Page 117 of Dragon Gods

“Did you bring in the woman you were lost with? Or is she still out there?”

“She’s in the prison with the rest,” he said, skipping over the part where he wasn’t the one to arrest her.

“I assume they’re in the basement, readying for execution?” Ian asked, voice thick with bitter vitriol.

Fox shook his head. “Not yet. The chief commander is still hoping for information. There were some interrogations today.”

Ian nodded, and Fox had to wonder if perhaps he wasn’t the only one seeking revenge for what the resistance had done to his brother after all this time. “I’m sure they’ll schedule the executions eventually.”

Fox’s empty stomach churned at his own words and Ian’s eyebrows pinched.

“You should sleep,” he said. “You look exhausted.”

Ian was right, but the idea of sleeping—of closing his eyes—sent a tremor through Fox. He already knew that the crack of the whip on Sofia’s bloody back would haunt his sleep. It was nothing he hadn’t seen before. He’d seen his father’s form of interrogation, although usually there were more questions interspersed between the blows.

But this was different. He knew Sofia. He knew the feel of her hair between his fingers and the smell of her skin, salty and floral. He knew the taste of her?—

“Thanks for coming by,” he said after a moment, shaking away the thoughts of Sofia. “But you’re right. I’m still catching up on sleep and food. Can you tell my mother I plan to sleep the rest of the evening and not to disturb me?”

Ian took the dismissal with a soft smile and a nod. “Of course.” Before he closed the door to Fox’s room, he looked over his shoulder one last time. “I’m glad you made it back alive. I’m not sure what I would have done losing you…after Leon.”

Fox gave a tight smile as the door clicked shut. He was alone once more, the silence of the home settling over him like a blanket, not comforting, but suffocating and heavy.

He didn’t touch the food the kitchen maid finally brought him, falling asleep in his chair by the fire.

* * *

Two days later,he slipped from the house before his parents were awake, when the sun was still below the horizon. The day before, he’d made the mistake of coming down for breakfast only to spend the day listening to his mother’s muffled sobs as she followed him around the house, refusing to let him out of her sight. He couldn’t take another day of it, but he was no more ready to return to the barracks and his job with the king’s men.

It was still early for the wealthy in the city, and the streets on this side of the inner gates were quiet. It was easy to make his way north, out of the royal quarter and into the outer city where the Dragonborn were already rushing around for the day.

He kept his cloak hood up and his hair tied back as he walked through the gates that separated the privileged from the poor. At one point, the small stone wall between the two sections hadn’t existed. But as the resistance grew more and more bold, it was another measure to ensure the safety of those within the wall from those outside. But this early in the day, there were no questions for walking in and out, especially for a Dereyan.

The ring of storefronts and houses that bordered the royal quarter were clean and freshly painted. The windows had glass panes, unbroken. Gas lamps lined the streets, ensuring they never were truly dark, and the workers kept the streets swept of debris and human waste. But a few blocks farther, the gas lamps dwindled and then disappeared altogether.

He wasn’t sure what his plan was as he carefully stepped around the feces that stained the roads here, and walked farther into the slums. He only knew he didn’t want to be home. He wanted to be away from the royal quarter. It smelled, even this early in the day, the sun having baked the filth into the stones long ago. A few blocks from the gates, the polish of the buildings was gone and the poverty flourished.

Perhaps for the first time in over a decade, he actually looked at the city he lived in.

He looked through the windows, which had only a sheet of fabric protecting them from the cold and the wind. While the smell of roasted pork and chicken had drifted through the air on the other side of the gate, here there was nothing. No small booths selling treats. No breakfasts wafting from the houses, despite their exposed windows and doors.

“The Dragonborn are the first to starve and the first to die, yet we wonder why they hate us?”

He remembered his brother’s words, hearing them now as if whispered in his ear, and it startled him to realize that it wasn’t his brother’s voice he heard, but Sofia’s.

“Excuse me, but where is the nearest healer?” Fox asked a man leaning against the wall of an unmarked building. The man didn’t even acknowledge his presence. With a heavy frown, he moved to the following block, asking the next person he saw, a woman with wide hips and a bright face. But the moment he spoke, her eyes clouded and the smile she’d been wearing disappeared.

He could hide his hair and skin beneath the cloak, but he couldn’t hide his accent. Switching tactics, he moved on to asking the children that huddled in the shadows, carefully flashing a coin for only them to see as he asked. The first child he asked pointed him down a narrow street that dead-ended a few minutes later and he realized he’d been lied to. The next time he asked, he didn’t hand the coin over until the small girl had walked him the two blocks to a small shop, an oil lamp burning in the windows where a woman was chopping away at a cutting board. He placed two coins in the child’s grubby hands. He grimaced as she swallowed one before running off, the other tucked in her mouth. That was one way to hide your money.

Ten minutes later, he left the shop with a balm and two tinctures tucked away in his pockets. He’d been overcharged, but he laid down the coins without complaint, handing over two more before asking that she not remember his visit. The small tin of numbing powder he’d slipped from the healer’s bag while he’d been treating Sofia would be gone by now. And he knew there were more interrogations to come. He’d ensured that with his advice to the chief commander.

By the time he made it back to the royal quarter, the sun had fully risen and the guards only stood by as people flowed in and out of the gates. Fox kept his hood up and his face down, not wanting to know if he’d become famous over the past few days since his miraculous return and promotion.

The prison was silent as he approached, a single guard stationed outside. The young soldier barely looked at Fox’s face as he flashed his golden junior major badge and stepped around him. He could get used to the newfound respect this station held, even if he felt like a fraud having earned it.

Inside, the prison was quiet. Unnaturally so, given the hundred or more prisoners it held at any given time. But there were four floors, and each hallway was locked behind its own door, keeping everything separated and all the more quiet. The upper floors housed the minor criminals who would be released after a day or two, or at most a blink. The main floor was where the prisoners under active investigation were locked away, and the basement floor, where darkness was perpetual, was where the condemned waited for the next new moons.

Guards were stationed at the doorway to the resistance cells, but they didn’t even blink as he passed them and opened the doors. He had been here yesterday, after all. The doors closed behind him with a click, the hall quiet except for the hum of the gas lamps that hung high above. They were never turned off, leaving the cells perpetually dimly lit. It was a torture in and of itself to never let the prisoners sleep properly. He knew the guards were ordered to walk along the hall every hour or two, waking up the prisoners who dared to fall asleep.

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