THE SPIRIT AND SOUL OF THE REALM

In the courtyard between the curtain wall and the keep, a platform was erected with a stout post at its center. To this, Second Empire had tied King Zachary. Fiori shifted nervously from one foot to the other. He stood assembled with the other slaves to view their king, he assumed, being humiliated. A larger group of Second Empire’s citizenry thronged before the platform like vultures ready to spring on carrion.

Captain Terrik stood on the platform identifying the king, though by now, all knew who he was. Word had spread more rapidly than a Coutre clipper that the slave known as Dav Hill was actually Zachary Davriel Hillander, king of Sacoridia. Oh, how Grandmother had exulted at the discovery.

Zachary did not look very kingly at the moment, but beaten and starved, the ropes all that held him up. His clothing, of some earlier era, was turning to rags, and was stained with blood and grime. His hair hung lank and shaggy, his beard untrimmed. His work digging out Grandmother’s special passage, the beatings he’d received, and, Fiori thought, whatever had happened to him before he ever came into Grandmother’s clutches, had taken their toll on him.

“I know you are keen to see this man executed,” Terrik was saying, “torn to pieces. I am, too, but Grandmother has grander designs for him, so he will not die this day.” His pronouncement was met with grumbling. “Be assured,” the captain continued, “of what a great blow his capture will be to his people, one which Grandmother means to exploit for the glory of God and the empire.”

He was answered with shouts of “God and empire!” and applause.

“Grandmother knows your hatred for this man and all he stands for, and so she is offering you this opportunity to express yourselves. Remember, throw nothing too hard—Grandmother wants him alive.” Terrik then jumped off the platform.

The people of Second Empire had come prepared: from toddlers to the elderly, they carried refuse, rotten eggs, entrails, slops, mud. All of these were hurled at the king. He averted his face, but it was the only sign he was conscious of the proceedings. The people jeered, cursed him, and laughed when a particularly well-aimed missile slapped against his body.

Fiori grimaced. Most of the slaves looked away. A few maybe wished they could join in. An older man, the one the king had befriended, grew red in the face and practically quivered with rage. Binning, Fiori recalled, was his name.

Inevitably, someone threw a rock despite the orders not to, and it hit the king’s chest with an audible thunk.

Oh, no, Fiori thought.

There was a pause, and then like a wave, more rocks were flung at the king.

“Hold!” Terrik cried, but a madness gripped the assembled, and people cast about themselves for rocks and stones. Someone lobbed a large block from the crumbling wall, which, thankfully, fell well short of the king.

Fiori looked desperately about for some miracle, for a flying cat to arrive and rescue the king as Karigan was rumored to have been rescued, but he saw only the bloodlust of the crowd. A stone clipped the king’s shoulder.

“No, no, no,” Fiori murmured.

But then, to his wonder, Binning broke from the group of slaves and ran—he ran for the platform and jumped up before the guards could stop him, and wrapped his arms around the king to shield him. He was hit in the back with projectiles.

Then, Lorilie Dorran, who had stood fuming beside him, ran. She had been the leader of the Anti-Monarchy Society, otherwise known as the King-Haters, but now she leaped onto the platform to help Binning protect King Zachary. Perhaps she had learned there were worse leaders than he. A moment later, several of her followers among the slaves ran after her to also use their bodies as shields. One by one, the slaves braved the anger of the crowd and their projectiles, creating a veritable wall around the king. When Fiori recovered from his incredulity, he, too, sprinted forward. He was not the last, but he was ashamed not to have been among the first.

A rock grazed his cheek, but he held steady before the platform in the face of the mob, his height making him an excellent target. A mud ball slapped against his chest.

By now, Terrik and his guards were pushing their own people away, forcing them to disperse. If the slaves were expecting to be thanked for preserving Grandmother’s special prisoner, they were to be disappointed, for when the crowd was sent away, the guards turned their attention to tearing the slaves away from the king. They were none too gentle, and Binning in particular had to be pried off him.

“You, too, Arvyn,” Terrik said. “I expected better of you.”

Why? Because as Lala’s tutor they treated him better than the other slaves? He shrugged. “He had no way of defending himself and it seemed unfair.” Then, with daring, he added, “And he is still my king.”

Terrik shoved him hard in the direction of the keep before turning back to the platform. Fiori glanced over his shoulder to see the king slumped at the post, fresh blood dripping from his face onto his shirt. Fiori wondered if there’d been one miracle, might there be another? He would send prayers to the gods, fervent prayers.

His only hope was that Karigan could somehow bring help. He’d heard something of what had been done to her, so she could not be in much of a condition to do anything herself. Still, she had escaped. Had been rescued. If they, whoever they were, including a flying cat, apparently, could rescue her, surely they could help the king. He feared that if King Zachary remained in Second Empire’s clutches much longer, if he was subjected to whatever twisted designs Grandmother intended, it would be a greater blow than Sacoridia could withstand, for the king was the realm’s spirit and its soul.

“You are disgusting.”

Nyssa’s voice came distantly to Zachary, through a gray haze. He’d ceased caring about his surroundings, how he smelled, so caught in the miasma of pain and exhaustion was he. Until the shock of frigid water hit him. It stole his breath.

“Again,” Nyssa said.

He opened his one eye that was not swollen shut just in time for another bucketful of water to splash over him. He shivered uncontrollably. There’d been a crowd watching, he recalled, but the courtyard was now quiet, any onlookers pushed well back.

“Cut the rags off,” Nyssa ordered.

Guards came at him with bared knives and did just that. Trussed to the post, there was little he could do. The frigid air prickled his skin.

“Another bucket,” Nyssa said.

He braced himself, but gasped as the icy water cascaded over him. When he regained his breath, he saw Nyssa giving him a thorough look over.

“You’ve seen better days, haven’t you, King Zachary. Your ribs are jutting out.” Her gaze dropped. “By all accounts, your wife must be pleased with what you bring to the bed chamber. I bet she misses it. Too bad you are not the sort of man I am interested in.” Her gaze lingered downward, and he was aware of mockery and hooting coming from the remaining onlookers. “I’d be more interested in cutting off what you’ve got, but Grandmother says no.”

“Cut him! Cut him!” the onlookers cried.

She smiled, made some joke, then told him, “I suppose Grandmother has her reasons why I can’t, and it is not my place to question her.”

He fought the chills, but they were such a force they could not be repressed. They came out in a large shudder.

Nyssa laughed. “A little cold, eh? Well, we’re not finished. I won’t have you stinking up my workshop.”

She made some signal with her hand, and guards came forward with more buckets full of sudsy water, scrub brushes in hand. They were not gentle. He was thoroughly washed and rinsed, no doubt to the great entertainment of Nyssa and the watchers. There was nothing he could do to combat it, so he endured the humiliation.

When the guards dumped a final rinse on him, Nyssa stepped up again. “Much better. All rosy and pink all over. Well, where you aren’t black and blue.”

At her order, the guards untied him from the post and threw a blanket over his shoulders. He thanked the gods and wrapped himself in it. They marched him beyond the curtain wall, a ways into the woods, to a simple wooden building he presumed to be Nyssa’s “workshop.”

They unceremoniously forced him onto a table where he was strapped down with leather bindings, even his head. He struggled, but the leather was snug. To his relief, they covered him with the blanket.

Nyssa leaned over him so that they were nearly nose-to-nose. He tried to turn his face away, but the strap around his forehead prevented him. “Wouldn’t want you to freeze before Grandmother gets here, would we?” she said. “Sadly, I am not to touch you until she says so. I look forward to cutting you, which will sorely disappoint your wife and whoever else you lie with. That Greenie, perhaps? That was quite a reaction you had for so lowly a servant as a messenger. That’s why you acted up, isn’t it? Because of her?”

He fisted his hands. Refused to speak. He would not let her get to him.

She chuckled. “So determined you are not to give me satisfaction. How admirable. You are an honorable man, King Zachary. I like honorable men—they are so much more pleasing to break. You see, I will get satisfaction, even if I must wait. In the meantime, Grandmother will not begrudge me a little blood.”

She peeled his blanket away to reveal his chest. “I see your old arrow wound healed well enough. Yes, I heard about that. By the time all is well and done, you will be wishing that assassin had proved successful.” She then walked away, humming. He could not see what she was up to. When she returned, she showed him a whip with multiple thongs. She separated one from the others. The leather appeared to be stiff with crusted blood. She showed him the knot at the end of the thing, twisted with wire so the ends created sharp barbs. Barbs that had clots of skin adhering to them.

“This has tasted the blood of your Greenie.”

He started to bellow his rage, but it turned to a sharp cry of surprise and pain as she jabbed the barb into his chest and ripped it across and through his nipple. She stepped back to admire her handiwork, then to his revulsion, dipped her finger in the blood that welled up from the wound, and tasted it.

“This pleases me,” she said. “Is it not interesting how closely aligned pain and pleasure are? I cannot say I have tasted royal blood before. Your Greenie’s was fine, too.”

He strained against the straps.

“Yes, she is more than a mere messenger to you, isn’t she. Grandmother will find that interesting. Too bad your Greenie is gone.”

“Gone?” he whispered.

She nodded and dropped something on his chest. “Something for you to remember her by.”

It looked like . . . Looked like brown braided hair. Karigan’s? What had they done to her? The rumors he’d heard of an intrusion on the encampment must have been a wishful dream—he’d been beaten into a stupor, then made to carry that log on his shoulders, and there was no accounting of what was real and what was not. Had they killed her?

“No . . .”

“No, what?”

“What did you do with her? Where is she?”

Nyssa shrugged. “Does it matter? Grandmother will be here soon and you won’t care about anything, not even your Greenie. Now, I am going to go check on my guards. You are a special prize, and there is no way anyone is going to get past our safeguards. No one will rescue you. You are ours to do with as we wish. You may be a king, but here you have no power. You are nothing.”

She turned and left him then, and as far as he knew, he was alone inside the building. The sting of the wound across his chest was nothing compared to the other abuses he’d received, but he didn’t care about himself. They could do whatever they wanted to him. What burned him inside was his rage, rage for whatever had been done to Karigan.

He fought his restraints anew, but they only seemed to tighten with his struggles. He sighed and relaxed. Karigan’s braid, if it was really hers, and he saw no reason for Nyssa to have lied about it, rose and fell on his chest with his breaths. How often had he wanted to stroke that long, brown hair . . . He closed his eyes, pictured himself doing just that, drawing her to him in a kiss . . . The pleasant vision gave way to imagining the many ways he’d murder Nyssa, how he’d defeat Second Empire, how he’d obliterate not only this encampment, but all of them so his realm could remain at peace.

Currently he was in no position to do anything. He would preserve his thwarted rage, use it when opportunity presented itself. If it ever did.

•   •   •

Voices talked over him. He must have drifted off, exhausted as he was in spirit and body. He did not open his eyes or move. Let them believe he was still asleep.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the braid?” Grandmother asked.

“I forgot about it,” Nyssa replied, “after everything happened.”

“You know I find such things useful when I work with etherea. Do not forget again.”

“I’m sorry, Grandmother. I won’t.”

“Of course you won’t, dear.”

How would Grandmother find Karigan’s braid useful? Did it mean that Karigan had escaped, after all? If she were dead, what use could the braid possibly be? No, she had to be alive. He must cling to that hope.

“He is feigning sleep,” Grandmother said. “I can tell. Young man, open your eyes.”

He looked up at the women who stood on either side of the table.

“Well, well,” Grandmother said. “The great king of Sacoridia, the warrior who has fought us on the border, does not look so impressive at the moment. No armor, no guards, no sword. You are just flesh and blood, after all, aren’t you.”

“He doesn’t talk much,” Nyssa said.

“That will change over time,” Grandmother replied. “Do you know I had to undo the entire scarf I made for Lala in the fall just so I had enough yarn to work on him?”

Scarf? Yarn? Then Zachary remembered that Grandmother somehow worked her magic into yarn, made spells of the knots she tied. The opening and closing of a door announced the arrival of someone else.

“There you are, Lala,” Grandmother said. “You will help me with the knots.”

A girl appeared in his peripheral vision, her expression neutral. Grandmother let this girl help with—with whatever she was going to do to him?

“Young man, I recommend you open your mouth.”

He did not.

“Now don’t be ridiculous and fight us on this. It is for your own good so you don’t bite off your tongue, and so we don’t have to listen to your screams all night.”

“I wouldn’t mind it,” Nyssa said.

“I know, dear, but other people like to get their sleep.”

When he failed to obey, Nyssa, who seemed unnaturally strong for her size, forced his jaw open. Grandmother dropped a thick strip of leather between his teeth to bite on. When she swept his blanket off and she and the girl started tying knots and placing them on his body, he understood why.