Chapter 2
Two
Stifling heat threatened to burn Lory’s lungs as she woke with a sharp breath, opening her eyes to the blinding sun. The stench—Guardians, the stench.
“Not exactly how you’d imagine a royal residence, is it?
” a female voice greeted her from the corner just as Lory’s stomach churned and she heaved the remainders of last night’s ale onto the earth supporting her weight.
“Yeah, that was my first response to the smell, too. You’ll get used to it, though.
After a week in here, you’ll barely notice it, and after two weeks, you’ll forget you have a nose to be offended at all.
That is, unless they break it. Then you do remember, but you won’t smell anything because…
You get the idea,” the voice rambled on, its owner obviously unimpressed by Lory’s heaving.
“You from Dunai? Or did they bring you in from one of the villages? I’ve heard half of us are being dragged into the capital by Ulder’s men. Why they’d bother hunting down someone who never even intended to set foot in the capital, I’ll never know.”
The nausea in Lory’s stomach turned into a panic-laced queasiness. “We’re at the palace?” The words barely left her throat, her ribcage aching and her knee still sore from the injury, but worst of all, the left side of her face was so swollen she could hardly open her eye.
“Where else would we be?” The voice came closer but stopped a few feet away, the scrape of boots on dirt ending in the sound of calluses sliding over metal. “It’s swarming with Ulder’s guards out there—look, there are more coming.”
When Lory finally managed to twist her head, forcing her eyes open to study the iron bars caging her in, she found a girl, perhaps a few years older than her, twenty-five at the most. Her dirt-crusted cheek leaned against one of the bars, hands gripping the barrier where the cage was separated into two cells.
Rags of what could have been silk but had been covered in layers of grime, turning it into an undefinable textile, hung from her narrow frame, her brown skin burned from being exposed to the sun for too long, and her black tresses fell to her shoulders in dull strings.
“You got a name?” the girl wanted to know, while all Lory needed was a moment to sort her thoughts and figure out how she’d gotten there.
“The guards called you Ycken’s little brat, but I doubt that’s an endearment you’d choose for yourself.
You actually don’t look like Ycken would bother with you at all. ”
“Who’s Ycken?” At last, Lory’s voice manifested on her tongue as she scrambled into a sitting position. “Why are we here?”
The girl shrugged, leaning against the bars as she slid to the ground, crossing her legs while her eyes followed Lory’s every move.
“Ycken is the head of Ulder’s guard,” she said, tilting her head as if trying to read from Lory’s face the answers to all the questions she didn’t dare ask.
“And we’re in the brig, right at the walls surrounding the premises.
” She glanced up at the cloudless sky. “We’ll get the shade of the pyramid in about an hour, so don’t worry about the heat.
You’ll survive the day. We all do. And eventually, they’ll give us water again. ”
The mere mention of water tore a fresh hole in Lory’s stomach. She hadn’t eaten the night before, not enough coins in her pocket to buy even a loaf of bread, and after she stole Top Knot’s bag—
Memories flashed through her mind, and a groan built in her throat.
“As for why we are here? I don’t know why you are, but I am here because I’m too entertaining to put me on the gallows.” For a moment, she grimaced as if she regretted saying what she had. “Actually, the gallows might be a better fate than what they do to those of us who prove interesting enough.”
“Interesting enough?”
“You don’t want to know, trust me.”
“What, by the Guardians, do they do to prisoners not destined for the gallows?” Lory barely dared think there could be anything worse than execution.
“Ashthorn.”
“What is an Ashthorn?”
“Not an Ashthorn. Ashthorn Ward.” The woman shook her head as if in disappointment. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Ashthorn Ward.”
Awkward silence spread in the feet of sweat-inducing heat separating them.
“Well, not surprising for a street rat like you. After all, Ashthorn Ward is the most secretive academy in Brestolya.”
It wasn’t meant to be condescending, Lory could tell that much, yet a canyon of things she’d never seen or learned because of growing up on the streets opened up between them as Lory studied the woman with her good eye.
“Academy for what?” Education wasn’t necessarily Lory’s strong suit, and it wasn’t like she could get her hands on any books of value on the streets, even when she and Evven had taught themselves how to read and write when they were ten years old, with the aid of scraps of paper from the markets and pages discarded in the rich citizens’s trash.
“Oh dear, you do have a lot to learn, don’t you? All I can tell you is I doubt people would want to go there if they knew what happens to the conscripts. Not that many survive their education.”
Lory was about to tell the woman she could keep her chattering to herself if she couldn’t spew anything of use, when two men in beige-and-black uniforms strode across the small, sand-and-stone yard, up to the cell, their expressions grim and their eyes squinted against the sun.
“Shit, they’re back. Pretend you’re dead.”
Lory didn’t get to dissect why she’d pretend when she basically felt like she wouldn’t make it through the day, anyway. The men had arrived at the cell, one of them unlocking it with a long, sturdy key while the other drew his shortsword.
“You’ve been summoned for trial,” he said, measuring her with a pair of unforgiving eyes, while the other one stood back, opening the door to let the first man into the cell.
Before Lory could object, she was hauled to her feet, her winces ignored as the man dragged her from the cell by the arm, his blade pointed at her throat as if she could even think of attacking.
Lory staggered along, wondering if she’d cut herself on the blade if she stumbled, and a glance at the woman in the other cell told her it was an option worth considering.
“Nice meeting you,” she called after Lory, a half-smile full of pity on her face, and waved with one hand until she was out of sight.
“Where are you taking me?” Lory demanded, forcing steel into her spine as the man shoved her through a narrow door into a low building at the edge of the yard, followed by the second guard, who had also drawn his blade and was surveying her like she was an actual threat.
“Shut up and walk,” he barked. “You only speak when spoken to. You don’t lie, and you don’t try to run. Any attempt will be punished by death.”
Well, great.
A long, three-foot wide, dark corridor and two turns around limestone corners later, they made it to another door, this one guarded by two men in gold and beige. With a nod at the men framing Lory, they opened the inconspicuous door.
Wherever it led, at least it was cooler here, the midday heat blocked out by thick, windowless walls. She’d gladly keep her mouth shut if it meant she wouldn’t be tossed back into the searing sun. And now that her eyes had adjusted, Lory could actually make out her surroundings.
“Move.” The guard behind her poked her back with the hilt of his sword, and Lory set in motion, but her mouth already hung open, even when she still kept all words to herself.
A set of stairs—wide, marble stairs—spread before her like an invitation to trip and break her neck, but that didn’t seem to interest the guards.
They merely marched her ahead, not offering her an opportunity to gawk at the golden symbols on the high, polished walls or the silver band trickling from the ceiling one floor up, filling the air with the sound of a drizzle in the night.
They didn’t stop to allow her to marvel at the excess of water dripping from a hole in the wall just where it met the ornate carvings of the ceiling, but shoved and pulled her forward until everything became a blur of hues of sand and gold and the silver of the water, the background noise lulling her into a near dreamlike state.
Never—not even when she’d scouted the houses of her wealthier victims—had she come across anything similar to this.
The grandeur, the use of water as a piece of furniture, the utter luxury of feeling its cool, humid touch with every movement of air—Lory wished she wasn’t in pain and walking to her execution so she could actually enjoy it.
As it was, all she could think was that she’d be with her brother soon when they cut her head off and that she’d tell Evven of this moment when she’d see him again behind Eroth’s Veil.
Another door stopped them at the end of the next hallway, this one wide enough for four men to walk side by side.
Two more guards in beige-and-gold inclined their heads at the men in beige-and-black, and the door swung open, revealing the largest room Lory had ever seen.
Ridiculously large. The entirety of Lu’Shen’s would have fit in there.
At the front of what could only be called a ballroom, a stage hosted an assembly of maybe twenty people, half of them in familiar shades of sand and beige highlighted with accents of gold and lapis lazuli, and the other half in deepest black.
They seemed to be in a discussion of sorts, while on the floor before the stage, a man was kneeling, a blade pointed at his neck by a guard dressed just like the men shoving Lory over the threshold.