34. Chapter 30
Chapter 30
Tanead
C old water slithered up my nose and poured down the sides of my face. It soaked the cloth covering my head and the damned prince just kept pouring. I pressed my lips together but it found its way in anyway, burrowing like a critter into even the smallest opening, like it just wanted to be inside me.
I’d never liked water. I’d grown up cleansing my skin with oils so as not to waste the precious stuff. In my travels, I’d milked droplets of sour water from the roots of plants during the dry season. I remembered how it felt to hardly wet your tongue and know it must be enough for days. Now all I could think about was how much the crown prince was wasting as the freezing liquid splashed into my ears. It rolled down my chest and pooled on the dragonstone floor.
It was automatic to shake my head, to try to find a hint of air around the stream of water. I made a closed-mouth roar, a sound like a river elephant about to charge. A powerful one. A mother. The men who surrounded me should know to fear the sound, but they didn’t.
Or they feared their prince more.
There was liquid in my lungs when they stopped pouring and took the cloth away. I coughed it out as best I could; the breath I took gurgled.
“Why don’t you burn?” Amon asked.
“You sound disappointed,” I coughed. “Are you cold?”
Amon laughed. It didn’t take much to make him laugh. I’d learned that as we got acquainted. His eyes were bright with frenetic enjoyment. He paced as if he couldn’t contain all the joy my pain made him feel. He wove through the line of men he’d brought with him. Every one of them carried a club made of dragonstone. They wore thick leather gloves, and they did not touch me.
They’d not even touched me after they lowered my cage and undid the lock. They’d prodded me with their clubs until I got onto the slab of dragonstone that served as a table. They’d had to touch me, then, as they tightened the straps to secure me. I could burn through them, of course, but then what? Another thing Amon had made clear pretty quickly was that he wasn’t stupid. He’d taken reasonable precautionary measures.
“You can learn a lot about an animal when you cause it pain. Did you know that? I hear the scholars of such things call it science. And I’m here to learn about you, demon.”
“Am I so fascinating?”
“Oh, yes.” He leaned in. “I want to know what makes you burn. I want to know how to stop it. I want to know how many men you have in your so-called army. I want to know how to kill the dragon.”
“I didn’t imagine you invaders to be so curious,” I said lightly, before I hacked up more water.
“I’m a curious man,” Amon confirmed. His hand pressed his finger firmly into my forehead. He, alone among them, seemed unafraid to touch me. The cloth went back over my face and I took a breath before it began again, the freezing water, an invading force that besieged my skin before it burrowed deep inside like an enemy in the tunnels. Panic flooded my limbs, making me thrash, but panic was nothing but a physical response chosen by my body. My mind could be stronger. I took my panic and I set it aside.
You are strong, said the deep voice of Kutha in my mind. The heat in my chest from holding my breath was joined by the sweet heat of love.
Kutha loved me. He was here with me, supporting me. As long as he watched me, I would make him proud.
“How many demons fight in your army?” Amon asked as the freezing water flooded my insides. “How many?”
The water stream stopped and I coughed, hacked out an answer. “Can’t count that high.”
It poured again.
Time was a construct of the mind. Unhinge your mind and time unhinges as well; it floats away like a feather in the wind. What to replace it with? Why, god’s light, of course. Just ahead, it poured from a doorway like a welcome beacon. The doorway was a pit, it was a mouth yawning open. I had a strange sensation that the tongue of a monster would snake out at any moment and capture me but I walked on anyway, ignoring it.
I regained consciousness as Amon slapped my face, brusque and businesslike.
“Don’t waste time,” he scolded.
I spat up half an ocean. I’d never seen the ocean. I’d heard it was as vast as the sky, but what man knew? What man had ever seen the whole sky?
“Time is a construct of the mind,” I informed the prince. He could learn so much from me if he listened to the answers I gave to the questions he hadn’t asked. “And so is pain. Neither will make me give up my secrets.”
Amon’s eyes narrowed but he bounced a little in excitement. He paced more fervently. He liked a challenge. “We’ll see, demon. You still have all your fingers. You have all your skin. We’re just getting started.”
I shrugged. Though I didn’t relish what would come, neither did I fear it. Pain is just sensation in the body. Honor is of the soul. Bravery is of the mind.
Oh, it wasn’t that I didn’t know what these Slayers could— would— do. My mother had died in this underworld. Perhaps once she’d been held in my cage. Perhaps I’d die here, too. Or perhaps I’d fly away on the back of the reborn god Kutha, and the claw of the giant I’d Bonded would crush all the Slayers on our way out.
I splayed out my fingers and raised my hand as far as it could reach, being strapped down. I offered my dominant hand. The horns on the knuckles of that hand were shattered from Caelan’s little temper tantrum. They’d grow again, in time. If the hand stayed attached.
“Let’s skip ahead,” I suggested.
Amon cackled again. The men around him were stone-faced. It was as if he’d cut their ears out and we were the only two actual beings in the room.
You’re not alone, Kutha reminded me. They were the words of a love song; they wrapped me in a blanket of comfort, warming me from the inside.
I will never be alone again.
“You’re insane,” Amon said. “They say all demons are insane, but the Tajawls most of all.”
“We teach our children that a certain amount of insanity protects one from the deeper madness brought on by Bonding a dragon. It runs in our blood to be a little bit crazy, and in exchange, we are the least likely to go mad from the Bond. There, Prince. A little bit of information about my people that you didn’t know before.”
“Very helpful,” Amon drawled. “Let me go use it to arrange my troop movements.”
“You don’t arrange troop movements.” I coughed out the remaining water in my lungs. That felt better. “You’re not entrusted with any important aspects of running your father’s empire. In fact, torturing me is the most important thing you’ve ever done. At least it draws on your strengths.”
Ah, his fury flooded back, which proved it true. I’d enjoy torturing the prince while he tortured me.
“Again,” he said tightly, and his stone men swarmed my face with water and cloth.
Have you seen the sea? I asked Kutha. It was good to take my mind away, to fly it far far away from here.
Of course. I have lived a hundred lifetimes.
Is it as vast as the sky, like they say?
As vast, no, Kutha answered. His voice sounded pensive, as if he took my question very seriously and sought hard to remember. For the Mother made the sea and the Father made the sky, and the Father is more powerful. But it is deep. Once, I flew out to the end of the horizon and I dove in. I had to surface to breathe before I could reach the bottom.
Awe suffused me. I imagined my current struggle to breathe as kin with the great god’s on that day. Did I feel a fraction of a thing he’d once felt?
What was it like down there?
The weight of the water presses at you. It tries to make you small.
You are Kutha. You could never be small.
I am your god. I could never be small, the god confirmed.
Ah, air. I gasped it in. In my mind, Kutha’s great scaled body crested the surface of the ocean. Wings flapped and droplets scattered the surface as they flew off him. Had his lungs felt as hot as mine when they filled once more with sweet air?
“You know, I like your brother better than you,” I said.
Amon’s lip curled down, though his eyes remained carefully disinterested. “Few people would say that.”
“Out loud,” I finished for him.
Amon’s eyes narrowed. “He treated you well, then, when you were his captive? How disappointingly like him to do so.”
I shrugged as best I could in my bindings. “I was unconscious. He could’ve pissed in my mouth and I wouldn’t know about it.”
Amon smiled again. “And would you consider that ill treatment or pleasure?”
“I’m exclusively interested in horned women,” I informed him.
“Yes, you must think of your bloodline. I've heard Tajawl blood sings to the dragon-gods. Is it true?"
"I imagine it as a nice soprano."
"But perhaps the baby god might not like your particular lullaby."
"I don't hear anybody else singing," I said.
"Now, now. Even I know that it's not only Tajawls that can Bond dragons. There are still Theubans, aren't there? And even demons of common blood have become Riders."
"Not this time."
"Brave words from the fool who ran away from that dragon and into my underworld." Amon leaned in. "Do you know what I think? I think you were scared she would reject you, and that's why you left your mountain."
“I left the mountain because I listened to the Mother-fucking priestess. You want to strap her to a table and ask her questions, I’d like to hear about it. You can tell it to me like a bedtime story.”
A fresh smile curled up Amon’s thin lips. His eyes darted unconsciously to the entrance to the cavern, as if he feared we might be overheard. “Oh really? And what can you tell me about Caelan’s new little toy?”
It was my turn to smile.
“When it comes to the priestess, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”