Royal Outlaw: (Royal Outlaw, Book 1) (32 page)

Mariel could not see how this was helpful. She bit her tongue to keep from shooting a sharp retort at her friend. They were in a bad enough situation as it was, they did not need to start getting angry at each other.

The chained girl heard a rustling of straw. She felt the heat of Cara’s body as she drew near and then the touch of her cold hand as she sought Mariel’s chained one. Cara placed something in Mariel’s hand. “Would these help?”

Mariel barely dared to breath, not that the tightly laced corset allowed her to draw much air anyway. She moved the pouch around in her fingers as best she could, careful not to dislodge any of its precious contents. “These are lock picks!”

“I know.” Mariel could almost hear the smile in Cara’s voice.

“But, how?”

“James gave them to me before he left. He told me to always keep them with me and hide them on my person. I had them tucked beneath my corset so the guards didn’t find them.”

“Who’s James?” Hallie asked, but the other two girls ignored her.

Mariel wanted to cry with relief. Escape from the prison cell would be more complicated, but being free of these chains and able to move would be something.

“Cara, I may not be a god, but surely you are a goddess!”

“But she doesn’t know how to use them,” Hallie pointed out. “She told me about them before you woke up and she said you never taught her how to pick a lock. And you can’t move.”   

Mariel shot a glare she knew could not be seen in the direction of the pessimistic disembodied voice. “Jeu tran zamé ariñar ist lamo ví bey el roshel gnal pÿrak.”

“What?”

“That’s not Dremian, is it?”

“It is an expression the people I grew up with used to say. It means ‘The only true battle ever lost or won is hope against despair.’”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that if you give up hope and let despair win then everything is ruined and you will surely fail, but if you hold on to hope there is always a chance.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, Mariel, we’re locked up in a dark, desolate prison cell wearing nothing but our underclothes against the bitter cold and you are bound in irons that only a serpentramel could escape!”

Mariel’s patience was wearing thin, as she struggled to remain optimistic and keep her mind open and thinking of ways to escape. “Cara, pull out the lock picks one by one and let me feel them.”

Accustomed to picking locks in the dark, Mariel knew the feel and touch of each pick. Although these were unfamiliar picks, they were still similar in make to hers. Keeping in mind the lock of the manacles, Mariel selected three different picks. She drilled Cara until the younger girl knew the difference between each of the three picks so she knew which pick Mariel referred to during the unlocking procedure.

Mariel wanted to shed the chains and manacles as quickly as she could, but patience was necessary when the only person she had to rely on was someone who had never picked a lock before. Cara’s hands shook, from cold or nerves Mariel was not certain, but she knew she needed to relax her friend if she ever wanted to escape.

With a gentle, voice Mariel directed Cara in picking the lock on her right wrist. It was a tedious and frustrating time for both of them. Cara had difficulty finding the lock in the dark and then keeping the picks in the right position. Whenever she made progress, Mariel made an effort to praise her, but soon they were back to the beginning and Cara had to start over. Mariel was glad she had experience teaching people how to pick locks, but she had never been forced to do it in the dark, in a life threatening situation.  

Mariel strained to hear the changes in the lock as Cara worked to pick it. Time marched on steadily, although without any light it was difficult to tell how long Cara worked. Hallie was smart enough to keep her opinionated comments to herself.

“I can’t do it!” Cara cried in the darkness.

Since death was the only alternative for Mariel, she knew Cara needed to get her out of these manacles. She was not about to let her friend give up.

“You’re getting better. You even managed to get to the step that involved the third pick the last few times. Try again. I’m sure you’ll pop the lock this time.” Mariel was not sure of anything, let alone Cara being successful. But giving up was a weakness and Mariel was not about to surrender to something so mundane as that.

“Please, Narel, guide my hands in this and give me the patience to endure,” Cara prayed. “Valmir, give me strength so I might win the battle against the locks. As the gods will it, so may it be.”

A deriding comment about the gods sprang to Mariel’s mind. She did not believe that there was such a thing as gods, let alone that if there were they would help a meek noble girl like Cara pick the lock on a wrist manacle of a known and wanted outlaw. However, she had the common sense not to speak this opinion aloud because it would not help Cara’s frame of mind.

Cara took a deep breath and held it as she set the picks to the lock again. Mariel had repeated the directions so many times that Cara had them memorized. Mariel allowed her head to rest against the stone wall to wait out another failed attempt. She would be bound here for hours, fated to hang and her friends would hang with her.

She had been stupid to bring them into the city. They did not have the fighting skills required for escape and she had forfeit her own life to try to keep them safe. Cara had shown grit when she had managed to throw her captor and rescue Hallie from the guard holding her, but they would not have needed to do that if Mariel had not brought them into the city in the first place. She had wanted a breath of freedom after being trapped in the suite, but that bit of escape would now cost her and her friends their lives.

An unexpected click brought Mariel to full awareness. Barely daring to hope, she wiggled her wrist and the iron surrounding it separated.

She shouted in triumph as she moved her freed arm around in the cold air. “You did it, Cara! You did it!”

“I did,” replied a quiet, awed voice from the dark.

Hallie hurried over to inspect Cara’s handiwork. There were a few happy moments of celebration, during which Mariel wiggled her fingers and swung her arm around as the blood painfully flooded back into it.

“But there’s four more locks, I’ll never be able to open them all,” Cara said mournfully.

Hallie groaned, but Mariel was not deterred. “You don’t have to, just give me the picks, I can do it one handed.”

In a matter of minutes, Mariel was completely free of the imprisoning chains. She had feared unbearable pain when the feeling came back to her injured arm, but she only felt the normal prickling sensation of blood returning to the limb. With Hallie’s and Cara’s help, she stood and walked about the tiny cell to wake her arms and legs and stretch stiff muscles. Cara unlaced Mariel’s corset and then strung it again more loosely. 

“What next?” Cara asked.

They were locked in a windowless prison cell and there were guards on the other side of the door. Lock picks would only go so far. She would not surrender though, and she knew she needed to keep up Hallie’s and Cara’s faith in her to prevent them from panicking.

“Feel around the walls. Search for anything that seems out of place with the stone, something loose or protruding or concave. Anything even remotely odd.”

The chances of there being an escape route in one of these high security cells was unlikely, especially since she knew they were located in the upper stories of the jailhouse. However, all possibilities had to be pursued.

Cara and Hallie, not knowing exactly what to look for, cried out the alarm several times, but all proved to be dead ends.

“There is something here!” Hallie exclaimed. “It feels like indentations in the wall.”

That sounded promising, Mariel headed toward the sound of Hallie’s voice. She placed her hands on the wall where Hallie directed. She was met with disappointment. The indentations were tally marks placed there by some criminal awaiting the noose. Telling the noble girls that would be a bad tactic, so Mariel said, “It’s nothing.”

“But we’ve covered all of the walls!”

Panic started to delve into Mariel’s gut, but she pushed it aside. Fear would not help her to think clearly. “Hallie go to the door, bang on it until someone opens the slot and peers in. Demand food.”

“How does food get us out of here?”

“It doesn’t, but when the guard peers in the slot to find out what you want, count how many guards are outside.”

Mariel sat near the chains and draped them over her to look like she was still bound. Cara sat next to her to help conceal the evidence of the picked locks.

With a word from Mariel, Hallie began to bang on the door. It was some time before anyone responded. Finally, the wooden slot in the door at eye level was wrenched open and light flooded into the small cell.

“Wha’ you want?” A gruff voice demanded.

“I am hungry,” Hallie said with her best indignant voice. “I insist that you bring us some food.”

That was not exactly the tone or the words Mariel would have used, but it was the ends that mattered, not the means.

“You ain’t getting no food, Fatso!” The guard slammed the slot shut, sealing the three girls in darkness once more.

“He called me fat!” Hallie cried.

“That’s the least of your worries,” Mariel pointed out. “What did you see?”

“I counted at least seven guards including that abominable man. Two of them had crossbows.”

Mariel swore. She could pick the lock on the door easily, but three unarmed young women faced with five well-armed and well-trained professional soldiers, let alone two crossbows would be suicide.

“There’s another way though, isn’t there?” Cara asked.

There was another way of escape, but it depended on other people. “I had some friends from the Resistance in the tavern If they run to others and tell them I’m here, they might make a jailbreak.”

Hallie cried out in defeat and slumped against a wall, as Cara broke into sobs. Alarmed, Mariel was quick to assure them that this was a strong possibility.

“They arrested them.”

Mariel froze, afraid to ask. “Who?”

“Everyone in the tavern. Even the workers.”

Mariel swallowed hard and tried to control her mounting fear. They would be kept here for hours, days, she had experienced it before, but this time there was no hope of escape. Sir Mathias would report that he had finally caught Mariel Quickwit. Archmagician Dieter Dreyfuss would come to watch the hanging . . . Mariel inhaled sharply.
Dreyfuss
.

No
, she thought in horror.
I can’t put my life in his hands. That man can’t be the one who saves me.
She listened to the sound of her friends’ crying.
But
if it means living
. . .

She sprang toward the door and pounded on it incessantly.

“No food!” A man yelled.

She continued beating on the door until her fists ached.

The slot slammed open and a face appeared in the window, but before the guard could speak or express his surprise about seeing her free of the manacles, she said, “Dreyfuss. Archmagician Dieter Dreyfuss. When is he coming to see that I’ve been caught?”

The man laughed. “The only way you’ll be seeing the archmagician is in a casket.”

“What do you mean?” Mariel asked, her hopes draining out of her. “With big-catch criminals like me, you’re supposed to inform the higher authorities. Dreyfuss wants to personally see me hang. You
have
to tell him.”

“Sir Mathias ain’t taking no chances. Last time he told the archmagician and you escaped. It nearly cost him his job. He’s not telling the archmagician until you’re good and dead.”

But Dreyfuss would find her missing and start searching for her. There was a possibility that he would find out that she was in prison. Guards liked to brag, she hoped they would.

“When am I to face the noose?” she asked, still trying to sound brave, but unable to keep the quaver out of her voice.

“At noon. In two hours.”

Laughing, the guard slammed the slot in her face. Mariel stumbled backward until she hit the wall. She slid down and buried her face in her knees. This time there was no escape. She, Cara, and Hallie were going to die because of one nobleman’s wounded pride.

Darren was going to die. Mariel knew it with all her heavy heart. She would die and then Dreyfuss would have no reason to keep her papa alive and he would kill him. She was going to die today. Soon. Cara would die too. And Hallie. Three other lives besides her own would be destroyed because of her stupid mistake. They would die because she had gone too far in her fight against her oppressors. She had wanted freedom too badly.

Cara and Hallie hugged each other and cried next to Mariel. They knew they were going to die. They must hate her. And she deserved their hatred. They had trusted her and she had let them down. Mariel had never experienced the betrayal she knew they were feeling now because she had never dared to trust a human.

The door groaned opened and light flooded the little cell. Mariel lifted her head from her knees and looked up at her captor through her dirty hair. Sir Mathias stood in the doorway with two men holding crossbows pointed at her. Three more men crowded into the cell. One clamped manacles on her hands and feet, while the other two bound her friends.

“Stand!” Sir Mathias commanded.

Shaking and sobbing, Cara and Hallie did as they were told. But in a last act of defiance, Mariel remained sitting, glaring at the noble with all the force she could muster. She was unceremoniously hauled to her feet.

“March!”

Guilt and fear refused to let any other emotion touch Mariel, but she would not walk to her death crying and whimpering, pleading for this prideful man to have mercy on her life. She would not admit to being the crown princess of Natric. They would only laugh anyway.

She threw back her shoulders as best she could with manacles weighing her down. Sir Mathias led the way with a group of guards, while Mariel, Cara, and Hallie followed, surrounded by more armed men.

They walked down a confusing array of corridors that Mariel kept track of, even knowing that the information would not matter when she was in Throvim’s Realm. Sir Mathias led them down flights of narrow stairs until they reached a floor that she knew was beneath the ground.

This was a place she had heard of, but had never seen. Most of the doors were shut, but one was open. Mariel tripped over her shackles as she stared inside the room. Foul air issued out of the room. The stench was worse than in the prison cell and Mariel heard one of her friends gag behind her. But worse than the smell were the sights.

A large wheel covered in spikes resting on an axel stood in the room next to a table outfitted with leather straps and gears. Beside those sat a chair covered in metal spikes with leather straps attached to keep the arms and legs of the victims in place. In the corner of the room, a contraption that appeared to be an upright sarcophagus was opened wide, revealing long metal spikes covered in dried blood embedded in its doors. Ropes, chains, gears, and pieces of iron or wood hung from the ceiling beams. Plain tables were covered with smaller torture devices such as thumbscrews, branding irons, and other devices Mariel did not recognize, nor want to.

A guard unkindly prodded her from behind, causing her to lose her balance again. She had not realized she had stopped walking. Attempting to swallow despite her bone dry mouth, she picked up her shuffling pace to pass beyond the sight of the torture room as quickly as possible. The iron chains strung between her wrists and ankles clanked loudly as she moved, but their sound was drowned out by the laughter of some of the men.

“Don’t fancy torture, Quickwit?” Sir Mathias asked. “Don’t worry. The noose will be a much quicker death . . . if the gods will your neck to break when you drop through the platform.”

Either Cara or Hallie cried out in fear, but Mariel refused to privilege these men with seeing her cower in terror. She was going to die. Of that she was certain, but she would die with dignity, with respect. Anyone who would witness the event would not be able to say she had died a coward, frightened and weak.

Most people were hung on the gallows outside so that citizens could come and watch, but Mariel had heard that in this prison there was a set of gallows in the basement which the guards used to kill prisoners who they feared might be rescued if the execution was held outside.

After walking down a short set of stairs, the ceiling rose upward and the walls expanded to reveal a large circular room with dirt walls and roots poking through. The room was in no way empty. Most of the on-duty day guards stood at attention, and all of the guards who had aided in her capture the previous night were present except for the pale man who had unwittingly helped unlock some painful memories she had been happy to forget.

Other prisoners were held by guards, their hands bound with twine. The thing these men and women had in common was that they had all been in the tavern the night before. They had fought to help protect her from capture, and had been arrested instead. Mariel recognized Dale and the merchants she and her friends had danced with, as well as other people she had known. These people would not be killed today, they were just here as witnesses.

As Mariel looked over the imprisoned citizens and the guards that were ordered here to see her execution, she noticed that many faces were drawn and sad. A few even had tears running down their cheeks. And those depressed faces did not belong only to the tavern-people. Some of the guardsmen looked delighted to be here and proud that the elusive Quickwit had finally been caught, but many more were not happy.

Mariel realized that most of the people here, prisoner and guardsmen alike, did not want to see her die. Not because they believed she was the princess, but because she had fought for and helped the common people of this city. Soldiers in Natric were not paid well and many came from the slums or the lower districts. They did not want to watch her die.

The guard behind her shoved her hard and she stumbled toward the raised wooden platform in the center of the large room. Hanging from a wooden post on top of the platform was a rope with a circular noose waiting for her neck. Next to the noose stood a huge guardsman wearing black leather waiting to put the rope around her and pull the lever that would open the trapdoor. 

Refusing to be abused and degraded, Mariel turned to face the guardsmen who had pushed her and spat in his face. Steeling herself for the end that was soon to come, she walked without further prodding to the gallows. She kept her head held high and her eyes on the hanging rope as she lifted her shackled foot to the first step.

“
Stop!
”

Mariel froze with her right foot barely resting on the first step up and her left foot still on the packed dirt floor. Her ears had to be playing tricks on her, a desperate attempt to cling to life when she faced death. But she had accepted death. She was prepared to die.

“Do you have any idea what you were about to do?” The same, breathless voice angrily demanded.

She was used to being yelled at by that voice. If the voice had been kind and soothing, she would not have recognized it. If she had had a choice of what voice to hear rescuing her as she faced death, this would have been one of the last ones on the list. That meant it was not a delusion. The voice that was saving her life was real.

Barely daring to believe, Mariel slowly turned around and saw two men in drenched clothes standing in the entrance to the underground room. One was the guardsman from the night before who had believed she was the princess. The other was the one who had spoken.

Water dripped from his soaked red hair and he clutched his side and struggled to catch his breath. His robes were soaked and splattered with mud. Despite his disheveled appearance, he looked like a god to Mariel’s grateful eyes—although she would never admit it.

“We have caught the wanted outlaw Mariel Quickwit,” Sir Mathias announced, stepping toward the angry archmagician.

“You do not know who you caught.”

Dreyfuss spoke a spell, drawing power from the roots in the walls. The irons around Cara’s, Hallie’s, and Mariel’s wrists and ankles fell away, releasing them.

“Archmagician!” the two noble girls cried.

Ignoring every bit of decorum and etiquette they had been taught, Hallie and Cara ran to the dripping man and threw their arms around his middle, sobbing in relief. Momentarily forgetting his anger, Dreyfuss stared down at the tops of the girls’ heads in surprise. The entire death chamber had risen into an uproar.

Mariel stared at Dreyfuss in shock and disbelief. Her legs turned to jelly and she collapsed into a sitting position on the stairs that were supposed to have ended in her death. She shook from head to toe. Tears of relief slid down her cheeks.

The sounds and shapes of the room blurred. Mariel could not pay attention to the momentous arguments unfolding. She was lost in her own world, confused and relieved. She had accepted death, but she was not dead. She was alive. And she owed her life to a man she hated. It was difficult to understand, difficult to fathom. She should be dead, but she still breathed, her heart still beat.

She sat on the steps of the gallows as people moved throughout the room, as voices were raised in anger and others cried out their disbelief. But she was numb to it all. She struggled to run through the events that had led up to this moment, but they refused to make sense to her. She had accepted death, why was she not dead?

Arms encircled her. Kisses were planted on her cheeks and forehead. Cara and Hallie sat on either side of her and held her close and cried. But she could not respond. She simply sat there like a lump, shaking.

The hem of mud splattered robes entered her vision. She looked up into the livid face of Archmagician Dieter Dreyfuss. “Get up, Your Royal Highness,” he ordered in a tone that brooked no argument.

Still in a state of shook, she rose from her seat, not noticing her friends release her from their hold. Dreyfuss turned and led the way out of the room with Mariel following numbly behind him. He led her up the stairs and down several corridors.

It was not until he held a door open for her, that Mariel began to overcome her shock and realize where she was. Thin slits of windows were set into the far wall, revealing a downpour of rain. A large cedar desk covered in sheets of official looking papers dominated the room. The walls were bare, but some books of law and ambiguous looking scrolls were shoved onto a shelf. This was the Deputy Provost’s office.

Dreyfuss began to yell at her, and although she failed to process most of the words he spoke, she understood their meaning. Still too numb to respond, Mariel touched the wood of the desk and the thin fabric of her chemise just to make sure she was really alive and not dead. Although she doubted the archmagician would be yelling at her like this if she were dead.

Slowly, Mariel began to understand what had happened. The shock began to fade, and was replaced by shame. She wanted to feel inordinately angry at this man screaming at her, but try as she might, she could not dredge up the feeling. All she felt was gratitude. It was a bizarre thing to feel toward a man who threatened her papa’s life and trapped her in a life she hated. She still felt angry about those things, but the anger was pushed back by a more powerful emotion.

Dreyfuss paused in his rant to draw breath, and Mariel took the opportunity to speak: “Thank you.”

The two simple words were quiet, but the archmagician heard them and they had a profound effect on him. The anger drained from his face, replaced by confusion and shock. “What?”

“Thank you,” Mariel repeated, just as quietly as before.

It was obvious that the archmagician was at a loss for words, and as he struggled to come up with something to say, Mariel began to return to herself.

“You cannot go gallivanting off,” Dreyfuss finally managed to say, although the anger was gone from his voice. “You are not indestructible, you can easily be killed.”

“Death is inevitable for us all,” she replied with a response that would have made any zreshlan proud.

“That does not mean you should seek it out.”

“I don’t want to be trapped in a stuffy suite either.”

Dreyfuss did not reply automatically, he seemed to be thinking hard. “If I allow you to leave your rooms, do you promise to always take a guard with you?”

A rigid “no” was on the tip of Mariel’s tongue when she paused to consider. Her sense of freedom did not include guards, but what Dreyfuss offered was still much better than being cloistered in her rooms with few people for company. She supposed she should be grateful that he was not threatening to chain her up in her bedroom for this fiasco, and it was then that she realized this was the first civilized conversation they had ever had.

“If you let me exercise in the training yard in the morning with Cara and Hallie.”

“Only if you do it before the day guards get up.”

Her friends would not appreciate having to wake up so early, but if they were serious about learning to fight, they would do it. And Mariel had a feeling that both girls would be more determined to learn how to defend themselves after what had happened last night—was it only last night?

“I don’t want Isabel as a lady’s maid.”

“Out of the question. She comes from too powerful a family. The queen selected her specifically.”

Mariel shrugged. “When I kill her because she grates on my nerves, don’t blame me.”

“Part of being princess is learning to cope and deal with people you do not like. To be politically accepted, you must learn this.”