Prince Aldric Thorne's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

Aldric woke to the scrape of the bolt again. His shoulders ached from the pull of the wrist-chains, and when he shifted, a hot sting bit under each shackle. He turned his hand over as far as the iron let him. The skin beneath was raw and weeping. A ring of red circled each wrist where the metal had ground through overnight. He knew what came next if it went untreated. Swelling. Pus. Fingers that would not close on a cup, let alone a sword. The door swung open. Owen stepped in with the water cup and a heel of bread on a wooden plate. He set them down and crouched to look at Aldric's wrists without asking. "Let me see the wrists, kid." The word hit before Aldric could catch it. Heat climbed his neck. "I'm sixteen," he snapped. His voice cracked on the number and he hated it. "Not a kid." Owen paused with his hand halfway to the manacle. He looked at Aldric's face for a moment, then at the raw skin under the iron. "Sixteen," he said. "Noted." For a moment Aldric had braced for the backhand, or the laugh, or the slow smile that meant a man had decided what he wanted. None came. Instead, Owen carefully took Aldric's left hand and turned it toward the light from the grate. His mouth thinned. He touched the cuff with a fingertip, testing the fit, then let it go. "These need padding or you'll lose the use of them. I can cut strips off the clean linen and wrap under the cuffs. You'd have to hold still while I unlock one at a time." Aldric's throat closed. To let a guard unlock him, one wrist at a time, in a cell no one watched, was to hand over the last thing he still owned. He thought of screaming. He thought of kicking. He thought of the sores splitting wider each time he lifted the cup to drink, and of the fingers going stiff, and of a life after this cell in which he could not hold a sword or sign his name. He weighed the two things against each other and found, to his shame, that the hands mattered more. "Do it," he whispered miserably. "Left first." Owen knelt and unlocked the left cuff first, held Aldric's wrist steady, and wiped the sores clean. Aldric watched his own hand shake in the guard's grip and could not stop it. Owen thumbed the salve into the last layer, and wound a strip of linen twice around the raw skin, and closed the iron over it. He tested the give with two fingers. Then the right. He did not speak while he worked. When he was done, he pushed the cup and the bread within reach and stood. "Eat," Owen said. He picked up the medicinal pot. At the door he stopped without turning. "Sixteen's old enough. I'll remember." Then the knight slipped out the door and the bolt shot home. Aldric turned his wrists in the low light. The linen held. The iron no longer bit. He flexed his fingers and they answered him. The panic in his chest thinned to something smaller and harder to name. Owen had not asked for anything. Owen had heard him and had changed one word without argument. Sixteen. Noted. That was not how his father's men had ever answered him. He reached for the bread with steadier hands. He chewed slowly and watched the door. A guard who listened was a new kind of problem. Aldric did not know yet what it would cost him. Owen had asked for nothing again. Two gifts now, and no bill. Aldric had been trained since he was a boy to know that no man gave twice without meaning to collect. Whatever Owen wanted, he was building it slowly, letting the debt grow until Aldric could not refuse. The prince closed his eyes and tried to think who in this castle would send a guard to be kind to him, and why. He could not name one. That frightened him more than the shackles ever had.