“I’m here,” his voice scratched, just ahead of her.
“Don’t fight them,” she said. “Do whatever they ask you to do.”
He made a sound faintly like a laugh.
Her captor bore her down a steep incline, and she was forced to use her feet or plunge headfirst into an unknown depth. Her boots squelched in mud. She stumbled over stones. Then the ground leveled, the mud deepened, and she was pushed to her knees.
“Huxley!” Madgala shouted. “Where are you, you coward?”
A low chuckle tickled her ear and her shoulders bunched.
“Let us go.” It was the vain bargaining of a desperate woman. “We’ll go back to Elegy and Asherton will find a way to abdicate, just like you wanted. There’s nothing to be gained by …”
Sharp, stunning pain cracked through her jaw. She fell into the mud, her mouth tasting of copper.
“Mags!” Asherton cried. Chains rattled. “Touch her again, Huxley, and I swear I’ll cut your throat.”
Spitting blood, Magdala gained her knees. “There’s nothing to be gained from this, Huxley,” she lisped. “Asherton will abdicate. Somehow. We’ll find a way …”
The blindfold whipped off and Magdala blinked in dim torchlight.
She was kneeling in the muddy riverbed, under a crumbling bridge. An iron cuff chafed her wrist, chaining her to a wooden piling.
“Mags?” Asherton sat beside her. He was chained to the piling as well. Blood trickled from a cut above his eye.
“I’m alright,” she said. “You?”
He craned his neck, taking in the riverbed and the bank. “Where is Zeph? Mags, where is Zeph?”
“I’m here,” Zephyr grumbled. “For my sins.”
Zephyr wasn’t chained, but he leaned against the piling behind Asherton. Huxley was aiming his shotfire at his chest.
From the riverbank above them, the royalists watched in agitation, the torches casting their faces in ghoulish glow and shadow.
“Oh, just shoot me and get it over with,” Asherton gritted. “Why the games?”
Magdala gasped. “Ash, shut up!”
Huxley knelt in front of Magdala. “Because I want to know who killed my brother.”
Magdala enunciated every word as though Huxley were a child. “Asherton didn’t do it.”
“Perhaps you did, then.”
Magdala blinked. “Me? Why would I …”
“Because he threw you down the stairs. Because you told him you wanted to kill him and then, mere minutes later, he had water in his lungs and a knife in his chest.”
“How did you know …”
“I’ve always known. And I know you lied at the inquest. And I meant for you to give the prince the amenite and hang for murder to eliminate you both. But, somehow, you evaded me.” He stood, casting his eyes up the dry riverbed toward the bulk of the distant dam. “The gun in your father’s cottage was a decoy, as you know. Meant to distract you. Your father believed it was real, of course, but he’s a fool. The oil was a gamble. If it didn’t kill you, I knew it would flush you out of the palace. I couldn’t very well kill the new king there, even if he is unpopular, and I want answers first. So here is what I will do. The dam is set to release at any minute. When it does, water will crash through thisriverbed, and you will be drowned. So, tell me who killed Julian and the rest of you get to live.”
Without a second’s hesitation, Asherton said, “I did.”
“No, he didn’t!” Magdala blurted. “He didn’t! I gave him the amenite, and he said that he didn’t do it!”
“Ash.” Zephyr leaned around the piling and whispered, “Tell them the truth. The water won’t hurt me.”
