“Valen,” he prompts before Oak can recall his name. One of the generals who campaigned with Madoc for years. Not a friend, either. They vied against each other for the position of grand general, and Valen never forgave Madoc for winning. Madoc must have promised him something extraordinary to get Valen to betray the High King.
Oak could well believe that once coming to Madoc’s side, Valen was unwilling to return to the military in Elfhame, tail between his legs. And now he is here, after spending perhaps nine years as a falcon. Oh, yes, Oak could well believe Valen despises him. Valen may actually hate him more than Hyacinthe does.
“I was a child,” the prince says.
“A spoiled, disobedient boy. You still are. But that won’t stop me from wringing every last drop of information out of you.”
Straun hesitates, cutting his gaze toward Bran, still far enough back that he hasn’t overheard their plan. “Aren’t we going to get in more trouble? The prince said—”
“You take orders from a prisoner now?” Valen needles. “Perhaps you’re still loyal to his father, despite being abandoned by him. Or the High Court? Maybe you think you made the wrong choice, not swearing fealty to that spoiled snake boy and his mortal concubine.”
“That’s not true!” Straun spits out, mightily offended. It’s a fine piece of manipulation. Valen has made Straun feel as though he has to prove himself.
“Then let’s go strap him down,” Valen says with a crooked grin. Oak would be willing to bet that this is the soldier who took Straun’s money playing dice.
“He’s just goading you—” Oak manages to get out before he is shoved roughly forward. And, of course, he has been commanded not to resist.
“What’s going on?” asks Bran, frowning at them.
“The boy has a smart mouth,” Valen says, and Bran narrows his eyes in suspicion but doesn’t ask any further questions.
Down they go, past the prisons. No matter how Oak tries to stop himself, his body moves like an automaton, like one of those stick soldiers Lady Nore created from Mab’s bones. His heart thuds dully in his chest, his body alight with panic.
“Listen,” he tries again. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing to me—”
“Shut your mouth,” snaps Valen, kicking the prince in the back of the leg.
“This isn’t the right direction,” Bran says, seeming to notice how far they’ve descended for the first time.
Oak hopes he will do something. Order them to stop. Tattle to Hyacinthe. It would be embarrassing to be saved by him, but the prince would far prefer that to whatever Valen is planning.
“We need information,” the scarred guard says. “Something to give the queen so that we don’t look like fools. You think you’re not going to be demoted? Mocked? He got past all three of us.”
Bran nods slowly. “I suppose there’s something to that. And I am given to understand the interrogation rooms are well outfitted.”
“You hardly need to strap me down. I will tell you how I stole the key, how I got into her tower, all of it.” Oak can tell, though, how little they want to be convinced. “I—”
“Quiet.” Straun shoves him hard enough for him to overbalance, arms behind his back as they are.
The prince hits the stone floor hard, smacking his head.
Valen laughs.
Oak pushes himself back up. A cut just above his left brow is bleeding, the blood dripping down over his eye. Since his hands are bound, he can’t wipe it away. He flexes his wrists a little to test the bindings, but there is no give.
Fury chokes him.
A few more shoves and he’s down the hall and into a room he’s never seen before—one with manacles attached to a black stone table and instruments of interrogation in a glass-paned cabinet. Straun and Valen press Oak’s back down onto the slab. They cut the bindings on his wrists, and for a moment, he’s free.
Desperately, he tries to struggle, but he finds he cannot, not with the bridle’s magic holding him down more firmly than they could. Go with Straun. Do not resist him. Do not trick him. The prince has to allow them to manacle his wrists and then his ankles.
He doesn’t bother pretending he’s not afraid. He’s terrified.
“Hyacinthe has been dreaming of torturing me for years.” The prince is unable to keep his voice from shaking a little. “I can’t imagine what I know that would make him forgive you if you jump the line.”
Bran squints in slight confusion as he parses the human phrase, looking more worried. “Maybe we should tell—”
Valen reaches for the small handheld crossbow on his hip.
“Bran!” Oak shouts in warning.
The falcon goes for his sword, unsheathing it in a single fluid movement. But the bolt from Valen’s crossbow strikes him in the throat before he can so much as advance.
Go with Straun. Do not resist him. Do not trick him. Until you are confined again, you will follow these commands.
Now that he is confined, Oak can finally resist. He pulls against his bindings, writhing and kicking, shouting every filthy thing he can think of—but, of course, it’s too late.
Bran drops heavily to the floor as two more bolts lodge in his chest.
This doesn’t seem like a good move. It doesn’t seem clever, and Oak doesn’t like the idea that Valen may be desperate enough or paranoid enough to make decisions that don’t make strategic sense. He’s not an amateur. He must have really believed that Bran was about to betray him.
“Bar the door,” Valen tells Straun.
Straun does it, stepping over Bran’s body. He’s breathing hard. If he’d been asked to choose sides, he might have chosen Bran’s. But no one’s asking him now.
“Well,” says Valen, turning toward Oak. “Now you and I are finally going to have a conversation.”
Oak cannot repress the shudder that goes through him at those words. He has been poisoned and stabbed many times over the course of his short life. Pain is transient, he tells himself. He has endured it before—broken bones and bled and survived. Pain is better than being dead.
He tells himself a lot of things.
“It seems rude for me to be lying down during it,” Oak says, but his voice doesn’t come out as calmly as he hoped.
“There are lots of ways to hurt us Folk,” says Valen, ignoring the prince’s words as he draws on a brown leather glove. “But cold iron is the worst. Burns through faerie flesh like a hot knife through lard.”
“A grim topic to discuss, but if that’s what you’d like to talk about, you are the host of this little get-together ” Oak tries to sound light, unconcerned. He’s heard Cardan speak just this way on many occasions, and it disarms his audience. Oak can only hope it works that way now.
Valen’s hand comes down hard on the corner of his mouth. It’s more a slap than a blow, but it still stings. He tastes blood where a tooth cuts into his lip.
Straun gives a guffaw. Maybe he feels torture will be a proper vengeance for Oak’s making him look like a fool. But with Bran’s body lying by the guard’s feet, Straun is a fool if he thinks himself safe.
Still, the game that has always served Oak best is seeming feckless, and he needs to play that up. Be that spoiled boy Valen expects.
At least until he can come up with something better.
“Let’s talk about what your sister will do,” says Valen, surprising Oak by not bothering to ask a single question about his escape. “Where were you planning on meeting her forces once you escaped your cell and murdered the queen?”
Clever of him to assume guilt and only press for details. Clever, but wrong.
With the stick creatures scattered into pieces, the falcons are the entire force of Wren’s military. That gives Valen room to rise in the ranks, since those ranks are thin, but it puts him in danger, too. Whatever Elfhame sends at the Citadel, he and his falcons will have to meet it.
That’s what Valen wants above all else, Oak realizes. Power. He’s been simmering with that desire for as long as he’s been laboring under the curse. And being Wren’s military leader would have appeased him a little. But she passed him over, and now he is hungrier than ever.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I have no way to communicate with my sister,” Oak says. That was true enough since he smashed the snake.