Just A Thief

“Me?” I snorted incredulously. “One of your so-called missing royals? Yeah. Right. I think I would know if I was.”

“Not if you’re only seventeen and have very secretive parents,” the brunette to my left stated in a tone that stated it was a matter of fact, his voice calm and level. “The betrayal took place around seventeen years ago now.”

I stayed silent for a moment, staring at the stone cealing above me. A drip of water formed and fell on my cheek even as I watched it.

Finally, I sighed and said, “So, let’s say that might, just might, be one of these missing people from the royal family and court and whatnot. I don’t know. So how do they find out whether I am or not? And if I do just happen to be one, do I get killed, or sent back down here to rot? Or even fed to the moat monster?”

“The court mages,” the man explained, leaning against the bars that were the only thing between he and I, “can test your lineage with a simple spell, so long as they have a reference.”

“If you are a royal, you may be thrown back down, though,” said the first man, his blonde hair dangling past his shoulders in a matted mess and streaked with grim, “but it all depends on how important you are.”

“How do they know how important you are, then?” I asked curiously.

“They have the princess captive, and they keep her alive, so the mages can compare the new person to her. If it’s a close match, you’re a very important member of the royal family. If there’s no match, you just might be free to go,” a man across from the blonde said. I couldn’t see him clearly through the gloom.

“And if you’re not a royal? How do they test members of the court and nobility?”

“The same way,” the blonde picked it up again, “just with the nobles as a base.”

“And just to reiterate…” I said, sitting up on the cot to look at the brunette better, “what happens if you are a royal, or a member of the court, or whatever the case may be? And what happens if you’re not?”

“Since you’re a woman,” my seemingly reliable source of information stated, “you may be forced into marriage to one of the false King’s men, to boost their status and make them legitimate courtiers. If not…that is, if you’re not a noble or royal, or you’re not a very important one, you’ll either be killed, forced to work as a servant, or like you guessed, used as food to the sea creature kept in the moat. It’s a matter full of ifs and ors and whatnot, as you can see.”

I groaned yet again, falling back on the hard, uncomfortable bedding. after a silence, I chose to say, “Then I’m not sure what I should be hoping for. Should I hope to have absolutely no relation to the royalty or nobility, or pray that I’m a close relation to the princess herself? I’m not in the mood to marry a complete stranger, to be frank, but I’d rather not be killed either. Do I hope to just get stuck back down here, or forced into servitude?”

My next-cell neighbor laughed.

“I’m not sure. I’ve only been down here for a couple of days.”

I snorted, and since the others chose to stay silent and not supply me with their answers, I sat back and closed my eyes against the monotonous sight of the damp grey stone and damp iron bars. It was kind of depressing to see that several of the men were in nothing but rags, they’d been down here for so long.

At least an hour had passed, slowly and torturously, and none of us had moved very far. The brunette in the cell immediately to my left was sitting, his back to me again, as he leaned against the bars between us. I shifted slightly on my bed, trying to occupy myself with something else so I wouldn’t ask the question, but I just had to get the thought out of my mind.

“All of you…” I finally said, voice loud enough for all of the men to hear me. I felt rather than saw the attention they gave me as I asked, “…you’re all nobility, aren’t you? The ones they’ve captured and tested. And I bet they use - or are going to use you - as a reference to test others, aren’t they? Maybe even to test me.”

For what seemed like the hundredth time, silence stretched. This time it lasted several minutes, and it was answer enough for me. I knew I was right even before one of the men behind me, across from the blonde man, said simply, “Yes.”

So simple, but there were no other words that needed to be spoken.

And there were no more words spoken until two hours later when the guards came back for me. Two of them were familiar to me as the worst of my taunting troupe from earlier.

“Hey, Princess, we’re back!” the leader figure from earlier smirked at me.

“Oh, good,” I rolled my eyes, sitting up. “Now that you’re here, you can just turn around and go back the way you came without me, right?”

I felt the gaze of all the other prisoners on me once more, but I didn’t allow myself the option of looking at them. The door to my cell slid open as the other taunting guard let out a laugh.

“I’m afraid not,” the leader figure said, as the other two entered behind the first and the other stood outside, safely out of my range. I spat at him anyway, and was cuffed in the back of the head.

I was yanked roughly to my feet by one of the new men, only to meet a fist in my gut and crumple back to the floor as shackles were placed around my wrists and locked by the leader, who entered once I was incapacitated. Once they were locked behind me, I was yanked to my feet backwards by the chain that dangled from the cuffs. I cried out sharply as one of my shoulders was very nearly dislocated, then grit my teeth against the pain and jerked my hands, making the guard who’d pulled me up stumbled in return. This time I was punched in the face, the glove with studded knuckles making painful contact with my already bruised and swollen chin. I spat out the blood that resulted from where my teeth had cut the inside of my cheek.

The blood landed on the shiny metal of the other new man’s boot. I just grinned at the angered man as a little bit of red appeared at the corner of my mouth. I spat again, getting the majority of the blood out, this time on the floor at the leader’s own booted feet.

“Sure you can handle her?” asked my next-cell neighbor, antagonizing the guards with his easygoing attitude. “Seems like she’s a match for the whole lot of you, doesn’t it?”

“Shut up, Duke,” the leader said snobbishly. “Your turn will come one day soon.”

“Have fun,” I told him with a grin. I got hit upside the head again, but I didn’t care. Well, I did care, but I didn’t let the indignation show on my face.

I was roughly pulled from my cell and we began the arduous trek back up the stairs. I didn’t really help them out very much at all. I tried to be as close to dead weight as possible without them noticing, just to spite the one who had said that he didn’t want to carry dead weight all the way back up the stairs. If I could force myself to pass out, it would just be that much better…but I decided I’d much rather be awake to hear exactly what my…diagnosis…and punishment would be.

Due to my slacking off and not helping them get me up the stairs, it took almost three times as long to get back up the stairs than it had to get down them. Granted, it usually is harder to go back up a staircase than it is to go down anyway, but I still caused a huge setback to their operation. When we did finally reach the top, rather than taking me by a heavily trafficked route as they had earlier, we went the longer way around, through tiny corridors and a few shortcuts hidden behind tapestries.

I grew tired of their coarse treatment of me rather quickly and came to an abrupt halt in the middle of one of these narrow corridors, practically brake checking the two guards behind me.

“Hey!”

“You thrice-blasted little witch!”

The shouts attracted the attention of the forward guards and one, the leader, of course, angrily grabbed me by the arm and threw me forward. I hit the ground hard, turning to face my captors. Even as they bore down on me, I grinned to myself, clutching my prize tightly behind my back, my fingers clasped tightly around the small object in my fingers.

*