Fairytales Slashed: Volume 8

by Samantha M. Derr

  "Another tour in the morning," the King said. "And you won't be disappointed! We didn't even have to send the guards to bring him to the main room for inspection; he charged right at us!"

  "I thought he would kill one of the guards! It was terrifying!" Lady Fenna exclaimed, though she was clearly enjoying herself. "Mariska, you simply must come with us tomorrow morning."

  "I'll think about it," she said, though the tight smile on her face told Janos she'd already made up her mind. Come morning, she would suddenly ‘feel faint' or come up with a different excuse until eventually people stopped asking.

  "Doubt you'll get as good a show tomorrow, though," Lord Hartmann said. "He won't charge at any of us again, not after the guards dealt with him."

  "That's assuming it's capable of learning from its mistakes," the King joked.

  "Is it true that they drink the blood of their enemies?" a Lady asked, her voice timid but the light in her eyes lending her soft face a ghoulish appearance.

  "True!" one of their Generals said. "Seen it myself! Some of them will go so far as to sharpen their own teeth before battle. And the human sacrifices…" He shuddered for dramatic effect. "Their gods are beastly, bloodthirsty things, and to appease them they'll kill their own children. Or those of their enemies, should they get the chance. They sacrifice the first-born child of every new year, to appease their gods. Once, when we pushed further into their territory, I saw…"

  The Lords and Ladies gathered around him, asking more questions, oohing and aahing at the details he gladly handed out. Janos quietly left the ballroom, unnoticed by anyone, and headed back up to his quarters again.

  The castle doctors had insisted on seeing the man when they'd brought him in. Whether they needed to see him again now, Janos didn't know. He doubted that his father would have let the guards beat the prisoner too severely—they needed to keep him alive to continue using him as leverage, after all—but then again…

  It didn't seem right, he thought. To keep someone so far away from home, all by themselves.

  And if his father knew he'd even entertained that thought for an instant, he would banish him. Refinement was to be praised, he well knew that—but weakness?

  The prisoner wasn't starved or kept completely in darkness. Janos watched sometimes as guards brought in food and drink, and several of the rooms upstairs were lit with a candle's warm glow, more than enough to read by. He wondered if the guards had thought to bring in any books.

  Janos left his quarters and headed outside, waving to the guards, who were more than used to seeing him wandering the gardens at night. Instead of looking at the stars or at the night-blooming flowers, he made his way to one of the gardening sheds. Pushing aside a rack of tools, he pulled up three floorboards, revealing a tunnel.

  It had been after his broken wrist had finally healed that he'd discovered this passageway. He'd gotten back into the First Castle through a window that hadn't yet been blocked off, and poked around in the lower levels. To his surprise, behind an old pile of linens, he had found a door, barely visible, no more than a few cracks in the stone. He had pushed it open and eagerly followed the tunnel, reaching up at the end of it to find himself pushing up part of the floor in one of the gardening sheds. For a time after that he'd gone out to the First Castle every night simply because he could, exploring every nook and cranny and trying not to think too much about what would happen if he found another crumbling stair. When he didn't appear at meals, would anyone even think to look for him out here?

  Which was again a valid question, he thought as he pulled the boards down after him, settling them back into place. No one would be doing any gardening at this time of night, and even if someone came into the shed, all they would see was a rack of tools moved just slightly away from the wall. It was doubtful they would even take notice of the misplacement.

  He hurried along the tunnel, patting once or twice at the familiar stone walls. After he'd explored the castle to his heart's content, he'd started inspecting the walls here. He'd found etchings in the stone, small carvings of animals, or names scrawled. He wondered if the people who'd written these things had done so out of boredom—had they hidden down here? —or simply because they felt like it after using this tunnel day after day. The gardening shed hadn't always been there; several buildings had been knocked down over the years. Perhaps the tunnel had once led from the First Castle to a fortress of some kind, or perhaps it had even once led outside the protective barricade, so people ambushed inside the castle had an escape route if needed. He had looked through the library for any information about previous incarnations of their grounds but hadn't found much. Details about such things were probably in papers kept in the King's private quarters, and asking for them would only reveal his secret.

  Janos paused as the tunnel began to tilt downwards, his fingers searching the carvings in the stone until he found the one he himself had left. He'd carved his mother's name, Valeria, on the first anniversary of her death. His father had turned it into a Kingdom-wide Day of Mourning, during which no one was to work or celebrate anything else or wear a color other than gray. He had carved her name, wishing that he had had the courage to tell her about this tunnel. Valeria would have worried for him, yes, but she also would've been fascinated by the evidence of all the other people who'd traversed the passage over the years.

  Leaving her name behind for the moment, Janos hurried his steps, smiling in anticipation as he neared the entrance into the First Castle.

  He shouldn't be feeling excited, he thought. This was an unreasonably dangerous idea, after all. His father and the Lords and Ladies had come in, yes, but they'd gone with a phalanx of armed guards surrounding them. If he was caught—

  He wouldn't be. He remembered this place too well; knew every crevice in which to hide, remembered how any footstep echoed from the walls. The candle he carried could provide some illumination, but the moon was full tonight, and part of the First Castle's roof was crumbling. Moonlight would be more than enough for him to see by, if he wanted to blow the candle out so as not to risk it giving him away.

  Janos finally reached the end of the passageway, and rested his palm against the stone slab.

  All he had to do was push it forward.

  He hesitated, knowing that this was the last possible second at which to turn back. There were a multitude of things that could go wrong, and for what? The chance to see someone from the western lands? In all probability, he wouldn't see him at all—getting close enough for that would be too great of a risk.

  Despite this knowledge, he couldn't help himself. The curiosity was too strong.

  He pushed the door open.

  The sound of stone scraping against stone made him grit his teeth, and as he held the candle out in front of him to illuminate the underground room, he half-expected to see a dark shape rushing toward him. He stood perfectly still for several long moments, waiting for footsteps or some other sign that he wasn't alone.

  Nothing.

  He crept out of the passage, leaving it open behind him. The gap was narrow, virtually invisible in the shadows. His heart began to pound as he moved further and further away from it. This castle was as familiar to him as his own bedroom, but even after his fall, when Ambrus and Abel had yelled frantically for help, there'd never been so strong a sense of danger here.

  Janos slowly moved upstairs, listening so hard that he was certain that if a sound did come he'd jump completely out of his skin. None did, and he found himself out in the expansive main room for the first time in over a year. The moon was still visible through the myriad gaps in the ceiling, and he delighted in the sight of it, the sight of the stars.

  Remembering which windows had candles burning, he walked upstairs, setting his weight down on each foothold gingerly, half-expecting the stairs to crumble underneath him any second. Once he reached the third level, he snuck down the hall, taking a quick peek into each lit room, expecting to find the prisoner staring at the door, waiting for him, as tense and re
ady for battle as he had been when he'd been carried through the villages in a cage.

  But when Janos finally caught sight of the man, there wasn't a hint of fight about him. He was leaning against the wall next to a window, his head resting against his forearm, which was braced against the stone. His eyes were closed, and his skin, so much of it visible, was marred with cuts and bruises.

  Feeling as though he had just intruded on something intensely private, Janos retreated. He hurried back down the tunnel, pulling the concrete slab back into place behind him. When he got back to the garden shed, he started to head back toward the castle, and then hesitated. He couldn't get the image of the stranger out of his mind. If he'd been stomping around in there, cursing, it would've been frightening but not unexpected, and he might have been able to go to bed, his curiosity sated. But he hadn't seemed threatening. Just hurt, and tired, and alone.

  Which would have changed in an instant if he'd realized you were there, Janos told himself, but so far this hadn't been a night for listening to logic, and he doubted that was going to change anytime soon. Instead of going back to his quarters, he retrieved a pair of shears from the garden shed, and walked through the gardens, searching.

  Finally, he found what he was looking for. A deep red rose, with touches of yellow at the edges of its petals. Every flower in this garden had a meaning, meanings that were taught to children along with their first understanding of colors. Bouquets were gathered to express specific feelings, from love to hate and everything in between. Valeria's favorite had been pink-and-white, representing joy.

  Red and yellow roses meant, "I'm sorry".

  Before he could rethink this admittedly insane idea, Janos retreated back into the shed, and made the journey to the First Castle once more.

  He wasn't so foolhardy as to try and put the blossom anywhere upstairs—he had already tried his luck enough for one night—so instead he placed it in the middle of the wide, weather-worn table in the entrance hall that had been abandoned along with the building itself. Then he hurried back to the lower levels, taking a moment to catch his breath before he returned to his own castle.

  It had been pointless, he thought. The prisoner wouldn't know what the rose was supposed to signify, wouldn't have any ideas about the color symbolism.

  But even given that knowledge, he couldn't regret what he'd done. Maybe all it would be was a bit of color, of life, in that dusty, drab place—but that was better than none at all.

  Perhaps he would take another rose tomorrow.

  *~*~*

  The next night did indeed find him delivering another rose, though this one was a deep, rich purple, its meaning "I will help". The night after that, the kitchen served glazed lemon bread for dessert, and Janos surreptitiously wrapped one of the small loaves in his cloth napkin and brought it upstairs to his room, waiting until nightfall before he changed into sturdier clothes again and headed for the garden shed.

  He couldn't fully explain to himself why he was doing this. The other man was locked away miles and miles from his home; a flower or a delicacy wouldn't change that. Whatever this was, it wasn't truly helping. To do that, he'd have to show the prisoner the exit so he could get back home, and he couldn't risk that.

  So what was it? he wondered. Was he returning here night after night because he knew that his family would panic if they realized what he was doing? Or because he hoped they would? Was this some way of proving a bravery he'd never had a chance to test on the battlefield? Or was it simply something different in the midst of his daily routines?

  Janos wasn't sure, nor was he sure he wanted to know the answer. All he knew was that every day, he looked forward more and more to nightfall, and the tense, excited feeling in his stomach as he closed the door to the garden shed behind him. Days were spent always half-focused on what presents he could bring. Food and drink from the kitchens other than the base items and water that he watched the armed guards take in; paint and paper from the artists' rooms; scented soap from the bathing quarters (because a tub filled with rainwater was suited for an animal, not a person); books from the library or his own personal collection (granted, he wasn't sure the stranger could read, which was why he chose tomes with quite lovely illustrations); a thick woolen blanket when the weather began to grow chilly; and of course, flowers from the garden.

  In an odd way, Janos started thinking of the prisoner as a companion of sorts, even a friend, albeit one he never saw or spoke to. He would bring in items one night, and the next night when he came back, they would be gone. That in and of itself was a communication of sorts, he felt, a ‘thank you'.

  Which was why the ambush took him completely by surprise.

  Sometime over the past weeks he'd stopped bothering to even try and conceal his footfalls. He left gifts every night; they were gone by the next—the prisoner knew when he would be by. But he stayed upstairs, leaving Janos in peace, and the arrangement worked quite well.

  Arrangement. That was probably his first mistake—thinking of this whole thing as something they had both agreed to rules for.

  He didn't have time to run, only barely had time to flinch. By the time Janos had registered that one of the shadows had detached from the wall, was charging straight at him, he was hit in the chest and driven back, slamming so hard into the wall behind him that he felt dust and stone fragments tumble down from the wall, landing in his hair and on his clothes. His breath came out in a panicked and very undignified squeak and then hands were around his wrists, the stranger's body still bracing him against the wall.

  "Who are you?" the prisoner snarled, and Janos was so startled to hear recognizable words from him that for a few seconds all he could do was stare open-mouthed in shock.

  This apparently wasn't what the prisoner was looking for, because he leaned forward further, and he really wasn't going to get any answers if he didn't let him breathe.

  "Who are you?" he repeated, and for one awful instant the words "Prince Janos" almost left his mouth.

  Fortunately, he realized what a monumentally stupid thing that would be to say, and instead told him, "My… my name is Janos. I work at the castle."

  "Why do you keep coming in here?"

  "I… well…" He had seen this moment over and over again in his mind, except in his idle daydreams the stranger had been across the room or perhaps speaking to him from the stairs, from anywhere that would give him some respectable distance so he could think. And he would give a blithe, charming answer, and the man would thank him for the gifts and perhaps make a request or two, and Janos would tell him that he'd see what he could do. "I don't know."

  He'd been stupid, Janos realized, he'd been so, so stupid, because he'd unconsciously believed that since he wasn't coming in with the guards and their crossbows, since he wasn't associating himself with the groups who came in to gawk and throw rocks, that he wouldn't be hurt.

  The pain in his wrist proved him wrong now; he could feel the bones grinding together under the strength of the man's grip. He had seemed a little intimidating behind the bars of the cage but now he was downright terrifying and huge; there was no earthly reason that a man should grow to be so tall, and it would at least be a little better if he could see his face and judge whether or not he was thinking things over or if he was fully stuck in murderous-rage mode but the moonlight was coming in from the windows and ceiling behind him, casting his face into shadow, and he was absolutely certain his wrist was about to snap and before he could help it, he let out a cry of pain.

  To his shock, the man immediately let go of his wrists and took a step back.

  Janos didn't wait to see what might happen next, didn't pause to say anything else, he just dodged around the prisoner and ran, nearly tripping over his own feet in his rush to get down the stairs. He heard no footsteps following and wasn't sure it would have mattered even if he had. He slid back into the opening to the tunnel and yanked the slab back into place, racing down the tunnel back to the garden shed, slipping and falling more than once on
the loosely-packed dirt.

  He pushed up the floor of the gardening shed and lowered it back into place, crouching there for a long time, preparing to scream for help should the man have followed. After several moments passed with no sound or movement, Janos cradled his sore wrist in his left hand and cried.

  *~*~*

  It wasn't until he was back in his room, still shaking, that he realized something. The man's skin had smelled like the leatherleaf soap he'd left for him.

  Yes, he was clearly paranoid, and more than a little hostile—his wrist would be well-bruised come morning—but he was using the gifts. That was a start, surely.

  He didn't get much sleep, instead drifting between formulating a basic plan and wondering where all his common sense had gone. He'd been very fortunate, he thought, that the prisoner hadn't just killed him outright. He should count his blessings and be done with it.

  Instead, once the sun had risen high enough for his father to be done with his morning meetings, Janos went to him.

  "Father," he said. "I was wondering if I might have a look at some of your private papers? The ones about the western lands? I wish to learn more about our new territory."

  "Ah, thinking about a diplomatic position, are you?"

  "Perhaps."

  "Good, good," the King said. "Of course, it'll be a while before those beasts settle down enough for you to be safely sent there, but I like the ambition. Come on."

  He strode briskly to his quarters, Janos hurrying to catch up. Once there, he caught sight of a brown-haired form on the bed, half-covered by blankets. Mariska was still sleeping, and he quickly looked away, his face reddening.

  Apparently oblivious to this, King Lorand took a key from a small pouch at his waist and unlocked a tall cabinet, pulling the doors open to reveal stacks upon stacks of books and handwritten papers.

  "Should be over here," he said, reaching for the top right shelf. "Just looked through some of them myself recently… ah! Here you are."