27
Arin woke with the movement of being heaved up onto something hard. His head thumped, and the world was a weird, jigsawed thing of sky and stone and water. Then his vision cleared, and Arin realized that he was lying on a stone pier. The skull-faced man was stepping out of the narrow boat anchored to the pier. He muttered something.
“What did you say?” Arin croaked.
The man hunkered down and gently slapped Arin’s cheek twice. “That I need a wheelbarrow.”
Wherever Arin was going, he wanted to be on his feet. “There’s been a misunderstanding.”
“Foreigners are illegal in Dacra. You broke our laws by entering the country. You’ll have to pay the price.”
“Just let me tell you why—”
“Oh, reasons. Everyone has reasons. I don’t care to know yours.” The easterner stared down at Arin, and although it wasn’t the man’s eyes that had been mutilated, it was hard to hold his gaze. Arin remembered seeing him for those few bare minutes in Herran. How the runaway eastern slave was being dragged past the road Arin was forced to pave. A Valorian dagger had flashed. Arin had cursed his masters. He had been beaten down. The man’s face was whole, and then it wasn’t.
“You ran away again,” Arin said. “You got free.”
The man straightened. He stared down at Arin from a height. “Do you think you did something for me that day?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I think that you liked your chains, little Herrani. Otherwise, you would have fought with everything you had. You would look like me.” He bent to grasp the ropes wound around Arin’s chest, and Arin realized that he meant to drag him.
“Let me walk.”
“All right.” The easy response surprised Arin until the man pulled Kestrel’s dagger from the satchel slung over his shoulder, cut the ropes binding Arin’s ankles, and watched him with a smile.
It was then that Arin realized that he couldn’t quite feel his feet. Standing up was going to be hard. Walking no longer seemed like a great idea.
Arin’s wrists were bound in front of him. Rope coiled around his upper body at the biceps. He decided to take that as a healthy amount of respect for the way he’d attacked the prison guard.
The easterner was still smirking.
Arin inchwormed to his knees. He struggled to his feet. He nearly fell back down.
The soles of his feet stung with a thousand little knives. He wobbled. Arin saw, again, Kestrel’s blade in the easterner’s hand. He was suddenly furious at her, as if she had drugged him, tied him, and watched him try to walk when he couldn’t.
He clenched his teeth until it hurt. He took a step.
The Dacran said something in his language.
“What?” said Arin. He took another wavering step. He bent his arms at the elbows, lifting his bound wrists. It helped him balance. He flexed his fingers. The feeling in them was fine. He could open and close his hands. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me what you said.”
“You want to know? Learn my language for yourself.” The man was unsettled, apparently by whatever he’d said as Arin tried to walk. He looked down and opened the satchel to place Kestrel’s dagger inside.
Arin knew an opportunity when he saw it.
He shouldered his weight into the man, toppling them both down. The dagger hit stone. The man was shoving Arin off him, but Arin jerked a knee up into the Dacran’s stomach and rolled to claim the dagger.
Later, Arin would realize how lucky he’d been. But for now he thought nothing at all. The dagger was in his hands, he was flipping it by its hilt. That exquisitely sharp edge sliced through the ropes at his wrists.
The Dacran gasped on the ground, clutching his gut. Arin loomed over him and couldn’t quite remember when or how he’d gotten to his feet. When had he yanked the ropes that had bound his chest up over his head? Ropes lay in a heap on the pier. Arin stared at them. He stared at the man, who stared back.
No, not really.
The Dacran wasn’t really looking at Arin. His gaze was going over Arin’s shoulder.
Arin turned. For the first time, he truly saw where he was: on a large island in the middle of the river. The pier was grand, edged with low, scalloped walls of translucent stone. A path traveled from it up onto the island, to a castle with steeply pitched roofs and walls that gleamed like glass.
But the pier didn’t matter, or the path, or the castle.
What mattered were the ranks of white-clad guards who had trained their small crossbows, wound and notched, at Arin.
“Good,” said the skull-faced man. He stood, and held out his hand for Kestrel’s dagger.
Arin hated that he always hated to let it go.
The man took it. “Good.”
Defeated, Arin muttered, “You said that already.”
It began to rain. The Dacran looked at him through the bright gray of it. “No. It was what I said earlier, when you got to your feet and walked.”
*
The castle had looked like glass because it had been made from that odd, translucent stone. Through the rain, Arin could see dark shapes of people moving behind its outer walls. But other figures seemed to stand inside the stone.
Arin wiped water from his eyes. “Does it always rain so much here?”
“Wait till summer,” said the Dacran. “It gets so hot that some of the city canals dry up and we walk in them like deep roads. Then you’ll wish for rain.”
“I won’t be here in summer.”
The other man said nothing.
As they passed through the castle gate, Arin tried to peer into the wall. “Are those … statues inside?”
“They are the dead.” When Arin shot him a startled look, the man said. “Our ancestors. Yes, I know that some people from other countries set the people they loved on fire or dump them in a hole in a ground. But Dacra is a civilized nation.”
They entered the castle. Arin was so wet it felt as if the rain was still drumming down on him. His boots squelched. Inside the castle, some walls were built from solid white marble, and others from that glassy rock. It had a dizzying effect. Arin found it hard to judge the space and shape of things.
“Well?” said the Dacran. “Where do you keep your family dead?”
“I don’t know where they are,” Arin said shortly. The other man went silent, and that made Arin uncomfortable, resentful. He wondered when he would stop sharing things he shouldn’t. It was a bad habit.
It had begun with her. He could swear that she was the start of it all.
“The ground,” Arin said, though he had not in fact seen what had been done with the bodies of his parents and sister. “We bury our dead, as I’m sure you know if you lived in my country long enough to learn its language.” The Dacran didn’t admit to it, or that he might have been needling Arin with questions whose answers he knew. This made Arin angrier. “You’re no more civilized than I am.”
“You asked to walk. Here you are, walking. You asked to speak with my queen. You will. You’ve broken our laws three times—”
“Three?”
The man ticked them off, starting with his smallest finger. “You entered our country. You bore the weapon of our enemy. And you struck a member of the royal family.”
Arin stared at him. The man gave a slow smile. “But we have been polite,” he said.
“Who are you?”
The man led the way down a hall lined with palm-size paintings.
“Wait.” Arin caught the man’s arm.
The Dacran glanced down at Arin’s hand on him, then gave a look that made Arin let go. “You are also not supposed to touch a member of the royal family. It’s not so grave an offense as striking me, but still. I don’t know what my sister is going to do with you. The queen can hardly sentence you to death more than once.”
“Your sister?”
“That last offense bears a lesser punishment, though I don’t think you’ll like that one either.”
Arin had stopped, only vaguely aware that they had entered a high-vaulted chamber. “But if you’re the queen’s brother, that means you’re Risha’s brother, too.”
The Dacran stopped as well. “Risha?”
There was a silent energy in this new room that kept Arin from saying anything else.
It was wariness. It was the watchful eyes of guards.
It was the hard expression of the young queen, who looked at Arin as if she had already pronounced his death.