Chapter Forty-One
The iron shackles on my feet dig into my skin, leaving anklets of dried blood. I’ve been back in this cell for a while, chained once again to the King’s walls.
Black put me back in here, unaware that I know he’s the King.
A switch that had to be made years ago, because his own men don’t know. They
protect the man masquerading as King, and not the King himself.
Black - the real King - leads the Blackfeet because that
is his true desire. It’s the perfect ruse. He gets to make up whatever he
wants, under guise of obeying orders, when really he’s ruling the Kingdom.
A wave of nausea washes over me and I stare at the iron
bars, willing them into focus. It’s been a long time, days maybe. No plate of
food has come. No water.
I’m going to die here, aren’t I?
I hug my knees to my chest.
I’ll be there soon, Mama. Then it can all be over. And
that’s all right.
Footsteps echo down the hall, and I meet Black’s stare as
he lets himself in my cell. He leaves the door open and stands in front of me.
Words spring to life in my mind. Chancellor. Black. King.
If I die, I’ll die with as much truth as I can. From now
on, I’ll call him what he is.
The King bends down and his grin eases up slow and steady to his face, like blood spilling out of a body. He steps aside and two Blackfeet enter, dragging a person between them.
Ward.
I push against the wall and stand. They have Ward. His face is bloodied and bruised. One eye is swollen shut. He looks at me with the other one. His face is tight, his features clenched in fiery determination. “Don’t do it, Gretta.”
“Go ahead,” the King says. “Save him.”
The King grabs my right arm and pulls it. It snaps the tension of the other shackle, jerking my wrist. Pain sings through me and I cry out.
The King pulls a knife from his side. The blade touches my skin, light like a kiss. My breaths are trapped inside me and my arm shakes in his hand. The blade hovers over the first of my three marks. The King looks at me, his eyes dark. Then he smiles and presses the knife into my skin.
Piercing pain reverberates down my arm, but he doesn’t stop. He traces the first line with the tip of the knife, and blood seeps up where the black line is. He takes the knife away and grins again before he starts on the second line. The blade doesn’t go deep, but I can’t keep from yelling.
Ward pulls against his chains, but a Blackfeet drives his fist into Ward’s back, rendering him silent. When the King raises the blade from the end of the second line, I pull my arm with all my might. He tightens his grasp and, with the patience only a mad man possesses, draws a line of blood down the third mark. Pain explodes through my arm, wave after wave of it. I bite down on the inside of my cheek, harder and harder until the pain of it blends with the terrible piercing in my arm.
When the King is done, he squeezes my arm so tight I wonder if it won’t break. Blood pools up on my arm and the pain takes over. Stars dance in my vision.
“Oh Gretta,” he says. “Your three saves are all used up. You can’t save him.”
My entire body shakes as fear wraps a noose around my heart.
The King’s eyes pierce mine. “But I can.”
####
"Don’t do it, Gretta! Don’t do what he wants!”
His voice echoes down the hallway as they drag him away.
I collapse to the stone floor.
It all comes rushing
back. Like a gale force wind.
####
The Blackfeet came out of nowhere that day. Later I would find out another Lyran gave us up. She wrote our discovery so her child wouldn’t die.
A neighbor ran over, screaming that the Blackfeet were coming. My mother hid Thomas and Lucas in the tiny cellar. She pushed the baby in my arms. “Run, Gretta.”
So I did.
The ground rumbled underneath my feet with the sound of horses coming fast. I ran into the corn field and let the stalks and leaves cover me as I watched.
I knew they’d come to kill her. Or take her.
They did neither.
Instead they dismounted. Only a half dozen or so but to me they looked like an entire army. Prisoners were with them - three of them - two women and a little girl. The Blackfeet pulled all three from their horses and threw them onto the ground.
They didn’t kill my mother. Or take her captive. Instead they threw paper and a pen at her and told her to write. I couldn’t hear what it was they wanted, but I knew from the way she clenched her mouth shut that it wasn’t good.
She refused at first. They beat her and hurt her. Still she would not write.
Then they heard Lucas crying in the cellar.
I watched as they held a knife to his little body. My mother screamed. Over and over she begged them. But these men weren’t just guards. They were Blackfeet. Content to kill.
My mother picked up a pen but didn’t move it over the paper.
That’s when they cut Lucas’ hand off.
His screams mingled with my mother’s. Blood poured out of his arm and my mother’s hand flew across the paper. And didn’t stop.
The Blackfeet spoke - I couldn’t hear their words. But the prisoners they had started screaming. Convulsing.
That’s what my mother wrote.
Their torture.
An hour later the screams of all of them were so ingrained in my head I knew I’d never forget them. I held Ashtin to my chest and rocked her back and forth. She slept through it all, thank the Saints.
When the screams of the little girl grew too much, my mother stopped writing.
They cut off Lucas’ other hand.
I stood then and raced deep into the corn field. Faster and faster I flew, Ashtin’s body heavy in my arms and the screams echoing behind me. I ran to the next farm house. No one was there. Everyone else had run when the Blackfeet first showed up. I put Ashtin down on the bed and tore through the house looking for paper.
A book of prayers was in a drawer by the bed. I took it out and pulled the pen from its hidden place in my shift. “Always have it with you,” my mother had taught me.
I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and sliced my leg, using the blood from my own body as ink. I scribbled as fast as I could. Then threw the paper in the kitchen fire, grabbed Ashtin, and ran back home.
There was no screaming. Just an eerie silence. No horses were in the yard, only torn up dirt where they had continued up the road.
I walked to my house until I came to my mother’s body, blood spilled around it and Lucas’ tiny body in her arms. Thomas lay a few feet from her.
The prisoner’s bodies lay on the ground. All three of them.
My words had worked. I remembered then to look down at my arm. No marks on my right. But on my left, three dark marks sifted up to the surface of my skin.
Three deaths.
That’s what I had written.
Ever since that day I have wakened ridden with guilt that I killed them.
But now I know.
In giving them death, I was giving them mercy.
And I wish there was someone out there who would write such a fate for me.
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