The King's Blood(125)

“Yes, this is the man,” Capsen Gostermak said, shaking his head sadly. “Good morning, Captain Wester. I’m sorry that we have to meet again under these unpleasant circumstances.”

Even with his teeth, his smile managed to seem world-weary and amused. So at least his gaoler was a sophisticate. “There was supposed to be payment sent with him,” Capsen said.

“Ah, right,” the carter said. “Forgot.”

“Certain you did.”

Marcus heard a purse change hands, and then the pair of them hauled him out of the cart and marched him through the darkness, carrying him like a slaughtered pig. His shoulders lit up with pain and whatever he’d pulled out of place in his wrist snapped back. It hurt just as much going the other way. The dovecote was rough and unfinished stone, so when they leaned him against the wall, Capsen fumbling with a wide iron key, Marcus was able to scrape his cheek against it and dislodge the gag. He spat the wet, bloody cloth to the ground.

“I’ll double it,” he said. “Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it.”

Capsen chuckled ruefully.

“You’re already paying me quite handsomely, Captain,” he said. “I’m not a greedy man.”

The interior was less than twenty feet across. The doves fluttered, asking wordless questions with their coos. Capsen and the carter hauled him across to a wide iron bar set diagonally across a corner, the ends of the bar deep in each wall. The leather strap was chained to it, and Marcus left to kneel on the flagstone floor. The carter trundled away, and Capsen drew a thin, wicked knife. The doves fluttered as if concerned on Marcus’s behalf.

“I have some experience with this,” Capsen said, slicing through the ropes that bound Marcus’s legs. “Turn around. Thank you. There are two ways that this can go, and I will be paid the same in either case. You can have the admittedly limited freedom of the chain there.”

“Five feet of freedom,” Marcus growled.

“It’s a relative term, granted,” Capsen said, sawing through the ropes on Marcus’s wrists. “Or else I have a set of old manacles. They chafe and they were meant for Cinnae, so they’d likely be a bit tight on you. But if you insist, we can use them.”

“I’ll kill you,” Marcus said.

“And I’m not much of a fighter,” Capsen said. “So if you tried, I would have to act definitively. I don’t really know enough to manage simple restraint against someone as experienced as yourself. Mealtimes are first thing in the morning, a snack at midday, and another full meal just before sundown. I’ll empty the night pot once a day. The door will be locked from the outside always, and you’re too large to fit through the doves’ holes. If you make things unpleasant for me, I will make things unpleasant for you.”

“More unpleasant than being chained to the wall of a dovecote, you mean?”

“Unpleasant’s another relative term,” Capsen said. His smile seemed genuine.

“Why are you doing this?”

“I raise doves and write poems. Something has to pay the taxman.”

He stood back, and Marcus staggered to his feet. Everything from his knees down was numb as the dead.

“I’ll let you try to escape for a while if you’d like,” Capsen said. “Breakfast will be in an hour or so.”

For the next week, Marcus tried everything he could think of. He tried to twist out of the leather restraints. He tried to find how the chain was fastened, reaching behind himself until his shoulders and elbows ached. He ran from the wall, putting his full force behind each charge in hopes of breaking something loose, and then tried everything he’d done before again. One day he tried shouting for help. On the sixth day, he remembered something he’d heard about twisting rope out of cord, and turned himself head over foot, winding the chain tighter until it was a single, solid thing four times as thick as the original restraint and unable to move further. He used all his strength to force it on, to crack one link loose.

“Ooh,” Capsen said when he brought the evening meal that day. “Haven’t seen that one before. You’re very clever.”

“Thank you,” Marcus grunted. Unwinding himself took a long time, and when he had enough slack in the chain, his dinner was cold.

As the second week of his captivity began, Marcus found his anger and outrage fading. The world narrowed to a small, insoluble problem. It consumed him. Long after he’d convinced himself that the mechanism was inescapable, he kept trying, doing all the things he’d done before, expecting them to be the same as they had been, but open for a pleasant surprise. No matter what happened next, his first job was to escape.