Page 22 of Flame and Sparrow

I rehearsed the things I would say, the looks I would give to turn his inklings of pity into full-blown compassion and cooperation.

But I didn’t have a chance to put my plans into action.

On the tenth evening, when I was nearly delirious from lack of food, a trio of guards I didn’t recognize entered my cell, hands on their weapons and sadistic gleams in their eyes. They left the door ajar, and the orange light from the hall torches flickered brightly at their backs. Their shadows stretched long and tall before them, swallowing me up well before they stood in a row before me.

They’d brought food with them. My stomach panged at the smell of it. Bread, some sort of dried meat, and maybe fruit, too—gods, what I would have done for a piece of fruit in that moment. I tried not to react, but my mouth salivated automatically, forcing me to swallow and lick my lips to avoid outright drooling.

The tallest of the guards—a nasty specimen of a human with oily black hair and a vertical scar dividing his lips into two even halves—stepped forward. “For every question you answer, you’ll receive something to eat. Simple as that. You cooperate, you don’t starve to death.”

Looks like I’m going to starve to death,I started to say. But my dry throat stung and my cracked lips threatened to peel with the slightest movement, so Ionly settled back against the wall, silent and stoic.

The guard loomed closer. Even underneath the many layers of my own compounded filth, I could smell his pungent, unwashed, salty human scent. “You admit that you were present at the God of Fire’s temple on the night of its destruction.”

There didn’t seem to be much point in lying about this; they already knew the truth. So I shrugged. Nodded.

He gestured, and one of his companions tossed a half-loaf of crusty bread at my feet. So at least they were following the rules of their own game.

Reflex made me reach for the bread without thinking. But I picked it up slowly, and I didn’t bring it anywhere near my mouth, determined not to show how ravenous I truly was.

Scar Lips waited with one eyebrow cocked in cruel amusement.

I didn’t eat. I only glared.

Finally, he spoke again. “We have reason to believe you didn’t act alone on that night.”

The chains around my wrists suddenly felt heavier. I shook my muscles loose and busied my hands with breaking off a small chunk of the bread and rolling it between my fingers. It felt crumbly and dry as dust, but damn it if I didn’t want to inhale it anyway.

Still, I resisted, continuing to glare up at the guards from beneath my lashes.

“However,” their leader continued, “we extensively searched the area where we found you and saw no sign of any others.”

I fought the urge to smile or otherwise show relief. Andrel and the others had played it smart and escaped.Good.

“So, would you like to tell us where we might find your accomplices on a lovely day such as this?”

I coughed.

He took that—correctly—as ano. “Not even for more food? You look terribly hungry.”

I smiled, hoping it looked as terrifyingly deranged as I felt, and then I swallowed hard. And through the pain of my peeling lips, in a voice made brittle from dehydration and disuse, I said, “Not even for all the food in all the miserable kingdoms of this realm.”

He smiled back at me. “Have it your way. It’s only a matter of time before we find those friends, all the same. And now you’ve lost your only chance at being rewarded for your cooperation.” He turned and started for the heavy metal door, motioning for the others to follow.

“You won’t find all of us,” I growled at his retreating figure.

He stopped walking but kept his back to me. “All of you?”

I should have kept my mouth shut. I knew it was foolish not to, and I was not usually the type to run my mouth to the point of trouble.

But the lack of food in my stomach had left room for other things to fester—dark and rotten things—and it all came rising up now, the words spilling out in a heated rush. “There are more than you could ever imagine. More of us who hate your king and his devotion to the cruel gods—and striking us down only encourages more to rise. We will destroy every temple you build to those wild new gods, and when we’re finished with that, we will destroy the very gods themselves. And who will your tiny brains and crooked hearts worship then?”

His head tilted slightly toward me as I spoke, so I could only just see the wicked grin stretching across his face. “Such lofty claims.”

I kept my chin lifted and my defiant glare fixed on him, though my body shook from lack of nourishment, threatening to buckle underneath me.

“Lofty andunkind,” sneered Scar Lips.

I had no shortage of unkind things to say to his sort. Usually. But the speech I’d just given was nearly identical to one my sister had given so many times when she was alive. And now that I’d used her words up—along with what remained of my strength—I couldn’t seem to think of anything else to say.

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