Page 110 of Pawn of the Cruel Princess

Fortunately the keys to all the cells are hanging in the jailer’s locker, a tiny room at the head of the main corridor. It’s a poorly furnished closet with some rough cubbyholes and a table, stocked with keys, torches, and a tinderbox.

We deposit Ward and the healer in the first two empty cells. Ward is nearly unconscious from drugs and drink, slurring and stumbling before falling headlong onto his straw pallet. Stefa seats herself rigidly on hers.

“I hope you will consider that you owe us your lives,” she says.

“We do owe you that.” I nod. “And I understand some of what you’ve done. But how did you really think this would go, Stefa? Did you think we’d embrace and run off our separate ways?”

“Not the embracing part,” she says. “But I assumed you’d be pleased at the chance for freedom. You love him, don’t you?”

“Hush.” I glance down the corridor. Ducayne is walking along it, peering into each cell. I lower my voice. “What if I do?”

“You cannot marry him. You will have to marry nobility, because you are the heir to the throne now, and you will have rules to follow, responsibilities to fulfill. Let us go, and come with us when we leave. Where we’re going, you can be free of all that.”

But I barely listen to the last sentence because a handful of horrible words are still ringing in my ears.

You are the heir to the throne now.

You are the heir to the throne now.

You are the heir…

Oh gods.

36

The dungeon corridor is far longer than I thought, stretching on into darkness. At the end, it takes a sharp turn, and I keep following it, drawn by a faint clanking sound. Probably shell-rats. And yet…

The next corridor, too, seems interminable, and I’m glad of the torch I brought with me from the jailer’s locker. It smokes a good deal—a thick, tarry smoke—but it’s nothannas, and for that I’m grateful. I will never touch the stuff again. The mere thought of it will be forever mingled in my mind with the stench of bile, bodily excretions, and death.

Speaking of bodily excretions, this tunnel smells like shit.

I keep looking into the cells, and at last I find the source of the clanking. An enormous shell-rat, the size of a cat, who has an old metal waste bucket on his back instead of a seashell. He’s creeping along the bars, trying to squeeze between them, but with the bucket in place, he can’t fit.

It strikes me as oddly parallel to Cowen and Stefa, thinking themselves so high and mighty, so much more righteous than the people they killed. Believing themselves to be better, to be different. And yet they are perhaps the worst of all.

However they may disguise themselves, they are still shell-rats.

Disturbed, I hurry back along the tunnels to where I left the Princess. She’s standing near Stefa’s cell, with her back to the wall, motionless. Even in the guttering torchlight I can tell that she has gone bone-white. And no wonder, after this nightmare.

“Your Highness,” I say gently. “How can I help you?”

“Meldare.” Her voice is faint and watery. “She’s up there, with all of them—so many, Ducayne, and we can’t—we can’t bury them all. But we should perform death rites for Meldare, and for Vienne, I suppose, because Vienne is dead. My sister is gone.”

Her porcelain features are beginning to crack, so I guide her away from Stefa’s cell, up the stone steps.

“Vienne is dead,” she repeats. “Do you know what that means, Ducayne? It means I’m the heir to the throne of Thannira.”

Gods. How did that not occur to me yet?

We stand in the hallway at the top of the stairs—the two of us, alone in this beautiful palace brimming with death. Alone, save for the tainted souls who created this massacre. And Ward.

“As queen, you could change things,” I tell her. “You could end the slave trade, abolish thralldom.”

“It’s not that easy,” she says. “Thralldom is entrenched in our society. There would be no support for that change, and there would be immense backlash—maybe even war. And we’re already at war with Yurstin.”

“But the difference you could make! You could save this kingdom, Ruelle.”

She presses her back to the wall, her fingers trembling. No weapons in hand—she has sheathed her tiny knives again, and she doesn’t reach for them.