I felt control of this situation slipping through my fingers. “We’renotgiving you a thousand of our citizens no matter what you’re calling it now.”
“Since the contracts expire in twenty years, we’d need four thousand servants. Although, of course, sometimes contracts get lost or altered, and the workers end up being forced to stay until they become too old to work.” Arrand winked at me. “Perhaps if you agree to deflect any inquiries concerning missing contracts over the next two decades, we can make it three thousand?”
“I’m not agreeing to that,” I said, desperate to emphasize that I was agreeing tonothing.
“No need for a pretense now that we’re alone. I already have the contract that we arranged back before you claimed your regency.” He removed a paper from his pocket.
I didn’t agree to this atrocity, Donya, I swear! I can’t be held responsible for what the original Blood Duchess did!Sweat dripped down my nose and dampened my armpits. What should I do? Deny everything? Pretend I knew what he was talking about? Babble some more about the weather?
“As per our agreement, the Guild of Indentured Servitude has sent you Gifted Knights to help you quell the current riots.”
I stared at him. “You planned those.” I had no evidence, but I knew it the way I could smell a rainstorm or tell when the crops back home were about to sprout.
“Don’t you meanweplanned the riots?” Arrand chuckled. “We both knew what would happen when you allowed me to buy up every bit of debt in this city. Your kingdom didn’t have legal slavery even before the last Games, so receiving papers of indentured servitude would come as a shock to the average citizen. Of course they’d directtheir rage at the palace, since the late king is the one who failed to pay those who worked on the stadium and necessitated them buying food on credit.”
Now I understood what Donya’s political allies had been talking about during the meeting yesterday. They’d said something about King Uctor going into debt to build the World Games stadium. But I hadn’t been politically savvy enough to follow that to its logical conclusion: that there must be workers going hungry and going into debt because they’d never received their pay. I felt ill.
“There’s no need to look concerned.” Arrand’s smile became even more hateful, if that was possible. “We took this into account, remember? The guild has hired mercenaries to supplement your own guards. Between the two of us, we have more than ample forces to control the city. If we massacre the first group of protesters, it will discourage a repeat.” It horrified me, how casually he spoke of it. “I’ll summon my forces.” He stood up.
“No,” I said.
Arrand frowned. “No?”
I’d promised Donya to do nothing. But I couldn’t let this happen. “No. The agreement is off!”
“Why the cold feet now? Did you find another buyer? No, our idea hasn’t spread far enough yet. We’ve both already sworn, and I won’t agree to remove the spell binding you to our oath. Surely this isn’t an attack of conscience?” Arrand snorted. “The average citizen is better off in servitude. We feed them and clothe them. They sold themselves for money that allowed their families to survive. Without a buyer, they’d starve. We’re providing a valuable role allowing the lower classes to be useful instead of burdens on society. They should be grateful to us.”
My world went white.
Because I’d been a young child the day my sister Ysabel had been sold, my memories had become faded and confused. I remembered her screaming as they’d dragged her into the cart. I remembered Calum asking our father when Ysabel was coming back and the look on his face when he learned that she wasn’t. And I remembered rocking mynewest baby brother to sleep that night because my mother had been crying too hard to do it herself.
The weight of that one day had infected our entire family like rot in the roots of a tree. My mother had blamed my youngest brother because Ysabel’s gift had been revealed when she’d healed him. And probably because Mom was too much of a coward to blame my father. She’d barely even looked at or touched her youngest child. Benoni had only been three years old when he’d asked me if he was going to hell because he made his sister disappear.
For years, my other siblings and I had lived in terror, afraid our father would do the same to us when the money ran out. We’d been unable to stand up against his verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse. All of us except Calum, who would pick fights with our father as if he wanted to get beaten. Calum had blamed himself more than anyone else could.
When Ysabel had resurfaced as the Church’s Holy Maiden, suddenly both my parents had acted like everything was all better. But it wasn’t all better. The sister who returned to me wore a mask in public and had panic attacks in private. Ysabel’s healing ability cost a day of her life every time she used it, and the Church was draining her dry. She didn’t even fight it. She acted like she didn’t care. I always wondered what the men who’d purchased her had done to her, to make her not even care if she lived or died.
I’d tried to talk to her about it, but it only made her angry. She didn’t open up to anyone, even—especially—her family. I didn’t know what to say to Ysabel. We were sisters, but after so many years apart, we were also strangers. In a sense, a bit of our sisterhood had been stolen. We might never be as close as we would have been if we’d spent our entire childhoods together. My youngest brother didn’t even know Ysabel at all. A part of my family had been taken away that we could never get back.
Then Calum had gone to the city to save Ysabel and come back in an urn.
Yet this smug, smiling man said that I should be grateful to him for providing my abusive father with the opportunity to sell my sister.
I snapped.
“Guards!” I shouted. Two Sherdan guards in black-and-white uniforms entered the room and saluted. I pointed with one of my brightly painted nails. “Arrest this man!”
In all honesty, even after I spoke the words, part of me didn’t think they’d actually do it. But without hesitation, the guards seized Arrand’s arms and dragged him down the hallway.
His face went crimson. “You can’t—this is an outrage!”
But I could. I remembered the day the Blood Duchess had casually ordered me murdered because Falael had kissed my hand. Now I was the one holding that power. It was terrifying and maybe a little exhilarating.
Arrand cried, “My Gifted Knights will—”
“We’ll take you hostage to stop them from attacking.” I was coming up with my plan as I went along. I didn’t even know what my next step would be. I only knew that I couldn’t let him start a massacre.
“We had a deal! You swore a life-oath!” Arrand stared at me as if expecting me to fall over dead on the spot.
