Aisa squatted and placed the torch on the floor, her knife held at the ready in case it was a trick. But Da lay still, hoarse breath hissing in and out through his thick black beard.
“I could kill you now,” Aisa whispered, brandishing her knife before Da’s closed eyes. “I could cut your throat, and no one would care. I could say I was defending myself.”
And it would be true, she realized. She couldn’t even imagine how it would feel, to walk the earth knowing that Da was no longer doing the same. To know that she no longer had a lurking enemy out there, a danger to them all . . . that would be freedom indeed. Aisa had never killed anyone before, but if she was going to start, she could hardly make a better choice than this.
Still, she hesitated, clutching her knife, as her knees began to ache and her palms became sticky with sweat.
“Why?” she whispered, watching Da’s eyelids twitch. “Why did you have to be this way?” Even more than she wanted to kill Da, she wanted answers, wanted to call him to account. Killing him seemed far too easy, particularly when he was unconscious. It was no punishment.
Several childish shrieks echoed up the hallway, making Aisa jump. For a moment, she had forgotten why she was here: the children. One day, less than a year ago, she had walked into the kitchen and found Da with his hand up Glee’s dress, and Glee not three years old.
“Too easy,” she muttered. “Just too easy.”
The Caden had the manacles, but she didn’t know when they would be back. Using her knife, Aisa cut the sleeves from Da’s shirt, being careful not to touch him. She wrapped his wrists and ankles, tying the knots as securely as she could. Da stirred and groaned as she tightened the bonds, but his eyes remained closed, and Aisa stared down at him for a long moment, wishing she were older, old enough to get past it all.
Someone was coming back up the tunnel now, and Aisa straightened, raising her knife. But as the noise resolved itself into many footsteps, walking at a steady pace, she relaxed and slipped the knife out of sight. The other part of her job was about to begin, and she was determined to do it well.
The group of children came around the corner, followed by all four Caden, holding torches. Christopher and James were each hauling a prisoner as well, men whose faces had been badly beaten. The children were frightened; many of them were crying, and they looked fearfully up at the four red-cloaked men. Aisa held up her hands.
“Listen to me,” she said. “These men are good men. They’re here to help you, I swear it. We’re going to take you out of the tunnels.”
She said this last as gently as possible, for they had already discovered that this news alarmed the children more than anything else. Many of them had lived their entire lives down here, and had no concept of the world above.
“We have plenty of food,” Aisa continued, and saw their eyes brighten with interest.
“We’ll get sick if we go up the stairs,” one of the older girls announced. “My pa said so.”
“Your pa lied,” Aisa told her, glancing down at Da, whose chest still rose and fell in the easy rhythm of unconsciousness. “I have lived up there my entire life.”
The girl still looked faintly mutinous, but said nothing else.
“You should follow us, and stay together. If you stray, you may get lost down here in the dark.” For the first few days, this possibility had haunted Aisa as well, but Daniel always marked the walls well, with special chalk that did not dissolve under the drip of water. As long as they didn’t run out of light, they were fine.
Christopher had bent to Da now, examining his bonds. “I’ll have to teach you to tie a knot, girl. If he’d woken, he would have been out of this in seconds.”
If he’d woken, I would have killed him.
But Aisa didn’t say it. She didn’t want to alarm the children, but even more, she didn’t want the Caden to know Da was her father. Coryn had told her that the Caden, like the Guard, allowed new recruits to wipe their pasts clean. But she didn’t know what status she really held with them, and besides, did that leeway include a past as ugly as this?
Christopher snapped a pair of manacles on Da’s wrists before hoisting him to his feet. Da’s eyes opened, bleary and red, and they wandered the room for a moment before finding Aisa and locking on her.
“Want to do the honors?” Daniel asked.
Meeting his eyes, Aisa froze, because she saw that he already knew. They all knew. It was the audience, the damnable audience, where she had revealed her shame to the entire world. Merritt was looking at her with poorly concealed pity, and James had put his hand on her shoulder.
“Go ahead,” he murmured. “It will do you good.”