Читать книгу Queen of Hearts Complete Collection: Queen of Hearts; Blood of Wonderland; War of the Cards - Colleen Oakes, Colleen Oakes - Страница 27

It was hard to make out exactly what they were seeing in the shadowy light. Faina’s cell was dark, but once Dinah’s eyes adjusted, she could make out a stone slab for sleeping, a chamber pot, and a threadbare rug on the floor. From there, Dinah’s eyes traveled up the wall to Faina Baker’s face, all while fighting the horror rising up inside of her.

Faina was pressed against the wall, held tight by leather bonds that looped over her abdomen and chest. She writhed against them, her feet slipping in the black fluid that dripped down from above. Thin tendrils of black roots snaked out of the wall and into Faina Baker’s open mouth, nose, and ears. All down her body, the black roots circled and twisted, moving slowly, leaving a thin black film as they slithered inch by inch. Dinah gripped Wardley’s arm as a tendril crawled its way up Faina’s face.

Faina’s eyes were open, frozen in panic; a low moan came out of her mouth filled with black roots. Cray sauntered up to her and unhooked the leather straps from her torso, narrowly avoiding the roots that reached ever so slightly for his hand.

Wardley’s mouth twisted with anger. “What are you doing to her? How can you allow this? What is …?” He stepped forward, forgetting himself. Dinah could see he was unhinged, his hand on his sword hilt. Forgetting chivalry and honor was not an easy thing. Dinah yanked backward on her chain, and he remembered where he was. Cray untethered Faina, and she slouched forward. The roots slithered back from her body, retreating from her nose, mouth, and ears with a revolting sucking sound. Finally, the roots released, and Faina Baker crumpled like a rag doll onto the dirty floor.

“You strap her to the tower? That’s the torture for high treason?”

Cray gave a filthy, toothless grin. “Aye. What could be worse than being strapped to the very source of the poison that corrupts the Towers? The roots take to the skin, and as you can tell, they love an opening. Eventually the poison seeps directly into the brain. It gives hallucinations and fevers, and some say the ability to see beyond the towers. The future and the past, and everything in between. The roots make you forget who you are, make you forget that you are human. What else could we do to these criminals that is worse than losing who they are?”

He laughed, and Dinah imagined silencing him with the flat of her palm. There was a faint outline left on the wall where Faina had been strapped, a root twisting itself back into place. An oily mist condensed in the head area.

“Make it quick,” snapped Cray.

Dinah stepped forward. Faina Baker was a shred of a woman. Her arms were as thin as sticks, and thick gray veins ran the length of them. The roots left black dirt behind where they had been clinging to her face and torso, as if she had been burned. What once had been lovely blue eyes were now sunken into two dark holes that stared out of a gaunt face.

“My gods,” muttered Wardley to Cray. “How can you live with yourself?”

Faina Baker was a walking skeleton. Her once-honeyed yellow hair was streaked with white, her lips dark with blood and bite marks. Faina Baker looked up at Dinah from the ground, a string of drool sneaking out of her mouth and pooling on the ground. She began singing in an eerily beautiful voice—high and lovely, her tears mingling with her warbling vibrato.

“You have a few minutes, that’s all.” Cray walked to the cell door.

Wardley gave Dinah a nudge forward as Cray slammed the cell door shut behind them. I could be stuck in here forever, thought Dinah, with a rush of panic. I should never have come. She knelt before Faina in the muck. The woman lay still on the ground, her fingernails tracing broken hearts in the mud.

“Hello, Faina, my name is Dinah. I don’t believe we’ve met before, but somehow I think you have information for me.”

Faina reached out and grazed her blackened fingers down Dinah’s face, leaving foul trails. Her vacant eyes looked through Dinah. “I know you,” she whispered. “The queen, the queen. You aren’t the queen, not yet. Keep your head.”

“I am. I received a note, to come here, to find you, to talk to you. Who are you?”

Faina blinked a few times and looked directly at Dinah. A moment of clarity lit up her eyes as the black marks left by the roots faded into her skin. Her arm reached out and clutched Dinah’s fingers roughly. “She’s not who you think she is, she is a good girl, be merciful, please. The one you call the duchess …”

Vittiore? Dinah’s heart skipped a beat. This was about Vittiore?

“Are you talking about Vittiore?”

“He came in the night. With the devil steed and many men. He was looking for something, looking for the yellow and the blue, looking for something he would never have again, something he had only once.” Her voice lifted in a song. “Blond, blond like the sun on the shore she was …” Her eyes widened. “The wrong crown waits for her. The strings will tighten around her arms, and she will dance, oh she will dance for her head, strings around her wrists like roots. Curls in blood, curls in blood …”

The woman was making no sense. It reminded Dinah of every conversation she had ever had with Charles. She took Faina’s hand in her own. “Please try not to speak in riddles. I need you to remember what you know.”

Faina blinked. “Have you seen my baby? She was here, once, inside of me. Now there is nothing but the black, the roots. They show me things. I know things. She will find her death under the heart, trampled under the devil steed, just like me.”

“She’s mad!” hissed Wardley.

Faina raised her head to look at Wardley and licked her lips. “You must have been mad,” she said, “or you would not have come here.”

Dinah pulled Faina to her feet and rested her on the stone platform that served as her bed. “What do you know? I need you to tell me. Think. How did you get here?”

Faina’s lower lip trembled and black tears that looked like ink began rolling down her face. “We did nothing but serve Wonderland, all our lives. Catching clams and oysters for the king’s pleasure and table. I have seen the beauty of a fiery sunset over the Western Sea, of shells in my baby’s hand. And then it was all gone, in the flash of a silver blade. All because of you. The queen’s cold bed was for naught, but she will, oh yes, she will rise like the sun, my own little sun … she will possess all that you desire.”

She leaned against Dinah, who held her breath against the wave of nausea that passed through her. Faina smelled like nothing she could ever describe—the smell of the tower itself, an ancient evil, filth, and death.

“Please, Your Highness! Please don’t let them tie me to the tree. The root shows me things, horrible things, beautiful things …” She started babbling incoherently.

“That’s Yurkei,” hissed Wardley. “She’s speaking Yurkei!”

Dinah listened closely, but all her language lessons were useless. The Yurkei that Faina was speaking was a strange blend of sounds and random words. Faina’s body gave a jerk, and then another. Dinah held Faina’s head gently with her hands as she thrashed in the darkness.

“I know,” she murmured. “I know it hurts. I know it feels horrible to not have control.”

She flashed to Charles, how his mind was a wild, unknowable thing, always seeing but never sharing, straining but always failing to make a human connection. With a loud scream, Faina’s seizure ended and she laid her head on Dinah’s lap. Her bright blue eyes shone with a new clarity, her voice unwavering. The madness had retreated. “You have to go,” she whispered. “Straddle the devil. And when the time comes, do not open the marked door. Please!” She grabbed Dinah’s arm, long nails ripping into the princess’s pale skin. “Do not heed the blood of secrets.”

“What do you mean?” Dinah heard the faint sound of marching from down below. The Clubs were changing their watch.

“It’s time to leave, right now. We have to go!” insisted Wardley. “We will not be so lucky with the night Clubs coming in.”

Dinah leaped up. “We can’t leave her here like this—they’ll bind her to the tower again!”

“What did you think went on in the Towers? Tea and tarts? That isn’t our choice to make! She is a prisoner here, and you are the princess. We need to leave. You won’t get any more information from her!”

He was right. Faina was clawing her way toward the back of the cell. Wardley reached into his baldric and pulled out a thin dagger, barely the width of a finger. He placed it on the ground and kicked it across the floor toward Faina’s blackened hand.

“What are you doing?” demanded Dinah.

“A kindness,” snapped Wardley. He yanked Dinah to her feet. She tore away from him and knelt beside Faina, covering her with her cloak.

“I’ll come back for you, I will,” she insisted.

Faina closed her eyes. “Not this time. There will be a bloody end for Faina, no baby at her breast.” She looked up at Dinah, a peaceful contentment passing over her features. “Oh, my poor queen. Your heart will sway your hand.”

“Cray!” Wardley shouted, banging his sword against the lock. “Open this cell at once.”

Cray trotted out of the darkness and unlocked it with a smile. “Did you have your way with her? She was a pretty one when she came in, not so much now that the tree has taken her for itself …”

Wardley slapped him across the face with an open hand. “A true man never needs to take by force.”

Cray stared at Wardley with awe as he pushed past. “I’ll strap her back up now. C’mon, Faina.”

“Can’t you just leave her alone?” snapped Dinah.

“Nope. We are on orders from the king himself to have her strapped in from sunrise to sunset.” He easily propped Faina against the wall and pulled the leather strap across her chest. Roots began to stir and pulse away from the wall.

“Even I think it’s cruel. The most I’ve ever seen a prisoner strapped in to the tower is an hour a day. And that was for the Gray Turncoat.”

The Gray Turncoat was an assassin sent by the Yurkei. He had come very close to killing the king, but his mortal fault was that he underestimated Cheshire. After his failed attempt at poisoning, he spent a month in the Towers before he lost his head, which was then sent back to the Yurkei on horseback. Cray pinched Faina’s thin cheek between his grubby fingers. “This one must have done something beyond horrible, but that makes sense from what she was saying when she arrived.”

Dinah took a step closer to Cray. “And what was that?” she asked, her voice low.

“It depends on what you can offer me, Your Highness.”

Dinah recoiled as if she had been punched in the chest.

“I may have been raised in the Towers, but I’m no fool.” He looped an arm around her shoulder. “I heard the princess was homely, but I have to say, you aren’t homely at all. I find you quite striking. Look at that strong chin, those dangerous eyes.”

Dinah heard the metallic swish of Wardley drawing his sword. Cray smiled and pointed his finger at Wardley over Dinah’s shoulder. “You will never get out of these towers without me.” He giggled. “Time is of the essence. The evening watch is coming in, and those Clubs are two times more brutal and suspicious. They will see through you in seconds.”

Dinah clutched the amethyst ring in her dress pocket. The stone was the size of a quail egg. She withdrew it slowly.

“I will offer you this if you tell me what Faina said when she arrived, and if you get us out alive. It will also buy your silence. It’s worth about ten years’ wages, or enough to buy a cottage in the village.”

Cray’s eyes lit up, the reflection of the gem flashing over his greedy pupils. “Yes. Yes, I will tell you, and make sure you get out of the Towers in one piece. But we must leave now.”

He read Dinah’s thoughts before she could open her mouth.

“We can’t take her with us. There is no hope for her. The roots have poisoned her mind and body, and she is more of the tree than she is of this world. Besides, all prisoners deserve their just punishment.”

Before Dinah could object, Wardley took her by the elbow and dragged her toward the door. Cray slammed the cell door shut after them, locking it. Dinah glanced sadly back. Faina met her eyes and for a moment she saw a peaceful look of finality pass over her features. Then she gave a whimper of pain and surrendered to the roots twisting their way across her face. A maniacal laugh escaped from her bloody mouth and followed them as they ran. Hot tears splashed down Dinah’s face as she shuffled after Wardley. The chains were still clamped over her wrists, and she struggled to keep her balance while they followed Cray through one dark hall after another.

“What is the quickest way to the Iron Web?”

Cray pointed down two levels. “See that iron poker hanging there? Between those two cells, there is a door to the web.”

Dinah’s feet flew as they sprinted down the platforms, spiraling lower and lower. Prisoners called out from their cells, extending their blackened hands to grab at Dinah. Cray motioned to a tattered rope lying on the ground between two cells. “Follow the rope out to the Iron Web. From there, you’re on your own. I have to return to Faina’s cell before anyone notices I was gone.”

From the corner of her eye, Dinah saw Wardley spin, his black Club cape flashing behind him. In a second, he was behind Cray, his sword pressed across Cray’s pale neck.

“You will tell us what Faina said, or you will die here, and I can assure you, no one will ever investigate how a spineless coward lost all his blood.”

Cray gave a squeak. “She didn’t say much, not much of nothing. It’s mostly madness. When she came in, she was gagged, she was! When we took it out, she would just cry and say, ‘She’ll wear a crown to keep her head! She’ll wear a crown to keep her head!’”

Cray began blubbering loudly. Too loudly. Wardley brought the butt of his sword down against Cray’s temple, and he crumpled to the ground like an empty sack.

“Put the ring in his pocket. This is safer. He’ll never want to tell someone that he was so easily overcome in his own prison or that he was bribed. Coward.” Wardley spat on his face and picked up the end of the rope. Thankfully, Cray had been telling the truth, and the rope led them to a misshapen door that opened to the bright Wonderland sky. Moving as quickly as they dared without attracting attention, Dinah and Wardley navigated their way over the web back to the Murderers’ Tower. Returning to the path they had arrived on required quite a bit of climbing and backtracking; several times they ended up on an iron walkway that led to a different tower, and one time into open sky.

“A trap for escapees,” mumbled Wardley as they slowly backed away from the steep drop that ended on a rocky outcropping just inside the palace gates. “Let’s not go that way again.”

It took an hour, but finally they were able to find the correct path through the maze and make their way to a low door that led into the Murderers’ Tower. The smell once again overpowered Dinah’s senses. But this time, she didn’t have time to retch. They were sprinting now, this time up the spiral, to where the forgotten door led them to the pool of ice. They could hear the marching of Clubs making their way up the spiral behind them. The next shift of Clubs was coming, and if they didn’t hurry, they would have to explain themselves to an entire deck of Cards. Dinah thought of the crown in her bag. She would grab it if she needed it.

“There, there is the door!” shouted Wardley as they flew past cells and rancid chamber pots. A prisoner’s hand grabbed Dinah’s dress through the cell bars, and she was yanked off her feet. She hit the ground hard as the prisoner pulled her toward the cell. Dinah delivered a firm kick to the scarred hand with the heels of her boot. She jerked her dress free as the prisoner began screaming. They were almost to the door when Wardley bucked to a sudden stop and jumped sideways into a tiny slot in the wall, pulling Dinah in after him. This wasn’t a doorway, rather an impossibly narrow storage chamber for clamps and chains. They could both barely fit, and Dinah found herself pressed face-first against the wall with Wardley wrapped around her.

“Yoous,” whispered Wardley into her ear. “He can’t see us, or we will be done for. Don’t even breathe.”

His warning didn’t matter; Dinah couldn’t. A single black root, sensing an open presence, was twisting its way up her torso, her breasts, and then onto her face. Something in the tree paralyzed her, and so she could only watch with horror as the delicate tendril reached her mouth and clawed its way inside, choking her. It sprouted a second root that started pushing into her nostrils. She wanted to cry out to Wardley, but she couldn’t. Dinah was part of the tree now, and she would be forever. Visions rushed through her mind—visions of decapitated heads, white cranes, blue smoke, burning wood, pulsating mushrooms, and bright-red blood. And then she was falling, falling forward, falling into the darkness that was warm and comforting. Wardley’s strong arm caught her as she pitched forward.

“Dinah? Dinah?”

She opened her eyes. She was still in the Towers, still in the slot between cells. Wardley held a broken root in his hand, his sword in the other. They watched as it twisted and writhed before turning into ash. Wardley wiped his hand on his tunic with disgust.

“The tree … ,” she mumbled.

“You leaned against it,” reprimanded Wardley. “You let it touch your skin. What were you thinking?”

Dinah shook her head. The visions were gone, already retreating back into her brain. “Yoous?” she asked as Wardley steadied her.

“He passed. We’re only one level down from where we need to be. Can you walk?”

Dinah inched one foot out in front of her. “I’m fine.” The longing to escape these towers of death was overwhelming. They made it to the same doorway without further trouble, and Dinah marveled at how hidden it was in plain sight, virtually indistinguishable from the roots around it. Their escape hatch waited quietly—its crooked door pouring freezing air into the damp humidity of the tower. Dinah had never seen such a welcome sight. They made their way down the stone teeth, her eyes trained on the skeleton sentry, forever frozen in the ice, forever watching the towers that held him. Dinah let her eyes play over the white holes where his eyes once were, over the gray pieces of skin crusted to the ice. She could feel the terrible vision seeping into her memory, etching its sightless stare there forever.

The thought filled her with terror as they wove their way back under the castle, sliding down the sloping tunnel they had crawled up hours before. She barely remembered the cold and the dark, Wardley leading their way with the glowing pink torch through turn after turn. They silently raced through the Great Hall, finding their way back to the cloak room without a word. It was only when Wardley started pulling off her dress did Dinah blink and realize where they were … and that they were safe.

Her lips trembled. “Wardley, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know …”

“No, you didn’t,” Wardley snapped. “But I tried to tell you. No one can tell you anything, Dinah, not ever, because you’re the princess and you do what you want. You’re not unlike your father that way.”

Dinah gritted her teeth. “That’s not true, is it?”

“Yes. Obviously.” He pulled off his filthy Card’s breastplate and stuffed it into his oversack. “We’re both filthy. Wipe your face and hands.”

He turned away from her, and Dinah knew this conversation was over. She wiped off the dirt, layers thick, on a bright-red cloak toward the back of the room. The red reminded her of Faina’s bloodstained mouth, and of her cryptic words, She’ll wear the crown to keep her head. Pity and shame ran through her, so strong it made her tremble as she pulled on her expensive silk gown and put on her jeweled shoes, completely lost in her thoughts. The Towers were a stain on Wonderland, a bloodstain that spread out from their terrible black roots, and through the centuries the Royal Line of Hearts had used them for evil.

As she raised her hands to put her red crown back on her head, she felt her first recognition of duty. To be the queen meant to protect her subjects, even if it was from the practices of the royal family themselves. The Towers were Wonderland’s terrible secret, a monstrosity for the entire kingdom to see and never understand. And when she was queen, she would tear them down, root by sickly root.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Wardley, his brown hair standing out in all directions, a streak of earth lingering on his cheek. Dinah lowered her head before him. “Forgive me for asking this of you. I didn’t truly understand what I was asking.” She licked her finger and brushed it lightly against his face, erasing the dirt from his strong cheekbone. “I will never forget what I saw today.”

Wardley shook his head. “All my life I heard rumors and stories about them, but none were as terrible as—” He paused, and Dinah saw his eyes fill with tears. “We should have taken her … Faina.”

“We couldn’t,” she replied simply. “We wouldn’t have made it out in time, and they would have known we were there.” She was learning quickly that what was right and what must happen weren’t always the same thing. Dinah heard a quiet shuffling outside the door—the Cards were obviously curious about the suspected passion going on inside the cloak room.

“It’s time,” she said.

“You don’t have the ring anymore,” said Wardley. Dinah turned the handle to the cloak room door, aware that she would never again be the naive girl who entered it.

Her eyes were dark when she turned around. “I’ll take care of it. I have a sapphire brooch twice its size in my chambers.” Her face glowed with determination. Wardley’s breath was loud behind her as the door opened, and she saw a mangled grin stretch the corners of Roxs’s face.

“Enjoyed yourselves, did ya?”

Dinah cleared her throat, and his smile quickly disappeared.