The laugher burst out of her in a loud cackle, and she slapped her hand against Marcus’s shoulder.
“I say!” he said, looking offended. “There’s no need to laugh at me. If I messed up again, just let me know and I’ll try to put things to right. But there’s no call for laughing at me.”
His gentle dignity touched Willow. She shook her head.
“No, Marcus, actually you’ve done very well. I’m laughing because as far as I can tell, everything has gone wrong … everything, that is, except for you. Lieutenant, you are the only person who did precisely what he was supposed to do.”
“I say.” He seemed completely at a loss for words, so he said again, “I say.”
Willow winced as she took off her jacket. A jagged piece of the arrow’s haft still protruded from her chest. It had been a rough adventure, but at least it was over.
That is, until the army of one hundred thousand Kards arrived at Bryanae’s shores.
“I say,” Marcus said yet again. Willow had forgotten how much she hated that phrase. “You’re hurt, Captain!”
She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got more important things to do right now.”
Marcus squared off before her, crossing his arms in front of all one hundred and thirty-some pounds of his.
“Nothing doing,” he said. “We’re going to have a look at those wounds.”
Willow sighed. “Not now. I’ll take care of them later, after I—”
“I said we’re going to have a look at those wounds,” Marcus said.
Their eyes met and locked. Then a huge smile broke out onto Willow’s face.
“Lieutenant,” she said. “I should have told you this a long time ago: you’re a good soldier, and Bryanae’s lucky to have you.”
“I say,” said Lieutenant Marcus, an enormous smile on his face.
Chapter 114
The castle emitted a brilliant yellow glow that shattered the night. The Queen must have had her Generator running at full capacity, meaning that at this very moment, hundreds of servants were feeding hunks of wood into the Szun-built contraption so that the region’s best and brightest could admire her kingdom’s wealth and resourcefulness.
Willow glanced at Prince Vazerian with a feeling of kinship. Perhaps his mother wasn’t as bad as hers was, but the comparison at least had merit.
Willow grasped the hilt of the rapier at her side, enjoying the reassuring solidity of it. Yes, it was true that she had mastered the axe, the bow, the sword, the knife, and countless other weapons, but there was something about the rapier that just appealed to her more than any other. Its simplicity, its elegance, its precision.
It felt good to be wearing one again. That, the fresh uniform and the clean bandages: she felt almost civilized.
The guards at the gate recognized her instantly, and moved to sound the alarm, but she stopped them.
“Stand down,” she said. “I’m here for the Masquerade.”
“But …” The guard to the left was Corporal Owens. A bright enough man, but always at a loss when orders conflicted or were complex. Beside him was a private whom Willow didn’t recognize, but he looked like he had made it into the guard through connections and not skill in much the same way that Marcus had.
Willow held up two pieces of paper, then handed them to the guard.
The papers were identical, of course, and read:
Her Majesty, Tiranda, Queen of Bryanae,
cordially invites you to
a gala Masquerade Ball
to celebrate the betrothal of
His Royal Highness, Vazerian, Prince of Bryanae
to Her Royal Highness, Sherrilou, Princess of Kyrn,
said ball to be held
at Corvus Castle on the last day of Spring,
commencing at sunset.
“As you can see,” she was saying, “we’ve been invited.”
“Who … who … who’s the other one?” Owens said, pointing at the Prince.
“Why, he’s your guest of honor,” she said, delighting in Owen’s stupefaction. She led Vazerian into the light so that the two guards could get a good look at his face.
They dropped to their knees.
“Your Highness!”
Vazerian didn’t say anything, but instead walked ahead onto the castle grounds. Willow limped after him. Behind her, the two guards scrambled to find persons in authority.
As they entered the castle, Willow could hear the muttering and gasps of the masked people that surrounded them.
“It’s Captain Willow … and the Prince!”
“They’ve returned!”
“But I thought she was an outlaw …”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She was on a secret mission to rescue the …”
“It’s His Highness, the Prince!”
Willow and Vazerian walked past the gods, goddesses, heroes, and animals that danced and chattered in the entry hall. As they passed, the party-goers fell in step behind them, forming a procession leading to the throne room. There, on the dais, sat Tiranda the Fair, the Queen of Bryanae. To her right, sat the feeble Chancellor, and to his left was a pink and bubbly monstrosity who could be none other than the Princess Sherrilou of Kyrn.
“Your Majesty!” called Willow, and an immediate hush fell upon the room. “I’ve returned with your son, His Royal Highness, Prince Vazerian of Bryanae!”
The assembled crowd split before her, moving to either side and clearing a path to the Queen. Willow placed her hand on Vazerian’s upper arm, and led him through the pathway to stand before the dais.
The Queen, her red hair done up in fiery blaze for the occasion, seemed torn between two polar emotions: joy at the return of her son and venom for Willow. Her mouth moved silently.
“Mother,” said Vazerian, and climbed the dais to run to her. “Captain Willow rescued me. It was terrible!”
The Queen wrapped her arms around her son in a perfunctory embrace, then gestured for him to step to the side. Then she pointed at Willow.
“Seize her,” she said.
“What?” Willow said.
She reached for her rapier, but a hand clamped over hers. She tried to elbow whomever it was, but then other hands were on her, grabbing at her, entangling her limbs. She felt rope wrapping around her wrists. Something rough grazed the bloody bandage on her head and she shrieked.
“No, Mother!” Vazerian said. “Let her go! She rescued me. Let her go.”
“Calm yourself, Vazerian. She has raised arms against her Queen and her kingdom, and endangered your life as well. Her life is forfeit.”
“No, Mother! I won’t allow it.”
The Queen stared at her son, incredulous. “You won’t—?”
“No, I won’t permit you to treat her in this way. Captain Willow is a hero. She saved me from that … that monster!”
The Queen’s cheeks flushed bright scarlet.
“You have no say in the matter, young man. Chancellor, escort my son to his room. I’ll speak to him later.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“No, Mother!”
Meanwhile, Willow was buried beneath of pile of guards, her face pressed against the stone floor, her wounds screaming at her.
She should have known better. She should have known that Queen Tiranda would be an ungrateful tyrant.
The guards bound Willow like a hog. She toyed with the idea of leaving Bryanae to its fate. Perhaps Prince Vazerian knew about the Warlord’s invasion plans; perhaps he knew about the role that the charmingly porcine Princess Sherrilou played in the events through which he had suffered. Perhaps he knew these things, and perhaps he didn’t. And if he didn’t, perhaps she should just keep her mouth shut.
But no, duty was so ingrained into Willow’s soul that even in the face of their ingratitude, she could not shirk her duty.
“Your Majesty,” she said, her mouth muffled against the floor. “It is my duty to warn you that there is a barbarian force of approximately one hundred thous
and strong poised to strike Bryanae from a base on the elven homeland of Ignis Fatuus. In addition, I am obliged to point out that your son’s kidnapping was orchestrated by none other than the Princess Sherrilou and the late Captain Eric Snyde of the King’s Guard.”
The Princess Sherrilou started to protest—a hideous, high-pitched bubbling voice that made Willow’s skin crawl—but the Queen overrode her before she had even uttered two syllables.
“If that’s the best you can do, Willow, I’m extremely disappointed. One hundred thousand, you say? Why not a million?”
Then, to the guards she said, “Take her to the tower. And keep her there until”—a malicious smile spread across her face—“until she dies of old age.”
“ ‘Queen Tiranda the Fair,’ ” Willow said as the guards dragged her away, the irony heavy in her voice. “Ha!”
Chapter 115
Queen Tiranda no doubt thought she was condemning Willow to the Hells by locking her up alone in the tower, but that just showed how little the Queen had ever really known her. Locked in a small room, with nobody but herself to talk to: that was how she had lived most of her life. Before her trip to Ignis Fatuus, Willow could easily have spent the rest of her life in this one room, and never have minded it for a moment.
The irony of course was that now she had changed. The part of her that had long been sealed off was rejoined, and she knew her feelings. They had always been there, but until recently, they had been so separated from her that they had almost no influence on her.
Now, things were different. Tamlevar. She had Tamlevar to blame for this. It was all his fault that she was sitting here on the floor of this miserable stone room with her arms wrapped around her knees. She wished Tamlevar were standing outside this tower, so she could lob a rock through the barred and unreachably high window and crack Tamlevar on the head with it.
She hated him, and he wasn’t even alive.
No, that wasn’t true. She didn’t hate him. She wanted to hate him, to blame her current misery on someone else, and he represented a convenient person to blame. But in fact, he had never been anything but wonderful and giving to her, and she had treated him like dirt.
And now he was dead, and it was all her fault.
So Willow sat in her stone room, all alone, and thought about doing pushups. She never did.
The sun rose to fill the window, climbed past it, and darkness fell. It happened again the next day, and the one after that, and the one after that. Willow barely moved from her position on the floor beside her cot, except to eat, drink, and use the chamber pot.
The sun rose. The sun set. Willow lost track of how many times. Had it been years since she had been thrown in here, or only months? Elves were notoriously bad at distinguishing between lesser gradients of time. Her arms and legs grew thin, her head lolled, and sores appeared on her buttocks. Yet still she sat motionless beside her bed.
At first, Prince Vazerian had come to visit her, but when she did not speak to him, his visits decreased in frequency until he showed up only rarely. But he had not completely forgotten about her, because in his absence, he sent all manner of entertainment: poets, musicians, jesters, anybody he could slip past his mother’s draconian edicts.
She appreciated his efforts—at least there was one member of the royal family who understood duty and loyalty—but she wished he’d abandon them just the same. It was her intention to fade away, to die as quickly and as quietly as possible, and to rot beside her bed. The perfect end to the perfect life.
Perhaps someday, Elidon would find out what happened to her, and she would be sad. But Elidon was always good at dealing with emotions and would no doubt recover. It was what had made her so strong. Perhaps Elidon would even make things uncomfortable for Queen Tiranda.
Probably not, but it was amusing to think of such things.
The sun continued to rise, the sun continued to set, and Willow continued to die a little each day. It might take years or decades, but eventually, her body would do as her mind had done, and just give up.
A wounded bird flew in through the window and Willow did what she could to care for it. She shared what meager food and water she had with the poor, sick thing. She even wrapped the shivering creature in one of her socks at night.
But it died anyway and Willow, stung to the heart, just wished that she could get on with dying, too.
Chapter 116
The sun rose. The sun set. The dead bird had long since decayed to a skeleton.
Then the sun rose again, and with it came shouts and klaxons of an army. Willow lay on her cot, too tired to move, but she listened with mild interest. If it were the barbarian army that she heard, it could very well affect how she’d die: either here, in the cell, or at the hands of whoever the new warlord was.
It wasn’t that her body had failed so fast, but rather that her spirit was no longer willing to cause the body to move. It still could, in theory, walk or do a pushup, but without a soul, she was just a hunk of flesh.
So she listened to the commotion outside until night came and the noise stopped. Then, in the morning, it resumed, and she listened some more.
On the third day it was quiet. She found that she really didn’t care who had won.
A key turned in the lock of her cell, and the door opened. She glanced at the sky. It was too early for her dinner.
“Come with me,” the guard said. Willow thought she knew the guard, but was too enervated to recall his name.
When she had trouble climbing from the cot, the guard assisted her. She felt like a wizened invalid, clutching his arm for balance.
He led her down the stairs, and her ears came to life, picking up the variety of sounds she hadn’t heard in … how long?
Perhaps they were going to execute her now. Maybe the Queen was furious when she found out that Willow’s claim about the barbarian horde was true; perhaps she felt that Willow had tricked her into disbelieving her. It was impossible to say how the Queen’s mind worked.
The guard led her through the innards of the castle, down corridors, and at last into the main hall, and into the throne room, which was unusually dark and solemn. There, the Queen sat at her throne, drumming her fingers. Beside her, the Chancellor chattered incessantly.
“Of course they’ll keep their word,” he was saying. “Why wouldn’t they? What would be the point of them saying one thing and doing something else? If they say they’ll spare us, then why shouldn’t we believe them? I mean, why would they say that they’d spare us and then—?”
“It seems you were right about the army,” the Queen said when Willow shuffled into the room. The Queen appeared to have aged a decade. Perhaps Willow had been in the tower that long, or perhaps the Queen’s recent ordeal had worn her out. Who could say?
The Queen looked at Willow awaiting a response; she seemed nonplussed when none was forthcoming.
“Our forces have surrendered,” the Queen said, her red lips turned down in a sour frown. “The cowards. Only the Guard remains, and of them, only those that remain in the castle.”
Willow didn’t say anything.
“Doesn’t any of this mean anything to you, Willow?”
Willow looked up and let the Queen see her dead eyes.
“Not anymore,” she said, and the Queen looked away.
“I may have … wronged you, Willow.” The Queen waited for a response, and again, when none was given, she continued. “But regardless, the time has come for you to save Bryanae again.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, the barbarians are willing to accept our surrender if … well, I won’t beat around the bush. They’ll accept our surrender if we give them you, Willow.”
Willow nodded her head. This again. She sighed.
“I take it you have no objections?”
“Would it matter if I did?”
The Queen met her eyes this time. “No, I don’t suppose it would.”
Chapter 117
So this was how it ended: with total failure
. Tamlevar dead, the Prince recaptured, the Szun recaptured, and Bryanae itself fallen to the barbarian hordes. She had failed at everything she had tried to do.
One by one, the portcullises rose to permit her to pass, and then they lowered behind her. At the last one, not even her guard followed. She marched alone down the hall towards the castle gates. She heard the sound of a massive force just outside. She smelled smoke and sweat on the air.
She reached the gates: a thin, almost skeletal figure about to confront an entire army, and she just didn’t care.
She pushed on one of the gates, but it wouldn’t budge. She threw her entire weight against it until it at last gave way, and opened out into the square.
The explosion of sunlight blinded her, and she cried out and covered her face with her forearm. Around her, she heard the clatter of weapons and armor, and the murmurs of voices all about. She felt small and exposed, without even a rapier at her side.
A familiar male voice spoke: “We’ve come for you, Waeh-Loh of Ignis Fatuus.”
She tried to peer beneath her forearm, but even squinting into the sunlight was too much for her.
“I can’t see!” she shouted. “It’s too bright for my eyes. Who is that?”
“It’s me,” the voice said. “Tamlevar.”
Tamlevar?
She squinted again, and sure enough, she could make out the outline of a figure that might have been Tamlevar.
She took a stumbling step forward, not really daring to believe it was him. On her second step, she fell, and the figure lunged forward and caught her.
“Easy,” Tamlevar said, gently. “I’ve got you.”
Willow shaded her eyes with her palm and looked into Tamlevar’s perfect hazel eyes. She felt the resurgence of life in her heart as though the water flow had resumed to the waterwheel powering her limbs.
“Tamlevar,” she whispered. She felt an overwhelming urge to embrace him, but she was a soldier and soldiers didn’t do that sort of—
Oh, to hell with it.
She wrapped her arms around him, and he wrapped his around her. It was the best thing she had ever felt, and she wished she could stay like that for the rest of her life.
Prince of Bryanae (Bryanae Series) Page 42