Aliana. The Dungeons of Castle Randal The walk down to the dungeons of Castle Randal was a different one than the last such march Aliana had taken. It seemed an eternity ago, a distant memory, but fresh as if it were a wound cut into her moments earlier. The queen was almost surprised to find William walking beside her, when in her mind he was behind an iron door with a small barred window. Castle Randal's dungeons were dank and musty, as if the smell of years of shit and blood had seeped into the rock around them. Despite the cold outside there was a disconcerting warmth to it, of too many bodies kept down there, like sardines packed into a pit of hell. Nothing like Tyron's Keep, with its cold damp air and mold. It made Aliana sick nonetheless, but she'd felt that way before they entered the tunnels. Aliana walked in silence through the stone tunnel, flanked by William on one side and his brother Ricaud on the other. She had not wanted her usual advisers to steer her one way or another; she wanted protection, and comfort, and nobody to sway her thoughts. The jailer appeared out of the darkness, holding a torch at the deepest place in the rock. He looked stiff but weary, much as Aliana herself felt. "Your Grace," he said to her, bowing, and then, "my lords," nodding his head to William first and then Ricaud. Aliana was ready for the argument to come. "I will see him now," she said succinctly, taking a step toward the door. She sensed both brothers take a step to follow her, and the queen added, "I will speak to him alone, my lords," not daring to look back at them. Aliana could feel William stiffen, and knew Ricaud would be looking to his brother's eyes for an indication of how to respond to his monarch's demand. After too many moments of silence, and no move from the confused jailer, Aliana chanced to look over her right shoulder at William, finding him closer than she'd imagined. He had not been far since the battle, and Aliana had not objected. He had not been far from her mind, either. She could almost feel his warm hand on her arm in the darkness when she tried to sleep, though she knew it was never really there to begin with. Now, Aliana found herself wishing for the first time since he'd led her out of his tent the morning of the battle that he were not so very close. His eyes found hers, searching and concerned. "I cannot allow you, Your Grace," William said, carefully enunciating each syllable. "He wants you dead --" "And what would it get him, if he killed me here in a cell out of which he has no escape?" Aliana interrupted him harshly. Too harshly. She turned to the jailer. "Please, assuage my High Commander's concerns and check the prisoner's chains for sturdiness and his walls for cracks." He set to the task immediately, unlocking the door as Aliana and the two brothers watched, then slipping inside, leaving the door open. Aliana saw out of the corner of her eye William grip the hilt of his sword. "Go, Ricaud," William said through his teeth, directed at his brother. When Aliana did not immediately object, she saw Ricaud bow to her and turn back up the dark passage. They were mostly alone, the jailer now inside the cell. William was quick to grab Aliana's arm the moment Ricaud was out of earshot, saying lowly, "You know you are not safe with him." His touch did not feel like the imagined version she sensed at night. Aliana pulled her arm away, hurt in her pride more than her person. "I do not have to listen to you," she finally said, softly but firmly. William kept her gaze for a few long moments, as if ready to challenge, but then looked away. The jailer had reappeared in the door to the cell, and nodded at her. "If he harms me," Aliana added, lowering her voice all the more and placing a hand over William's that rested upon his sword's hilt, "you have my permission to kill him where he stands." She was quick to leave him, turning instead to the jailer and walking past him into the cell. "Close the door, you need not lock it," Aliana ordered him, carefully avoiding looking back at William to see the certain distaste that would lie in his face. She was even more careful not to let the closing of the heavy door remind her of him, behind bars far beneath Tyron's Keep. Shut in, Aliana turned to look into the cell, seeing the shadow of her brother's body in the far corner. Sensing no movement on his part, Aliana took a step toward him, then another, then another. Finally, she said, "At the very least you could come into the light, Garratt. You must have respect enough for your sister to let her look upon your face." He did not move. Aliana opened her mouth to speak again, but a voice came from the shadowy corner instead. "When did you finally fuck him, sis? The Warden of Carrowood's prized eldest boy. Renfry was convinced he'd had you long before your wedding night, but I told him not to worry, that you had neither the balls to risk it nor the sense to wrap him around your finger through your cunt. But it seems you've learned better." Aliana let him talk, eyes flashing angrily but her expression unchanging. When she was certain he'd finished, she began in again. "You should be thanking him, not painting him as the cad in your silly little stories," Aliana said evenly. "He could have taken your head, but he brought you to me alive." "He has as little sense as you do, sister," Garratt responded, still shrouded in the darkness of the corner of the cell. "He should have brought you my head as a trophy, conquering the enemy and disposing of it makes your woman wet as the--" "Your japes don't amuse me," Aliana stopped him. "If you had any sense of your own you'd stand up and face me like you're half a man, not the coward you are." He was quiet at first, so quiet she could hear his breathing. Then there was the scraping of chains on the floor as they shifted with him, and Garratt emerged out of the shadows, standing at his full height. Aliana watched him intently, reacting carefully to how like her father he looked. He walked towards her, and Aliana could see how they had chained him, shackles around both wrists, both ankles, and his neck, bound all together by heavy chain links and then chained to the wall in two places. When he stood close to her, Aliana looked up at her brother and said, "I know I cannot intimidate you. I am not here to prod you for a confession, I know better." She paused, letting him watch her watch him for a long moment before concluding, "I just want you to tell me why you never came home. Why this was your choice." Garratt's expression was cold, a coldness that reminded her of how Ansell had looked when he spoke of those who had killed his son, the son who stood before her now resembling him. "They offered me my kingdom," Garratt said, eyes never leaving his sister's. "I wanted it. So I took it." "You didn't take it," Aliana corrected him, rising to his challenge. "I am the queen and you are my prisoner. You have taken nothing but pain and suffering, long years that made your parents wretched and ill from your death and destroyed your brother. Thank the gods they never knew you were alive, because I would have killed you for the pain it caused them." "Will you not kill me for it?" Garratt seemed not to notice that his sister's eyes had gone glassy with tears, rimmed now with red. For the first time, Aliana did not have a response for him. She thought about her own words to William only moments earlier, promising him the right to take her brother's head if he harmed her. Had she meant it? Would Garratt's death bring her peace? Breathing deeply over the words, Aliana said, "You cannot kill that which is already dead to you." "Harsh words, sis," Garratt said, smirking. Aliana wanted to slap the look off his face, but wasn't sure she had the strength. "Harsh actions deserve harsh words," she insisted, tightening her hands in the fabric of her dress as she looked her brother up and down again, and again, and again. "Do you know how much I missed you, Garratt?" she asked him at last, quietly, like a prayer. "We all missed you, Derrick most of all. If he'd known you took yourself from him willingly... took his father from him..." Garratt smiled at her then, a sickeningly sad sort of smile that turned her insides more than they were already churning on their own. She watched frozen as Garratt reached up a chained hand and took her chin in his fingers, tilting her face at just the right angle to stare at her straight on. His eyes were like Derrick's. Aliana tore her face away and was sick, her stomach weak and emptying itself on the floor of the cell. She coughed, gagging on what was mostly bile as she had eaten nearly nothing for days. The cell door crashed thunderously open, and William was between her and her brother before Aliana had even stood up again, clutching her abdomen. His dagger was drawn, held at the prisoner's breastbone. Garratt had not moved. "What did you say to her?" William demanded, voice low and even but practically vibrating with anger. Garratt looked past William to his sister, still swaying slightly on her feet as the sickness passed. "Your mad dog of Carrowood wants me to think he'll actually bite, sis," he said to her, pointedly ignoring William's blade and his angry stare. "You should give him a bone to keep him more--" Aliana had been ready to ignore another of his seemingly endless jabs and innuendoes, but William seemed to have no such patience. He took Garratt by the shackle around his neck and pulled him close, dagger still placed against his chest. "I have permission to kill you if you harm her. I will choose to take the meaning of 'harm' quite loosely." As he spoke, Aliana moved closer, walking gingerly, head still spinning. "Put down your blade," Aliana said to William when she was close behind his shoulder, though she was looking not at him but at Garratt. "He is not worth the blood you'd spill." William turned to face her, not letting go of Garratt. His expression showed genuine concern, concern he would only betray to her. "I am alright," she confirmed, looking back to her brother. "I am ill at this sick animal whose blood I've the misfortune of sharing." The words tasted horrible on her tongue, like they were a condemnation of herself and her own soul more than a slight to his. She had wanted him home her whole life; now he was home in chains, at her orders. He would already have killed you in your sleep if he were free. She hoped it was a true evaluation of his mission, to justify the imprisonment. Aliana did not speak again until long after they left Garratt's cell and trekked back through the rock to the dungeons' exit in the bowels of the castle. William had not touched her nor tried to speak to her, but had been a shadow at her side, hand as ever on the hilt of his sword, dagger back in its small sheath at his hip. They stopped at the base of the stairs leading back up into the castle, only moments left of privacy. Aliana moved onto the first step and said, "I need to rest," her voice even wearier than she felt, which was indeed quite weary. "You will tell the council to collect judges for the trial. I want as many as will come, I want no stone unturned when his fate is decided." Even with her eyes heavy and strained as they were, Aliana caught the strange sadness in William's expression, but she did not ask what it meant; she did not want to know. "Yes, Your Grace," he replied automatically. Aliana felt his eyes on her back as she mounted the stairs, even when he disappeared from her sight, lingering in the antechamber between dungeons and castle.