Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance) (36 page)

He sighs. “The Solkovians are mine as well.”

He looks at me and adds, “My people,” quickly.

“I know everyone here is closely related, culturally speaking. Your languages are almost the same. I can pick out bits and pieces enough to understand you if you speak slowly.”

He nods and shifts closer on the seat.

“Before I stamped out such ignorant superstitions, the people believed that women with hair like yours were witches. Did you know this?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Perhaps when you were across the border you saw old women making signs at you.”

“With their hands? Like this?”

I twist my fingers in imitation of the little gesture they used to make at me.

“Yes, that’s it. They were warding off your gaze. You’re lucky you were with your, what did you call it, church group? If you were there alone they might think you meant to slip into their daughters’ beds at night and steal their menstrual blood to use it in place of your own and whelp demons. When a woman is barren or has difficult conceiving, tradition says a witch has done this thing.”

I swallow. “Um. Okay.”

“That is the sort of thing I have eradicated in my country. Do you know what happens to a woman who is accused of this sort of witchcraft?”

“No, what?”

“They cut out her womanly parts while she’s still alive and make a preparation for the barren woman to drink.”

I shudder. “You made that up.”

“The old ways are strong in the countryside. Much of Solkovia has been torn apart, like a rope between two elephants pulling at each other, but other places are still in the fourteenth century. There is nothing there to claim, just barren soil and worthless rocks.”

“Is that your excuse to invade and and oppress them?”

He rolls his eyes. “Do you hear yourself? You sound like a bad movie. My
excuse
is to bring people who have never seen running water or electricity into the modern world. To feed and clothe them, free them from a miserable existence as subsistence farmers. Have you been to the capital?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty bad, I admit.”

“Pretty bad,” he snorts. “You have a talent for understatement. Half the populace is unemployed, and two thirds are on a dole the government cannot sustain. The local currency is scrip, useless except for buying rotten potatoes and old cheese at moldy government stores. Walk into Solkovia with a week’s pay for an American and you can buy drugs, women, enforcers.”

He turns sharply to me. “They don’t sell women in my country.”

I meet his gaze evenly. At least, I think I do. I want to sink into the seat and disappear, but I swallow hard and say, “You talk about hurting women a lot. Does it bother you when people hurt women?”

“
Yes
,” he barks, his accent making the word almost unintelligible. “Yes. It
bothers
me. It disgusts me. It is the most perverse thing a man can do. No man in Kosztyla dares raise a hand to his wife.”

“Why, you’ll cut it off?”

“No. He can keep the hand. It’s other parts I remove for that.”

I hunch my shoulders and glance down at my hands.

“In my country you could walk down the street naked at midnight and no one would harm you.”

“Yeah, except you, right? Don’t tell me your laws would permit that.”

“No, of course not. You’d be arrested, but you wouldn’t be attacked. Try that in New York and tell me what would happen.”

“I’ve never actually been to New York.” I turn up my nose. “You foreigners, you’re always, New York, New York, New York, like there’s only two cities in America. You’ve been lecturing me all day about my presumptions about your country, what about your presumptions about mine?”

He sits back and folds his arms. “I’m listening.”

“You talk about America like if you walk down the street you’ll get dragged into an alley and raped. News flash, your majesty.”

“The proper style is
your grace
.”

“Whatever. That doesn’t happen. Yes, people get hurt. A lot of people, but it’s a country of three hundred and fifty million.”

“That’s your excuse? One assault is too many. One woman hurt is too many.”

“I’m not going to lie. I went to college in a city. I’ve been followed, I’ve been catcalled, I even had to duck into a bar and call my fiancé once because I was scared of a guy following me on the bus.”

“Fiancé?” he says, quickly and sharply. “You are to be married? You’re promised to a man?”

“What? No. Not anymore. I don’t want to talk about it.”

He eyes me and bites his lip. He has a snaggletooth, on the right side. It looks like a fang.

“You’re not selling me on America. All I hear is that you have to be afraid to walk the street at night.”

“Not afraid, cautious. I have to be careful, just like I have to be careful I don’t get run over, or something like that.”

“You can’t walk the streets without fear someone will attack you.”

I clench my fists. “Like what you offer is any better. You act like it’s better, but it’s not better at all. Sure, people in your country don’t have to be afraid of a criminal in a dark alley, do they?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“They don’t need some random attacker. They’ve got you.”

He blinks. “What?”

“That’s the choice you’re offering here.” I hold out my arm, gesturing at the empty streets around us. “You’ve replaced one fear with another. I’ve read about this place. You only let them read what you allow, watch what you allow,
say
what you allow. Your schools teach children to report on their parents. You tell them what to eat and where to go and when to go to bed.”

He says nothing.

“Okay, so it’s clean, and you say it’s safe. Is it? Is it safe not to like the menu options at lunch? If one of your
subjects
just stands up and throws his lunch down because he can’t stand choosing from Door One or Door Two anymore, what do you do with him? Drag him off for
reeducation
?”

I fold my arms over my chest and sink into the seat.

“If anybody else talked to you the way I am now, would you just let them?”

“No,” he says, turning away to look out the window.

“Why not?”

“They’re not you.”

“But they
are
. I’m not anybody special.”

His gaze almost disarms me a little. Almost. “That’s not true.”

I sigh. “Of course you’d say that. It’s great for you, isn’t? You eat what you want, go where you want, do and say what you want, read what you want. Why? Because you were born into it. Because of who your dad was.”

“You say that as if there are not people of privilege in your country—”

“Of course there are. Look, I’m not saying everybody is equal and that it’s a perfect land of sunshine and opportunity and we all go out and dance in amber waves of grain like a goddamn cartoon. Yes, we have a lot of problems, but I’d rather have some problems than live in a cold gray world with no human spirit. God, look at this place! Everything is gray!”

“It’s efficient.”

“It’s a prison. The whole place is one big prison. You know what really speaks against the way you run this place? If you won’t
let people leave
.”

“I—”

“Don’t start. You have one of the tightest borders on Earth. Nobody leaves this place without your permission. Only diplomats. Oh, and you. Funny how there’s
one
exception to every chickenshit rule here and, I’m sitting next to him.”

“Two exceptions,” he says. “If anyone else spoke to me in this manner they would have, what did you call it? A bad day.”

“I know, I know, mister hit-me-and-I’ll-cut-off-your-hand. You know what kind of a guy tears out a man’s tongue? Somebody who’s afraid of what they might say.”

He turns to me. “You just quoted Tyrion Lannister.”

“That doesn’t make it any less true. Hypocrite. I bet your average man on the street here wouldn’t get that reference. Let me guess, no HBO in Kosztyla. Not for the common folk, anyway.”

“I read that in the book. That line is not in the show.”

“A book you don’t let your people read.”

He looks over at me, and it feels like I just swallowed an ice cube.

“Do you enjoy provoking me? Is it to make yourself feel better, or do you want me to put you in your place?”

There’s an edge to that last part that I don’t like. I shift in the seat.

“Maybe if I annoy you enough, you’ll let me go home.”

“I’m not letting you go.”

“If you think you can browbeat me into adoring you like your
loving subjects
, you’re mistaken. You’ll never force me to like you.”

“I see that in America they do not teach gratitude.”

“You saved my life,” I sigh. “I’m grateful for that, but that doesn’t excuse everything
else
that you are.”

His eyes narrow. “What is that?”

“I saw what you did to those men. You enjoyed yourself. I’m not talking about the general. I’m talking about the others, on the goat path. I’m not going to forget what I saw.”

“I forgot myself,” he says quickly, turning away.

“You think I’m dumb enough to believe that?”

He doesn’t look at me. His voice is very soft.

“Yes. I did it because I wanted to. Because I like it. I wanted to hurt them. I wanted them to suffer. I saw the terror in your eyes.” His voice rises and his hands clench into fists. “I wanted them to be afraid, as you were afraid. I wanted them to know what it was like to be hurt by someone they can’t hurt back. An eye for an eye.”

“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

“You would have let them live?”

“Did you
have
to kill them? Do you think they would have given up? What about all those men you ordered hanged before you left? They lost, they were beaten. They didn’t need to die.”

“They didn’t need to live, either.”

I chew my lip.

“Many who live deserve death.”

“Yes.”

“Many that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?”

He looks at me for a brief moment then turns away.

“Stop quoting books at me.”

“I’m an English teacher. Can’t help it.”

“If I could, I would,” he says softly.

“Could what?”

“Give life.”

The pain in his voice is like a knife drawing along my skin. He doesn’t look at me when he says it. He leans and touches his fingers to his chin, in thought.

I think we’re here. The car stops.

I know enough to recognize stables. I move to step out and when I open the door I’m confronted by a servant opening it all the way.

I step out onto a rug lying in the mud, I suppose so as not to dirty my skirts or slippers. The prince strides around and offers me his arm, walking me down a path of planks with carpets laid over them toward the stables.

“You have ridden before?”

“I’ve sat on a horse before, yes. Ridden, not really.”

“Oh?”

I shrug. “Birthday party when I was twelve. Not my birthday, a friend’s birthday. I think. Maybe my mom’s friend’s kid’s birthday. I can’t remember. Anyway there was a horse and we took turns sitting on it.”

“I do not see the point of that.”

“I don’t know, kids. They like weird stuff. The horse pooped on my foot.”

He looks at me. I shrug.

It
did
poop on my foot.

When we arrive there are two horses. One is huge, and black. The other is smaller, and brown.

Also, it has a chair on its back. A funny, twisted leather chair, like a saddle but…chairy.

“What is that?”

“A sidesaddle.”

“You’re making me ride sidesaddle? I’m going to fall off and break my neck.”

“You won’t. This mount is well trained. I assumed you lack experience riding. Do as I tell you and you will not be hurt.”

“Oh, thanks. That really sells the experience. How do I get up there?”

By way of reply he grabs my waist and lifts me right up off the ground. I squeak in alarm and grab the little arms on the sidesaddle and jerk myself into place. He’s so
strong
. I’ve never been lifted up like that. My heart is still pounding as he steps back and admires me in my seat. Somehow he manages to check out my legs beneath my elaborates skirts.

I thought it was the armor. It’s mechanical somehow. It must be, but there is still incredible power in his compact form. He mounts easily, almost leaping into the saddle.

Then they give him a bird. A hawk, I suppose. It has a little hood over its eyes. He holds his arm out and the bird sits perched on his forearm, talons digging into a thick leather gauntlet.

He urges his mount forward and mine just follows. I sit there dumbly holding the reins, wondering how the hell my life reached this point. The point at which hawking became involved.

“What exactly does hawking mean? What does that thing do?”

“She hunts,” the prince says casually.

“Are you always so cryptic? Hunts what?”

He eyes me, glancing back at the retinue of people following us on other horses. I think I need to watch my tone.

“Ah, what does she hunt, my prince?”

“Small animals. Squirrels, hares, perhaps another bird.”

“When she, ah, hunts one, what do you do with it?”

“Do? She eats it.”

“Oh my God,” I blurt out before I realize what I’m doing. “You’re going to let that thing fly off and rip up some innocent animal?”

He rolls his eyes. “You have a problem with
that
?”

“Yes! You can’t just kill some little animal.”

“Your country—”

“Can we please not do the ‘your country’ thing again? Yes, people kill animals in my country. I’m pretty sure people train raptors for falconry or whatever, too. That doesn’t mean
you
have to do it. I don’t want to watch that thing rip up some innocent little animal. What the hell kind of activity is this?”

“It’s a tradition,” he grates, sounding more exasperated with every syllable.

“Can we please not do this? At least let me go back to the car. I don’t want to see any squirrel guts today.”

He reins in his mount and hands off the bird, slowly turning his horse to face me.

“This is absurd. You are absurd. It’s a hawk. It eats other animals. If I let it fly away it would eat other animals.”