by Callie Bates
With a clatter, the door opens and Annis returns. “Lady Teofila, the guards say no one, not even you, is to remain alone with the prisoner.”
My mother and I look at each other for another moment, with all the words unsaid between us. The truth about the Butcher; the truth about her.
She puts her arm around me and leads me toward the bed. She sits me down and begins to brush out my hair, humming. “Our song,” she whispers to me. “The land’s song.”
—
WHEN ANNIS LEAVES me for the night and the bolt shoots home on the other side of the door, I leap from the bed. I have to pace around in a small circle, biting my lip to keep from moaning at the pain in my ribs. Finally, it eases. At least my mind seems clearer; perhaps the laudanum affected me more than the witch stone. I limp over to the wardrobe with the single candle Annis left me, tugging open the drawers with breathless care in case they squeak or in any way alert my guards.
Not that the wardrobe contains a single shred of practical clothing. I discover three chemises and a massive fluff of petticoats, a gown, a skirt and caraco, but besides that, little indeed. I think of the glint of snow I saw on the high northern hills and the frost creeping the windows. It’s going to be a cold night.
I drop my chemise in favor of one with longer sleeves. But then I stop with the fresh chemise in my hands.
My stomach is black and bruised. Long bruises run down my thighs. I have to be thankful for the candlelight, softening the sight of it. Even my arms are spotted with purpling marks. I sink to the floor, cradling my arms around my poor naked body.
I can’t do this. What if they catch me again? How much worse will they beat me? How much more awful will my last days be?
If I have to die, I want it to be for something—for Caeris’s greater good, for her freedom. But if I die here, I won’t have done any good for anyone. The steward of the land is supposed to be fighting alongside her people. If I’m going to die for Caeris, I want to do it out in the open, on a high hill, trying to wake the land, trying to destroy Denis and the queen—not in secret, in an airless chamber behind closed doors.
I’m getting cold. And I’m being a fool. I don’t want to die. So get yourself up and get out of here, El.
I swaddle myself in chemises and petticoats, stuff two pairs of stockings into thin slippers; there is no sensible footwear in the wardrobe, either. I tie a blanket over the caraco and spend some minutes bulking up pillows beneath the bedsheets, trying to make it look like someone is still sleeping under the covers. Anything to delay pursuit, even for a few short minutes.
I pace to the clock. Almost ten. My preparations took precisely half an hour.
I have a long time to wait.
Unable to sleep, I sit by the fire and stare at the clock. At my hands. The hands that can grow trees out of scaffolds.
And at the humming witch stone behind me, next to the bed.
I storm to my feet, seizing the witch stone from its place. It seems to fizz and spark in my hand, spitting angry electricity into my palms.
“You are a stone,” I say to it. “You are just a stone.”
I grip it in both hands, even though it protests and seems to struggle to get away from me. The humming rattles into my bones, up into my ears. Every instinct urges me to throw the thing away, cast it out the window. But it is a stone. I know stones. I understand them.
“Quiet,” I say to it. It softens in my grip, turning malleable in my hands, but the buzzing persists. Still, it is talking to me now. I see how it was pulled from the ground, the dirt beaten off it. I see how hands cupped it, and someone wove magic into it—a kind of magic I don’t understand and the stone doesn’t, either—an unnatural magic woven out of fear and anger.
I remind the stone of its true nature. Of the mountain in which it grew, of the land once native to it.
It melts into my hands, its anger forgotten. The humming lingers, but softer now, more like a melody. As though the stone is speaking to me.
I slip it into my pocket.
—
MIDNIGHT ARRIVES, THEN passes. I sit with the witch stone, waiting. I pace to the window. To the door Jahan made.
Nothing.
Maybe my mother lied. Maybe Jahan lied.
Maybe someone else found out.
Maybe I have been left alone, after all.
Then I hear something. Footsteps coming closer out in the corridor. The sound of voices, guardsmen hailing one another.
My heartbeat starts hammering in my ears. It’s the changing of the guard. It has to be.
They wouldn’t come into my room in the middle of the night. Would they?
I’ve frozen in the center of the rug. I don’t know what to do. Crawl back into bed? Hide? Pretend to sleep?
No. I can’t go back into that bed. I can’t just wait for them to come for me.
I dive into the corner, behind the tapestry where Jahan’s door is hidden.
The door rattles as the lock opens. I flatten myself against the wall with a gasp. A blaze of light burns my eyes: guardsmen troop in, muskets strapped to their backs. They wear tricorn hats and heavy traveling coats.
I yank my head back behind the tapestry. I hardly dare to breathe. They’ll see me here, and they’ll know.
I’m not melting through the wooden paneling to the stone behind. I pass through, I think at the paneling. I pass through!
The wall seems to shift behind me.
“Lady Elanna, it’s time to waken.” It’s the Butcher. Oh, all the gods. They have come for me in the middle of the night. They know about our plan. Or this is their way of torturing prisoners—startling them out of sleep, forcing them to answer questions and threats. No—the guards are dressed to travel.
At least my pillows must look reasonably lifelike. He hasn’t caught on yet.
I need to move backward, but I seem to be frozen in place.
“We’re taking you to a new location,” he says to the bed. “A new place, where you’ll be able to think more clearly. You will be more comfortable there, I promise you. The air will be fresh. Come along, wake up.”
The wall has shifted behind me—it seems almost to be melting. I stretch back a hand to feel for the wall, but only a strange vibration hums through my skin and bones. I pass through. My hand touches cold, empty air.
I let one foot fall back. Another. The cold air bites up beneath my skirts. In the bedchamber, the Butcher is still talking to my empty bed, apparently reluctant to shake me awake. This may be the only time I’m glad for his absurd sense of propriety.
Another step. Thank the gods I’m wearing slippers; the soles are thin and soundless. One more step. Now I’m in the passageway, and when I stretch my hands out before me, they meet the hard, rough surface of the stone wall.
I bite down a desperate laugh. I just walked through a wall. Jahan’s magic worked for me. And without the words to open it, no one else will come through.
I turn. I’m in a pitch-black corridor alone, with no idea how to get out or where Jahan is or how I’m supposed to meet our supporters. But this passage must go somewhere, and it must be safe enough, or Jahan wouldn’t have made the door to it.
I feel my way along the wall. My slippers reveal every bump in the rough-hewn floor. I pass another door, an entrance to an unknown room, the latch’s metal cold under my hand.
The ground falls out from under me.
I catch a scream mid-breath. I’m tumbling backward. My backside hits one step, then another. My feet knock a wall. My whole body jerks and jolts to a stop. I feel as if all my bones have been shaken; my bruises protest.
It’s a spiral stair. The wall may have jarred my feet, but it stopped me from tumbling down into oblivion, breaking a leg—or worse. I pick myself up. Oh, all the gods, it hurts to move.
One leg after another. One step. I lean hard against the wall, feeling myself down each step. I have a reluctance to die, especially in the dark.
After an eternity, my foot skims level ground. By touc
h, I figure out that a corridor stretches out to either side of me, while the stairs continue to twist down.
I barely know this castle. Where will down take me? Do Denis’s men know about the passages? Will I be able to get out?
Down seems to be the only way out, but still I can’t make myself move. If I make the wrong choice, I’m dead.
A thump.
I freeze. My heart leaps.
But it’s not in the passage—it’s coming through one of the thin doors on my left. I know I should turn. I should go the opposite direction.
I feel my way toward the sound.
Raised voices echo on the other side of the door. I press my ear to the wood. All I can hear are snatches, guesses of words.
And then, “You liar.”
Jahan. I know the way he rolls his r’s.
I push open the door. A streak of light runs out into the black passageway. I can feel the wainscoting on the other side and glimpse a strip of carpet.
“Don’t you dare threaten me,” Jahan is saying. “I am the emperor’s ambassador. If anything happens to me, it will cost you more than your life.”
A forced laugh. “Accidents happen to anyone.”
Denis.
I clutch the latch. We’ve been found out.
“I doubt even you can make an accident convincing enough to the imperial eye.” Jahan sounds cold. “I have all the evidence I need. I’ve already written to the emperor.”
“You can’t have evidence—it doesn’t exist. I was careful.”
“So you admit it?”
“I—I—”
They must be in Jahan’s room. Jahan wouldn’t burst into Denis’s room and then get threatened by him. It doesn’t make sense. So Denis must have burst into his—threatening him, and now being threatened in turn by Jahan.
“Wouldn’t you?” Denis says, suddenly coaxing, charming, confidential. “If you could do away with the emperor, marry one of the princesses, rule Paladis—wouldn’t you? Or maybe you would just rule through Leontius; we all know what they say.”
The rumors about the prince and the Korakos. I swallow hard. Maybe it is true that they’re lovers. And would it matter if they are, or were?
It shouldn’t, but it does. It changes how I see him, how I feel about him. It makes me wonder how he sees me. Where do I fit in his life?
But Jahan says nothing.
“We’re quite alike, you and I. Nobody else understands what it’s like, to come from little and always want more. To be constantly passed over by others with a more illustrious pedigree and lesser ability. If you could, wouldn’t you make yourself a king?”
My ears are slow, my brain slower. Is he saying what I think he’s saying?
“A king?” Jahan says. “But responsibility is so dreadfully boring.”
“Oh, come. You can’t tell me you’re friends with Leontius because you enjoy his company? They say he’s the dullest man alive! He likes gardening. No, Lord Jahan, I know you. You’re clever. If you could see your way onto a throne, you would, too.”
“A throne? Is that what you want, Lord Denis? Do you think the queen will divorce her husband and wed you instead?”
There’s a moment of silence, then Denis says, “Don’t I deserve it? I’ve bided my time. I’ve taken the steps to secure myself. I’ve endured her—all her moods and her demands and, dear gods, her bed. The stories I could tell you…!”
For a moment, I almost feel sorry for Loyce, being discussed in this manner.
“And the king?” Jahan says, so softly I almost miss it.
“It’s the price of being in power. And Antoine Eyrlai ruled for too long.”
I burst through the door. It’s a green sitting room, and the two men stand by the fire, turning with astonishment to see me.
“I should have known from the beginning it was you who killed the king,” I snarl at Denis. “I should have known you’d be low enough to do it, and pin the blame on me and Guerin. As if I would hurt the man who was like a father to me!”
Denis blinks rapidly. “Lady Elanna. You are supposed to be going to prison.”
Jahan flashes a grin at me.
“You’re the one who should be going to prison,” I say, advancing into the room.
Denis stares between Jahan and me. His eyes widen. Then he begins to shout. “Guards! Guards!”
The sound echoes around us, bouncing back as if it hits a smooth wall. Jahan’s magic.
“They cannot hear you, Lord Denis,” Jahan says gently.
Denis bolts.
Jahan is on him in a moment, tackling him to the floor. I snatch a cord from the curtain beside me and use it to tie Denis’s feet, while Jahan binds his hands and stuffs a cravat into his mouth. Denis glares at us over the bit of lace protruding from his lips, his cheeks blooming with scarlet. He’s trying to shout, to no avail.
“Oh, come, Lord Denis,” Jahan says in a fair approximation of Denis’s own voice, standing back to survey our handiwork. “It’s nothing more than you deserve.”
Denis thrashes and glares.
I lunge forward and kick him in his thrashing legs. “This is for King Antoine. That is for letting me be beaten by your men. This is for accusing Guerin of murder. This is for Hensey. This is for my father. This is for—”
“El.” Jahan grabs me by the wrist, pulling me off Denis—not that my thin slippers did any damage. Denis glowers. “We need to get out of here.”
He’s dressed to go outside; he lets go of me to shrug on an overcoat. I take the opportunity to aim a kick at Denis again—but then I stop myself. With his reddening face, fallen on the floor as he is and trussed like a pig, it’s not really fair. He is pathetic, and I’m being no better than him. My hatred is turning me ugly.
Jahan throws an overcoat at me. He’s got a lantern. I push my arms into the coat’s sleeves, feeling a shock of relief at its warmth. I spare a final glance for Denis, who stares after us from the floor, before I plunge after Jahan into the passageway.
—
IN THE SPIRAL staircase, voices echo above us. We run, Jahan before me, down the sharp twisting stairs to a small door that drops us out into the night. The frost soaks through my slippers almost instantly. Jahan turns back to the door, working some magic over it, his palm pressed to the wood.
Shivering, I look around. We’ve emerged onto the palace’s north side, facing the hills. A faint moon illuminates a vegetable garden. Jahan blows out the lantern and catches my hand in his. We both look around. Are any guards watching this side of the castle? I don’t hear a sound.
“They’re meeting us at the top of the hill,” Jahan whispers.
I tighten my hand around his and we run, picking our way through the garden plots. The hill rises, steep and sudden, behind the garden. At the top of the ridge, the moonlight shines off the walls of some structure.
We climb, stopping every now and then to catch our breath. My legs are cramping from my still-aching bruises. No trees buffer the hill. When shouts sound below at the castle, I feel exposed, obvious. They will see us, and that will be the end of it. With my wounds, I can’t run fast enough.
Jahan comes up beside me, his hand under my elbow. “Think yourself invisible,” he whispers. “Think, I am the wind. I am a fox moving in the night. Convince yourself, and that’s all they’ll see and hear.”
It’s like what I did when Sophy, Alistar, and I were hiding from the Butcher—only I did that by instinct, and Jahan speaks with the certainty of knowledge. Not for the first time, I wish I’d been taught as he has been.
I grip his hand. I am a fox.
Our thoughts seem to work. Guards tramp below us, shining lanterns and calling for me to come out, but no one climbs the hill. No one shoots at us.
At last we emerge onto the top of the ridge—only to see another ridge beyond it. I groan. My ribs ache. If I stop moving, I don’t think I’ll be able to start again.
“El.” Jahan nudges me, pointing to the right.
I can’t believe
I didn’t see it.
A stone circle sits, moonlit, on the ridge above the castle. It is the structure I saw from below—not a building at all, but a mysterious piece of magic placed here by ancestors even the land struggles to recall.
The stones pull me toward them, a magnetic call. But when I place my hand against the entry stones, I feel nothing—except a soft hum in my pocket.
The witch stone. I pull it out, holding it in one hand while I touch the standing stone with the other.
Jahan has paced into the circle, looking up at the next ridge. I look after him just in time to see light flare for a single moment above us.
“They’re waiting for us.” He gestures up the hill.
I put the stone back in my pocket. Whatever secrets this circle contains will have to wait—until we’ve won Barrody back, probably.
I run to catch up with Jahan. He holds out his arms, and his warmth heats me even down to the soles of my thinly shod feet. He puts an arm around my waist, helping me climb the final stretch to the top.
—
A FIGURE WITH pale hair starts to run down toward us as we approach the height of the hill. The moment her braid flops loose, I know who it is, and I start to run, too, despite my protesting thighs. Sophy catches me in a hug that almost sends us both flying back down the hill.
“You stupid, stupid…El!” she exclaims, hooking her arm through mine. Then she sees Jahan and stiffens. “Who’s this?”
“The Paladisan ambassador—”
“The one who betrayed us?”
I hiss in exasperation, and partly from a stabbing pain in my ribs. “Didn’t Sorcha tell you? He didn’t betray us. He’s helping. We just tied Denis Falconier up with a curtain sash.”
“The duke?” Though she’s never even met Denis, Sophy utters a delighted giggle. “Really?”
Jahan, who’s been looking back, comes up to us. “The queen’s men must have found our tracks. They’re heading up the hill now.”
“Well, hurry, then,” Sophy says.
We climb over a rock face to where a group of shadowed figures huddle under sparse pine trees. One of them lets out a whoop and is quickly hushed by the others.
I allow myself a grin for Alistar Connell.