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“Why, dear daughter,” he hisses in my ear, “would you come back, after all the pains I’ve taken to retrieve you, hmm? Explain that to me.”
I don’t struggle against his grip. Fear has dulled and muted, an echo in my bones. Fascinating, how quickly I remember how to react, how to breathe, how to speak. It’s been a second skin, all this time.
I feed him a sprinkle of truth. “Because I’ve been with trolls. And I realized that a life with you was better than life as a slave.” As though life with him was anything but.
He holds me like that, my neck craned to the side, as though he’s waiting for it to hurt. Then he releases me. I resume my posture as though nothing happened, keeping my hands at my side. I can rub the kinked muscles later.
Azmar, where are you now? In your room? In the dungeon? Are you angry, too? Do you hate me now?I remember him taking his own anger out on the training hall surfaces. I tuck the memory away like a prayer.
My father steps back. “You’ve riled my men.”
I hadn’t noticed, but now I hear quiet commotion beyond the walls of the tent. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep my expression dull.
He steps back like I couldn’t possibly hurt him and leans against the table. “All right, then. Tell me about Cagmar.”
And I do. I detail truths that will do little to help him, like the caste system. I tell him things I hope will dissuade him from attempting to conquer Cagmar and its resources, such as that every citizen in the city endures military training from ages twelve to nineteen, and how large their weapons are. I tell him a few names, including Grodd’s, but many will never pass my tongue: Azmar, Unach, Perg, the council members’. He listens intently, asking a clarifying question here and there. In truth, I don’t think I could give away any military secrets even if I wanted to, but I filter every syllable that exits my mouth anyway. Fatigue starts to work its way up my legs, but I continue to feed him with truth and fiction and anything else that could possibly endear him to me. Not as a father endears to a daughter. No, we never had such a bond. But as a soldier endears to his favorite sword.
“They eat monsters?” he repeats. I wonder what time it is, but I don’t ask.
“Some of them.”
He’s been studying me this entire time, relearning my face, trying to read my mind, but now he watches me in a new way, and I cannot tell if it’s good or bad. Then he saunters past me, opens the tent flap, and says to the guard outside, “Get me some rope.” To me, he explains, “You’ll sleep bound for the rest of the night. And every night, until you earn your place.”
I try not to pinch my lips. I should have expected as much.
The guard returns with the rope. My father takes it in one hand and my arm in the other, then escorts me to the dark tent on the west. Which likely means he sleeps in the dark tent to the east. Farthest from the direction of an attack, should the trollis strike. Two men shadow him but keep a respectful distance.
Before we step into the tent, my father twists me around so my back presses to his chest, and with a jut of his chin, indicates a large, bearded man by a campfire about twenty feet away. “See that soldier over there?” His wet breath clings to my hair. The soldier is hard to miss—he mightbe the burliest man in the camp. “You make one wrong move, and I’ll let him and his friends have their way with you. The men here grow anxious, Calia. They could use the sport.” His grip tightens, rivaling even Grodd’s. “And don’t youdareuse it on my soldiers again. If I feel even a whisper of it, I will ruin you. Do you understand?”
I don’t know if he means torture, death, or the taking of my maidenhood. Unfortunately for him, I’ve already lost the last to his enemy. But I nod, keeping my face smooth. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I murmur. “I want revenge just as much as you do.”
He thinks I mean the trollis.
I don’t bother specifying.
Chapter 24
Despite the fact that I’ve returned to my father’s side, and that I sleep with my hands tied behind my back, my wrists nearly touching my ankles, I sleep soundly. Exhaustion—both from my long walk and my high-strung emotions—overwhelms everything else.
I feel a little more myself when I wake. I’m sore and hungry. My skin feels tight where the sun burned it. My mouth is dry. My rage has abandoned me, and it feels like a betrayal, my shield gone when I need it most. But when my father comes in to untie me, anger prickles at my back, reminding me of its allyship.
I clench my jaw as my joints reorient themselves. Massaging my shoulder, I say, “That was unnecessary.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Ottius Thellele throws the bonds on the ground and hands me a piece of jerky. That’s all my breakfast is to be, then, but at least he’s feeding me. “Come. I’ve work for you to do.”
Already.I chew on the jerky and stretch. The tent is used for miscellany, odd equipment that the army can’t put elsewhere. A pile of belts, a few crates that might have foodstuff in them, two saddles, a bolt of cloth. I follow my father out, ensuring that I keep his pace. I am the obedient and repentant daughter. If that mask slips even a hair, both I and Azmar will suffer for it.
I’m led away from the main camp, only to discover a second, smaller camp just over a quarter mile away. There are roughly a dozen soldiers here and only one tent, though it’s a high, round tent like the ones myfather uses. The men busy themselves cleaning up: covering fires, rolling tarps, sheathing weapons. They glance my way when I arrive, but their glances don’t linger, probably more my father’s doing than mine.
Six of the men surround the circular tent, more heavily armed than any human soldier I’ve laid eyes on. At my father’s approach, one of them pulls the door aside and allows us entrance.
I’m immediately assaulted by the scent of urine, thickened by heat. Nothing occupies the tent save for a trollis on his knees. My stomach lurches, and I hold my breath to keep my composure. I don’t recognize him. He looks to be about Perg’s age, with gray skin so rich it looks blue. His long black hair falls in a giant knot over one shoulder. He’s completely naked. Red slash marks—from a knife or a whip, I can’t tell in the low light—cover his person. Bile burns the base of my throat when I see deep blue holes in his shoulders. Someone has dug out the bone stubs.
The queen and the oak tree.War.
You hate the trollis. You hate the trolls. That is what he must believe,I remind myself. My thoughts try to superimpose Azmar, Unach, and Perg over this poor creature, and I mentally push them away. I cannot show sympathy. I must be as merciless as my father. He must learn to trust me. That is the only way to survive.
“This one’s stubborn,” my father ribs, as if we’re talking about horseflesh and not one of the gods’ own people. “He won’t give up anything, even his own name.”
