He tested his teeth, especially the edge of the broken one in front, then pulled in a breath.
All three guards turned to look at him.
That was good, Tiiran supposed, even if it didn’t feel that way.
“Scullery help,” he said again in someone else’s hoarse voice, “lapdogs, and lobcocks. If you want me out of here, you’re going to have to carry me out.”
One way or the other?Orin practically growled it in his ear, furious with him and rightly so, since the insults seemed to work better than treasonous words.
Tiiran rested his head on the cool floor and watched them approach with one eye, and thought it was also good that Orin and Nikoly weren’t here, because then Tiiran would have wanted to apologize and it would have been a lie.
Chapter Twenty-three
Every step made Tiiran’s head pound. The guard carrying him did not take care and his steps were not gentle. Neither was the hand holding Tiiran in place over the guard’s shoulder.
They had tried to get Tiiran to walk, but since Tiiran appearing towillinglygo with them was not what he’d wanted, he had fallen to the floor and forced them to move him as though he was a child throwing a tantrum. He’d been struck again and then lifted off his feet when it had become clear that pulling on Tiiran’s arm to drag him only drew more attention, but Pash hadn’t seemed concerned beyond that.
A sign of confidence, but Tiiran wasn’t sure Pash was wrong to feel that way. The palace was emptier and quieter than it usually was before the evening meal. Many of the nobles were gone, so who was there to see an assistant being wrangled but palace staff and other palace guards?
The staff, at least, would talk, as Niksa would if he fled the palace as Tiiran thought he should.
Tiiran’s death would be a small note in the margins of a librarian’s account someday, perhaps in a request for more funds to hire a replacement. If the library continued. If the country did.
Butsomedaydidn’t matter to Tiiran any more than the grand notions about the country. Niksa had to get out and tell Amie or Po or anyone else, and they had to tell it to others so word would spread that the Great Library was once again no longer safe from a pitiful ruler. If for some reason Orin considered returning, that should keep him away. And if Nikoly had not already left, then Tiiran could only hope the story reached him in the capital before he came back.
Nikoly worried him the most. There was a faint chance Nikoly had already tried to enter the palace gate and been taken as Tiiran had, and Tiiran would have no way of knowing unless the Rossick attacked the palace to retrieve him. Maybe the Rossick did that sort of thing. Other noble families might.
Piya should prepare for that, Tiiran reflected, dizzy and sick as he was carried upside-down with a throbbing head through unfamiliar, cold halls of darkened, damp stone. It would have to be some other force from some noble family, since the Canamorra were few. They could hardly invade a fortified palace. Were one or two Canamorra supposed to sneak through the ruins of the original walls? Maybe use one of the tunnels or passageways said to exist?
There were maps. Hard-to-read and often fanciful maps that supposedly depicted old buildings and paths in the palace. The passageways had most likely been destroyed by time or the rebuilding efforts throughout the palace complex over centuries. But there were also ancient buildings, their stones and bricks raided for other projects, their purpose and design known only to the few scholars interested in such subjects.
He had a feeling he was in one of those buildings. Pash had disappeared some time ago, then the other guard as well. The air smelled wet and earthy, and the windows were framed by heavy stone, without glass in any color. He didn’t recognize the building, not that Tiiran recognized much of the palace outside of the kitchens or library.
His thoughts were difficult to keep in front of him, but his pulse was loud in his ears and he kept worrying that he ought to be more concerned with whatever his last view would be. There were execution grounds in the palace. Not labeled as such on any palace sketches or maps, but there was a space where executions of beat-of-fours had taken place or were rumored to have taken place. A spot where not even grass would grow, they said.
Then there were other places. Unknown spots where people like Lanth, not noble, not charged with anything before the ruler or anyone else, had met their ends.
Orin had said outguards were about justice. That anyone was supposed to be able to seek it. If a magistrate or mayor could not help, then there were the local noble families, and if they could not or would not, then the ruler was supposed to be the one to hear all cases, all pleas.
That was a nice idea, Tiiran decided, blood rushing through his skull. But who did one plea to if the ruler was a selfish, cowardly, useless sack of dung and goat spit—the fae?
He snorted, then hissed as he was jostled then dropped to his feet. He got a glimpse of a long hallway lit by a few torches and braziers, with more palace guards gathered around several doors.
“You can’t bring that here!” one of the guards cried out.
Tiiran turned toward the sound, squinting at the smoke from the torches and the lack of light, and thought he saw people through one of the openings in the heavy wooden doors. The openings were about head-height for any adult who was not Tiiran, and crosshatched with metal.
Hedidsee people. Wide-eyed faces pressed to the crosshatching before the guard shoved Tiiran onward, and Tiiran fell clumsily and painfully against a wall he hadn’t seen with his closed, swollen eye.
If there were executions, then there were places to keep people while they waited to die. Tiiran hadn’t considered that part of the histories before, but it made sickening sense now. Yet he didn’t thinkthiswas where the elder Canamorra had been held before their deaths. He didn’t think even Mattin knew of this part of the palace. Most had probably forgotten it, as those held captive here were meant to be forgotten.
He didn’t know them, or why Piya had chosen this over their immediate deaths, or if some got death and others were left to rot with the building. He couldn’t think and was given no chance to. He was pushed through a doorway into a shadowed space under a stone staircase already fallen to ruin. Then the door slammed closed and he was alone in the dark.
With no one to hold him up, Tiiran collapsed to the floor, hitting his head on what must have been stone, then lying still until his moans stopped echoing around him. He slowly became aware of the door in front of him, with an opening for air or light like the other doors he’d seen, but so small that there no need for any crossed metal bars to keep the person inside from escaping. The floor was damp, or so cold it felt damp, without even straw to keep the chill out.
Scratching sounds around the ceiling made him suspect the floor above him had rats, and he doubted the ruined staircase kept the creatures away from this level. He wondered if the rats were meant to scare him, then doubted Pash or anyone else had given Tiiran a second thought the moment he was out of sight.Thatwas probably meant to scare him, so that Pash or some other ranking palace guard could show up to ask him about Orin and Nikoly again. More fool them, because Tiiran wasn’t afraid of rodents or dirt or cold.
“Slept in worse places,” he informed no one with a great, wracking shiver.
