by Callie Bates
Denis lunges down in front of me. “Hilarious! Answer the question.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“Where did you leave him, then?”
I shake my head. I won’t answer that.
Denis puts his hands over mine, trapping them on the arms of the chair, slowly digging his fingers into my knuckles. He’s getting angry. The tendons bulge on the back of his hands. “Tell me where Fionnlach Dromahair is.”
“No.” The pressure on my knuckles hurts in a distant sort of way—a bearable pain. I force myself to think of Finn. Of Sophy, Hugh, Rhia. If only I had tried to convince them to mount a rescue, all of us together—maybe then I would not be here alone.
If I ever see them again, we will fight Denis and the Butcher together. I envision Finn in this room, ruling as king of Caeris, and Jahan and I using magic openly in defiance of Eren and Paladis. The image gives me strength.
Denis looks over his shoulder at the Butcher, who watches us impassively. He probably knows how to extract information better than Denis does, but Denis is too proud to let him take over. At least I can be grateful for Denis’s arrogance. They sent Jahan out on a pretext, so that he wouldn’t see this.
“I would hit her, but it seems uncouth to hit a woman,” Denis says to the Butcher. “Should I hit her?”
“Not yet.” The Butcher pauses. “There are more effective ways to get her to answer than physical pain.”
But he does not say what they are. I look at him. He regards me evenly, his hands clasped again behind his back. Why is he being obtuse? For my sake? Or simply because he dislikes Denis?
Denis, evidently frustrated, looks back at me. “Let me try this. A bargain. You answer one question a day, and it’s another day you get to live. How’s that?”
I swallow hard. My resolve is slipping, and the vision of Finn is only a fantasy. The pulse in my head sings coward, coward, coward. I do not want to die.
“I won’t take that bargain,” I say. Even though I want to.
Pain. Sharp pain across my face—he struck me. I didn’t even see his hand move. I reel back, my cheek flaming. I cradle my hands over my face.
He stomps away, swings back around. He shouts into my face, “Tell me where you left Fionnlach Dromahair!”
A fleck of his spittle lands on my nose. I shudder. I shake my head. I cling again to the image of Finn in this room. Even if I die, he can still win against Denis. Let him rule Caeris as a just king, a free king.
Denis raises his hand again—apparently he only meant he wouldn’t strike me if he wasn’t angry enough. But he is now. I always knew this rage lurked under his charming surface. I knew, but I never wanted to see it.
He’s screaming at me. “Tell me about Fionnlach Dromahair, you little Caerisian bitch!”
I glare back at him, though my ears are ringing. I won’t betray Finn, my friend, my future king.
There’s a squeal of hinges. Feet pound across the floor, then slow to a halt. “I heard raised voices. Is everything quite all right, Lord Denis?”
It’s Jahan. I slump a little in relief, even though I know he can’t stop Denis.
“I am trying to get the little bi—” Denis bellows, then cuts himself short, looking at Jahan. In a reduced voice, he says, “Lady Elanna is our prisoner, Lord Jahan. She owes us answers to our questions. When a prisoner refuses to cooperate, it is customary to interrogate them.”
Jahan lifts an eyebrow. “An interrogation? How tiresome. Come, Lord Denis, surely you know there are easier ways to get women to talk than that.”
I glare at him, even though I know he’s saying it to buy me time.
Denis barks a laugh. “If only we had the luxury of persuading her to succumb to our charms, instead! That would be very Idaean. I should like to see you try.”
Jahan looks at me speculatively. “Well…”
Just before I think I’m going to explode from embarrassment and rage, the Butcher intervenes. “We wouldn’t wish to impose upon you, Lord Jahan, to aid in such a distasteful task.”
“Always so dull, Lord Gilbert!” Denis exclaims. “No wonder they call you the Butcher, instead of—of—”
“The Philanderer?” I say nastily. “That would certainly be appropriate for you, Lord Denis. Oh, I forgot! That’s already what they call you, since everyone knows you share a bed with—”
His palm strikes my jaw, knocking the name Loyce off my lips. I reel back.
Denis raises his hand to hit me again, but Jahan grabs his shoulder in a firm but friendly grip. “Look at her, Lord Denis!” he exclaims. “You’re only giving her satisfaction by getting angry. Let’s try it my way—gentle, then fierce…”
With a growl, Denis throws him off. He seems to be gathering himself for another blow, but there’s a sudden knock on the door.
It’s an army officer. “Your Grace,” he begins as Denis marches over to him, anger stiff in his gait. They have a swift, murmured exchange.
The Butcher has taken a step toward them; they’ve made no effort to include him in their conference. Jahan sends me a quick glance, tapping his jaw.
I nod. It hurts, but I’m all right.
Denis comes marching back over to us. I do not like the way he’s smiling.
“Lady Elanna.” He holds out his hand to me, a courtier’s gesture, as if he weren’t hitting me two minutes ago. “Please fetch your hat and coat. We’re going on an excursion.”
—
THE COACH RATTLES down the hill, and inside it, the silence is thick. Jahan sits next to me, his body tense though his smile is easy, and across from us Denis and the Butcher occupy the bench seat in reluctant companionship. I don’t think Denis meant for either of them to come—he wanted this to be a moment of power between me and him. Whatever we’re doing, he certainly doesn’t want Jahan here.
And maybe he doesn’t want the Butcher, either. They obviously dislike each other, and Jahan said Lord Gilbert doesn’t trust Denis.
We jerk over a pothole. Denis swears under his breath. Jahan’s shoulder bumps mine. I dig my fingers into the fabric of the seat cushion as the coach slows. We’ve come to the bottom of the hill, down into the heart of the city.
“There’s a crowd,” the Butcher observes. “Was that your intent?”
He’s asking Denis, but Denis pretends not to hear.
Outside the windows, I see a jumble of hats and faces on either side of the coach. We’re creeping through the crowd now. I can’t see any buildings. We must be in a square—Green Square—the one Rhia and I passed through on our way to the garrison.
Rhia. Is there any chance the rebels are in this crowd, waiting for me? That I am not alone?
Then I look out and see the scaffold.
It’s not that tall—a tiered wooden structure dominating the square. A square frame surmounts it, with three ropes hanging from it.
No. No, no.
Denis is smiling at me. “Enjoying our outing, Lady Elanna?”
I try to form words, but my mouth has gone dry. I seem to be shaking. Jahan leans his weight toward me, so I feel the press of his thigh against mine. But it is not enough to give me courage.
“Don’t worry,” Denis says, still with that terrible smile. “You’re not going to be put up there. At least…not today.”
I shudder. My stomach is rebelling; I think I’m going to throw up. I know who it must be; I know who will hang there. And all at once I break.
“I can’t do this! You can’t force me to watch this!”
“And we won’t,” Denis says. “Just answer three questions for me. One question for each life.”
I stare at him. Bargaining with my own life seems nothing, compared to this. I own my life. But whoever he’s about to have killed—how can he give me the power over them?
Denis murdered the king. It should be he who hangs.
Three ropes. It will be Hugh and Rhia, caught as they tried to escape. It will be my father.
I reach out blindly to clutch at Jahan’s a
rm. He shakes me off—he has to, to protect his cover—and his abrupt movement startles me back to my senses.
“No. I won’t make the bargain. I won’t watch you kill my people!”
“There is no bargain,” Denis says, his teeth clenched. “You answer three questions. If you don’t answer, they die. It’s quite simple.”
I can’t seem to catch my breath. “What’s the first question?”
Denis smiles grimly. “Tell us where you last saw Fionnlach Dromahair.”
Relief rings through me. It’s an easy question. An easy lie. Without hesitation, I say, “Cerid Aven. They’re camped in the woods.” Finn won’t have gone back, of course, but they don’t know that.
Denis looks at the Butcher—for confirmation, I realize. I’m going to be sick. Do they actually know where Finn is? Have they tricked me?
Is he one of the captives coming here for execution?
The Butcher’s gaze flickers toward me. With a soft, irritated sigh, he says to Denis, “It’s unlikely. The prince is not that foolish.”
Denis shakes his head at me. “Lady Elanna, you shouldn’t lie.”
“I’m not lying!” My voice is high, pinched.
The Butcher stares Denis down. “This is not the way to conduct an interrogation.”
Denis waves him off. “Enough! Lady Elanna, it’s time to show you your future, and the future of your countrypeople.” He swings out of the coach without a backward glance.
Jahan pushes me gently; I climb out of the coach. My hands are trembling, slick with sweat, as I land among a knot of soldiers.
But at least they don’t have Finn.
—
WE ASSEMBLE ON the cobblestones. Four soldiers flank me, but Jahan manages to stay by my right hand. The Butcher is on the left, arms folded and stiff with anger: “This is not,” he says again, “the way to conduct an interrogation.” Denis paces in front of the scaffold, ignoring him.
“Why are scaffolds always made of wood?” Jahan wonders. “Lady Elanna, do you know?”
This seems so profoundly irrelevant I can’t even reply. My father is surely coming here to die, along with Hugh and Rhia Knoll, because I cannot lie well enough to Denis Falconier. And I cannot give up anyone by telling the truth.
The building material of scaffolds doesn’t matter.
We’ve been standing here for minutes. Are they ever going to begin? The hangman tromps up the scaffold’s steps to inspect the nooses.
Then a wagon comes rattling through the crowd, stuffed with soldiers and three boys, with their hands shackled. The wagon stops. The boys are guided through a line of soldiers to the stairs, up onto the scaffold. It takes a moment for my mind to catch up with what I’m seeing. A sickening relief guts me. It’s not my father, nor Rhia or Hugh. These are boys I do not know. Boys who, in this skirmish over crowns, do not matter.
I’m sick with myself for thinking it. Of course they matter. They aren’t expendable simply because I don’t know their names.
“These men have been found guilty of violence against Eren’s soldiers,” an official proclaims. “They will be punished by death.”
The boys—they are not men—shuffle toward the scaffold. Their faces seem almost empty—whatever torture they’ve endured seems to have exhausted them beyond any fear of death. I want to embrace them, and then I wonder if it’s simply to exonerate my own guilt. And yet I want to give them something good, something worth seeing, before they die. I find myself murmuring a prayer to Father Dagod—the Caerisian deity seems more appropriate than the Idaean ones I’ve mouthed reverence to most of my life. But the whispered words sound hollow, even to me. Father Dagod will not burn into life and sing away the boys’ bonds, or cradle their souls in his hands. Or if he does, I won’t see it.
And then, as they begin to climb the steps, their feet hampered by shackles, I realize I do know them.
They are the stableboys from Cerid Aven. The boys who started a fight with the Butcher’s men. The one in the middle is the one I saved. The one who was concussed but lived.
I can’t let them die.
The boys line up in front of the nooses.
The one in the middle looks down. I know his name. Domnall. He sees me.
A terrifying emotion splits through his empty face.
Hope.
“Caveadear!” he shouts.
Jahan’s elbow jabs into mine, and I remember what he said earlier. Wood. The scaffold is wood.
I stretch out my hands. The earth pulses under me. My awareness of it is shaky, but it’s there.
The other boys have seen me now, too. They’re all shouting, the wonderful fools. “Caveadear! Tire Caer-Ys! Caveadear!”
The earth lives even in wood that has been cut and hammered into an instrument of death. It lives, and it grows when I touch it. Father Dagod can wait.
Denis looms in front of me, his face red and swollen with rage. He shoves me back into the guardsmen flanking me. “Get her out of here.”
I dodge past him, lunging for the scaffold. When my hand touches it, it utters a great creak.
And it begins to grow.
“Lady Elanna, step away from the scaffold!” A soldier is pointing a musket at me, but the ground splits and shakes beneath him. The scaffold thrusts outward, into branches and leaves. A quick-growing branch strikes the soldier in the side. His musket explodes into the air.
The hangman’s already leapt from the scaffold. The frame for the nooses is growing, towering into the sky, into a tree that’s never existed.
The boys are chanting. “Caveadear, Caveadear!” They’re jumping up and down.
It takes me a moment to realize they’re free of their shackles. As if the chains exploded.
I glance for Jahan, but I don’t see him.
Behind me, the crowd has erupted into chaos. The Butcher is pushing toward me. Shots are fired, and one of the boys on the scaffold flinches backward, blood turning his shoulder scarlet.
“Run!” I scream at them.
A soldier grabs me by the shoulders just before the Butcher reaches me. I struggle against him. I just manage to see that the boys have obeyed and that the crowd has pulled Lord Gilbert away, when something strikes my ribs, my back, my hea—
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I wake, crying out.
The earth shudders under me. It is in pain. No, the pain is mine—or the earth’s and mine—
“Drink this, lady.”
A girl’s plump hands arrive at my lips, pinching a glass dropper. A bitter liquid tear falls into my mouth.
I shove her away. “No.”
“It’s only for the pain. Until you heal.”
I try to argue, but the bitter liquid carries me back under a thick not-quite sleep, and when I open my eyes again, the tall pink canopy on the bed lolls above me like a tongue. A high humming lingers in my ears.
“Keep your distance,” a man says. I know that voice. “It’s dangerous. A Valtai witch.”
“It is a woman like any other, and she’s hurt,” a woman replies.
“Shall I send for the guards?”
“Please, Your Grace. I am a doctor. It appears you’ve given her such a high dosage of laudanum she can’t fully wake. That is the problem—not that the bruises your thugs gave her are helping.”
“They gave her the laudanum under my orders. What else are we to do with a Valtai witch? Lord Gilbert suggested we keep her sedated until the witch hunters reach Laon and send instruction. He said we mustn’t, ah, have her ‘disappear’ until we know how to dispose of her properly.”
“I see you also have a witch stone there.”
“Lord Gilbert has some experience with witches. It’s his.”
“Mmm. Lord Gilbert seems very useful.” The woman leans over me: tidy dark hair, clinical eyes in a pale face. I see a spread of anatomical drawings. It’s Sorcha Kerr.
I try to speak her name, but it comes out in a grunt.
“Shh, Lady Elanna,” she says, patting my arm. “Calm
yourself. Duke Denis, really. I will do my work best if you leave us.”
Denis’s footsteps thunk over the carpet. “If you insist, Doctor Kerr. But send for me the moment she starts to speak. We need to question her while she’s still under. She’s done nothing but mumble for the last three days.”
The door clicks shut behind him.
I move my fingers, which feel swollen and clumsy. I try to grasp the woman’s sleeve. “Sor…?”
“Yes, Lady Elanna. You need some salve for those wounds, and a lower dosage of laudanum. That’ll fix you up.” She leans over me, pressing an ear-horn to my heart. In rapid Caerisian, she whispers, “Keep silent. Pretend you don’t know me. We’re being watched.”
I try to nod, though it makes my head seem too wide.
She moves the ear-horn to listen to my lungs. “Thank all the gods you’re alive,” she adds, her voice choking so much I hardly hear the whispered words. “We thought the duke had done you in.”
This time, I manage to reach her hand. I squeeze it.
She wipes at her eyes as she moves briskly from the bed. To Annis, she says, “I’m going to modify that dosage of laudanum. I’ve brought some of my own—the gods alone know where you got the stuff you’re using.”
“Yes, ma’am,” says Annis.
I roll my head to watch them. Sorcha clinks through glass bottles over on the table. “And I’ll leave you this salve,” she’s saying. “Apply it to the lady’s bruises—if you dare to touch her. She’s been badly beaten, but nothing’s broken. I didn’t sense any internal bleeding.”
Annis takes the jar of salve. “I’ll put it on her. She doesn’t seem very frightening to me.”
“No. She’ll do nothing to hurt you. She’s just a badly injured young woman. She needs rest, and to move around as soon as the laudanum wears off.”
“But the duke’s going to—to—”
“Not just yet. It’s your job to see she gets better, so she can tell you what you need to do to fight the Caerisians. Understand?”