Page 36 of The Ragpicker King
“No one has invoked this Law in a hundred years, but it’s still the Law.” He had heard many different tones animate her voice through the years. He had heard her happy and disappointed and angry and affectedly foolish, but he had never heard her sound so... flat. “After we marry, I belong to him, and he can display me in any manner he chooses.”
“Ana. What if he hurts you?” Kel said, giving voice at last to his deepest fear. “He likes causing pain—”
Antonetta raised her face to look up at him. The glitter in her eyes—surely it was tears? Or perhaps only the posy-drops? “He won’t lay violent hands on me. You know the Laws. I could have him hauled before the Judicia. He’d risk being exiled again,” she added. “No. I am not worried about him causing me physical pain.”
“There are other kinds of pain,” Kel said. “He wishes to humiliate and control you—”
“I am aware of that.” She fixed him with her cool blue eyes. “I can manage that. And besides—whatcouldyou do about it, Kel?”
It was like having a knife dipped in acid twisted deep in his side. He thought he might have actually flinched.
Kill him,Kel thought. Slip into his bedroom in the dead of night and cut his throat wide open so that it gleamed with scarlet like Antonetta’s ruby collar. She did not know he was a Sword Catcher; she did not know what he could do. What he was capable of.
And he could not tell her. Only endure her looking at him, half wearily, as if she could not imagine a world in which he might be any help to her at all.
He did not remember leaving her. Only that one moment he was with her behind the curtain, and the next he was back in the ballroom, the sounds of festivity assaulting his ears like weapons. He saw Conor, like a bird of dark plumage in his swan cloak, deep in conversation with a slim, beautiful girl with a fall of scarlet hair. Distantly, Kel realized the girl was Lin. He had not known she would be here tonight and neither, judging by his expression, had Conor.
More figures moved around the room in the dance, like clockwork dolls set in motion. He cut a path through them to the stage, where the three “musicians” were playing—the sound uneven, though not as terrible as he’d expected.
Merren glanced at him as he approached and must have seen something in his face, for when Kel arrived at the stage’s edge,Merren was already kneeling, still plucking thelior,a question in his eyes as he looked at Kel.
“Forget anything Jerrod or I may have said about the dangers of murdering Gremont,” Kel said, his voice low but surprisingly steady. “Go ahead and kill him.”
Merren did not look surprised. He did, however, look relieved. “I’m so glad you said that.” He exhaled. “You see, I’ve already poisoned his wine.”
Lin stood frozen. The party seemed to fade away around her, as if she were traveling away from it, hearing its noises in the distance. It was a blur of murmuring sound and color, and in the middle of that blur, she stood alone with Prince Conor, whose silk shirtfront she had just covered in wine.
“I see,” he said, “that I have been anointed by the Goddess. Is this ceremonial or merely a comment on my personality?”
His voice. She had forgotten hisvoice.How it was rough and soft at the same time, like the lap of a cat’s tongue. He wore a cloak of black feathers, clasped at the throat with a silver brooch carved in the shape of a lily. It was like something out of a Story-Spinner’s tale, a garment that seemed as if it ought to be enchanted. His hair was the same jet-black as the feathers and fell in waves over his forehead. His face was thinner than she remembered, dominated now by his eyes, fiercely gray and surrounded by coal-dark lashes.
She had remembered him as beautiful, but not as beautiful as this. As forbidding, but not as forbidding as this.
Somehow she found her voice. “How fortunate,” she said, “that you are so encrusted with jewels, no one is likely to notice the stain.”
In fact, his shirt was black; the stain was only a greater darkening rather than a bloody discoloration, the wetness making it cling to his skin. Without a word, he reached out, took the empty glass from her hand, and set it down on a small table nearby.
The colors and sounds of the room around them began to comeback to her. Music had begun—a sweetly discordant tune. The musicians seemed out of practice, but the crowd of partygoers began to come together in pairs, laughter rising as the dancing began.
She expected the Prince to turn on his heel and walk away. Instead, he held out a hand. “Dance with me,” he said.
Lin’s mouth went dry. “But— Everyone will see us.”
He looked impatient. “And? You are the granddaughter of my Counselor. No one will question it. They will assume we have matters to discuss.”
Still, she hung back. “Do we? Have matters to discuss?”
He said nothing, only remained as he was, his hand extended. If she did not take it, she realized, people reallywouldstare. One did not refuse a dance with the Prince of Castellane.
She reached her own hand out. It was immediately enfolded in his. His grasp was careful, his fingers long and sparkling-cold with rings. He drew her closer, and they began to dance. Lin did not know the steps, but the Prince—Conor, he asked you to call him Conor—clearly did.
“Relax,” he murmured. “I know you can dance.”
She felt the blush spreading across her face. The last time she had danced, here on the Hill, she had been the only one dancing. She had danced the story of the Goddess Adassa with Conor watching her, the heat of his gaze like a brand. She remembered how it had made her burn, made her dance more wildly, as if she could show him her rebellion, her fury, with every movement of her body.
Where had all that bravery gone? She tipped her head back, looking up at him squarely. Around them couples whirled and turned to the music. “I was very sorry,” she said, “to hear of the tragedy in the Shining Gallery. The little Princess—”
“Whom I treated cruelly. I know. You needn’t say it. They already say it in the city, in the streets. There are Story-Spinner tales about it.The Bloody-Handed Prince,that sort of thing.” He held his left hand up, where his rings glittered—little points of scarlet. “Perhaps they recognize, as you did, that I am a broken person.”
