“I don’”—he choked, with sputtering difficulty—“I don’ understand ye.”
“Return to your master,” she said. “Tell them I wish to be left alone. Tell them to consider this a warning.”
She then dropped the man to the ground, where he fell badly and twisted an ankle. He cried out, wheezing as he struggled upright.
“Get out of my sight,” said Alizeh softly. “Before I change my mind.”
“Yes, miss, r-right away, miss.” The brute hobbled away then, as quickly as his bad leg would allow.
Only when he’d disappeared from view did Alizeh finally exhale. She looked around her, at the bodies littering the street. She sighed.
Alizeh did not enjoy killing people.
She did not take lightly the death of any living being, for not only was it a difficult and exhausting business, but it left her tremendously sad. Alizeh had tried, over the years, only to injure, never to kill. She’d tried over and over to negotiate. She tried always to be merciful.
They laughed in her face every time.
Alizeh had learned the hard way that an unprotected woman of small stature and low station would never be treated with respect by her enemies. They thought her stupid and incapable; they saw only weakness in her for being kind.
It never occurred to most people that Alizeh’s compassionate spirit was wrought not from a frail na?veté, but from a ferocious pain. She did not seek to steep in her nightmares. She sought instead, every day, to outgrow them. And yet never once had her offers of mercy been accepted. Never once had others set aside their darkness long enough to allow Alizeh a reprieve from her own.
What choice was she left, then?
With a heavy heart, she pulled free her sewing scissors from the ruin of a man’s chest, wiping the blades clean on his coat before tucking them into her bag. She searched the cobblestone for her embroidery needle, then pulled each of her pins free from yet another dead man’s throat, taking care to clean each needle before putting it away.
Would she have to move again? she wondered. Would she have to rebuild again?
So soon?
She sighed once more, taking a moment to adjust her skirts before picking up her carpet bag, snapping it closed.
Alizeh was so tired she couldn’t imagine walking the short rest of the way home, and yet—
There lay the road, and below her, two feet.
She did not possess wings, nor did she own a carriage or a horse. She’d not enough money for a hackney, and no one would be along to carry her.
As always, the girl would have to carry herself.
One foot in front of the other, one step at a time. She would remain focused until she got back to Baz House. She still had to bank the kitchen fire, but she would manage it. She would manage it all, somehow. Perhaps only then would she finally be able t—
She gasped.
A single prick of light flashed before her eyes, there and gone again.
Alizeh blinked, slowly. Her eyes were dry, in desperate need of rest. Heavens, but she was too tired for this.
“I demand you show yourself,” she said, frustrated. “I’ve had quite enough of this game. Show yourself or let me get on. I beg you.”
At that, a figure suddenly materialized. It was a young man in silhouette—Alizeh could not discern his face—and he fell suddenly on one knee before her.
“Your Majesty,” he said softly.
Twenty-Two
WAS HE GOING MAD? KAMRAN wondered.
Who on earth would be pounding at his door—at this hour? He’d have known, surely, if the palace were under siege, would he not? Surely there’d have been more madness, more commotion? He’d seen nothing amiss from his window, through which he’d been staring just moments ago.
Still, Kamran hastily dressed himself, and was tugging on his boots when the pounding grew suddenly louder. He knew it an indulgence, but he drew his sword belt around his waist anyway, for it was a habit so fully embedded it could not be spared even then.
The prince finally went to the door, having hardly opened it before he went suddenly blind. Someone had thrown a sack over his head while another grabbed his arms, twisting them painfully behind his back.
Kamran cried out, shock and confusion rendering him briefly paralyzed before he remembered himself and knocked his head back hard enough to break the nose of the monstrous figure restraining him. The man roared with anger but did not loosen his hold quite enough, and worse: the second assailant swiftly tightened the hood around Kamran’s neck, choking him.
The prince gasped for breath and promptly tasted leather; someone had shoved a stone into his mouth from the outside of the hood, lashing it in place with a strip of material now being tied around his skull. Kamran tried to shout, to spit it out, but managed only muffled sounds of protest. He threw his body around instead, thrashing as best he could, but both men held him securely, one torturing his arms into an unnatural position while the other bound the prince’s hands together.