Page 72

Rue lifted the handful closer to her face, habit only, for in this place the tricks that age had played upon her eyes were undone. On every coin the three whips of the Academy had been neatly incised like three nested S’s. The whips of the Furies. Placed to mark the coins as payment for a life. It had been done not to shame those who took the money—though it did that too—but so that when they entered circulation and pulsed through the veins of first the city and then the nation, they would remind every person whose hands they passed through both of the existence of the Kindnesses and of the existence of another market for girl-flesh. It was, to put it bluntly, a form of advertising.

The boatman’s hand stayed where it was, palm out.

The river rushed by, hissing at the delay.

Rue clenched the coins until her hand hurt. This was what they had bought her for. Less than you’d pay for a sturdy mule, as Kindness Marta had so unflatteringly put it.

“Pay him!” Senna squawked, unable to endure the tension.

Rue glanced back to the riverside and the thorn bushes where Bek and Einsa had spoken to her before. She looked along the banks, left and right, wondering what strange sea the river might reach and from what mountains it had sprung.

“Pay.” The boatman’s voice grated like one vast stone across another.

Rue put her hand back into her pocket and stared at him, daring him to raise his head and meet her eyes.

“Fuck you.”

31

Mollandra

Year Five

In the cold light of a rainy afternoon, stripped of the magic that he had hidden himself within, Father looked far more human than Mollandra remembered ever having seen him. Even so, the wickedness in his black eyes carried the same awful promises that had made the Academy seem a place of refuge.

Perhaps if the royal visitors had not been present to witness the deed, the Kindnesses would have killed the intruder and let the older acolytes practise their necromancy on his corpse. Under the curious eyes of the king’s brother, Kindness Marta chose to reply to Father’s claim on Mollandra with words rather than a blade.

“Acolytes cannot be taken from the Academy. Their families no longer have any claim on them. It is for this indemnity that a fee is paid.”

“Of course. Of course.” Father executed a mocking bow, one arm extended, one cradled to his chest, the fingers on both hands raking the air as if playing the strings of some oversized, invisible instrument. “But in the case of this particular girl, no fee was paid to her family, to wit, myself or her beloved mother. And as such she is not an acolyte and can be returned to her rightful home.”

“A fee is always paid.” Somehow Kindness Marta managed to make “always” sound like a threat.

“If some abductor of children took your coin and fled into the night with it, that’s hardly my concern, Kindness.” Father turned to the nobles. “Highnesses, I’m sure you could not countenance such theft within sight of the walls of the kingdom’s second city.”

Prince Cormac, looking rather like a drowned rat stuffed into imperial finery, coughed into his hand and glanced from the dangerously calm face of one Kindness to the next. At last, his gaze settled on Father’s barely contained insanity. “Well…” The elder prince hemmed and he hawed and he looked almost grateful when his wife elbowed him impatiently out of the way.

“Of course, the Academy can’t steal children. The child’s parent must be paid!…Or their official guardian.”

“Or owner!” Prince Cormac interjected, pleased with himself for the contribution and puffing up within the wet confines of his embroidered jacket.

“Whoever sold my daughter into this establishment was neither parent, guardian, nor owner.” Father dusted off his damp hands and stepped towards Mollandra, reaching for her with fingers so very like claws.

Kindness Terra’s great sword blocked his path, placed between them so swiftly that if not for the hiss of the air it cut, Mollandra might have thought it had simply appeared there. “We will examine the records.”

Mollandra’s throat, constricted by old fear, had been unable to give voice to a single word until Terra’s blade, as long as she was tall, lay between her father and herself.

“I sold myself. I have the marks here.” She held out her hand, showing the coins she had been working free from the hem of her robe as they talked.

Father’s terrible eyes narrowed. She remembered when he was the beast, chasing the children through the mansion’s corridors, crawling through the attic space, stalking the blindness of the bedrooms. The Academy had killed far more of its charges, but the place had seldom come close to evoking the same fear she had experienced even on the least bad of the days she remembered in the mansion’s darkness.

“The girl can’t sell herself. She doesn’t stop being my daughter just because she has crossed over the threshold of my home and gone out into the world.”

Mollandra locked eyes with Kindness Marta. “I’ve never seen this man before.” She closed her fist around the money they had given her at the gate five years earlier. “But this is mine.” She raised the hand. “And children sell themselves on the streets of Tandra-ah every day. How is that allowed if not this?”

“The father’s claim outranks the child’s.” Princess Scalla kept her face a mask, eyes hard.

Why such a high-placed noble should care about an acolyte’s fate, or the demands of a trespassing parent, Mollandra had no idea, but the timing was far too convenient to be taken as coincidence.