The Silvered (60 page)

The guards had been ordered not to talk to the prisoners. That had been obvious from the beginning.

That there were men willing to follow orders so exactly was as terrifying as anything that had yet happened.

Danika knew she was both taller and heavier than Kirstin. She could get better leverage and do significantly more damage if she landed on either of her guards.

She was also pregnant. Risking the baby in a fall she couldn’t control would bring freedom no closer. Once again, she wished she knew
how
to fight. She knew how to dance, how to speak to her housekeeper, how to entertain politicians, how to dress well, how to lie charmingly, and how to struggle but have no effect on two large men trained to use their bodies for violence.

Just past the last cell there was a full-sized steel door; like the stairs, incongruously new.

On the other side of the door, another row of dark cells. The moment Danika’s guard pulled the door closed behind them, the prisoners began to howl.

Pain and anger and fear and anger and hunger and anger.

Danika stumbled and was hauled back onto her feet, fingers gouging
bruises into her arms. The floor was sticky. She could smell shit and urine and blood and rot. How much more overpowering must it be to Pack senses?

Kirstin’s guards were carrying her now. Danika could see her mouth moving.

Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.

The howling grew louder, anger drowning out the rest.

Danika felt Chipped-tooth shudder and she twisted, mouth near his ear. She couldn’t convince him to do anything he didn’t already want to do.
“I know you. Let me go.”

His grip loosened.

“I know you. Let me go.”

Loosened.

“I know you. Let me go.”

Then Gouge-in-boot nearly jerked her out of Chipped-tooth’s grip, and he tightened his hold again.

It didn’t matter, she realized. If they let her go, she’d follow Kirstin regardless.

She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to the captured Pack that would give them comfort.

At the other end of the cells, Kirstin’s guards carried her up another flight of stairs although these were old and worn and probably the original access to the cells.

Danika wrapped the anger in the air around her like high fashion, like silk and lace and velvet, and climbed, head up, back straight, teeth bared.

In an antechamber, identical to the one that led to the water room and the big room and their hall, they were handed over to four other guards. They looked harder, more confident—these were men who’d already proven themselves. As they made the transfer, Bruised-thumb swore and jerked back, blood running down his cheek. Blood on Kirstin’s mouth. If he hadn’t moved in time, he’d have lost the end of his nose.

One of the new guards laughed. “All abominations bite, kid.” As he grabbed Danika’s arm, she saw familiar scars. She knew the teeth that made those scars. These guards dealt with Pack. If Dimples and Chipped-tooth proved themselves with netted mages, would they be promoted to torturing Pack? Were they looking forward to it?

The door closed behind them, and the howling faded. When the door opened in front of them, a woman wearing a white coat over sensible clothes looked up from a mess of paper on a high desk and said, “Take the dark-haired mage to testing. Blonde to the cage on the deck.”

The guards began to drag them apart.

Danika let herself go limp, her unexpected weight pulling her arms from her guards’ grip. She dropped to one knee, pushed forward and back up onto her feet, throwing her arms around Kirstin’s waist. “Where she goes, I go.”

She’d spoken Imperial, but the woman in the white coat only pulled her spectacles off and polished them as though she hadn’t heard. “Get them separated, or the abomination will be there before she is.”

“Don’t ignore…” Danika’s head snapped back. Her mouth filled with blood. She had to swallow or spit. Only her grip on Kirstin kept her from falling. Another blow and they were yanked apart, Danika clutching fistfuls of Kirstin’s clothes, refusing to let go, grunting in pain as blows pounded against her ribs.

“Danika! Think of the baby!”

Danika blinked away tears and tried to focus on Kirstin’s face. Wrapped her fear and anger around the Aydori words. “You know what they’re going to do to you!”

Blue-flecked eyes narrowed, and Kirstin’s upper lip curled. “I know what they think they’re going to do. I make my own choices, Lady Hagen. Like I always have.”

“Stubborn…”

One of the guards jabbed his thumb into the back of Danika’s hand, driving it deep between the small bones. Her fingers spasmed, opened, and she lost her hold. As they dragged her along the slick floor, she thrashed and fought. She couldn’t get free, but she would not have them say she left her Pack willingly.

Rounding a corner, they planted their boots and threw her forward. Sliding across the glossy tiles on her knees, she slammed up against metal bars and spun around in time to see a cage door shut and barred.

“This mage is the first female abomination we’ve allowed on the
deck over the testing room. I’m looking forward to her reactions. They should be fascinating.”

Breathing heavily, Danika rose to her feet and turned to face Leopald, snarling, lips drawn back off her teeth. It seemed at first as though he was in a cage of his own, but there were only bars between them and in front of him. One set separated him from the room below, one from her.

He stood far enough away, she couldn’t reach him. Arm thrust through the bars, her fingers clawed at the air.

He shook his head. “Fascinating. They all attempt that. It must be due to some commonality in their blood.”

The man standing behind him, wearing a parody of a uniform, stared at the back of Leopald’s head in disbelief.

Danika knew him.

Reiter saw the mage’s blue-flecked eyes widen and knew she’d recognized him.

“You did this,” she snarled, touching two fingers to the blood at the corner of her mouth.

The emperor turned to face him and Reiter barely managed to control his reaction in time. After a moment of study, Reiter maintaining as neutral an expression as possible, he turned back to face the mage. “You remember Captain Reiter, do you? How wonderful. But when it comes right down to it, it’s unkind to blame him for the situation you’re in. Your current situation is entirely a result of what you are, isn’t it? The captain was merely following my orders.”

Reiter could see her answer in her eyes—the anger, the terror—and he braced himself. He’d taken prisoners before. While he was still a ranker, he’d been on work details throwing prisoners’ bodies into pits. On the other side, in other armies, he knew enemy soldiers did the same. It wasn’t personal. It was war.

This wasn’t war.

This
specifically wasn’t even about trying to prevent a danger to the empire the Soothsayers had warned about.

This was, as she had said, insane.

And he’d helped make it possible.

Before the mage could speak, throw accusations or curses—both justified—a door opened. She shot him one last disgusted look, then spun around to throw herself at the bars separating her from the room below.

The deck stretched along one side of a square room. Longer and higher than the small box where the emperor spied on the mages, it was much the same idea without the Imperial trappings or the secrecy. The floor and the walls of the room had been covered in the same large white tiles he stood on. The ceiling had been entirely mirrored, brass rings marking the holes where a dozen lamps had been lowered down from above. At first glance the room looked featureless in the brilliant gleam of the reflected light. At second glance, Reiter saw the rings and clamps where any manner of things could be attached to the walls and the floors.

Through the open door in the west wall, Reiter could see the small, dark-haired mage. Although her guards attempted to throw her into the room, she twisted free and limped through the door under her own power. Rolled her eyes when the door slammed behind her. Glanced up. Curtsied mockingly at the emperor.

She tried to hide it, but Reiter had seen that expression before. Had passed soldiers lying wounded on the battlefield, looked into their faces and seen dead men look back. Men who were breathing and making jokes, but who knew they were dead.

He didn’t understand. She’d lain with beastmen in the past and they were, when it came down to it, only another kind of men.

This would be public and unwanted, but she’d survive the experience. The emperor’s plan to control the only mages and beastmen in this part of the world meant he needed these mages alive.

What did she know he didn’t?

“Kirstin!”

Reiter silently repeated the name the blonde mage had called out. People had names. Abominations didn’t.

Kirstin raised a hand in acknowledgment, but didn’t look up.

What didn’t she want her friend to know?

“We’re putting the big tricolor in with her.” Nothing in the emperor’s voice gave any indication he was aware he was about to destroy a life. Nothing suggested he was about to enjoy the pain and humiliation he’d ordered to happen. “He’s been restless, and they
tell me he keeps setting the others off. Hopefully, this will calm him a little. The volume they can achieve may be scientifically amazing, but it’s still annoyingly loud for the poor people who have to care for them.”

“Big tricolor,” Reiter repeated. He remembered his grandfather talking the same way about the pigeons he kept.

The emperor laughed. The gleaming toes of his boots were pressed right up against the bars.
Against,
Reiter noted, not through although there was room enough. “Big tricolor rather than the small- or medium-sized tricolor. It’s completely unnatural, so it’s the easiest to spot when the abominations try to hide among people. I have a number of them. I know it’s foolish, but I’m hoping I can get some other colors when these five…no, four whelp. Unfortunately, the result of this…” He waved a hand toward the room. “…will likely be another tricolor.”

The door seemed to open again on a wave of sound: snarling, howling, claws and teeth ringing against steel. In the open doorway, a cage. In the cage, an enormous wolf; black and gray and tan fur blended in a way that made it…Him, Reiter corrected. Made
him
hard to see in the shadows beyond the door.

The silver collar around his neck glinted in the spill of light from the room as he fought to get free.

“Kirstin!”

“They were very chatty when they brought me around, Danika. I know what to expect.” She spoke Imperial so that everyone could understand her—making it harder for the enemy to consider her a beast, Reiter assumed—but she still didn’t look up. She backed slowly away until she stood against the wall opposite the door. She twitched invisible wrinkles out of her skirt, folded her hands, and waited.

Metal screamed as the front of the cage rose. The wolf charged out onto the tile.

He was huge. Gaunt. Starving, if Reiter was any judge. His hips jutted up and his ribs hung down like another cage under loose patchy fur.

The mage watching—Danika, he reminded himself. Danika made a soft, pained noise that had Reiter curling his hands into fists, nails pressed into his palms.

Silver spikes lined the inside of the collar, the ends driven into the flesh all around the wolf’s throat. Silver poisoned the beastmen. Every soldier in the Imperial army knew that now. What must silver constantly digging into a wound be doing?

The wolf walked carefully, his nails skidding on the slick floor. As the door swung shut behind him, he lifted his head, stared at the emperor with deep-sunk, mad eyes, and charged forward.

One paw nearly reached the emperor’s boot. Reiter winced as the wasted body slammed down onto the floor, bones barely covered with flesh and fur rattling against the tile.

The emperor shook his head and sighed. “Every time. They just don’t learn. Well, every time they’re not tied down,” he added thoughtfully.

“He can’t change with the collar on!” Danika’s cry was loud enough Reiter knew the dark-haired…Kirstin had to have heard it. She didn’t react. She didn’t look up. She didn’t take her eyes off the wolf. She wasn’t surprised.

“That is the point of the collar,” the emperor agreed.

When Reiter turned toward her, Danika stood pressed against the bars, her knuckles white where she clutched at the steel. The cheek he could see, glistened in the harsh light. “How long has he been kept like that? How long since he’s been allowed to change?”

“He’s permitted to change when we need him to heal.” Staring down at the wolf, the emperor shrugged. “He’s fine.”

“He’s barely there!” She took a deep breath, stepped back, and turned toward the emperor. Reiter watched her swallow her pride and her fear and keep her voice calm and level. In a lifetime spent under Imperial banners, he’d never known anyone with that kind of strength. “Your Imperial Majesty, please listen. If the balance between fur and skin is not kept, if there’s too long spent in one form over the other, then that form begins to dominate. If this man has been forced to remain in fur, tortured in fur, starved, he won’t be responsible for his actions. You still have only five of the six mages the Soothsayers prophesied. If you allow this to continue, you’ll have four.”