Weight hanging off her guards’ hands, Kirstin braced both feet against the wall and pushed. She wasn’t very large, but she’d never been weak. Bruised-thumb stumbled off the edge of a step. Swayed. Began to fall. He’d have fallen alone if he’d just let go of Kirstin’s arm. Dimples could have saved himself if he’d let go. They both hung on. The three of them landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, Kirstin somehow, amazingly, on the top of the pile. She scrambled to her feet and limped past the line of dark cells to the rough wall at the far end where they cornered and recaptured her.
Three steps higher, Danika watched it all.
The fall, the landing, the chase—all done in silence. Dimples cried out when he landed. Bruised-thumb made no sound.
The guards had been ordered not to talk to the prisoners. That had been obvious from the beginning.
That there were men willing to follow orders so exactly was as terrifying as anything that had yet happened.
Danika knew she was both taller and heavier than Kirstin. She could get better leverage and do significantly more damage if she landed on either of her guards.
She was also pregnant. Risking the baby in a fall she couldn’t control would bring freedom no closer. Once again, she wished she knew how to fight. She knew how to dance, how to speak to her housekeeper, how to entertain politicians, how to dress well, how to lie charmingly, and how to struggle but have no effect on two large men trained to use their bodies for violence.
Just past the last cell there was a full-sized steel door; like the stairs, incongruously new.
On the other side of the door, another row of dark cells. The moment Danika’s guard pulled the door closed behind them, the prisoners began to howl.
Pain and anger and fear and anger and hunger and anger.
Danika stumbled and was hauled back onto her feet, fingers gouging bruises into her arms. The floor was sticky. She could smell shit and urine and blood and rot. How much more overpowering must it be to Pack senses?
Kirstin’s guards were carrying her now. Danika could see her mouth moving.
Freedom. Freedom. Freedom.
The howling grew louder, anger drowning out the rest.
Danika felt Chipped-tooth shudder and she twisted, mouth near his ear. She couldn’t convince him to do anything he didn’t already want to do. “I know you. Let me go.”
His grip loosened.
“I know you. Let me go.”
Loosened.
“I know you. Let me go.”
Then Gouge-in-boot nearly jerked her out of Chipped-tooth’s grip, and he tightened his hold again.
It didn’t matter, she realized. If they let her go, she’d follow Kirstin regardless.
She couldn’t think of a single thing to say to the captured Pack that would give them comfort.
At the other end of the cells, Kirstin’s guards carried her up another flight of stairs although these were old and worn and probably the original access to the cells.
Danika wrapped the anger in the air around her like high fashion, like silk and lace and velvet, and climbed, head up, back straight, teeth bared.
In an antechamber, identical to the one that led to the water room and the big room and their hall, they were handed over to four other guards. They looked harder, more confident—these were men who’d already proven themselves. As they made the transfer, Bruised-thumb swore and jerked back, blood running down his cheek. Blood on Kirstin’s mouth. If he hadn’t moved in time, he’d have lost the end of his nose.
One of the new guards laughed. “All abominations bite, kid.” As he grabbed Danika’s arm, she saw familiar scars. She knew the teeth that made those scars. These guards dealt with Pack. If Dimples and Chipped-tooth proved themselves with netted mages, would they be promoted to torturing Pack? Were they looking forward to it?
The door closed behind them, and the howling faded. When the door opened in front of them, a woman wearing a white coat over sensible clothes looked up from a mess of paper on a high desk and said, “Take the dark-haired mage to testing. Blonde to the cage on the deck.”
The guards began to drag them apart.
Danika let herself go limp, her unexpected weight pulling her arms from her guards’ grip. She dropped to one knee, pushed forward and back up onto her feet, throwing her arms around Kirstin’s waist. “Where she goes, I go.”
She’d spoken Imperial, but the woman in the white coat only pulled her spectacles off and polished them as though she hadn’t heard. “Get them separated, or the abomination will be there before she is.”
“Don’t ignore…” Danika’s head snapped back. Her mouth filled with blood. She had to swallow or spit. Only her grip on Kirstin kept her from falling. Another blow and they were yanked apart, Danika clutching fistfuls of Kirstin’s clothes, refusing to let go, grunting in pain as blows pounded against her ribs.
“Danika! Think of the baby!”
Danika blinked away tears and tried to focus on Kirstin’s face. Wrapped her fear and anger around the Aydori words. “You know what they’re going to do to you!”
Blue-flecked eyes narrowed, and Kirstin’s upper lip curled. “I know what they think they’re going to do. I make my own choices, Lady Hagen. Like I always have.”
“Stubborn…”
One of the guards jabbed his thumb into the back of Danika’s hand, driving it deep between the small bones. Her fingers spasmed, opened, and she lost her hold. As they dragged her along the slick floor, she thrashed and fought. She couldn’t get free, but she would not have them say she left her Pack willingly.
Rounding a corner, they planted their boots and threw her forward. Sliding across the glossy tiles on her knees, she slammed up against metal bars and spun around in time to see a cage door shut and barred.
“This mage is the first female abomination we’ve allowed on the deck over the testing room. I’m looking forward to her reactions. They should be fascinating.”
Breathing heavily, Danika rose to her feet and turned to face Leopald, snarling, lips drawn back off her teeth. It seemed at first as though he was in a cage of his own, but there were only bars between them and in front of him. One set separated him from the room below, one from her.
He stood far enough away, she couldn’t reach him. Arm thrust through the bars, her fingers clawed at the air.
He shook his head. “Fascinating. They all attempt that. It must be due to some commonality in their blood.”
The man standing behind him, wearing a parody of a uniform, stared at the back of Leopald’s head in disbelief.
Danika knew him.
Reiter saw the mage’s blue-flecked eyes widen and knew she’d recognized him.
“You did this,” she snarled, touching two fingers to the blood at the corner of her mouth.
The emperor turned to face him and Reiter barely managed to control his reaction in time. After a moment of study, Reiter maintaining as neutral an expression as possible, he turned back to face the mage. “You remember Captain Reiter, do you? How wonderful. But when it comes right down to it, it’s unkind to blame him for the situation you’re in. Your current situation is entirely a result of what you are, isn’t it? The captain was merely following my orders.”
Reiter could see her answer in her eyes—the anger, the terror—and he braced himself. He’d taken prisoners before. While he was still a ranker, he’d been on work details throwing prisoners’ bodies into pits. On the other side, in other armies, he knew enemy soldiers did the same. It wasn’t personal. It was war.
This wasn’t war.