Jacque shook his head. “He don’t care about me, so long as I help him.”
“Once you’ve outlived your usefulness, he’ll make a meal of you. Like he does with the rest of La Rue Sauvage.”
“Yeah, so what am I s’posed to do about it?”
306
“You know what sort of girl I am. What sort of boy are you? Sooner or later, he’ll kill you, now that you know his secrets. You can help me stand up to him, or start numbering your days.”
“You’re crazy! I ain’t fighting the Duke of the whole province!”
“You don’t have to. Just do what he told you to do. Take me to him. Tell him you captured me, but leave me opportunity for escape. When he least suspects it, I can –.”
Something shifted in his eyes as he glanced toward the horse stalls. I whirled toward his friends, still seated, in time to see a horseshoe flying at me.
It struck my forehead. The stable spun as I fell to the ground. I blinked at the dull pain as everything started to blur. Denue loomed over me, grinning. “Change of plans,” he said.
I tried to clutch at him but I could barely sit up. His fist connected with my jaw and everything went black.
I woke to shouts.
“Imbecile! I told you to bring her last night!”
It was Laurent’s voice. I shuddered, feeling cold and confused. I lay on my side, my jaw aching, my head throbbing. My throat tasted like dry manure, and there was a suffocating smell of dust from the surrounding hay. But not from Brocard’s stable where Denue struck me.
307
Somewhere less clean. Somewhere I had been before.
I blinked awake with terror. I was back in Brocard’s barn in the forest, where I had intruded on the Lycanthru’s ceremony. Only now I lay on the ground floor, a few feet away from the vat of sulfurous liquid that filled the room with its foul odor.
Standing over me on the raised platform, just fifteen feet away from the vat, Laurent glowered at Denue in a rage.
“We grabbed some food and fell asleep,”
Denue said. “She took a lot out of us. But I got her and she’s here now. What difference does it make?”
Laurent backhanded him with a fist that sent Denue sprawling from the platform onto the dirt. “That is the difference, you impudent fool.
From now on, do as you’re told.”
My shoulder ached where I had been lying on it. My head pounded like a drum. I squinted at the few lit torches smoldering in the room, as rays of the approaching dawn peeked between cracks in the wood walls. How long had I slept?
Ten or more of the Lycanthru stood around Laurent. A few wore their black robes and wolf hoods. Others wore their daytime clothes.
Laurent’s advisor, Simonet, stood close by, his hands folded behind his back.
Beneath their feet, I saw my repeating crossbow. If I could leap for it before they noticed me …
308
My body pulsed as I prepared to rise, but I couldn’t move my hands. I tugged again. Then I fingered the thick hemp binding my wrists behind my back.
“Your Grace,” Simonet said in a monotone.
I glanced back to find him studying me.
“Well, look who’s awake,” Lieutenant-General Sharrad snorted.
Laurent’s entire posture relaxed at the sight of me. He strode forward with a jaunt in his step and knelt down. Then he gripped my cheeks hard and lifted my face to his. “Good morning, Mademoiselle. A pleasure to see you again.”
I grunted and tried to pull away. The other Lycanthru grinned like hyenas.
“But a little too early, I think.”
He released my head to fall painfully back to the ground. Then he raised his fist and brought it crashing down onto my jaw.
309
34.
I woke again more slowly, roused by the sulfur stench. Sore muscles ached in my shoulders, thighs, and the back of my neck. I struggled to open my eyes as my chin rested heavily against my chest. Wake up, I ordered myself, inhaling the sulfur deeper, listening to the bubbling vat. Wake up!
The room was full of sunlight and noise.
My temples throbbed
