15. FIFTEEN #2
She wriggled her wrists painfully for the tenth time since Jamad’s departure.
She’d only been in Nelfindar a few months, but one thing was certain: it was impossible to be a woman here without someone looking at you like you were their next meal.
With this dinner party forthcoming, she didn’t need to interpret what the evening held in store for her.
Perhaps she would make Thacklore his weapon when she got out of this—then fry him with it. What she would give to see this manor burn to the ground…
Futile thoughts. She needed Thacklore; she and Thedexemore were under the double-edged blade of his protection. The Nelfinden authorities did not see kindly to Azadonians. Neither did the streets.
The time in Thacklore’s rooms passed sickeningly slow. The maid usually returned Thedexemore to Attilatia after her work sessions. Not today. The child might be hungry. He might be terrified. Worse yet, he might not have noticed anything had changed.
Light faded behind the windows. That usually brought her comfort, but tonight the passage of time was not in her favor.
She was sure Thacklore’s guests had arrived by now, but sound didn’t carry in the manor.
When a man had many secrets, walls became a powerful investment.
She needed a miracle to get out unscathed.
Even if she survived the trials of the night, Thacklore—his basement, his insults, his bed—would await her for the remainder of her foreseeable future.
Slavery was illegal in Nelfindar, she knew that much. It was the one thing that separated this country from the pure barbarism of the Tera’thians. But Thacklore played by his own rules. She owed him. For that, he owned her.
Attilatia bit her lip, squeezing her eyes shut to stem the flow of tears.
She hated that she actually appreciated Thacklore’s brilliance in forcing a weapon from her.
Only fools believed money and power were of the same cloth.
True, they formed a symbiosis and were rarely seen in isolation.
But when power existed without monetary crutch, it was in its most dangerous form.
She was far more valuable to Thacklore if she created weapons.
And what he was doing to her to get it? Well, men killed for far less.
Her only option was to be enough of a problem to him that he would rather sell her than deal with her. And because power was worth more than wealth to him, she’d need to depreciate the one thing with more value to him than power: reputation.
The semblance of a plan had only started to form in her mind when the door to the room burst open. A tall man of middling age and more hair on his arms than his head stumbled in.
Stumbling was good. In spite of her revulsion, the man’s condition could be advantageous.
“Good. You here,” she tried in Nelfinden. Who knew whether anything she said was intelligible. “Thacklore leave you key.”
The man stared at her, swaying slightly. Ever so slowly, he turned to look at the key sitting innocently on the dresser. His fingers fumbled for it, then clutched it triumphantly.
Attilatia scarcely believed her luck as the scraggly sot in gentlemen’s attire knelt beside her.
He tried to stick the key in its hole—if his finesse was any indication, he might not know where to put his prick anyway, given the chance.
Words she didn’t understand slurred from his mouth until one of her hands was freed.
Then the next. Before she could leap away, he was on top of her, lips and hands and pelvis pressed against her.
The man swore as her knee collided with his groin. She maneuvered away and lunged for the exit, but he scrambled to his feet and barred the door. He shouted something obscene, his teeth bared.
Fury took her until she was shrieking back at him. She’d been cornered—exploited. For information that belonged to her. They’d taken Thedexemore’s family for it. They’d taken everything she had for it. But not this.
She kicked at his groin again. He caught her foot and brought her to the floor. She tried to crawl away, but he clawed his way up her leg. She slammed her elbow down: once to the nose—something cracked—and once to the throat. He reeled backward, face covered, roaring in pain.
Attilatia sprinted for the far wall and ripped the dowaga free. It was cold and horrible in her hands.
The man hesitated only a moment before attacking, making for the weapon’s twin grips.
He tried to wrench it from her. He nearly succeeded—would have, had he not been verging on stupefaction.
She leveraged the weapon against him, slowly pressing the curving blade toward his chest until—one more kick where it counted—his grip released.
The steel plunged down. Once. Twice. A third time. The man crumpled. Blood gushed from the holes in his chest.
Unwilling to take her chances, Attilatia clenched shaking fingers around the handle before cleaving the dowaga into his neck.
It didn’t cut clean through, the way she’d thought it would.
She could have stopped there; he was certainly dead.
But something deeply broken within her wanted to feel steel strike floorboard.
Her arms had never worked so hard. The blade kept rising and falling.
She might have been screaming. She might have been silent.
Her face was wet when the wood stole the blade from her hands.
Her fingers curled instead into the man’s hair, pulling his head from where it belonged.
She tried not to think about how heavy it was.
Tried not to think of the heat drenching her feet.
She staggered from Thacklore’s room, through the hall, down the stairs and directly into Thacklore’s dinner party.
Bearded men shouted. Women in beaded kaftans fled, their screams shrill. Attilatia’s heart drummed in her ears as her eyes found Thacklore. That was what did her in—that deadpan face, staring at her. He was still seated at the table’s end, lips pulling at a freshly lit pipe.
She threw the severed head onto the spread. It scattered trays of food and dishes and cast red freckles against crystal stemware before coming to a rest, jaw slack, glass eyes reflecting the chandelier.
“Sell me!” She didn’t recognize the barking voice as her own. “Sell me!”
The whole room went silent enough to hear a steady dripping of fluid against porcelain. Thacklore released a cloud of smoke into the haze. He pulled an embroidered cloth from his pocket, bundled the pipe, and returned it.