“Indeed,” said Brother Thistle in an equally hushed tone. “But she survived the prison. She may have hidden strength. And perhaps she has other gifts we have not anticipated.”
“Like excellent hearing,” I suggested, making the monk startle. We weren’t so far that we couldn’t turn back to the prison. I couldn’t let them see me as weak.
The old monk bowed, his voice edged with chagrin. “My apologies, Miss Otrera.”
My cheeks seemed to crack like dry leather, and I realized I was smiling at his discomfiture. It was the first time my face had formed that expression in so long that I had almost forgotten the feeling.
Arcus turned toward me, the moonlight reflecting off the clasp of his cloak. Something about his silhouette and the bright metal sparked a flash of memory of figures moving toward me in flickering torchlight. My smile faded and I huddled deeper into the blankets.
“I will take your rudeness as a sign of improved health,” he said.
In a minute we were off again, passing forests and hushed villages. There was just enough moonlight to see the caved-in roofs, doors hanging off hinges, and broken fences. Most of the homes, whether finely built or made of mud and thatch, were abandoned and falling into ruin.
As men and women had marched off to war, the hope of planting and harvesting enough crops in this harsh northern land had gone, too, leaving hunger and starvation behind. The fields stank of decay, even worse than they had months before, when I’d been taken to prison.
An hour or two later, the land changed. Instead of forests and fields, the moonlight silvered low bushes and scrub frosted with snow. We rattled over what felt like a goat path leading up the side of a mountain.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just kill me now?” I said through clenched teeth, attempting to keep my innards inside my body with my hands pressed to my stomach. “It would cause less suffering, and the end result would be the same.”
“We have a use for you,” Arcus replied, “and it doesn’t involve watching your bony carcass bounce down the side of a mountain.”
He sounded as though he was tempted. Same as I was tempted to push him out of the carriage as we rounded a high cliff. Or maybe set his precious hood on fire.
The land leveled to a high plain hemmed in by craggy slopes dotted with snow-covered pines. What had appeared to be a pile of rocks from a distance resolved itself into a sprawling building with a tower rising high on one side. The moon sat atop the tower as if someone had jammed a sickle into its flat top.
“The abbey you mentioned?” I asked, noting the heaps of rocks beneath gaping holes in the walls. “The prison is a palace by comparison.”
“Feel free to walk back, then,” Arcus answered coldly. “I’m sure the guards will welcome you with open arms. And the executioner, too, no doubt.”
“The executioner didn’t seem bothered with me. No doubt he’s preoccupied with the many dissenters rounded up by the king’s noble soldiers. He’s not likely to remember me until the end of the border wars.”
Arcus snorted. “You would be dead by then.”
I pressed my lips together. He was probably right.
The carriage pulled up to a stable door, and the driver hopped out while a broad figure shuffled over to help with the horses. Arcus stepped out and reached for me. For a man of such size, he moved lightly. I stiffened as he lifted and tucked me against his cold chest.
“Don’t burn me and I won’t hurt you,” he said, invoking our earlier bargain. Pain distracted me from fear. I bit my cheek and clung to his robe, closing my eyes against the throb of my ankle.
“Tell Brother Gamut our guest has arrived,” Brother Thistle said, motioning to a man waiting at the door. “Then take her to the infirmary.”
“Guest?” I repeated drily. “Does the abbey welcome many guests with ankle chains?”
“Its standards have fallen abysmally,” he replied, stepping over paving stones that had heaved up like jagged fingers. “Which is why this is the perfect place to keep you.”
And you, I thought. They had taken me from the king’s prison and were therefore just as guilty of crimes against the king as I was.
The large wooden door to the abbey was held open by a man holding a candle, the light reflecting off his shiny bald head, shaved in a white tonsure. He was quite old, with a curved back; large, bent nose; and sunken cheeks.
“The infirmary,” said Arcus.
The monk turned to shuffle away into the darkness. We followed the candle as it bobbed along a corridor with arched windows and into a small room with four straw-stuffed mattresses on the floor. One of them was covered in a threadbare white sheet, a thin pillow, and a quilt folded at the foot. It was the first time I had seen anything like a bed in months. I leaned toward it, and Arcus let me down with a thump. I rubbed my hip and glared at him.
He motioned toward me with one hand. “Get her cleaned up.”
With that, he turned and left.