Dragonoak: Gall and Wormwood, page 54
All I could do was breathe too quickly, eyes stinging with tears. I was surrounded by luxury, thick carpets and finely woven rugs, but all I saw were bloodied floors, all I heard was the scraping of metal against metal. I closed my eyes, trying to shake the certainty that there was something on the table, something that never should’ve been put there.
And Akela wasn’t coming for me.
Not this time.
“The hell’s wrong with you?” Varn asked, nudging my hip with her foot. “So we got captured! Big deal. You don’t think I’m gonna let us be stuck here for long, do you?”
“It’s not that,” I murmured, tears sliding out though I squeezed my eyes shut. “The chains, I—”
Every breath caught in my throat, parching me.
Varn crouched in front of me. I heard her shuffle over but kept my eyes closed, shaking my head over and over.
“It’s the chains. Just—get them off. Please.”
“Can’t do a fucking thing about ‘em,” Varn huffed. “If you ain’t noticed, we’re kinda in the same boat here.”
I was going to grind my teeth into nothing. I slammed my forehead against my knees, trembling more when I didn’t claw at my wrist, desperately trying to tear through metal. I had to get out of them. Had to. I wouldn’t be able to breathe properly until I did. They were around my chest, burning and branding me, clinging like ice.
“Get them off. You need to. Please. Please, Varn, please, get them off, help me out of here, please.”
“Whoa. Shit. Okay,” Varn said, knees knocking against my feet. “You’re really freaking out here. Uh. Do you think you can, I don’t know, stop?”
I managed to open my eyes. Varn flinched when I looked up at her. Tears tore down my face; this was out of her depth. Being caught up in a gunpowder explosion was one thing and being taken prisoner was nothing new to her, but the sight of me trembling and begging for help was something she wasn’t equipped for.
“Can’t,” I said. I wanted to. Varn could tell that much, but biting hard on the inside of my mouth did nothing to slow the blood burning through my cheeks. “You remember Katja. What she said about my hand, when she took me, I was—there were chains, and she, she…”
“Fuck,” Varn muttered, glancing away.
I kept my eyes on her as though pleading would give her the strength to break through her own chains and tear mine off. They’d slipped from my ribs and tightened around my throat, choking me, barely letting me cling to this side of consciousness. Katja was there. She was there, and she was going to come for me, she—
“Shit. Okay! Okay, you’re really scared,” Varn yelped. Her words did nothing to reach me. In a last futile effort, she blurted out, “I’m scared of the sea!”
“I… what?”
Varn didn’t lie about things. She didn’t often tell the truth, but she only ever lied by omission. There was a brutal rawness to what she’d said, as though the words had bruised her throat on the way out. I forced my eyes to focus and found that her face had reddened.
If she was trying to distract me, it worked enough to allow the corners of my thoughts to cling to something other than the chains around my wrists.
“But you… You were making fun of Kondo-Kana,” I said, wearily refuting her.
“No shit I was, North Woods. Kondo-Kana’s like, the easiest target ever,” she said gruffly. It took her a moment to remember that she was supposed to be helping me. “… Look, I figured if I was laughing about Kondo-Kana, no one would notice anything was up with me. They wouldn’t give me lip, yeah? I mean, I used to be a pirate. If anyone ever figured it out, I’d never live it down.”
I took a deep breath and tasted tears at the corners of my mouth.
“What happened? Why are you scared?”
I’d lost her gaze. Her jaw tensed, but it was only the two of us.
“A bunch of years ago, I was out with my old crew. We got caught up in this massive storm. Shouldn’t have been a big deal. There were storms hitting us every other week. But that one… it was alive. Threw me clean off deck, down into the ocean. I dunno how I survived. Still ain’t figured that one out. Felt like I was fighting for hours down there, trying to get back to the surface.
“But then I’m being pulled back on board, spluttering half the fucking sea onto the deck. That was that. I survived and we carried on. It weren’t a big deal. For a while, anyway. For whatever reason… dunno. It stuck with me. Kept coming back every time I went out on a boat. Didn’t even have to be a storm.”
I nodded in understanding and forced my eyes shut. I bowed forward and Varn pressed her forehead to mine, unable to support me with her hands.
“I know everyone in Mahon thinks I went soft and that’s why I ran off to serve Queen Nasrin. But that ain’t true. I respect the Queen, alright? Proper believe in what she’s doing,” Varn said firmly, shoulders rising after a beat. “Sometimes wonder if they ain’t right, though. That I’m using it as an excuse to get away from pirating. From the sea. You met my mum. She’s some big pirate, friends with Yin Zhou and everything, and it’s like, what the fuck am I doing? Running off to the Queen ‘cause I’m too scared to deal with things myself?”
Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t think you’re running away. I think it takes a lot of courage to do what you really want to, especially when you’re from somewhere like Mahon. Especially when people expect so much from you.”
I opened my eyes and found Varn smiling with no spite or wicked streak behind it. My breathing came easily when I realised that they were only chains around my wrists. They were only metal, and I could be freed from them. I would be freed from them. I’d know fear greater than this in the past and I’d always ended up in roughly one piece.
It was only a matter of waiting.
“Varn…?”
She’d moved to the other end of the room to press her ear against the door.
“What?”
“It’s Akela,” I said, swallowing thickly. “The Mansels killed her.”
“What?”
She wanted to accuse me of lying but knew I wouldn’t. Not about something like this. Her lips parted and she said nothing. She sneered and under the dirt and soot on her face, her dark skin paled. If they’d killed Akela, they could take down any of us.
“That’s… that’s okay,” she decided, eyes darting left and right. She licked her dry lips and said, “Did you forget what you can do, Rowan? We’ll break out of here, find Akela’s body, then you can bring her back. Yeah?”
“Right,” I agreed for Varn’s sake.
It didn’t matter how many soldiers I’d raised over the last week. I had no real faith in my powers.
“Good. Don’t go crying on me again.”
We heard nothing for an hour. Kicking the door earnt Varn no response and when she tried twisting the handle, back to the door, all we gained was the pounding of fists against the outside and firm words ordering us to stop. Varn kept rattling the handle, taunting the soldiers outside with crass words they didn’t understand, but they’d been rightly instructed to ignore anything happening within the chamber.
“Get out of here, meet up with Lanta, track down both our Queens,” Varn murmured to herself. “Easy. Just as soon as someone bloody pays the blindest bit of attention to us.”
As if finally relenting to Varn’s twenty-fourth outburst, a key slid into the lock.
Varn scurried across the room using her heels and I sat straight, watching as the door creaked open an inch at a time.
I wasn’t chained to a stove but Katja was standing over me all the same. I couldn’t move. She closed the door softly behind her, helm and gloves removed, and stood in the centre of the room, armour gleaming as a stray sunbeam struck it.
“The fuck do you want?” Varn spat. “’Cause you’re about ten seconds away from getting your ribs crushed by that armour of yours.”
Katja regarded Varn with disinterest and didn’t so much as sigh to signal how little she was worth arguing with. She made straight for me, clinging to a ring of keys. She knelt on the carpet, took hold of my shoulder and pulled me towards her.
I did the only thing I could to defend myself.
I bit her hand. With my heart pounding in my throat, my teeth sunk in with enough force to push my pulse through her veins. Yelping in fast-fading pain, Katja shook her hand free and used the heel of her palm to force my head back.
Breathing already ragged, I said, “You did it again, you, you…”
The calm Varn inspired within me was gone, drowned with her fears.
“Rowan, dear,” Katja said, clicking her tongue. She took my shoulder again and shoved me face-first towards the ground before I could lash out. “I didn’t chain you up like this. I wouldn’t be so dreadfully unoriginal. If you would stop being so woefully short-sighted for a mere moment of your life, I’d be endlessly grateful.”
Forced onto my front, I fixed my gaze on Varn. She was eyeing the seat of the armchair I’d been pinned in front of, about to make her move and grab the paperweight. All I had to do was distract Katja. She knelt on my back, one hand twisting in my short hair, and I writhed beneath her.
“Do stop that. It’s incredibly childish,” Katja chided. I waited for her to pull my head back and slam my face into the floor, but instead I heard one of her keys slide into the lock holding my chains in place. “Do you want me to free you or not?”
I froze. I couldn’t even swallow the lump in my throat. Why would she do that? Why would she want me free?
“Well?”
“I…” I began, desperately trying to unravel whatever trap she was leading me into. I couldn’t think clearly enough. I wanted the chains gone. Needed them gone, even if that meant giving her all the power. “Yes.”
“Yes what?”
That was why. She wanted to hear me beg. I was in no position to do anything other than what she demanded of me.
“Yes. Please,” I seethed. “Take the chains off.”
“Patience, dear,” she said, but turned the key in the lock regardless. The chains came loose but I was far from free. With her knee dug between my shoulder blades, Katja said, “Promise me that you’re going to behave, Rowan.”
My jaw scraped against the floor as I nodded.
I pushed myself up, hands shaking more than ever. I rubbed my palms together and entwined my fingers. I looked at Katja unblinking, and I think I might’ve remained there, perfectly compliant, had something akin to gratitude not welled up in my chest.
I’d already thanked Katja for taking something away from me. I wasn’t going to thank her for the part she’d played in tearing the castle away from Claire.
“Rowan, what are you—” Katja began as I reached out, words dying in her throat as I wrapped my fingers around the collar of her chestplate.
I slammed her onto her back and she cried out. Who did she think was going to help her? Varn? I silenced Katja by crawling atop her and striking her jaw with my fist.
Finally.
Finally, everything was clear to me.
I was going to do it.
I was going to kill Katja. I was going to drive her from my head.
She looked up at me in horror as I punched her again, this time against her jaw, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to tremble. Needed to cry, to beg, to plead for her life through mouthfuls of her own thick blood.
My fist – my fist – wasn’t enough. My eyes flickered to the side and I saw what I needed. I reached for the fire poker under the armchair and Katja’s eyes flashed as I pulled my arm back. I swung before she could react and metal met bone with a satisfying crack. Blood gushed from her nose, from the gash beneath her eye.
After hitting her once, I couldn’t stop. I swung again and again, caving her skull in, and I was going to kill her. I was going to kill her, I was going to kill her.
But Katja couldn’t feel it. Not after that first blow. She healed as I struck her, leaving behind nothing but blood, but I knew she’d tire before I did. I’d hit her over and over, refusing to stop until I outpaced her healing, and finally, metal would make mulch of bone and meet brain matter.
“Fucking hell,” Varn said.
That was the moment I realised what was happening.
I was going to kill Katja. Her blood covered my hands, my chest, splattering across her face and mine, and I was going to kill her.
I didn’t know how to stop myself. My fingers had fused with the poker and my arm was caught in the motion; I was going to kill her with my bare hands and there was no going back from that.
I would’ve done it, would’ve kept beating her face in long after she was dead, if not for Varn.
She launched herself at me, knocked me to the floor with her shoulder, and I almost lashed out at her. She knelt above me, refusing to flinch, and the poker fell from my hand.
“Oi. Oi! Where the hell are you going?” Varn demanded as Katja stumbled onto unsteady feet and clutched at her face.
She tried to say something but it came out as a bubble of blood. She caught my eye and looked at me in the same way I had once looked at her.
That was the way I would always remember her, when I closed my eyes and still couldn’t escape her.
Not the way she’d looked when she towered over me, knife in hand, or even when she huddled in the corner, sobbing. I’d never shake the image of her being so afraid of me, and it stung to realise I’d finally proven her wrong.
Katja fled the room. The door slammed behind her and Varn wasted no time.
“We’ve got maybe thirty seconds before someone else comes and deals with us,” she said, not letting me stare at my bloodied hands. “Grab the key, yeah? Get me out of these and we’ll make a run for it.”
I forced myself to listen to Varn. If she’d got me through one sort of fear she could guide me through another.
The key slid from my fingertips the first time I reached for it, and Varn pushed herself to her feet and stood with her back to me. Through sheer force of will, most likely inspired by not wanting to deal with Varn snapping at me to hurry up, I managed to get the key in the lock the first time. It turned easily, chains coming loose.
Varn kept hold of them and fastened the padlock onto the last link.
“Alright. Hand us that poker. I’m gonna bust the door open and you’re gonna get ready to run,” she said.
I crouched to pick it up, ignoring the blood and all else streaked across it.
Varn tended to the locked door with as much ease as most people walked through open corridors. One of the soldiers stationed outside had run off to help Katja and the other was blind-sided when Varn swung the padlock straight in her face.
The soldier went down with a groan and Varn kicked her in the side of her head to ensure she wouldn’t be up any time soon. Crouching down, Varn pulled the soldier’s sword from its sheath and glowered at the metal.
“Why’s it always swords? Gimme a good spear any day.”
Carefully stepping over the body, I glanced left and right to discern where we were. Usually, I would’ve been full of hesitation, would’ve second-guessed myself, but I was staying as far from my thoughts as I possibly could.
“This way,” I said, dragging Varn down the corridor.
The air was stifling all throughout the castle. It was like being caught in a storm. Discord was sown across every level and shouting echoed in distant chambers. Every so often the terrible whine of someone being run through with a blade would clap like thunder, making the rain that had come before it seem as nothing.
Varn and I sprinted down hallways and skidded to a stop whenever we came to an opening. Rylan’s forces might’ve been unending in our minds, but there weren’t enough soldiers to cover every last inch of the castle. We moved quietly and smartly and managed to reach my chambers without alerting anyone to our presence.
Not that it was a good thing: the Queen’s chambers would’ve been guarded, had she been inside.
“Empty,” I said, and kicked over a chair. So much for remaining silent.
“Hey! You can’t do that,” Varn whispered loudly. “My girlfriend’s missing too but you don’t see me wrecking shit. Use your brain, Rowan. Where would she be?”
Where would she be? There was an entire castle’s worth of answers! There were chambers to lock her in, dungeons that had long since gone unused, cellars with heavy, bolted doors. She could be anywhere. Anywhere! Anything could happen in the time it took to get to her and I couldn’t stand the way Varn was staring at me, demanding an answer. How was I supposed to know!
“I don’t fuc—” I began, but Varn jabbed a finger against my forehead.
“I can deal with things exploding and going to hell, but if you start swearing I’m gonna lose my shit. Seriously, I already told you to calm down. So do it! Think! Where are they gonna take her? I mean, if she ain’t dead, they’ll have some use for her, right? So where do we start?”
I didn’t know. I couldn’t force myself to calm down and think, couldn’t—
“Her mother,” I blurted out. “The Mansels were heading to her chambers. Maybe…”
“It’s a start,” Varn said, yanking me out of the room.
The royal family’s chambers were all relatively close together. We were there within minutes and the lack of soldiers convinced me we were heading for another dead end. But as we charged up the stairs, Laus and their partner long since removed from their station, I found that there was a good reason for the easy route there.
Victory over Akela had made the Mansels rightly confident.
They were the only guards in sight.
“Come on, Ightham! Enough with the stubborn act,” one of the Mansels said. Amy. It was Amy. Neither of them would ever call her Your Majesty. “Do your part for the Kingdom. Cooperate with us. Surrender! Tell your loyal subjects you were looking after Felheim until King Rylan returned and maybe he’ll still be able to find a use for you.”
Varn raised her brow as the words drifted through the door, unintelligible to her.
“I’ve told you a dozen times. I shall only discuss such matters with my brother,” Claire said.
Varn grinned, giving me a thumbs-up. She didn’t have to understand what Claire was saying; her voice was strong and clear and that was all she needed to hear.
