Oszin

The cell door slammed shut on me. I wrapped my hands around the bars. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yes. You may.” Izeria seemed a little friendly to me, as murderous queens go. I guess I’d been useful.

“If you wanted him dead…why didn’t you just poison him yourself? A little bit over time, even?”

“I could have done that,” she said softly. “Somehow…I just couldn’t bring myself… Silly as it sounds. It was easy, wasn’t it?”

“I guess it was. Just a few drops in a cup. I’ve done worse.”

“Haven’t we all,” she said, and then I was sorry I’d given her a chance to say we were the same.

“What now?” I asked her.

“Well, you’ll be fed well enough, and I won’t kill you, and you ought to be very thankful to have that much,” she said. “You came here as an assassin. It was lucky for you that I found you useful, but I won’t forget why you came either.”

“I don’t expect you would.”

“You’ll rot here.” She paused. “Well, actually, we’ll be moving north. So you might rot there. You’ll hear reports, of course. I have plans for your kin. I know the high dragons will never follow me as a beloved queen, but they might kneel to me in terror before long. I have sent some of my dragons to meet your friends, and they are armed with one of the more rare and dangerous of all mists. One that will steal away a person’s memories and make their mind as fresh and open to persuasion as a child.”

What? I knew my face betrayed some fear, damnit. I hated being trapped here, unable to do anything about it.

“I’m going to use it on Ezeru, of course,” she said. “Because I did make some mistakes with him. Huge mistakes. I guess he was more…sensitive than I realized?” She sounded a little incredulous. “It’s not too late to fix them, though… Dvaro hated Ezeru. That was always the trouble. But he’s done now, and I will tell Ezeru that he is…” Her mouth scrunched. “He’s special, isn’t he? I didn’t mean for him to be so very special. I just meant for him to be strong. Our own creations get away from us.”

“I can’t say I relate.”

She shook her head. “What am I doing, talking to some human? Well, it doesn’t matter, that’s why. I know you’re not making it out of here alive. I will see to it. But if you’re smart, I’ll let you live a long, long time. We let Perina live a long time. I think you know about that.”

“You let her go,” I said, for some stupid reason.

“She was a bad influence on Ezeru. So she had to go, and Dvaro had to go. Now, I will be the queen, and Ezeru will be my heir. My prince. I’m going to marry him to one of the most beautiful mist dragons in the kingdom, and she’s a good fighter too. They’ll be happy together. That’s how it should have been all along.”

“Don’t you worry that somewhere, deep down, Ezeru will still know?”

Her eyes snapped to me and it was obvious that she was very worried about this. “You are a handsome little human. Be good and quiet, and I’ll find a use for you. Oh, yes…you can’t even turn into a dragon. So you’d be a companion for someone. An older woman, I think, would be best. We don’t need any human babies here.” She reached through the bars and smacked my cheek. “Be good.”

I grabbed her arm and twisted it back, not enough to hurt her, but enough to warn her. “I want to make it clear, then. That is something I won’t do. I really don’t want to die, but if the choice is between being a dragon’s plaything and death, I’ll take death. I will always take death rather than being forced against my will.”

“Ohhh…but you would never know you were being forced,” she said. “You would be so high on mist. You would accept it all. Something to think about.” She wrenched her arm away. Before she left the room, she looked at me again. Her looks sent ice down my spine.

I didn’t really know what she wanted.

I had a lot of time to think back on killing King Dvaro. Putting the poison in his cup wasn’t hard. But watching him froth at the mouth and curse and the way his skin turned a weird color as he clawed at the ground…

Poison really was a shameful way to kill someone. I lay back on my shabby cot in the cell and prayed to the Kamiri gods to forgive me for doing something like that. I couldn’t call it cowardly; I was trying to help Aurekdel and Ezeru get revenge.

Sure was anticlimactic, though.

Izeria is the one who raised Ezeru. Maybe she was the power behind the throne…

As Dvaro was dying, Izeria held his hand and genuine tears flowed down her cheeks. At least, they certainly seemed genuine. It was bizarre to watch. Even as guards were handcuffing me and dragging me out, I was watching her. We were the only two people in the room who knew what had really happened, and there she was, looking for all the world like she was really suffering. Like she really loved him.

I certainly would have been fooled. Which meant, this was a very untrustworthy woman, one who could honestly weep for a man she’d just murdered.

In my cell, I kept shivering, even though it wasn’t cold.

It was a rectangular room, about the size of the main room in the tiny cottage where I grew up, which felt pretty claustrophobic to me these days. But our cottage had windows. This room didn’t. The walls were made of stone. It felt like a castle basement, which I guess it was, and occasionally I heard rock dragons chittering or someone crying out.

I never thought I ran any risk of dying alone in a basement.

But I’d volunteered for this. And I had killed Dvaro, after all. Maybe not the way I’d intended, but he was dead.

No one brought me dinner that night. My stomach growled and gnawed. I’d forgotten what this felt like. It brought back aching memories of my mother counting out money and days, puzzling over how to make it stretch. It was just the way life was; all our neighbors lived the same way. But when I become the captain of Himika’s guard, I knew my mother would never count money like that again. And she never would. I trusted Himika to make sure my parents were provided for, even if something happened to me.

I tried not to think about Himika too much.

If I died, I would cause her so much pain.

I wondered what my parents would think. They knew the price of their son rising in the ranks.

I think they’d understand more than Himika would. It would hurt them, but…poor people can’t afford pain the same way rich people can.

I had a lot of time to think about all of that, lying there in my cell, waiting for someone to feed me, more helpless than I’d ever been in my life.

There was always a divide between me and the girl I loved. Things she would never understand. Of course, I knew it went the other way too. It shocked me the first time I saw her wiping tears. I thought princess never cried, at least, I couldn’t imagine it. Even a crippled princess still had feasts, warm clothes, endless entertainment. I never realized until I saw her that you can’t run from pain either, no matter how rich you are. And when Himika’s father was killed, when she fell into the emperor’s hands…

I wondered why I put myself through all this, knowing that if I was killed, it would be the cruelest thing I could ever do to her.

What was the use of pride anyway?

Did I do this to make her miss me? To make her admire me?

Or did it root back to my mother, worrying over our next meal? She used to sing a song that went, A Kamiri life is pain and sorrow, until the day we die.

Maybe it was true. I couldn’t imagine myself ever just settling down, taking pleasure in Himika, in children, in simple things, like a rich man might.

The small panel at the bottom of the door opened and a bowl of mush was slid in. I ran to the window to see my jailer, but instead I saw Ijaru’s tail quickly turn the corner. Izeria had tried to force the young girl to seduce me, because her father betrayed the king. I wanted to ask her what had happened, but clearly she didn’t want to be seen. She had begged me to take her, so her father wouldn’t lose a hand. Her virginity for her father’s hand…a punishment of pure malice.

“Ijaru!” I hissed.

She turned. “Shh, shh!” Then she ran to the window. “My father is down here. I heard you were here too, so I—well, I heard that the prisoners aren’t getting fed regularly because Peri’s gone. She made sure no one went too hungry. I don’t know if I can always make it here, so eat every bite.”

“How is your father?”

Her eyes lowered. “He is…still all right, for now. I think he might get a bit of a reprieve because the queen is grieving the king.”

“Right…”

“Isn’t she?” The girl was sharp.

I shook my head. “Don’t get me killed, but…keep paying attention.”

“I understand. We never did trust her. That’s how we got into this mess.” Her brows furrowed upward with worry. “My father wanted me to tell you, thank you for being honorable.”

“Even though he might lose a hand?”

“He would rather lose a hand than hurt me,” she said. “And I would rather lose my virginity to a kind stranger than for my father to lose a hand. But he won this round.”

“I have someone I would never, ever betray,” I said. “But honor certainly is a complicated thing sometimes.”

“Did you really kill the king?” she asked. “That’s what everyone is saying.”

“That’s a complicated question,” I said, pointedly.

“Ohh…” She glanced behind her. “I should go, but…I’ll keep paying attention, as you said.”

I nodded. All I could do right now was plant the seeds of doubt and disarray in Izeria’s kingdom. Maybe something would tug at Ezeru’s mind.

If I was going to rot here under Izeria’s watch, I wouldn’t go down easy.