The anesthetic worked quickly; within a few seconds, the pain had dulled to a low pulse. The Fetch released Kelsea’s neck and pocketed the pouch. “Later, some mead should take care of the rest of the pain.”
“Don’t patronize me!” Kelsea snapped; she was angry at herself for finding this man attractive, and it seemed very important that he not know. “If you mean to kill me, be done with it!”
“In my own time.” The Fetch’s black eyes gleamed with something that Kelsea thought might be respect. “You surprise me, girl.”
“Did you expect me to beg?”
“Had you done so, I would have killed you on the spot.”
“Why?”
“Your mother was a beggar.”
“I’m not my mother.”
“Perhaps not.”
“Why don’t you tell me what it is you want?”
“We want you to be a queen.”
Kelsea heard the implication easily. “As my mother was not?”
“Have you any idea who your father was?”
“No, and I don’t care.”
“I do. I’ve a bet with one of my men.”
“A bet?”
His eyes twinkled. “Your paternity is one of the great wagering items in this kingdom. I know an old woman living in a village far to the south who backed her horse almost twenty years ago, and she’s been waiting for the truth to come out ever since. The field is, shall we say, quite wide.”
“How charming.”
“You’re royalty, girl. Nothing in your life will be personal anymore.”
Kelsea pursed her lips, annoyed at the turn of the conversation. Her father, like her uncle, had never seemed particularly important. Her mother was the important one, the woman who ruled the kingdom. Whoever Kelsea’s father was, he had apparently abandoned her at birth . . . but that abandonment had never hurt the way her mother’s had. Kelsea remembered days spent waiting in front of the picture window in the front room of the cottage; eventually, the sun would always set, and still her mother hadn’t come.
“We’ve waited a long time to see what you were made of, girl,” the Fetch remarked. “I cajole and threaten by turns, and now I’m no further. You’re not what we expected.”
“Who is we?”
The Fetch gestured behind him. Kelsea realized that she could hear men’s voices outside the tent, and, slightly more distant, someone chopping wood.
“What holds your group together?”
“That’s a perceptive question, so of course you’ll get no answer.” He sprang to his feet, the movement so sudden that Kelsea flinched and drew her knees together. Had she a knife and he nothing at all, this man would still have her dead in less than a minute. He reminded her of Mace: a man of latent violence, its employment all the more deadly for the fact that he held it in such low esteem. She’d forgotten to ask about Mace, she realized, but now wasn’t the time. She felt dim relief when the Fetch tucked his knife back into the band at his waist.
“Dress yourself, girl, and come outside.”
When he had disappeared through the tent flap, Kelsea turned her attention to the pile of dark-hued clothing on the ground. Men’s clothes, and far too big for her, but perhaps that was for the best. Kelsea didn’t flatter herself that she had a shapely figure.
Who cares about your figure?
No one, she answered Carlin grumpily, pulling the crumpled linen gown over her head. She wasn’t fool enough to miss the danger here: a man who was handsome, intelligent, and more than slightly bad. Not all of Carlin’s books had been nonfiction.
But I’m doing no harm, she insisted. If I know the danger, it lessens the harm.
Even inside her head, this statement didn’t ring entirely true. The Fetch had left moments ago, but she was already anxious to follow him outside and see him again.
Don’t be a fool, her mind snapped. You’re too ugly for him, he said so.
She had finished dressing now. Combing her fingers through her hair, she stood and peered out of the tent.
They must have brought her a long way south. The country surrounding the camp was no longer forest or even farmland; they were on top of a high, flat hill covered with weedy grass parched yellow by the sun. Similar hills surrounded them on all sides, a sea of rolling yellow. The land hadn’t yet begun to drop into desert, but they couldn’t be far from the Cadarese border.
At first glance, Kelsea would have taken the camp for that of a circus troupe: several tents dyed gaudy shades of red, yellow, and blue, situated around a stone fire pit. Something was cooking, for smoke drifted lazily into the air and Kelsea could smell roasting meat. On the other side of the pit, a short blond man dressed in the same sort of shapeless clothing as Kelsea herself was chopping wood.
Closer to Kelsea’s tent, three men were huddled together, talking in low voices. One of them was the Fetch; another, judging by his height and shoulders, could only be the enormous Morgan. He had blond hair and a round face that remained friendly as Kelsea approached. The third man was black, which gave Kelsea pause for a moment. She’d never seen a black person before, and she was fascinated by the man’s skin, which gleamed in the sunlight.
None of them bowed to her, not that Kelsea had expected them to. The Fetch beckoned her, and Kelsea moved forward, taking plenty of time about it so that he knew she didn’t jump to his command. As she drew nearer, he gestured to his two companions. “My associates, Morgan and Lear. They won’t harm you.”
“Unless you tell them to.”
“Of course.”
Kelsea squatted down and found the three of them gazing at her with an assessment that she could only describe as clinical. Her sense of danger doubled. But if they killed her, she reasoned, her uncle would remain on the throne. He might even become king, since he was the last of the line. It wasn’t much of a bargaining chip, but it was something. According to Carlin, the Regent was not loved in the Tearling, but maybe Carlin had lied to her about that too. Kelsea looked off into the distance, trying to tamp down her frustration. Her mother, the Regent, the Red Queen . . . she needed someone to tell her the truth.
What if the truth isn’t anything you want to hear?
She still wanted to know. And, she realized, someone did have answers. “Where’s Lazarus?”
“Your Mace? Over there.” The Fetch gestured toward a bright red tent some thirty feet away. One of his men, broad and sandy-haired, stood on guard.
“Can I see him?”
“Be my guest, girl. See if you can get him to settle down; he’s been making a nuisance of himself.”
Kelsea headed for the tent, a bit worried. They didn’t seem to be vicious men, but they were hard, and Mace didn’t strike her as a model prisoner. The man in front of the red tent stared at her, but she nodded at him and he allowed her to pass.
Mace was lying on the floor, blindfolded and bound securely to a peg in the ground. His wounds appeared to have been stitched just as skillfully as Kelsea’s, but ropes were coiled around his wrists and ankles, and a secondary line had been tied up around his neck in a noose. Kelsea hissed involuntarily, and at the sound Mace turned his head. “Have you been harmed, Lady?”
“No.” Mindful of the man stationed outside the tent, Kelsea seated herself cross-legged on the floor beside him and spoke in a low voice. “Only a few threats against my life.”
“If they were going to kill you, you’d be dead. Your uncle has no use for you alive.”
“They’re not—” Kelsea lowered her voice even further, struggling to express the strange impression she’d received. “I don’t think they’re sent from my uncle. They want something from me, but they won’t tell me what it is.”
“I don’t suppose you could untie me? They’ve found a knot I can’t slip.”
“I don’t think further flight is the way, Lazarus. We wouldn’t escape these men.”
“Wouldn’t you rather call me Mace?”
“Carroll didn’t.”
“Carroll and I, Lady, have a long history.”
“I don’t doubt that.” Kelsea considered it, realizing that she always thought of him as Mace in her head. “Still, I prefer Lazarus. It’s a name of good omen.”
“As you like.” Mace shifted, the ropes binding his wrists and ankles visibly expanding as he tried to stretch his muscles.
“Are you in pain?”
“Discomfort. Certainly I’ve been in worse places. How did we escape from the river?”
“Magic.”
“What sort of—”
“Lazarus,” Kelsea cut in firmly. “I need some answers.”
He winced visibly, shifting against his bonds.
“I know my uncle placed a price on my head. But what has he done to the Tearling?”
“Pick something, Lady. Your uncle’s probably done it.”
“Explain.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I won’t have this discussion with you, Lady.”
“Why? Were you in my uncle’s guard?”
“No.”
She waited for him to elaborate, but he merely lay there. Somehow Kelsea knew that his eyes were shut tightly, even beneath the blindfold, like a man under heavy interrogation. She bit down on her cheek, hard, trying to keep a rein on her temper. “I don’t understand how I’m supposed to make smart decisions without knowing everything.”
“Why dwell on the past, Lady? You have the power to make your own future.”
“What of my dolls and dresses?”
“I poked you with a stick to see if you’d fight back. And you did.”
“What if I order you to tell me?”
“Order away, Lady, and see how far you get.”
She thought for a moment, then decided not to. It was the wrong road to take with Mace; order though she might, he would be guided by his own judgment. After watching him shift restlessly in his bindings for another minute, Kelsea felt the last of her annoyance give way to pity. They’d trussed him up very hard; he barely had room to stretch.
“How’s your head?”