The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)

“Does it matter?” Racso asked.

“Well . . . no. Sixty-four thousand? That’s not even a number.”

“It is—”

“Nobody has sixty-four thousand!” I doubted even Grandmother could lay her claw on sixty-four thousand in crown gold without selling something holy or spilling some blood. “Who lent him that kind of money?”

“It’s a code, see.” More scratching and Racso bent his balding head as if the admission shamed a man who was paid to watch people starve. “Means the bank has them here for its own reasons. An abuse of the system is what it is. Puts honest men in a questionable position regarding the law is what it does.” He shook his head and spat dolefully.

I took us back to the more immediate questions. “A penny for the candle then. And food, for me and the boy, bread, butter, apples?”

“A hex.” Again the grin, pleased to be on more familiar ground. “Better hope you can eat fast though.” An eye to the bodies behind me, a shiver of anticipation running through them.

“How much to get out of here, a private cell back up the corridor?”

“Ah.” A slow shake of the head, almost regretful. “That’d take silver that would, yer lordship. Don’t think I’ve ever seen the colour of it down in the dark cells. You got silver on you? Have you, yer lordship?” He seemed to think it unlikely.

“Just the food for now,” I said. “And the candle.” I fished in my pocket and brought out a hex and a penny.

Racso took my money on a flat wooden paddle hooked upon his belt. A device that meant he never had to come within grabbing range of the bars. “Done and dealt.” He stowed the coins away, nodded to me, and handed me the cold end of my candle. Transaction complete, Racso wiped his hands across the sides of his trousers and sauntered away whistling some spring tune that remembered flowers and joy.

•   •   •

When Racso returned he carried a reed basket containing three crusty loaves, a wedge of blue cheese, and half a dozen apples of a good size, bursting with the summer. He also brought with him a barrel on wheels from which he doled out ladles of water to those who could pay. Water exchanged hands for the clippings of a copper, for a left shoe, for one of the tin mugs into which he was pouring—that man took his ration in his cupped hands—and for promises of company from several of the younger women. I had to pay over a penny for two cups and their contents, my earlier order not having made mention of water.

“Give me two apples first,” I said. And Racso rolled them over to the bars.

I tossed them to the two largest and least dead of our inmates, Artemis and Antonio, men I’d selected and negotiated with before. They cleared a space and kept the others back while I took the remaining food.

“Behave yourselves and there’ll be crusts to share out. Give me any shit and jaws will get broken.” It’s easy enough to be the hard man when you’re fit, fed, and hale and the foe are skin and bones.

Backs to the wall, bread between us, cups on the floor and the candle burning at our feet, Hennan and I began to eat. The boy dipped his bread in the water to ease it past his sore gums. I still couldn’t pin an age on him and he’d never had a clear idea of it himself. Today I settled on twelve. He looked older starved. All of them did. Ancients with young men’s fears. Old women with children like tiny old men. A mother with breasts as withered as any crone, the baby in her arms black with dirt and unmoving. I choked down what food I could and threw the rest at them, cursing the lot for beggars and thieves. Fear stole my appetite.

Hennan recovered faster than I thought possible, wrinkling his face at the cheese as he wolfed it down.

“Steady—you’ll be sick.” I say “recovered” . . . he remained a skeleton dressed in skin, but the light returned to his eyes, the words to his tongue.

“Why did you come?” he asked.

I’d been asking myself the same thing. “I’m an idiot.”

“How come they locked you in? You’ve got money.”

“I owe more than I’ve got.” That had been the story of my adult life. A short enough tale but one that had never got me locked up in hell before. “In debtors’ prisons you own what you carry in. They call it bankruptcy.”

“How are we getting out?” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and reached for his water. Across the cell fights were breaking out over the loaf I’d thrown.

“I don’t know.” Honesty always pains me. Telling it to a child who considers you a hero puts any number of barbs on those words, making them harder than you’d expect to spit out. “You shouldn’t have run.” Recriminations are useless but it takes a better man than me not to kick someone close when they’re down. “You were in the palace of Vermillion for God’s sake! And now . . .”