“Who’s there?” asked the guard in Wendish, rising from the stool where he waited out the night in the dank, dark dungeon. An oil lamp hung from a ring set into the wall. The light barely illuminated the hole cut into the plank floor and the ladder lying on the planks beside it. “Oh, it’s just you, Brother. What brings you here so late?”
Would his trembling hands and sweating brow give him away? He must not falter now. His glib tongue had always saved him before.
“My lord prince has sent me to interrogate the prisoner.”
“In the middle of the night?”
He raised a finger to his lips and beckoned the soldier closer, so that they wouldn’t wake the prisoner. “Malbert, when did you come on watch? Did you hear that an Eagle rode in?”
“An Eagle? Nay, I’ve heard no such news. From Princess Theophanu? News of Wendar?” Malbert came from the northern coast of Wendar, near Gent, and was always eager for news of the region where he’d grown up.
“Nay, she brings news from Aosta. King Henry is ill. He’s being poisoned by sorcery.”
“God save him!”
“Prince Sanglant doesn’t know whether to ride east or return to Aosta. I’m to ask the prisoner again of the eastern lands. See if he’ll talk, give us any information.”
Malbert snorted. “As if he would! He’ll laugh at you.” But not for long.
“If he’s groggy from sleep, he might reveal something. How many days to the eastern swamps. Where the griffins hunt.”
“Hasn’t the prince come to listen and watch? Where is he?”
“Well. Well. Just where most men wish they were in the dead of night. Heh, yes. He’s gone to his bed.”
Malbert grinned. “I wish I were in as sweet a bed as he’s in now. But I can’t come down with you. You know the rule.”
“It’s better if he thinks I’m alone. I’ve got this spear with me to keep him honest.”
He bit his tongue to hold back the frantic words that wanted to spill out: to silence him.
That was the only way. Hathui must never know.
Malbert had an open face and was himself too honest not to let his skepticism show. They all knew how disgracefully Zacharias had behaved in a skirmish before. “So you say. I’ll keep watch from above.”
They slid the ladder down through the hole until it rested on the dirt beneath. Malbert held the lamp over the opening to light Zacharias’ descent. With the spear tucked under one arm, he climbed down into the pit.
Although the prince had had the pit swept clean the day they had arrived here, it still stank of garbage, urine, and feces. Dirt squeaked under his feet as Zacharias steadied himself. Malbert lowered a second, newly lit oil lamp to hang from a hook hammered into the underside of the plank floor. Drops of water beaded on the stone walls, dripping onto the soil. The stink of closed-in air almost choked him, but hatred drove him on.
The prisoner lay silent, still asleep, on a heap of straw. Chains draped his recumbent body, iron links fastened to the wall. Without chains he was too dangerous, so the prince had discovered. No matter that Zacharias had warned him. Two servants had died and three soldiers been injured in that first and only escape attempt one month after the battle at the Veser. Yet even the heavy chains did not weaken him. They barely contained him.
Do it now, while the fever burned. Do it for Hathui, so she need never know. So she need never spit in her brother’s face.
Sweat dripped in his eyes and tickled the back of his neck. Flushed, heart pounding as though he were running, he stumbled forward. Triumph flooded him as his hands wrapped tight around the haft of the spear and he thrust hard at the exposed back of the man lying in the straw.
He should have done this long ago.
Lithe as a serpent, the shadowed figure twisted, and his manacled forearm batted the spear aside. The point drove into the dirt beneath the straw. Quick as a striking snake, he grabbed the haft with his right hand and with his left wrapped the chains shackling his arms around the point. Linked by the shaft of wood, the two men stared at each other. A smile quivered on Bulkezu’s lips as he slithered to his feet, confined only by the limit of his chains.
The wound that had torn a flap of skin half off his cheek had healed remarkably well, but the ragged scar marred his beauty. No one could possibly look at him now and wonder how a man so handsome could be so monstrous. It had never been true that God so wrought the world that those things They lavished loving care on by granting them beauty were, because of their beautiful nature, therefore also good. Sometimes you met evil in the guise of beauty. You had to be careful.