Behind me, I hear a knock on the door. At the Scholar’s word, a maid steps in. I twist to peer at her from between the shelves; she is tall and gangly with a sharp chin and a crooked smile. “Room’s ready, kel.”
“Ria,” the Scholar says, the name a command.
I scramble to my feet, slipping the journal into my pocket as I turn to reshelve the history book I had taken down. If I’m to be imprisoned in my room, at least I can take some good reading with me.
The Scholar reaches the shelves just as I slide the book in beside its brothers. He looks pleasantly surprised. “Histories?”
“You have an unusual collection,” I say, dropping my hand. The little journal feels like it’s burning a hole through my skirts.
“And you have unusual taste for a peasant.”
“I’m not a peasant,” I say coldly. “My father owns a horse farm.” And even if I were a peasant, why shouldn’t I be interested in histories?
“Does he indeed?” The Scholar offers me a predatory smile, and I have the uncomfortable feeling that I may have just raised the ransom the Scholar wants of Red Hawk. I bite my tongue, calling myself five kinds of fool, but he only gestures toward the door and the waiting maid. I pass him, keeping my eyes on the maid. She inspects me, her hands on her hips, that crooked grin growing more impudent by the moment.
“Your father raise lame horses too?” she asks.
My head jerks back. I glare at her, trying to ignore the hurt of her words. I know this is how people see me, so why does it keep hurting? Her grin grows wide enough to bare her gums, and I finally find words to cut her with in return. “He breeds horses. Children are raised, though clearly your parents didn’t bother with you.”
“What! You—”
“That will be enough, Irayna. Show our guest to her room and refrain from further insults, if you can. Maybe just try keeping your mouth shut.”
“Yes, kel,” she says, her face a mottled red beneath the brown. “Forgive me, kel.”
“Kelari Ria?” the Scholar continues, a speculative glint in his eye.
“Yes?” I ask warily.
“I take a light refreshment before I retire for the evening. You will join me for it, in a half hour or so?”
It’s not a request, not really. “As it pleases you.”
“I look forward to it,” he says, waving me on.
I can’t say I feel the same.
Chapter
28
The Scholar takes his evening refreshment in the library: a tray with tea, a plate of biscuits, and that is all. At his gesture, I sit down in an armchair newly placed opposite him, my hands tightly folded in my lap.
I have spent the last half hour alternately reading the journal and staring off into space as I try to imagine either an impossible escape attempt or what I might do when Red Hawk’s response comes in the morning. At least Bren should eventually be able to get word to Alyrra regarding what we learned from the boys and the Blessing, even if . . . No, I will get away from here somehow. The other possibility is far too terrifying to consider.
A cursory inspection of my room revealed no easy opportunities to escape. It is on the third floor of a smooth-faced building, so I can hardly jump to the ground nor climb safely to the roof. Irayna locked my door from the outside, part and parcel, I suppose, of being placed in this particular “guest” room. While I would like to think I’m capable of picking a lock, the reality is I have no idea how to proceed other than to stick things into the keyhole and jiggle them about. Which I will attempt, but not till later tonight, once everyone is asleep.
“I hope you have been made comfortable,” the Scholar says now, reaching to pour the tea.
“Quite, thank you.”
The Scholar smiles amiably and offers me a slender cup of tea, the scent of mint rising with the steam. To my surprise, he asks nothing further about my family, or Bren, or what we were doing in his territory. Instead, he asks me about books.
I blink back my astonishment, take a comforting sip of tea, and open myself up to the conversation. We debate the points made by Edhanburrah in his contentious The Descent of Anarchy, and I find myself enjoying the freedom with which I can voice my opinions—though I am careful not to speak too specifically about our own king. Baba and I brought a copy of the book back with us from the last Spring Fair, got from a local print shop there; my sisters and I read it together and debated its claims through half this past winter. Now the Scholar impresses me with his thoughtfulness, the way he pauses over his tea, considering his words, one hand caressing the cup. Watching him, I can almost forget the way that same hand held my wrist, offering the faintest of threats in the firmness of its grasp.
I rise to take my leave at the end of our conversation, the Scholar accompanying me to the door. “A delightful evening, Kelari Ria,” he says with a warm smile, surprising me yet again.
“You are an exceptional host,” I say, meaning it for the most part. If one overlooks his being my captor. “But, kel, may I ask one question?”
“You may ask,” he replies, his expression reserved once more.
“In the morning, if Red Hawk does not meet your demands . . .” I trail off.
“Let us hope he does.”
“But if he does not?”
His lips thin, his gaze dark, unbending. “I am afraid I shall have to kill you.”
His words are a shock of cold water, washing away the pretenses of a shared conversation over a cup of tea, the false security I had been lulled into by thinking him an actual scholar, a man of education and manners. Which he is. But he is also a thief lord. And a killer.
With a gentle push, he propels me through the doorway. I turn back to him, strangely unsteady. I have grown up with the idea that one can reason with one’s opponent, that manners and culture and civility lead to respect for each other’s lives. But that is devastatingly wrong, and the man I have just spent an hour discussing politics and philosophy with will kill me as easily as he will let me go, and cares not what I think of either possibility.
“Good night, kelari,” he says as a manservant steps forward to escort me away.
There is no word that will move him. I bow my head and retreat to my room.
I pace my room, considering my options. My mind jumps from the Scholar’s demands to what the morning will bring, to the boys’ stories, to the Darkness. And there is nothing I can do—no way to inform the princess, not about my own danger, not about what happened to the boys, or the clue we’ve uncovered.
My hands clench into fists, but even my anger is useless. I have never felt so helpless in my life. I raise my hands and press hard against my head, as if somehow I might order things, find a way forward when there is nowhere I can go and nothing I can do. Come sunrise, chances are I’ll die. And leave all this behind, all the things I should have done, or could have helped fix.
I want my family desperately—I don’t know what this will do to them, to Melly, and my parents, and my sisters—to Niya especially. It hits me like a wall of bricks. I stand stock-still, staring blindly across the room. Niya and I are a matched pair. We’re supposed to be there for each other after Bean has married and our parents grow old and eventually pass on. If I die, Niya will spend those years alone. She can’t even hope to stay with Bean’s eventual family because the chances of someone else in her home discovering her secret is too high.
That’s the one thing I’ve always promised her: that I would be there for her. That we’d have each other. It is only one thing more that I cannot help, but together with everything I have learned tonight, all that might be won or lost, it is one thing too much. I am not letting the Black Scholar destroy all these futures, all these hopes, even if I have to throw myself from the window.
Which I might.
I go back to it, running my hand over the smooth plaster finish, then turn to the room. I am getting out of here. There is a large bed to one side, a small table and chair by the window, supplied with a lamp, and that is all. I s
talk over to the bed, pull back the woven blanket to assess the sheets. They’re a fine, soft linen, and of course far too short to reach the ground, even tied together. But I carry Niya with me, and the gifts she gave me. I can use the bone knife hidden in her stitches to nick the edges of each sheet and rip it into strips. Braid those together, and I’ll have a rope that should hold my weight comfortably enough.
I return to the window. The street lies relatively quiet, though I can hear the faint echoes of laughter and carousing from somewhere not too distant. But here I see only a young man passing by. I lean out the window, searching the shadows. There, by the corner, I spot a dark form leaning against the building. He might be waiting for someone, or he might be one of the Scholar’s guards. I doubt I could safely descend with a makeshift rope and run away before such a guard caught me.
I step back from the window, moving to sit in the lone chair. Perhaps if I wait long enough, he will move on to another post. Or doze off. All I can do is hope. And wait. No matter what I try tonight, I must wait until the house has fallen asleep, the streets quiet.
So I hunch beside the lamp and read the spidery writing of the long-dead archer, following the army’s march to the sea, their ill-conceived attack on the Faerie marauders, and, ultimately, their massacre.
They are an army, greater in number and skill than ours, and backed by a sorceress of terrifying talent. We were as the empty husks of wheat before them, chaff in the wind. Half our nmbers fell to Fae swords while their own were still sheathed, their eyes blinded by a fell darkness. The carnage—I cannot write of it. Death everywhere. The cries of the wounded in our ears, or at least, those whom we could save and bring with us. A rout, a complete rout. But a score of us left, and the king. At least we managed to protect him. He has sent to Tarinon for his remaining troops, and for every lord to raise troops of their own. The Circle of Mages will send their most adept mages to oppose the sorceress. We meet at Ajroon to rally once more against the Fae. Let us hope they do not harry our footsteps now, or we shall die long before we may hope for reinforcements.
It seems strange to me that, facing my own imminent demise, I find myself so compelled by the archer’s words, reading feverishly of the survivors’ flight to Ajroon, the raising of a second army while half the coast was laid to ruin—merchant ships commandeered, trading towns surrounded and their inhabitants marched out to the fields while their houses burned, leaving them with only the meager belongings they managed to gather in sheets and satchels before they were forced out.
Peculiar, is it not? wrote the archer. They let those who do not fight live, and do not take what they carry from them. So we have half a country of refugees streaming in from the coasts seeking food and shelter, carrying their best silver, their favorite books, their jewelry. That is kindness itself compared to what Mendar says was the king’s practice in the Fae lands. And while our people might curse the faeries, they curse our king equally. Few of these men and women join our forces to expel the Fae. Yet, if they do not, we shall fall soon enough. What sort of rulers would the Fae make over us? Is it treason to wonder?
Over the following weeks, the army suffered loss upon loss. The mages fell in battle as well as the soldiers. But worse, far worse, were the deaths of the princes and princesses, and the king’s brothers. They do not die in battle. None of them. They simply disappear, as if they had never been, or as if they had sunk into their bedclothes, or stepped from the trail to be swallowed by the earth.
The king is mad with rage. I would that he feared the Fae more, but each loss just drives him harder against them. He will no longer speak to us, holding council with only Mendar from among our numbers, him and the mages, and the quad of captains over what remains of our second army. I should have spoken before, when I knew his first plan was flawed. I should have counseled him when we met in Ajroon, that a new strategy would be needed against the Fae. I should have argued that the sorceress must be stopped at all costs, let the Fae army do what it wishes. She is their true strength. But I have held my silence too long, and now when I speak he brushes me away.
We will die soon. I think often of my sister. I know she will be safe, for the Fae kill no children. I hope that our parents are safe with her. I hope my family will not hate me for having failed them.
I look up finally, consider the deep darkness through the window. Then I slip the book back into my pocket, untie my sash, and use my teeth to snap the knot of red thread showing through the back of the sash. I tug the thread out, and on the other side a tiny red diamond comes undone, delivering up to me my bone knife. It appears as a sudden weight upon my lap, the onyx and mother-of-pearl handle gleaming in the lamplight.
The blade is too wide by a hair to slip into the keyhole, nor do I suspect it would do much good regardless. There will be guards and more locked doors to contend with if I attempt to flee down the hallways and out through the building itself. No, my only hope is the window.
The rope takes barely a half hour to make, used as I am to braiding. I tie knots at intervals, to give my hands and legs purchase. I push the bed next to the window to serve as my anchor, positioning it so that even if my weight lifts it from the ground, it will remain firmly on this side of the window.
Then I blow out the lamp and wait. Once my eyes have adjusted to the dark, I peek from the window, searching for guards. The shadows lie deep and still, and it is impossible to determine what is darkness and what might be a man standing watch. In the end, I can only hope that the man I saw has left.
I wrap my knife in a final strip of fabric, just long enough to cover it properly, and then I lay it flat against my stomach, rolling the top of my skirt over it. I tug my sash down over its slight bulk to keep it in place. It is not ideal, but if I am caught, I do not want to lose my knife as well.
I wait a quarter of an hour longer, counting out the minutes with prayers, and then I lower the rope out the window. Far away, I can hear a dog barking, but here all lies quiet.
Taking hold of the sill in one hand and my rope in the other, I swing my feet over the windowsill, and freeze. It is so very far down, the road made of stone cobbles. If I slip, if I lose my grip on the rope, I will die. As certainly as I will die come morning, if Red Hawk cannot ransom me. Perhaps I should wait. Perhaps Bren will come through for me, and I don’t need to attempt something as foolhardy as this . . .
And perhaps this is the only chance I will get. I wind my legs around the rope and carefully lower myself off the sill, gripping the rope in sweat-damp hands. Don’t look down, I tell myself. One hand at a time. That’s all.
I can’t use my feet very well, so I keep the rope wound between my legs and use each knot as a resting spot, if only for a single breath. My whole body is shaking with tension by the time I pass the set of windows below my own. As I near the street, my arms shudder with effort.
I drop to the ground, stumbling slightly, and turn.
A man stands just behind me, smiling. I neither saw nor heard him approach, and now the shock of it freezes me in place.
“Took you long enough,” he says, reaching for me.
I try to run. I manage no more than two limping strides before a hand closes around my arm, yanking me back. I open my mouth to scream, but there is already an arm across my throat, as strong and unforgiving as an iron bar.
I manage a strained, gasping breath and am jerked backward as the man begins to walk. I scrabble to keep up, my feet backpedaling as he drags me effortlessly across the cobbles and around the corner to the Scholar’s front door.
This time, I doubt there will be any windows for me to climb out.
Chapter
29
The cell I am locked in is the sort of thing I only ever expected to meet in tales of pure criminals. Here is the horror of a cold stone room, bars forming a barely visible cage across one wall, the taint of captivity and despair in the air itself. There is no hint of light here.
I huddle in the farthest corner, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the
darkness as the sentry departs in company with a second guard who allowed us entry and brought us here, lamp in hand. But the darkness doesn’t ease now, the inky blackness complete. I wedge myself tighter into the corner, as if there were safety in the stone against my back, my legs folding up to press against my chest—and a strange pressure against my stomach.
My knife.
I unfold myself, press my hand against the comforting line of the cloth-wrapped blade. It’s something. And now that I am sitting forward, I notice the faint weight in my pocket: the archer’s journal. The sentry had not bothered to search me, no doubt assuming that I had been searched upon arrival. I wrap my hand around the little book, fiercely grateful he did not find it. Else the Black Scholar would certainly kill me, ransom or not. One doesn’t steal things from a thief lord.
Not that I can do much about that now. I should have left it in my room, but I forgot, and now is not the time to consider confessing and begging forgiveness. I push myself to my feet, put one hand out against the stone, and follow it around to the bars, working mostly by feel to find the lock.
Carefully extracting my knife, I slide it through the keyhole and wiggle it. But no matter how long I work at it, pinching my fingers and jiggling the knife in every angle I can find, the door remains locked. If I get out of this alive, I’m asking Bren to teach me how to pick locks. Just so I know.
I return to my corner, carefully rewrapping the knife and hiding it once more. It’s a strange blade. For all that I’ve handled it enough to have sliced my fingers open repeatedly tonight, it hasn’t cut me once. I know from experimentation that it is more than sharp enough to cut through flesh—chicken and goat, which is not all that different from human. Fae magic, I suppose. Too bad that magic doesn’t extend to unlocking doors.
The Theft of Sunlight Page 21