Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

“Only us two,” said Matthias.

“Lord in Heaven. How did you survive?”

Matthias gestured toward the pits, then realized the man might not be able to see his movement. “There was food enough to be scrounged, until now. We hid here because the dogs couldn’t smell us.”

The man squinted at Anna in the dim light, stepped forward abruptly, and took her chin in his hand. Matthias started forward, raising his belt knife, but Anna said, “No,” and he stopped and waited.

After a moment the man let go and stepped back, brushing his eyes with a finger. “A girl. You’re a girl, and no older than my little Mariya. The Lady is merciful, to have saved one.”

“Where is your daughter?” asked Anna, bold now. This man did not scare her.

“Dead,” he said curtly. “In the Eika raid that took my village not a month ago. They killed everyone.”

“They didn’t kill you,” said Anna reasonably, seeing that he looked alive and not anything like the shade of a dead man—not that she had ever seen such a thing, but certainly she had heard stories of them such as come back to haunt the living world on Hallowing Eve.

“Ai, they killed me, child,” he said bitterly. “Killed all but this husk. Now I am merely a soulless body, their slave, to do with as they will until they tire of me and feed me to the dogs.” Though he spoke as though living exhausted him, still he shuddered when he spoke of the dogs.

Anna sorted through this explanation and thought she understood most of it. “What will you do with us?” she asked. “Won’t the Eika kill us if they find us?”

“They will,” said the man. “They never leave children alive. They only want grown slaves strong enough to do their work. But I heard tell from one of the other slaves that there are no children in Gent, no bodies of children, simply no children at all. It’s a tale they whisper at night, in the darkness, that the saint who guards the city led the children away to safety or up to the Chamber of Light, I don’t know which.”

“It’s true,” muttered Matthias. “All the children are gone, but I don’t know where they went.”

“Where are your parents, then?” asked the man. “Why were you not taken to safety, if the others were?”

Anna shrugged, but she saw her brother hunch down as he always did, because the misery still sank its claws in him although she did not recall their parents well enough to mourn them.

“They’re dead four summers ago,” said Matthias. “Our da drowned when he was out fishing, and our ma died a few months later of a fever. They were good people. Then we went to our uncle. He ran, when the Eika came. He never thought of us. I ran back to the house and got Anna, but by then there was fighting everywhere. You couldn’t even get to the cathedral where most folk fled, so we hid in here. And here we stayed.”

“It’s a miracle,” murmured the man. Out of the night’s silence came sudden noise: dogs barking and a single harsh call, a word neither child understood. The man started noticeably. “They come ’round in the middle night to count us,” he said. “I must go back. I won’t betray you, I swear it on Our Lady’s Hearth. May Our Lord strike me down with His heavenly Sword if I do any such thing. I’ll bring more food tomorrow, if I can.”

Then he was gone, retreating into the night.

They relieved themselves quickly in one of the stinking pits filled with dung and water, and paused after to look up at the strangely clear sky, so hard a darkness above them that the stars were almost painful to look upon. They heard the dogs again and Matthias shoved Anna onto the ladder. She scrambled back up, and he came up behind her and closed the trap. After a hesitation, but without speaking, they devoured the rest of the cheese and bread—and waited for tomorrow.

2

THE next night, long after sunset, the man came again and tapped on the door softly and said, “I am your friend.”

Cautiously, Matthias opened the trap and peered down. After a moment he climbed down. Anna followed him. The man gave them bread and watched silently as they ate. She could see him a bit more clearly tonight—the moon was waxing, and its quarter face slowly swelled, bubbling toward the full. Not particularly tall, he had the broad shoulders of a farmer and a moon-shaped face.

“What are you called?” he asked finally, hesitantly.

“I am called Matthias, and this is Anna, which is short for Johanna. Our ma named us after the disciplas of the blessed Daisan.”

The man nodded, as if he had known this all along or perhaps only to show he understood. “I am called Otto. I am sorry the bread was all I could bring. We are not fed well, and I dare not ask the others for a share of their portion. I don’t know if I can trust them, for they’re no kin of mine. Any one of them might tell the Eika in return for some reward, more bread perhaps.”

“It is very kind of you to help us,” said Anna brightly, for she remembered that their ma had always told her to be polite and to be thankful for the gifts she received.

The man caught in a sob, then hesitantly touched her hair. As abruptly, he backed away from her. “Or perhaps, like me, the others would gladly help, if only it meant finding a way to see two more brought free of the savages. It isn’t as if the Eika play favorites. I’ve never seen them seek to turn their slaves against each other by handing out special treatment. They despise us all. All are treated the same. Work or die.”

“Is it only here,” asked Matthias, “in the tanneries, that they’ve brought slaves?”

“They’ve opened up the smithies, too, though they’ve no one trained here in blacksmith’s work. But we’re slaves and expendable.” His voice was hard. “It’s fortune’s chance I was sent here to the tanneries, though it stinks like nothing I’ve smelled before. It’s whispered that at the forge men are burned every day and the Eika as likely to slit a burned man’s throat as to let that man heal if he can’t get up and keep working. I saw those Eika. I saw one pushed into a fire. It didn’t burn. The heat left no scar on its body. They don’t have skin, not like us. It’s some kind of hide, like a snake’s scales but harder and thicker. Dragon’s get.” He hawked and spat, as if to get the taste of the word out of his mouth. “The spawn of dragons and human women, that’s what they say, but I don’t see how such an unnatural congress could take place. But we should not speak of this in front of the child.”

“I’ve seen nothing she hasn’t seen also,” said Matthias softly, but Anna felt at once that the man’s simple statement, protecting her, confiding in the boy, had won over her brother’s trust.

She finished her bread and wished there were more, but she knew better than to ask. Perhaps he had given them his entire ration. It would be rude to demand more.