Chapter 178: The Price of Freedom

Chapter 178: Chapter 178: The Price of Freedom

On the night before the Duke of Draevenor left for the north, the gaol beneath the magistrate’s court was very quiet.

Xanther had stopped shouting hours ago.

Nobody had come when he called for his cousin.

Nobody had come when he called for his mother.

In the end, he simply sat on the damp straw and listened to the water dripping somewhere in the dark.

When the key finally turned in the lock, he scrambled to his feet.

"Have they sent for me? Is it—"

He stopped.

The watchman who had locked him in that afternoon stood in the doorway with a lantern. He did not look at Xanther. He simply stepped aside.

Two men came in.

Xanther recognised them at once. He had seen them at the Velvet Lantern, and at the side gate of Draevenor Manor.

"Master Asheford," the first man said pleasantly. "We hear you came into a great deal of gold today."

Xanther backed against the wall. "It was confiscated. You know it was. As soon as I’m out, I’ll—"

"As soon as you’re out?" The man laughed. "And when might that be?"

He did not wait for an answer.

The first blow drove the breath from Xanther’s lungs.

The second knocked him to the floor. After that, he stopped counting.

He curled up on the straw with his arms over his head and screamed for the watchman, who did not come.

At some point, he tried to crawl towards the door.

A boot caught him in the ribs and sent him sprawling backwards. He struck the edge of the stone ledge that served as a bed, hard, square across the small of his back.

Something cracked.

Pain flared, white and blinding. Then the next blow landed, and the next, and he could no longer tell one hurt from another.

At last, the two men stepped back, breathing hard.

"That’s a taste," the first man said, wiping his knuckles on his coat. "Pay what you owe, and we won’t need to come back."

The door clanged shut behind them.

Xanther lay where he had fallen, gasping.

Everything hurt. His face, his ribs, his arms.

When had a young noble like him ever been made to endure such indignity? Once he got out, he would make every one of them pay for daring to lay a hand on him.

He tried to drag himself up. That was when he realised something was wrong.

He could not feel his legs.

He told them to move. They did not.

He pressed a hand against his thigh. He could see his fingers digging into the cloth, but his leg felt nothing at all.

Panic seized him by the throat.

"Help!" He pounded his fist against the floor. "Somebody help me! Get a physician! I need a physician! Get me a damned physician, or you’ll regret it! HELP!"

Nobody came.

He did not know how much time had passed before he heard the wheels.

The door opened. Bran hung a lantern on the hook on the wall and stepped aside, and Cassiel wheeled himself into the cell.

The cold of the night still clung to his coat.

Xanther dragged himself up onto his elbows, his legs trailing uselessly behind him.

"Cassiel." The name came out as a sob. "Look what they did to me. I can’t feel my legs. You have to get me out of here. Tell them it’s a mistake."

Cassiel’s gaze moved to Xanther’s legs, lingered there for a moment, then returned to his face. Xanther could not read his expression at all.

"Is it a mistake?"

"I’m not a traitor! I sold the pendant, that’s all. I sold it to an old woman because I needed the money. I never saw those maps in my life!"

Cassiel simply looked at him.

"I might believe you," he said evenly. "The magistrate does not. And since the charge is treason, His Majesty will certainly order a full investigation. By the time it is finished, you may have spent a year in this cell. Perhaps longer. So I have come to offer you a different solution."

Hope flared so violently in Xanther’s chest that it hurt.

"Anything, Cassiel. Anything."

"I have spoken to the magistrate. He is willing to deal with this quietly. The charge will be reduced. You will be a fool who sold an heirloom of the Dowager Queen’s family to a stranger without asking who she was. Not a traitor. Only a fool."

Xanther nodded frantically.

"In return, you will marry Odette Penhale."

Xanther went still.

"Sir Hollis’s daughter," Cassiel said, as calmly as if he were discussing the weather. "The girl who is carrying your child."

"I—"

"Then you will leave Caelvyr for Greywater. There is a seventh-rank official’s post waiting for you at the river toll house. Your mother will accompany you, and neither of you will return to the capital unless you are summoned."

His voice did not rise, but the chill in it could cut through bone. "And if you ever come within sight of my wife again, I will not be offering you a choice."

Greywater lay a fortnight’s journey west, at the edge of the marshes, where nothing ever happened.

"Cassiel, can’t you do something? Is there no other way?"

"No," Cassiel said. "Either you stay here and the magistrate takes his time, or you accept what I am offering and leave this place. I will only ask once. If you are unwilling, we can forget I ever came."

Xanther panicked.

"I’ll do it," he said hoarsely. "I’ll do whatever you say. Just get me out of here."

Cassiel turned his chair towards the door.

"Good choice. Your father died so that I could live. This is the last thing I owe him."

"Please," Xanther whispered. "Could you at least send a physician? I can’t feel my legs."

Cassiel did not answer the question.

"Bran will see to the rest," was all he said.

The wheels rolled away down the corridor.

Xanther looked down at his own legs.

Not so long ago, he had stood over his cousin’s sickbed and called him useless.

Now he could not even sit up on his own.

Xanther lay on the straw and wept.

Five days after the Duke left for the north, Xanther Asheford left the city gaol on a litter.

Elysia heard it from Miriam, who had heard it from half of Cloudmere Lane.

"The charge was reduced, Your Grace," Miriam whispered, setting down the tea tray. "Not treason after all. Only selling a nobility pendant to some foreigner. And this morning, he was married in the prison chapel to Sir Hollis Penhale’s daughter. They carried him in on a litter and out again the same way."

Elysia set her cup down very carefully.

"And now?"

"He’s being sent to Greywater with Lady Melissa. The carriages are already waiting at Rose Hall."

She had wanted Xanther out of Draevenor, and his mother with him. She had expected it to take months. Instead, it had been settled in less than a week.

She could see Cassiel’s hand in it as clear as day.

By the time Elysia reached Rose Hall, the courtyard was full of trunks.

Through the open door of the first carriage, she glimpsed a figure propped up against cushions, a blanket over his legs. A young woman in a plain travelling cloak sat very straight beside him.

She did not look frightened.

Melissa stood beside the courtyard entrance. She seemed to have aged ten years in five days.

"Have you come to see us off, Your Grace?"

There was no sneer in it. Only exhaustion.

"Those Velvet Lantern brutes broke him. He’ll never walk again. And Cassiel calls this mercy."

Elysia said nothing.

She had never imagined this.

Yet when she remembered what he had meant to do the night he slipped into the Duke’s courtyard, and what he had most likely done to other girls before, she found she could not pity him at all.

"Lillian," Melissa said sharply. "Get in the carriage."

Lillian stood on the steps of Rose Hall. She did not move.

"I’m not coming, Mother."

Melissa stared at her.

"Father is buried at Oren Lake," Lillian said. Her voice shook, but she did not look away. "Someone should stay near him."

"Lillian will stay at Draevenor," Elysia said quietly. "Under my care."

Melissa turned back to Lillian, her lips thin.

"Fine. Do as you please. But don’t come crying to me later."

It was the last of her fight. She climbed into the carriage without another word.

As the first carriage began to move, the young woman inside turned and met Elysia’s eyes. She inclined her head, very slightly.

Elysia had never seen her before. But she had a feeling she knew exactly who had put her in that carriage.

That evening, Elysia sat alone in her study and finally let herself think.

A treason case should have dragged on for weeks. She had counted on that.

Someone should have asked who had taken the room by the river gate.

Someone should have gone to Cloudmere Lane to enquire where the storyteller’s tale had come from.

Someone should have looked closely at those maps and wondered why a foreign agent was carrying charts drawn before the last war.

No one had.

That very morning, a note had come from Aunt Imogen. Three words in her tidy hand.

No one came.

His coat had been so cold that last morning.

She recalled thinking that it felt as if he had just been out.

So he had known all along.

And while she had been so careful to keep her own hand hidden, Cassiel had quietly followed behind her and swept away every trace she left, before anyone could think to look.

He had never said a word.

Elysia pressed a hand to her chest, where something felt dangerously close to longing.

She missed him so badly that it frightened her.

"Come back early," she whispered to the empty room.