Crown of Midnight
Page 31

“Do they know Davis was a mistake?”
“Mistakes happen often enough in Rifthold for us to know that most of them are anything but mistakes.” He ran his hands through his hair. “Please. Just a little more time.”
“I don’t have any to give you. I need more than names, Archer.”
“What about the Crown Prince? And the Captain of the Guard? Perhaps they have the information you need. You’re close with both of them, aren’t you?”
She bared her teeth at him. “What do you know about them?”
Archer gave her a steady, calculating look. “You think I didn’t recognize the Captain of the Guard the day you just happened to run into me outside of the Willows?” His attention flicked to her side, where her hand currently rested on a dagger. “Have you told them about your plan to keep me alive?”
“No,” she said, her grip on the dagger relaxing. “No, I haven’t. I don’t want to involve them.”
“Or is it because you don’t actually trust either of them?”
She shot to her feet. “Don’t presume to know anything about me, Archer.”
She stalked to the door and flung it open. The butler was nowhere to be seen. She looked over her shoulder at Archer, whose eyes were wide as he watched her. “You have until the end of the week—six days—to get me more information. If you don’t give me anything by then, my next visit won’t be nearly as pleasant.”
Not giving him the time to reply, she stormed out of the room, grabbed her cloak from the front closet, and strode back out onto the icy city streets.
 
The maps and figures in front of Dorian had to be wrong. Someone had to be playing a joke, because there was no way Calaculla had this many slaves. Seated at the long table in his father’s council chamber, Dorian glanced at the men around him. None looked surprised, none looked upset. Councilman Mullison, who had taken a special interest in Calaculla, was practically beaming.
He should have fought to get Nehemia into this council meeting. But there was probably nothing she could say right now that would have any impact on a decision that had clearly already been made.
His father was smiling faintly at Roland, his head propped on a fist. The black ring on the king’s hand glinted in the dim light from the beastly fireplace, that mouth-shaped hearth that seemed poised to devour the room.
From his spot beside Perrington, Roland gestured to the map. Another black ring glinted on Roland’s hand—the same as the one Perrington wore, too. “As you can see, Calaculla can’t support the current number of slaves. There are too many to even fit in the mines as it is—and though we have them digging for new deposits, the work has been stagnant.” Roland smiled. “But, slightly to the north, right along the southern edge of Oakwald, our men have discovered an iron deposit that seems to cover a large area. It’s close enough to Calaculla that we could erect a few new buildings to house additional guards and overseers, bring in even more slaves if we want, and start work on it right away.”
Impressed murmurs, and a nod from his father to Roland made Dorian’s jaw clench. Three matching rings; three black rings to signify—what? That they were bound in some way to each other? How had Roland gotten past his father’s and Perrington’s defenses so quickly? Because of his support of a place like Calaculla?
Nehemia’s words from the night before kept ringing in his head. He’d seen the scars on Celaena’s back up close—a brutal mess of flesh that made him sick with rage to look at. How many like her were rotting away in these labor camps?
“And where will the slaves sleep?” Dorian suddenly asked. “Will you build shelter for them, too?”
Everyone, including his father, turned to look at him. But Roland just shrugged. “They’re slaves. Why shelter them, when they can sleep in the mines? Then we wouldn’t waste time bringing them in and out every day.”
More murmurs and nods. Dorian stared at Roland. “If we have a surplus of slaves, then why not let some of them go? Surely they’re not all rebels and criminals.”
A growl from down the table—his father. “Watch your tongue, Prince.”
Not a father to his son, but a king to his heir. Still, that icy rage was growing, and he kept seeing Celaena’s scars, her too-thin body the day they’d pulled her out of Endovier, her gaunt face and the hope and desperation mingling in her eyes. He heard Nehemia’s words: What she went through is a blessing compared to what most endure.
Dorian peered down the table at his father, whose face was dark with irritation. “Is this the plan? Now that we’ve conquered the continent, you’ll throw everyone into Calaculla or Endovier, until there’s no one left in the kingdoms but people from Adarlan?”
Silence.
The rage dragged him down to the place where he’d felt that flicker of ancient power when Nehemia had touched his heart. “You keep tightening the leash, and it’s going to snap,” Dorian said to his father, then looked across the table to Roland and Mullison. “How about you spend a year in Calaculla, and when you’re done, you two can sit here and tell me about your plans for expansion.”
His father slammed his hands on the table, rattling the glasses and pitchers. “You will mind your mouth, Prince, or you will be thrown out of this room before the vote.”
Dorian shot out of his seat. Nehemia had been right. He hadn’t looked at the others in Endovier. He hadn’t let himself. “I’ve heard enough,” he snarled at his father, at Roland and Mullison, at Perrington, and at all the lords and men in the room. “You want my vote? Then here it is: No. Not in a thousand years.”
His father growled, but Dorian was already walking across the red marble floor, past that horrible fireplace, out the doors, and into the bright halls of the glass castle.
He didn’t know where he was going, only that he felt freezing cold—a cold that fueled the calm, glittering rage. He took flight after flight of stairs down into the stone castle, then long hallways and narrow staircases until he found a forgotten hall where there were no eyes to see him as he drew back his fist and punched the wall.
The stone cracked under his hand.
Not a small crack, but a spiderweb that kept growing and growing toward the window on the right, until—
The window exploded, glass showering everywhere as Dorian dropped into a crouch and covered his head. Air rushed in, so cold his eyes blurred, but he just knelt there, fingers in his hair, breathing, breathing, breathing as the anger ebbed out of him.
It wasn’t possible. Maybe he’d just hit the wall in the wrong spot, and the damn thing was so ancient that it had only been waiting for something like this to happen. He’d never heard of stone cracking that way—spreading out like a living thing—and then the window …
Heart racing, Dorian lowered his hands from his head and looked at them. There wasn’t a bruise or a cut, or even a trace of pain. But he’d hit that wall as hard as he could. He could have—should have—broken his hand. Yet his knuckles were unharmed—only white from gripping his fingers in a tight fist.
On trembling legs, Dorian rose and surveyed the damage.
The wall had splintered, but remained intact. The ancient window, however, had shattered completely. And around him, around where he had crouched …