In Dreaming Bound

by J. Kathleen Cheney

  Mikael knelt before Madam Anjir. “Did you see where they were taking her, Madam? The name of the asylum? Was it on the paperwork?”

  “No.” She grasped at his hands, her eyes still unfocused. “The girls. Where are the other girls?”

  Of course, I should have told her that immediately. “Filip Messine is with your daughters right now, Madam. Melanna is hurt but shouldn’t be moved until a doctor can look at her. Do you understand?”

  The woman tried to rise, only to be forced back down onto the bench by the large woman. The cook, Mikael guessed. “You stay right here, girl,” she ordered Madam Anjir sternly. “Let the boy get a doctor to see to her.”

  Mikael rose, intending to go back upstairs, but Madam Anjir reached out and grasped his sleeve. “What about Perrin?”

  Perrin. That’s the older girl’s name.

  “I don’t think she’s injured.” Mikael hoped that was the truth. “I’m going to go up to let Messine know I found you.” He slid his arm from her grasp before she could ask him anything more. Like Shironne, the mother was a sensitive. She would know he hadn’t told the whole truth.

  In a whisper, she protested, “But they left . . . they were leaving. . . .”

  Noises from the courtyard warned them before the door opened again. Kai entered the kitchen, a militant force coming out of the darkness, his black overcoat flapping. His father, Dahar, followed—the Royal House of Valaren arriving in numbers even though both men wore the stark black uniform of the Lucas Family, not finely embroidered Anvarrid robes. Dahar immediately sat down next to his half-sister and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

  Deborah Lucas brought up the end of the train, and Mikael felt inordinately relieved at the sight of the infirmarian dressed neatly in her black Family uniform, the black soutache trim markings of the infirmarians stitched across the chest of her black jacket. Her blond hair was worn in a single braid, and she was cool and calm as always, despite being roused during the night.

  Mikael was terribly grateful Kai had thought to bring his aunt along. Deborah will know what to do.

  She appeared ready to stop and look over Madam Anjir, but spotted Mikael’s face and followed him up the stairs instead when he nodded that direction.

  “What happened?” she asked once they mounted the stairwell. Her satchel hung over the other shoulder, so she’d come prepared to deal with medical issues.

  “One of the girls is injured, maybe badly. The other is . . . I don’t know.” He didn’t have the proper words for it. “She’s distressed.”

  He led Deborah down the papered hallway to the dimly lit room where Messine waited, still talking to the girl huddled in the bedclothes. His dark eyes flicked in their direction, but he kept on speaking soothing words, softly promising that everything would be all right.

  Taking in the room with one glance, Deborah proceeded to kneel next to the younger girl. She felt carefully along the girl’s spine, frowning when she neared the nape of her neck. “Help me with her, Mikael.”

  She carefully turned the girl onto her back. Mikael could see why when she lay flat on her back. He’d seen broken bones before, but the sight of this one made his stomach heave. A length of bone protruded from the child’s lower arm, blood seeping again now they’d jostled her. It looked like a clean break, though, something to be grateful for.

  “The scalp wound isn’t bad, I think,” Deborah said, “but she may be concussed. I’ll hope she stays unconscious while we set this.”

  Mikael watched Deborah prepare to work on the girl’s arm with trepidation. “What do I do?”

  “Whatever I tell you, dear. Where’s Shironne?”

  Deborah had her own reasons to be concerned about Shironne’s absence. Shironne kept Mikael’s dreams of death under control. “Kirya said men from an asylum took her,” he answered. “They had the paperwork. Her father had it made up when he was alive, evidently, and put the paperwork in someone else’s hands.”

  He kept his voice low. Perrin’s strange combination of emotions dragged at him, but he forced it away, trying again to find some sense of Shironne in his mind.

  “What’s that on your face?” Deborah asked while she located a blue satin pillow and put it under the girl’s feet. “Handprints?”

  “I think they forced her mouth open, maybe drugged her.”

  “Can you sense her?”

  Mikael met Deborah’s worried eyes. If there was anyone who understood his extraordinary connection to Shironne Anjir, it was Deborah. “Not at all. It’s not like when she hid from me before. It’s like . . . she was never there.”

  He hadn’t known—not for years—that he’d forged a tenuous connection to Shironne Anjir, the result of an accidental meeting that had left them both bleeding, the blood somehow a vital facet of that link between them. But a month ago he’d met her in person, and that proximity caused the strange tie between them—binding—to blossom. He’d slowly come to understand that he’d felt her presence in the corners of his mind for years, only he hadn’t understood what he was sensing. A far stronger sensitive than he was, Shironne had recognized more, picking up his emotions from a province away and, at times, sharing his dreams.

  “I don’t know what could cut her off from you,” Deborah said as she laid out a syringe, likely something to mute the girl’s pain.

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway, and Mikael rose quickly to block the doorway in case Madam Anjir had prevailed upon Dahar to bring her upstairs, but Captain Kassannan, an army field surgeon, stood there instead, a satchel much like Deborah’s over his shoulder, only in brown—an army color. The surgeon lived closer than the colonel did, Mikael recalled, so he would have gotten word first.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Aron.” Deborah gestured for Kassannan to join her.

  Like Colonel Cerradine, Kassannan stood several inches taller than Mikael and weighed a good bit more. The surgeon shooed Mikael out of his way and knelt next to Deborah, sparing Mikael the necessity of feeling bone shifting around under his fingers.

  “What should I tell Madam Anjir?” Mikael asked.

  “We’ll set this arm, and then we should take the lot of them up to the palace.” She glanced up at the bed. “Have Savelle come up here to help with Perrin. There’s no point in hiding it from her mother, whatever did happen.”

  Mikael nodded wearily, the self-appointed carrier of bad tidings. He made his way back downstairs to the kitchens. Dahar sat with his arm about his sister’s shoulders, a damp cloth held to the side of her face. She half rose when she saw Mikael, but Dahar urged her to stay.

  Mikael crouched so she could see his face better. “Deborah thinks Melanna should be all right, but she has a broken arm. They’re setting it right now.”

  Madam Anjir’s eyes filled with pain. “How could they do that to my child?”

  Mikael shook his head. “We need you to come upstairs to help with Perrin, Madam. She’s very upset. Deborah thinks you would be the best person for her to see now.”

  She gazed at him, eyes wide in horror. One slender hand clutched at her throat. “What did they do?”

  “I don’t know that anyone hurt her, Madam.”

  She stood, tearing out of Dahar’s grip, then swayed, one hand going to her head. Dahar set an arm about her waist to steady her. He helped his sister up the stairs, Mikael trailing behind.

  When she entered the room, she first tried to reach the younger girl, but Deborah ordered her back, directing her toward the bed instead. Madam Anjir stumbled that direction, sat down on the edge, and pulled her daughter into her arms, heedless of the blood. The girl broke into wrenching sobs, hiding her face behind reddened hands again, but not before Mikael spotted the blood splattered down the front of her torn nightdress.

  Mikael walked out of the room. He stopped in the hallway, drawing one shaky breath after another, closing his emotions down so he wouldn’t upset Madam Anjir further. The clock began striking four, alarming in its reality.

  He’d seen the afterma
th of battle before, but this was different. This shouldn’t happen in a normal household.

  He needed to get out of here. He needed to go after Shironne, but with no sense of her in his mind, he had no idea which direction to start. He had to put together a plan.

  Dahar came out of the bedroom then, narrow face pale and worried. “What happened here, Mikael?”

  He mentally put together what he knew to report. He repeated Aldrine’s report, along with what little Messine had told him. “What happened in there, I don’t know, but that girl is . . . well, you can feel what she’s doing.” Panic and denial clouded the ambient in the room, Perrin’s mind out of control, an alarming strength.

  Kai approached along the hallway just as Messine emerged from the bedroom, his face grim.

  “What happened?” Mikael asked Messine before Dahar could get the words out.

  Messine frowned, his dark features strained. The young officer was fond of the Anjir family and would see this as a personal failure. “Not what you think,” Messine said. “A coach came, just after three, and took Shironne. Through the front of the house. Pamini and I were back in the mews, so we weren’t aware of the entry until Pamini heard something break and we saw a light turn up in Miss Anjir’s room. Pamini took a horse and followed the coach, and I started around the front of the house, but then I heard Miss Perrin screaming. So I climbed up on the balcony and came through the window. There were two men fleeing the room, the little one was crumpled on the floor, and Miss Perrin was covered in blood.” Messine took a deep breath. “Near as I can tell, two of the men took it in their minds to come back and rape Miss Perrin. The little one must have been hiding in here and attacked one—or both—of them, and one knocked her across the room.”

  That would explain the girl’s head injury and the broken arm.

  Messine reached into the pocket of his groom’s livery and drew out what looked to be a slim dagger. No, Mikael realized, a letter-opener, liberally streaked with blood. “That’s when Miss Perrin stabbed the one who hit her sister. Given the evidence, she hit an artery. That’s where all the blood is from. It’s not hers. He’ll be showing up in a morgue soon. The other man grabbed him and dragged him away toward the front door with a pillow held to his neck, as if that would help. I came through the window just as they disappeared out the bedroom door heading for the stairwell. I checked on Miss Melanna, and then tried to calm down Miss Perrin. Then Mikael showed up.”

  “You don’t think she’s injured?” Mikael asked.

  “No,” Filip reiterated. “But she wasn’t raised to combat, Mr. Lee. She doesn’t know how to handle what happened to her sister, or what she did.”

  A letter opener. Mikael was surprised the girl had picked up a weapon at all. That helped explain the strange mixture of fear and guilt her mind churned out. He could feel her calming now that her mother had arrived. Or perhaps Deborah had dosed her with that second syringe.

  “Is Shironne still alive?” Dahar asked quietly, turning to Mikael.

  “I have no idea.” Mikael stared at the clock, suppressing the surge of fear that question bought out. An hour since they’d taken her? How far had they gotten?

  A door banged in the house somewhere, and a voice called Savelle Anjir’s name. Colonel Cerradine, dressed in civilian garments rather than his usual army uniform, hurled himself up the stairs. He headed directly for Dahar’s side. As tall as Dahar and Kai, Cerradine had similar Anvarrid looks, although his Larossan mother had passed on her darker skin and near-black eyes. It made his prematurely white hair all the more striking.

  “Where is she?” he asked Dahar in a hoarse voice.

  Savelle Anjir stumbled from the bedroom and into the colonel’s arms. She buried her face against his coat, weeping. “Jon.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Cerradine murmured into her hair.

  She pulled away after a moment, her lovely tear-streaked face not seeing past Cerradine, as if none of the rest of them were there. “They took her, Jon. They took her to an asylum, and I don’t know where.”

  “We’ll find her, Savelle.” Cerradine’s dark eyes met Mikael’s. He nodded once, assuring Mikael that they shared the same goal—that we included him. “We’ll bring her back, I promise.”

  Cerradine had known Shironne for years. She had worked for the Army, using her talents to benefit their Intelligence and Investigation Office, so the colonel felt responsible for her.

  Even so, Mikael’s ties to her were far more profound. He would not stop until she was safe.

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  SHIRONNE ANJIR’S ARMS ached, immobilized for so long. She didn’t know how long she could maintain the masquerade of sleep. If they discovered she was awake, they would drug her again, so she kept her eyes closed. Opening them would only make her sick anyway.

  A female sat beside her in the swaying coach, her demeanor dictatorial. She smelled of camphor. The two men obeyed the woman’s commands without demur, keeping their hands well off their prisoner and their mouths closed.

  Shironne’s stomach, long empty, twisted with hunger, growling loudly in the dour silence. She tried hard not to move or react. She heard no response from the other inhabitants of the coach, though.

  She sensed nothing from them.

  She didn’t know what they’d done to her, but that frightened her most—the internal silence. Her world had gone flat, the shades of emotion and intention she detected from others stripped away. As had her sudden blindness years before, this new deafness terrified her.

  Worst of all, she had no sense of Mikael Lee anywhere. His usual grip on her mind had been torn away. She listened for his voice. In the furthest recess of her mind, Shironne waited for the proof of his coming after her. Nothing answered her search, though, as if his blood-bound link to her mind had been severed.

  He will come. He promised.

  She wanted to cry. Her arms burned, held in place by the strange jacket they’d put on her. The drugs muted the pain, and Shironne struggled against the urge to tell her captors she was awake just to ease her discomfort.

  She fought to keep herself calm instead.

  What did they give me? Whatever it was, the drug must have deadened that part of her mind that sensed other’s emotions. It had deadened the often-overwhelming impressions that came through her skin with every touch. And she could see now. That was profoundly wrong. She didn’t want the hazy images her eyes could give her, not at the expense of the sensitivity she’d worked so hard to make useful.

  She had to hang on, so she kept her eyes closed and feigned unconsciousness. If they drugged her insensate again, she couldn’t learn anything about them or where they were taking her.

  The coach began moving. The sounds and smells of the inn’s yard told her nothing more than its function. Not where it was, nor where they intended to take her. They had changed horses. She waited for her captors to say something worth the pain of staying awake.

  It seemed like hours that she stayed that way, willing herself immobile. The coach continued on in the cold.

  Out of the silence, she heard the barest whisper of Mikael’s thoughts, fretting and worrying over her. And as soon as she’d noticed it, she felt his mind’s recognition of her, as if he’d turned and spotted her across a crowded room. He called her name, and she willed him to hear her, hoping desperately he would find her soon.

  “She’s awake,” the woman said.

  Hands grabbed at her face, another attempt to force her mouth open. Shironne kicked out with both feet, her useless arms bound too closely to her chest to move. Her left foot contacted muscle and bone, earning a muffled curse, before her balance failed and she toppled forward. Someone grabbed her braid and yanked her head back, keeping her from falling to the floor of the coach.

  Other hands steadied her and strong fingers pried her jaws open again. Liquid, metallic and foul, poured down her throat. She gagged. A hand clamped over her mouth to keep her from spitting the solution back out. The hands pus
hed her back onto her bench, not gently this time, and her skull banged into the coach’s wall.

  Her head swam, so she opened her eyes. Nothing about the man across from her told her where they intended to take her. The man’s tan uniform tunic seemed impossibly nondescript, matching his very average Larossan face, brown skin, brown eyes, brown hair.

  The man started when he noticed her gazing blearily at him, and told the woman, “She’s looking at me.”

  “She’s blind,” the woman returned in a dismissive tone. “It’s only an illusion.”

  Everything faded away.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  COLONEL CERRADINE SAT across from Mikael on the coach’s other bench, facing backwards. His head drooped down, bobbing slightly with the motion of the carriage. His army uniform mimicked a Family uniform in cut. The long skirts and high collar of the coat looked like the one Mikael wore, save that Mikael’s was black, even down to the soutache trim markers sewn on to indicate his rank, position, and posting: a looping pattern around the right cuff to show that he’d been First of his yeargroup, the chevrons across his jacket’s chest that showed he was a Fightmaster, the markings on the left cuff, his assignment to the Daujom. By comparison, Cerradine’s blue coat with silver braid and his brown trousers seemed almost garish to Mikael’s eyes.

  Mikael tapped the colonel’s knee to get his attention, and Cerradine’s dark eyes immediately opened, fixing with hawklike intensity on Mikael’s face.

  “I felt her this time,” Mikael said.

  The colonel reached up and rapped on the box to alert the driver. “Where, Mikael?”

  The coach jerked to a halt. Cerradine opened the door, letting in more light from the afternoon sun. The recent snow made everything blindingly bright. “Which direction?” the colonel asked.

  Ensign Pamini had reported nearly five hours after Shironne was taken. She’d managed to follow the coach that stole Shironne away from the Anjir household to the high road that led out of Noikinos toward the mountain town of Serenos. Once she’d decided they’d gone far enough for their path not to be a ruse, the young ensign headed back toward the capital to report to Colonel Cerradine. She’d witnessed the men who’d invaded the Anjir household handing over their hostage to a Larossan woman and two men in khaki uniforms that suggested some official establishment not far outside the city’s boundaries. The ruffians, as Pamini called them, were paid off and headed back into the city.