The Sartious Mage (The Rhythm of Rivalry) (25 page)

The one beside me spoke up. “The Princess says he’s valuable. They were to be married.”

I didn’t like his use of “were” instead of “are.”

The commander behind the desk formed an open-mouthed smile. “Finally, some luck. Perhaps now we can get out of this hole of shit.” He waved me toward him.

“Come forward, young man. Stand there next to your bride.” He pointed. “Tell me your name. More importantly, who’s your father?”

Fear caught my breath in my throat as I joined Lisanda in the center of the half circle. I could feel the eyes of the ten men behind us burning into our backs. More importantly, I could feel their hands wavering near their weapons.

“He’s Jek Stamuth from Chanren.” Lisanda spoke for me, and good thing as well. If knowledge of nobility could fill buckets, she’d fill a thousand for every one that I’d fill. But there was still the matter of whether she was telling them something that would get me killed or not. I’d never heard of the Stamuth family. And Chanren was about as far from Goldram as possible, meaning I had even less knowledge about the area than the family I was supposed to be from.

The commander held his gaze on Lisanda, tilting his head, waiting for more information.

“Son of King Manch Stamuth of Castle Stamuth,” Lisanda added.

The commander lifted his eyes over my shoulder. I followed it by turning my head to the first man who’d found us, the one with the most knowledge of nobility.

The man shrugged. “Manch Stamuth has more wives than he can count and enough children to fill a shotmarl stadium.”

The commander rubbed a finger across his burgeoning mustache. “Chanren is too far,” he thought aloud. His eyes snapped back to Lisanda. “Does your father find this husband of yours to be valuable to the Takary family?”

Lisanda nodded eagerly. “We’re each very valuable to my father.”

Even with the thick stench in this room beginning to make my head ache, I found some amusement in the irony of the situation. Yes, Lisanda’s father found me valuable, she was telling the truth, but my value to him was for the exact opposite reason these men must’ve believed. The King would never bargain for my life like he would for Lisanda’s. Though, he might bargain for my delivery just the same.

“Then they’ll stay with us until tonight,” the commander said, lifting the cloth back over his face.

“What will happen then?” I asked.

“You’ll find out.” The commander’s words were muffled.

“Where should we keep them?” one of them asked. “We don’t have a place for prisoners.”

“Secure them in a storage room. I don’t care how. Just make sure they can’t escape.” The commander lowered his cloth again and pointed at Scraggle Beard. “Barad, do not touch the Princess. I don’t want to hear of you even being in the same room as her. Understand?”

Barad was running his fingers through his greasy beard. Suddenly, he slapped his whole hand on Lisanda’s left butt cheek, giving it a firm shake.

“You mean like this?” Barad uttered through clenched teeth and open lips.

Lisanda gave out a partial scream, holding in most of it. She jumped forward, but Barad’s other hand came around her stomach, pulling her toward him.

“Stop!” I demanded.

He didn’t move. Lisanda squirmed, trying to force her way out of his grip.

The commander spoke just after me. “Barad, you won’t ruin this for us—”

I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. I was too busy driving my elbow into Barad’s side. I’d never touched a man so fat. It was like driving my elbow into a pillow, utterly useless.

He pushed Lisanda away and struck me in the temple with his fist. I was on the ground without remembering falling.

When I looked up, I saw a few of them had their swords pointed at Barad, including the commander. Barad held his hands up.

With an angry frown like he’d been betrayed, he said, “I just want to have a little fun. Isn’t it time?” His voice was deep and loud, exasperated. “We’ve been stuck here for five years.” Barad shook his stomach. “Look at us…look at us!” He kept one hand up but used the other to gesture around the room. “Getting fat, living in shit, dealing with desmarls…”

Desmarls? It took getting back on my feet to realize I’d heard him correctly. He said dealing with desmarls, but that couldn’t be. Though, it would explain the SE I felt…I couldn’t listen to him and think about it, so I waited until he finished.

Both of Barad’s hands were being used to gesture now. “James killed himself last week, and for what?”

They each began lowering their swords. The commander seemed to have a look of pity and sadness.

Barad continued. “For our King, who none of us have even met? For the King of Presoren, who’s smart enough not to send his own men for this? For the
alliance
?” Barad’s voice was dripping with disrespect.

I didn’t like the faces I saw around me. They were composed of listening ears, nodding heads, widening eyes. No one spoke up during the silence, so Barad continued yet again.

“Five years…and now I’m never going to forget the sight of James’ leg getting ripped off by a desmarl tentacle. And every time I shit for the rest of my life it’ll serve to remind me of this horrid place. Don’t we deserve something for the trouble?”

Finally, the commander answered. “We will be rewarded.” He had a frustration to his tone as if he’d repeated the same line many times, but also a hesitance as if he’d didn’t quite believe it himself. Nonetheless, his confidence came through stronger as he went on. “When Goldram falls, we’ll be known as the main reason. We’ll be rewarded kingly, and that’s only if we don’t screw up. I’m not going to discuss this with you. Put them in one of the storage rooms.”

Chapter 22: Storage Room

Four of the blubbery men led us back up to the second storage room we’d passed earlier. Thankfully, the smell was much more tolerable here than in the commander’s office.

Barad went the opposite way, down the winding stairs. I made a mental note to keep a close watch on him. He was followed by the rest of them besides the four who came up the stairs with us. I hadn’t seen anyone else, giving me the impression there were only eleven in total, including the commander.

The four men who took Lisanda and me to the storage room quickly realized it wasn’t going to be easy to find a way to secure us. They only had rope, no chains, and each of the shelves stocked with food were tall but thin, easily knocked over, so they couldn’t tie us to them.

One of our captors finally had the idea to search me for weapons while the others thought of where to put us. When he found a wand, he was more curious than anything else.

“Aren’t you a bit young for magic?”

I shrugged, playing the amateur mage as best I could. “I can cast a few spells already, Bastial light and Bastial wind, though both are quite faint.” They were beginner spells.

The man pulled his wand from his belt, wiggling it to show he was a mage as well. He surprised me with a gentle smile, void of disrespect. He had soft eyes and two chins. His skin was dark as coal but smooth as a baby’s, almost glowing as it was stretched around his jolly face.

“You have a long road ahead of you if you stick with magic,” he said.

I nodded, reciprocating his smile. “I’ve heard.”

He slid my wand into his pocket and turned to check on the three men with Lisanda. They’d stood her in the opposite corner as me while they paced around the room, searching, waiting for ideas to come. As the mage with me turned to leave, I tried to stop him with a question.

“What’s your name, if you don’t mind?”

“Kory,” he replied in a low voice. “I shouldn’t be talking to you. Just makes things more complicated.” He started to turn again.

“Can you just tell me one thing?” I tried.

It worked. He turned back with a raised eyebrow.

“Do you really have desmarls in here?” I whispered.

“Aye,” he said with a grave nod. “That’s their shit you smell. We can’t get into the cages to clean it, too dangerous.” He looked away, shaking his head back and forth with a slow breath.

I looked around the storage room but didn’t see what I thought I would find. “There’s no meat in here. What do you feed them?”

“We have to catch animals from the forest.” Kory gave a quick glance over his shoulder to check on the other three. “We’re not all like Barad, you should know.” He kept his voice near a whisper. “We wouldn’t have killed you if you were no one important. Probably just would’ve let you go so long as you didn’t try to follow.”

I tried to squeeze out as much information as I could. “What are you going to do with us?”

“Kory!” one of them shouted. “Help us lift this.”

Kory ran to the back of the storage room to join them. I couldn’t see what they were referring to, as too many shelves of food were in the way.

My eyes shifted to Lisanda across from me. Her wrists and ankles were still bound like mine. She showed me a dramatic sigh. I nodded back to her.

The four men groaned as they came around into view. They were dragging a steel chest that must’ve weighed close to the four of them put together. It made a thundering crash when they stopped to let it fall.

“There’s no way they’re going to move that,” one of them stated.

“Seems like a lot of unnecessary work.” My heart jumped when I turned to see Barad poking his head through the open door. “When you could just break their legs instead.”

“You can’t be in here,” Kory told him.

“I’m outside the room.” Barad reached his hands in and childishly pointed back at his feet still on the stairs outside. “Who’s going to watch them?”

“I will,” Kory said proudly with a thumb to his chest.

Barad and Kory stared at each other, a hard glare. I didn’t know what they were thinking, but if I had to guess, Kory was wondering what Barad would do to get to us, and Barad was trying to judge how much Kory cared about defending Lisanda to stop him.

Then, as quickly and quietly as Barad had come, he left. There was no echo of his boots against the stone steps, no muttering of his breath, no sound at all. I didn’t like not knowing when someone was coming, especially if that someone was him.

They roped me and Lisanda to the steel chest, putting us on opposite sides. Sitting me with my back against the chest, they roped my left wrist to a buckle on the left corner of the chest and my right wrist to a buckle on the right corner. The ropes were short, making it so I had no chance of touching my hands together to untie the rope around either wrist. It was actually somewhat clever.

I couldn’t turn around completely. Standing was possible, but it was closer to a squat due to the short ropes keeping me close to the ground. If I wanted a glance at Lisanda directly behind me, I could manage it only by turning my body halfway and then cranking my neck as far as it could go. It was the same for Lisanda, I saw when I turned.

The other men left, leaving Kory pacing about the small walkways between shelves.

I wondered what Lisanda thought about this capture. She’d gone from being kidnapped by me in order to be traded for my cure, to being kidnapped by these men who showed little indication of what they wanted.

Could she be relieved? If I got a chance to escape, would she come willingly or would she fight against me to stay here? She’d sighed to me earlier, but now that I thought about it, it could’ve meant she was just tired of people using her.

My worries turned to Kalli, who probably was back at an empty camp now. I could imagine her terror when she couldn’t find us. She would search the camp hastily, calling our names and running through the forest nearby. When she didn’t find us, she would stay close to the camp to wait, but how long would she stay there? What would she do after that?

Would she find the cluster of sticks we’d dropped a few hundred feet from the camp when the men had surrounded us on horses? Did the horses leave tracks clear enough in the grass for her to follow? I hoped she wouldn’t find us here, as there was no way she could get us out. It would only put her in danger as well.

My promise to Lisanda came next to mind. Anxiety clenched my stomach even tighter. I only had two days left with Lisanda before I had to let her go…unless I broke my promise.

No, I couldn’t even consider that after everything she’d done to cooperate. I didn’t want to imagine how miserable she’d make my life if I broke that promise, how miserable I’d feel doing that to her.

But first I had to worry about getting us out of here before there was any reason to worry about anything else. And I still didn’t know if Lisanda would want to come with me.

I needed some time alone to speak to her, to plan.

“Kory?” I asked politely.

He turned and came toward us.

“You know his name?” Lisanda whispered.

“He’s nice,” I whispered back without enough time to say more.

“Is something the matter?” Kory asked with heartfelt curiosity.

“Will you tell us what we’re being used for?” I asked.

His face straightened like a parent catching his child misbehaving. “You know I shouldn’t do that.”