Empire of Dust by Eleanor Herman Page B

put her in the trough.”
    Cynane’s body is too tired to curl in horror. Once she would have screamed her fury, but now she can barely muster the strength to rail against them in her own mind. For the first time, she fears that she will actually give in. That she will betray Audata and her own future of leading a nation as the sole possessor of Smoke Blood.
    The Lords place her in an old stone horse trough filled with water. She is too weak to struggle much, and when they set the huge stones across her flat abdomen, she sinks to the bottom. She holds her breath for as long as she can, her lungs burning, and then they explode, exhaling air and then inhaling water. The pain in her chest is unbearable. Her heart is hammering, her head splitting. And then she sinks into blackness.
    She wakes to find herself folded in strong arms covered in thick blond hair. She glimpses mildewed gray walls curving around her. They are in the small spiral staircase that leads up to her room in the tower.
    â€œTwo hours,” the High Lord says. “This time she was under water for two hours.”
    â€œHigh Lord, why don’t you behead her and see if she can heal that?” asks the one called Gaius in his Roman-accented Greek. “Perhaps she will reach up with both hands and set her head back on her shoulders.”
    â€œThat is something I’d like to see,” one Lord sniggers over the clatter of boots on stairs. “Like how the cook cuts a chicken—a fowl princess.” Though the other men laugh, Cyn does not hear Gideon’s dark laugh among them. She opens her eyes and sees him standing before the door to the tower room, staring at her, a bitter smile on his broad face. “I suspect that might be impossible for her,” the High Lord says. “Though we might use that as punishment if she fails to tell us what we want to know.” He kicks the door open with his black boot.
    She is dropped on the table and chained, too helpless to move. She hears boots on stairs again, and then the sound fades. Outside the little window in Cyn’s shabby room, a gentle afternoon rain begins to murmur a soothing lullaby. The window slats have long ago rotted and fallen off, and a steady patter hits the cracked stone floor. The breeze is fresh, clean, and she gulps it in. She is alone for once. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep.
    Soon it seems that there are voices in the rain. Whispers, really, mixed with sighs.
    Cy...na...ne , they say.
    Cy...na...ne.
    A dream. Sometimes she thinks everything that has happened to her since her abduction has been a dream, and that she will wake in her soft palace bed, morning light streaming through her windows, and laugh out loud at the dream’s intricacy.
    Cynane!
    She opens her eyes and sees a figure of smoke and mist bending over her. Tiny droplets of rain dance in the form.
    She tries to rub her eyes, but remembers too late that her wrists are chained down on the table. The heavy metal clanks against rough wood. “Who are you?” she asks, her voice cracking from the screams that have scraped her throat.
    The figure stands up straight. She believes it to be a man from its height and wide shoulders, but she can’t be sure. The outline shifts, coming in and out of focus like someone emerging from thick fog.
    â€œI am one who knows you well.” The voice is made of mist and smoke, like the figure itself, but this time, Cyn is sure that it is a male voice—though she could not have sworn it was entirely human.
    â€œI am relieved to see my work has kept you safe from harm,” he says. The rain beats harder, almost drowning out the soft words.
    â€œWork?” she whispers. “What work?”
    â€œThe spell of protection I placed on you the day your mother was killed. A very difficult spell, although I’ve had to put all my power into strengthening it against the Aesarians or you never would have survived this.” Cyn thinks