Chapter 38.1

The last remaining bread crumbs fell to the floor. The clinging, fishy smell of the place where Lia found herself, let her know that it was located close to the Leon River. The floor creaked every time she stepped on it, and her body was shaking as if she were walking on air.

I don’t feel well, Lia thought to herself.

Presumably, the hideout was not on solid ground. Due to the rocking motions of the floor beneath her feet, Lia estimated that she was on a boat, a medium-sized fishing vessel if she had to guess.

Only three men had abducted her, but the number of footsteps increased as they moved on to the boat. Lia estimated that more than 10 people met them once they were aboard the boat.

Lia, wrists tied, was carried over the shoulders of a strong man. Suddenly she was thrown to the hard wooden floor. She almost screamed at the dull pain that hit her body, but she swallowed her moan as she feigned unconsciousness.

“Let’s cut her hair first. Have you seen it before? Marilyn Selby must have been a scarecrow.”

“I agree. I think it will definitely be different this time. It looks like you can get a lot of money out of this. Doing a big job like this, getting money from the duke’s family, is a nice change.”

“What should we do with those kids from earlier?”

“You have to deal with it. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t keep the children who saw our faces alive. But first, let’s cut that hair off. Or should I slice her neck and send her away?”

A cool blade touched the nape of her neck. The scent of blood mixed with the fishy smell of iron invaded her senses; it was clear to Lia that he was the man who had cut the women’s necks. But what had frightened her even more than his ident.i.ty, was his comment about killing the children.

“Wait a minute. She looks quite familiar… Move away from her.”

The cold blade touching the nape of her neck moved away. The man’s behaviour was rough, but the second man was obedient to the first’s orders. Then, Lia was hoisted up, out of her crouched position on the floor.

The man shoved her into a chair with his rough hands and pulled off the cloth that had been covering her eyes. She struggled to open her eyes, but when she did, she found five men surrounding her in what looked like a narrow cabin.

“Don’t be scared,” a man said, shining a lantern near her face, bringing her features into the light.

Lia frowned at the bright light and turned her head. The person addressing her was, as she expected, the doctor she had seen in the square.

“Except for her hair and eyes, yes… I know… She looks like Laura.”

She was unable to hide her surprise at Laura’s name. She hadn’t antic.i.p.ated that he would think of her mother as soon as he saw her. Her eyes adjusting to the light, she looked straight up at the doctor. Seeing her face for the first time, the crowd of men gasped.

“Unbelievable!”

“Didn’t you say that she lost her daughter a few years ago… ?” A man asked the doctor. “Isn’t that why she left Louver?”

“No, she is still here…”

“Her daughter was only ten years old. She was not a lady.”

Only the doctor stared at her quietly, oblivious to the murmurs of panic. He leaned towards her and stretched out his hand, and removed her gag.

“You are…”

“You cannot justify harming a powerless woman and child; no matter how right you believe yourself to be!” Lia said, her voice cold.

The surrounding sounds of confusion came to a halt at her words. The sound of her deep breaths could be heard throughout the room.

“Don’t you dare look down at me for what I have to do to stay alive. You’re dressed well, and have food in your belly, and can obviously not understand what it’s like.”

“What you’ve done is a crime! You are all murderers!”

The doctor’s face hardened at her outburst, slapping her through the face. The impact toppled the chair onto its side with a loud thud. Lia collapsed and swallowed her scream. Her mouth, already wounded from earlier, began to bleed again. The blood poured from her mouth and over her chin.

“I must have mistaken her for someone else. They deprive the people of their rights, playing and eating like beasts, wielding power without effort as if it were a right…. They are the n.o.bles.” The doctor righted the chair before brushing off his leather gloves. Tilting his head to the man with the knife, the doctor said, “Let’s get rid of her hair for now.”

At the doctor’s orders, the man who had been playing with a knife approached, with the blade in his hand.

Lia stared at the man, a jagged scar on his face. A thick bandage was visible under the man’s shirt. He was the man who had wounded Marilyn, escaping with a gunshot wound.

“Our doctor is overly generous. If it were me, I would have had your wrist cut off,” the man said, a malicious smile on his face.

“You’re a coward of a man! Are you going to harm those poor children?” Lia asked.

“Why do you care about them? Those children have been abandoned, even their parents don’t want them. Why do you think their parents would do such a thing? A n.o.bleman like you left the child hungry. After all, you are the reason they starve..”

“The nonsensical accusations you make do not absolve you of your crimes.”

“Why don’t you cry and beg for mercy? All the others did…” a gruff man asked, pulling her hair back and touching the cold knife to the hair at the nape of her neck.

But instead of frightening Lia, it had the opposite effect.

“It is you, not me, who should cry and beg for your life,” she said, boldly raising her eyes to meet his.

Her honey-coloured wig was raggedly cut off. The well-forged blade cut a handful of her hair off as well, without much effort.

The man who had buried his nose in her cut hair put the tip of a knife to her cheek. “Why are all you arrogant n.o.bles so persistent? Even on the verge of death, you can’t let go of your pride. However, when you see blood, that abruptly changes. Some of the others lost control of their bladders as they begged. You know what I did to them then?”

“I don’t know how many people you’ve killed, nor what you did to them.”

The man’s eyes changed, intrigued by her blunt reply.

The doctor, who had been watching the two of them argue, approached and took the clump of hair from the other man’s hand.

“I’ve killed twelve n.o.bles. If I cut off your head, it’ll be thirteen. They’ve all done something worthy of death. They treated slaves like cattle and killed commoners for no reason. To them, we were nothing more than worms. They felt no remorse for the people they trampled,” the doctor said; his lament filled with anger, sorrow and longing at the same time.