Chapter 17
Heaven Help Me – Raign
Tepid water splashed down, and Clarke came awake with a cry.
Her reddened eyes flew open, though her vision blurred. Standing over her was a pair of girls. Each bearing a bucket in both hands. They gazed down, and as Clarke's eyes focused, she shifted her gaze to the soldiers beyond the cell's open gate.
Head aching, and her mind slow, she didn't realize what the girls were doing until a second bucketful fell on her. Gasping at the warmth, she opened mouth and choked. They didn't pause. The last two buckets fell upon her- soaking Clarke from head to her still booted feet. The blackened water swept down into the grate. It left both the cell floor and it's prisoner marginally cleaner.
The maids stepped back, without a word, ignoring the prisoner's garbled questions. Sniffling, she began to shake, with her wet clothes and skin in the frigid cell. Clarke pressed both hands to the grimy floor and tried to heave her body upward.
Half-way up, her knee buckled. Thunder boomed as pain in her head, and her stomach clamped down in warning. With sneers at the trembling mess on the ground, the guards stepped forwards. The maids flattened themselves to the wall out of the way. Calloused hands wrapped around Clarke's upper arms to lift her onto her feet. When she swayed towards the ground, those hands yanked her. Clarke lost her footing as they passed through the wide gate into a torch-lit corridor.
Soft footsteps followed. Between the pair of soldiers, she was dragged forwards. Her feet and ankles dragging the dirt-strewn floor. Clarke fought to keep her eyes open, and her mouth shut, but as one corner became two, then three, she failed at both. Already raw ankles tore open as the worn skin caught upon the stones. Inside her knee, something burned. Clarke cried out helplessly. Whether it was the fourth, or fifth corner, she didn't know, but a sharp turn brought them into a brighter light.
As Clarke opened her eyes, the guards tossed her into a brick wall. Once red, it was browned by age. A protruding corner caught her. The blood felt boiling to her chill as it filled her mouth, and cascaded down her chin from the burst lip. A single, wide hand slammed into her back between her shoulder blades. It ground her chest and belly into the bricks as one yanked her arms above her head.
Clarke's bleeding wrists were crushed in a tight grip. Then she felt ropes knotting around them.
Panicking, Clarke threw herself back. Slamming her head into the nose of one of her captors it connected with a vindicate crack. Twisting, and yelling her fury, her terror, Clarke raised her good leg to catching the other guard in his thigh, but her other leg didn't hold her weight. Collasping, only to be caught before she hit the ground.
Swearing, the men crushed her to the wall, and tied her wrists together swiftly. With practiced ease, her bound wrists were secured to the heavy iron ring set in the wall. The ring was ten feet from the ground, and she couldn't imagine any good coming from this. Through it all, she never stopped screaming.
Even as she let her weight hang from the ropes and wrists to kicking and flail, her ankles were grabbed next. Then it was done. She was bound tight at the three points.
Though she was facing the wall, she had just enough slack to stand back a few inches. This she used to try tearing her wrists down until another wave overtook her. This time the water was truly hot, and she shrieked as it swept down her chilled flesh. Cringing, Clarke shied away as some bristly touch fell upon her shoulder.
Twisting her head , she saw the blank face of one of the maids. In her hand, a black bristled wooden brush like the ones used to groom horses. Bewildered, she eyed the guards at the distance they'd backed away to. Trapped, and tied like an animal, there was no way out of this. Clarke's strength left her. She fell limp against the wall- letting the bite of the bricks catch her.
Accepting the prisoner's stillness, the maid set the brush onto her shoulder again. The girl's eyes carefully averted from Clarke's face, she began to scour the prisoner clean of the grime the water had failed to wash away.
Scrubbed from the tips of her hands hanging above her head, downwards, Clarke's face rested on the wall. Raising one foot at a time, her boots were maneuvered off.
The soaked boots were taken away to be dried by the fire, but the rest of her clothing were rinsed and brushed still hanging on her body. Finally thick, warmed towels were brought and worked over her diligently.
The firm, but slow handling, and the warmth of the fire nearby brought Clarke back to herself as the minutes slid by. "Where is Charlotte? My second, where is she?" Clarke demanded, her voice hoarse.
She kept on, asking of where the girl was, of what was happening, where were they. All her pleas, and demands alike, went ignored. The maids barely blinked, and said not a word.
The guards at her to be silent, in thick English. Kneeling at her feet, the maids worked the damp boots back onto her towel dried socked feet. Tied them tightly. Clarke though about kicking out at them, but they were only skinny serving girls in thick aprons.
With their duties accomplished the girls vanished, and that was all the warning Clarke received before the guards moved over her again.
One heavy chest crushed her to the wall, while the other undid the restraints. They took hold of her by her arms to pull her away. Stairs led upwards, narrow and gray, but Clarke couldn't manage them. Twice she fell into her captors before one grunted impatiently.
He hefted her into his arms, and then head first, over his shoulder. One muscled arm across her lower back held her in place. Kicking at his chest, and her clawing at the back of his tunic was ignored.
Giving up on escape when the soldier did not even flinch, Clarke focused on trying to hide the pain.
Her surrounding blurred, and Clarke drifted. There was the opening up into a wide sunlit space, and drafts of cold wing. Boots on hard ground. So many more than she could figure out. More stairs. Climbing upwards endlessly. Her leg curled painfully stiff against the jostling of the careless carry. The rhythmic marching and swaying in the guard's hold pricked at her memory.
There had been days and days of it, but not with a man's hold on her.
There had been ropes, around her arms, and legs, and waist. They'd bound her to the frothy, coarse hair of the horse that swayed with each footstep.
The sun had flickered through rough-spun blankets, but little air had come. Her stomach clenching on nothing. How many days had it been? How many days did they have left? How far from Polis was she? Voices scratched, and floated around her.
All these thoughts fled as the arm holding her tight shifted. Then she was sliding, falling, but she didn't hit the floor.
Something padded and cloth covered broke her descent. There she lay, trying to remember who she was and why she ought to bother standing. She knew she should. Rise, and rise again.
Yet there was so much light, and so much noise that her brain stuttered on the commands, and her body refused to carry them out anyway.
She lay still. Down to the cloth beneath her, her face rested with her eyes closed. If she stayed still, her head eased. It made focusing possible. Breathe in, breathe out...
"Too many hits to her thick head," grunted a man above her.
"I wanted her subdued- not damaged," hissed a woman's voice. The tones were familiar- commanding, but it wasn't Lexa's sleek voice, nor Octavia's growl... it was a voice she should know, though...
"She's intact enough to fight the washing," reported the guard.
"Then get her to her feet, and out there! She must be seen, and she needs to see, too," Nia, Clarke realized. Her chest seized. The Ice Queen, just feet away from her. Did that mean- but thick hands wrapped around her arms again, and Clarke found herself on her feet.
Her knee burned like there were ribbons of red hot iron laced inside. Protectively, she bent it to ease her weight off. Opening her eyes made her sway as the light hit.
"Can she even walk?" hissed Nia. Behind Clarke, the guards maintained their hold on her, and grimaced at the queen. "I see," snarled Nia. "Get her to the railing, and don't let them see her fall!"
Under the queen's stare, the guards handled Clarke slowly. Each took an arm near her elbows to haul her close between them.
Somehow the stabbing pain of each step shocked her more and more back to herself. Woke her up. Skaikru. Their leader. Their voice. Their protector. She was Clarke Griffin. There wasn't nothing she wouldn't do for them.
Grudgingly, Clarke rotated her arm to grip onto the guard on her good side. Giving herself leverage meant she could support a bit of her own weight.
The bright sun was shining through from the balcony they steered her onto. The queen marched before her in the gray furs and black breeches, a sword on her hip, and crown on her head. The sword and crown that ought to be Roan's, but he was nowhere to be seen. No one else was on the long, wide balcony.
When they neared the thick stone railing, the other guard pushed her into it. It came to just below her breasts.
Cautiously, she let her weight rest upon it, and unclenched her hand from the guard's arm. They stepped back. Behind her, she could still feel the warmth of them, the brush of their furs, as they flanked her. At least with her hands and belly braced on the half-wall, she could stand without their aid.
Still, her head throbbed, and her vision swam sickly when she moved. Breathing slow, and deep, she forced herself to adjust.
"Now," breathed Nia, from somewhere to Clarke's left.
One of the guards stepped closer, his chest brushing Clarke's side, and his voice boomed out. "The Prisa kom Skaikru! Mountain Slayer, Wanheda!"
When the world coalesced around her, Clarke hesitantly titled her gaze down to the noise. Her eyes watered, but she blinked them clear. The balcony was not particularly high up. Three or four floors at most.
From here, she could make out a stone and iron courtyard. Despite the cold, it was full to bursting around the edges. Only the center stood nearly empty.
There were just four men alone there, and their faces all pointed up to the balcony. As did all of the crowd, Clarke saw. With slow movement, Clarke looked her left, and found the queen already watching her. Nia's mouth curved into a smirk, and something gleamed in her eyes.
"Are you ready, my dear?" she asked pleasantly.
"What?" Clarke breathed out, hoarse and choked. Her mouth was dried and her throat tight from too long without water, her screaming protests down in the cells.
Nia nodded, as if Clarke's had answered. The queen raised her hand high with her palm open, and fingers spread, out over the courtyard.
Turning her head downwards again, Clarke's vision doubled, then blurred.
The men in the center were already in motion. Clarke watched blearily as one was forced to his knees, arms behind his back.
Two others backed away then, and there was a great, pale wood block and not this wasn't- but the kneeling beside it laid his head down without a fight.
An ax was raised... the largest, gleaming piece of metal Clarke had ever seen.
The crowd murmured and wavered, but then the ax fell, and there was the snapping. The thunk of metal meeting thick wood, and the blood soared.
Clarke's cheeks were frozen, but she distantly thought the salt in tears ought to keep them from truly freezing. The dark haired head lolled away from the block.
"The price of disobedience," Nia murmured.
Clarke's face jerked toward the queen. The lack of care stabbed pain like an ice pick into her brain, and Clarke's eyes slid closed without her permission. Her own breathes sounded so loud she could out the horrible cheers, and the yells from below. A woman was screaming, but it was so far away. Hands came for her again. She shrugged them away, and they waited behind her.
"We will talk now, inside, Wanheda," announced the queen.
Clarke snarled wordlessly, and forced herself to face the queen. "I was only sixteen when I watched my father's execution, and they pulled me from my mother away to arrest me too. Watching you kill your own people won't make me bow to you," Clarke bit out.
The queen's huff of laughter grated on Clarke, but then the guards' hands were back on her arms. They held Clarke still as the queen turned her back on them to walk away.
Steered through the wide doorway, she brought before Nia. The ice queen leaned back on her throne. Clarke knelt only because the Azgeda warriors forced her down. Pain wrenched from her knee. Finally, as she tried to keep herself from falling to the floor, Clarke sucked into sharp panting breathes. She couldn't deny it any longer. There was something irrevocably wrong with her knee.
Not even what felt like an open gash across her belly from hip to hip agonized her as terribly. Running away... might not even be an option. The only defiance she could muster was to glare into Nia's face. Blearily, she hoped that her anger was written clearly enough for the vicious queen to read. Though her eyes blurred, Clarke felt the smugness that wafted down from the queen's dais.
"The Ice Nation holds your life in it's hands, and I, your queen, command that Wanheda shall live for Azgeda. You will be bound to my son, and through you, Azgeda will overcome the Coalition." pronounced Nia smugly.
"I will die for the Coalition first." retorted the kneeling skai prisa sharply.
What slammed into the side of her skull, she didn't know. The words had barely been out of her mouth before the blow flung her sideways. Sprawled on the floor, she panted, trying to get through the pain.
"Do not blemish her face," instructed the queen. It did not sound as though Nia truly cared one way or the other, but the guards bowed their heads in deference.
The moment she could, Clarke scrambled back up as far as she could, but she couldn't straighten her bad knee. But she could stand, with her teeth gritted, and fire in her eyes.
"You are brave, but foolish. You are mine now, child." warned Nia quietly.
"I am Skaikru," replied Clarke firmly, despite the ringing in her ears, and for a moment, Clarke wished to be anyone other than who she was.
She couldn't help but remember how Ontari had died, in another life. The Azgeda nightblood had died from a blow to her skull by Skaikru... and history might be to repeat itself, inversed. John had been there then. His duty had been to sustain the last traces of Ontari's life. He'd stood by pumping her blood into Clarke's veins, and keeping watch over Clarke's own life. This time, Ontari had outlived John. Perhaps she'd outlive Clarke as well.
"Sky princess, mountain slayer, Wanheda, you can belong to no one but Azgeda. I am honoring you, stupid child. You will wed to the heir to my throne, and thus you... you will be the next queen of Azgeda. My own successor," hissed Nia, standing up from her throne.
The queen slowly approached Clarke, watching her intently. As she grew close, her tone softened. Her eyes did not. Clarke blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision.
"My son Roan is a simple-minded warrior. He'll be easily maneuvered by you in time. It would be no difficult task to sway him to your whims, and then you can rule the land yourself. The world will bow before you. All you must do is think sensibly," The Queen's voice was smooth, and cold, lacking any trace of maternal affection when she spoke of her son.
"Never." spat the furious girl, standing, throbbing knee bent, but on her feet.
The same staff that had been used to knock her down returned. It lashed out swiping her knees out from under her. The screams echoed against the high ceiling. Something had torn inside her leg, and with it, Clarke's ability to remember her pride.
"Bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind, but remember your orders. She is not to be defiled," murmured the queen.
On the polished floors of the ice queen's throne room, the sky princess did not even hear those words. Clinging to consciousness, Clarke felt herself be scooped up from the ground, and did not even try to figure out what would come next. She knew enough of Azgeda cruelty.