The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [21]
Once it would have been enough to make him scream. Now tears started in his eyes as he looked down to where the king’s hand gripped his.
He still didn’t recognize them, his hands. Once the fingers had been gently tapered, lean and supple, perfect for fingering the croth or tripping on keys. Now they were swollen and twisted in terribly unnatural ways; the praifec’s men had broken them methodically between all the joints.
They hadn’t stopped there, though; they had crushed the bones of each hand as well, and shattered the wrists that supported them. If they had cut his hands completely off, it would have been kinder. But they hadn’t. They had left them to hang there, a reminder of other things he would never, ever do again.
He looked again at the hammarharp, at its lovely red-and-black keys, and his shoulders began to tremble. The trickle of tears turned to a flood.
“There,” Robert said. “That’s right. Let it out. Let it out.”
“I-I did not think you could hurt me more,” Leoff managed, gritting his teeth, ashamed but almost, finally, beyond shame.
The king stroked the composer’s hair as if he were a child. “Listen, my friend,” he said. “I am at fault for this, but my crime was that of neglect. I did not supervise the praifec closely enough. I had no idea of the cruelty he was visiting upon you.”
Leoff almost laughed. “You will forgive me if I am skeptical,” he said.
The usurper’s fingers pinched his ear and twisted a bit. “And you will address me as ‘Your Majesty,’” Robert said softly.
Leoff snorted. “What will you do if I don’t? Kill me? You have already taken all I have.”
“You think so?” Robert murmured. He released Leoff’s ear and withdrew. “I have not taken everything, I promise you. But let that pass. I regret what has happened to you. My personal physician will attend you from here on out.”
“No physician can heal this,” Leoff said, holding up his maimed hands.
“Perhaps not,” Robert conceded. “Perhaps you will never again play yourself. But as I understand it, the music you create—compose—is done within your head.”
“It cannot come out of my head without my fingers, however,” Leoff snarled.
“Or the fingers of another,” Robert said.
“What—”
But at that moment, the king gestured and the door opened, and there, in the lamplight, stood a soldier in dark armor. His hand rested on the shoulder of a little girl whose eyes were covered by a cloth.
“Mery?” he gasped.
“Cavaor Leoff?” she squealed. She tried to start forward, but the soldier pulled her back, and the door closed.
“Mery,” Leoff repeated, lumbering toward the door, but Robert caught him by the shoulder again.
“You see?” Robert said softly.
“They told me she was dead!” Leoff gasped. “Executed!”
“The praifec was trying to break your heretic soul,” Robert said. “Much of what his men told you is untrue.”
“But—”
“Hush,” Robert said. “I have been charitable. I can be more so. But you must agree to help me.”
“Help you how?”
Robert smiled a ghastly little smile. “Shall we discuss it over a meal? You look half-starved.”
For what seemed an eternity, Leoff’s meals had consisted of either nothing or some nameless mush that under the best of circumstances was more or less without taste and under the worst reeked of putrefying offal.
Now he found himself staring at a trencher of black bread that had been heaped with roast pork, leeks braised in must, redbutter cheese, boiled eggs sliced and sprinkled with green sauce, and cream fritters. Each scent was a lovely melody, wafting together into a rhapsodic whole. His goblet was filled with a red wine so sharp and fruity, he could smell it without bending toward it.
He looked at his useless hands, then back at the meal. Did the king expect him to lower his face into the food like a hog?
Probably. And he knew that in a few more moments he would.
Instead, a girl in black-and-gray