Chapter 7 Boy
seven
Boy
Boy stirred at the sound of the heavy boots that clomped in the passageway outside his cell, but it was fear that woke him with a start.
Horror roiled within at the reminder of his impending death, draining the blood from his face.
He uncurled from where he lay, hunched in the foetal position on the floor, to meet his fate head on.
Then he remembered the savagery of the Royal Guard the day before and instead dragged himself onto all fours in preparation to kneel.
His knees protested loudly, and immediately Boy was thrown back into the memories of the night before with an unexpected vigour.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he wondered if he hadn’t imagined the whole thing, but when he licked over his chapped lips he tasted the sticky-sweet residue of the magickal strawberries, and his cheeks flamed.
Louder now, the rhythmic footsteps drew him back into the present moment, and cold reality clashed hard against hot fantasy.
Wretched and confused, Boy shook with mental fever and his body seized with indecision.
So when the Royal Guard opened the door hard enough for it to slam against the stone wall of his cell, Boy didn’t so much as flinch.
When the brilliant light from the lamps flooded the room and hurt his eyes, he lacked the wherewithal to blink against it.
Tears brimmed against his lashes and he dug his blunt fingernails into the stone floor, hoping a bite of pain might centre him. Instead of wet and mossy damp, he found the dried husks and stems of grasses, as if he had slept the night upon a thin bed of straw.
Confusion begat clarity, however, when he remembered the guards had carried in a bag of straw and a dusty spinning wheel yesterday, before locking him inside.
Had it really been a whole day already? He was about to turn his head to check whether the ominous items were still there when a guard bellowed for him to kneel before the Queen.
Boy stayed exactly as he was—prone, subjugated, and mute.
Hushed footsteps announced Her Majesty’s arrival, but she stopped just outside his limited field of vision.
The silence that extended between them made Boy’s soul throb.
Could she see the platter of food that hadn’t been there when she left?
Could she smell the brandy that had spilled down his throat until it saturated his linen tunic?
Or was it, perhaps, the weight of the decision as to his manner of death that gave her pause?
“Well,” the Queen finally said upon an exhale. “Rarely does a person surpass my expectations.” Her melodic voice was at stark odds with the dank and decay that provided their ambience.
She stepped closer. The toes of her golden shoes peeked out from underneath a deep red skirt made from a delicate fabric that was woven in an open, weblike pattern.
It was reminiscent of the crochet blankets his grandma had made for him and his siblings when they were babes, except this handiwork was on a much more intricate scale and had a unique transparent quality about it.
The hem was weighed down by golden embroidery, not too dissimilar from that on the coat her Shadow had worn the night before.
When that memory caused his cheeks to flush a colour similar to the fancy skirt in front of him, he smartly ceased his exploration of the Queen’s clothing and returned his gaze to the cell floor. He was thankful that she hadn’t noticed, or had chosen to ignore him entirely.
Her golden shoe, so pointed at the end that Boy winced on behalf of her toes, swiped at the loose stalks of dried maize tassels that littered the ground beneath him. “Why did you not transform the entire sack?”
The question confused Boy. She had seen through his father’s delusional lies yesterday, he was certain of it. Surely the scattered crops she had so elegantly—yet wordlessly—pointed out were all the evidence she needed to fulfil her promise to kill him. So what was the point of her question?
Boy couldn’t think of a single word to say, and so he said nothing. He’d rather she think of him as stupid than risk upsetting her.
“Your Majesty?” The gruff voice belonged to one of her guards and came from somewhere behind him.
Boy hadn’t dared to turn his head when the clanking of a guard’s armoured foot tapped against the side of the upturned wooden bucket, causing it to scrape dully over the wet stones.
“Ah,” came the Queen’s soft voice. “I see.”
There was a loaded pause, promptly followed by the guard’s forced laughter.
“Good one, Your Majesty,” he responded with strained joviality. “That was funny, ’cause of course you can see that once the wick’d burned down, he couldn’t have seen in ’ere at all. Very funny, Your Majesty.”
She clapped her hands once. Loudly. And the guard was immediately silent. Boy wondered if he was even breathing.
“Then I think the best solution is the most simple one, don’t you?” she asked.
Boy didn’t know if she was addressing him or the guard, so he stayed quiet.
So did the guard.
“See the boy moved to the Merchant’s Quarters within the walls of the Royal City. The window there will provide him with enough natural light during the day. And make sure he has at least two lamps this time.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Boy didn’t know what was happening. For all the sense her words made, the Queen may as well have been speaking another language, because it sounded like, instead of asking the guard to escort him to the gallows, he was being escorted to an actual room inside the city walls.
But why would she do that? It made little sense, unless…
He turned his head to the side, his eyes having adjusted to the brightness of the guards’ lamps, and where yesterday the old spinning wheel had been covered in cobwebs, it was now gleaming as if polished. His jaw dropped involuntarily.
With his heart firmly in his throat, Boy risked looking back over his shoulder at where the sack of dried straw had been. There, arranged neatly upon the hessian, were seven spools of glittering golden thread. Boy couldn’t stifle the strangled sound of surprise that spilled from him.
“I think what you mean to say is, ‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’” With that, those golden shoes spun on their heels and stepped out of view, but not before she added, “Don’t get too comfortable.
Your new accommodation will come with even more sacks of straw, and I expect it all transformed into golden thread before the next sunrise. There will be no more excuses.”
Ever-quietening footsteps announced her retreat down the passageway as she called out, “Else you will be dead before I’ve eaten my morn meal.”
Boy’s gaze fixed fast upon the spools. He hadn’t done that; he knew he hadn’t. He was a human and possessed no magick, so how…?
His spiralling thoughts were cut off by the rough hands of the Royal Guard, who caught him—one armpit each—and hauled him to his feet.
Holding their lamps aloft, they pushed him through the cell doorway and escorted him back down the narrow passageway in the opposite direction from which he had been brought in the day before.
Why did it require two of them to manhandle him? Boy’s mind was too scattered to coordinate the effort needed to escape them, besides which, he had no idea where in this stone labyrinth he might find an exit.
As if coming to that realisation for themselves, the guards released him so suddenly that his legs didn’t have time to take his weight, and he stumbled.
The guard on his left laughed and pushed in front, lighting the way but at too-brisk a pace.
Boy’s feet were treacherous beneath him, especially when they reached a narrow stone staircase.
This one, at least, was dry—unlike the one they had entered from the Royal District—but the renewed threat of death had done nothing to steady him, and he staggered against the wall with a thud.
This time, the guard behind laughed at Boy and gave him a forceful shove when they breached the top step.
He half fell through the wooden doorway that led out onto a gravel path, and was immediately assaulted by the bright morning sun.
Boy raised his arm to shield his eyes from the harsh rays, but it was the sounds that held his attention.
He’d expected more savage guards and barking dogs, but the people here chatted animatedly. He’d braced for lewd comments and vicious threats, as there had been upon his arrival yesterday, but found the Royal City resembled more closely the trader’s market from back home.
Distracted, he lost track of the lead guard.
Boy was used to stalls that traded in livestock, grains, wool, and linens, not small and colourful glass vials that held fragrances so potent that he could smell them from several paces away.
Nor had he ever seen birds of prey in leather hoods tethered to perches as patrons haggled over the price.
For a moment he wondered why they would spend precious coin on such an item, until he realised they were trained to retrieve rodents and other small creatures—an ingenious solution to the kingdom’s current meat shortage.
Before he could inspect another stall, one with shallow wooden troughs filled to the brim with salt-smothered fish that had attracted thick swarms of flies, he found himself once again caught roughly by the arm.
What was it with the people here manhandling him?
Boy had never been touched so much in his life.
The guard all but dragged Boy along the gravelled path, which rose at a steady incline, until they reached a long, timber-framed farmhouse.
It reminded him of the Fachhallenhaus nearby his home market, which allowed traders to overnight with their animals and wares all under one roof.
He wasn’t surprised at all that this was the direction they were heading—the Queen had stated for him to be housed in the Merchant’s Quarters, and this building couldn’t be anything else.
The entrance beam was set so low that Boy had to duck, else he risked hitting his head when the guard—yet again—shoved him through.
A small stone that had worked its way inside the gaping sole of Boy’s shoe dug into the heel of his foot as he regained his balance, and Boy bit his tongue as he swallowed down the pain.
A different guard pushed passed Boy, turning him bodily and forcing him to step to the side lest he be continuously jostled about, and Boy took in the great, if not run-down, space.
Based on what little experience he had of the inside of a Fachhallenhaus, he’d expected other merchants to be here, but it was deathly silent.
A sure sign that he was very much still the Queen’s prisoner.
The entire quarters had been emptied of people and animals alike, and Boy wondered where they might all have moved to.
The only sign that remained of the simple cots and basic amenities that had surely been there before his arrival were the freshly exposed darker patches of wooden flooring where the rays from the single window hadn’t yet reached.
Another guard part-nudged and part-threw Boy towards the far end of the large room, from where he watched in morbid silence as guard after guard brought in hessian sacks filled to overflowing with dry straw and field mice.
They piled them high in the empty bays that Boy could now see ran the full length along the outer wall, and each time a sack was set down, his mood sank along with it.
He wrapped his arms tightly around his torso and edged closer to the one remaining cot pushed deep into the end bay—it had been a very trying morning.
When the last sack had been wedged tightly in with the others, the lamps had been deposited as per the Queen’s instruction, and the remaining guards had unloaded that menacing spinning wheel and set it squarely in the centre of the room, Boy sank onto the low bed with a thin, down-filled mattress, and scrubbed his hand over his dirty face.
The day might have changed, but his dire circumstances remained the same. The ominous bang of the door being barred shut as the guards left barely disturbed Boy’s churning thoughts.
He’d expected to be dead by now.
Boy’s gaze was drawn to the bright rays of morning sun that illuminated the plentiful dust motes as they twirled through the air.
This was a sunrise he shouldn’t have experienced, and the only explanation he had for any of it was that the Queen’s Shadow must have used his magick to spin the straw into gold once Boy had fallen asleep.
But why? Boy struggled to reconcile the legends he knew about the spirit with his actions the night before.
A chill autumn breeze drifted over the wooden floor, gusting against Boy’s bare legs, and his gaze immediately snapped to the gap underneath the door.
Agonising seconds ticked by, but when no shadowed tendrils were forthcoming, Boy let out a defeated exhale.
He wished they would come back—he missed their comforting embrace.
But why would they? Boy was nobody special, and the Royal Shadow had got what he wanted: one night with company he didn’t have to kill.
Boy draped his forearm over his brow in a vain attempt to stem the tears that built behind his eyes.
He was sure he hadn’t imagined it, though.
There had been something in the way the geist had looked at him—in the way those shadows had touched him—that had assured Boy he was safe with the most feared spirit in Falchovari.
If it had been just as the man said, then Boy had dutifully fulfilled his end of their tacit agreement, and there was no other reason he could think of for the geist to have done as he had. Unless…
Boy’s breaths rushed out in shallow pants. Unless the Queen’s Shadow wanted more. Spinning the straw into gold had bought them both another day, but was the extra time a gift for the geist, or for Boy?
Tormented by questions, Boy’s heart pounded in his chest, and the energy spike that had coursed through his veins when the Queen woke him waned like the moon.