“You saved my life. I was a dead man. I wanted to be dead.”
“It’s an evil thing. I could have killed you.” I still wasn’t sure why I hadn’t.
“I won’t argue that it wasn’t a touch fearful. It’s not something I’d want to do over again… or even to talk about. Not yet. And one more thing” - he jerked his head at the dead maintainers - “I don’t ever want you that riled at me.”
“No time to figure it out right now. We’ve got to get you someplace I can take care of you.”
I didn’t know how long I’d been insensible, and Paulo wouldn’t be able to move fast. How well I knew that. I got to my feet and across the floor, ignoring the way the walls seemed to dip and swirl as I squatted beside him.
“I’m as ready as I’m gonna be for a while.” He was shivering so badly he almost couldn’t get the words out. His breath came in short, tight gasps.
“Don’t try to talk.”
“Don’t forget the others.”
“Others?”
Paulo waved toward the cells lining the block. “Other prisoners.”
Earth and sky… “All right. Hold on. I’ll be right back.”
I grabbed a torch and the keys I’d dropped, and then ran the length of the room, unlocking every cell door and throwing it open. Most cells were empty. In one I glimpsed a dead man. He had been dead a long time, but I think he’d been foul even before that. He had scales.
In another cell I found the disfigured girl from our first day, sitting in the middle of the floor watching the door. I waved my hand impatiently. “Come on, you’re free.” She didn’t move.
I stepped into the cell and offered her my hand, but she refused to take it. “I must stay here for punishing. We took Joca down from his fastness. They’d tied him to its wall.” She gripped her knees, and tears rolled down her cheeks. “He was so broken. Bleeding terrible. The Guardian’s servants grabbed me, but good Singlars carried Joca to safety. I wish no more hurting for him. Ah, Joca… ”
She looked half starved, but no one could call her weak. Not by half. It took me an eternity to persuade her that allowing the Guardian to punish her would not save her friend, that Joca would surely come for her and risk more punishment himself.
“You’re doing the right thing,” I said, when I finally got her moving. “Take care of each other. Just be careful. Don’t let anyone see you.”
“I would never want Joca’s hurting. All I want is goodness for him… and being with him.”
“Things will change,” I said. “I’ll see to it before I go. You and your friend can be together as you should be.”
She knelt and took my hand, bowing her head over it. “You are all kindness, mighty king.”
I shoved her toward the stairs and closed my eyes for a moment so everything would stop spinning. I was in too much of a hurry to explain that I had no intention of being her king.
The last cell in the row appeared to be empty. But just as I turned to go, a slight movement caught the corner of my eye. A rat, most likely, assuming they had vermin here. But the infernal place was as dark as pitch, and I’d left my torch behind when I’d taken the Singlar girl to the stairs, so I stepped through the doorway and squinted to get a better look. “Come out,” I said, just in case it wasn’t a rat. “You’re free.”
A chip of stone smacked into my bruised head. Ten more followed it, stinging all the wrong places.
“Stop that!” I yelled. “Are you crazy? I’ve come to set you free.”
I fumbled around in the dark, fending off a flurry of ineffective blows, and dragged the prisoner out into the torchlight. No sooner had I shoved the fellow up against the wall, than I dropped my hands and stepped back, confounded.
The bedraggled, furious person before me was a girl very near my own age. Though her fair hair was matted, and her face streaked with dirt, she was no Singlar. She had no obvious deformity, and her torn and filthy garment had once been white satin. Even more astonishing, she looked vaguely familiar.
She darted out from between me and the wall, and grabbed an ax from the implement rack, keeping her eyes on me the whole time. “Don’t touch me, you villainous scum. My father will cut off your hands. He’ll put out your eyes for looking at me. Don’t think he won’t.” Though her voice quavered a bit, she brandished the ax with some authority.
“Your father?”
“My father. The King of Leire.”
“Roxanne?” The rock-throwing prisoner was none other than my long-ago playmate, the Crown Princess of Leire. Though shorter than me by a handspan, she’d grown up considerably since I’d seen her last.
I had been eight or nine years old the last time King Evard had come to Comigor to visit. He had sent the two of us off riding with six grooms and six ladies-in-waiting. It had been a miserable afternoon. Roxanne spent the entire time tormenting her servants, arguing with her chaperones, and calling me names. I spent the hours mute and paralyzed with terror that she’d spot me working some sorcery and have her father burn me to death. A most uncomfortable acquaintance. Tomas and Philomena had planned that I would marry Roxanne, but on our return from our ride, the princess announced to her father that I was the stupidest boy in the world, and she’d sooner marry her horse.
“You needn’t be afraid,” I said, holding up my hands, palms open. “We’ll take care of you. My friend and I were prisoners here, too.”
She snorted as if she were sitting in her salon in Montevial. “You don’t look like you’re capable of caring for your boots, much less me. And as for him” - she glared at Paulo, who was looking like a particularly grotesque gargoyle on a castle battlement - “I’ve seen livelier fellows at their own hanging. If you want to ‘help,’ then you will show me where I can take a bath, find me a decent garment to put on, and send a message to my father to come for me. He’ll kill every nasty villain in this hellish place.” She did not lower the ax.
Paulo started choking, and I forgot all about the princess and hurried back to him, worried to death until I realized he was laughing and about killing himself with it. “Oh, damn… oh damn… ” He held his ribs, gasping for breath.
“Don’t turn your back on me, boy,” the princess yelled at me, brandishing the ax. “I said - ”
“You listen to me, Your Highness,” I said, crossing the space between us in two steps. We had no time for this.
Ready to dodge, I raised my hand as if to strike her. She swung the ax. Ax swings are not easily recovered… especially by someone inexperienced. In one swift movement, I ducked the blow, grabbed her arm and the ax handle, and yanked the ax from her hand, throwing it across the dungeon well out of reach. Though she wriggled and hissed, I gripped her arms tight while I gave her the rules.
“I don’t know if you have any idea where you are or how different is this place from anywhere you’ve ever been, but if you ever want to see Montevial again, you’d best take heed. I don’t give two coppers for you, your father, Leire, or anything else you’re likely to care about, so if you cross me, I’ll leave you behind. There are people here who would as soon eat you as look at you. By the remotest twitch of chance you’ve fallen in with someone who not only might be able to get you home, but also knows that when you were nine, you stuffed three cherry tarts into your jumper, and ended up with them leaking all down your leg. You were so angry at your own stupidity that you ripped your jumper and told everyone you’d been chased through the woods by bandits and fought them off with your riding crop. It was lucky a whole village wasn’t hanged for it. So I know you, and you’ll not pull your tricks on me.”
I don’t know whether it was the disarming, the threats, the sight of the two dead maintainers facedown in a pool of blood, or simple mystification at my familiarity with her past, but she stared at me speechless, an unaccustomed state for this particular princess as I remembered. I let her go and steadied her on her feet, gesturing toward Paulo. “My friend here needs care. You will help me carry him out of here, and you will help me tend him. Then maybe I won’t toss you back in that cell for our jailers to play with. Do you understand?”