Two stagecoaches trickled north to the sea. Erik sat across from Christine, who was still blindfolded with her hands bound in her lap. The girl was beside her, and two men on either side of him, clutching a knife despite the chains binding their captive.
The sky filled with ink, but no stars peered out from the depths. A sliver of moon glowed pale through the window.
They traveled all night without a single stop, and then well on into the pink morning. It was then that the coaches stopped. The guards began speaking to one another in Farsi before exiting the coach.
"Erik?" Christine whispered. "What is it?"
He replied without hardly moving his lips. "They are freeing the boy."
"Oh, thank God! Can you see him? Is he well?"
He leaned over to peer out the window. His lip curled.
"He is well."
Her forehead knitted. "Are you... certain he is? Entirely well?"
"They have removed his bonds and are giving him a bit of the Mazandaran scent."
"What is that?"
"A type of chloroform, one I would consider far superior to its European counterparts."
She nodded, though her chin was trembling. "Do you promise?"
"You believe I am lying."
"I believe you are kind to me."
A tear ran down from underneath her blindfold. She fell silent and began fidgeting with the green fabric of her skirt.
Erik's chains rustled as he moved away from the window, his stomach writhing.
"I do not wish to cause you pain," he offered.
"I would be in more pain over a lie," she replied firmly in spite of her restless and trembling fingertips. "Would you swear it, on my life, that you are telling the truth?"
"I swear it. He has been freed, and is alive."
Her hands relaxed and settled on her knee, crossed from the rope binding her wrists.
He bit down hard on his lip at the sight outside the window, of the boy in a heap on the grass. They had left him to die, that was certain, but for now the boy was alive, and had been freed. He had tried to save Christine, and failed, so did it matter what happened to him now? He had served his purpose, however fruitless. He had offered his life.
The guards entered and slammed the door shut. Once seated, the coaches started off again.
...
After another few hours, they stopped with a sense of finality. The door opened and Christine felt herself being taken out of the coach, then guided onto wooden planks. Erik's chains clinked behind her.
The planks began to slope, and soon the floor rocked beneath her. By the salty breeze, she realized they were on a boat. She was taken beneath, down a winding staircase, step by step, until they placed her inside a room of some sort and, after cutting the bonds around her hands, left her quite alone.
The clanking of Erik's chains soon followed. They dragged across the wood floor, all the way into her cell, as she assumed that was where she was. He was soon bound across from her. The door grated shut.
"Christine?" he said, finding her in the cell adjacent, through the bars, clutching her knees to her chest.
"I was so worried I would be alone," she replied. "Where are we?"
"Beneath a ship, in two barred cells."
She stood up and reached out her arms. Her hands found the bars separating them, and she wove her arms through them, stretching as far out as she could.
"Can you reach me?" she asked, though it came out as pleading.
He shuffled across the floor. His chains groaned, then ceased, falling onto the ground in a heap.
"No," he said faintly. "I cannot."
Her arms fell back to her sides. A shadow passed over her features.
"So the tortures have begun," she murmured, sinking into the floor.
"No. Not for you. It is my pain they want, and they won't hurt you as long as I'm alive."
"Monsieur Khan said all that, too, when we were cellmates, but how can you both be so certain? And what if you are forced to do something you do not want, for my sake? Be killed, tortured, or..." She inhaled shakily. "I would much rather have myself punished than you. I feel, as a woman, and someone who has not offended them, they may be kinder-"
"The sultana does not care who you are. Often, when she ran out of prisoners to execute, she offered up her own maidservants."
Her lips parted in horror. "Surely... surely not? Her own women?"
His silence solidified his answer.
"But how could she? And why?"
"Boredom," he said with a nonchalant wave of his hand. "Wealth, power, time... Nothing amused her so much as toying with lives."
"And she made you... like her."
"I am nothing like her," he growled. "If I am a demon, she is the devil. To live, I had to indulge her. I tried for years to free myself, but I knew I would never succeed. Even now she pulls me back, like a cat with toy. I want nothing more to do with death, not now."
He gritted his teeth in silence.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean to open old wounds-"
"You have every right to. Tear me to pieces at your leisure."
"Why would I do such a thing, when you have endured enough already?"
"I expect, then," he sighed, "that Khan told you about me?"
"He told me about what he had known of you firsthand... he left the rest to you."
"And you wish to hear it?"
She folded her lips. His chains clinked as he adjusted to lean against the wall.
"You are too curious for your own good," he said, "though it makes you an excellent student."
"I only feel I know nothing of you."
"Well, we shall know each other very well by the time we reach Mazandaran."
"That is my one consolation..." She massaged her wrists where they had been rubbed raw. "Do you think we shall ever be free?"
"You shall. I swear it."
"But we, Erik."
He fidgeted with a link in his chains. "If possible."
"Well, if we do..." She twisted a brown curl round her finger for a moment. "I've had a lot of time to think, you see."
"Think?"
"About what I would do if I were free." She exhaled and rubbed her knees through her dress. "After all, life is so very short. This whole affair with Raoul's abduction, and my kidnapping, and us going to Persia, possibly to..." She faltered. "Well, if we escape it, I'm not going back to Paris, or any city. I'm going home... Where will you go?"
He fell silent. She rubbed her fingertips along the palm of her hand.
"Where would you go?" she corrected.
"I have nowhere to go, even if I were free."
She swallowed. "You could come with me, then."
"If I came with you, I would not be free."
Her head bowed. He shook the chain on his wrist for a moment in irritation.
"Would you do something for me?" she asked, her head tilting.
"Anything," came his soft reply.
"Would you sing?"
"Sing?"
She nodded. "When you sang before, you took me somewhere else. Like heaven."
"You wish for a bit of heaven from a man who knows only hell?"
"Those who are in hell know heaven better than anyone." She crept closer to the bars until her hands entwined around them, entreating him. "Please."
"I could never deny you."
She rested her head against the bars. He shut his eyes, letting himself be surrounded by the darkness, and took in a deep breath of salty air.
A bit of heaven for Christine...
"Elle ne croyait pas, dans sa candeur naïve,
Que l'amour innocent qui dormait dans son Coeur,"
His voice wrapped around her, drawing her forth. Her chin lifted, as if gazing at something just beyond, despite the blindfold and the black air surrounding them. She brought her forehead to the bars, resting it there as her spirit swelled within her. A faint smile lit her features.
How soon he had forgotten the effect his music had on her, that he could draw her from this place, give her light in the dark. He had done so before, behind her mirror, but here, down in this black cell, he could give her life. Vibrant life.
The melody swayed like the waves beneath the ship, caught like the sail in the breeze, pulling her forward. His voice always brought her towards something, unseen but irresistible. She was floating, certainly, higher and higher, though her knees remained firmly rooted to the floor.
"Ô printemps, donne-lui ta goutte de rosée."
Ô mon coeur, donne-lui ton rayon de soleil."
The last note faded. He exhaled softly and, quite suddenly, realized that warmth had flooded his chest with such fever that he could barely breathe.
"Thank you," she whispered. "I had almost forgotten, so much time has passed..."
"Forgotten?"
"Your voice. I forget that I was not so stupid when I thought you an angel." She leaned back against the wall. "I've missed music more than anything. All I've had of it is at those dreadful parties Raoul took me to- ladies who had learned piano like a subject, and only as a way to find a man. I could hear it in the way they played, that cold precision, and longing... I wish I could have given them some true music. Some had good technique."
"Did you not sing, then?"
Her head lowered. "They would have mocked me."
"Mocked you? Are you not the songbird of Paris?"
"Exactly," she replied, lowering her head. "They see me as an opera diva looking to seduce a vicomte. That's what every other member of the opera tries for, after all, and for many, I do not blame them. It doesn't matter my actions or words, or his... I couldn't sing, not when he was walking such a tightrope as it was. It would have solidified all their beliefs about me."
They fell silent for a moment. Erik was too depleted to be enraged. Instead, he felt as if his insides had been hollowed out. More than ever, he wanted to reach out and grab hold of some small part of her, just the hem of her skirt, perhaps. It would give him some hold on the world.
"You can sing now," he said. "No one will mock you here."
"I know... I haven't sung in some time, though, so forgive me if I falter a little."
"Sing something simple, then. Perhaps something of your homeland?"
"But you would not understand it."
"The way you sing, I do not have to understand it. You express the meaning far better than words could ever manage."
She smiled faintly. He leaned forward, against the will of his bonds. Her arms relaxed about her knees as she lifted her head, lips parting gently.
Her voice came forth in a feeble note. She swallowed, took a deep inhale, and continued, voice rising as her confidence grew.
"Hvi längtar du åter till fädernes strand,
Mitt hjärta,
du slår så oroligt,"
Again, it felt as if a match had been struck in his chest, warm and fervent. He dared not draw breath. The gloom around them turned into light like the very edge of a sunrise. The rocking of the ship became a gentle swaying. His mind was swept clean of coming torments, and he realized, even as the thought ate through his heart, that he was saved by her company.
"Men fädernetjället, det blomstrar ju än,
Och moder och vänner mig mana igen
Till hembygdens skogar och dalar."
Her song flickered and extinguished, as if it pained her to continue. He opened his eyes.
"I never thought I would hear you sing again," he said.
"Nor I you." She smiled faintly, then reached up to graze the seam of her blindfold as a shadow passed over her features. "If music were taken from me, I fear I should die."
"Do not fear it. The music is in your soul, Christine. Even when you die, it shall follow you to heaven."
"The music is in your soul, too."
"And it shall be my one respite in hell."
"Oh, speak no more of hell, I-"
Footsteps echoed to their right. Christine wrapped her arms about her knees as two guards came down from above decks. They opened her door first and gave her a bowl of rich-smelling broth and a piece of flat bread. Then they went to Erik.
"Give her mine," he commanded in Farsi.
"The sultana does not want you weak when you arrive," one man replied. "Eat your share."
They placed the bowl at his feet and shut the door, then went back up.
Christine felt along the ground for a spoon. Upon realizing there was not one, she tilted the bowl to her lips.
"Why do they still make you wear that?" Erik asked.
She set the bowl down in her lap. "I told you not to ask-"
"And you think I would respect that, when it concerns your wellbeing...? What have they done?"
"I cannot say."
"Because they forbade you?"
"Because I do not wish to say. It is my body, my life, and I have the sole right to it... I do not wish to cause you premature pain."
"Lord, Christine, I am in pain already! Tell me!"
"I shall not say! I did it to spare Raoul, who would be dead without my promise!" She shook her head in dismay. "Why was he even with you at all?"
"He begged to come."
"How is that so?" Her forehead knitted above the black cloth. "He found you?"
"I went to him. I thought he might know where you were."
"And what more?"
"I suspected that he had been kidnapped by accident, when they were after you. His capture was indeed no coincidence."
She shook her head, biting down on her lip. "But why would they want him? Oh, if I had only gone with him!"
"Then they would have murdered him. He would have put up a struggle."
"But why did you let him come? You despise him."
"He wanted to save you. I thought he could prove useful, when all he did was make things worse for you. Damn that boy!"
"How can you say that? Half the deal I made was for you!"
Erik faltered. His mouth filled with sand.
"Why would you do that?" he breathed.
"Because you are my friend. Are you not?"
"But what did you promise? You speak of your body and life-" He stopped. His heart was pounding. Deafening.
"What is it?"
"You must answer me now," he demanded, his knuckles white, "or I shall go mad."
"What has your mind concocted now?"
"Have they violated you?"
"Oh, that is why you are so pale! No, and they shall not, or else they will be mutilated. The girl told me... I am glad I can at least console you in something. But I am hungry, please let me eat in peace for a time."
"Take my bread," he offered, preparing to throw it through the bars.
"No, no, don't-"
"I insist."
She heard it land beside her and felt along the floor for it.
"I would give it back," she sighed, "if only I could see... Please don't give me any more."
"I am not giving it. I am paying back my debt to you."
She bowed her head. "Thank you, then. It's very kind of you." Her head lifted in sudden realization. "But I have something for you as well."
She pulled up her skirts and began to roll down her stocking. Erik averted his eyes.
"Christine?"
"They did not expect a little woman such as myself to be carrying it," she replied as she unfastened the leather trap from her thigh.
He lifted his eyes back up to meet her shrouded gaze as she approached the bars. She felt along them to find the center gap, then slid the sheath through it, across the wood planks. It hit his knee.
"Is it worth anything?" she asked.
"At the right moment, I should hope so... You are brave to have kept it."
"I am a fool to have not gotten rid of it sooner. If they had found it-"
"You are the bravest of women, Christine, and no fool."
He stowed the blade.
...
The next morning, she was gone. A great, gnawing pain rose up in his chest.
They were tormenting him with her presence.
To his great relief, however, she was again deposited in the cell across from him. Her head hung low, though, and for some time she made no conversation. It was only when they were brought lunch, when she asked him what it was, that he answered, along with the location of each on her plate so she could find them more easily.
She asked him to sing with her for a time. She taught him a Swedish song, and he encouraged her voice up to its prior standing. Her silver throat had barely tarnished in its lack of use.
This became routine. In the morning, she would be gone, then returned before lunch, meek and reserved. He brought the glow back in her cheeks with music, and she became herself again. Sometimes, when her color was particularly drained, he would even offer up a piece of his past. For some reason unknown to him, it comforted her.
Many nights, when she thought him asleep, she cried quietly to herself. Unable to think of anything else, he began to hum, as if oblivious, a tune- one she would recognize. She would inhale shakily, then relax into sleep.
Never had his voice been more valuable to him than now. It gave Christine hope. He could even make her laugh by throwing it about, a trick that he had forgotten was meant for amusement and not terror.
He marked the days into the wood floor with whatever utensil he was given to eat with, or his own fingernails. Soon they numbered seventeen. Christine was fast asleep on a bamboo mat the next morning when he etched in the eighteenth. They had not taken her away that morning. Curious.
It was then that a great commotion rose up above decks, and she sat bolt upright, her color draining.
"What's happening?" she asked.
"We must be docking."
She nodded, though he saw her swallowing as if a stone were lodged in her throat.
"I demand you tell me now," he said, "what they have done to you."
"I fear you shall find out soon enough," came her soft reply.
Two men came down and entered Erik's cell, then shoved the black cloth over his face. Christine whimpered at their roughness. He heard her plainly.
They dragged him out of the cell, up into the daylight. He recognized that burning daylight.
The men shoved him into a coach of some sort. This time the cloth was not removed, and Christine did not sit beside him.
He was alone. It was like before. He had tried to push away the memories, but they burrowed in his eyes and ears like sand, coming forth with a bite when disturbed.
The rolling of wheels on gravel made way for tiresome thoughts. Mostly his mind wandered to Christine. The sultana had plans of some sort for her, but he assumed she was only a tool and would not be harmed if he cooperated. His mind wandered regardless, to her writhing in pain and crying out as he stood hopeless against some glass wall, and the sultana shrieked with laughter.
Once he freed Christine, he would murder that horrible woman. Whatever could she want so desperately to go to all this effort? Was his death worth so much? His agony?
After a few days, the wheels stopped. He was pulled out, back into the fiery daylight, then dragged along marble and mosaic, into cooler air. He recognized these halls even as he stumbled upon them, blind, his chains grating across the polished floor.
The men threw him down without warning, onto his knees. His lip rose in a snarl.
"Remove that," came a clear, cold voice that knotted his stomach.
The cloth was taken off his head. He looked up to find the sultana seated on her favorite divan, her chosen maidservants- five in number- kneeling and standing around her. Her figure was relaxed, but her gaze was hard and clear as crystal. The silk she wore was of deepest red. She had aged considerably, as was visible in her graying hair and the deepening creases around her mouth and eyes.
"The mask... too," she added, the corner of her lip creeping up.
Her maidservants lowered their gaze as this request was met. The men tore it from Erik's features, stripping him bare beneath her roaming gaze. He glared up at her rather than give her satisfaction.
"Welcome back, my pet," she said, smiling down at him. "How long has it been since you left me? Do you even know?"
He remained silent.
She clucked her tongue. "No answer? No sharp reply?"
His distorted lips grew white and thin. She sighed in distaste.
"What did I ever do to deserve your betrayal?"
He stared up at her with greater intensity, trying to burn through her gaze.
"Speak," she commanded. "Or perhaps it would be best to simply kill you and put you out of your misery-"
"Is that not your intention?" he growled.
She emitted a shrill little laugh. "Oh, your voice is just as I remember it! Soft as a bird and violent as a demon! But yes, I did want to kill you. I wanted it desperately. And it would be done over the course of a month or two, depending on how long you lasted, using your own favorite tricks... but then I realized that no one can humor me as you do. I have searched in vain for over a decade, seeking out a suitable replacement."
"Then why did you try to have me killed when I was in your service?"
She waved her hand with nonchalance. "Oh, that was my son. He was so easily decided, and he feared you, which I do not. But he is dead now, and his brother sits on the throne. He is far more indulgent... But surely you knew I would have prevented your death?"
"You hunted me down like a dog, let them torture my companion to find my whereabouts, then made him blind and lame-!"
"Do not speak to me in that manner!" she snapped. "As if you give a damn what happened to him. He was my subject, and dealt with according to his crimes. Disloyalty is intolerable in this court. But I am merciful to those who win my favor. You betrayed my trust and fled my side, even though you had sworn yourself to the Shah and I alone... But I am merciful. I offer you a deal."
His lip curled in a sneer. "Nothing could ever make me stay here."
"Oh, we both know that isn't true. I have decided, in my mercy, to allow you to regain my trust and be reinstated as my magician and entertainment. To keep you here, fully willing, and grateful, I have prepared a gift for you. You only have to earn it."
Earn my own slavery, sultana?"
She sighed in discontent. "Oh, I know you well, my pet. You would kill yourself rather than spend a single day in a cage... unless between the bars lay the one thing you desire above all else."
He averted his gaze. His stomach writhed as she smiled cruelly, revealing white teeth.
"A wife," she said, her voice clear and remarkably soft. "I have known your general whereabouts for some time, but found no way to bring you here. You had no weaknesses. But then I found, almost by accident, these peculiar articles about an opera house, and a certain diva there. After all, I have people all over Europe. Well, a few odd calamities, a few deaths, and it all pointed to you. I recognize your signature and style... So I made a few arrangements, plans, and with my faithful maidservant's talents, everything fell into place. The woman we took is not just any, either. You would not accept such. She has a voice, I hear, that is clear as crystal. Her beauty is not remarkable, which disappointed me, but certainly acceptable. We have made certain this woman, your bride, is prepared for you and shall give you a semblance of love. She is waiting in your chambers, should you accept my terms."
"And if I refuse?"
"Without even knowing the terms?" She laughed, shaking her head. "Well, if you refuse, I shall have her dragged in here, before you, and her throat shall be slit. Then you shall be brought into my court, day after day, until you snap in two like a dry branch... I assume you shall not take that."
He swallowed. She tapped her nails on the gold edge of the divan.
"Well?"
He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood.
"What are the terms?" he managed out, his gaze lowering.
She waved a hand towards the great cedar doors at the end of the hall. The guards on either side, with pistols in their decorative belts, opened the doors to reveal a man in chains, his clothes ripped and faded brown. Erik's heart beat madly against his ribcage.
They dragged the man forth until he was in front of Erik, his green eyes pleading and filled with tears. They reminded him of the daroga's jade gaze. All of him was bruised. He could hardly lift himself to his knees.
"You were my magician, yes," the sultana said, her voice filling the room as her black eyes gleamed. "But also my assassin and entertainer. I need to know you can still prove loyal, that you have not grown soft in your absence."
The guards removed Erik's chains. They tumbled to the ground in a heap as the prisoner clamped his eyes shut.
"Show me you have not lost your skill," the sultana continued. "And once it is completed, all shall be forgiven."
Erik met the gaze of the girl closest to the sultana's side. He had not realized it at first, but she was the same who had, without hesitation, shot a bullet through the daroga's servant. She appeared to be drifting, though, side to side, as if in a slight breeze. Her brown eyes were murky.
The guard threw him a red lasso, weighted on one end, this one freshly dyed and stiff from lack of use. The sultana was already beaming.
"Go on," she said. "Entertain me."
He swallowed. The rope burned his hands. The man before him was shaking in terror.
Was he still such a menacing figure? Dirty and bruised, the marks from his chains still fresh and bleeding?
"What was his crime?" Erik growled.
"Does that matter?" the sultana replied leisurely.
"I should like to know."
"Do not delay or I shall remove my offer from the table," she replied sharply.
"No, I shall not," he said through clenched teeth, rising to his feet. His knuckles were white around the crimson lasso. "I am your servant, sultana... but shouldn't the ladies leave?"
"You are a proper gentleman now, I see. If they did not faint at your disgusting excuse for a face, then I am sure they can bear this. Now do it! You exhaust me."
"I am only trying to build your excitement, sultana," he offered dryly, wetting his lips. "You love to be teased, do you not? Do you want it over so quickly?"
She clapped her hands in delight, though her eyes were still dark in distrust. Erik wrapped the lasso around his fist, testing its strength and bend. He would have to satisfy her with fear, but not pain. He had to be swift. Merciful. After all, the man had already been tortured. It was a mercy. It had to be a mercy.
"On your feet," he growled to the man.
Forgive me, Christine.