If the man opening the wagon door also has the key to our chains…
The door swung open. Both Royce and Hadrian started, then stopped short, confounded by the sight of red hair.
“Hang on, I have to find the right one,” Scarlett Dodge said, holding up a large metal hoop filled with a dozen keys. A bit of dirt smeared her shirt, and she had a grass stain on one knee of her trousers. Other than that, she looked fine. “Here, turn around,” she told Hadrian.
“You’re…you’re all right?”
“Yeah,” she said with a little puff of air—an almost-laugh that said, Why wouldn’t I be? “Turn around.”
He did as she instructed, sending Royce a baffled look. Royce didn’t look surprised, but his face was covered with suspicion.
Hadrian felt a tug on the manacles at his wrist.
“What did you do? Your skin is all torn up and bloody.” She loosened one; then both popped open, and his arms were free. The relief in his shoulders was immediate. A surge of blood reached his fingertips, igniting a burst of pins and needles. The ache in his side—while not gone—eased a bit.
“Hold steady,” she complained, starting to work on his collar.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.
“Me? Of course I’m sure.”
The heavy metal collar made a loud hollow clunk! as it hit the wagon’s bed. Hadrian rubbed at his raw neck and swallowed several times, enjoying the simple pleasure.
Scarlett paused before Royce, holding up the key. “If I unlock you, are you going to be nice?”
Royce said nothing. He stared at her with an unfathomable expression: anger, suspicion, but also something else.
Scarlett let out a frustrated sigh and went to work on Royce’s locks. As she did, Hadrian climbed out. A cool breeze chilled the sweat on his skin as he cautiously moved around between the two wagons. He headed toward the river, which proved to be no more than a pathetic trickle running over the road. High banks told tales of spring floods, but at that moment Mercator Creek wasn’t impressive. There was no bridge; the two-track road just plowed through a shallow section where rocks refused to wash away. The team of horses that had pulled the prison wagon drank from the rippling water. Scarlett’s pair were held by a hand brake, too far back to join the other horses. The two animals were slick with sweat, their hair soaked flat and dark beneath the leather straps and collar. She’d driven them hard—too hard to let them drink until they cooled down.
Around the front, a keg marked BEER sat upright in the road. It looked exactly like a miniature rain barrel; its lid had been broken into two parts. The dirt around the base was dark and wet. A few inches away, he spotted a tin cup in the dirt. Next to it lay a slaver. He wasn’t alone. Hadrian counted the men and came up with all six. They were lying on the road or in the grass—although one was partially in the creek, the fingers of his left hand shifting in the current.
Royce came out of the wagon and pushed past. He descended on the nearest guard, his torn cloak spreading out like the wings of a vulture with the movement.
“You don’t have to—”
Before Scarlett could finish, Royce had pulled a dagger from the soldier’s belt and stabbed the man in the throat.
Royce moved to the next one.
“He doesn’t have to do that,” Scarlett said, moving to stand beside Hadrian.
“Don’t bother trying to stop him. There’s no way he’ll let them live.”
“No, it’s not that,” Scarlett said. “I didn’t drug them.”
Royce paused, looking first at her, then down at the man he straddled. He placed a hand to the slaver’s throat. He nodded in a sort of grim approval and rose. Still holding the dagger, he returned to Scarlett, who took three quick steps backward.
“Royce!” Hadrian shouted, but the thief ignored him.
He caught her by the throat with his left hand. His middle finger being broken, he used his thumb to hook under her chin, forcing her head back against the side of the prison wagon. The dagger was clutched awkwardly, painfully, in his other hand, which still bore the boot mark where someone had stepped on it. “Why’d you do it?”
“Royce—let her go!”
“I want to know why.”
“Because unlike you, she cares about people. We got to be friends the other day. She did it for me.”
“No,” Scarlett said. “I did it for him.” She managed a shallow nod at Royce.
The thief stared. “Explain why you’d risk your life for me. Explain fast.”
“Royce!” Hadrian yanked a sword from the belt of a black-uniformed man.
“I did it because you were drugged with my herbs. Someone took them from my place while I was out with Hadrian, but I knew you wouldn’t believe that. I knew you’d blame me, and that Manzant can’t hold you. And I heard what happened the last time you got out—what happened to those who helped put you there.”
“Royce!” Hadrian shouted, coming at him with the naked sword.
Royce let go of her and gingerly shifted the knife to his other hand, wincing as he did. He moved away from her.
Hadrian slowed down as he stepped through the grisly scene, ignoring the gathering flies. “This was stupid. What if they didn’t drink right away? What if they’d waited to celebrate their good fortune?”
“Riding in the hot sun all day?” Scarlett replied. “Pretty much a sure thing.”
“So they didn’t…” Hadrian looked at her but not directly in her eyes. It felt like too much of an intrusion. “They didn’t—you know?”
“No.” Scarlett gave her head a curt shake. She wore a little smile while narrowing her eyes, as if he both amused and bewildered her. Then she shrugged. “They were a little grabby near the end.” She pulled out the side of her shirt and peered beneath it with a scowl. “I’ll have a nasty bruise.”
“What if they had drunk from another barrel?” Hadrian asked.
“They’re all poisoned,” Royce answered for her. “But what if not all of them drank? What if the first one dropped dead before the others got around to it?”
Scarlett exposed a knife beneath the long tails of her shirt and shrugged.
“Might have killed one—maybe. These were Manzant slavers. They don’t go down easy.” Royce shook his head. “That was way too dangerous.”
“Glad you noticed,” she said. “And you should also note that this is Wagner’s entire supply of beer and ale—ruined to save you. So the two of you can go on back to wherever you came from, right? Hadrian’s swords are in the box up where the driver rests his feet. Wag says he saw them load up. That pretty white dagger and your coin, you’ll find on the bodies. Just take the horses, leave, and forget about Dulgath. Okay? Just leave.”
Hadrian saw the way Royce was clutching his broken hand.
Royce looked back at him with a familiar expression that was easy to read.
“Sorry,” Hadrian said. “We aren’t leaving.”
Chapter Seventeen
Shervin Gerami