Free The Immortal Prince by Jennifer Fallon Page B

too sure of that, suzerain. The Tide can be a long time turning, and you wouldn’t be here if it was on the way back.”
    Never a truer word was spoken, Cayal lamented silently. The Crasii was right. It was the long drought caused by the Vanishing Tide that had brought him to this desperate pass and there was still no hint of when the Tide would begin to turn, and with it, his fortunes.
    â€œWhen it does turn, you’ll be on your knees, begging for the scraps from my table, gemang,” he predicted, leaning on the bars to study his companion more closely. He really was a magnificent specimen. From Tryan’s kennels, if Cayal guessed correctly. He’d bred his Crasii for their size and strength. “Enjoy your moment of rebellion. It won’t last long.”
    The Crasii wasn’t given a chance to answer. At that moment, several guards rounded the corner of the corridor, shoving a trustee and a water cart ahead of them, yelling at the prisoners to step back from the bars so they could open the cells.
    Cayal did as the guards asked, watching the big Crasii across the hall as they shackled his hands and feet, thinking that if he decided to make a break for it, he’d need the Crasii to aid him. Until the Tide turned and Cayal’s power with it, he was helpless. Perhaps, with the aid of a beast specifically bred by his kind to serve the Tide Lords, he had a chance of escaping this place.
    Then, with luck, he could resume his quest to find a way for a tormented immortal to commit suicide.
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    Several hours later, with his cell reeking of bleach and clean ticking on his straw-filled mattress for the first time, Cayal suspected, in at least four generations, he lay down to wait for the historian they were sending to interrogate him.
    It was gratifying to learn the Warden had taken his claim of being a Tide Lord seriously. Seriously enough that the King’s Spymaster had been to see him and now they were sending a historian to speak to him, too.
    The Duchess of Lebec herself, no less.
    He was surprised they were sending a historian. He’d been expecting a doctor; and one armed with a straightjacket and a vial full of laudanum, at that.
    Not that he held much hope any human scholar would be able to verify his claim. And this one was female, to boot. Given the low opinion the men of Glaeba held of educated women, Cayal imagined either this duchess must be some spoiled heiress playing at being an academic to while away the long hours of her leisure time—which was bad enough—or worse, she took herself seriously and would question him endlessly on facts she had no way of checking.
    He wasn’t sure which would be more painful.
    This Glaeban duchess might well prove a worse torment than the noose.
    That was the trouble with hiding for a thousand years. People forgot about you. Or they twisted your story around so much they turned you into a myth; they scorned your very existence until you began to wonder if you were real, or just a figment of your own imagination.
    Cayal folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes, still cursing his own stupidity. It had been foolish to think this might work; sheer lunacy to imagine the Vanishing Tide would release him from his hellish sentence. He’d tried it before, to no avail. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t have proof of the futility of trying to die. Even with everything they had done to each other over the years, no Tide Lord had yet succeeded in killing another.
    But Cayal still hoped for an escape. It amazed him a little that he was still able to do that.
    Or maybe not. Before the relentless drudge of immortality had worn him down, Cayal had always been an optimist. Even in the most dire circumstances, he’d always believed things would go his way, sometimes to the point of idiocy. It was a trait he’d brought with him into immortality; something he’d been guilty of long before fate had taken a hand in his