Shattered (31 page)

Adara pulled her cleaner sleeve over her hand and wiped the sweat from his
face.  “Just come out of this alive Master,” she said, and her voice was surety.

Nathan’s frown cracked
and he squeezed her hand.  “Yes m’lady,” he whispered.

She
suppressed her grin and stood, bowed once, and took her leave of him and his men.  The darkness of the courtyard swallowed her up and then she was gone.

*
**

The court bustled with people within the hour as word got out, not only to the King’s watch, but to many of the nobles and diplomats that had ears within their ranks.  Nathan knew this would attract a crowd, he had counted on it.

He stood beside the empty throne and used the gilded iron armrest to hold himself up.  Some of his men stood around him, the rest would be arriving soon, and for the moment Nathan enjoyed the relative stillness of the morning.
  When the doors to the residence halls burst open he took one last breath and prepared to plunge the room into chaos.

His men hauled Jeremy in and
, in his semi-drunken state, he was belligerent.  The King’s watch, Jeremy’s men, all drew their swords, but the blade pressed threateningly close to their King’s neck stayed their hand.  Nathan didn’t know how long that might last though.  He and his men were horrible outnumbered here.

An officer joined him near the throne.

“Any deaths?” Nathan asked.

“Strangely Sire, no.  There were hardly any men there at all and we outnumbered them so greatly they laid down their arms without fight.  The woman came without struggle, but your brother fought the whole way here.  His injuries couldn’t be helped.”

Nathan doubted that but he stayed silent.  Robin didn’t look injured, just tired, and Jeremy was no more than a little roughed up.  Given the pain Nathan was currently in, and worse, the pain he’d seen in Robin’s eyes, he wasn’t able to summon a whole lot of pity for his brother.

His
attention swept out across the crowd one last time.  A hundred different conversations raged; murmurs, speculations, threats, and his brother’s own wild commands. Nathan saw Denrick there, bewildered and more than a bit alarmed.  His attention lingered there just long enough that his expression might say that he knew, he remembered.

“
Quiet,” Nathan commanded, and the room fell thus.  “Robin A’rin, Jeremy Dorthorial, I name you both in my abduction last month and the injuries I suffered this evening.  Of your attempts to extract a false confession by methods prohibited by the law of our land, by torture, and ultimately, I accuse you both of conspiracy and with the murder of Trent Dorthorial.”

“Kill them,” Jeremy
shouted to the members of the King’s watch, but they looked around to one another, and for a moment no one moved.

“Robin A’rin,” Nathan said, and Robin’s eyes came up to his.  It was almost too much, but her expression beseeched him to continue.  “Tell the court what you did to me for thirteen days last month.”

Robin shut her eyes in a long blink and then detailed all the ways she’d starved him, terrorized him, tortured him.  How she bound him to deny him sleep, how she had men provided to her by her father to help her, how he had been lured out and set up by Jeremy so that he might be taken from the city undetected.  Nathan noticed she left out some details though, such as Denrick’s visit there, and she emphasized others, like how he never told them anything of value.  She was playing up his strength before the crowd, creating the illusion she wanted him to maintain.

Nathan listened without really hearing it, completely numb to the details of his ordeal. 
The whole city would know after today, yet it was nothing next to telling Adara.

Jeremy was
silent as Robin moved on to lay out the events of this last evening.  She recited verbatim the exchange between brothers, the deal Jeremy offered to Nathan should he confess, and how she beat him when he refused to do so.

When she stopped talking Nathan looked up.  He’d never see
n so many wide eyes, never heard the court so utterly silent.  Then the sound of a sword sliding along a scabbard, and another, until the noise rolled over the entire hall like a wave.  One after another the King’s watch replaced their weapons at their sides.

“Do you have proof of this
brother
,” Jeremy growled. 

Nathan l
ooked to Robin and she nodded.

“
Do you have my bag still?” Robin asked one of the soldiers, “Give him the letters in there.”

A
handful of raven scrolls were brought up to the throne and, one by one, they were read aloud.  Most of them were rather circumstantial, eluding to this, hinting at that, but coupled with Robin’s account of tonight and Nathan’s own ghastly injuries, it was enough.

The evidence against Denrick was far more scarce
though, and at best he could be seen as a financial contributor to his daughter’s twisted schemes.  Robin must have more and Nathan didn’t understand why she’d protect him, but she did.  At least she had no such care for Jeremy.  The King’s watch looked ready to kill him where he stood.

Nathan turned his attention back to Jeremy. 
“You offered me banishment, brother, if I confessed.  Let me extend the same to you.”

Jeremy’s shoulders rose.  Nathan might not be able to prove Trent’s murder, but Jeremy was
guilty enough without it, and he seemed to know it.

“It’s true, what she said.  All of it.
”  He sounded defeated.  “I traded you for an engagement and murdered Trent to secure the throne.”

Nathan nodded.  “Release him,” he said, and the men holding Jeremy stepped back. “You’re free to go brother.  Leave and never come back.”

Members of the King’s watch, officers and soldiers alike, looked from Nathan to Jeremy at the exodus of his decree.  Jeremy’s face froze and, as his eyes swept the room, he paled.  All around him the faces of the men that no longer served him lit up.

“I will be murdered before I reach the city gates,” Jeremy whispered, and then louder, near a shout as indignation took hold.  “You’re sentencing me to death in this
.”

“Surely one of your allies will take you in,” Nathan replied, and dismissed him with a wave of his hand.  “Go.  Walk out those doors now or share Trent’s fate off the wall.”

Jeremy glowered at him for only a second longer, then turned from the throne and marched the long hall, to the doors at the end and the night beyond.

Nathan sought Denrick out of the crowd and found him easily.  The people standing around him before had all stepped back as Robin’s letters were read aloud
. Now he stood there alone.

“Denrick A’rin, your daughter has implicated you in her schemes with my brother.  But I know you’re a victim too.  Return to Verill and stay there, and if I never see you again I might forget your role in this. 
Appoint an envoy and your voice will not be absent from our court.  Go now and let that be the whole of your punishment.”

Denrick bowed and backed away, but Nathan’s attention was already off him and on to Robin.  He wanted to call her up here so that he might stand beside her,
hug her and tell her not to be afraid, but he had to play this game.  She’d taught him that already. 

“Robin A’rin.  For your
role in my abduction, confinement, and torture, I sentence you to no more than the very same.  I plan to see to it, personally, that you suffer in all the same ways I did.”

Robin looked down and Nathan felt his gut wretch around in a knot. 
He had to do this.

“Take her to the dungeon until arrangeme
nts can be made.  Find the cell they had me in and lock her there. Alone.”

I
t wasn’t until she was escorted from the room that Nathan was able to breathe again, and everything he hadn’t let himself feel for Trent hit him all at once, now that she was gone.  It took the last of his strength and he slumped down to the ground beside the throne.  He felt the cold metal frame against his cheek and he shut his eyes, and this time when his guard told him he needed to rest Nathan managed a nod.  It was finally over.

***

The
soldier at the base of the tower bowed as Nathan approached and unlocked the wooden door once he got near.  Nathan nodded in acknowledgement and the bucket of water he carried sloshed a little against the sides as he stepped into the shade of that stone tower.  He heard the door lock behind him and take with it the sunlight at his back, and now it was all dark here except for slivers of light cast down the stairs from slits in the walls.  He ascended, though his legs protested the climb, as did his arms and his back under the pressure of several gallons of water, but he knew in time he’d get used to it all.

He
had one of only a few keys to this last door, at the top of the spiral stairs, and it opened quietly on newly greased hinges. Robin’s room was just as he prescribed.  Iron loops and chains that opened or closed with a touch, whips, rods, and a dozen other ways to hurt the flesh.  Robin looked up from her book and set it aside when she saw him there.  Her grey eyes scanned his face and she was silent.

The last few weeks
had been a blur of transition and the entire time Nathan felt the ache of her absence.  She hadn’t allowed him up here before now, but finally he could supplement his memory with the sight of her and it was worth it.

Robin’s
hair fell disheveled about her shoulders and the thin, long sleeved cotton shirt she wore hung a little too loose on her.  It seemed too poor for someone of her status, but then he reminded himself again she was a prisoner here.  He need only look down at her feet to see the evidence of that.

An iron shackle about her ankle tethered her to the far wall
, no more than six feet of slack in its chain, well away from the door and all those implements of pain.  She couldn’t even make it to that slit of a window, though the light from it did reach her chair and she sat with her toes in the sun.  Nathan shook his head and broke the hold his guilt had on him, set down the bucket of water, turned, closed the door behind him. The sound of it echoed through the room.

She
watched him as he crossed the room and knelt at her feet, as he slipped one last key into the shackle that bound her, as it fell away with a clank.  Her fingers come down upon him, ran through his hair, lifted the thin gold crown from around his head.  It barely made a sound as she set it down on the small end table beside them. She touched his face, slid her hand beneath his chin and, slowly, she lifted his face up to hers.

“Hello prince,” she whispered, though no one could hear them.
  The windows here were hardly more than cracks in the shell of stone around them.  This high up, this far from the main castle grounds, they were alone.

“I’m a
king now, you know,” Nathan corrected, but there was no severity in his voice.  It killed him to see her like this.

“Not on your knees you’re not
.”

Her express
ion remained blank and her eyes gave him nothing.  They scanned his face and he felt naked.  He couldn’t move, not even as her fingers rose from his chin to his mouth, as he felt her thumb smooth against his lips.

“Something’s
bothering you,” she said.

Nathan
let out his breath in a sighed and the question he shouldn’t ask bubbled up in him until he couldn’t contain it.  “Are you happy here?”

Her
hand left his face.  “You know better Nathan.  Why would you even ask that?”

“Because I
have to know that you’re okay with this. It was so hard to stand up there and denounce you.  You have no idea what that took.”

Robin’s neutral cracked immedia
tely and she let out a laugh. The sharp burst of sound shattered the thrall his melancholy had held him to.  It ran with rich undertones of relief, as though she had feared worse.

“Aren’t you being presumptuous,” she sai
d, shook her head, and chased the words out with another soft chuckle.  “As though you’re the first person to ever carry a burden.”

His mind flashed to
their last time together, to the cell with her and his brother, and he remembered the expression on her face, the paper-thin visage she’d worn to protect him.

“I didn’t mean it like that…,” Nathan said, but Robin cut him off.

“Look me in the eyes and tell me you wouldn’t free me right now if I asked you to,” she said, and when he dropped his face away from hers instead she went on.  “No prince, I’m not confined here at all.”

Robin stood and
scooted around behind him, and Nathan didn’t move.  Her laughter had pushed him away from the worry he’d been carrying around and relief from that last concern freed him to just be.  After two weeks of playing the games of court he was exhausted and, somehow, kneeling here was peaceful.

“
You brought me water to bathe with,” Robin said and she sounded pleased.

“Adara told me
to.”