When Javel wiped his brow, his hand came away soaking wet. The day was brutally, unseasonably hot, and driving the mules forward was exhausting work. Thorne had planned the bulk of their route through the Almont to avoid the most heavily populated towns and villages; sensible enough, but as a consequence they’d sometimes been forced to take rough roads that had seen no repair for a long time. By the time they reached the end of the Crithe, Javel could already feel his sickness over this whole enterprise beginning to overtake him, but he turned forward and thought of Allie.
The people in the cages wouldn’t be quiet. They could hardly be expected to, but their pleading was something that Javel had never considered back in New London. Even Thorne might not have considered it, although being Thorne, he probably didn’t care either way. Javel could see him up ahead through the bars of the cage, guiding his horse forward as serenely as a king out for a picnic. Javel pulled the flask from his pocket and took a sip of whiskey, which burned his parched throat. Thorne would give him hell if he saw him drinking, but Javel hardly cared at this point. He’d packed three full flasks into his saddlebags, knowing that he would need them before the journey was over.
Thorne had decided that four men were necessary to guard each cage. There were several nobles in addition to Lord Tare, as well as a fair smattering of the Tearling army. The Baedencourt brothers had also produced two more Caden, Dwyne and Avile; both were well-known fighters, which made the rest of the group feel better. But even for a conspiracy, they were all curiously detached from each other, brought together by a common purpose like a group of wanderers stranded in the Cadarese desert. There was no love, and precious little respect. Brother Matthew and the little pickpocket, Alain, had taken a palpable dislike to each other. Lord Tare kept himself removed, riding ahead as a scout. Javel resented the presence of the Baedencourt brothers, who didn’t even appear to have sobered up for the journey, and he’d spent the past few days with one eye on his cage and the other on Keller, who had begun to worry him more and more.
They had raided twelve villages along the shores of the Crithe. There had been almost no young men and so there’d been very little actual fighting. But Javel had noticed that Keller’s disappearances into houses and huts took a long time, and that some of the women Keller brought out, particularly the young ones, had seen rough handling, their clothing ripped and stained with blood. Javel had considered raising the subject with Thorne, appealing to him on his level: wouldn’t damage to the merchandise mean reduced value? But there had been no opportunity to speak privately with Thorne, and finally Javel had swallowed his disgust, bit by bit, just as he’d been forced to swallow everything else in this business. The progression was terribly easy: one bulwark after another fell inside his mind, like sand castles under the tide, until he worried that one day he might wake up and find himself actually become Arlen Thorne, so debased that everything seemed acceptable.
Allie.
The villages were so isolated that it seemed unlikely anyone would have time to mount a pursuit, but Thorne had insisted on the extra guards all the same, and Javel was forced to admit that Thorne was right. The recent rains had raised the level of the Crithe, and extra men were needed to get the cages across the Beth Ford. It didn’t hurt to be overly cautious either, for the cages were vulnerable—made of simple wood, built to undertake only a few journeys, easier to attack.
“Please,” a woman whimpered from the cage beside Javel, so close that he jumped. “My sons. Please. Can’t they be in here with me?”
Javel shut his eyes and then opened them. The children were the worst part of this business, the worst part of every shipment. But Thorne had explained that the Red Queen valued the children highly, perhaps more than anything else they might bring. Javel himself had seized several: two small girls from Lowell, a toddler and baby boy from Haven, and, in Haymarket, a baby girl right out of her cradle. The children’s cages were fourth and fifth in line, right in the center of the shipment, and Javel thanked God that he hadn’t been assigned to guard them, though he could hear them well enough. The babies, particularly those too young for weaning, had squalled almost continuously for the first two days of the journey. Now, mercifully, they had fallen silent, and so had nearly all of the prisoners, their throats too dry to beg. Thorne had barely brought enough water for the guards and mules; he said that more than a few liters apiece would slow them down.
Right now I need you, Javel thought, staring at Thorne through the bars of the cage. But if I ever catch you alone, just once, on a dark night in the Gut . . . I won’t be fooled again.
“Please,” the woman croaked. “My little one, my baby. He’s only five months old.”
Javel shut his eyes again, wishing he had put her in a different cage. She had blonde hair, just like Allie’s, and when he had yanked her son from her arms, he’d been assaulted by a sudden and terrible certainty: Allie could see him. She could see everything he’d done. The certainty had faded a bit as the caravan moved along and dawn faded into morning, but it had raised a new problem, one that Javel had not considered before: how would he account to Allie for her release? She was a good woman; she would rather die than buy her freedom by the misery of others. What would she say when she found out what he had done?
When Javel was ten, his father had taken him to see the slaughterhouse where he worked, a squat building made of cheap wood. Maybe Father had intended it as a learning experience, or maybe he meant for Javel to follow in his footsteps, but either way, the outing had backfired. The line of steers, dozens of them, had waited dumbly to enter the building through its huge door. But the cows inside the building weren’t dumb at all; there was a cacophony of sound, mooing and screeching, and behind that the thudding of heavy blows.
“Where do they come out?” Javel asked. But his father didn’t answer, merely looked at him until Javel understood. “You kill them?”
“Where d’you think beef comes from, son? For that matter, where d’you think money comes from?”
When they entered the slaughterhouse, the smell had hit Javel instantly, blood and the rich reek of rotten entrails, and he’d lost his breakfast violently all over his father’s shoes. He would remember that smell all his life, but it was the door of the slaughterhouse that planted the real hooks in Javel’s child’s mind: the wide-open door, the yawning darkness beyond. The steers went in, they screamed in the darkness, and they didn’t come out again.
Six years ago, when Allie had gone to Mortmesne, Javel had ridden quietly behind the shipment for several days, not knowing what he planned to do. He could see Allie in the fourth cage, her bright blonde hair visible even from a distance, but the bars put infinite miles between them. And even if he found a way to successfully attack the shipment—a feat no one had ever managed—where would they go?
At least the steer didn’t know what was coming. Allie’s doom had been in her eyes that entire summer; it was one of the few things Javel remembered clearly. Mortmesne would have only one use for such a beautiful woman, just as a slaughterhouse had only one use for steers. They went in, and they didn’t come out again. But now he would snatch Allie back. Javel could almost see her now, a dim shape in the darkened doorway, and he no longer heard the woman beside him, begging for her sons. Eventually she stopped.
As the day got hotter, the mules began to act up. They were Cadarese mules, bred for strain and scorching temperatures, but they seemed to like the cargo no more than Javel did. He’d avoided whipping them throughout the journey, but finally it couldn’t be helped, and he and Arne Baedencourt stationed themselves up at the front of the third cage, whips at the ready whenever a mule began to lag. It did no good. The caravan slowed, and then slowed further, until Thorne himself rode toward the cages and yelled at Ian, the mules’ handler. “We need to reach Demesne by tomorrow night! What’s wrong with your mules?”
“Can’t say!” Ian shouted back. “The heat, maybe! They need more water!”
Good luck with that, Javel thought. They’d passed the end of the Crithe yesterday, and now they were more than halfway up the foothills that set the base of the Clayton Mountains. Even after the rains, there was no water this high up. Several hundred feet ahead, they would go through the Argive Pass and then run straight down the Pike Hill to Demesne. If only the damned mules could make it a few more hours, they could rest and it would be an easy trek the rest of the way.
The heat finally reached its pinnacle and held there as the sun began to sink toward the horizon. Several times Javel saw Alain, stationed on the cage ahead of him, sneaking cups of water to the prisoners. Javel thought of reprimanding him; if Thorne caught Alain wasting water that should have gone to the mules, they would all hear about it. But Javel remained silent.
Near sunset, the woman in the cage, who was apparently blessed with a throat of iron, started up again. She was more difficult to ignore this time; soon Javel knew that her sons were named Jeffrey and William, that her husband had been killed in a construction accident two months ago, that she was pregnant once more and sure it was a girl this time. This last fact bothered Javel most of all, though he couldn’t say why. Allie had never gotten pregnant; Gate Guards made enough to afford good contraception, and both he and Allie deemed children too much of a risk in uncertain times. The decision had seemed so clear-cut then, but now Javel was merely sorry, and wearier than he could say. He wondered why Thorne hadn’t thought of this, that they might take a woman whose pregnancy wasn’t visible yet. Very soon she would have little value as a slave; she wouldn’t be able to work, and no man wanted a pregnant woman for his toy.
It’s Thorne’s problem, it’s Thorne’s problem.
After the last excruciating mile uphill, they finished the rise at dusk and brought the line of cages into the Argive Pass. The sides of the ravine were steep but not sheer, dotted with boulders and outcroppings that jutted sharply from the slope. Broken stonework, the wreck of the Argive Tower, littered the floor of the valley. Greenery had long since deserted the Argive, and the constant trek of shipments had further eroded what arid vegetation was left. In the half-light of dusk, the pass was a deep brown gorge with dim purple sky at the top, stretching nearly a mile from east to west.
The mules were at the end of their strength, but Javel refrained from pointing this out to Thorne. He’d find out soon enough, when the poor beasts simply stopped moving despite all the whips in the world. They would have to stop for the night, although Javel didn’t expect to get any sleep, not with those cages only yards away. He thought of Allie again. What would he tell her? Not the truth, certainly; her eyes would take on that brittle, blank look, Allie’s form of disappointment.
What if she doesn’t care?
But Javel refused to think of how Allie might have changed during the years in Mortmesne. Telling her was out of the question; he would have to come up with a lie.
As the sun set, clouds gathered overhead. Javel heard some grumbling; Dwyne, the leader of the four Caden, muttered loudly to his companions that it was convenient to receive shade just when the sun was gone. The Caden had made this journey many times during the Regency, and it was a comfort to have Dwyne and Avile, if not the dissipated Baedencourts. Yet even Dwyne seemed uneasy. The clouds had gathered fast, and were darkening even faster. If a storm broke overnight, it would slow the caravan’s progress down the Pike Hill. But a storm would also give the prisoners some water. Perhaps when they stopped, Javel could even give the pregnant woman some time with her sons. Thorne would never allow it, but Alain had been sneaking around under Thorne’s nose all day. Maybe Javel could do the same. He straightened up in his saddle, feeling better at the thought. It was a small thing, but a thing he could do.
The clouds deepened inexorably overhead, and at some point, almost without warning, darkness fell on the pass.
How many?” Mace hissed.
“I count twenty-nine,” Wellmer whispered back. “Several more I can’t see behind the cages. Wait—”
Kelsea waited, uncomfortably aware of the group of shadows who surrounded her. Mace and Pen were beside her, yes, but anyone could pull a knife in the dark. She was undeniably vulnerable here. She waited, her anxiety increasing, until Wellmer crawled back behind the boulder where half the troop crouched concealed. “Caden down there, sir. Dwyne and another I don’t recognize.”
“Damn, and they never work in twos. There’ll be more of them.”
After several seconds of hunting for a pocket, Wellmer tucked his spyglass away in the neck of his army uniform. They had left the horses far behind, at the mouth of the Pass, and everyone seemed to have simultaneously discovered that their uniforms had no pockets. Kelsea pulled at the neck of her own uniform; it was sewn of cheap material that made her skin itch. The army garb seemed to sit strangely on all of the Guard; she’d caught many of them twisting and adjusting themselves all day, even Pen, who seemed to be able to blend like a chameleon into whatever surrounded him.
But the black of the uniforms was good for concealment, since the sky still held the barest hint of a cold amber moon. The other half of Kelsea’s guard was about fifteen feet away, tucked behind a second boulder, and Kelsea couldn’t even pick them out; they were simply a dark mass against the side of the ravine. She was more worried about concealing her sapphire. The moment they’d entered the Argive Pass, the horrible heat inside her chest had cooled down to a low pulse that was almost pleasant by comparison. The jewel’s light had dimmed as well, but Kelsea didn’t trust the thin fabric of the uniform to block it entirely.
Metal rasped on leather behind her, the sound of a knife being drawn, and Kelsea drew into herself, trying to compress her body into the tiniest ball possible. Her pulse was thudding now, so loudly that it seemed they would all be able to hear it, and her forehead was chilled with sweat. The wound on her shoulder tightened in remembered agony. Which of the men around her had done it?
“We’re outnumbered, Lady,” Mace told her. “Not badly, but we can’t simply make a frontal attack. Not with the Caden down there.”
“Wellmer, can’t you pick them off?”
“I can shoot, Lady, but only two or three before they take cover and douse the light.”
Mace tapped Venner on the shoulder, whispered to him, and sent him to the other boulder. “We’ve got Wellmer and three more decent archers. We’ll send two across the pass, so the rest can’t take cover behind the cages. If we take the Caden first, that’ll even things up a bit.”
“They might put out the fires at any point,” Pen warned softly. “We should act soon, before we lose the advantage of the light.”
Kelsea grabbed Mace’s wrist. “The people in the cages are the priority. Make very sure they understand.”
Venner crept back, three dark forms behind him. They huddled with Mace, conversing in whispers, and Kelsea wiped her sweating forehead, determined not to give in to the paranoia that had come over her in the dark. “Wellmer, give me your spyglass.”
The eight cages had been doubled up in a horseshoe so that their gates faced inward. Kelsea was relieved to see that the cages had no iron. They looked to be hastily assembled affairs of mere wood, and the bars, rather than interlocking links, were thick, vertical wooden planks. Even if the wood was Tearling oak, the bars should be vulnerable to a concerted attack with axes.