When he felt he could move without vomiting, he probed around his eye as lightly as he could to gauge the damage, tested his teeth to make sure none were broken, then sat up to find a wall and curl against it. He pulled his robe around him and held it closed with the arm that didn’t hurt.
He didn’t remember any injuries to his arm, but getting dragged halfway down a corridor by a furious palace guard twice his size must have done some damage.
Nikoly would fuss. Tiiran worried over Nikoly’s reaction for the half a moment before he remembered there wouldn’t be one. Then he put his head down, his face to his knees, and sucked in a shaky breath.
“It’s fine,” he whispered to Nikoly and Orin, who wouldn’t show up to stand in the doorway and glare at him for his blackened eye. “Worry more about all those people out there, and how long it will take before one or more of the noble houses decides to do something about it.”
More fighting in the palace. More bloodshed. Tiiran was so tired. And cold, and pained, and hungry, if he thought about it and how long it had been since he had eaten or even had tea. Although he wasn’t certain any food would stay down.
“You did try to tell me, Orin.” He nearly smiled to himself about it. “You were wrong about why the guard might be interested in what I have to say, but you weren’t wrong to give my words back to me.” If Piya would kill a noble child by neglecting it to death, why would he hesitate over someone like Tiiran, fae or not?
Orin had been so concerned for Tiiran. That had been real too. Tiiran was briefly warm again at the memory.
“I don’t think even Lanth was ever really worried for me,” he remarked softly to the lovers who weren’t there, then closed his eye to wait for the pain to recede.
He must have slept. He woke as the door opened and didn’t even make it to his feet before it was slammed shut again after a bowl and a bucket had been shoved into the room with him.
He supposed he should be grateful for the bucket, although he was confused by the bowl, which held porridge and a spoon.
They must not have decided his fate yet. Strange that they would hesitate. If Piya kept the throne, no one was going to challenge him over Tiiran. If Piya lost the throne, no incoming ruler would likely care much either when they had nobles to worry about. That only left the fae, and Tiiran didn’t see why, in Pash’s imagination, the fae would be more forgiving of imprisonment and possible slow death over a quick one.
The fae were not concerned about Tiiran, though even Tiiran would have had enough sense not to say so to the Guard Captain’s face. Not that anyone was there to question him. Perhaps that was for the best; Tiiran didn’t feel much like talking at the moment.
His head and especially half his face pounded and were hot to the touch. His arm and shoulder were stiff and numb until he moved, and the sun—for he assumed it was now day—did not bring much light into the room. He ate the porridge slowly, only to keep it from the rats, then put his head down again.
He stirred at the sound of the door and the arrival of another bowl of porridge, and could not have said whether it was day still or if night had fallen. His eye remained shut but some of his headache had lessened, so he dutifully ate as he had no doubt his lovers would have wanted him to, then stumbled to his feet.
On his toes and swaying wildly, he could see hints of movement through the opening in the door: guards occasionally walking past, a flicker of a shadow from a torch. He could hear the guards better than he could see them, most of them grumbling about the smell of the place, or the work of feeding people and retrieving slop buckets. Tiiran vaguely wondered if they were being punished with this duty. They certainly seemed to think so. Of course, they didn’t need to be here. They could resign their posts or simply leave at any time. Yet here they were.
Maybe they imagined it would be worth it, to do such things for such a ruler. As if a ruler would ever do more for guards like them than perhaps promote them to a new level of guard. Commoners weren’t even worth a trial to Piya, and these fools thought they mattered to him? Or to Pash, for that matter?
“Bunch of fucking idiots!” Tiiran shouted through the door. Or tried to shout, but pain shot through his skull, so it was more of a loud whisper. The only reply was a guard hitting or kicking the door hard as they went by.
The door felt solid and quite heavy. The handle held a lock, which Tiiran later tried when the guards were silent and hopefully too far away to notice, but the handle didn’t budge. Then, with nothing else to do, he walked along each wall, trying to get a feel for the space. It was a cell, but very small.
He couldn’t imagine even someone as bold as the first ruler ever holding a fae captive. That this room was meant for a child was a less pleasant possibility, but Tiiran imagined that tormenting someone like Orin by putting them in a room of this size was its real purpose. Which made him wonder which ruler had ordered this place built and why.
He walked the length in slow, shambling steps while he tried not to think of his injuries, or if Nikoly had escaped, or if Orin was still in danger, or how his lovers had possibly betrayed him.
Had Piya inspected this place before sending nobles here? Had Pash chosen it? They had better offer to the fae in hopes that Tiiran never got out, or he was going to shout their crimes at every street corner in the capital. He would tell Mattin to put it in a history.
“And then what?” Tiiran asked the air. “What good will that do? No one will know of it. Nobles won’t care or will forget the moment their studies are over. And commoners have no idea they can request information from the library. Most of them don’t or can’t read.” Tiiran hadn’t, before coming to the palace.
Nobody needed to read for most daily tasks. But they should know things, their own histories the way the nobles learned theirs. In songs maybe, if bards ever sang about anything other than fucking or heroic nobles or the fae.
A crunch beneath his foot stopped him. Tiiran crouched down to feel in the dark until he found the remnants of one of Mattin’s clasps under his boot. It must have fallen from his hair or been smashed against the stone when Tiiran had been first shoved into the room. He put the wire carefully into his robe pocket and tried to kick away the broken glass. He felt for the other clasp and found it still in his hair, although his braid was falling apart. That clasp went into a pocket as well. He didn’t want to ruin the only other fine thing to have ever been in his possession.
Then he realized his face was still hot and then that his thoughts were strangely slow.
All at once, he was shaking. He would have said he was cold, shivering in his tiny frozen cell, but his throat locked and he could barely breathe except for gasping, too large breaths that hurt his chest. His eyes were wet, stinging, and wiping them on his sleeves did nothing.
He was tired and cold. All of him hurt. He’d forgotten what being alone felt like. Only a few days and he’d forgotten.
He could hardly blame Orin and Nikoly for that. That was his own stupid fault.
“When someone takes in a kitten off the street and gives it a night by the fire, they don’t expect the kitten to defend them from burglars, now do they? I can’t put that on them. But I do wish—”
He stopped at hearing that word said aloud, then closed his mouth and resumed his walking until he could no longer continue.
