Palace of Darkness (30 page)

She knew the guards were there ahead, but somehow all else faded from view, and she ran through a dark tunnel. She heard herself yell something, she knew not what, as though the empty place inside had a voice of its own.

Somewhere in the middle of the hall she met up with the two guards. One of them, bigger and uglier, bent his head and drove it toward her belly. She fixed on his greasy hair and felt revulsion as his head burrowed into her stomach.

Air exploded from her chest and sparks ignited behind her eyes. She felt herself lift up, up, and over the guard, watched the frescoed ceiling pass under her, and wondered at such beauty and such ugliness in the same place. She hit the marble hall, dragged in one ragged breath, then remembered her training, leaped to her feet, and whirled to face them.

Her hand went instinctively to the dagger under her robe, and she said a quick prayer of thanks it had not punctured anything in
the fall. It was slick and cold in her hand but felt like a caress. It was for this moment she had trained with Yehosef, all those long, sweaty nights in the theatre.

That surge of anger she had accessed so often with Yehosef came back to her, a welcome friend, to strengthen her arm and her mind to the fight.

She half crouched, dagger extended, and reveled in the flicker of concern that crossed the face of the guard who had flipped her onto the floor. They were brutes kept for their muscle, not their minds, and they had no weapons but their strength.

She circled, keeping them both in front of her, waiting.

The bigger one had a jagged scar that ran from his cheekbone to his hairline, and his eye drooped over the mutilated skin. He lunged first, as she knew he would, and she was prepared.

She lashed out with the dagger, a thrust and parry as Yehosef had taught her. The dagger found purchase on the guard’s arm and drew blood. He howled, covered his arm with his hand, and backed off.

Cassia let the anger well up, a hot fountain of hate. She wished it had been the other eye instead of his arm. She flicked a glance to the second guard, daring him to be next.

Instead of fear, though, she saw amusement. A bubble of terror forced itself into her chest.

And then they were both on her at once. She felt the blows, heard the dagger
clink
somewhere on the marble floor, and realized in a flash that no amount of training would allow one small woman to take down two muscle-bound guards.

The big, greasy one wrapped his bloody arm around her waist like the arm of a lover and pulled her body to his, her back to his chest. The palace servant’s robe she had stolen soaked up his blood at her waist like a red sash tied around her, and she tasted her own blood in her mouth and felt her lip swell.

He bent his thick lips to her ear and laughed. “Now we are having fun, are we not?”

His partner crossed the floor, scooped her dagger into his palm, and turned, a wicked smile playing on his face. Cassia’s stomach churned and the anger drained from her, leaving her a brittle shell. Perhaps if the guard would squeeze harder, she would simply break into pieces and this nightmare would end.

The second guard sauntered toward them. He swung the dagger from a thumb and forefinger, still smiling.

“Cut for a cut, Lazar?” he said to her captor.

“Hmm,” he murmured into her ear, as though the other fiend had offered him a ripe piece of fruit. “But it would be a shame to mar this beauty.” His face was still buried in her neck.

His friend laughed. “Perhaps somewhere none but her husband would see, then!”

Cassia closed her eyes and fought the nausea that rose in her chest.

A shout from the end of the hall snapped her eyes open. Another palace guard hailed them, then waved a hand. “Bring the girl! The queen wants her—now!”

The bloody guard growled his disappointment, then kicked at her heels. “Walk.” He loosened his grip on her waist only enough to step beside her.

The halls passed in a blur, and Cassia felt as though her feet slid over the marble floors, more carried to the throne room than arriving in her own strength. But she heard the slap of her own sandals on the white floor, heard it echo in the silent, lifeless room. After the violent struggle in the halls, the room seemed like the eye of a storm.

Cassia turned her heavy head in all directions, searching for a face she knew. Had Julian left her already? Where were Nahor and Niv? Malik? She scanned the doorways, hoping for Marta’s face.

She knew without looking that Alexander was not there. She would have sensed him. The room was hollow and empty, save Hagiru’s seething presence on the throne.

Cassia smelled incense and wondered absently if the queen had been offering sacrifices before Cassia had arrived. The thought brought a vision of Alexander on the High Place altar. It fell over her eyes like a hazy veil and produced a wave of dizziness that left her so sick, she expected to retch. She bared her teeth, stared at the queen, and strained in the grip of the guards.

“So, Aretas’s plaything has not had enough?” Hagiru’s chin tipped down and her eyes peered over her long nose.

Cassia’s stomach settled and she drew herself upright to face the queen. “You will not kill my son.”

Hagiru laughed. Her arms rested casually on the carved sides of the throne, and she lifted one hand at the wrist and gave the guard a small flick of her hand to indicate he should release Cassia. He did so with a shove, and she stumbled forward several steps before gaining her balance and facing the queen.

“And you will stop me?” Hagiru drew out each word as though the thought amused her.

Cassia knew the futility of it. She had nothing. No plan, no weapons, no army. She was only a mother. She had begged for the life of her son once before, but now her begging would accomplish nothing. No, it was a time for power.

And she had none.

She stood there, wishing the force of her hatred could melt the queen like a flame touched to candle wax. Hagiru met her look of hatred with a searing heat of her own, and Cassia felt the scorch of it build in her chest. It stole her breath and still it burned.

Black spots dotted her vision, and she imagined she saw a blackness
hover over the queen like a cloud of malevolence. She felt the fumes of it choke her, and she swayed on her feet, fighting and knowing it was useless to fight.

Somewhere to her right there was a flutter of white, barely noticeable in her distorted sight, but then the white form was at the side of the queen and the noxious cloud dissipated, and Cassia was able to draw in a pained breath. She leaned forward, hands on her knees, and tried to regain the strength the queen had somehow stolen.

“It is the king.” The messenger’s whisper was loud enough for Cassia to hear. “He has taken a turn. You must come.”

Hagiru’s look of disgust flowed down over Cassia. “Throw her in a cell,” she said to the guards at the edge of the room. “I will deal with her later.”

Cassia sagged backward, exhausted beyond measure, and was nearly grateful for the guards when they caught her from behind.

Hagiru disappeared in a swoosh of purple, then Cassia felt herself dragged backward.

She would await the queen’s good pleasure on the floor of a cell.

THIRTY-THREE

C
ASSIA
’
S
STRENGTH RETURNED BY DEGREES AS THE GUARDS
dragged her by her arms through the palace halls. First, the memory of Alexander’s sweet face as he called out to her only moments ago lifted her head and opened her eyes. Then the hateful vision of her boy on the High Place altar strengthened her legs under her. She pulled herself to standing and held her ground.

The two men paused to spin her around to walk with them. She noted with relief these two were not the ones whom she had wrestled with earlier, not the greasy brute whose arm she had sliced open.

They pushed her along in front of them, down a corridor she’d never traveled, then stopped at a set of dimly lit steps. She could not see the bottom and knew they must end underground.

She had existed in a haze of despair since the guards had grabbed her, but now the reality of descending into the earth, far from sunlight and from Alexander, wormed itself into her consciousness and stirred up a new fierceness.

My last chance to save him.

She rocked back on her heels at the top of the steps and yanked
her arms from the guards. They had not expected her defiance, and she slipped from their grasp.

A moment of triumph was followed by their angry shouts. They both reached out for her, and then she was fighting them, not with the trained moves of the arena Yehosef had taught her, but with a frantic, frenzied attack. She lashed out with arms and legs, kicked and clawed with the fury of an animal protecting its young. Her fingernails dug into flesh. The scene flashed light and dark before her as her hair tumbled about her face and blocked her vision.

She heard the guards’ curses. Felt the rip of her clothes. Still she fought on, panting and thrashing. All the anger and futility of these past weeks exploded in a hundred pieces and she saw herself as from a distance, a tangled twist of tamarisk branches tossed in the wind.

But it could not last. Her strength ebbed, her arms slowed, and then she was soaring, flying, over open space—they had cast her off and thrown her down the steps. Time slowed enough for her to remember the first time she had been thrown out of the palace, the beginning of this nightmare, and to realize with a crushing sadness that this was the end.

The bottom of the steps rushed up to meet her and she thudded to the ground and lay still.

She heard the laugh of the guards as from a great distance and heard the word
jackal
. For a delirious moment she thought she heard Alexander’s laughter float above their derision, but then it was gone and she knew it had not been real.

Cassia was conscious of nothing until she found herself being carried by her wrists and ankles through the darkness. A fire burned in her wrist and shot up her arm and into her heart.

Darkness again, then a scrape of iron and stone. The pain took her breath away.

She felt her body swing between them like a sack of barley being tossed onto a pile, then felt the weightlessness yet again and the hard smack of the ground beneath her.

When she woke, it was to solid darkness and utter silence.

The dirt floor was cold beneath her, and she lay still a moment, focused on her breathing. She tested her wrist, then cried out in pain and brought her hand to her belly, cradling it with her other hand.

The darkness was like the grave, complete and heavy, as though she had been buried while yet alive.

Am I alive?

The thought was like a wisp of smoke, and she fought to hold on to it. How could one be certain she still lived? Perhaps this was the underworld itself. She forced a picture of her cell into her mind, to hold on to sanity. Stone walls, no doubt. Iron bars across a small grate of a door.

In the end, it was the searing pain in her wrist, too real, too earthbound, that convinced her she had fallen only to the depths of the palace, and not to the depths of the earth.

And yet, what difference did it make?

She was useless here, as surely as if she were dead. The Festival of Grain began tomorrow. How long would Hagiru keep her here? Would she ever send for her?

If she ever frees me, it will not be before she has killed my son.
This was truth.

Cassia rolled to her side and curled herself into a ball, still cradling the injured wrist. Her cheek lay in the dirt, but she barely noticed.

Memories washed over her, of happy times with Alexander, of her years with Aretas.

Cassia sighed as a tear slid to the dirt beneath her cheek. She had thought she had come so far, changing into a woman of strength. And yet what had it accomplished?

Strength had brought her to Petra. And Alexander was taken from her.

Strength had pushed Julian away so she could stand alone. And now she lay alone in a cell.

It would have been better to remain weak.

She had pushed Julian away, refused to let him into her heart, unwilling to rely on a man again. But if she had let Julian take control, if she had never come to the palace and simply done what he told her, she would not be here now, where she had no chance to help her son. Relying on herself only brought failure.

A scuffle in the darkness startled her. Something nearby and not human. She pulled herself to sitting and scurried backward, away from the scratching sound. Unthinking, she bore weight on her wrist. Flames shot through her arm and exploded in her head, and then the darkness grew even heavier and she slumped to the floor.