by Amy Raby
She said nothing. She lay still, submissive, waiting for her moment.
He sighed with pleasure, his hips moving. “You’re so beautiful. Say something,” he begged. “Are you a prisoner here too?”
She remained silent and motionless beneath him.
He smiled sadly and twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. “I don’t understand. You offer yourself to me, but you won’t talk. Have they cut out your tongue?”
• • •
“Vitala. Can you hear me? Vitala!”
• • •
The soldier was gagging, choking, his whole body seizing. Foam burbled from his mouth. Vitala’s stomach lurched. She tried to fling the soldier away, but his hands had tightened and locked around her arms. She was caught in his embrace.
His frantic words came out as sharp little huffs of breath. Then the convulsions began in earnest. He thrashed atop her. She squeezed her eyes shut, but felt every moment of his suffering, every frantic kick, every spasmodic movement, every frenzied gyration of his heart. Bloody froth leaked from the corners of his mouth; warm urine soaked her thighs.
Finally she wrenched herself free of him and fled to the far side of the room, where she huddled in a corner. When his body finally lay still, she wept.
• • •
“Vitala, for gods’ sake, can you hear me?”
She blinked. She was staring at a solid gray wall.
“Should we restrain her, sire?”
Vitala turned her head, startled by the unfamiliar voice. It was one of Lucien’s bodyguards. Two of them stood in the doorway, watching her. She was, for some reason, crouching by the wall—and, oh, gods, completely naked. Lucien was naked too, sitting up in bed, but he’d pulled a blanket around himself. What had happened? They’d been in the midst of coitus. She blushed furiously.
“I think she’s coming around.” Lucien’s voice trembled. “Do you hear me, Vitala?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded strange. Distant.
“Thank you. You may go,” Lucien told the guards.
They bowed and left.
“What happened?” asked Lucien. “Why did you scream?”
“I screamed?”
A pause. “You don’t remember?”
Vitala shook her head.
“What do you remember?”
Vitala took a deep breath. Her heart throbbed so wildly, she feared it would leap out of her chest. “We were— We were making love. And then I was . . . somewhere else. Next thing I remember, I was here, crouching by the wall.”
“You don’t remember screaming?”
“No. I . . . I don’t think I was conscious. How did I get here?”
“Like you said, we were making love. And your eyes did this funny thing; they went all glassy, like you weren’t there. I tried to talk to you, but I don’t think you could hear. And then you started screaming. I got off you, but you kicked me and ran to that spot by the wall, still screaming, and the guards came. By then you were crying, not screaming anymore. We kept trying to talk to you, but it seemed you couldn’t hear us.”
Vitala felt her cheeks and found the wetness there. She climbed shakily to her feet. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I’ve made women scream in bed before, but never like that,” said Lucien.
Fresh tears started, and she placed a hand over her eyes.
“Sorry,” said Lucien. “Bad time for a joke. It’s just that lots of people must have heard, and by tomorrow rumors will be all over the camp.”
Vitala’s head throbbed. “We’ll get an annulment—a divorce—something.”
“Three gods!” Lucien blinked at her in shock. “Where did that come from? Tomorrow we’ll talk about this, figure out what happened, and fix it. Right?”
Vitala closed her eyes and flopped down on the bed, exhausted and drained.
“Talk to me,” said Lucien sternly.
Vitala gritted her teeth. The young soldier’s face appeared in her head, unbidden. Say something.
“Kiss me,” Lucien ordered. “Promise me we’ll talk this through in the morning, when you’re feeling better. Promise me you’re not going to give up just because we’ve had a setback.”
“I promise,” she murmured, and when he leaned down, gave him a peck on the lips.
Anything to quiet him for now.
• • •
Though sleep came easily to her addled mind, the soldier strode through her dreams, making each of them a nightmare with his bloody froth and convulsions, until blessed unconsciousness eluded her and she found herself staring at the roof of the tent, listening to Lucien’s quiet, even breathing beside her. She rolled out of bed.
“You all right?” he mumbled.
“Chamber pot,” she said.
He turned over and fell back asleep.
The two door guards peered at her curiously as she emerged from the command tent. One of them reddened a little, and she recalled these were the men who’d seen her after the screaming episode. “Yes, Empress?” one of them said.
“Have my horse brought round.”
The guards exchanged glances. “Does the emperor know—”
“You have orders, sir,” she snapped. “Obey them.”
• • •
A Riorcan forest by night might have frightened a lesser being, but Vitala was beyond fear. The clawlike branches in the nighttime fog could not intimidate her, nor could the rustling of leaves, the hooting of owls, or the bark of a badger. Vitala had too many nightmares inside her head to worry about the ones on the outside. Besides, she was in no danger. One of the guards was tailing her. He was keeping well back, but she could hear his horse’s hoofbeats.
Her chestnut mare stepped restlessly in the soft dirt, neck overarched with anxiety, a faint sheen of sweat glistening along her shoulder blades. “Shh,” Vitala soothed, and the horse calmed at her touch. Would that Vitala herself could be so easily reassured.
Her official kill count as per the Circle was seven, but she had, in fact, killed ten men. It was one of the three others, one of the men who didn’t count, who haunted her. She didn’t even know his name. He had marked her, taken up residence in her mind like a ghost. She supposed she deserved it; after all, she’d killed him, and this was a fitting revenge.
The chestnut snorted beneath her. She looked up and spotted a glimmer of light peeking at her from between the trees. Sunrise. Time to turn around and go back?
No, not yet.
25
In the early evening, she was nearing the encampment when a search party, probably alerted to her location by a magelight signal from her tail, finally intercepted her. “Empress,” said the prefect in charge of the group, “the emperor has been searching for you. I’m to take you directly to the command tent.”
She shrugged. “I was headed there, anyway.”
The ride to the command tent was quiet and somber; some of the soldiers stole glances at her, but no one spoke. She dismounted, someone took her horse, and she entered the command tent, head high, ready for the inevitable confrontation.
Lucien stood as she entered, a teacup and saucer still in his hands. He was red-faced and practically vibrating with fury. “Do you have any idea what this day has been like?”
“Spare me the lecture, Lucien.”
“Do you have any idea?”
She sighed and sank heavily into one of the command center chairs. “I suppose it’s been about as pleasant as mine.”
Something sailed past her, and she jolted in surprise as the teacup shattered against one of the wooden beams behind her, followed shortly by the saucer.
“It’s all over the camp,” Lucien roared. “It’s all over the camp about how I tortured you so horribly in the marriage bed that you screamed like a staking victim and ran off in the dead of night. They think I’m a sadist, a deviant, a violent-tempered monster!”
Vitala stared, astonished, at the tea dripping down the walls. “And you’re doing such a fine job disabusing them of tha
t notion.”
“You promised we would talk about this!” said Lucien. “If you had stayed, we could have made something up to quell the rumors. But when you ran, that was it. I nearly had the guards whipped for letting you go.”
“They were only following their empress’s orders.”
“Then I regret giving you an official rank!”
She shrugged. “I renounce it. We’ll get the marriage annulled. It was never consummated, anyway.”
He looked stricken. “Vitala, you cannot mean that.”
She felt the tears starting and lowered her head.
He crossed the room to her. She realized he was moving without his crutch, that he must be wearing the artificial leg. He waved his hand, and by the sounds of movement, she understood the guards were leaving the room. Then he knelt by her chair and took her hand. “The marriage was consummated.”
She shook her head. “No. You did not . . . spill your seed.”
He smiled crookedly. “How do you know? You weren’t conscious.”
“You couldn’t have. The way you described what happened—I know you would not have continued like nothing had gone wrong.”
“I say I did, and I’m the only credible witness. The guards will attest that you were insensible. I say the marriage was consummated; therefore it cannot be annulled.”
She let out her breath in exasperation. “Then we’ll get a divorce. Kjallans do that all the time—”
“I will not grant you one. The husband can divorce the wife, but the wife cannot divorce the husband. Did you not know that?”
“No. I never studied Kjallan marriage law. I never thought it would apply to me!”
He made a clucking sound with his teeth. “You ought to have looked into it.”
“There’s a third option: murdering you in your sleep.”
Lucien grinned. “Gods, you’re giving me such a cockstand.” He got up from the floor and sat in the chair next to hers. “Tell me what happened last night.”
“There’s no point,” she said. “I can’t stop it from happening.”
“How do you know you can’t stop it?”
“Because I’m not conscious when it happens. I have no control,” she said.
“Are you implying this has happened before?” he cried.
Vitala bit her lip. Time for honesty. “It has.”
“But I thought—didn’t this have something to do with Remus?” He looked stricken. “When could it have happened before?”
“I never said it had anything to do with Remus. I know you assumed that, and I encouraged that assumption.”
“No, you said it outright. You said something happened in the tent that night.”
“Something did. I had a vision in the tent that night, but it was interrupted when Remus and the others showed up.”
He paused, and his brow wrinkled. “A vision? I think I remember. Your eyes went all strange—I thought it was because you heard the noise outside. Explain. What was going on inside your head?”
“No point explaining. You realize I can’t sleep with you, right? This marriage you’re so nobly trying to preserve—it would be a sham, a mockery. I cannot give you an heir.”
“You’re giving up too easily. One bad experience and you’re finished? What happened to the woman who said she wanted to conquer this?”
“Let’s pretend for a moment that we sleep together tonight and everything goes fine. I don’t have any screaming fits that make the camp think you’re a sexual deviant. Do you think that means the problem is solved?”
Lucien bit his lip.
“Of course it isn’t solved,” she said. “It could happen again the night after, or at the next Vagabond moon, or a year from now. That fear will hang over us always, and because of that, we’ll never truly be able to enjoy ourselves. Coitus will be a chore, something we hope to get through without a disaster. That’s my reality, Lucien. It will always be my reality, but it doesn’t have to be yours. Don’t you realize I’m trying to help you?”
“You’re making assumptions,” said Lucien. “You think this will never get better, but maybe it will. Maybe each episode will be weaker than the last, until it fades away entirely.”
“Or maybe they’ll get worse. When I’m having one of those episodes, I’m not myself. Next time, I might do more than scream and cry. What if next time I summon a Shard and attack you?” It was possible. More than possible. Clearly, some of her actions in the vision were echoed by her real self. Theoretically, she could disarm herself and get rid of her Shards, but in the middle of a war, that didn’t seem like a good idea.
“I’m a war mage. I’m not easy to kill.”
“Lucien, I specialize in killing war mages.” She’d thought about it at length during her ride, and concluded that she simply couldn’t take the chance. Fear and discomfort were one thing; losing control was another. “I’m sorry. I won’t go to bed with you again.”
“Vitala—”
“You must divorce me. I love you, and I wish it didn’t have to be this way. But there can be no more middle-of-the-night screaming. I apologize for humiliating you.”
His cheeks reddened. “Look, I’m sorry I lost my temper. Let the soldiers make up stories. It doesn’t matter what they think—”
“I’m going back to the Circle,” said Vitala. “That’s what I came here to tell you.”
Lucien gaped at her, momentarily speechless. “Please tell me this isn’t because I threw the gods-cursed teacup.”
She smiled sadly and shook her head. “I made my decision while I was out riding. Think about it. You don’t need my protection; there are no assassins after you. You’ve got the battalions well in hand—you are the military strategist, not I. I cannot be your wife without failing spectacularly. I have only one skill, and with the Circle I can put that skill to use.” Killing people, she thought bitterly. My sole talent.
“You’re the Empress of Kjall! And you do not have only one skill—” he began.
Someone knocked loudly on the door. “Sire!”
His brow tightened in annoyance. “Is it an emergency, Quincius?”
“Yes, sire,” came Quincius’s voice.
Lucien gave Vitala a stern look. “Do not move. I’m not finished with you.” He called out, “Come in.” As Quincius entered, he reached for the teapot and an unbroken cup and saucer. “What’s the news?”
“A fleet’s been sighted in the Great Northern Sea.”
Lucien froze in the middle of pouring. “Soldier’s hell.”
“They’re not Kjallan ships, sire. They’re Mosari.”
After a moment of stunned silence, Lucien leapt to his feet, wobbling a bit on the new leg. He hurried unevenly to the door, with Quincius on his heels. “Three gods, man, if that’s who I think it is—”
“Who?” said Vitala. “Who do you think it is?”
Lucien pointed an urgent finger at her. “Do not leave!” He called to the door guards, “On pain of excruciating death, do not allow the empress to leave the command tent!”
“What’s going on?” cried Vitala, rising from her seat.
But both Quincius and Lucien were already out the door.
26
Lucien burst back into the command tent. “Pack a day’s supplies. We’re riding out.”
Vitala stood up, startled. “Right now? It’s getting dark.”
“All the more reason to hurry.” He slap-thumped into the bedroom.
She stepped outside to whistle up Flavia, who had the run of the camp. Moments later, with the dog at her side, she followed Lucien into the bedroom and found him yanking clothes out of a chest and tossing them on the bed for his batman to pack. “What were the ships?”
“They’re carrying my cousin Rhianne and her husband, the king of Mosar. We’ve spoken by signal relay, and I must see them immediately—they’ve come to help us. You’d better start packing, or you’ll have nothing to wear.” He ogled her for a moment. “Of course, that has possibilities.”
Sighing, she went to her own trunk. “Why do we have to go to them? Can’t they come here?”
“My dear Vitala, I love you, but ships cannot travel on land.”
She raised a hand to slap him. “You know what I mean!” But the smile he lobbed in her direction was so joyous, so full of buoyant energy, that she lowered her hand and went back to picking out clothes. “Isn’t this a bad time to leave the army? The usurper’s forces aren’t far away.”
“Quincius will remain here, in charge, and I’ll be in touch with him by signal. Once I’ve spoken to King Jan-Torres and determined our course of action, we’ll move the battalions. Besides . . .” He rose to his feet and seized her around the waist, hugging her fiercely. “This will be fun. We’ve been hearing and smelling the Great Northern Sea for ages. Don’t you want to get up close where you can taste it?” His kissed her neck.
Laughing, she pushed him away. How strange: a moment ago he’d been in the worst of moods and now he was happy again, but she wasn’t the one who’d brought about the change. His cousin Rhianne had done it. Irrational as it was, she found herself jealous. “I said I was going back to the Circle. This doesn’t change that.”
“But if you meet with the Mosari leaders first, you’ll have actual intelligence to carry back. Won’t you?”
“I suppose so.” She glanced at him sidelong. Not long ago, he’d been arguing with her vociferously on this subject.
A corner of his mouth turned up in a sly smile as he grabbed Flavia and hugged her about the shoulders, then dug deeper in his trunk. That Caturanga head of his was at work, scheming as usual. Whatever plan he’d dreamed up this time would likely prove a disappointment, but she was glad, at least, to see him back to his old self.
• • •
They packed only the bare minimum and were off at once. A baggage train would follow them with more supplies and a larger party of soldiers. For now, they rode in a vanguard of twenty horsemen and galloped through the entire remaining hour of daylight, pausing only twice to rest the horses.