Warning: This story contains very mild spoilers for Ran Shaipur.
This far under, the water was a green-black, malevolent presence. The pressure crushed her lungs as the currents tangled her legs. Water weeds and her own skirts conspired to drag her further under. She tipped her face toward the lighter surface of the pond and screamed.
The bubbles of her last breath set stray tendrils of her black hair into motion, like inky tentacles grasping for life. Arms up, she flailed as she sank. If she had to die in this Ancestor-forsaken ornamental pond, she’d go out with all the fight within her.
Hard hands lodged under her armpits and hauled her through the water. As she fought against this new attack, her beleaguered lungs sucked in water. Consciousness slipped away like a bad dream.
“She’s got to wake up!”
“If Sir will step back, we’ll manage. We know how to take care of Miss.”
“She’s not breathing!”
“If Sir wants Miss to breathe again, Sir will step back!”
She knew these voices, but her oxygen-starved mind refused to name them. Multiple sets of hands forced her onto her side and beat her back, forcing vomit and pond water from her stomach and lungs. The cool, perfectly manicured spring grass pressed into her cheek and a light breeze chilled her wet clothes, sucking the last of the heat from her body. And still, she could not breathe.
“We need adrenaline, like what the priestesses use,” someone said.
“There’s no time to fetch it!” That was from the voice that the one in charge kept referring to as Sir.
“Needs must that we do this the old-fashioned way,” the in-charge man replied.
The hands returned, pulling the front of her gown open and then compressing her chest while someone blew air into her mouth. Together, they forced her lungs to breathe and her heart to beat again. She coughed and vomited, this time on her own. The little group of people around her let out a cheer.
“Silas, bring the garden wagon. Erik, grab that tarp!” the voice in charge snapped. Rickard. The voice in charge was Rickard, her father’s house manager.
The tarp smelled of compost and dead grass. The aroma caused her injured lungs to seize and sputter. She tried to move away, but the multiple pairs of hands were back, rolling her round and round into the tarp. None too gently, she landed in the wagon. Harried hands tucked and folded her long arms and legs until she was balled up, nothing dangling. Something that felt and smelled like freshly cut brush landed on her.
“And here they come,” Rickard muttered. “Into the reeds in the pond, young Sir. And mind you don’t drown before we can come back for you!”
A distant splashing was silenced by upcoming footsteps heavy on the ground.
“Hey ho, Rickard, is that you? What are you fellows doing down here?”
Daria froze at this new voice and suppressed her desire to cough. It was Quentin, her father’s Second. Her sister’s supposedly grieving fiance. Miriam hadn’t been dead six months before he was courting again. Courting her, his dead fiance’s sister. He hadn’t liked it when she’d said no. That simple ‘no’ had signed her death warrant.
“Greetings, Lieutenant Quinten and sirs. I am checking that the boys had cleared out the correct patch of brush this time,” Rickard replied.
One of Quentin’s toadies cracked an off-color joke about checking bushes as the wagon jolted into movement. The others chuckled.
“Wait a moment,” Quentin ordered.
The wagon came to a reluctant halt. Everyone fell silent for a long, terrifying moment. Her head was knocked against the front board in the cramped space. Daria bit the inside of her cheek to suppress a whimper.
“Any of you see Daria? She was weeping over Miriam again. She ran off. I thought she came down this way.”
“Good Ancestors, no!” Rickard replied, his voice raising far above its usual octaves. “Miss Daria has always hated this pond. Miss says it’s a deathtrap.”
“Well, that’s my worry. She seemed, not to put too fine a point on it, inconsolable. I’m afraid that she might have done herself some harm,” Quentin said.
His tone was all silky smooth, full of false concern. From somewhere in his vicinity came the sounds of his cohorts agreeing with her supposed fate and offering Quentin sympathy, mixed with mocking laughs.
If she had been strong enough to move, she’d have got free of the tarp and brush and punched him straight in the face. The hot rush of anger quickly faded to self-loathing and fear. If she had been strong enough, she could have punched him straight in the face and escaped from him before he threw her into the pond to begin with.
If she lived through this day, she would do whatever it took to make sure she was never again at the mercy of another. The wagon started moving, this time more quickly. Rickard berated Erik and Silas to hurry and fetch the rakes and nets to drag the pond bottom.
“I can only hope that we are mistaken!” Quentin called out after them.
The rest of Quentin’s false concern was lost to her as the wagon lurched onto the path, and the crunch of gravel canceled out most anything else. The smelly tarp kept the wind off her as she worried about Ren hiding in the reeds and what would happen when her father, already half-mad with grief, realized that he’d almost lost his only remaining family member.
Daria let out a snort of derision that spurred on a coughing fit, earning herself a muttered reprimand from the gardeners pushing and pulling her wagon. She forced her coughing to stillness, but her thoughts kept circling back.
Her mother was dead. Her sister was dead. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, all dead. Ren was her first, best cousin. But thankfully not in the direct Brundt line. Daria was the last pawn in her father’s tottering empire. Why did she think he would manage to keep her safe when he’d failed everyone else they loved?
As soon as it was discovered that she was not, after all, dead in the pond, the assassination plots would start all over again. And she had neither the skill nor resources to keep herself alive. She might as well have drowned, for there would be no surviving Quentin and allies.
The gardeners left her bundled in the wagon, parked outside the shed closest to the pond. It let her hear, if not see, all the commotion. Ren was screaming and crying with apparent sincerity.
Her father, cursing and shouting. Quentin uttered false, soothing things to both of them. Rickard ordered yet another dragging of the pond with rakes and nets. Finally, as the air grew chill and the little light that penetrated the tarp and brush started to fade, a shout went out.
“Sir! Sir! I found a shoe!”
Daria cautiously wiggled her feet and discovered that both of her shoes were missing. Considering that she had the large shoe size to match her extra tall height, there was no chance they’d suppose that a shoe of hers belonged to anyone else.
A howling sounded across the palace lawn. It took her a moment to realize that the soul-wrenching sound was coming from her father.
“Where’s Ren? Where is he? By all the cursed Ancestors, is he drowned as well? First light, you fill this damned thing in! Fill it in!” her father yelled.
“Yes, your Excellency. Of course, your Excellency!”
The hubbub slowly died. So did her chill, morphing into a bone-wrenching fever.
Continue to Part Two: https://www.tlryder.com/?p=4915
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