Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (53 page)

“What about thoughts?” Owen wanted to know. “Can she read your mind, too?”

Diaz took a sip before answering. He winced, then looked pointedly in the direction of the bed.

“Only when she’s very close,” he answered.

“And how often is that?” Owen muttered, cup pressed to his lower lip.

“Whenever the queen desires,” Diaz said. “It’s my free will that has been impaired, Owen, not my hearing.”

Owen held up a hand for peace. He set the cup and saucer back down on the table, rested his elbows on the chair’s arms, and folded his hands before him like a businessman.

“I want to speak to the queen.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I have a proposition I’d like to make her,” Owen continued.

“A proposition pertaining to your sister?”

“No, not directly.” Owen shook his head. “This is about Shade. Or Brisin.”

Diaz arched his eyebrows as high as he could.

“If I tell you what I want to tell her, can I count on an accurate retelling on your part?” Owen asked.

“Tell me and I will hear you.”

“I’m going on the assumption that Queen Suranna has already or will soon determine the exact location of the dormant Living Blade. It seems to me, though, that Shade is not a suitable candidate as a sacrifice for the Blade.”

Diaz stared at Owen across the table. The young man carried on.

“On a superficial level, he seems to be ideal. He is an illegitimate child, a direct descendant of Bashan’s, blood related. That’s a powerful bond. A bond powerful enough to make a powerful Blade. Plus, when Bashan is emperor, he’ll need legitimate children, so sacrificing Shade beforehand seems to clear the path for a glorious future. Only there’s a problem, isn’t there?”

Diaz waited.

“Shade has been prepared. Unknowingly, true, but still. He’s been conditioned by Suranna to do the bidding of anyone who speaks a certain formula, a sentence she has indoctrinated into his mind from infancy. A sentence she has undoubtedly made Bashan aware of by now. So, what Bashan really has is an unwilling, unknowing sacrifice. And blood or no, that’s a heavy gamble on his side. What if he says the magic words, sacrifices Shade, and nothing happens? The Blade does not assemble itself?” Owen took a sip from his cup and made a point of fussing with the saucer as he set it back down. He looked up at Diaz before continuing.

“Bashan will be standing in wight territory with nothing but his dick in his hand. He will have to rely on you to get him out of there fast.” Owen folded his hands neatly once more. “I wonder whether Suranna’s hold over you reaches that far north?”

“It does not.” Diaz smiled without mirth.

“Poor Prince Bashan.” Owen flashed a smile, too, but there was no warmth in his eyes. “There is a solution to his problem, though.”

“Is there?”

“I offer myself willingly as a sacrifice.”

Diaz grasped the arms of his chair tightly.

“You cannot be serious.”

“Do I look like I’m joking to you?” Owen took a deep, shuddering breath. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before he continued. “The Blade is a source of infinite power. But it is also a source of infinite knowledge. Knowledge that I seek. I’m not of Bashan’s blood, true. But the Blade remade by my blood, with my personality, might still be an advantage for him. I ask that you do whatever you can to make the queen convince Bashan I am his man. She can be very convincing, I’m sure. After all, she managed to convince Bashan’s father to send his son away, which led him to go on the quest for the Blade in the first place. And…well, she’s got you doing exactly what she wants you to do. The only question left is whether you can be as convincing.”

“Owen, I cannot allow you to throw your life away—”

“You can’t allow me to do anything anyway,” Owen interrupted. “And besides, I’m not throwing my life away. I’m making an educated guess, that’s all. I’m not doing this for Shade or Bashan. I’m doing this for me. Although, there is a condition for my sacrifice, of course. I offer myself willingly only if Suranna lets Nora go free. With us. You see, I am motivated purely by selfish reasons.”

Diaz shook his head. Sweat pearled down his naked back, but he felt chilled to his heart.

“Your sister would never allow it. If she knew what you are planning—”

“Then Nora must never know.” Owen gave Diaz a hard stare. “I trust your discretion.”

Diaz was speechless.

Owen stood and made to leave.

“Think on what I said.”

T
he heat beat down on
her naked skin like a leaking charcoal clamp. Nora reached out to find the shovel’s handle, then remembered she wasn’t tending charcoal anymore. She opened one eye and searched for a flash of metal that would betray a knife or a sword. She needed one. She was in the arena and she’d be up to fight next. No, wait. That wasn’t what had happened last. Suranna. And Diaz. Especially Diaz. With a groan Nora stirred, moving to get the blood flowing again. She coughed, cleared her throat, and spat out sand with a gob of gooey, sticky phlegm. She sat up, leaning her hurting head against a burning stone wall, and looked around.

She was at the bottom of a dry cistern. High above her she saw the cloudless sky and the merciless sun. When Shinar traversed the sky in his fiery chariot, shadows would creep down the wall of the empty well until all was dark and cold with nightfall. Now, though, it was just past midday and only a sliver of shade darkened a patch of bare rock. She rose on wobbly legs, running a hand over the smooth walls of her prison as she paced the circle of it. Four and a half long strides wide, thirty-two normal paces when she walked around. A rusty iron door had been built into the rock. A water valve for when the cistern was full. Nora felt no chink, no weakness in the ironwork. She looked up. At certain irregular points in height, the cistern sported small holes in its walls, holes guarded by iron gates. For the rain, Nora guessed. They would channel the precious water into the cistern, flooding it within moments, depending on the torrent, or filling it slowly, over days. Would Suranna risk poisoning the fresh water with Nora’s rotting corpse? Would she drown in a suddenly full well? Or exhaust herself trying to keep above the rising water and drown that way? She would already be dead when the rains came, though. In this heat, she’d dehydrate within hours, be dead in two, maybe three days. Could she reach the lowest of the rain channels? Grab the iron gate, loosen it, and crawl through the rain channel to find a crueler kind of freedom in the barren rocks and canyons that made up Shinar’s realm?

Above her head the walls of the cistern wavered in the heat. Nora raised an arm over her face. Already her head was a hammering mess of dull pain.

Prison was not meant to be comfortable.

At least she wasn’t in chains.

Sometimes a slit in the iron door rattled open and half of a small bottle gourd plant was shoved through, splashing its costly wet. It tasted brackish, earthen, but she didn’t mind. The few sips ran down her parched, sore throat like liquid balm. But all too soon she was thirsty again. The drinks came irregularly. Sometimes they would leave her without water until the thirst grew so strong her lips cracked and she cried out, tasting her own blood, her hoarse voice echoing against the dry walls. Sometimes Nora cried until the tears stopped coming and she simply sat at her favorite place against the wall, heaving dry sobs, allowing herself to wallow in self-pity. Sometimes she tried to scale the wall to get to the lowest rain channel for what seemed like hours. Every day, when the sun reached its zenith, she curled up, sweat dripping from her head resting on her knees, her back bearing the brunt of the worst heat, turning into a red burning sore with the skin flayed from her. She tried to sleep then, because at night it grew so cold that she couldn’t, shaking and shivering as her teeth chattered. Most days she tried to come to terms with the fact that she would be kept alive, just alive enough, until Suranna got bored and finally had her killed. Other times, though, she panicked and howled and stomped her feet and gnashed her teeth and called Suranna all the filthy words Mother Sara had forbidden her to use. But after a while she would stop. Screaming was exhausting, and worse, it made her thirsty, and who knew when there would be water again?

Without the possibility of deep sleep, her mind tricked her into seeing images even when she was awake. Faces and scenes passed before her ever-more-confused, heat-addled mind. Sometimes she saw her brother with her in the cistern, other times Shade as he had been in the garden, in a cistern just like this one, only full. But most of all she saw Diaz. Always Diaz. With Suranna. Over and over again, until she wasn’t sure where the dream image of the queen stopped and where her own self began. After a while she stopped trying to make a distinction. She had stopped counting the monotonous days, too. Sun up, sun down. It didn’t matter anymore. The sun burned deep within her, etched into her darkened skin and spreading like a fever throughout her whole body, a fire in her lungs whenever she breathed. Maybe she should just stop. Yeah, stop breathing, stop hurting. Not long now.

She was laying in her corner when the door opened. Her eyes were half caked shut, and when she tried to raise her head she felt sick. She had to tug her head free from where it rested. At first she thought her face had melted and stuck to the stone. But she had vomited bottle gourd juice earlier and, body too weak to get up, her hair was baked into the hardening clump.

People. People in the cistern with her. People were walking. Yes, they were walking around, doing…something. Must be a new vision. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, she felt two shoulders beneath her weak arms. Her head lolled, but she was carried into the center of the cistern where two poles stood erect, iron chains dangling from them. Her hands were clapped into the iron, forcing her upright unless she wanted to have her shoulder joints dislocated. Her legs shook, though, and she was sick again.

The people said something in a foreign tongue. Annoyance. Disgust. Or something. Nora couldn’t remember the correct word. A hand pressed something against her skin-flaked lips. It was cold, liquid, and tasted of the metal ladle it had been poured into. Water? Was this…actual water?

More water was thrown over her. The impact made it feel like her cooked flesh would fall off the bone. But by some kind of miracle, it remained on her outstretched arms. They scrubbed her all over. It hurt and she screamed a bit. Then someone shaved a mat of black tangles and knots from her head. It would grow back, Nora told herself as she saw the lank strands of her dark hair falling around her feet. It could grow back. There was absolutely no reason to cry. Someone else rubbed her skin with aloe, and another someone clothed her in a simple white shift. The best, though, the best was a dark sun sail someone hung above the working people, casting out the glaring sun. Then the people left and she was alone again, slow thoughts dripping irregularly through her aching mind.

“Do you think me a monster now?” A honey voice intruded on her.

Nora opened her eyes and saw herself. She closed her eyes, then tried again.

Suranna stood before her, smiling, waiting for an answer.

Nora made a noise that was supposed to be laughter. Didn’t sound right. She frowned. What did laughter sound like?

“Allow me,” Suranna said and reached out to touch Nora’s face.

A heat rushed from Suranna’s fingertips, spreading warmth through Nora like strong liquor, revitalizing her as much as it made her head fuzzy. The nausea stopped. The throb in her burned skin dulled its sharp edge. She looked up into the queen’s golden eyes.

“And? Do you take me for a monster?” Suranna repeated.

“Lady,” Nora spoke, voice breaking from disuse. She glanced down at her clean self, up at the iron bands that held her hands high above her head. “I don’t know if you’re real right now.”

“I am real.” Suranna was wearing a simple black dress, and a thin band of gold rested on her silky black hair. “Your brother is alive.”

Nora let herself hang by her sagging shoulders for a moment. Her lower lip trembled.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I didn’t say he was well.”

“Bitch.”

Suranna laughed.

“I see the defiance hasn’t died in you. Keep it. It will serve you well.”

“Really? In prison?”

“Make me an offer for your freedom, Nora. In truth, though, you have nothing you could give me.”

“How so? Getting bored of torturing Diaz?”

Suranna’s smile broadened.

“Never. But alas, the quest must come before my selfish needs.”

Nora’s head still felt like she was wading through a dense fog. Her tongue felt huge in her mouth.

“Quest?”

“Bashan’s quest for the Living Blade, of course. The time is now. To achieve our revolution, Bashan needs Telen to guide him north. And so my love will leave my service soon. There is no point in keeping you here.”

“So you’ll set me free? Just like that?”

“Every day you’ll see each other on your journey, and you’ll be reminded of how you’re both bound to me. It’s far more effective a prison than any empty cistern could be.”