Maleta focused on breathing as shallowly as possible. Like rats in a maze, she thought, working their way through innumerable twists and turns. Closer, ever closer, to the palace. To Sunniva. To Jovan. Her heart hammered in her chest and blood pounded in her ears. Her muscles quivered in her struggle to walk, when all she wanted to do was charge ahead and get there. Cianan threw her a warning frown. She nodded back. The foul air wrapped around her like a death-shroud, threatening to suffocate her. She shook off the feeling and followed Cianan's Light.
They paused as the tunnel split in two directions yet again. Jana hesitated and Cianan held up a warning hand. Jana pointed down the cleaner of the two. "That way leads to the kitchens," she reported.
"But the prisoners lie in the other direction," Cianan added. He looked Maleta in the eye.
"Seems this is where I leave you," Maleta said.
Gayle eyed the cleaner tunnel with longing. "I could go with you."
Maleta shook her head. "Best I do this alone." She wasn't sure why she felt so strongly about it, but she knew she was right. Conviction burned in her breast. She and she alone had to get Jovan out.
"Be careful," Sister Reva warned.
Maleta had eyes only for Cianan. Would she see him again when this was over? "Always."
"The head baker is Mistress Renai, very fat with a wart on her chin and a limp from a bad right knee," Jana reported. "She can help you."
"Thank you." Maleta turned down the tunnel to the kitchens. It got black as pitch when Cianan led the other group away, and she drew Hedda's Sword. Although it didn't light up the way Cianan's Goddess-blade did, it showed her the true lines of the tunnel so she didn't stumble. Just as well she wasn't lit up like a beacon. Some instrument of stealth that would be.
She followed the tunnel until it ended at a T-junction. The left trailed back toward the dungeons, Maleta guessed it meant an outer wing of the palace. She took a chance the right turned toward the main palace. As she crept along the wall, it appeared she'd guessed correctly. The sewer stench faded, soon replaced by the smell of soured milk, rotting food and the scritch-scritch of rats scurrying about in the dark.
She shivered. She hated rats. Up ahead she saw an unevenness in the wall. As one familiar with hidden passages, when she drew closer she noticed a portion of wall split. A doorway left sprung and cracked open. She forced it open farther and slipped into a small buttery. Stairs led up to the rest of the kitchen. She squatted down behind the butter churn as the door at the top of the stairs opened and a large woman stumped down the stairs with a lantern. Maleta noticed the wart on the woman's chin right away, and stood up, sheathing Hedda's Sword.
"Mistress Renai?"
"Who're ye?" the woman demanded in a loud whisper. Grey curls escaped her wimple to frame her lined face. Flour and bits of dried dough decorated her apron. She held up the lantern, further illuminating Maleta.
"My name used to be Marete of Kunigonde Keep," Maleta answered. "A friend told me my brother still lives."
Renai nodded. "Von Jereon's boy, Jovan?" She peered closer at Maleta. "Ye look nothin' like him."
"Nay, I take after my mother, Van Agna." Maleta swallowed hard. "Is he here?"
Renai had eyes only for Hedda's setting-sun breastplate, but she raised her gaze to meet Maleta's now. "Aye. He's kept in a room on th' second floor, in th' south wing."
A woman screamed above them and loud voices came from the kitchen. Renai turned to Maleta. "Ye didn't come alone."
Maleta shook her head. "I'm here for Jovan. The Shamaru are here for their own. And Hedda's here for Sunniva. Will you help?"
"Praise Orthia," Renai sighed. "Is it true? Nerthus?"
"Aye." Maleta swallowed hard.
"Wait here, behind th' stairs. I'll clear th' kitchen an' show ye th' servants' stairs t' th' second level," Renai said. She went upstairs, opening the door to a cacophony of hysterical babble and even more distant shouts.
Maleta barely got behind the stairs in time afore two dozen men and women in servants' garb fled down the staircase and out into the sewers. Renai followed right behind them.
"'Tis safe t' come up now," the old woman reported, leading the way up the stairs. "I barricaded th' kitchens from th' rest of th' palace. I'll show ye th' stairs, then I'm gone with th' rest of them. I'm off t' my daughter's 'til this all sorts itself out." She took Maleta to a small unassuming doorway aside the fireplace. "Follow th' chimney up t' th' next level. There's a door. Turn left. He's down that hall. All Sunniva's important prisoners reside there. Watch out for th' guards."
"I will." Maleta placed a hand on the woman's shoulder. "Thank you."
"Go with Hedda. Find your brother." Renai turned and disappeared back into the buttery.
Maleta wasted no time slipping into the tiny stairwell and crept up the stairs. Jovan waited somewhere above her. Renai had remarked she looked nothing like her brother. He must take after Jereon, after all. The thought made her smile, but then another wiped it right off. Renai had also mentioned guards. Maleta hoped they were all called away to fight off the invasion force. Otherwise, her plan was doomed.
She reached the upstairs door and drew Hedda's Sword. She eased the door open a crack and listened. Nothing. She peered out. The corridor went in both directions. Renai had said to go left. Maleta would have to trust Jana's instincts and trust Renai's information. If not reliable, this would be a short day. She'd done her best by Hedda, and that must count for something. She hoped Tzigana prevailed.
Maleta crept down the corridor, listening for approaching footsteps. Her heart pounded in her throat, like rushing surf to her ears. She wrestled down the urge to charge ahead screaming Jovan's name. The first two doors on the left were locked up tight, but there were no sounds coming from the other side. The first door on the right revealed a storage room for extra furniture, the second empty save for a loom and a stool. She tried the third door on the right. She tensed as she heard muffled sobs, and she tried the latch. It lifted easily, silently, and she opened the door. The hidden person sounded female, not male. Not Jovan. But Maleta recognized the fear, the despair, in the cry and couldn't leave.
She peered around the door. Man's room, spartan. A naked Shamaru woman lay in chains on the bed, surrounded by lit tallow candles. Black curly hair, black iron shackles. The woman must have heard her, because she raised her head, and Maleta's heart stopped. Not a woman. Just a girl. She couldn't have been sixteen yet.
The girl tried to stifle her sobs. "Who are ye? What are ye doin' here?"
"Getting you out of here," Maleta declared. Jovan or not, she couldn't leave the girl there, not like that. She approached the bed, and sheathed Hedda's Sword so she could examine the restraints. "We're getting you and the rest of your kin out of here."
The girl's eyes widened at the sight of Hedda's breastplate. "Ye can't stay here. He's comin' right back, an' ye don't want him t' find ye here."
Maleta peered at the chains. "He's got the key to these?"
The girl nodded. "But he won't be givin' it up."
"Oh, I think he will," Maleta disagreed. "I won't be asking."
The girl's eyes widened with horror, and she focused on something – or someone – over Maleta's shoulder. Maleta frowned and straightened, drawing Hedda's Sword.
"Well, well, well," a familiar, loathsome voice sneered behind her. "What have we here? Lose yer way, traitor? Hands off my property. I found her first."
The girl whimpered. Maleta couldn't even manage that. She froze at the echo from the past. Even after Sunniva had turned her over to the false Black Wolf, others had tried to take her. Tried – and failed. A giant ogre with blue berserker eyes framed by greying hair. She recalled his foul breath as he licked her mother's blood from her neck. Her skin crawled even now. She felt herself turn, but as if in deep water, slowly, like a dream.
Like her nightmare.
She tried to close her eyes, and couldn't. She wanted to run, but her feet wouldn't move. She clenched her shaking hands
as Hedda's Sword dipped toward the floor.
"So. Not a lad." He laughed, an evil chuckle that raised the hair on the back of her neck. He leered at her breastplate, unfazed by Hedda's setting sun. "Warrior nun, eh?"
Hedda's Sword had never been so heavy. It was as if someone had greased the pommel. Maleta could barely keep her grip. She locked her knees to keep her legs from folding.
He drew his own sword. "Or mayhaps not so warrior. I'll settle for th' nun. I missed out on all th' fun at Nerthus' Abbey, but better late than never." He pointed his blade at the girl on the bed, at Maleta. "Who's first?"
The girl struggled in her chains like a trapped animal. Deep within, Hedda's ice burned, stealing Maleta's breath. "Who art thou?" Hedda demanded. "Remember My Mandate."
Maleta's shaking lessened as she found her anger. She was a woman grown, not a girl. She wouldn't leave another girl to suffer the same fate she had. She found strength enough to look him in the eye. "You want her, you have to come through me."
"Through ye, in ye," he laughed, "either way I'll have my reward."
She shuddered. "I swear, this is your last reward from Sunniva," Maleta retorted.
His eyes narrowed, and he peered closer at her. "Do I know you?"
"You know me," Maleta spat. "I'm your mother's heartbreak at birthing a monster."
He lunged, and she leapt to the left as she knocked his blade aside. Come what may, she had to stay betwixt him and the girl. She swung toward his head. He ducked backward, away from the bed. She followed, swinging again. He met her blow, their weapons crossed betwixt their bodies. He gripped her sleeve and drew her lover-close. The repair to her jerkin gave way. The stench of his breath, the solid weight of his body and the sound of ripping cloth closed over her mind like a suffocating pillow. She fought the paralysis as he drew her stiff body even closer.
"I know ye, don't I?" he whispered in her ear. "Ye've th' look of yer bitch mother. I still recall th' taste of her blood on yer skin." His tongue touched the side of her neck.
With a wild cry she jerked away, tearing the sleeve off. The chain mail dug into her arm. The pain helped her focus on here. Now. She fought the revulsion, the panic. That had happened years ago. She wasn't Marete anymore. She'd survived as Maleta, and she was strong, damn it, strong enough to make him pay.
He laughed, rooster-cocky. "I recall th' taste of ye, as well." He took a deep breath. "The smell of a woman's fear. There's nothing like it."
Anger built, further burning away her fear. She swung Hedda's Sword at him. He surprised her by swinging his own sword low, the flat of his blade hammering against the side of her left knee. Something popped. Her world exploded into a red haze of pain, and her leg buckled beneath her. Hedda's Sword clattered to the floor as she clutched her knee. Tears of agony clouded her vision. Approaching skeletons and glinting blades flashed through her mind.
He flung himself on her, pinning her to the floor. "Now this feels familiar," he growled, holding her wrists above her head. He ground against her, and for an instant she flashed back to Kunigonde, staring up at him from the mud. She blinked and refocused on the wooden beam far above her head. They were not in Kunigonde, and she was not that helpless teenaged girl.
She squirmed. Her left leg refused to move. A wave of nausea rolled over her at the attempt. But her right leg bent up, and she slid it up along the side of his body, curling around his thighs as she snapped her head forward. She caught him square in the nose with her forehead. As he released her wrist to grab his broken, bloody nose, she reached down for the knife in her boot, thrusting it in his side below his ribcage.
With a howl he rolled off her, crushing her knee anew. But it gave her enough room to roll aside and grasp Hedda's Sword. She dragged it to her and flipped over so the blade came to rest against his throat.
He froze at the touch of the consecrated Goddess-metal, unable to escape the rush of past sins. She shook, wondering if she was strong enough to bear it. A countless sea of faces flashed through her mind's eye, other young girls asides herself. She saw not an ogre, but a man. A snaggle-toothed, dragon-breathed man whose grey hair thinned and whose waistline thickened. A man who'd been unable to take grown women, even whores. A usually impotent man who stood shorter than she. A sick man who'd fed off the fears of young girls. Only then had he been able to... Just another murderous criminal in need of Hedda's judgment.
This she'd feared? This she'd let steal her dreams, her hope, her future? Well, no more. It ends here, she vowed. "As Hedda's judge, jury and executioner, for your crimes against the innocent children of this realm, I sentence you to death. Give my regards to my Mistress." She resisted the urge to aim a great deal lower and drove the point of Hedda's Sword through his throat. Hedda had no sense of humor about that sort of thing.
Maleta frisked his body until she found a ring of keys. She yanked them off his belt and tossed them to the other girl, who unlocked her chains and moved to help Maleta up. Her left leg hung useless, unable to bear her weight at all. The Shamaru girl took an axe down from above the fireplace mantle and chopped the back of a chair apart, using two of the slats and some torn bedding as a splint.
"I'm Hajnal," the girl said. "Thank you for saving me."
Maleta lost the battle with nausea. When she finished, she sheathed Hedda's Sword and sat down on the bed, her injured leg stretched afore her. "You're welcome."
Hajnal wrapped herself in a sheet, toga-style, then nodded at the man's crumpled body. "You, too?"
"When I was sixteen. I never even knew his name, until now," Maleta confessed.
"Well, don't tell me. I don't want to know." Hajnal's expression was hard and bitter. "What were you doing here?"
"Looking for someone. My younger brother. Sunniva stole him from me some six years ago."
Hajnal gasped. "Describe him."
"Well, I'm guessing he looks like our father, since I've been told he looks nothing like me and I know I look like our mother. He'd be a big man, with reddish curly hair and blue eyes. He loved music."
Hajnal's eyes snapped with excitement. "Did he play the lute? The lyre?"
Maleta nodded. Hope swelled. "Do you know him?"
"It was my job to bring food to Sunniva's special prisoners. I know where he is. I can take you to him."
Chapter Eighteen
Maleta lurched off the bed, balancing on her one good foot as she held onto the bedpost for balance. "What are we waiting for? Let's go."
Hajnal eyed Maleta's injured leg. "It's a long hallway, and he's all the way at the end, last door on the left. How are you going to make it?"
Maleta tried putting weight on her leg, but the pain in her knee proved too great, even for her. Crawl, aye. Walk, nay. Not how she'd planned on reuniting with Jovan. Tears blurred her vision as she tried to think.
"Ye can lean on me," Hajnal said. "But it'll be slow going an' we'd be nigh helpless if we get caught. I'm not a trained fighter."
Maleta snorted, and she sat down on the corner of the bed. "I can't fight either, at the moment." A sound caught her attention from the other side of the door. "Someone's coming."
To her surprise, Hajnal lunged for their dead enemy's sword and held it afore her. It would be obvious to almost anyone she barely knew which end to hold, let alone how to use it. But her Shamaru grit wouldn't let her go down without a fight, short-lived though it be.
The door slammed open, and there stood a bloody and rumpled Cianan, minus his sword and wielding another's.
"Stay back," Hajnal warned. "I'll stick yet like a pig do ye come any closer."
He had eyes only for Maleta. "Are you all right?"
"He's with me, Hajnal." Maleta staggered back up onto her one good leg, leaning on the bedpost. "Cianan, what are you doing here?"
"The vision," he replied. He glanced down at the crumpled body. "That him?"
Hajnal backed up, but kept the sword betwixt Cianan, and Maleta and her.
"Aye." To Maleta's utter horror, she burst into tears. In
a heartbeat he moved past Hajnal and afore her. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to him, holding her close. That pure golden aura, the warmth of his body, his wild masculine scent, enfolded her like a familiar blanket and felt too comforting to reject. He buried his fingers in her hair, disregarding the blood in it, and murmured reassurances in her ear. She couldn't understand the words, but she felt the relief pouring off him while she clung to him. Eventually she ran out of tears, and regained a semblance of composure with shudders and hiccups. He kissed her forehead and stepped back as she swiped at her eyes.
"You are a strong woman, you know. You shall find a way to go on with the rest of your life. He did not take that away from you. Believe me."
"What are you doing here?" Maleta repeated.
"They needed my sword more than they needed me, so I loaned it to Jana. No offense, but Hedda is too dark. Nerthus would have been ideal but Orthia is as close to the Lady as I could get in that tunnel."
"Jana's people follow Orthia?"
"The seers do, aye." Cianan eyed her leg. "How bad?"
"I can't walk on it," Maleta confessed. She thought of Namula requesting to meet Jana. Jana was halfway there already.
Cianan knelt and examined the wound, careful not to touch it. He shook his head. "The knee joint is destroyed. I cannot heal others, but I know someone who can." He checked the hallway and locked the door. He closed his eyes for several moments, then opened them to stare into the fire in the hearth. "You two might want to stand back."
Flames shot from the fireplace, and out rolled Dara. "I've got to work on my queenly entrances," she muttered as she staggered to her feet. First thing she looked at was the body on the floor. "That the raping, murdering bastard?"
"Aye." Hajnal nodded, wide-eyed with shock.
"Give me your sword, girl."
Hajnal handed it over gingerly. "It's his sword."
"Perfect." Dara's eyes glowed red, as red as the stone in her torque. With a guttural, non-elvish-sounding curse she drove the sword through the groin of the man's dead body. "Next time, aim lower, small target though it be."
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