Maxim hadn’t needed magic to create his revolution among the gullible lower classes, to turn those mindless animals, human animals, loose to destroy her city. The rebels followed him, all the while cheering for a foolish dream they had not earned.
As anger and frustration welled within her, Thora lashed out again, opened her fingers to slam a trembling quake of magic against the wall like a mastiff battering the sides of a cage, but the spell runes deflected her onslaught, and the magic dissipated without any effect.
Thora sank back and let the flicker of fire die in her hands. She gripped the chipped stone bench and listened to the resounding silence again.
Darkness made the time pass interminably, and she didn’t know how long she waited before she saw the light brighten in the corridor outside. She heard heavy footsteps, hard boots, the jangle of keys. She heard gruff voices, saw shadows outside the barred window.
With a scraping sound, the crossbar slid aside as it was removed from its metal rests, followed by a squeak and clank as the deadbolt shot back. The hinges protested as two burly guards pushed the door open. Light poured into the cell, making silhouettes of the two men from their torches, but Thora’s eyes adjusted.
One man, with black stubble on his chin and a helmet askew on his wide head, wore an ill-fitting armored vest taken from the city guard. He obviously wasn’t accustomed to such a uniform. With a pang, she remembered how dashing High Captain Avery had looked when he guarded Thora and also served as her lover. But Avery had been slaughtered in the streets by Mirrormask’s rebels, and Thora knew it was no accident. Maxim—Mirrormask—had done it just to spite her, out of an acid twinge of jealousy.
These two guards were obviously rebel slaves who now felt important, having taken unearned uniforms. The first man looked at Thora with a hungry sneer and spoke in a blunt voice that made her doubt the extent of his vocabulary. “We’ve come to you again, Sovrena. Are you lonely yet? You might be partly stone, but your skin looks smooth enough. If we spread your legs, would you be soft and wet where it counts?”
“I doubt you would be hard enough to find out,” she retorted.
The second guard snickered at the insult.
Thora continued, “Or maybe I would crush your soft little member, like between two stones.”
Struggling for words, the gruff guard proved that he did not, indeed, have much vocabulary.
The second guard carried a tray with hard bread, a cup of water, and a small bowl of gruel. “We brought your food, but if the siege lasts longer, we might have to cut off prisoner rations.”
Thora wasn’t hungry. Even though this was the third time guards had brought food, she’d never felt the need to eat or drink. The water did nothing for her and the food just felt leaden in her stomach. When the guard approached, she smashed the meal out of his hands, and her hardened fist split the tray down the middle. The guards scampered backward as the broken dishes clattered to the cell floor, uncertain of what she could do.
“I don’t want any rations,” she said. “I want my freedom.”
“That’s beyond our ability to give, Sovrena,” said the second guard.
Still stinging from her insult, the first guard said, “We’ll leave you with your own company. And the dark. And the rats.” He huffed. “You can think about me in your dreams.”
The second guard looked at her with scorn. “I liked it better when you were a statue in the ruling tower. It’s what you deserved.” He looked down at the broken tray and crockery. “No more rations for you. We’ll save the food for the good people of Ildakar.”
With a grunt of effort, the guards pulled the door shut. Keys turned in the lock, and the deadbolt slid into place again. They rammed the crossbar onto its rests.
The men departed, extinguishing the torches behind them. She sat on the stone bench in darkness again, extended her hand, and called forth the magical fire, playing with the flame as it bobbed and danced in her palm.
CHAPTER 19
From behind the safety of the high walls, Bannon watched. He wanted to fight, wanted to do something, but how could even the entire city stand against such an enormous enemy?
His greatest hurt, though, came from the night of the revolt and the terrible circumstances that had built up to so much violence. His thoughts turned to the treacherous young men who had claimed to be his friends. False friends. His heart was torn by what had been done to him. Amos, Jed, and Brock had set him up and done nothing to save him, hadn’t even bothered to tell Nicci or Nathan what happened when he was captured and dragged down into the training pits. Yes, he had survived the ordeal—scarred, and maybe even stronger for it—but how could friends do that to him?
The answer was obvious: they had never been friends at all.
When Lila recently sparred with him, she had urged him to put aside his grudges. In order for Ildakar to endure this crisis, the city could not tear itself apart. The besieging army was dangerous enough to force them to set aside their differences.
Jed and Brock, though … their actions were malicious. Led by Amos, they had taken the young and naive outsider under their wing to show him their city, but they had done it only to trick him, to mock him. But Bannon was not just some gullible fool.
Now he strapped on his sword and shored up his courage, knowing he couldn’t avoid this any longer. It was time he confronted the two surviving young men and made them understand what they had done.
His fingers clenched around Sturdy’s leather-wrapped grip, his forearm bunched, and he could feel the ripple of hard muscles—muscles that had grown strong from hand-to-hand fighting and wrestling, from swinging weapons. Bannon was strong in his heart and mind, too.
He left the grand villa and made his way to the headquarters of the skinners’ guild and Lord Oron, the newest member of the duma, who was Brock’s father. The young man paid no attention to the tightly packed grapevines on narrow terraces along the steep hillsides or the clustered orchards of dwarf fruit trees. A few workers were out picking grapes, harvesting apples, plucking green olives from the trees. Much of the work had simply been abandoned after the uprising. The freed slaves were indignant and many refused their responsibilities. “Let the nobles get blisters picking crops for a change.”
Others, though, understood that if the city were to survive this siege, they would need all the food Ildakar could produce. Former slaves would starve just as quickly as nobles did. Those who went back to work did so by their own choice, out of responsibility rather than oppression. Their families, at least, would have something to eat.
Bannon wore simple clothes, feeling uncomfortable in a fur-lined cape or billowing pantaloons, which were the height of Ildakaran fashion. Despite his many adventures, in his heart he still thought of himself as a farm boy from Chiriya Island. He would never lose that core.
Amos, Jed, and Brock had considered him to be beneath them, but they nevertheless dragged him to the silk yaxen dachas, trying to get him to partake of the pleasure women along with them. At first he was sure they were teasing him, or maybe the three really wanted to make Bannon just like them. Silk yaxen were women created and trained to be nothing more than beautiful bodies to serve the pleasure of their customers. They supposedly couldn’t think, couldn’t feel, but Bannon had always felt sorry for them.
Amos had treated the silk yaxen Melody the worst. On the night of the revolt, he had raped her, slapped her, bruised her, and she finally responded, using a shard of broken glass to slash his throat. That same night, seven other silk yaxen had killed their abusive customers. Afterward, they reverted to their meek and pliable state, not denying their crimes, but passively accepting them. With all the other turmoil going on in Ildakar, Bannon wasn’t sure the women would ever be called to account for their crimes. Justice had indeed been served in its own way. He couldn’t help but think of how his own mother had been beaten and murdered by his father.