The Hostage Prince (9 page)

I
cannot believe she touched me,
Aspen thought.
The cheek of the girl!

Back home her kind were not even allowed to be regular house servants. They were the lowest of the low, fit for only the tannery or the mill or any of a dozen other filthy jobs that Aspen had but a vague knowledge of.

Of course it seems I am in dire need of allies at the moment. So needs must. Even if her people are . . .
He shuddered and stopped himself.
She seems capable enough. She might be useful, if only as a hostage, something to trade if I have to
. He held back a giggle:
A hostage for the Hostage Prince!

He thought of her whipping her knife out of the ogre's back and popping it into her apron pocket, pretty as you please.

Where did she have it hidden? Surely they searched her apron before putting her in a cell. And how did she get it out and stab the ogre so quickly? And why did she first hit him with the stool?

He shook his head. So many questions and no time to answer them. The only thing he was certain of: she was not going to lead him. Especially not up the stairs he had bounced down. That led directly into the arms of the two boggarts. He was the prince; he
had
to be the leader.

“This way,” he said, petulantly turning left—the no-exit way, according to the girl. But if she had not been that way before, how could she know?

“But,” she said, “there's no door out that end.”

“Follow!” he hissed. She had been obeying his kind her whole life and did so now, quick-stepping after him. But he could feel her glare between his shoulder blades.

For some reason, it made him smile.

His torch finally guttered out, leaving them in a gloomy hall. Only a single flickering candle lit the narrow hallway as they walked three dozen paces past rows of cells occupied by only the skeletons of long-dead prisoners. Probably left there to intimidate the weak-minded underclasses. He refused to let them intimidate him. Much.

“Oh!” the girl behind him suddenly cried. “Thank you, Your Serenity!”

Then she charged past him muttering something, and rattled the door of a cell that was actually inhabited by live prisoners.

“Mistress Softhands!” she called.

Aspen peered through the gloom into the cell. Three squat old midwives—as alike as toads—as well as one sylph-like assistant, who would be pretty if someone gave her a bath, all clambered to the bars squawking and squeaking at once. The only word Aspen understood was when the girl said, “Quiet!” in the same tone he had used on her just moments before.

She is certainly a quick study
, he thought, almost in admiration
. But simply saying the word in that tone does not make her a princess. She was born without magic and with an ability only to serve.

Still the women quieted—a little.

But when they spotted him, they began gasping, curtsying, and saying, “Your Serenity!” all at the same time.

It wasn't an improvement. And it was much too loud.
They will have the guards back in a minute
, he thought
, and that will not do any of us any good.

“Come,” he said to the girl. “We do not have time for this.” He looked again at the awkward mass of bowing servantry. “Whatever
this
is.”

The girl whipped her head around to glare at him, then with a visible effort turned the glare into a friendly smile. It puffed her cheeks and thickened her face. Made her look less fey.

It wasn't an improvement either.

“But, Your Serenity, we have to free them,” she said. “They're my friends.”

The other girl—by her apron and striped hose, an apprentice as well—shot his girl a look that did not seem all that friendly to Aspen.
Not
my
girl
, he quickly reminded himself. He would have to find out her name. Knowing something's name made it the more biddable.

“No!” the caged girl shouted. “We're not going anywhere with
you
!” Folding her arms, she backed away from the cell door. “You're the reason we're in here. You're just trying to get us into more trouble.”

Aspen was not sure how much more trouble they could get in.
Did they not see all the skeletons on the way in?
It was obvious that few folks ever left the dungeons alive.

Two of the midwives looked as if they agreed with the pretty apprentice, taking up positions next to her on the back wall, arms folded angrily across their ample chests.

“Mistress Softhands?” the knife girl said to the last midwife at the cell bars.

The old toad turned her wrinkled brown face up and looked at the girl with what Aspen assumed was a kindly expression. He could not really tell through the wrinkles and the gloom, nor with the miles of social strata between them.

Reaching through the bars, the midwife patted the girl on the cheek.

“Go, Snail,” she said. “There's blood on your apron and yon former hostage prince carries a traveling pack.”

“
Hostage
prince?” The girl turned and stared at him. Or glared. It was hard to distinguish in the little bit of hallway light.

The old midwife added, “I don't think leaving with you two will do much to improve my lot.”

“It might?” the girl said, turning it into a question, as if even she didn't believe it.

The midwife didn't answer the question, but said, “Go,” again, and then changed her cheek pat to a fairly sharp cuff on the girl's ear. “And quickly, too! Be a rabbit today, Snail!”

The girl backed away rubbing at her ear. “Yes, mistress,” she said quietly.

Well, that was a waste of time,
Aspen thought, before realizing he now had the girl's name. Snail.
She had best be faster than that!
He grabbed her by the wrist—far more suitable than
her
grabbing
him—
and dragged her down the increasingly dark hall. On the way, he had another thought.
Now she knows I'm the Hostage Prince.
She could trade me as quickly as I could trade her.
Perhaps she was a dangerous person to travel with after all.

They didn't get far. As the girl had predicted, the hallway ended in a very short distance at a plain wall with a final sconce holding an unlit torch.

“See,” she snarled. Then, remembering her station, she quickly changed it to, “I believe I informed you thusly, Your Serenity.” And gave a bow that Aspen felt wasn't nearly deep enough.

He did not deign to answer her. Instead, he stomped over to the sconce and pulled the unlit torch out. Smirking haughtily at the girl, he pulled down on the now-empty sconce.

It didn't budge.

Frowning, he pulled it harder.

Nothing.

Turning to face the sconce completely, he dropped the unlit torch and pulled hard with both hands. When that didn't work, he tried shoving the sconce from side to side.

It shifted ever so slightly in the stones, but no secret passage appeared to lead them to freedom.

He looked down at the torch as if the fault lay with that piece of wood, hay, and pitch. Then he looked at the girl. She was staring at him almost with pity, which was much worse than the smile. And infinitely worse than the glare.

She opened her mouth to speak.

“I know,” he interrupted, “you have informed me thusly.” He pointed down the hall. “Back.”

The midwives and their assistant looked at them strangely as they strode past a second time, but none dared to say anything to the prince, escaping hostage or no.

I'm sure they will be
more
than happy to tell the next noble who stops by all about the two of us,
Aspen thought. An underling's freedom had been bought for far less. He realized, having both a knife and a sword, he could easily silence them all, but he would not buy his freedom that dearly. Not slaying three old women and two girls. That might be an Unseelie thing to do, but—he had no doubt of it now—he was still Seelie at the core.

During the three dozen paces back to the cell that held the dead ogre and the stairs, Aspen thought about whether or not he should pass it by and try to go out the easier way, past the guard station.

But there might be too many guards at the station and Puck knows how many soldiers at the top of the stairs,
he thought. They were just going to have to risk the two boggarts that had been stalking him down the halls. Maybe he could bluff his way by. Or maybe he and the girl could dispatch them with sword, dagger, and some noble magic.
She was mighty quick with her knife.

Still, he was not hopeful. The two at the top of the secret stairs had been hunters, assassins. They would be expecting trouble. The ogre, for all his bulk, had been slow and unsuspecting.
And as everybody knows, they are not,
he reminded himself,
a subtle race.

And further
, he admitted to himself dismally,
I have not had
really
proper sword training since I was seven.
Certainly not enough to best trained soldiers in a small setting. He had spells, of course, but the dungeon was surely warded against all major spellcraft, and though the girl was gifted with that dagger, there were two creatures—not just one—waiting above.

But his worries about the two creatures were suddenly swept aside, swamping all that he knew, much like a mighty bore in a river overturning even the most balanced boat, for when they reached the ogre's interrogation cell, just outside the door, Aspen all but tripped over two bodies stretched out in the hall. Even in the small light thrown by the cell's candle, he could see that their throats had been savagely cut and they were still bleeding into the rough dungeon floor. It had been so quietly and efficiently done, he had heard nothing.

Grabbing the candle, he knelt down, and held the light close to the boggarts' faces, noted they were hairy, pointy-nosed, and very dead.

“Boggarts!” came a voice at his ear. “What are they doing down here? They surely weren't there when we came out.” It was the girl, Snail.

He did not say it aloud, but he was certain they were the two assassins who had been after him. He smiled and everything inside of him seemed to let go.
Nothing to worry about anymore
, he thought.

Keeping his voice steady, he said, “Never mind them. We do not know them. They mean nothing. We will go in, circumvent the dead ogre, and head up the secret stairs.”

Surprisingly, she interrupted him. “Circumvent? What's that mean?”

“It means,” he said, “to go around.”

“Then say
go around
,” she muttered, adding a bit more loudly, “if it pleases Your Serenity.”

He thought the addition of the politeness at the end hardly excused her tone in the beginning, but he also felt that they were running out of time.

I will try to correct her behavior later.
Looking at the boggart bodies, he couldn't help adding to himself,
If there
is
a later.
To Snail he said,
“I know the way out from the top of the stairs.” He used his strongest Princely Voice, as if going out that way had always been his intention. And it was true. Well at least it had been true before the assassins had arrived. And now it was true again. The rest—well, it was bluff. He knew it. The girl might know it, too. But since she was of the underclass, he was certain she would never say any such thought aloud. “So, are you ready to stop arguing and—”

“Who killed
them
?” Snail asked, interrupting again. “And why?” She looked up at him with a kind of childlike puzzlement, as if this were a maze she could not think her way through.

“Why should I care?”

“Because someone is quite the dab hand with quiet butchery,” she said. “And we don't know which side he's on.”

Aspen wanted to ignore her. She was only a midwife's apprentice, after all. But his hand holding the candle obviously felt differently, because it suddenly began trembling, sending bouncing shadows across the stone walls.

He realized that now they had a brand-new worry.
Who—indeed—had killed the assassins? And why
? The girl had put her finger on the open wound and had not flinched. On the other hand, he had closed his eyes and tried to ignore it.

This
, he thought,
is possibly a worse worry than the others combined
.

“Let us get out of here and into the light,” he said.
Surely I have been traipsing around in these dungeons long enough for dawn to be near.
“Everything looks better there.” It was something his father used to say.

And maybe
—he hoped—
it is true
. After all, nothing could look any worse. Of that he was now sure.

I
nto the light.
That suddenly sounded like the best idea in the world.

Following the prince—because that was what her class was trained to do since birth—Snail thought about what she'd just witnessed. As the prince had checked out the two dead boggarts, she'd stared at them over his shoulder.

Their throats had been cut with something large and inelegant.

Something like the ogre's butcher knives, the ones he'd worn in the belt around his waist.

But when she and the prince had passed by the dead ogre, he was still lying on his stomach, which concealed the knives. And he was as still as the two creatures at the door. So she knew he couldn't have been faking. Ogres were not subtle creatures.

There's someone else in this game,
she thought.
Someone who doesn't care about killing, which argues for a toff. Someone who is fast, thorough, and inelegant, which argues for a Border Lord. Someone who kills without using magic.
She bit her lower lip.
Which leaves only another creature, or an apprentice.
She sighed.
Apprentices don't kill.

She thought a minute, then amended that:
Unless they are apprentice assassins
. Not that she'd ever met any apprentice assassins. Or met anyone who'd met any.

It was a puzzle.

Puzzles made her head spin.

A midwife's apprentice was taught how to anticipate problems in the birth chamber, not solve problems left by killers.
Anticipate, alleviate, and then await—the midwife's creed
. What an assassin's creed was, she didn't want to know.
Cut, kill, hack, and hew, slice your prey through and through? And then slip silently away?

She forced herself to watch the prince's back and keep up with him step for step across the interrogation cell. By concentrating on that, she got her head to stop spinning at last, but it didn't solve the puzzle.

She
hated
puzzles.

While she climbed the secret stairs behind the prince, she stuffed her right hand into her apron pocket and wrapped her fingers around the handle of the knife she'd taken from the ogre's back. Elegant, with a carved handle, and an exceedingly sharp point that she hadn't dared touch, the knife was the only thing that made her feel even a little bit safe.

So why hadn't the prince taken it? Or asked for it back?
She shook her head, reminding herself that if there were a third player in this game, then the knife was probably his. And he, rather than the prince, had done the ogre in.
I definitely don't want
him
to come to get his knife back.

Snail was lost in thought as they reached the top of the stairs, and she failed to notice the prince coming to an abrupt stop. She slammed into him for the second time that day, and he dropped the candle. It fell spinning to the floor, making their shadows dance crazily along the stone walls as if there were suddenly dozens of strange creatures in the corridor.

“I'm so sorry, Your Serenity!” she whispered as she bent to pick up the candle. It must have been magically lit, because it was—
thanks be to Mab
—still burning. But when she stood up again, she saw that the shadows hadn't lied completely, and there
was
someone else in the hall: a tall, dark shadow looming up behind the prince, spreading shadowy arms to grab him.

And that
someone
, Snail thought, was most probably the one who killed the two assassins and possibly the ogre as well.

Before she could move or even think, the shadowy arms grabbed the prince. He tried to jerk away, but the arms held him fast by the shoulders. Even by candlelight, Snail could see that the prince's face had gone bone white. It was as if she could see the skull beneath. Whether it was terror or something else, she couldn't tell.

“Let him go!” she shouted.

She heard a low chuckle, and it was not from the prince, who was still struggling against his assailant.

That laugh
 . . . she'd heard it before. Only she couldn't think where. She took the knife out of her pocket and held it up in her left hand, the candle being in her right.

“Let . . . him . . . go,” she said plainly, each word enunciated in case the shadow assailant was from the Seelie Court and didn't speak their language. “Let him go now. I have a knife . . .”

She held it up and was pleased that her hand didn't tremble at all.

“Unless you are left-handed,” the voice behind the prince said—it was low, controlled, and rather amused—“I think I have the better of you.”

“I
am
left-handed,” she said, bluffing, “and my knife is very sharp.”

The low laugh came again. “
Your
knife, is it? Not unless you are a drow.”

Unexpectedly, the prince broke free, turned to face his assailant, and said, “Jack, what are you playing at?”

“You
know
him?” Snail was astonished.

The prince said over his shoulder, “He is my best friend.” He hesitated as if he'd said too much, then turned back to the drow.

And now Snail could clearly see the drow's hand, which—if she'd noticed it earlier—would have identified him sooner, the four-fingered hand with sharp black fingernails that gave away his clan.

“Answer me, in Obs's name,” the prince insisted. “What are you playing at?”

The drow moved into the light.

Still holding the knife out in front of her, Snail raised the candle so she could see both their faces at once.

The prince looked furious, color now flooding back into his face. He had his hand on the handle of his sword as if any minute he'd take the drow's head off.

As for the drow—this Jack—he was old. She knew that few drows reached old age. They were a quarrelsome crew—the young males fighting in the nest and eating their dead, and the adolescent males battling to the death over mates. That Jack was this old and a friend of the prince meant he was smart, lucky, and ruthless. She didn't like the sound of that combination.

“Ask him,” she said to the prince. “Ask him again.”

“Ask him . . . what?” the prince said, turning toward her, narrowing his eyes, almost hissing.

She realized at once that she might have just made a fatal mistake. The problem was she'd never had real occasion to learn proper manners. Birthing mothers don't care if the midwife addresses them correctly; they just want the babe out NOW! And the prince had seemed forgiving of her lapses in manners when they were alone and creatures were dying mysteriously all around them. But she knew that toffs could get really prickly about all that manners stuff when they were gathered in one place. Not that the drow was an
actual
toff. But still . . .

More than one head had been lost at court because of a dropped address or a misused title.

“Ask him again, Your Serenity, if it pleases you,” she said, dropping quickly to one knee.

He turned back to the drow and said casually, so no one would think the girl had commanded him, “What
are
you playing at, Jack Daw?”

Not to be outdone, the drow bowed his head. “Just trying to keep you safe, Your Serenity.” He winked one bright eye at Snail and stuck a dark nail into his mouth as if loosening a bit of something lodged in his teeth. When he withdrew the nail again, he added, “It looked like you were falling there.”

The prince straightened his tunic. “I was fine. The girl bumped into me is all.”

The drow peered at Snail as if his old eyes were having trouble piercing the darkness. She wasn't convinced.

“A midwife's apprentice? Interesting.” He turned back to the prince. “Shall I keep her safe as well, Your Serenity?”

“Well . . . yes . . . I suppose . . .” the prince stammered, then caught himself. “Yes, of course,” he said, sounding more regal, more commanding. “She has proven useful in my escape.”

“Your escape seems to have needed many such useful folk already,” said the drow. “And it is barely begun.” He seemed to be controlling the urge to laugh.

“It is no laughing matter, Jack.”

“Am I laughing, Serenity?”

Snail thought,
Close enough as to be no never mind
, which was something Mistress Softhands often said.

“Then let us get moving.” The drow's voice was coolly in control. “The guards will find your two other useful friends at the bottom of the stairs before long.” He turned and said to Snail in a tone that was both commanding and wheedling, “I suggest you put the knife away lest you fall against the prince again and injure him with it. It looks quite . . . lethal.” Then he walked away from them, along the corridor.

Snail dropped the knife back into her pocket but kept hold of the candle with its flickering light, not wanting to miss any of the drow's movements. He may have wanted to help his friend. But she guessed he didn't
really
want to keep her safe at all. Or alive.

However, she knew he would do his dirty work in the dark where the prince couldn't see it. His kind always did. More reason to hold the candle high.

She was in this fight and flight alone, as she had been from the start.

It's best not to forget that
, she told herself.