Page 7 of The Captive's Curse
Enzo waved at the lads by the wall, who sprang into action, bringing plates and forks and cups, hurrying to lay them out in front of us as someone else carried one of the platters of food up from a table below.
Soft laughter ebbed and flowed through the diners, and I ducked my head at last, my cheeks burning. They all knew Enzo had chosen to be kind to me, his idiot prisoner wearing poorly magicked rags who didn’t know where to sit, and that made it so much worse.
It was a long and mostly silent meal. My appetite had deserted me, and even though my belly rumbled I could hardly choke down more than a few bites. It didn’t help at all that my predicament had finally really sunk in.
I’d been captured by bandits. They might be toying with me before they killed me. I didn’t think Enzo and his men were particularly notorious for violence against anyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight back, but then again, when anyone started to discuss anything serious, I wandered off in search of my lute or a fuck or a bite to eat.
When Enzo stood at last and said, “I’ll escort you back to your room,” I didn’t even complain about the prospect of spending the night with the onions.
He paused at the door, hand on the latch, and fixed me with those hard eyes. “I think this goes without saying, but please don’t try to escape. Your door won’t be locked. There’s a garderobe on the right,” and he gestured down the corridor. “But the stables and gates are guarded, and my men are alert. None of your parlor tricks will get you anywhere.”
I gaped at him, furiously offended all over again. And to think I’d almost been on the point of thanking him for the way he’d tried to spare me mortification at dinner! Maybe he hadn’t been sparing me. Maybe that had been his way of making an even greater point of it.
Ugh.
“They are not parlor tricks,” I hissed at him. “It’s not like you have any magic at all, so perhaps you ought to—”
“Oh, please, Lord Shiny Blanket, if you’d had the power to turn me into a goat I’d have been hoofing it around the hall and bleating hours ago. Now if you’ll excuse me?”
And with a bow that I couldn’t possibly interpret as respectful, he turned and strode down the corridor without a backward glance. If glares could’ve killed, he wouldn’t just have been a goat: he’d have been a skinned, spitted goat with an apple stuffed in his mouth.
Enzo turned the corner of the corridor and disappeared.
Lacking anything else to do, I opened the door, took a deep breath to sustain me, and stepped into my onion chamber to go to bed.
Surely everything would seem brighter and more hopeful in the morning.
Chapter Three
The morning brought several developments that I tried desperately to view as bright and hopeful. First, it was too cold for the onions to be particularly smelly. Or perhaps I’d already gotten used to them. I chose to believe the first, because I refused to grow accustomed to such misery as if it were my due.
Second, the brisk knock on my door that awakened me at the crack of dawn heralded one of the serving lads from the night before, bearing my clothing all washed and folded in a stack, plus my very own boots. Those had been cleaned, though not precisely polished.
He set it all down on a rickety wooden chair near the grimy alcove of ashes that passed for a fireplace, and turned to me. “You need anything?” he asked. “Breakfast’s in the hall.”
I needed breakfast and coffee in bed, but his second sentence strongly suggested no one would be bringing me any. And I doubted “anything” included throwing all of the crates into the river after stuffing Enzo into one of them, with an onion stuffed, in turn, firmly up his ass.
“Thank you,” I said, in lieu of anything more expressive. After all, this boy hadn’t been the one to abduct me, he was almost certainly not in charge of vegetable storage in this place, and he also had probably been the one to clean my boots—and though he’d done it poorly, I appreciated the effort. “That’s all for now.”
He nodded and slipped out, shutting the door behind him, and I sat up, wrapping my arms around myself and shivering. I’d found a couple more blankets piled on my bed when I came back from supper, and someone had made a cursory effort at a fire, but it simply hadn’t been enough. Creating a pleasant warmth in the air might be in the repertoire of some other mages, but not mine—I was more likely to light all the air in the room on fire and die.
So frost had crept over the entirety of the room’s one little window, making it opaque. And the shirt I’d altered with magic had disintegrated in the night, sad threads clinging to my shoulders and bits fluttering down like snow.
Probably a good thing I hadn’t tried to transform Agnethe.
The blanket had held up, though, and still had a satisfying shimmer. Lord Shiny Blanket indeed. I’d have liked to see stupid Enzo make a blanket shiny.
It took only a couple of minutes to get dressed, and then I ventured out into the corridor. A couple of men in soldier-bandits’ clothing walked by as I went to find the garderobe, but they simply nodded and went on their way.
The corridor stretched on and on, with dozens of other doors along it. I peeked into a couple of them as I passed, seeing nothing but dust, neglect, and the occasional pile of things that had been carelessly stored away and left for the gods knew how long. No one slept in these rooms, apparently. Could there be a barracks? Unless they all slept outdoors in tents, or tree houses, or under rocks.
Enzo seemed like he might be at home under a rock. Perhaps I ought to try turning him into a grub instead of a goat.
I walked on. Gods, this place was enormous. Too big to miss.
And I’d never seen it before.
Despite everything, my heart started to beat faster, excitement tingling through my fingers.
