The Hostage Prince (8 page)

T
he girl's screams tweaked Aspen's princely instincts—his
Seelie
instincts—and he took two steps toward the sound before stopping abruptly.

“What am I doing?” he asked the darkness. He received no answer. “I have to escape, not rescue damsels in distress. If she is screaming that way, there is more than one tormentor involved. And
I
am out of time!” Those were
Unseelie
thoughts, but he didn't acknowledge that aloud.

Besides,
he thought, picturing all the horrid creatures that made up most of the Unseelie Court,
the screamer is unlikely to be a damsel. It could be a banshee or a wolf girl or a morrigan or . . .
He turned away from the screams and headed back toward what he hoped was the midden pile and freedom.

The screams faded and finally stopped. He tried not to think about whether he was just too far away to hear them anymore or whether they'd stopped because the girl—
creature!
he told himself—could no longer draw breath. He tried not to think of himself as a coward.

“I could not help her,” he muttered, then corrected himself again. “I could not help
it.
Whatever it was.”

The stench of the midden pile was strong now, and the rock wall he dragged his hand over was rougher with occasional patches of moss. All signs that the corridor had turned to tunnel and the exit was near.

“At last.”

The flight from his room, the long trek in the dark, the screaming creature—he was afraid that, all together, they had finally fractured his nerves. He needed to get outside in the fresh air and pull himself together.
Even if the fresh air holds the stink of the midden.

He still had a long night ahead, and he had to find the Water Gate before whatever Old Jack Daw had done to “indispose” the guards wore off and he was then left with no means of escape. Stopping for a moment, he pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve to cover his nose—the smell of the offal steaming in the nearby midden was suddenly enough to burn his nostrils. Briefly he wondered how the midden lads stood the smell, then shrugged because it was an unprincely thought. Besides, they were bred up to it, as he was bred up to . . .

His mouth twisted with the next thought.
As I was bred up to be a hostage.

He was
not
making a good job of it.

From up ahead, between him and freedom, Aspen heard talking.

“I hates the ones that screams likes that.” The voice hissed and sputtered like a wet torch.

Aspen stuffed the handkerchief back in his sleeve and looked around desperately for another route to the outside. It was a remarkably futile gesture, for the passage remained pitch-dark and he still couldn't see a thing.

“But they all scream when Master Geck puts the questions to 'em,” a low reply growled.

“And I hates them all,” the first replied, not distinguishing whether he meant the screams or the dungeon master or someone else.

Aspen tried to back quietly away, but when he heard the voices again they were closer.
Much
closer. If the voices belonged to trolls or drows or woodwose, they'd smell him out in another few steps, even with the stench of the midden up their noses. Trolls and drows and woodwose, who made up most of the castle guard, were scent hunters. If he'd been worried before, he was terrified now and thought he could hear his heart thudding madly, nearly bursting through his tunic. He wondered if they could hear that, too.

He tried to think of a bluff, something to say to them, something to silence them with the Princely Voice, full of authority and snark. Usually, the underfolk could be cowed that way. But he doubted if anything but a squeak would come out of his mouth now, and they'd be on to him—and
on
him—in an instant.

Think, Aspen, think!
he warned himself, but he was beyond thinking.

“It's not their fault they screams,” said the growler. “Master Geck hurts them sumthin' awful.”

“I don't
blames
them. I
hates
them.”

I have to get away!
Aspen thought.
But quietly.

For a moment, he felt proud for having a reasonable thought in such circumstances. But putting that thought into action was proving difficult. He turned to sneak away and in the darkness didn't realize how close he was to the wall. The tip of his sheathed sword scraped against the stone. It wasn't terribly loud. Just the soft swoosh of leather against stone. But it was loud enough.

“What's 'at?” the hissy voice asked.

“Halloo?” growled the low voice, sounding a bit like leather against stone itself. “Halloo?”

Aspen froze.

“Halloo?” the low voice called a third time.

The hissing voice had gone quiet.

Suspiciously quiet,
Aspen thought.

Then he heard a sniff, as if the guard, whatever creature it was, had gotten his scent, and after came the sound of the lightest of footsteps closing in from behind.

Aspen ran, taking off liked a scared rabbit running from a wolf, racing back into the sightless dark. He tried to keep his hand on the wall, but it was hard to do while running, and painful, too. It felt as if he left a pound of skin on the corridor stone every time he reached out to try to stay oriented. With every charging step, he feared he'd crash into a wall or trip over an unseen obstacle, and he knew he would surely be overtaken by whatever horrific creature the hissing, sniffing hater was.

They will probably take me to Master Geck for questioning.
He caught his breath. When he breathed again, it was painful.
And I will probably scream, too.

Despite the short length of the conversation he'd overheard, Aspen now knew quite enough about Master Geck to realize he didn't want to be questioned by him, and so he forced himself to run faster.

Suddenly, there was another scream.

More of a yell, this time,
he thought,
and definitely a different voice.

Thinking about the scream rather than his running made his feet tangle up on their own, and he fell.

“There!” he heard hissed from not nearly far enough away. “We has him!”

Aspen felt a little woozy as he came to his feet.
I wonder if I have hit my head.
There was no time to worry about it, though. He had to keep going.

Reaching out for the wall to help himself stand, he felt something protruding outward and knew it at once.

A torch!

He pulled it from its sconce with the vague idea that light might help—if not to hide, then at least to keep him from falling again. And the torch could always become a weapon. Most Unseelie folk hated fire, just as they hated water. Perhaps he could keep the two hunters at bay with the torch fire long enough to kill them with his sword.

And maybe I will grow wings and fly out of here.

He knew that was a ridiculous thought: the royal Fey hadn't had wings for thousands of years.

But I don't need wings to light a torch!
It was a simple matter for a full-blooded prince of Faerie to light a torch. So simple that it didn't even require words. Aspen took a deep breath, formed a single fiery thought, and focused on the torch, and it burst into brilliant flame.

Which presented a new problem. Because no amount of magic could prepare his eyes for the sudden bright light after being so long in blackness. If the creatures were blinded, he was, too, as blind in the light as he'd been in the dark.

And now he was dizzy as well.

Definitely hit my head when I fell.

He reached for the torch's empty sconce to steady himself. But instead of finding a firm handle to hold onto in the now-spinning corridor, he felt the sconce suddenly give way beneath his grip, almost like a lever.

Aspen staggered in surprise. There was a sound of stone grinding on stone and then a puff of wind that blew the torch out.

His next thought was:
Exactly like a lever
—as he plunged into darkness and a wall that was no longer there. He couldn't tell which way he was facing or even which way was up, and when he took another step, his foot, too, met nothing but air.

For a moment he hung there by one arm over the black pit and heard the two sniffers laughing, as the hissy one said, “That goes straight down to the dungeon, that does. Let's head down there and watch the fun.”

For a second he could make out their outlines—hairy things about his size, looking like weasels, with long pointy noses.

The bigger one kicked out and connected with Aspen's stomach, and the surprise of it made him let go of the lever.

Boggarts!
he thought, and then—with nothing to hold on to and nowhere to stand, he tumbled away into darkness. But at least he didn't scream.

M
istress Softhands had often said,
When speaking to ogres make your sentences small and direct. Say things plainly. They are not subtle creatures.

She'd neglected to say that in a darkened dungeon room, surrounded by damp walls coated with a kind of phosphorescent fungus that turned everything a vomit green, ogres smelled like death.

Snail tried not to sniff aloud, tried not to weep, tried not to fall to her knees in fear. She managed two out of the three. However, tears coursed down her cheeks unchecked.

“Girl,” came the rumbling voice, “I don't want to hurt you.”

Somehow, she didn't believe him.

Somehow, she refrained from saying that. She refrained from saying anything at all. She didn't want a trembling voice to give her away.

But she held on to what Mistress Softhands had said. If ogres were not subtle, then perhaps he
was
speaking the truth.

Perhaps. Seven letters that spelled out the possibility of life.

“But,” rumbled the voice, “I do have some questions.”

And I have lots myself
, she thought. She didn't say that aloud, either.

In the dungeon's dark, she couldn't see him. Not really. Though she had a vague sense of something big and hulking moving in the shadows. The only light was a thin sliver of moon from a very high and very tiny window, which shone down on a plain wooden stool. Snail wondered if she'd be asked to sit.

“I understand, Master Geck,” Snail said finally, her voice a shadow in the dark room. That it hadn't trembled was a miracle. The Unseelie didn't believe in miracles, though of course
everyone
believed in magic.

“I don't need understanding,” the voice rumbled on, sounding a bit testy.

Snail didn't like testy. She wanted the low rumbling back.

“What
do
you need, Master Geck?” she asked as politely as she could. This time her voice shook. But only a little.

“Answers.”

“I have answers,” she said. “I have lots of answers. Any kind of answers you want.”

“I want the
right
answers.” Rumble. Grumble.

This isn't going well
, Snail thought,
and we haven't even really begun
.

But evidently they had.

There was a shift in the air, and suddenly something grey, like a sliver of moon with fangs, smiled above her.

It has to be the ogre grinning
, she thought, since it was just a little below the actual sliver of moon shining behind the bars of the single cell window. She couldn't begin to imagine why his smile should shine so. Surely an ogre wasn't interested enough in personal grooming to brush his teeth.
Or perhaps he brushes them with luminescent moss
. She wondered what he used for a brush. A twig? A carved stick? A finger bone?

She shuddered.

“Are you frightened, girl?” the rumble asked.

She realized that in fact she'd been thinking about brushing teeth and not about being eaten, an improvement of sorts, though both led in the same direction.

“I'm considering right answers, Master Geck,” she said.

It was a kind of lie and somehow he knew. The grey smile loomed lower, broader, not at all jolly.

“Speak true,” the mouth warned.

“I was thinking about tooth brushings,” she said.

He began to laugh, and it was as if two people were laughing at her, one higher, one lower.

Fascinating
, Snail thought, for a moment forgetting to be afraid. But she remembered again quickly when the ogre abruptly stopped laughing.

And a second later the other voice, the sort-of echo, stopped laughing as well.

“Tell me,” Master Geck said, the grey grin and clean fangs appearing suddenly inches from her face. “Why did you try to kill the queen?”

“I didn't . . .” She tried to look the ogre in the eye, but he was gone now, stepped back into the darkness. “She isn't . . . ?”

Before she could finish her thought, there was a hot breath on the back of her neck and a rumbling in her ear that made her jump in shock.

How does something so big move so fast? And so quietly?

“Then whose idea was it?”

Turning to face the ogre, Snail said, “Wait. It wasn't anybody's
idea . . .
”
but he was gone again.

“Best tell me soon, girl.” From behind her, once more. Snail spun again, knowing it was futile, and was rewarded with a dark empty space and a low voice in her ear. “I don't want to hurt you.”

This time Snail didn't stop herself from speaking. “I don't believe you.”

Master Geck loomed up in front of her, close enough now so that he was outlined in the single candle's light, and even in the darkened room—the sliver of moon gave no light—she could finally see all of him. Even for an ogre, he was big. He was shirtless, his flesh a deathly grey green. Though he was grossly fat in the belly, his arms and legs bulged with impressive muscles. Lank hair hung over his giant ears and protruding brow, obscuring his eyes, perhaps to hide how surprisingly small and beady they were. He wore only a leather kilt held up by a straining belt from which hung no less than ten knives of various sizes. None of those sizes was small.

She shuddered. Those were not knives for mumblety-peg or sharpening a quill. They were skinning and boning knives. Those knives belonged to a butcher.

“But,” the ogre said, bending over so that his face was directly in front of Snail's. He smiled widely and she could see that the rest of his teeth were as clean as his two long fangs. “I am getting awfully hungry.”

As if to emphasize his point, he reached out a hand, and with a pointy black nail poked Snail hard in the stomach.

She supposed he meant the poke to send more shivers down her spine but it didn't. She hated being poked anywhere, and especially in the stomach. It didn't make her afraid. It just made her furious.

“IF YOU MEAN TO EAT ME,” she shouted, “DO IT! JUST DON'T POKE!”

Master Geck looked taken aback, as if thinking,
Here is a wee speck of a girl who should be shaking in terror and is instead shouting furiously at me.

Ha!
thought Snail.
He doesn't like surprises
. She wondered if that was what Mistress Softhands meant about being unsubtle.

But the ogre looked even more taken aback when, with a groaning scrape and a few thumps and bangs, a back door to the room suddenly opened, and the prince Snail had spilled drinks on just that morning rolled across the floor to fetch up against their feet, a sputtering torch in his hand and a pack on his back. He didn't seem to notice the giant ogre. Instead, he gazed dazedly up at Snail.

“You!” he said, sounding more confused than angry.

“Who?” Master Geck said, sounding only confused.

That's when the prince looked behind him and, noticing the ogre for the first time, gulped.

“Are you?” the prince said, as if completing the ogre's question. Standing quickly, he held the torch aloft. “Who . . . Are . . . You?”

Snail thought he was trying to use the Princely Voice, the voice that was used to make servants move faster. But it squeaked a little too much to impress her, let alone the ogre.

The prince and the ogre began circling each other, shouting “Who?” and “Who” back and forth like a couple of demented owls, almost as if they were playing catch-'em with words instead of the usual chaff-stuffed balls.

None of it made any sense to Snail. She was much more angry than scared now, and she didn't care how or why the prince was here, only grateful—in a furious sort of way—for the escape, even if it was only momentary. She certainly didn't want to get eaten or beaten or otherwise abused. The only thing that mattered, she decided, was that for the first time since she came into the room, the ogre's attention was elsewhere.

Grabbing the stool with both hands, she reached up as high as she could and slammed Master Geck in the back of his head, where his neck and shoulders met. The force of it ran down both her arms. She hoped it would fell him.

The stool shattered and Snail felt a sting as a splinter from the broken stool jabbed her palm.

The ogre grunted in pain, staggered, but didn't fall. When he turned to face Snail, one hand on the back of his neck, he squinted down at her, his piggy eyes half shut. She hoped it was from pain.

Then he laughed. “Now I am going to eat you for certain.”

She believed him, and—in her terror—glared.

The ogre took one step toward her and his piggy eyes suddenly glazed over, like one of Master Bonetooth's finest
fygeye
confections. Then, he spun around, grunted “Why?” turned completely grey, and fell forward, a mountain crumbling.

Snail stared at the ogre's lower back, at the knife jammed in it, as if it had grown there on its own.

The princeling must be a lot tougher than he looks,
she thought.
And faster, too.
She hadn't even seen him move behind the dungeon master in all their circling.

“Thank you, sir,” she said to the princeling, but he seemed dazed.

“For what?” he asked.

“For that,” she said pointing to the downed ogre.

“Oh, Puck!” he said.

Seemed an odd reaction to his kill, but Snail didn't have time to think about it. She reached for the knife and yanked it out with two hands. It was an elegant thing, looking much too thin and much too pretty to kill something as big and ugly as Master Geck. She dropped it, point first into her apron pocket, then grabbed the prince's hand and pulled him toward the now-gaping back door of the cell through which he'd so recently fallen.

“I'm getting out of here,” she said, before suddenly remembering her manners, and adding, “Your Serenity. And I apologize for touching you. But I suggest you come with me.”

“Oh, Puck!” he said again, wiping his hand on a silk handkerchief that seemed to have been stuffed up a sleeve. But he followed her as she stepped around the fallen ogre. The prince's still-guttering torch illuminated the door he'd just fallen through.

As if suddenly awakening, the prince said, “We cannot go that way. There are . . . creatures up there waiting. We need to go that way.” He gestured toward the front of the cell.

“No getting out that way,” she told him, working hard to keep her voice low and sensible when really she just wanted to scream like Yarrow. “Too many guards.”
And cells and skellies,
she thought, but didn't say that, not knowing what princes were sensitive about—except about being touched. And splattered. “We're going up your new stairs.”

“No!” he said, using the Princely Voice again, that hard, low command that all royalty was born with. It didn't squeak this time.

I guess it's easier to use the Prince Voice on an unarmed midwife's apprentice than on a giant ogre with a belt full of knives.
Then she remembered the knife she'd popped into her apron.
Well, not unarmed anymore, I suppose, but certainly not an ogre.

“No!” the prince said again, using the Voice.

As a lowly apprentice, she had no way of disagreeing further, and simply followed him to the cell door. Since it was only locked, not bespelled, he opened it with a single wave of his hand and went through.

I wish an apprentice's life was that easy
, she thought, going after him.
Or an escape.