Chapter 1 #3
I shivered, considering what situation Renn’s sister had found herself in to have to discard this dress.
She’d seemed hale enough on the deck, but I knew personally that looks could deceive.
I hadn’t heard her scream, or any foul language regarding her person on the tongues of sailors.
I hoped for the best. I might lose my mind if I didn’t.
The king turned around before I gave him any indication of my state of dress, and he grinned at me in a way that made me feel covered in oil. “I thought that might suit you.”
I did not ask why he had the princess’s gown. A casual servant in the castle likely would not have noticed it. And I could not let him think I was close to the royal family . . . or what was left of it.
Relief, and I daresay a bit of elation, sparked in my chest. Something muted, like I was reading a story, but not truly feeling the sensations for myself. I pressed my hand to my breastbone, then drank more from the water bladder to hide the sudden shift in emotion.
What, Renn? I wondered. Had he discovered a strategy against Sesta? Had he recruited new soldiers, or obtained useful information? I couldn’t know where he’d ended up after my capture, but the sensations I received made it feel like he was fighting back, or at least trying to.
He felt like the other end of a dream. I’d never wake up without him.
A knock came at the door. I stepped aside—even a king’s cabin on a ship was small—and a crewman came in carrying a wooden tray with strange foods on it. Sestan foods, with sauces and fried patties and a strange fluffy grain. He set it down on the small table in the room, bowed, and left.
“Sit.” King Nicosia gestured to the chair nearest me. “I’m not going to poison you.”
Of course he wouldn’t, unless he wanted his precious information to die with me. So I sat and started eating without invitation. The king watched me for a full minute before taking a seat and serving himself in a more dignified manner. I didn’t care. I was not here to impress him, nor to help him.
“Why are you so mistrusting of me, Miss Tallowax?” he asked, that honeycomb sweetness returning.
I’d had plenty of time to ruminate on the best way to answer his questions, and I’d practiced with Ursa as well. I could not be silent forever. That might indict me more than words would. “Because you burned down my home and captured me against my will. What kind of a question is that?”
I easily could have been born and raised in Rove, for all he knew. Though with the draft, he could figure I’d come from afar.
He nodded. “I do apologize. My army got a little . . . out of hand. The general has been disciplined.”
Liar, I thought, and ate bland grain and tart sauce.
“And you lived in the castle?”
I bided my time before answering, glad to have the excuse of chewing food to mull over my responses. “I served there.”
“Served Prince Renn.”
“I served anyone who needed healing.” I took a long drink from the bladder, swallowing its last drops. The king offered me wine, but I did not accept it. The last thing I wanted was inebriation. Not when I had so much to protect. “The Noblewights, the servants, the livestock.”
“And what’s so special about you, hm?” he asked. “Why you over the many others who’d come for the same position?”
I shrugged. “I guess I’m fast. I’d be happy to demonstrate.”
Demonstrating would mean hurting him first, but I need not explain that. The way the king’s lip turned up, he understood my meaning.
“You are not a very . . . demure servant, are you?”
I set down my fork. “Why should I be?” I asked around a mouthful of meat.
I swallowed, letting genuine frustration leak into my voice.
“I was hired against my will and forced to take unpaid work for nobility who didn’t give a pig’s backside about me, my family, or my people.
Nobility who would have killed me for the craft had their precious baby not fallen ill. ”
He reached across the table to touch my hand. Outwardly, it would seem a sign of comfort, but I knew what he wanted. Knew that focus in his eyes. He was trying to read me again, dive into my thoughts. But my basalt wall held firm.
He released me a moment later. “Why won’t you let me understand you? Truly understand you. Surely you do not despise the craft of mindreading, when you yourself have experienced so much prejudice against your own.”
I glowered at him. “My thoughts and memories are mine. I do not wish to share them with anyone.”
“Not even your family? Your husband?”
I frowned. “No.” All the better if he thought me married. The half-heart connection aside, if King Nicosia understood how Renn and I felt about each other, he could still use me against him.
My own guilt twisted in my gut. Renn had already lost so much. If I’d grasped the chill of death clinging to the castle, if I’d been able to save Adrinn in time . . . how might these events have transpired differently?
King Nicosia leaned back then, folding his arms, studying me.
I glanced at the mastiff, wondering if I could possibly grab the beast by the collar and haul it overboard with me.
Would the dog sink and drown me with him, or would he swim and keep us afloat?
I could swim decently, but not for long. Not in the icy waves of Salm’s Rest.
As the king watched me, his smile slowly faded. “Well. I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to get to know each other better.” He slid the wine toward me. “Tell me about yourself.”
Full, I pushed back from the table as much as the small cabin would allow me. “You first. Please.”
He chuckled. “Such heartless disrespect for chivalry you have, Miss Tallowax. It surprises me, the way women are treated in Cansere. I wouldn’t think you’d have the opportunity to develop it as you have.”
My stomach churned, trying to remember what to do with the food I’d given it. I dowsed to soothe it, only to have the king’s toe hook around a leg of my chair and jerk me forward. “None of that.”
“I feel sick,” I shot back. “I was deprived for five days and just gorged. Of course I feel sick.”
“Then I suggest you drink something. Slowly this time.”
I met his eyes, staring, waiting for my stomach to settle. Did not touch the wine. Sighing, he handed me a new waterskin. I sipped at it contents, then pulled it away and sniffed.
“You’re rather smart,” he offered.
“You son of a whore.” My tongue started to thicken in my mouth. He’d put something in the water.
He shrugged. “You’ll be easier cargo this way. Don’t take it personally.”
I absolutely did, even as my body went slack in the chair and teetered over.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t slip away and let him beat down my carefully placed wall.
The moment I hit the floor, I dowsed, my lumis tipping and shifting as I tried to focus on where the drug made the stones of my crenellated wall slick. Tried to clear as much as I could before—
“Wake up, Nym,” Ursa whispered. “It’s been too long. He’s going to try to fight his way in.”
I blearily opened my eyes. I lay in the hold again, soulbound to the mastiff. I could feel the tether linked somewhere behind my breastbone. My heart beat weakly, sickly. I hadn’t been able to refuel the magic holding it together.
“Be quiet,” she urged.
My body weighed a thousand pounds. Closing my eyes, I tried to keep my breathing even and slipped into my lumis.
It shimmered before my eyes, the way a hot road shimmers with summer heat.
I fed the pieces of my heart first, steadying it.
Then, leaning against the basalt wall, I pulled magic into me, demanding extra through Ursa, and bade the wall grow thicker, harder.
Imagined it forming a sphere beneath the floor, guarding my lumis from all sides, even the unseen.
As much as I could before he drugged me again. I had to stay ahead of him.
King Nicosia may have had all three forms of craftlock, but I had a second healer within me. I prayed to Alm, god over healing, that it would be enough.
A flicker of worry, deep in my chest. Like the scent of an oncoming storm.
Renn, I thought, and pushed myself harder, channeling as much magic as I could.
I heard approaching footsteps as my consciousness slipped again.
You will not have him, I promised, and sank into the black.