Freeing the Prisoner Read online

  “But you must marry him, my sweet,” Yana said earnestly. “And it’s lucky you are that he’ll still have you after you pulled a weapon on a male that way. Your dear father the Monarch, may he live forever, is most upset. Most upset.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Dani said shortly. “It wasn’t my intention to upset him but to warn him of the danger he is sending Lavi into.”

  “Oh my dear Princess, it is you who is in danger!” Yana sounded so earnest that Dani scooted a little closer to the edge of the dresser which blocked the door, trying to hear better.

  “I know I’m in danger,” she said dryly. “In danger of being married off to a male I hate who will probably beat me and punish me and…and…” Her throat worked but she couldn’t say the awful words that wanted to bubble to the top of her brain—words that had to do with the act of breeding and ownership and changing the color of her eyes. “And do whatever he wants with me at night,” she finished lamely.

  “That’s not the danger I’m talking about, my sweet!” her old nurse protested. “I’m speaking of how you threatened a male with a weapon in the throne room! Princess dear, where did you even find such an awful thing as a sud-stab?”

  “I found it in my mother’s things,” Dani said reluctantly.

  From the other side of the door she heard a ragged gasp.

  “The same weapon…the very same,” she heard Yana mutter, as though to herself. “Gods below and above, it is true—ill-luck does follow in the footsteps of the dead.”

  “What? What are you talking about out there?” Dani demanded, scooting a bit closer to the door. “Why do you say the same weapon—the same as what?”

  “Your mother’s sud-stab,” Yana explained in a low voice. “It was the same one she…oh Princess, I did hope never to have to tell you this sad story.”

  “What? What is it? Is it about my mother?” Dani felt her stomach tighten. “Tell me, Yana—tell me!”

  A weary sigh drifted from the other side of the door and she could picture the old woman putting her wrinkled forehead to the intricately carved wood in sad exhaustion. For a moment she thought Yana would speak no more—that whatever secret she carried was too great of a burden to share. But finally she heard the old, tired voice start up again.

  “Your mother had that sud-stab as a gift from her brother,” Yana explained. “He had the idea that females ought to be taught to protect themselves—as though males wouldn’t do it for them. Bless me! He was a little mad in the head. I always said nothing good would come of it but he taught her to use it all the same and so when she was called to the palace to become wife to your father, the Monarch, may he live forever, she took the sud-stab with her.”

  “Wait—how do you know all this?” Dani asked. “Did someone tell you?”

  “Oh, no child—I saw it. I was there. Didn’t you know I used to be nurse to your mother and Lavi’s too when they were young? Old Yana has seen so much…so much she wishes she could forget…” Another melancholy sigh. “So your mother, bless her dead soul, took the sud-stab with her to the palace and that is what got her killed.”

  “What?” Dani’s stomach got tighter but she told herself she must have misunderstood. “A fever killed my mother—one so virulent and contagious she had to be taken away at once and buried outside the palace gates.”

  “That was what we told you, my sweet,” Yana said softly. “But it is not so. What killed her was her willful pride and her refusal to behave as a proper royal female should—as I am always begging you to do.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dani said blankly. “Did…did someone stab her with her own weapon, or—”

  “Oh dear me—nothing like that.” Yana sounded shocked. “No, she was killed for threatening the life of the Monarch.”

  What?” The fist clenching in her stomach suddenly turned to a lump of ice. “What are you talking about? That’s impossible!”

  “It’s not, I’m afraid, my sweet,” Yana said sadly. “You see, she came to the throne room—just as you did today—making wild accusations—”

  “What accusations? Who did she accuse?” Dani interrupted.

  “Well, it was Councilor Bray-bray—I mean, Tornk.” Yana coughed in apparent embarrassment at her slip. “She said he was trying to…” She cleared her throat. “Trying to do things to her no one but a female’s husband may do.”

  “She did?” Remembering the way the disgusting old Councilor’s eyes had been crawling all over her body from the moment she began to develop womanly attributes, Dani didn’t doubt the truth of her mother’s accusations for an instant. “So that old bastard tried to rape her and she went to the throne room to complain to my father?” she asked.

  “Well, essentially, yes, my sweet,” Yana said reluctantly.

  “And did my father believe her? Or did he brush her off as a hysterical female who didn’t know what she was talking about?” Dani asked bitterly.

  “I don’t know if he believed her or not,” Yana said. “For the Councilor came up and started denying her claims and saying she was lying. It was then, as I heard it from those in the throne room who saw the whole thing, that your mother pulled out the sud-stab.”

  “She did?” Dani fingered the weapon in her pocket. She could imagine her mother—who had looked much like Dani herself—drawing the weapon and rounding on the lecherous old bastard. “What happened then?” she asked.

  “Ahhh…” Yana mourned softly. “My poor sweet pet…that was when everything went wrong. For you see, the Monarch, may he live forever, came down from his golden throne to try and stop his favorite wife from her wild actions. People who were in the throne room say that Councilor Tornk shoved her and there was a scuffle and then…”

  “Then what?” Dani asked breathlessly.

  “Why the sud-stab found your Royal father’s flesh somehow.” Yana’s voice was a cracked whisper of horror. “And you know an attempt on the Monarch’s life carries an immediate death sentence.”

  “But if it was an accident—”

  “Her blade drew the Royal blood,” Yana said flatly. “There can be no excuse for that—only death.”

  “But…but all this can’t be true,” Dani whispered. But suddenly she thought of the long scar—more of a scratch—on her father’s arm which was visible when he wore his sleeveless summer robes. It showed up very white against his indigo skin—she remembered wondering how he had gotten it.

  “It is true, my Princess,” Yana said sadly. “And as her blade had drawn your father’s blood, he had no choice but to declare her an assassin and condemn her to death.”

  “My…my father?” Dani’s voice was a ragged, hurt whisper. “My father killed my mother?”

  “Oh my sweet, I didn’t want you to ever know,” Yana whispered. “She was my favorite and you were so like her and I knew how you would grieve without her…”

  “How?” Dani made herself speak coldly, not giving in to the emotion she felt. “How, Yana? How did he kill her?”

  “My sweet, you don’t really want to know.”

  “I do!” Dani insisted. “I do, Yana—I must know. Tell me now!”

  “Ah me, ah me…” The old woman sounded as though she might be crying now. “That very night, at Councilor Tornk’s insistence—since he also had been threatened and wronged by your mother—they took her out beyond the palace gates to the rock pit…”

  “They stoned her?” Dani knew of few worse deaths. Such a punishment was usually reserved for adulterous females who cheated on their husbands.

  “They did,” Yana whispered. “All that night I held you and rocked you, singing in your ears lest you hear it.”

  Thinking back, Dani did recall such a night, not long before she had been told the sad (and now apparently untrue) details of her mother’s sudden death. But after that, Yana had seemed to prefer Lavi and there had been no more singing and rocking ever again.

  Maybe she couldn’t bear to be near me because I reminded her of my mother, Dani thought, her