The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(65)

“Lower your voice,” her mother hissed. “You think the guards outside the cell can’t hear? And what about him?” She gestured at the prisoner still cowering on the floor at their feet.

“You said she was just a dumb little girl,” Set continued. He spoke more softly now, but it only seemed to intensify the malevolent sting of his words. “That she had no friends. And yet she has allies as far as Ansana!”

“This means nothing,” her mother said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Who is this man? A peasant. She likely coerced or tricked him into housing her.”

Set fixed his gaze back on the prisoner. “Is that what happened, old man?” he demanded. When the prisoner did not respond immediately, Set seized a handful of his beard and yanked him to his feet. The man swayed, clearly unsteady, kept upright only by the force of Set’s grip. “Who are you?” Set screamed in his face, slamming him against the wall of the cell.

Min jumped back, her whole body running cold.

The old man winced at the flecks of spit spraying his face. “If it p-please Your Majesty, your Emperorship, I am an ap-apothecarist. Nothing more.” He turned his face to the side, like a nervous dog, mouth wet and trembling.

“An apothecarist, are you? A healer?” Set released his hold on the prisoner abruptly, sending him crumpling to the floor. “You’re going to need a very, very good healer when I’m done with you.”

Then her cousin drew back his handsomely booted foot and kicked the man in the ribs. Once, twice—the man yelped each time Set made contact, but the blows came faster, wild, uncontrolled, until his voice became a continuous shriek, and then a low moan.

Stop! Please stop! Min thought, but she wasn’t sure if she meant it for Set or for the prisoner. Her heart swelled, squeezing the air from her lungs. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. All she could do was stand there, pummeled by the man’s wail. And beneath it the frantic, panted demands of her cousin.

“Where is she? Where is Lu? Where is the little bitch? Who else are you working with?”

It could only have been a few minutes, but it felt like hours later when her cousin stilled, breathing raggedly. Min stared at his heaving back and for the first time prayed he wouldn’t turn around and look her way.

He thrust a palm against the wall, leaning heavily against it. A ring of sweat soaked the neck of his robes. The old man curled in on himself like burning paper. The acrid stink of fresh urine filled the cell.

Her mother drew back in revulsion. “He’s soiled himself.”

“Good,” snarled Set. “That means he’s afraid. As he should be.”

“I don’t know anything!” wailed the old man.

“If you’re going to kill him,” her mother said, “call the guards in to do it. This is a waste of our time.”

“I won’t kill him yet,” Set said. “Not until I’ve wrung out every drop of information he has to give.”

He delivered a final, disgusted kick to the man’s side, but his aim was skewed by exhaustion; the toe of his boot merely glanced off the prisoner’s ribs and hit the stone wall. He hopped back, cursing.

“This old peasant dog here couldn’t have been working alone,” he said. “He must have connections in the court.”

“I’m telling you, Lu is relying on dumb luck,” insisted her mother. “It will soon run out. I have spies everywhere—they would have told me if she’d begun covertly planning anything.”

“Your spies are either useless or lying to you, Aunt Rinyi!” snapped Set. He turned away then, heading for the door of the cell. “I will get to the bottom of who can be trusted and who knows Lu’s plans. And when we find her, I’ll kill Lu with my own bare hands.”

The cell door slammed hard behind him. For a long moment, her mother stared at it, as though contemplating the space where Set had stood. Then, without turning, she spoke.

“Omair,” she mused, her voice low, but clear. Intentional. Both Min and the prisoner looked up sharply, as though her words were a lead tugging at their necks. “An unusual name. Sounds southern.”

She turned back to where the prisoner remained crouched amid the dirty rushes scattering the floor. “Though, I suppose that’s what you were hoping for, weren’t you? Much less provincial than Ohn, I’ll grant you that.”

It was as though the name was a spell her mother had recited. The old man slowly rose from his defeated crouch. He winced, leaning his back against the wall, the pain still clear on his face.

But as Min watched, he slowed his breath, closed his eyes. She felt it—the way she could feel her own heart beating or a breeze against her skin. His energy leveled, drawing the pain from his side, his mouth, shifting it to a sustaining equilibrium. The change came slow and subtle, the way a new flower unfolds. When he opened his eyes, the weight of a dozen years seemed to slip from his shoulders. Gone was the slack, cowed expression—the mask of a frightened peasant replaced with the canny certainty of a man no longer out of his element looking royalty in the face.

“I thought perhaps you’d forgotten me,” said this new man.

“How could I?” Her mother’s tone was bitter. She did not appear to notice the man’s quiet metamorphosis. “Pissing yourself. That was a nice touch. But, no. I didn’t forget. Do you know how many years I spent looking for you? How much I paid, to how many mercenaries—all for empty promises of your swift, discreet death? You were my one loose thread.”