I shouldn’t be surprised to be interrogated. “Terysos.”
“Lie.” He grasps the table before him. I glance to see if there’s a map on it—my father always loved to use maps like game boards, planning his conquests—but find only an open ledger, too far away for me to read. “Half the people here are from Terysos.” He tilts his heads to his companions, as though I hadn’t noticed them.
“Are they, now?” I have very little time to gain my father’s trust. I have to give him anything I can spare. Easy facts, half-truths, flattery. “But I was in Terysos. How else could I have found your army?” Half-truth. I was in Terysos. When I was fourteen. Now for a fact. “But before that, I was in Cagmar.”
“Cagmar?” one of the men repeats, like he’s tasted something strange.
My father’s brow shoots up once more. “Surely you jest.”
“Not at all.” I take another step into the room. Look around like it interests me, giving myself time to think. All tactics my father inadvertently taught me. Will he recognize them? “They keep humans as pets, just like you do.”
The twelve-year-old me would throw up at the blatancy of my words. My anger fuels them, a dull simmer, but very much alive. I have run from my father a very long time. I caused him trouble. If I were to be perfectly compliant, he would suspect me more than he does already.
With a single gesture, he dismisses the rest of the men, who scrutinize me as they slowly wind their way out. My father says, “Come immediately if you hear any sort of struggle.”
Ah, there he is. Cautious. Wise. He hasn’t forgotten why he wants me. He remembers what I am. What I can do.
He bides his time until we’re alone. The tent flap settles, and he steps around the table, strolls to my side, and seizes me by my hair.
I’m right. My eyes are level with his, until he wrenches my head to the side.
“Why, dear daughter,” he hisses in my ear, “would you come back, after all the pains I’ve taken to retrieve you, hmm? Explain that to me.”
I don’t struggle against his grip. Fear has dulled and muted, an echo in my bones. Fascinating, how quickly I remember how to react, how to breathe, how to speak. It’s been a second skin, all this time.
I feed him a sprinkle of truth. “Because I’ve been with trolls. And I realized that a life with you was better than life as a slave.” As though life with him was anything but.
He holds me like that, my neck craned to the side, as though he’s waiting for it to hurt. Then he releases me. I resume my posture as though nothing happened, keeping my hands at my side. I can rub the kinked muscles later.
Azmar, where are you now? In your room? In the dungeon? Are you angry, too? Do you hate me now? I remember him taking his own anger out on the training hall surfaces. I tuck the memory away like a prayer.
My father steps back. “You’ve riled my men.”
I hadn’t noticed, but now I hear quiet commotion beyond the walls of the tent. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep my expression dull.
He steps back like I couldn’t possibly hurt him and leans against the table. “All right, then. Tell me about Cagmar.”
And I do. I detail truths that will do little to help him, like the caste system. I tell him things I hope will dissuade him from attempting to conquer Cagmar and its resources, such as that every citizen in the city endures military training from ages twelve to nineteen, and how large their weapons are. I tell him a few names, including Grodd’s, but many will never pass my tongue: Azmar, Unach, Perg, the council members’. He listens intently, asking a clarifying question here and there. In truth, I don’t think I could give away any military secrets even if I wanted to, but I filter every syllable that exits my mouth anyway. Fatigue starts to work its way up my legs, but I continue to feed him with truth and fiction and anything else that could possibly endear him to me. Not as a father endears to a daughter. No, we never had such a bond. But as a soldier endears to his favorite sword.
“They eat monsters?” he repeats. I wonder what time it is, but I don’t ask.
“Some of them.”
He’s been studying me this entire time, relearning my face, trying to read my mind, but now he watches me in a new way, and I cannot tell if it’s good or bad. Then he saunters past me, opens the tent flap, and says to the guard outside, “Get me some rope.” To me, he explains, “You’ll sleep bound for the rest of the night. And every night, until you earn your place.”
I try not to pinch my lips. I should have expected as much.
The guard returns with the rope. My father takes it in one hand and my arm in the other, then escorts me to the dark tent on the west. Which likely means he sleeps in the dark tent to the east. Farthest from the direction of an attack, should the trollis strike. Two men shadow him but keep a respectful distance.
Before we step into the tent, my father twists me around so my back presses to his chest, and with a jut of his chin, indicates a large, bearded man by a campfire about twenty feet away. “See that soldier over there?” His wet breath clings to my hair. The soldier is hard to miss—he might be the burliest man in the camp. “You make one wrong move, and I’ll let him and his friends have their way with you. The men here grow anxious, Calia. They could use the sport.” His grip tightens, rivaling even Grodd’s. “And don’t you dare use it on my soldiers again. If I feel even a whisper of it, I will ruin you. Do you understand?”
I don’t know if he means torture, death, or the taking of my maidenhood. Unfortunately for him, I’ve already lost the last to his enemy. But I nod, keeping my face smooth. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I murmur. “I want revenge just as much as you do.”
He thinks I mean the trollis.
I don’t bother specifying.
Chapter 24
Despite the fact that I’ve returned to my father’s side, and that I sleep with my hands tied behind my back, my wrists nearly touching my ankles, I sleep soundly. Exhaustion—both from my long walk and my high-strung emotions—overwhelms everything else.
I feel a little more myself when I wake. I’m sore and hungry. My skin feels tight where the sun burned it. My mouth is dry. My rage has abandoned me, and it feels like a betrayal, my shield gone when I need it most. But when my father comes in to untie me, anger prickles at my back, reminding me of its allyship.
I clench my jaw as my joints reorient themselves. Massaging my shoulder, I say, “That was unnecessary.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Ottius Thellele throws the bonds on the ground and hands me a piece of jerky. That’s all my breakfast is to be, then, but at least he’s feeding me. “Come. I’ve work for you to do.”