“Release me,” he said abruptly, “and I will allow you to leave the Empire unmolested.”
The word’s pained him, but necessity required that he return to the Fortress as soon as possible, and he couldn’t do that with two Exiles in tow.
“No,” Tomaz responded promptly.
For a moment the Prince was struck dumb by the man’s flat-out refusal.
“I am the Prince of Ravens, Exile,” he said, gathering his wits. “The entire Empire will be looking for me. They will find me, and you will die slowly and in excruciating pain for holding me. Release me, and I will conveniently forget you. You are lucky I am even offering this once. I warn you, do not refuse me again.”
The Exile girl gave him a strange look, but neither of them spoke.
“What?” he snapped at her.
“You almost made me believe you,” she said. She and Tomaz exchanged a glance and then she shrugged, turned, and began to tear a blanket into strips with her dagger. Seeing this, the Prince realized that he might not actually be in control of the situation.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice controlled but his mind shaking.
“Binding you.”
Partly out of anger and partly out of fear, the Prince lost control of himself.
“ENOUGH!” he roared, his voice cracking out like a whip, using what he’d learned watching Rikard marshal his troops. “You will release me, and you will go! You will be grateful that I am offering you this mercy, and you will forever remember the glory of the Empire on which you have turned your backs!”
The girl had jumped back from the blanket and stood staring at him with wide eyes. For an instant, the Prince thought he had won as she sheathed her dagger; she took a step forward, her eyes locked on his, her mouth slack. Triumph surged through him.
But having focused all of his attention on her, he completely forgot about the big man holding him, and the next thing he knew, he had been lifted into the air, turned upside down, and dunked headfirst into a barrel of salty brine set next to the table.
The water burned as it rushed up his nose and filled his mouth, choking him. For a brief second he fully believed that the big man meant to drown him, but just as the thought crossed his mind he was hoisted back up into the air, sputtering and coughing.
“He’s just a boy,” he heard the man say, “even if he’s a son of the Empress. A boy that needs to be taught some manners.”
Once more he was dunked into the barrel, and once more the salty water burned his eyes, his nose, his throat. He was pulled back out, given time for a single hacking, wheezing breath, one that ripped through his lungs like fire, and then he was again submerged.
After the third time, he was pulled up and dropped onto the wood floor, his knees and elbows striking the hard, unyielding planks and sending streaks of pain through his arms and legs. As his head cleared and his ears drained, he heard laughter and saw through teary eyes the girl doubled over, arms wrapped around her stomach. His cheeks started to burn, and he opened his mouth in fury—but before he could speak, a rough piece of cloth was slipped neatly between his teeth and tied off around the back of his head. He let out a muffled sound of protest, but the big man ignored him and tied his hands together behind his back, using wide strips of fabric from the shredded blanket.
“No use talking if you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head,” he said.
The Prince began to shout muffled retorts through the coarse wool cloth, using the worst language he had ever heard from the Commons. However, when he realized how undignified he looked, he stopped and instead sat in sullen—dignified!—silence, watching the Exiles murderously.
How dare they?!
As the girl’s laughter tapered off, the big man examined him with a critical eye. “What if we take him with us?” he mused.
The girl straightened up, looking surprised. But then she too eyed the Prince with a bold, frank stare.
“I know what you’re thinking,ashandel,” she replied. “The Elders would love a chance to interrogate one of the Children, if that’s really who he is. Particularly Ishmael. So would I for that matter. But we’ve got more than three fourths of the Empire still to cover until we’re back in Vale—and how are we going to sneak him past Roarke of all places to get him there?”
The big man shrugged and smiled. “Not my job to figure it out, is it?”
She rolled her eyes.
“You wanted to scout this far into the Empire even though I said it was foolish to come twice in one year,” the giant rumbled. “I’m enough of a man to know when I’ve been proven wrong. Foolish or not, your gamble just paid off. I don’t think either of us can crack him,” they both glanced at the Prince, who was following this conversation quite avidly, “and that means we either let him go or we take him with us.”
“Or we kill him,” the girl said. The Prince stiffened at the cold calculation that had entered her voice, and from the look on her face he was entirely certain that she did indeed mean this as a viable option. Memories of his brother Geofred, the Prince of Eagles, hatching a plan came to mind. She had the same cold, distant, objective look.
He just hoped she wasn’t as ruthless.
Abruptly she turned and crossed the room to the corner next to the door and knelt on the wooden floor. She pried up a loose board, heavily warped by time and weather, from under which she pulled a number of items, chief amongst them a large roll of parchment and two travel-sized paperweights.
