyr and House Rinwar. Had it really taken mutual hatred of the King to bring them together? He couldn’t quite believe that.
“Rinwar. Do you know my work for the Crown,” he asked quietly, “before I was accused and exiled?”
It took some time for the sniffling to die down. “No.”
“No, Your Highness.” It was the first time he had ever asked, insisted, on his proper title.
A penetrating pause. “No, Your Highness.”
“What is your name? Your given name.”
“Soeben, Your Highness.”
Draken settled against the bars. They rattled slightly. Shivers were settling in. It’d be worse before it was over, if he was left here the night. “I was a Black Guard Commander, responsible for hunting down and eradicating my own kind. It is an ugly thing, Soeben, as you have learned this day.”
To his surprise, Rinwar didn’t snap back at him, but only released a breath. Both of them fell silent for some time. Draken pushed some straw together to soften the hard floor, ignoring the critters he sent scattering. He’d had worse accommodations. He struggled to stay awake, listening to the silence broken only by dripping and an occasional cough from Soeben or sigh from Yramantha. His body ached and his mind strained with seeking a solution to his problem. The closest he’d been to death in a sevennight and he rather abruptly did not want to die. He could imagine Bruche’s laughter at the irony.
He startled to rough voices and the clang of a gate. Torchlight made him blink and his blood freeze, until he realized it wasn’t his gate that had opened. Guards pulled Soeben from his cell. The boy stumbled and turned his head to look at Draken before they pulled him over a short distance to an open area with a table. Draken sat up but remained silent. It wouldn’t help to draw attention to himself right now and it certainly might hurt. He cursed inwardly, though. He’d had more questions for the boy and the likelihood of their ever being answered had just fallen away into the depths of despair—Soeben’s, which was surely coming.
A man entered the room and Draken had to fight the urge to creep deeper into the shadows of his cell. Grym must’ve earned his freedom because he bore no shackles on his feet. His shaggy hair had been cut, slicked back into a neat dark tail, and his beard was gone. But Draken would recognize his pocked cheeks, crooked nose, and soft, sympathetic eyes anywhere. He’d stared up at them for long enough as Grym had torn out his fingernails, broken his foot, dislocated his shoulder, and sliced the delicate skin on his inner thighs. Grym had called Draken a challenge, and so he had been. Draken had extensive training to resist torture, and besides, he’d been innocent so he’d had nothing to confess. But Grym had not stopped until Draken screamed, and the next day he’d done it again, and the next again; until he’d been removed from the local dungeon and taken to the gaol at the docks after his sentencing.
Grym leaned against the bars, a torch in his hand. Draken had to duck his head; the flames stung his eyes after so long in the dark and the oil smell was rank. “You again.”
Draken summoned a mild tone. “Aye, me.”
“Eh, we’re saving you for special.” He jerked his chin at the others with him and Soeben’s cell clanged open.
They tore Soeben’s clothes from his body and shoved him onto the table. Two men held him on his back while a third strapped him down. Soeben struggled a little, but half-heartedly, as if he knew it was a losing battle. Grym watched, pale eyes narrowed.
When he was secure, Grym stepped forward and patted Soeben’s chest over his heart.
Soeben shoved against the straps. “I am Landed. I am nobility. You can’t—”
Grym shushed him with a gentle finger on his lips. “I’m supposed to find out what you told about the rebellion.”
Told? Not what he knew … who had ordered this interrogation? Draken’s gaze stayed riveted on Soeben and Grym.
“Such a pretty boy,” Grym said, soft, coercive. “You’d have been a hero if you’d managed it, eh?”
Soeben’s face hardened. Draken wouldn’t have noticed had he not been watching so closely.
Grym saw it too. “Ah, then.”
His hand trailed down to Soeben’s fingers. His hand barely twitched but the boy cried out. His sharp yelp echoed echoed against the stone and bars. Grym pulled his hand away, leaving Soeben’s ring finger sticking up at an odd angle. He yanked Soeben’s House signet off the broken finger and pocketed it. The boy panted and turned his head to look past Grym into Draken’s cell.
Yramantha made a noise of terror and he heard her scooting back across the rough stone and dirt.
Draken gave the boy a nod. He knew Soeben was a rebel, he deserved punishment, maybe death. But not like this, not with Grym, who was likely praying to the Seven the boy would last long enough to have some real fun. Not that it would stop him; Draken had seen Grym torture someone well past the point of breaking, of confession, past the point of the capability of speech.
Grym moved. Soeben grunted as Grym wrenched on the lad’s hand, both arms corded. Snap. Soeben screamed, long, piercing. When he showed signs of slowing, Grym tugged on the broken limb, wrenching at it. The skin held. Grym reached for his blade. The screams resumed, broken only by wet gagging. Rancid scents of piss and puke filled the air. The arm hit the ground with a dull thud. Grym kicked it away, toward Draken’s cell. One of the others cauterized the wound with a plank of metal, red hot from the fire. Soeben screamed breathlessly until it choked off. They slapped him awake and splashed him with water.
Draken felt his neck heat and his back prickle. His sword arm. Soeben would never fight again. Draken swallowed his bile. The boy would never do anything again, save scream.
Draken moved to the front of the cell, into the torchlight. They could see his face; they could recognize him through the smeared ink. He ignored them all for Soeben, unable to tear his eyes away. The lad’s flowed with tears and bloody drool dripped from between his lips, but his jaw was set. Soeben turned his head and met his eyes.
Draken gripped the bars with both hands. I will kill Grym. This I swear on my blood and my damned sword. He will die alone, desperate. “I am with you.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Draken?”
The voice cut through the nightmarish fog of blood. He stirred, lifted his head from his thin, itchy bed of hay, so groggy his vision blurred in the torchlight. He reached up to wipe the back of his bumpy, branded hand over his eyes. Squinted and pushed himself to a sit. A cloaked figure waited on the other side of the bars, silvery and ghostlike. There was no mistaking that glow. A shadow a few steps behind it held a louvered lantern. It cast a sallo
w, surreal light.
“Osias,” Draken said.
“Aye, and someone to help you.”
The darker figure opened the louvers, shedding more light. Soeben lay strapped to the table in his blood and filth. A stinking, still shadow. Very dead. It also revealed the pale, aged face and shadowed eyes of an unfamiliar woman.
“Draken,” she breathed.
Draken pushed to his feet. “My lady?”
For that was obviously what she was. Fine lace peeked under the hem of her long cloak. An intricate knot taming well-tended waves topped her head, the blonde partially slid into grey. He wished he were better clothed, not stinking in this cell with bits of straw stuck in his hair. “You know me?”
She nodded, wordless. Something crossed her face … anger? Terror?
“Who are you, may I ask?” Draken asked, taking a step forward.
She edged back from him, sliding on slippered feet.
He stopped.
“Lady Sikyra,” Osias said. Lady Sikyra swallowed and glanced behind her at Soeben.
Draken looked at the still, battered body and sighed deeply. “I wish I could have done something. They seemed determined to see him dead.”
“It is said he tried to kill the King.”
Draken bowed his head to her, wondering if she was Soeben’s mother or sister. “Aye,” he said quietly.
Lady Sikyra fell quiet for a moment, studying him. He fought the urge to fidget under her gaze.
“You don’t recognize me?” she asked.
“No, my lady. Should I?”
She blinked and lowered her head. “Forgive my stare. You look so very like your father. It’s a bit of a shock.”
Draken’s heart skipped and slowed; his body fell still. The cold air started to penetrate. He stared at her, and she stared unblinking back. He swallowed, his throat tight. Osias reached between the bars and took Draken’s wrist in his hand.
“You’re my mother.” He barely got enough air behind the words to be heard.
Lady Sikyra moved into action, reaching for the bars, the large round key in her hand. The bars clanked and she flinched, but she pulled them open. “Come. We must hurry if you’re to escape.”
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