Winterbourne's Daughter Page 10

  Andriy didn't move forward, but he did straighten his shoulders. "Then kill me."

  "No! What are―"

  "Make it look like something out here did it. It would be a mercy, sir, I promise you. Please."

  Gennadi turned away, unable for a moment to look at the child's bruises, knowing now who had caused them. "Are any loyalists honorable?"

  "Olya," the child said quickly. "And her mother."

  "Who are they?" Gennadi asked, desperate for any type of conversation that didn't consist of a child asking for death.

  "She's my best friend. My father believes that Olya's mother stole an armorhart from his stable, but she did no such thing. Father lost it himself, traded it away while under the drink. I tried to tell him, but he... he didn't listen. He forbade me from seeing Olya, but she's my friend. And he caught me."

  "What of your mother? Does she not protect you? Or try?"

  "She laughs," he whispered. "Sometimes she helps. Sometimes they just fight. I go under my blanket then. Are you going to kill me now?" he asked hopefully.

  "No."

  Andriy looked dejected at that but also resigned. He nodded once and then walked to Gennadi's side. "All right."

  "That doesn't mean I will not help you," Gennadi said. "Stay close."

  He remembered the plant well. It had small white berries, similar to waxwort, but the leaves split out into four points, not three. The tiniest distinction between something that could save a life and something that would end it. He plucked a small branch that was thick with berries.

  "What are those?"

  "It's a poison," Gennadi said. "Tasteless."

  "Oh!"

  Andriy took the branch from him and started to put the berries in his mouth. Gennadi grabbed his hand and jerked it back.

  "Don't! You should not pay with your own life for your parents' crimes. Once the berries dry, crumble them. Can you get them into your parents' food?"

  The boy stared at him, wide-eyed, and shook his head. Gennadi gently took the branch from him and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. "Should you change your mind."

  *~*~*

  Gennadi was congratulated for his good work when he got back to the palace. The loyalists all fussed over him. Loyalist Orianne now cooed at him, and Loyalist Emeric recommended to the king that he be named the new Huntsman, given the 'unfortunate end' Stanimir had met. Gustave had held out his hand, the hand he had once struck his mother with, and Gennadi had no choice but to shake it.

  And he had no choice but to smile at Andriy's parents, though he saw quite clearly how hard the father was gripping the boy's arm and the simmering fury in the mother's eyes.

  Less than a week after they returned from Vedrana's Forest, he asked a Page how Andriy was doing. The Page clucked his tongue and shook his head. "Well, he's somewhat fine."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. Poor lad broke his arm! A most accident-prone child, he is."

  Later, Gennadi asked again. There was no news. For a long time, he didn't ask at all, afraid to hear the words "He's dead."

  One day, however, the Page approached him as he and the fighters went to retrieve their meals from the dining hall.

  "Huntsman? You had asked before of news of Andriy. I thought you would wish to know."

  Gennadi braced himself for the words he had known were coming. "Yes?"

  "His parents fell quite ill and died. Their closest neighbor took him in. She has a daughter close to his age, so that might ease the transition for the poor boy. Though, just between us, of course, his parents' disease might be the best thing to happen to him."

  "Why is that?"

  "Neither of them possessed the best of tempers. Oftentimes they took their woes out on the child."

  "And nothing was done?"

  The Page stared at him as if he had started speaking in tongues. "They were loyalists. Such things were not spoken of."

  "Of course not," Gennadi said, filling his plate with some of what the royals had left behind.

  *~*~*

  "And this one!" Gennadi exclaimed, propping his left leg up on the table and rolling up the cuff of his pants to display a thick, jagged scar. "Beast of Veldar's Field!"

  "That was you?" one of the other fighters asked.

  "Goddesses, yes, that was me!" he said proudly. "Thing damn near took my leg off. I got it in the end, though. Meanest son of a Shadow I ever fought. Thought I―" He paused as someone came into the doorway―wide skirt, hair held in place by an elaborate crespine, a silhouette that was completely out of place here. When she came fully into the lamplight, he recognized Loyalist Yelena and gave her a wave.

  Across from him, Vasya glanced back to see who he was greeting. At the sight of Yelena, the smile that had been on his face disappeared, and he got to his feet. The look Yelena gave to him as he left the tavern was so grief-stricken that it diminished a good deal of the warm cloudy-headedness Gennadi had built up over the course of many drinks.

  "Hang on," he said, using the table to brace himself as he got up. "More stories tomorrow."

  He stumbled over to Loyalist Yelena, giving her a smile as she walked directly to the bar and ordered a glass of fire brandy. "Y'know," he told her, "could just give you a good whack on the head if you wanna pass out. Head would probably hurt less in the morning, too."

  She chuckled, picked up the small glass the bartender handed her, and downed it in one swallow with barely a wince.

  Gennadi's eyes widened. "I think I love you." When that earned a full laugh, he grinned and leaned against the bar. "Don't suppose y'remember me at all?"

  "Of course I do. Your mother and brother seem to be doing splendidly." She rested a hand on his forearm, giving him a reassuring smile. "Besides, even if I had forgotten all that, you wouldn't be far from my thoughts. Little Andriy thinks quite highly of you."

  Gennadi drew back, staring down at her. "How do you know Andriy?"

  "He came to live with us after his parents passed away."

  "You―you're Olya's mother."

  "Yes."

  He laughed loudly and pulled her into a tight hug.

  And now, he thought as he just as quickly let go of her, he knew without a doubt how to make a tavern full of rowdy drinkers fall silent.

  "It's all right," Loyalist Yelena told them, and though many of them went back to their conversations, Gennadi could feel several of them still watching him.

  "I do apologize," he said quietly. Though he felt that the unspoken rules about how those of the lower classes should not touch a loyalist were ridiculous, he knew that he might have just made her uncomfortable, and that needed an apology.

  "Think nothing of it."

  "Y'know, been meaning to thank you. For going to visit the dungeons and the bondservants. You still bring them food?"

  "When I can."

  "If you don't mind my asking... why?"

  "Penance."

  Gennadi shook his head. "No. You've been making those visits for years. Since before I came here. Can't imagine you having done anything so terrible that it would require that much penance."

  "You're still young," Yelena said quietly and motioned the bartender over to ask him for an ale. Gennadi asked for one as well, and when she walked to a table at the back of the tavern, he followed.

  "We were close once," she said after she'd sat down at the table and taken a long drink. "Vasya and his sister and I. Ania was my best friend. And Vasya..."

  "Ohh."

  Yelena shook her head. "It was never mutual," she explained. "But he knew of my feelings and was kind about them, and I suppose that's the most one can ask for in that particular situation." She took another drink and slowly continued. "I was always so focused on myself. My friends, my family, my tiny corner of this world. Ania was different. She cared for everyone, even if she'd only spoken one word to them before. Everything mattered to her. And so when she learned of the abuses under King Thibault's rule..."

  "She supported a coup."

  "Yes. Some prot
esters wanted Thekla to be the sole ruler, some wanted Nazar... but all agreed that Thibault should go. But Thibault had his supporters as well, of course. And though they didn't find Ania right away, they did get close enough to―to take me in. Question me."

  Gennadi knew full well what that meant and reached out to clasp her hand. "I'm sorry."

  "Don't be," she ordered, snatching her hand away. "A better person would've been able to withstand it. And I did. Grisha kept me there for ten days and I didn't speak. But then he told me if I really wasn't going to be useful then Thibault had given him permission to kill me. He described how he would do it. And Goddesses help me, I didn't want to die. I tried to make him promise. Promise that if I gave him a name, that he wouldn't kill her. I was so delirious by then that I actually believed him.

  "But he did keep his word," she said bitterly. "Enslaved Ania's brother to the Arena. Murdered her boy. And in the end he didn't have to kill her. She took her own life. She was my best friend," Yelena whispered. "And him? I loved him with my whole heart. No matter how many messages I deliver, no matter how much food and drink I bring, it will never erase that."

  *~*~*

  Lisette slowly made her way down the main hall in the fighters' building, her thoughts crashing into one another. Roz was distraught, and rightly so. Sie had first gone to the king, offering to serve the Arena for ten years past sier current sentence if sie were allowed to visit sier sick grandchild. The king had refused. Next, sie had told the king that sie would give him all the coin sie earned from now until the day of sier freedom.

  Another refusal.

  The only option left was escape.

  Lisette frowned. She had helped get bondservants out before, yes, but that had consisted of talking to them, giving Emeline the names of one who most needed to get out when her birthday came along so that she might grant them a pardon. A true escape? How to get past the guards, the Wall?

  She had heard tale of secret passages hidden throughout the castle, but though she had searched diligently, she had yet to find one.

  And with her luck, she thought, she would find one that led straight to the king's chambers.

  Then Lisette froze. The Champion's door stood open. He sat on a cot that seemed barely sturdy enough to hold him, his bare back to her. That back was crisscrossed with scars.

  He'd had a name once, of course, but Lisette had never heard it. She only knew that when the king wanted to ensure death for a particular contestant, he sent them against the Champion. The deathfights varied. Some, the more merciful ones, allowed both combatants to have weapons. Some gave only one weapon, and the first fighter to get hold of it had the advantage. The most brutal ones dictated that there would be no weapons at all, that beating the opponent to death with fists and feet was the only option.

  The Champion had survived all of these challenges and more.

  She'd heard plenty of boasts during the Visitors' Days. Several younger fighters had claimed that they would surely be the one to beat him. He was older now, after all, past his fiftieth year while many of them had barely left their second decade. They were destined to win.

  One at a time, many of the loudest boasters fought against him and lost.

  Lisette had been nine the first time she faced him in the Arena.

  Since then, she had been sent against him once more. That time, she had struck him. She'd trusted that he wouldn't kill her and hoped that at least if a few blows were exchanged, the king would not order him flogged.

  There was no such luck. He took her blows stoically and then walked away for a second time.

  Lisette knew that many of the fighters considered them close friends, which was an odd thing, given that the two of them had very rarely spoken.

  She kept intending to talk with him. But the thing that she wouldn't admit to anyone else, hated to admit to herself, was that she was frightened.

  Not of him―any nervousness she'd felt around him had disappeared the first time he'd turned away from her in the Arena―but of what he might turn out to be. She had always silently considered him an ally, but she had to admit that probably wasn't the case. The fact that he hadn't wanted to kill an unarmed child didn't mean he would side with her in other areas. He'd been sentenced to the Arena in the first place for acting against Father Thibault, after all.

  And the idea that he might side with her, might become a friend, was almost worse. Because though he'd taken down all the braggarts so far, one day he would come across someone who could best him. A part of her still insisted on thinking that on that day, if she lost an acquaintance rather than a close friend, it would hurt less.

  She seemed to lie to herself quite frequently where he was concerned.

  Lisette walked closer, hovering in the doorway. He turned slightly, his profile ragged and tired.

  "How..." She cleared her throat. "How many of those are because of me?"

  He smiled. "None."

  "Do not give me lies," she said, taking a few steps further into the room. She made grand plans, yes, but so far she had not even managed to protect this one man who had done so much for her. "You were flogged after each time I faced you. I would know how much of a debt I owe."

  "And I told you. None. Every lash I've gotten is because of the king."

  She drew in a breath, wanting nothing more than to reach out to him. But one question hung in her mind, keeping her still.

  "I have a question for you. And I request an honest answer."

  "Of course."

  "Nazar's coup. Were you a part of it?"

  "No," he said. "I was sentenced to the circuit weeks before the attack. And had I been free, my answer would be the same."

  Lisette crossed over to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. After a moment, he placed his hand over hers and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  She looked down at his hand, wondered how many death blows it had struck. "Someday I will escape from this place," she whispered. He glanced up, worry plain on his face, and she gave him a reassuring smile. "When I do, I'll bring you with me."

  *~*~*

  "He's certainly grown into his frame, hasn't he?"

  Emeline nodded absently to Loyalist Ustinya, who was staring at Gennadi with something akin to hunger.

  The first time Emeline had seen Gennadi in the Arena, he had looked awkward, gangly, like he wasn't entirely sure what to do with his height. Now Gennadi stood before everyone, smiling broadly, his black hair twisted into a multitude of braids and then pulled back into a ponytail.

  Loyalist Ustinya was right, Emeline thought, even if the realization didn't light kindred feelings in her own body.

  She had fully expected, as she grew older, to feel attraction to some of the loyalists' sons and daughters, or the occasional visiting princess or prince.

  What she hadn't expected was to feel... well, very little. Certainly not feelings of the strength that everyone else seemed to experience. She could look at someone and acknowledge they were attractive, experience a pleasant tingle in her chest if they looked her way. But she felt none of the outright passion she'd heard the servants speak of, hadn't possessed any of the strong desire that her first husband had clearly felt for her. When she'd been a servant girl, she'd listened to the others giggle their way through talks of their eventual wedding nights, and though she'd smiled right along with them, the act of making love had never seemed anything other than distasteful.

  Since learning to read, Emeline had gone through every book she could reach, every diary, hoping to find some similarity of thought between herself and one of the writers. There had been none.

  She was beginning to feel as though she were irrevocably broken.

  Returning her focus to Gennadi again, she wondered if he was truly as happy as he seemed to be the object of their attention. He certainly knew how to play to the crowd; his sparring fights full of complicated maneuvers and wild grins, charming the loyalists so that he had rarely been called for a deathfight.

  "Fighter," King Nazar called.
"Do you promise to take up the mantle of Stanimir, the Huntsman before you, and protect my family and these loyalists with your life if need be?"

  "I promise."

  "Do you swear to take whatever missions we assign to defend this castle and her inhabitants?"

  "I swear."

  "Then I pronounce your status raised, from fighter to Huntsman. Perhaps, should your actions continue to impress, I will even pronounce you loyalist someday."

  Gennadi bowed and then turned away, crossing to a small woman with black hair and a young man. The woman hugged him tightly and then stepped back, laughing, as Gennadi grabbed the man―a brother, probably, given that they had the same dusky complexion and dark hair―and swung him around, despite his immediate flailing.

  Emeline watched the scene with a mixture of fondness and sadness. The ease Gennadi had with people was something she'd never managed to attain. She had two people she was truly comfortable with―Lisette and Vasya―and even then she had to keep her guard up, lest someone see her talking with them for too long a period and inform her husband.

  She wanted to be able to easily speak with more people. Wanted to at least be close to her daughter. But all she could seem to manage were brittle smiles and carefully-rehearsed speeches.

  Emeline tried not to fidget with the need to get up and leave the room. Sometimes she felt the desire to be around crowds of people, around noise, but she was only ever able to stand it for a few moments without feeling like she wanted to crawl out of her skin.

  "See this and remember," Nazar said, looking to the fighters who were gathered in a half-circle at the edge of the Arena. "Faithfulness is always well-rewarded."

  "And my faithfulness?" Roz called.

  The king smiled tightly. "I do not believe I granted you permission to speak."

  Undaunted, Roz moved forward. "I have served the Arena well these past years!" sie called. "My grandchild is sick, and my daughter has need of me. If you grant me leave, I promise I will return―"

  "Your daughter, the traitor?" King Nazar asked. "She's fortunate she still has her life, let alone her freedom. And if you continue on this way, I'll rescind your recent promotion to trainer."