Chapter 32
I was dead.
No, worse than dead – I was right back where I’d come from.
Belloc’s thick fingers pressed against my mouth and the front of my throat, holding me with a force that wasn’t yet painful but held an unmistakable promise of pain.
I’d lost my balance when he’d kicked me, and that hand didn’t allow me to regain my footing; I was pinned like a ragdoll against his broad chest, trying not to squeak as I breathed, trying not to stir or feel like I might start stirring.
One of my wrists was caught in the trap of rough, calloused fingers.
Two slender hands hung on my other forearm, keeping my hands from coming together, keeping me from signing so much as a single rune.
I couldn’t think.
My mind was still catching up, in a trickle of numb, sluggish panic.
‘Not even fighting, are you?’ Belloc crooned against my temple, fingers squeezing tighter. I went rigid. ‘A crying shame, little bird. The boys told me all these stories about your grand deeds in my brother’s name. I’d made so many lovely plans for you.’
Don’t react.
Don’t fight.
I struggled for breath, struggled for clarity, struggled – worst of all – to keep my limbs still, still, still.
My body seemed to be battling itself. Half of me knew exactly what to do.
Half of me had been here before, had survived this before: be invisible, be quiet, be harmless.
And half of me had pressed Durlain against a wall with a knife to his throat, had breathed the sulphur-less air and felt the salt of the sea on my lips, and that part of me wanted nothing more than to bite Belloc’s hand hard enough to break a finger.
Don’t.
He'd burn my throat straight through.
‘Maybe you believe you don’t need to fight?
’ He took his hand off my mouth, fingers trailing appreciatively over my jaw.
I stifled the urge to gag. No wincing. No pulling away from him.
He would get bored soon enough, I desperately promised myself …
and as if he’d heard the thought, Belloc ceased his fondling and purred, ‘Maybe you’re hoping for His Highness to come and save you? ’
The world froze.
I had frozen too, I was distantly aware.
I couldn’t have heard those words correctly. His Highness. That couldn’t be right, because the three of them only knew Givron Averre. A man pretending to be Givron Averre, granted, but Prince Durlain was dead, everyone knew he was dead, and there was no way on earth Belloc could have guessed—
‘Quiet, aren’t you?’ he drawled, shaking me like a glass jar that refused to surrender its contents.
‘What?’ I wheezed.
‘Don’t think she knows, m’lord.’ Rook’s rough voice, accent rural but tone warily respectful, rose from the shadows to my right. I didn’t dare turn my head. ‘Probably told her he was Givron, too.’
Rook.
Who always found out everything.
I no longer felt my hands and feet. No longer felt the fingers on my throat.
‘He probably did,’ Belloc unwillingly admitted, although I wasn’t sure whether the reluctance was a matter of disappointment or annoyance at having to agree with a mere peasant.
‘Shame. Did you think we’d travelled all this way for you alone, poppet?
I don’t care that much for the girls my brother likes to play with, but the murderer of my sister’s daughter … ’
Pol.
A choked sound escaped me.
‘See?’ Jay said to my left, still clinging to my wrist as if it was made of gold. His voice was a little too high. ‘We thought you’d be knocked for a loop when you found out. We’ll get him, though, don’t worry.’
Don’t worry.
Oh, shit, shit, shit.
‘You should, in fact, worry,’ Belloc informed me, sounding pleased as a cat over a saucer of cream. ‘If we can’t get the boy, you’ll make for a fine prize for my brother, too. Be a good piece of bait for me, though, and I might reconsider. Get her up the hill, boys.’
His hand slid off my throat.
Shouldn’t fight. Shouldn’t fight – but I was no longer scared, sensible Thraga.
The birds’ hands yanked at my wrists, and I didn’t stagger along as I should have, a mindless, harmless ragdoll.
It was just a stiffening. Just an unthinking knee locking in place, just an unthinking heel digging in the sand.
But I felt the fingers on my forearms tighten, and—
Whack.
I didn’t even feel myself fall. Didn’t hear myself scream.
Just an eyeblink of breathless, all-consuming agony exploding from beneath my ribcage, and then I was on my knees, throat raw, face wet, my body nothing but throbbing anguish on the right side of my torso.
My liver. Belloc had punched me in the liver – a slow drip of a realisation, but attaching a name to the pain didn’t make it any less nauseating.
‘He’ll hear us!’ Jay squeaked through the hazy pulse in my ears.
‘As he should.’ A boot slammed into my aching side, shoving me sideways with such force my arm was almost wrenched out of my socket. Rook was still holding my wrist. ‘Give us another of those screams, poppet. He shouldn’t get too much time to think.’
He.
Durlain.
I gasped for breath, choking a moan as my ribs cried out in agony. What had I done?
‘M’lord,’ Rook said, deferential yet somehow with obvious unhappiness in the title. ‘M’lord, if she can’t walk up the mountain …’
A grinding sound suggested a boot landing back in the sand; Belloc gave an audible sigh of displeasure. ‘Fine. Get her up there. He’ll have heard her anyway.’
Yes.
He must have.
Yet when Rook and Jay dragged me back onto my feet, when I turned my head towards the other side of the bay, there was nothing to be seen behind the entrance of the cave. No firelight – my own spells kept that hidden. No Durlain.
A gag rose in my throat.
Rook slung my right arm over his shoulder, still holding my hand in his iron grip, and began to walk.
Jay trailed rather uselessly along on my left.
Neither of them spoke, and somehow that was even worse than their gleeful assurance that Durlain would be caught – because we weren’t friends, of course we’d never been friends, but did they really, truly not care that my guts had just been kicked half out of me?
Would I have cared, had it been their livers?
I had stopped Durlain from killing Jay in the marshes. Stupid, stupid mistake.
The two of them steered me around the cliff, every step another pulse of agony below my ribs. A narrow path led up the slope, and Rook had to keep me from falling over as I staggered along with him. Breathing hurt. My heart, somehow, hurt more.
I was back, I was back, I was back, and what was I going to do?
Durlain had been a prick – an utter and unforgivable prick. But those vicious sneers paled at the thought of Aranc’s wrath, because no one deserved Aranc’s wrath … which meant I had to hope he wouldn’t fall into Belloc’s trap. I had to hope he wouldn’t try to save me.
The thought was unbearable.
Perhaps he’d find a way – I repeated that desperate hope to myself as the path levelled and we neared the top of the cliffs.
Uneven hill ridges stretched out around me, black glass gleaming in the grey light of the moon – volcanoes, some of them, and surely Durlain would find a way to make use of that?
He was a strong mage, after all. He wasn’t an idiot.
All he had to do was keep his head clear …
He shouldn’t get too much time to think, Belloc had said.
At least that gave me something like a plan.
I couldn’t fight. I could only wait … but I could wait patiently. I could stifle my screams. I could give Durlain as little reason to rush and mess up as possible.
It was that thought, that inkling of something to do, that got me up the last slope, to where a small encampment and three horses were waiting for us.
It was a terrible place to camp, at the mercy of cold and rain and the bitter ocean winds – but it was, I realised with dawning horror, a perfect place to lay a trap.
The only decent place to sleep nearby, Durlain had said about the cave.
Belloc and the birds had known, and so they’d waited here until we inevitably turned up – had been looking for a way to enter our hideaway safely, and then I’d run straight into their arms.
I almost gagged again.
No dramatics, damn it. Patience. I was going to fight by being fine, just fine. Belloc could hit me, and I would let him, would lie and endure and smile through my tears – because it was only pain, and I’d survived pain before. Bodies could heal. Durlain in Aranc’s hands could not.
I focused on that image, Durlain dangling in a cage at Mount Estien, and didn’t so much as moan when Rook dropped me to the ground.
I swallowed my cries when Belloc knelt and yanked my hands behind my back with a force that set my ribs on fire.
I bit my lip even as they locked two iron shackles around my wrists and attached a sturdy, foot-long wooden stick between them – no way for me to bring my hands together.
Shit. They had had time to prepare.
‘There,’ Belloc said, fingers folding around my jaw to force up my head. His small row of golden earrings glittered in the moonlight; a grin hovered around his lips. ‘Now we can have a chat, you and I. No jokes, no games. I ask, you answer. Clear?’
I nodded, numbly, insofar as his fingers allowed me to.
‘Good.’ He let go of my chin, then cupped my jaw instead, rubbing a possessive thumb over my cheek. ‘Pretty little thing you are. What did my brother name you again? Something sweet, one hopes – Wren? Robin?’
He knew.
Of course he knew. Jay and Rook must have talked plenty about me.
This was the most useless sort of defiance, and yet my teeth ground together, tongue refusing service; I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of saying it out loud.
I wasn’t even going to think it, the name that had turned me into Aranc’s creature, because I was no longer Aranc’s creature. I was no longer—
Belloc let go of my face.