‘I killed Rate,’ said Thalia. ‘I killed him. Stabbed him. And now we’re here. What are we going to do?’
Marith sighed. Not think about it. Fuck some more. Sleep and hope his hangover went away.
He poured himself another cup of water, surveyed the room. Small. Empty. The windows shuttered and he’d guess high up anyway from the way the sounds drifted in. The door locked and guarded: he could hear the tread of feet outside, never moving far beyond the edges of the doorframe. Boring job, though the sounds of them at it had possibly livened things up a bit. An inn, probably, some kind of lodging house, a stop-over on the way back home to die.
‘Very little we can do,’ he said at last. Thalia looked at him sharply. ‘What did you expect, beautiful girl? That I’d cut our way out of here? Whistle up a dragon? I haven’t even got a sword. And even if I did, my hands are shaking too much to hold one. I’m sorry,’ he said.
Unanswerable. He pressed his face into her hair. It still had a sweet scent to it, faint and fragile, like dried roses. He nuzzled his head into her shoulder. His head ached.
‘Some day soon, we’ll sleep in a silver bed with silk curtains, and you’ll wear dresses of gold. You can hear the sound of the sea, from my chambers in Malth Elelane. The seabirds calling. The windows face east. Into the rising sun. Into the sea. You’ll like the sea.’
‘Some day soon, we’ll be dead.’
Marith said nothing, staring up at the light.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
A little time later. He’d perhaps been asleep. Footsteps in the corridor, a woman’s voice barking out commands.
‘Someone’s coming,’ said Thalia. The flame of the lamp flared then died.
The door opened. Landra Relast, accompanied by two men armed with knives. She stood facing them, her eyes cold and sad.
‘Prince Ruin.’
Marith tried to smile at her. ‘Hello, Landra.’
Her face wrinkled at the vomit on the floor, the filthy state of Marith’s clothes. ‘Your father swore you were dead. If I hadn’t been walking down that street and seen you, if I’d been looking the other way … Your father must have been laughing, lying to us about you! Filth and liars, you are. You and your kin. But now I’ll kill you as you deserve. The old ways. Slow and painful. So now perhaps I’m glad he lied.’
So strained. Trying so, so hard to seem as cruel as she wanted to allow herself to be. You always hated me, thought Marith. The gods only know why. I never did anything to hurt you. As though you hated me because I let Carin ruin me as your father wanted. That’s your guilt. If you’d been blind to it. If you’d been looking the other way.
He almost laughed.
Landra said, ‘We leave in a little while. You’ – a glance at Thalia – ‘will be mounted with one of my guards. You’ – another scowl at Marith – ‘will ride on your own. If your horse moves out of line for anything, the man will cut her throat. Then we’ll cut you down. I have five armed men with me. So don’t even think it. When we stop for the night, you’ll be taken straight upstairs again. If you make any noise, she dies. If you make one move I don’t like, she dies. We’ll be in Skerneheh soon enough. Then a ship home to Malth Salene. Then you die.’
‘Going to cut my throat on Carin’s grave, are you? Libations to the dead?’ A pain stabbing through him as he spoke Carin’s name. He scratched angrily at his face. ‘He understood why I killed him, you know. I saw it in his eyes.’
Landra spat at his feet and went out.
Silence.
Thalia said suddenly, ‘Was she your lover?’
‘What?’ Marith looked at her in astonishment. ‘Landra? Gods, no.’
‘The way you … the way you spoke to her …’
‘Jealous?’ He tried to laugh. ‘I’ve known her since we were children, that’s all. The sister of my best and dearest friend. She hates me. Always has. As you may have guessed.’
I should have begged her to let Thalia go, he thought.
The door opened again. Two armed men entered, followed by a frightened looking maidservant and then two more men carrying a bathtub.
‘You’re to be washed and dressed,’ one of the men said gruffly.
Servants brought cold water in large, heavy buckets. One bucket seemed to have pond weed still floating in it. Charming of Landra to go to so much trouble.
‘Strip,’ the man commanded them once the bath was filled. ‘Both of you.’ Thalia went pale. Her hand clutching at Marith’s arm.
‘Strip.’ Anger in the man’s voice. Hands jerking on swords.
Marith slipped off his filthy shirt. ‘Better just do as he says.’ I’ll cut his eyes out and make him eat them in front of you, one day, he thought. I swear it. On my name and my blood, I swear it. He stepped into the cold water, shivering. The maidservant scrubbed them both down with lye soap while the men leered at Thalia.
The least erotic bath with a woman he could possibly imagine.
‘Now walk.’ They walked together down the corridor, Thalia in front of him. He tried to take her hand but the men pulled him away from her. And she flinched away from him, too, her face fixed on the floor.
Ruined.
In the courtyard of the inn people bustled around loading baggage onto packhorses. A dog ran underfoot and was kicked away, a small child peeped through a doorway, eyes wide. A guardsman pulled Thalia roughly towards him, lifted her up into the saddle. She looked so fragile, twisted awkwardly between the horse’s head and the body of the man who held her. A wounded child or a captive bird.
You did this, a voice echoed in Marith’s mind. You. You.
A man led a horse towards him. Marith vaguely recognized him. Mandle. The man’s name was Mandle. Landra’s man. Carin’s, once.
‘My Lord Prince.’ The man’s voice grey and icy. ‘Your horse.’ His eyes laughed cruelly. Marith turned and saw a broken-down packhorse.
Mandle had seen him crawl out of enough squalor in his time. The man couldn’t really think he’d feel insulted by a piss poor horse? He swung himself up into the saddle, which creaked alarmingly under his weight. Mandle mounted up too, moved his own horse until it was pressed up so close Marith could feel the heat coming off it. The packhorse snorted and shied back. Marith struggled to control it, cursing as he ended up scraping his left leg against the stable wall. The dog yelped.
‘Keep that bloody horse under control,’ Mandle shouted at him. ‘We ride shoulder to shoulder like this all the way to Skerneheh, Prince Ruin. So your bloody horse better get to bloody like it. You too. Horse does that too many times, it dies and you’re walking on the end of its rein.’