A Trial of Sparks & Kindling (Fall of the Mantle Book 2) Page 17

  “About time,” the queen said.

  Lance regained his composure just as his own cell’s door grated over the floor. He grabbed the hand offered to him.

  She was blond, her eyes wild, but her shoulders were straight and confident. Her dress was dark, stained with dungeon muck, but of fine quality, better than anything Lance had ever seen. She held his fingertip-lacking hand and said, “Come with me.”

  She didn’t look away from his rot-scarred face, not a muscle moved to show fear or disgust, and he’d been down there long enough to reek of death. This was a formidable woman. Cutter was right—she really was worth betting on.

  “Don’t have to ask me twice,” he said. “I don’t know protocol or anything—”

  “Sera. My name is Sera.”

  A tall ghost stood among the group around Sera.

  “Ahmed?” Lance’s eyes stretched as wide as they’d go. “And Doc Cutter? What in damnation?”

  “No time,” a man hanging between Ahmed and another man with reddish hair said. Sallow skin, yellowing eyes—that was rot.

  “Run,” the reddish one said.

  A sea of escapees ebbed and flowed in every direction, but the reddish one led them down a path free of other prisoners, into a long, dark tunnel.

  One of Sera’s group was the short, orange-haired physician Lance had seen in the slums a time or two with the lady-physician. Where the hell was she these days? He shook his head. This orange one was slower than the rest, always falling back. No surprise with legs that short and solid.

  Lance hooked his arm through the orange one’s and hauled him along.

  “Thanks—” He wheezed. “Jerry.”

  “Lance.”

  The tunnel exited under a bright street lamp, where a pair of guards lay bleeding from head wounds on the cobbles. The path led to one of those mechanical steam carriages.

  They boarded—a bloody tight fit. They had the sense to put the sick one with the conductor, but they’d all been exposed. Maybe Cutter would have them disinfect when they reached their destination? Heh. The rest of them, eleven in total, almost sat in each other’s laps in the carriage.

  Puffs of smoke rose as they rode away, faster and faster, until everything outside was a blur.

  Chapter 21

  “Here you go, Carabelle.” A knock sounded at the door in the same moment Malak held out the sedative and a spoon to Cara. “Have a drink, and I’ll see who’s here.”

  Cara plopped down on the edge of her bed and pretended to fumble with the bottle cap. She almost dropped the bottle when Frank’s reflection grinned back at her from the doorway.

  He’d returned. He’d actually returned. Because he cared, or just to see his handiwork for himself? Malak might be the one pouring the medicine down Cara’s throat, but the order had come from Frank. Frank and his murderous puppeteer.

  Pretend, Cara. Pretend so that Sera would be proud.

  “Morning, Mouse.” His smile flickered out as he studied her face and the bottle she held but returned brighter after a split second.

  “I can’t open this,” Cara said to Malak.

  Malak rushed over to help. She poured some of the sticky brown liquid into the spoon and held it near Cara’s mouth. “Here you go.”

  Spoon-fed like an infant. Salamander’s spit, how much more could she stand? Yet Cara parted her lips and kept the medicine in her mouth. The bitterness poked at her tongue until her gorge rose, but she didn’t swallow.

  “Look, my lamb. You have a visitor.” Malak held Cara by the shoulders and bent down, so their cheeks touched. “See? It’s Frank.” She kissed Cara’s head, then stood and lowered her voice a bit. “Be gentle with her, won’t you? This stuff really takes its toll, but I think we’re almost there.”

  Cara shuffled to the bathroom, and Malak followed to close the door behind her.

  “Poor thing. I think the ethirin affects her stomach,” Malak said through the door. “She constantly has to go and is losing so much weight.”

  Oh, so that was what Malak believed. Cara spat the medicine and returned to the bedroom.

  “Give us a moment.” Frank’s lips flattened.

  “I’m not done with her yet.” Malak ran her fingers through Cara’s hair.

  “Then do what you must do,” Frank said.

  “I know she looks bad now, but it’ll get better.” Malak took Cara by the elbow and made her sit in front of the mirror.

  “Better.” He buried his face in his palms. “This had all better be worth it. Look at her, Malak. There’s nothing left of her. Even during the worst times at Chastain’s, she never looked this bad.”

  Come on, say something important.

  Cara picked a stone in the wall slightly bigger and darker than the ones surrounding it and stared at it while she counted and breathed until she could stop her shaking.

  “You know this is for the best. We’ll get her over to our side, and everything will be all right.” Malak segmented off a chunk of Cara’s hair with a comb and twisted it around the hot iron. “We can’t have her trusting Du Pont.”

  Frank held up a forefinger. “One, nobody has a bloody clue where Du Pont is.”

  “Bah.” Malak rolled her eyes. “You haven’t done all you can to find him.”

  Pointy was gone? If there was any grace in the world, he’d found out about Celestine’s plans and was hiding somewhere.

  Frank also extended his middle finger and gestured up and down Cara’s body. “And two, how long can this go on?”

  As long as you let it, Frank. Cara met Frank’s gaze.

  His lips smiled, but his eyes swam with unshed tears.

  So. He cared, but not enough to stop this plan.

  “It takes as long as it takes,” Malak said. “You know as well as I that larger quantities of ethirin are needed to change ingrained ideas.”

  Ethirin? Was that what they were giving her? Cara held her breath. Celestine’s favourite drug? The one she’d given Le Roux? Dammit.

  “I know, but meanwhile, we’re making an addict of my baby sister. I’ve said it, and I’ll say it again—I don’t think giving her the ethirin is a good idea. We should have tried talking to her first, but nobody is listening to me.”

  So ethirin was addictive, as an added side-benefit to the confusion, numbness, and thinned blood. Great. How addictive, though? Some medicines were so addictive that the user could be reliant within a few days, while others took much longer to cause any sort of dependency. If she had to act like someone already addicted to ethirin, she had to know more about it.

  “I’m sick of this.” Frank flopped onto his back.

  “Oh, get yourself together,” Malak said. “You’re the king of Mordoux, not a whiny child. Discredit and kill Du Pont, marry the battle axe, then we’ll work on Aelland.” Malak wiped at a smudge under Cara’s eye. “We’re gaining strength, Frank. We’re almost ready to invade Aelland, and when you’ve defeated the emperor and united the Seven Kingdoms, Cara will understand why we had to do this to her. She loves you and will forgive you. Won’t you, my lamb?”

  Discredit and kill Pointy? Unite the Seven Kingdoms? Cara hadn’t expected that. “My lamb.”

  Malak patted her cheek. “There’s a good girl.”

  “She’s not stupid, Malak.” Frank rose and kicked the edge of the bed.

  “Nobody said she is. Look, my love, I know how difficult this is, it’s difficult for me, too. I’m the one doing all the work. She’ll hate me most when the truth comes out, but I promise you it’ll be worth it in the end.” Malak combed through the coils of Cara’s hair with her fingers. “We’ll have to leave it this way today, my lamb, but we’ll play with it again tomorrow. All right?”

  Cara nodded.

  “Good. I’ll be back in a while.” Malak waved and left.

  “Hello, Cara.” Frank moved closer cautiously. He reached out but didn’t touch her.

  Cara’s muscles stiffened, yet that traitorous part of her heart lightened just at the sight of h
im. But this wasn’t the brother she’d worshipped. This was a vicious stranger who allowed her to be hurt. She cocked her head and held his gaze, mouth open, and jerked her eyebrows.

  He made a sound between a laugh and a groan. “Creator, you look horrible.”

  She let her knees buckle, and Frank caught her before she fell. All sorts of pain flashed in the look he gave her, jaw clenched, knuckles white. One part of her was sorry for him, but the other celebrated. He didn’t know it was an act.

  Frank swallowed twice, then led her to the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” He banged the door as he stormed out.

  He didn’t lock her in.

  Cara waited for his footsteps to fade, then cracked open the door. A pair of guards stood chatting outside, too close to slip by. Too close for a princess to slip by. An apprentice adept at invisibility was another matter altogether.

  She retrieved her robe from the armoire and slung it over the dress. The white fabric covered all the frills and frosting, and she hid her hair in the hood. She wore flat shoes—a necessity for one so intoxicated.

  Thankfully, Malak had left the morning tea tray on the small table, and Cara balanced the tray on one hand. How many times hadn’t she brought tea to Magnus’s rooms in the same way?

  How she missed him. How she longed for those days spent together in his office, the father she’d adopted, a monolith in her life. A lump rose in Cara’s throat, but she swallowed it down.

  She straightened her shoulders, checked in the mirror that her hair was still covered, then stepped into the hall. She held her face at a downward angle, as was expected of servants, and carried the tray in front of her like a shield. The guards noticed only the tray and let her pass. Most people in the castle glanced right over her. Why wouldn’t they? They had no idea what their princess looked like—so few of them had seen her.

  The halls, however, were all the same. Grey stone floors, grey stone walls, no windows. Which way was out?

  Cara dared not stop moving and dared not ask for directions. The people had to believe she belonged, or they might figure out who she was. She came to a split in the hall, and looked right, then left. Where now?

  Someone crashed into her.

  Cara barely held on to her tray, but by some miracle, nothing fell.

  “Are you all right there?” a man asked.

  Cara’s heart plummeted.

  He was blond, his beard long and coarse but the hair on his head straight and styled to perfection. About as tall as Nathan, but broader of shoulder. A soldier. His eyes were cool blue, and he smiled with ease—a quality all Mordians seemed to inherit.

  Nic, Frank’s second in command.

  “Well now, you’ve been a rare sight, haven’t you?” He took the tray from her and put it on the floor. “Frank says you’ve had a cold. Feeling better?”

  A cold? A scream filled her throat.

  He frowned. “Is something the matter?”

  What wasn’t the matter these days? Who could she trust while the enemies throughout this castle wore smiles as disguises? What was a lie in Collinefort? A necessity. A way of life. How could she be sure Nic wasn’t just the same?

  The best course would be to keep pretending. Test him. If he turned out to be an enemy, she wouldn’t have given up her hard work, and her cover would remain intact, but if Frank truly hadn’t told Nic the truth, maybe she could lead him to ask the right questions later. Maybe she could gain an ally.

  “Cara?” He took her by the shoulders. “What’s going on?”

  She waited a moment, then cocked her head. “The medicine. It makes me feel…so tired. So tired. Confused. I, I don’t want it, but they tell me to drink it and I drink it. I hate it”—she rubbed her upper arms—“but I need it.”

  “Medicine? What medicine, Cara?”

  “Frank said she made him do it.”

  Nic’s mouth went slack and varied between different stages of openness. “What does that mean?”

  He was either sincere, and didn’t know the truth, or he was a brilliant actor. She needed to know, and this was taking too long. Like earlier, she let her knees buckle, and he caught her. “So tired.”

  “I’ll take you back to your room.”

  “No!” She couldn’t stop the rush of tears. “Not there. Please, not there.”

  “What is that bitch doing to you?”

  Cara covered her face with her hands.

  People stopped to stare at them, and Nic took her by the elbow to lead her into an open storeroom. Three open-ended shelves were piled ceiling-high with stacks of bleached linen. Detergent-fresh, with a hint of musty mothballs. A single yellow light, fitted next to the doorway, wasn’t enough to illuminate the whole space. The middle row was bright, but the shelves to the sides cast stark shadows.

  A maid glanced at them from one of the darker rows, her eyes glinting in the low light. Nic arched his eyebrow, and she bobbed her head and hurried into the hall.

  Think, Cara. He’d obviously struggle to believe anything bad about his best friend, especially since the Frank he knew and the Frank who came to Cara’s room to drug her were two different people. Still, she had to get the message across. Maybe he knew of Celestine.

  “Frank said she made him do it,” Cara said. “She made him.”

  “Did he say who, sweetheart?”

  Not his sweetheart. She shook her head. “She was afraid. I changed. He didn’t want to, but she made him.”

  His jaw set. “A different bitch then. Come with me, I’ll take you somewhere safe.”

  Nic led her through the too-similar halls. Once they neared an exit, he shrugged out of his green archer’s coat and helped her into it. The garment was warm and smelled of earth and rain. Of outside.

  Icy wind smashed into them as they exited the castle. Angry grey clouds with dark bellies hung above, and fine, mist-like drizzle gathered in larger drops on their clothes. The memory of a night not too long gone, when an apprentice had sneaked through the Mantle and been caught under thunder and rain washed over Cara. The thrill, the sheer wonder of a sky instead of a purple lid. Traces of that now ran in her veins, after two weeks of confinement in a prison disguised as a princess’s room.

  Nic took her to a garden in the corner between one of the pentagon-shaped towers and a wall of the castle.

  Fir trees groaned under the thick, white weight of frost. Long icicles grew from clusters of needles, and chickadees and cardinals chattered from nests hidden deeper in the tree’s embrace. A magpie picked at the remains of frozen berries in a bush, and the sun pulled out blue tones in its long, black tail feathers. Other birds fluttered in and out of the trees, offering splashes of colour to the washed-out landscape.

  Cobbled pathways were halfway covered with patches of mirror-like ice, and white hares huddled in the snow became visible for a split-second when their ears twitched.

  Nic brushed chunks of wet snow from a wooden bench with his forearm, then helped Cara to sit, and lowered to his haunches in front of her. He sandwiched her hands between his. “Are you warm enough?”

  She nodded. He seemed to be all right in a thick woollen sweater. The sky was already darkening, though, and he’d probably be freezing within an hour.

  He rubbed the tops of her hands. “This medicine they give you, can you describe it to me?”

  “It’s dark brown.”

  “Thick? Bitter?”

  Cara nodded.

  “When they tell you to do something, you feel like your only choice is to do what they say? No matter if your head says you shouldn’t, you can’t keep yourself from doing it?”

  Impressive. She nodded.

  “And you’re confused. Maybe your emotions seem dulled.”

  “Yes.”

  He closed his eyes and snorted. “And you said this isn’t just Malak? Frank made you drink it, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? I need you to think hard about this, sweetheart. I have to be sure Frank gave you this med
icine.”

  “Both. Both make me drink it.”

  He was quiet for a long time, then looked up at her with raised eyebrows. “I should take you back.”

  No. She opened her mouth, but he cut her off.

  “I’ll talk to Frank. I’ll tell him you can’t stay in that room all the time. We’ll go out for a walk every day. Would you like that?”

  He’d take her out of her room? Yes, she’d like that. Getting away from one man would be so much easier than getting away from an entire keep. She nodded.

  “Good. I’ll arrange lunch for us tomorrow.”

  Chapter 22

  From the exterior, the Du Pont estate seemed like any other noble manor, if more extravagant than most: large and fancy, with carefully manicured lawns and tasteful décor.

  The architect who’d been responsible for its design must have been a genius, since the outer shell of the structure hid its true size. By Sera’s estimate, the Du Pont family home was larger than the palace by quite a margin.

  With more than fifty Du Ponts living there—according to the patriarch of the family, Jean-Luc Du Pont—and the staff and groundskeepers and guest rooms for all the drunken nobles leftover from every party, how could the estate not be one of the largest family homes in Aelland?

  And that was just on the surface.

  The interior opened to huge, spacious rooms—the party areas. From there, a series of convoluted hallways split out, each riddled with doors to rooms that led to more hallways and more rooms. Through ‘transition rooms’, the hallways went down, underground, where the true burrow was located—the heart of the branch of Mordian Intelligence in Aelland.

  As always, the Du Ponts were hosting an event; this time a wake for the late king Victor.

  Since Sera couldn’t be seen, she’d been assigned a spacious suite in the underground, where not even a whisper from upstairs could be heard. Not a trifling thing. She’d attended parties at the estate before and knew how loud they could get.

  She and her companions had barely made it to the estate when she’d received her first report from Jean-Luc: a chubby man with silvery hair, thinning at the top, and an accent so thick it sounded as though he’d just arrived in the big city from the most remote Mordian town on the map. Yet, he’d been living in Aelland for decades, and interacted with locals daily.