Chapter 5 #2
Blessed steam escaped, the scent of tea waking every cell in his body. Obviously not the leftover dregs from his final morning of freedom—which meant she’d had this prepared fresh for him. “You…why?”
She stilled, her hands in his bag again, and studied him.
Presumably to puzzle out which “why” he meant.
“Why have I never been down here? Because it was never my domain. Einar has been managing the prisons since before I was born. But my father tells me it’s my responsibility now, as are Krystiana’s snows.
” For a second, her face contorted, but too quickly for him to pin down what emotion was responsible before it smoothed out again.
“Or if you mean why am I here now…” She shrugged and handed him a foil-wrapped something.
Something hot. He couldn’t decide whether to drop it or let it burn his hands. He settled for lowering it swiftly to his blanket-draped legs and savoring the warmth that seeped in. He took a sip of the honey-sweetened tea and then set it down so he could unwrap the gift.
Bread, soft and fresh and piping hot. Roasted lamb, fragrant with herbs. A potato, baked in its skin and sliced open, smothered in melted butter.
She held out a fork. “Eat. I just saw the reports today on what prisoners are fed. It will take time to get changes approved by the Two Councils, but for today, I’ll settle for correcting it here, with you.”
It could be a trap. It could all be poisoned. But frankly, he didn’t care. He’d rather die warm and full than waste away in here slowly. He grabbed the fork, plunged it into the butter-dripping potato, and hurried the first bite to his lips.
He nearly groaned. No potato had ever tasted so good.
She nudged his pack toward him and drew her knees up, resting her arms on them. “The funerals are tomorrow.”
Nik paused with his fork an inch above the lamb. “Your family?”
He knew she was older than him by eight years, but she looked younger by the same when she tucked a dark curl behind her ear and nodded.
When she sat there, on a prison floor, in her ridiculously ornate and lightweight dress and hugged her knees.
“All four of them. Theirs will be held in the Grand Kyrka. That’s what made me think of you, think to check on you.
I’m sorry I didn’t do so before. There has been so much. So much.” Her eyes slid shut.
He could nod, but it would be a lie. He didn’t have the first idea what responsibilities had fallen onto her shoulders, what grief, what anger.
He had just lost a father, yes—his only living relative.
But he and Pab weren’t a daily part of each other’s lives.
And his mother, his sister—he’d lost them so long ago he didn’t even remember them.
He’d not even been two when they’d died together in childbirth.
To lose a parent and siblings all in one blow, and to have to pick up the mantle of their duties so quickly? No, he couldn’t imagine. “You don’t need to apologize, Your Highness. You owe me nothing.”
She straightened, those silver eyes boring into him.
“You helped me recover their bodies—gave them dignity. You worked beside me for hours, putting out fires, shifting rubble, finding survivors, giving each of the dead you pulled out that same dignity, whether servant or Blessed. And this is how my family thanks you?” She waved to the cell.
Her voice was no longer a whisper. But he suspected that even if someone lingered nearby, they wouldn’t be able to hear her words through the thick wall of ice.
Even so, his own throat wouldn’t produce more than a murmur, even after another sip of soothing tea.
“If my father truly set that bomb, targeting your family…” He couldn’t even look at her as he said it.
He had to squeeze his eyes shut, shake his head.
He didn’t want to think Pab could be so hateful.
But he was. He knew he was. How many times had he begged his father to banish the bitterness from his heart before it consumed him?
How many times had he tried to explain that not providing the medical care that could have saved his mother and sister wasn’t the same as killing them?
That the king was not directly responsible for their deaths?
Nik drew in a shaking breath. “I would undo his actions if I could. But since I cannot, then it is only fair that I pay for them. My father took the lives of your mother, your brother and his wife, your sister. My father. I don’t…I don’t know how to live with that knowledge.”
Her gaze dropped to the stones. “If my father has his way, you won’t.
He has said nothing publicly—he won’t until after the funerals tomorrow—but he means to execute you.
He’s already drawn up the documents claiming you were in league with your father, that he was the Red Hand but you are the dark mind that moved it. ”
What? Nik let the fork fall into the packet of food. “I don’t know what evidence he has found, Highness, but I swear to you, I’ve barely even communicated with my father for the last decade. I’ve gone home for Yule and Pasca feasts, that’s it. I was not complicit—”
“I believe you.” She met his gaze again.
“Your actions that day spoke loudly about who you are. I couldn’t wrap my mind around Fodur’s accusations even then.
And in the days since, his actions have only made me doubt his claims more.
He didn’t dispatch any guards to your dome before he wrote that statement, though they’ve gone now.
He didn’t schedule the trial he said you would have.
He just…he just means to do it. Without evidence.
Without even pretending to have evidence, and I…
” She lowered her hands and pressed them to the stones.
Snow drifted upward from the contact, dancing in a choreographed whirl before vanishing into the air.
“I don’t know how to stop him.” Her tone sounded brittle. “The High Council has no respect for me, Fodur doesn’t listen to a thing I say, I don’t know the intricacies of the law well enough to appeal to that.”
Perhaps by rights, he ought to be too upset to take another bite. But his stomach, at the moment, didn’t much care about tomorrow. It was far more concerned with the last four days of starvation rations. He forked a bite of meat and raised it to his lips. “You don’t need to fight for me, Princess.”
“Kyrja.” She lifted her chin. “You pulled the dead from the ruins with me. You can call me by name.”
In another world, the invitation would have been alternately horrifying and hilarious—that it was he, not Raf, who had earned it simply by the happenstance of keeping pace with her as they all ran toward the explosion, while the bulkier Raf fell behind.
He, who had never even wanted to meet the royal family.
“All right. Kyrja”—the name felt odd on his tongue, too short, too familiar—“you don’t need to fight for me. ”
“Of course I do. You are Fjordic. You deserve justice, not vengeance. To be judged on your own actions, no one else’s.”
He snorted his opinion of that before he could think better of it. And then winced at the look she gave him. “Forgive me, pr—Kyrja. But farmlings, as your father called us, are never given trials.”
Her dark brows flew upward. “Of course you are. All subjects are given fair trials.”
“I challenge you to find record of a single one in the last two centuries.” He shook his head and focused on his food.
“I have studied the law for years. When the kyrkas had no place for me, I thought perhaps I could break ground and become a man of law, even though there has never been one from the thanes.”
Wishful thinking, Pab had always called it. Impossible.
Now her brows knit together. “Perhaps the records were simply not available to you in Harroby.”
“Oh, there were very few records there, to be sure. Brother Gylfi had to borrow everything I wanted from the capital and then send it back within a month or lose his access to the royal library. The dominie of the Grand Kyrka was the one to search the royal archives, check out the records on our behalf, and send them. He’s the one who insisted there were no records to be found on recent thane trials, because thanes do not receive trials—at least not thanes from the domes. Perhaps those in the city do.”
He doubted it, but he hadn’t gotten that far in his requests. His goal had always, always been to lessen the burden of his people beneath the domes.
Just like Pab, in one way. So very different, in others.
Her frown didn’t ease any. “Impossible. What happens to those arrested in the domes then?”
“Sent here, to Reykstoll.”
She waited. Blinked. “And then?”
He shrugged. “That’s what I was trying to sort out.
Rumor under the domes is that some are exiled into the frozen wastes and others pressed into labor.
None ever return, I can tell you that much.
And surely if there were trials, not every person arrested would be guilty. It’s not statistically possible.”
Though to be sure, arrests for actual crimes were few—every thane knew the cost of lashing out against the Fjorders.
There was plenty of thane-on-thane crime, especially in the cities, but never at a level to get the attention of the overseers.
They’d long ago learned they would all pay if the Fjorders had to intervene.
Kyrja pinched the bridge of her nose. “I will look into this as well. As soon as I can.”
“Not for my sake—but they are your people, and they deserve justice. So we thank you. And if I may…” Did he dare try to teach the princess?
Her brows lifted in invitation.
He cleared his throat. “You are the Heir. That means that you have legal standing as the overseer of all trials, all justice. You not only can demand a trial, you would need to be present to verify it.”