Slowly, hesitatingly, he pulls his arm a few inches from his face. His eyes are still braced against the light, but I get my first look at him. His hair is long and wet from its recent washing. The beard obscures the shape of his mouth and set of his chin, but his nose is straight and not overly large.
When his eyes finally adjust, we study each other warily. “So you are the voice in the dark.” There is a note of reverence in his words that I do not deserve. “I wondered what you would look like. Wondered if you were even attached to a body.”
I lift my chin, my face cold and wooden. “I do not know what you are talking about, but you are wrong. I have never been here before.” My voice is as hard as the stone walls that surround us. “Whatever you thought you saw or imagined you heard was likely the product of a mind enfeebled by long captivity. Imprisonment will do that to a man.”
The scowl that appears on his face gives him a wild, animal quality. “Surely my enfeebled mind did not produce the food that sustained me for these last weeks. Nor the water, nor the voice that pulled me from the brink of madness.”
I steel my heart against his angry confusion. If his wits are fraying at the edges, his memory will be easy to manipulate. “Perhaps your jailors brought you the food, or you simply ate rotted straw and skinny rats and thought them a feast. I know not, but you and I have never met before.” As far as I am concerned, our past conversations never happened. Our secrets were never shared. No bond was ever formed. If he cannot accept this most basic truth, we have nothing further to talk about. I stare at him with all the iron I have in me.
He stares back, and I realize he possesses a fair amount of iron of his own. He looks up at the grate, then back down at his small prison, scanning the whole of it before returning his gaze to me. The faint light from the torch does not reach his eyes.
“If you cannot tell truth from fantasy, there is no point in talking,” I say.
“But of course. You are correct. Forgive my mistake.”
“I am glad we understand each other. Now tell me why you are in here.” My fingers tighten around the handle of my knife. Before we go any further, I must know how dangerous he is.
“Because I fought for the losing side.”
“Which side was that?”
“Brittany’s.”
“That cannot be the whole of it. Not everyone who fought on Brittany’s side has been thrown down a hole to rot away in oblivion.”
“No,” he agrees. “Some were slain on the battlefield.”
“You mean killed in battle?”
He adjusts his sleeves. “Yes, that is what I mean.”
“Why are you here? Did you commit some atrocity?”
His entire face hardens. “There were many atrocities on the battlefield, but none were committed by me.”
“Would you tell me if you had?”
He does not move, but it feels as if he takes a step toward me. “If I were given to atrocities, I would already have overpowered you, strangled you with your rope, and be halfway to . . . Where did you say we are?”
“I didn’t.” I pull the knife from the folds of my skirt so it is visible.
His eyes shift to my blade. “But, since I am not given to atrocities, I have done none of those things. Besides, I would never cause harm to one who has brought me more comfort and kindness—” He shuts his mouth abruptly, remembering my condition. “Forgive my blabbering, demoiselle.”
He learns quickly. I nod in approval. “Now that we are clear, I have a proposition for you.” Even though he does not move, I can feel his interest deepen. “I need a sparring partner.”
A single harsh croak emerges from his throat. At first I think he is laughing at me, until I recognize he is coughing. To be certain, I point my knife directly at him for the first time. “I will not be laughed at, and certainly not by a sack of bones that is little more than rat bait.”
“I was not laughing. It is wretchedly damp in here, and my lungs do not like it. Even so, you must admit it is not every day that a prisoner in an oubliette receives such an offer.”
“You are mocking me.”
“I am mocking the circumstances in which I find myself. It is certainly the most novel proposition I have ever received from a woman.” He folds his arms, studying me in earnest now, taking in my height and the breadth of my shoulders. “So you wish me to teach you swordplay?”
Figs! Are all men truly so lack-witted? “No.” In one fluid motion, I retrieve the short sword strapped to my back, whip it forward in a figure eight so that the point of it nicks the back of his right hand, then his left, before coming to rest in the hollow of his throat. “I need someone to spar with.”
He eyes the sword. “Clearly, I misunderstood.” His manner sharpens with intrigue and . . . mayhap even admiration. “If I do as you ask, will you help me escape?”
Finally he is ready to negotiate. “No, that is not part of the proposition.”
He shrugs and begins to turn away, but I know a bargaining tactic when I see it. “You assume that I have the power to give you what you want. I do not.”
He tilts his head, studying me. “Who are you that you are allowed access to swords and freedom to roam the dungeons at whim, yet do not have the means to help me escape?”
I smile without humor. “I have a unique position within the household.”
He turns his gaze back to my sword, appraising, coveting.
“You will not be given a true sword.” I am not so stupid as to hand a battle-scarred prisoner, even one so weakened as he, a real sword and pray that he will not skewer me with it. “But a wooden practice one from the garrison.”
“And if I refuse?”
I shrug. “I will leave and not come back. You will have had a bath and some food for your trouble and may return to your slow and tedious dying.” My words are harsh and bleak, but they are also the truth. I have nothing else to offer him. Giving him his freedom would put me at even greater risk and gain me nothing. Besides, I have no true knowledge of who he is or whether he is even safe to let loose upon the countryside. This is the limit of my trade. “What have you to lose? You have been thrown down here to rot, forgotten by all except those who are just cruel enough to taunt you with the promise of life.”
“Is that not what you’re doing?”
His words catch me off-guard. “No! I am giving you a chance, buying you some time. What you will be able to purchase with it, I cannot say.”
He looks down at his hands, clenching them, then opening them again. I raise the tip of my sword in case he is considering trying to strangle me.
When finally he looks up to meet my gaze, he gives a single nod. “When you return, bring the wooden sword as well.”
?Chapter 29
Sybella
wo days later, every one of my senses is still on alert, fully expecting the regent to slither out from under some nearby rock despite her claims that she would ride on ahead of us.
But she does not.