The Silvered (41 page)

“Thank you.”

He mumbled something that might have been
no problem.

When only Kirstin remained, Danika leaned back inside and took her hands, tugging her gently to her feet and out the door.

They looked to be in a courtyard behind the palace. Dark and small, it had room for only one coach at a time and, unlike at the posting houses when they were allowed to mingle, Lieutenant Geurin gave orders to keep them separate. Tagget and Carlsan moved them over by the wall. Danika watched from between their shoulders as a few minutes later Jesine and Annalyse emerged from their coach. Annalyse looked as though she were barely holding it together, but Jesine, although she wasn’t much older, held her back straight and her head high, sweeping the assembled company with aristocratic disdain, the net glinting within auburn curls like a crown. Before her marriage, her family had been as high in Aydori society as it was possible to get and not be Pack, and she intended everyone in this courtyard to know it. When she glanced her way, Danika smiled.

To her surprise, Murphy helped Stina down from the third coach, the two of them laughing like they shared a joke. Which would be impressive as Stina spoke next to no Imperial.

Now they were all on the ground, Danika ducked her head, found a breeze, and murmured,
“Calm. Stay calm.”

Lieutenant Geurin pinched her chin and lifted her head. “What are you doing?”

“Praying.”

He smiled. “Good.”

There were suddenly a great many more men in the courtyard. Orders were shouted and the soldiers who’d taken them from Aydori were replaced by clean-shaven, unsmiling men in spotless charcoal-gray uniforms, with low brimmed caps instead of the familiar bicorns. Lieutenant Geurin was assured General Loreau would see him in the morning, and then their soldiers—the soldiers who’d been with them since Aydori—were gone.

Eleven strangers watched them with cold eyes as though they
were lesser beings. No curiosity. No sympathy. Two soldiers—no, two guards for each of them.

Although they wore no visible rank insignia, she assumed the man standing apart had to be their officer.

He gestured and the heavier of her two guards shoved Danika toward the open door.

She stumbled, caught herself, and turned to glare. “There is no need to be…”

“Silence.” The officer held up what looked like balls on leather cord. “Or be silenced.”

Another time she might have argued, accepted the consequences, but she was tired and sore and hungry and her bladder was full and there were a hundred excuses available if she needed them.

The building looked new. Something about the hard edges made her think it had been built purposefully for them.

When she saw the six doors opening into the windowless hall, she knew it had been.

But the guards kept them moving past those doors too fast for their exhaustion to be able to command their legs, stumbling, half-dragged at times, the lamps set high along the long wall flickering with their passing. At the end of the hall, a seventh door opened into a vestibule. Danika had almost no time to see it as one of the soldiers tightened his grip on her arm and dragged her through another door and down a flight of stairs. Heart pounding so loudly it was all she could hear, she started to struggle.

It wasn’t the stairs that terrified, they were as new and sterile as the hall they’d just left, but the smells that coiled up them spoke of an older, darker part of the palace. Ryder used to tease her because her nose was so limited, but she’d have given anything right now to be able to smell even less.

Blood. Offal. Rot. A dark patina layered onto the stone by centuries of pain and fear.

Stone all around them now, huge ancient blocks. Almost no light. The shadows told stories of desperation and the death of hope.

Danika’s shoes barely touched the ground as her guards half carried, half dragged her forward. She begged, pleaded, fought…

Then Jesine, who’d been so strong, so sure since they were taken, keened. The sound rose up and spread, the closest she could come
to a howl. It was cut off short by an open-handed blow, too hard to be named a mere slap, and Danika remembered she was Alpha.

Her feet found the floor and she walked, head up, past six low iron doors, dark and stained and a cruel parody of the doors they’d first seen. Those doors had said shelter; these said prison. Her lips drew back. She twisted as far as she could and through bared teeth breathed,
Calm. Stay calm. Be water. Be earth. Be air. Be life. Be strong.
She was Alpha. They’d find their strength in her.

When the thinner of the two guards moved around in front of her and pulled a knife, she didn’t flinch. When he cut the cord holding her hands together, she managed a heartfelt, “Thank you.” Close enough the words brushed his face, she saw his eyes widen in confusion. He barely managed to step aside in time as the guard still behind her shoved her into the cell.

She landed on her knees, her hands sliding along the damp floor. She saw rusty steel rings on the wall in front of her, dark rot softening the corners.

The door slammed shut and Danika froze.

The darkness was complete. No window. No light around the edges of the door.

She sat back on her knees and wiped her hands against her skirt. She wasn’t afraid of the dark.

But she hadn’t seen the whole cell.

Was she alone?

Had they thrown her in with someone…something…?

Breath held back behind her teeth she listened. Heard nothing. Nothing at all. They could have taken the rest of the Mage-pack away and she wouldn’t know. They could leave her. Forget her. Alone…

No.

Her hand dropped to the curve of her belly.

Not alone.

Her child. Ryder’s child.

A reason to survive.

D
ANIKA HAD NO IDEA how long they left her in the dark. She tried to keep track of the passing time, but couldn’t do it. She relieved herself in the far corner because she had to. She found the small bucket of water by tripping over it and spilling half. She settled against the wall opposite the door. She wasn’t afraid of the dark and at least the cell wasn’t moving. If she ever had to get in a coach again, it would be too soon.

She slept. She woke. She slept. Nothing changed.

The water was gone.

No one came.

She slept. She woke. Relieved herself again. Maybe again.

She thought that maybe she’d screamed because her throat felt like she’d been swallowing broken glass, but she had no memory of doing it.

When the door finally opened, the dim light spilling in hurt her eyes so badly she flinched away and they had to drag her out. Out into an empty corridor. Empty. Silent. Where were the others?

She was afraid to ask. Afraid they’d throw her back in the dark. Hated herself a little for that fear.

At the top of the stairs, were four doors—two facing her, one beside her, one to the right. They all had identical brass locks. Big brass locks. Locks. She had no keys. But the door to the right was open and the soldiers dragged her to it.

Inside the door was…

Danika had no idea.

It was a small, narrow room, tiled, pipes running along the ceiling at the far end, and a grate in the floor. Her heart slammed against her ribs as she realized it would be an easy room to clean. The guards shoved her forward. She shook her head and resisted. She couldn’t be brave about this. Not when all she could think of were knives and her baby and pain and…

There was a woman in the room.

Danika squinted, trying to bring the woman’s features into focus. It was too bright. But she was tall. As tall as Annalyse and large. Not softly rounded like Stina but squared. Competent.

The door slammed closed. She heard the key turn and the woman say in accented Aydori, “Clothes off. Now.”

When Danika moved too slowly, she was efficiently stripped, handled as though she were an object not a person, and shoved toward the grate where she could smell…

Soap?

She turned and looked past the woman to see a large piece of unbleached linen toweling and a robe of the same fabric hanging on the back of the door. Frowning, Danika stared up at the pipes as the woman muttered and pulled a wooden plumb on the end of a chain.

Oh.

The guards took her back down the hallway with the six wooden doors. It had to be the same hallway Danika had seen before, but the door they’d entered the palace by no longer existed. Concrete blocks a very little bit lighter than the rest filled in the space as though there’d never been an opening in the wall. The guards yanked her to a stop at the second-to-last door, and she assumed the last door was for the missing sixth mage.

Her shadow went through the door before her, so she turned to see a lamp behind a sheet of glass above the door. The room had no window. There would be light only when their captors allowed them
light. Given where she’d just been, the threat was implicit. Both hands clutching the robe, tiled floor cold against her bare feet, Danika saw a bed made up with sheets and blankets along one long wall, in the far corner a commode and next to it a basin on a small washstand. Beside the basin were a tin mug and a plate of bread and cheese.

She cried out and spun around when the door slammed behind her, but the light stayed on.

This was it. This was…

This was…

This was a room with food.

She ripped chunks off the bread and shoved them in her mouth, coughed, caught the wet mass in one hand and forced herself to eat it slowly. Then the cheese. It was mild and almost tasteless and the best thing she could remember eating. When the food was gone, she gulped down the warm barley water in the mug, then staggered to the bed and collapsed more than sat.

This wasn’t a cell; it was a room. She could smell nothing but the soap she’d washed her hair with. She could see into all the corners. A nightgown had been thrown across the end of the bed. Scooped neck, long sleeves, unbleached muslin. A nightgown.

Then…

A sound…

A sound so faint only an Air-mage could have heard it.

There was a crack, not quite the width of her baby finger under the door. Lying on her side, Danika could feel the air moving down the corridor and hear the door to the room beside her close. She heard two pairs of booted feet move away and the door at the end of the corridor by the water room open and shut.

She might have slept, her body surrendering to relative safety, because it seemed like no time had passed when she heard the door at the end of the corridor open again. Two pairs of booted feet moved closer, but this time she could hear the soft sound of bare feet beside them.

The door to the room beside the room beside hers closed.

They were bringing the others up.

The guilt that had come with being clean and out of that horrid darkness faded.

Feeling almost lightheaded from the loss, she got to her feet,
slipped out of the robe, and slipped on the nightgown. It was large on her, would be tight on Stina, short on Annalyse, swamp Kirstin, but fit Jesine if the gowns were all the same size.

She hadn’t worn a nightgown since she married Ryder.

Wearing the fabric like a shield, she was back on the floor in time to hear the fourth door close.

And then, in time, the fifth.

They were safe. They were all safe.

Rolling onto her back, Danika took a deep, cleansing breath. She listened to multiple boots moving about in the hall. Froze as they stopped outside her door. Stifled a scream as the lamp went out.

Clung to the sound of the boots moving away.

Remembered the sound of the doors closing. Four doors had closed. She wasn’t alone. They were all here.

The room was dark. As much of a cell as those ancient stone holes for all it smelled better.

She wasn’t afraid of the dark. Not this time. She had her crack under the door.

And then…

…in the distance, so faint she thought she heard it because she wanted to hear it, a howl.

Rolling back up onto her side, Danika pressed as close to the crack as she could. Nothing. Nothing but the barely perceptible movement of the air against her cheek. Just when she’d begun to think she’d been imagining it, she heard the howl again.

Young. Male. Terrified more than defiant.

“Hush. I’m here now. We’ll fix this.” Danika blew the words out under the door and waited, sending her presence on every exhale. When the howling finally stopped, she hoped it was because he’d heard.

Rolling over on her back, she wrapped a hand around the curve of her belly. It seemed there were more Pack here to save than those she’d come with.

The roses in the border had clearly needed deadheading for some time. Danika had no idea why she’d left it so long. She pulled the faded blossoms toward her, one by one, barely managing to snip them off the canes before the next rose wilted and then the next. This was
rapidly becoming more complicated than her small gardening ability could deal with. She’d have sent a message to Tylor, the second level Earth-mage who oversaw the estate’s flower gardens, but the air was so completely still she was afraid to disturb it.