Ethine's heart was racing, tears stinging her eyes. It made no sense. The knight with the green eyes, the Unseelie knight - here. Looking for her. How? Why? Her first instinct had been her brother, but he'd said that he hadn't sent him? So, why had he come? For her? It didn't seem possible. Watching him walk away had been horrible - she'd felt abandoned, had felt like screaming after him, pleading with him to get her out right there and then. A more rational part of her knew he couldn't, knew she had to be patient - but she was so scared, so alone. Of course that rational part of herself had realised something else even as she'd watched him walk away - she wasn't really alone, not any longer, someone had come for her after all. Despite her surroundings she'd felt her heart lift.
As he'd disappeared from sight she'd realised something else - just having him here had changed everything. Somehow his presence seemed to diminish the scale of her problems. Then there was that soft, tender look in his eyes - like nothing bad could happen to her while he was around. She looked at her fingers, she could still feel the touch of his hand. His fingers - hard, calloused from training with the sword -- had been so soft on hers, gentle. For the first time in a long time she felt herself smile.
Once the guards had gone the fay gathered around her, whispering hopefully amongst themselves.
"Who was your knight-errant?" Turiel whispered, awake now, the others pressing close - hope as contagious now as fear had been earlier.
Carefully she shared the food he had given her, passing it out as evenly as she could amongst her fellow prisoners. They gobbled it hungrily, only a bite each but the warmth of the fire apples' intoxicating sweetness flowed through their starved bodies; the farbread - sweet, sticky, designed for long journeys, for hardship on the trail - working magic on her and the other prisoners half-starved on gruel.
Ethine shrugged, licking sticky juice from the fingers he'd held. "My knight-errant? I'm not sure - I don't know his name," she said shyly. "Don't know his name?" whispered one, chuckling. "He certainly knows yours..."
"Ethine, girl, that man is sweeter on you than this fire apple?" said Elderbany, chuckling like rumbling thunder. Ethine giggled with her, the juice of the apple making her silly.
Athinas, the troll, laughed lightly, an alien sound in the prison. "Sweet isn't the word I'd use," she added, her big ears red with the effects of the apple.
Ethine found herself laughing along with them, her heart pounding fit to burst. Her knight-errant?
Her happiness was brief.
Even before the effects of the food had gone, Thorn, vanilla suited, returned with his two colourful cronies, both still in red and yellow - his elegant, handsome face sneering at them as he looked through the bars of the cage. She wasn't surprised when she was chosen, she had known that it had to be soon, too many others had already been through the ordeal.
Without preamble the two fay took hold of her arms - grinding their hard fingers into her soft flesh until she whimpered in pain, frog-marching her along the corridor. They followed the path her knight-errant had used, toward the only exit from the prison. Behind her she could feel the imprisoned fay watching her helplessly from the cage. Thorn led and she was dragged in his wake - along the corridor, past the guardroom with its musty smells, to a small door at the end. On the way they passed a set of narrow stone stairs leading up to a banded wooden door, from beyond which she thought that she could hear the sound of music playing, of singing. She noted it as a possible escape route.
They passed to the side of the staircase, through a thick wooden door and into a further corridor. This one was paved with rough stone slabs, the sconces more permanent bowls of coals - the light brighter, less inclined to flicker into shadow. At the end of this corridor they reached a further short staircase and passed up two small steps through an arch into a better appointed part of the Court. Here the light source was indeterminate - the corridor lit with an even warm glow - and the floor was carpeted, warm beneath her feet. After a few paces they stopped outside an unremarkable wooden door and Thorn knocked gently, waiting until he heard a summons before entering.
The room inside was a simple study, a writing bureau open on the wall just beyond the door. On the facing wall Ethine could see a bookcase that took up its entire surface. A matching bookcase occupied the wall to the left of the door making the room cramped, its smell was the smell of old books and dust. Bare by comparison, the remaining wall held only a large but simple, dark portrait of a male fay with malign features.
The male fay depicted on the painting sat at the desk, a book open before him, a pen set to one side. His long grey hair was tied back in a pony tail, held with a silver ring, his pearl grey suit elegant with its matching shirt and tie -- but his angular face held no warmth, his storm grey eyes as cold as the winter.
"Lord Sorrow, another prisoner for you to inspect," Thorn said, nodding his head briefly in respect.
To one side she noticed a black sword in a rack, its presence seeming to suck light from the room. Just looking at it made her eyes hurt.
Sorrow looked over at her, his eyes hard, boring into her, roving over her body - undressing her; dissecting her, even. There was nothing of lust or desire in it -- it was more akin to an appreciation of livestock or of some possession whose value remains undetermined. Despite herself, she shivered - his gaze was cruel, malicious, calculating.
"Are you the one responsible for kidnapping us?" she said, surprising herself with her sudden boldness, her voice steady though her heart beat in her chest like a bird trying to escape a cage. She felt the pressure on her arms increase as she spoke.
Sorrow inclined his head, his face momentarily surprised that she had had the courage to address him. "Yes," he said simply, his voice hard. "I am."
"Why?"
Sorrow smiled. "I am going to trade you, you and the other prisoners, in return for the use of some rather special knights." As he spoke his delicate fingers rolled the pen back and forth on the top of his desk.
"But... Trade us? To whom?" she said, her mind racing - could she use this information, would it help?
For a moment he looked at her, his face blank, then he beckoned to the men holding her and she was forced into the room, her arms pinioned behind her. With her helpless before him he reached out, his fingers slowly, cruelly, squeezing her cheeks, forcing her mouth open - examining her teeth as if she were an animal for sale. His hands, she noticed, were crowned by long, pointed fingernails.
"I am going to trade you to Hafgan, the Witch Queen," he said, releasing his hold on her.
For a moment Ethine struggled to make sense of what he'd said: Hafgan the Witch Queen, Hafgan the Hag. If mortal parents scared their children with tales of witches in the forest, fay children were scared with tales of Hafgan the Hag, the queen of witches. But Hafgan was only a legend, a storybook character. She looked at him closely, his face held no trace of humour - it was clear that Sorrow believed every word of what he said. And fay couldn't lie. But if she was real...
"No," she hissed, suddenly frightened again. "You can't!"
"I assure you that I can," he said, smiling. "In fact, I think you'll find that there is very little that I can't do to you."
As if to prove his point his hand slid onto her blouse - his thumb slipping into the gap between the buttons on the front, stroking her nipple beneath the fabric.
