Lillian was used to being woken abruptly – the cells they stuffed the inmates into were pitch black when the doors closed. After that, even the flickering torchlight when the guards arrived was enough to wake everyone in the room and make them squint, teary eyed.
From her place on the floor, Lillian climbed to her feet with the others, disoriented and dizzy, shackles clanking. She was almost sure this was not the usual work time.
"Just Sardothien," one of the guards barked. Lillian blinked stupidly at him.
Another guard tapped his baton impatiently against the side of his leg, and free space appeared suddenly around her as the others huddled against walls, crowding each other even more to avoid the guards' careless batons and heavy boots if she made them come for her. She'd made that mistake once.
It wasn't that she was trying to be difficult. Sometimes she just had trouble responding to the name.
She walked out of the cell.
"Someone wants to see you," the first guard told her as they marched her through the halls, even though she hadn't asked. Lillian didn't answer: silence was best unless she was asked a direct question. Sometimes it was best even then.
She didn't know where she had expected them to take her, but it was not the overseer's quarters. She was too busy smelling things other than blood, sweat, and waste (the lye the prisoners were required to scrub their cells and the hallways with never covered it entirely) to look around properly, but she did notice the immediate pleasant warmth. She had not been warm in a year. In Endovier, you were cold, or you were hot.
They stopped her at a door, where a quiet, cultured voice asked, "No one thought to clean her up first?"
Lillian shuddered, just once, with longing and dread both. Clean was a faraway dream, but being cleaned involved guards and groping hands and notice.
"Nobody asked," the talkative guard muttered, and after a short silence added, "My Lord."
"Indeed," the quiet voice said. "Too late now. Look at me."
Lillian peeked up through matted hair, hoping he wasn't talking to her. He was. Reluctantly she raised her head. Brown eyes met her blue ones.
"If you cause any trouble," he said, "any at all, I will kill you. Do you understand?"
She nodded.
His eyes narrowed, but he nodded sharply. Two guards that she hadn't noticed swung open the door, and the brown-eyed man led the way into the room.
"If you're through threatening the assassin?" another cultured voice asked from inside, though his was considerably less quiet. The words were drawled, almost to the point of adding extra syllables, and she saw the man who spoke sprawled across a chair behind a desk. There was no other furniture in the room.
The man was not the overseer, who she knew by sight, and there was something familiar about him. He should not have been sitting in the overseer's chair.
"Bow," the brown-eyed man ordered.
Lillian bowed.
"Don't tell me the mines have tamed her," the familiar man said.
Lillian looked him over as unobtrusively as she could: pale, pale skin – paler than hers had been before the mines – and pitch black hair. Tall. His fingers drummed impatiently on the chair arm, making a ring catch the light of the lanterns.
"She gave little trouble after the first week, Your Highness," the overseer said. "We expected more."
Anger sparked, but she stomped it ruthlessly out. More trouble would have meant more beatings, less food, less water. She had stopped protesting after the second week, and lost her count of days sometime after the third. His Highness and the overseer could expect whatever they wanted. She was obscurely glad she had not given it to them.
"Just like a criminal," Dorian Haviliard, son of the King of Adarlan, said. "Tough when things are easy, but they fold under discipline."
Lillian could not help but wonder how many criminals the prince had met, but she said nothing.
"Dear gods, no one cut out her tongue or anything as unpleasant as that?" the prince asked, still drawling. "Can you speak, assassin? Or do you have some code against it?"
Lillian shook her head.
"Answer the prince," brown-eyes said.
She tried, but her voice emerged only as a croak. Clearing her throat, she tried again. "I have no code," she said, voice hoarse with disuse.
"Your Highness," brown-eyes said, and, when Lillian looked at him in confusion, nodded towards the prince.
"I have no code, Your Highness," she said obediently.
The prince smiled. "How appropriate."
When she did not answer, the prince leaned forward, letting his arms rest on his knees and knitting his fingers together. "I have an offer for you, Sardothien."
Lillian glanced sideways, where brown-eyes was still watching her, and back at the prince. "An offer, Your Highness?"
Apparently taking her confusion as a cool request for more information, the prince clarified, "A choice. You can go back to your cell, keep mining until you die. You've done well here, lasted longer than most. How much longer will it take, do you think? Before you die of exhaustion, or a cut rots you from the inside out with infection? One misstep could mean death. These guards seem jumpy to me, though. It might not even be your misstep: guards can be so careless."
He met her eyes, and his were a darker blue than hers. "No one cares if one more convict dies."
She licked her lips, tasting salt from the mines and her own sweat. A tang of copper let her know that her lip had cracked again – she had stopped noticing the pinpricks of pain. "Or?"
He shrugged, still not looking away. "Or you work for me. Six years of service, assuming you survive."
"Survive?" she asked.
"Obviously we must be sure you are qualified," he said. "Not to mention the stakes. The only way you get out of here is if I have enough power to make it happen."
There had to be a catch, aside from the obvious. That didn't matter: anything was better than Endovier.
"Accepted," she said.
"Celaena Sardothien," he mused after a long moment, looking her up and down. "Not the negotiator I had expected. Take her out then, Chaol, and get her cleaned up. The chains stay."
She never was what people expected. The guards had expected more trouble; brown-eyes – Chaol – had expected her to be clean; the prince had expected negotiation, or maybe scorn.
It all boiled down to one thing: they expected Celaena Sardothien. It was unfortunate for everyone involved that Lillian wasn't her.