Chapter 33
I didn’t know how long I sat there, curled around my throbbing torso on the hillslope, staring numbly at the starless night sky. Feeling nothing but the empty sheaths on my thigh, my hip, my shoulder. Seeing nothing but steel sinking into molten stone.
Gone.
How many times had I checked those knives?
Surely that should have stopped Belloc, somehow, from destroying them so easily?
I couldn’t say whether minutes or hours had gone by when Jay came hurtling back onto the cliff plateau; I hadn’t bothered to keep track of the moon.
But there was no missing the little weasel’s voice in the silence of night, shrill and high, more guttersnipe than soldier – ‘Lord Belloc! Lord Belloc, he’s gone! ’
I stiffened.
For a man of his size, Belloc moved fast. He stood in the blink of an eye, a flicker of flame in his broad palm. ‘What was that?’
‘The prince. Durlain.’ Jay bent over on the path, breath squeaking; he must have sprinted up the cliffside.
‘We finally entered. Had to be careful, you see? One horse still there, a couple bags still there, other horse and all the food gone. No prince. He must have bolted while we were bringing her up the volcano.’
Bolted.
No.
He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t.
I gaped at the two men before me, not hearing a word of Belloc’s rapid interrogation, something ink-black and ice-cold breaking through the dull pain and shock.
Wouldn’t he?
He’d dragged me from the water of the Svala.
He’d pulled me from the dark and lifeless hole of Lark’s betrayal.
I hadn’t even considered he might not at least try to save me while Belloc was punching the air from my lungs, an assumption so instinctive I hadn’t even realised it had been an assumption at all …
but did I have any reason to be so very damn sure of it?
Don’t pretend we’re friendly.
Fuck.
He needed me. There was that – the single useful fact on which our bargain had been built.
But he’d also hurt me in that last conversation – coldly and deliberately so – and he’d told me time and time again he would never choose me over his own interests.
If he’d heard or seen enough to realise that he’d been recognised as Varraulis’s son, as Pol’s murderer …
Oh, sweet merciful hell.
He must have known what would be happening to him in Belloc’s hands.
And his horse was gone.
I sank into the realisation as if it was a bath of ice-water – that he might already be half an hour away from here, riding Smudge to shreds to get away from the consequences of his own damn actions.
That the birds would never catch up with him while they were dragging a captive along.
That he could hide in the Dawn House as he’d done for years, with its warm beds and its plentiful food, and I’d never see a glimpse of him again.
That I might be alone.
The obsidian hills towered over me, the sea stretched out into the night ahead, and I might be entirely, wretchedly alone.
Any moment now, I expected Belloc to tie me up in the saddle and commence the long trek back to Mount Estien – without the more spectacular triumph of a resurrected prince in chains, but in possession of a fine prize all the same.
The little witchling bird who’d thought she could defy a king – I could already hear the laughter of the gathered court.
But no horses were saddled. No bags were packed.
They left me chained to the mountain slope, no blanket or water, arms bloodless behind my back, as Rook returned and the three of them patrolled the clifftop with torches and knives in hand.
Still anticipating danger, I grasped only slowly through the haze of pain and heartache – did they think Durlain might have faked his flight?
That he might be hiding behind a boulder nearby, waiting for their chance to save me?
I didn’t dare hope.
If you hope, they’ll hurt you worse.
It wasn’t what Lark had said, but it seemed just as true – because that was what I’d done, wasn’t it?
Hope I could escape Mount Estien. Hope I could bring Lark back.
Hope that I might find some sort of safety with Durlain, no matter how often he’d warned me not to …
and look where it had landed me? Back in Aranc’s hands, and all the worse off for my short stint of freedom – because the king of Estien treated his weapons poorly, but his traitors much, much worse.
What would he do? Lock me in a cage and use me as archery practise for his drunken nobles? Hang me upside down over his dinner table? Strip me naked and send me to a witch’s death for his own amusement?
I felt my ribs with every ragged breath and tried to find solace in the pain. Tried to remind myself I would soon yearn for the time when some bruised bones had been the worst of my worries.
The moon rose. The moon set again.
No Durlain.
Perhaps he’d simply decided I’d save myself.
Just like he’d made me hold the door, just like he’d sent me to face Hevaine’s guests on my own.
Perhaps he’d scoff and declare me incompetent after all if he were to see me like this – not soldier enough to fight, not victim enough to do the sensible thing and surrender.
But what could I do?
I was alone.
I no longer had my knives.
I no longer had my knives, and only now, far, far too late, did I understand I should never have worried about losing them unnoticed – because there was no not noticing it, the phantom weight of the blades I’d worn for so long.
I felt their absence like missing fingers.
Like the hollow, dusty air of our hut when I’d returned one last time to take everything of value I could find, the fire of the smithy quenched, Kjell’s thunderous laugh nowhere to be heard.
Breathing is the first step of fighting, girl.
But breathing hurt.
And fighting had only hurt me, too.
I should never have fought the provost who’d sent me to Mount Estien. Should never have fought Aranc and betrayed my powers. Should never have run from court.
I should just have chosen the fucking gallows.
I’d only given myself something to lose these past weeks, and sweet hell below – I was losing it now.
Sunset arrived in grim shades of pink, dousing the obsidian plains in an eerie, flesh-coloured glow. I dozed off and on, for lack of anything else to do; at least when I slept, I didn’t feel the cold and the pain and the heartache as much.
It was in the early afternoon that Rook strolled up to me, Jay trailing behind him. I tried not to flinch – surely I still had that much of my pride left – but it was hard to find another name for the swift and involuntary contraction of my shoulders.
Fuck, I missed Durlain.
Not like I’d missed Lark, a protective shield I could no longer hide behind, but rather the way I missed my knives.
I seemed to have lost track of my claws as Rook knelt before me and began to unchain my left hand.
I’d lost my danger. Had Durlain been beside me, all sneers and cold wit, I might have tried to attack – might have yanked my hand free and brought my fingers together and managed a few quick eihwaz signs.
But Rook’s large fingers were steel on my wrists as he pulled my arms to the front of my body and bound them again, and Jay continued to hover protectively around him with a green-gleaming knife in each hand. I didn’t struggle.
They’d just hurt me worse.
I’ve seen how you fight back, Durlain had said – but maybe I only fought so well when he was there to see me.
Rook didn’t speak until he was done with my chains, all his focus on my unresisting fingers. Only when he rose did he meet my gaze – the burn scars on his face even more grotesque in this pale, unforgiving light – and observed, ‘Bit of a pickle you’re in.’
His accent was almost implausibly rural, his diction slow to the point that the unwise assumed he’d be slow-witted as well. I knew better. I’d seen him work for years, the human equivalent of porous rock: unmoving, unmovable, absorbing everything in his path until he decided, finally, to burst.
If he was talking now, he was about to burst.
I could only assume that was bad news. ‘Fuck off.’
He regarded me with hooded, unimpressed eyes, even his shaggy black hair refusing to ruffle in the ocean breeze. ‘Not me who ran out of that cave, was it.’
‘In fact,’ Jay added savagely, knife shaking a little as he pointed it at me, ‘we did our very fucking best to warn you, you ungrateful stupid bonehead. That was my best bottle of poison I dropped, I’ll have you bloody know.’
My thoughts stuttered.
That poison bottle—
Dropped.
‘You— What?’ My hands gave an unthinking yank at my chains, as if it might be that simple – no, locked thoroughly. ‘What do you mean, you—'
On the other side of the obsidian plain, Belloc bellowed, ‘Oy! No talking!’
Jay rolled his eyes at me, looking like a petulant pageboy, and turned to face the prince. ‘She’s asking for a blanket, Lord Belloc!’
‘She can get a blanket when she’s crawled here to beg for it.’ Belloc considered me, the malicious glint in his eyes visible even from two dozen yards away. ‘Might see what else she’s willing to do while she’s on her knees.’
I stiffened.
‘Gross,’ Jay said under his breath.
‘Figure she’d bite,’ Rook offered with a stoic shrug, and just like that they were ambling off, not a glance in my direction, as if there hadn’t been a conversation to interrupt in the first place. No talking.
I stared at their backs – broad and tall, short and slender – and felt … something.
Not hope, because I wasn’t stupid.
Rather …
Was it anticipation?