He nodded passionately. “I know, Princeps. I thank the stars.”
“Tell me, how did you manage to catch her?”
His beady eyes wandered to the left and then the right, no doubt observing the way our captive audience waited to hear of his heroics. His chest slightly puffed, inflated by the attention. “While she managed to poison me, she did not manage to subdue me for long. I knew that if I let her get away, she would commit these same atrocities on another. I couldn’t live with myself if this happened. And so I fought through the poison and quickly pursued her outside of thecity walls and into the fields, where I easily caught up to her.”
Harthon’s forehead crinkled in bland surprise. “How impressive it is that you were able to not only recover from a poison, but also catch up to someone half your age who had a healthy start on you. I don’t know if that’s possible for any ordinary man. You caught her on foot?”
The man bowed his head in feigned humility. “I used my horse to run her down, Princeps.”
Harthon grunted as I held my breath. “And what city do you live in?”
“Falsgard, Princeps.”
“And you ran her down on horseback?”
“Yes. I raced from my home as quickly as I could. She was no match for my horse’s speed.”
“How…impressive,” Harthon commented, and again, the man beamed. Then Harthon continued. “It’s impressive because Falsgard is surrounded by woods that are impossible to navigate any faster than a slow trot, thanks to their geography. And even then, only the most skilled riders are able to remain on horseback through the first stretch outside of the city.”
Despite all he did to preserve it, the pride slowly drained from the man’s face. “You are not wrong, Princeps. Having lived there for so long, I have become particularly skilled at navigating those woods,” he said, smiling too brightly.
Harthon regarded him for a breath before turning to his right. “Callen, care to check his hands?”
“I-I’m sorry?” the man stuttered, rearing a step as Callen descended to the floor and approached him.
Callen snatched his hands, ignored the man’s outraged gasp, and turned them so their palms were up.
My own fingers twitched as I recalled the blisters that marked mypalms and fingers from my riding lessons. Jac had told me they’d turn to calluses soon, and as long as I kept riding regularly, the calluses would protect my skin.
Callen released the man and turned back to us. “These hands are far too smooth and clean to have touched a horse’s reins often, if at all,” he reported before returning to his station.
The liar’s mouth opened and closed as realization dawned, but he didn’t manage a word before Harthon said, “Chain him.”
Then he found his voice. “I don’t understand! I took a criminal off the streets.” He was wrestled onto his knees, his struggles weak against the strength of Harthon’s men. “This is outrageous—I have done nothing wrong—”
“Shut up or lose your tongue.”
That was a bloodshed I wouldn’t mind witnessing.
Unfortunately, his mouth snapped shut as shackles secured his wrists together. The woman beside him, still on her feet, stared at him and then at us with an unhinged jaw, shock slackening her features.
“He clearly holds something over you. Considering he’s in chains, he no longer has that power,” Harthon told her. “This will be your only opportunity to share your story.”
She blinked several times. “He…I…he’ll kill my brother if…” She trailed off, clearly at war with herself.
“He can’t kill anyone at the moment. Tell us,” I said softly, offering the compassion that Harthon couldn’t.
It was enough for her to begin. “Our parents died of starvation four years ago. My brother was only five, and I was only fifteen. We were too young to care for ourselves, and so when he offered me payment and housing in exchange for servantry, I took the offer. It was the worst mistake of my life.”
Beside her, the man’s face became the color of beets, his bodyshaking with the need to speak as his eyes shot arrows at her. But she was looking at me, not him. “He became violent quickly, but I decided I could bear it for the sake of my brother. There were no other servantry options available unless we traveled somewhere new, and even then, it was no guarantee I would find something. This past year, though, he…he began to demand of me things that went beyond normal, um, work. When I refused or fought him, he’d punish me.”
It took no imagination to know what she referred to. I stiffened, my breaths becoming thin.
She was almost my age.
If not for Merelda taking me in, I could very well be her.
All this, because of the Domus. Her parents had died from this dreadful land, from the waste it had become ever since those damned walls came up. Just as my parents had died from the violence that was bred from the disorder, starvation, and desperation that came from the changes the Domus caused.
