The False Martyr

by H. Nathan Wilcox

  “He hates Liandria,” Cary interjected. “Juhn told me that he lost his eye to a Liandrin knight in the Second Pindar War. Nyel hasn’t had him to her bed since.”

  “I suspected as much,” the ambassador conceded. He shook his head at the futility of it all. “That means the Empire has a solid five.” The three eastern lodges, Hvartin or Ostoff, and Torswauk, Cary counted. It sounded just like the situation Juhn had described earlier except for Torswauk’s position, which made the Callik’s inability to reach a conclusion even more confusing.

  “Eselhelt then,” Cary said. His guts clenched at the thought of Noé caught in the middle of all this, the poor, broken girl at the center of this epic tug-o-war.

  Ambassador Chulters stopped his pacing and looked at Cary with what might have been admiration. “Right. I can barely tolerate that brute of a Father they have – he is even worse than Ithar – but they have sided with us thus far. I can’t say I understand it because their Father is practically attached to Ithar, and Ithar is with the Imperial ambassador so much you’d think they were lovers, but Zhurn has always voted to keep the Callik open.”

  The mention of Zhurn filled Cary’s mind with images of the old man climaxing as his wife cried and struggled to breathe. The memories were so strong, that Cary almost missed the second part of the ambassador’s comment. “Zhurn is the one keeping the Callik going?” he asked, thoughts moving between what Juhn and the ambassador had said. He felt like he was on the verge of something but couldn’t quite get it.

  The ambassador frowned, clearly upset at having his train of thought disturbed. “That is what I just said. I can only imagine they’re holding out for more from the Empire. It’s only a matter of time before they get it, and since we’re seeking to hire all the lodges, there’s nothing I can do to compete. So the real question . . . .”

  Cary stopped listening. This wasn’t right. There was no reason for Eselhelt to hold up the Callik. They should be doing exactly what Juhn had suggested. If they moved quickly, they could reject Liandria, accept the Empire, and be on the move before the Thull could act. Surely, the amount of payment could not be what was delaying the decision.

  “Perhaps I should send you,” brought Cary from his reverie. Ambassador Chulters was measuring him with his eyes. For a second, Cary’s hope rose that the ambassador was going to send him back into the order passages.

  “Send me where, my lord?” Cary asked, when Ambassador Chulters offered no more.

  The ambassador clicked his tongue in displeasure. “Weren’t you even listening? We need the prince to get here. Even Juhn said so, and it is the only way I’m going to keep the Callik going. If our coalition holds, I might manage a few more days, but the prince is what we really need. When he arrives, they’ll have to weigh the gold, and we can start the trade negotiations all over again. There’s also the fact that he should be here by now, yet there’s been no word. I’m starting to worry that something has happened. We can’t simply sit and wait any longer. We need to know.” Cary did not like where this was going. His mind raced to think of something to change the ambassador’s mind. “Yes,” the ambassador finally decided. “Since you’re no longer needed for this idiocy of Juhn’s, you will go to find the prince. You leave tomorrow at first light. Ride with all haste to find him and bring back word of his expected arrival.”

  “My lord,” Cary scrambled, “how . . . how will I find him? I’m not a tracker, just a courier.”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard. He’s traveling with a hundred soldiers and a score of wagons. You can take one of the rangers if you’d like. The Order be damned, you can take all of them. They’ve been nothing but trouble anyway.” He laughed darkly at that. The rangers had been egged into a fight with the Imperial delegation a few days ago. Despite their reputation, the Morgs strictly forbid fighting in their lodges, so the fight, which Ithar was quick to blame on the Liandrins, had been a great embarrassment. The rangers had been confined to the bunk room ever since. Cary had no doubt they’d climb over themselves for the opportunity to get out of the lodge.

  Cary saw the whole thing spinning out of control. There was nothing he could say now to deter the ambassador, but he wouldn’t give up on Noé either. “It shall be as you say, my lord,” he agreed. If he was fast and the prince was close, he could be away for only a few days. But first, he’d see Noé. “With your permission, I need to prepare my things and make sure the horses are ready.”

  “Of course,” the ambassador smiled, seemingly pleased at having his orders followed without further discussion. “I’ll send two rangers with you.”

  “Very well, my lord,” Cary said as he moved to the door. “I assume you want us to be as quick as possible, so I’d prefer Yerl and Pence. They’re the best riders.”

  “I’ll ask the sergeant, but that sounds right to me.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” Cary bowed, hand on the latch of the door. “I have much to do to prepare. May I be dismissed?”

  “Certainly . . . .” was as much as Cary heard before he was out the door. A few seconds later, he was around a corner and heading for the closest entrance to the order passages.

  #

  Heart racing, Cary adjusted the hood of the brown robe he wore, pulled up the sleeves, and forced his trembling hands to move the slat slowly, to remain silent, to keep him from discovery. His hand would not cooperate.

  Zhurn was in the room with Noé. His voice had carried down the dark passage as Cary approached. The foreign rumbling continued now as Cary struggled to open the peephole that would satisfy his curiosity and ease his anticipation. The Eselhelt father’s voice was gentle, tone kind. Enticing or apologizing? Cary could not help but imagine what would follow. Or had it just happened? He listened for it. When will it start? When will the kind words turn to grunts, cries, gasps, the slap of skin?

  The slat clicked open with the slightest sound of wood on wood. It sounded like a crash. Cary ducked below the hole, sure he had been caught, wondering if he should run, heart beating out of his chest. Nothing happened. The voices – Zhurn’s gentle rumble, Noé’s timid tone distorted by her deformity – continued slightly clearer but unchanged in volume or cadence. Cary listened. He did not understand the words, but this was clearly a very different conversation from the last one he’d witnessed. If not for that first visit, Cary would have thought that Noé and her husband were in love, that he had never mistreated her, hurt or threatened her. But then wasn’t that how it always was – abuse followed by apology, the net of reconciliation?

  When he was certain that he had not been discovered, Cary’s eye found the hole. He focused on Noé. She was looking at him, knew he was there. She was on the bed propped up on pillows, naked, legs curled to the side under the swell of her belly. Her hand reached to her husband’s hairy back as he bent to kiss her. His lips landed on her head, but Cary did not miss how she had angled her face hoping the kiss would find her lips, how her husband had moved his own purposefully away from hers. He rose from the bed and pulled a robe over his sagging, wrinkled body.

  Noé asked something as he tied the strap. It earned her a rebuke. She retracted and moved to hide herself – a hand rising to cover her lip, an arm covering her breast, legs pulling closer to her body. Only Cary could see the disgust on the big man’s face that accompanied the hard words. He sat beside her again and placed a hand on her belly. His face was hard but not cruel, voice stern but not harsh. He spoke to her as if to a child, a reminder to behave, of the consequences if she didn’t. Noé shriveled, stared at the mattress before her and nodded.

  “Understand?” Though the language he used was foreign, Cary had no difficulty translating the conversation that followed.

  Noé nodded again, eyes locked on the sheets then slipping to Cary’s.

  “Say it,” Zhurn’s voice turned hard. His big hand clasped her chin and forced her face to him.

  “I understand,” she whispered, but he did not release her. He just stared into her eyes, forcing them back
to his, moving her head with his hand every time she tried to divert her gaze. Finally, he cast her aside, allowing her to study the mattress. He caressed her unborn child, whispered a final reminder, then stood, and walked from Cary’s view.

  The door clicked shut a minute later. Sighing, Noé reached to the bed beside her and pulled a dress over her head, but not before Cary had developed a whole new range of fantasies. “You can come out now,” she said, looking directly at him. “You’ve finally found me alone, so you might as well come out and tell me whatever it is that brings you here every day.” She stood from the bed, allowing the pale woolen dress to fall to her ankles, and walked toward him.

  Though it was exactly what he wanted, Cary’s fear spiked, a combination of honest anxiety about what he was doing and fear of getting exactly what he wanted and not knowing what to do with it. At the same time, he wondered how she could always know when he was there. Did she . . . .

  “I know you’re at the Thull meetings,” Noé answered his silent question before he could finish it. “I have seen you peeking out from your little nook, I know you are watching me.” She smiled. There was sadness to it, but it was a dramatic change from their first encounter. “If I wanted to be rid of you, I’d just have to point. Unlike finding you here, there would be no suspicion of me then.”

  “So why haven’t you?” Cary asked as he stepped from the dark passage into the dim room. There was a single lamp burning beside the bed, but his eyes seemed to have gotten used to the gloom of the lodge. Reflexively, he checked the areas outside his vision before he pulled back the hood on his robe. The room was, as expected, empty.

  His attention came back to Noé. She seemed to glow – white skin, golden hair, pale blue eyes. She kept her face tilted away to hide her deformity, a natural reflex built through years of scorn. Her hands held her child. Cary did not hide the fact that he was studying her, thinking of her as she had been a minute before, eating her with his hungry eyes.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” she admitted and seemed honestly confused. She turned her face further away, breath quickening. “I should. I cannot imagine how it is that you have been allowed in the order passages, why you have been allowed to spy on the Thull. Maybe it is because it is so terribly strange, but I never honestly thought to do it.”

  “It’s not because you like that I watch you, that you long also to see me?” Cary walked toward her. He reminded himself that this might be his last chance to see her. He could waste nothing.

  Noé tried to laugh, but it was forced. “You presume too much, guth. I am the Mother of a lodge. I am joined to a legendary warrior. Even if you were not an outsider, you would not last a minute in the caratht. Even an order keeper would be more desirable than you.” She tried to make her voice sharp, tried to bring her eyes to his, tried to face him fully. She failed in every attempt.

  Cary stepped closer, keeping her between him and the bed. “I thought Morgs didn’t lie,” he said with a smirk. “Though you are a Morg and the Mother of a lodge and wife of a great warrior, you are still a woman, and you long more than anything to be touched, to be admired, to be loved.”

  “You are wrong.” She forced her eyes to his but retreated a step. “You are wrong about Zhurn. He loves me. He told me so. He was so sorry for his anger the last time he came. It . . . it was my fault. I angered him, but still he apologized. He even brought me a gift.” She turned to the bed and retrieved a stole of luscious mink. She rubbed it between her hands and against her face. “It is so soft. I could never have had anything like this before Zhurn picked me. Now, I have a whole trunk of furs. He knows that mink is my favorite. If he did not love me, would he remember that, would he bring me such gifts?” She caressed the fur again, then pulled it around her neck. Cary could not help but wish that he were that fur, that it was him feeling her so intimately.

  “So he did not hurt you?” Cary took another step toward her. He did not fail to notice that she had changed the subject, that she was trying to convince herself, not him.

  Noé’s face darkened. “He . . . he is a passionate man. He was not trying to hurt me – I know he wasn’t – but he cannot always help what he does.”

  “And the last? He threatened you again. He threatened your child.”

  “No!” Noé shook her head, but her eyes were on the floor. “He was reminding me of my duty to him and our lodge. It was not a threat. I was not raised for this life, and he is just making sure I understand what is happening, what I am supposed to do.”

  Understand what? Cary’s mind cried. Zhurn was up to something. Something was not right. Somewhere Cary knew it, but he could not make himself focus on it. “I would never threaten you, would never hurt you. You know that, right? You know that it, that making love, should not hurt? It should be wonderful. You should see your lovers face. You should see his pleasure reflected in your own.”

  Noé turned away, but her blood rose, flushing her cheeks, making her even more beautiful. “Stop,” she whispered.

  Cary did not. “I have been in these halls for weeks. I have seen many women with their men. I have seen how those men seek nothing but the pleasure of their wives. It is the same where I am from. When a man loves a woman, he places her pleasure even above his own. I am only sorry that you have never experienced that.” He almost felt badly for stoking the girl’s insecurities with his lies, but he knew that he had only to plant the idea in her mind. She shifted slightly at the thought, considering how her husband used her, how she dreaded rather than longed for his touch.

  “Who is to say that he does not pleasure me?” she asked to cover what Cary now knew beyond a doubt to be true. “How can you know what I feel?”

  Cary took another step toward her, coming within arm’s length. “The question answers itself,” he said softly, seeking her downturned eyes with his own. “You are praying that Zhurn stop, not that he never stop.” He reached out a hand and placed it on her cheek. She flinched away, breath catching.

  “You shouldn’t,” she begged.

  “Does he touch you like this?” Cary ran his hand down her cheek to her neck and arm. His other found her hip as he drew closer. “Even when he is gentle? Even when he is sorry?”

  Noé was lost for words. She gulped, caught between what she dreaded and what she wanted.

  “I can show you.” He allowed his other hand to find her back, pulled himself in so that he was almost touching her, so that his lips were close to hers. He looked into her eyes, ran his hands on her back, to her hips, to her rear. This is it. She’s mine. He brought his lips up to meet hers, felt her trembling.

  Cary was on his ass. He landed with a thump on the boards below and barely kept from going to his back. His eyes bounced to Noé, saw her arms stretched out from where she had pushed him. “Don’t ever touch me again,” she warned. Her breaths were pants but not from the effort of pushing him to the ground. “You . . . you have gotten all of this wrong. I allowed you to watch me because I had no other option. If I had said something, I, my child, would have suffered as much as you. I have spoken to you because . . . because . . . I don’t know why, but it was a mistake. The fact that you watched me should have told me everything I needed to know about you.”

  Cary forced himself to look hurt by the rejection. He was. He had wanted this, had wanted it now, but he was not defeated. She knew what was possible. When he returned from his trip, she’d have made up her mind. She’d be waiting for him, and it would be so much better than having her now full of doubt.

  “I . . . I cannot . . . you know I cannot say anything, but. . . .” The admission reminded Cary of the power he had over her. For a second, he considered how easy it would be to force her. She would never fight – that had literally been beaten from her. She’d probably even thank you. Just like your sister? The image flashed in his mind, and he cursed himself for even allowing it to exist, knew even as he thought it that he could never do it. The lesson, he reminded himself. You can’t save them, but you’re not the bastards tha
t abuse them. At least they’ll have that. At least it’s better than how the other men treat them. They’ll give themselves to any bastard. At least you’re the bastard that is kind to them.

  “I am sorry,” he said, looking ashamed. Time to back away. Let her think that she’s lost her chance. Let her come to you. “I . . . I knew it was a fool’s dream. I cannot keep you from my mind, but I should have known that it could never be. I wanted to give you something wonderful before I was gone. Something to show you what love is supposed to be, but if I cannot give you that, can I, at least, give you my friendship? I know I am a guth, but I hope that we can talk, that I can share your company and look on your face . . . and have my fantasies.”

  Noé eyed him, stare running across his body. Her pants subsided. She feels back in control, Cary knew. So let her think she has denied me, that I have given up, that she has won. Tonight, in her bed, she will be able to think of nothing else. She will dream of me, will know I am waiting, will know what is possible. Day after day, she will think about what she can have, and eventually she will want it more than anything.

  “Alright. We shall be friends.” She forced a smile, forgetting even to cover her lip.

  She took a long, trembling breath and walked across the room, circling wide around Cary, to sit on a cushion on the floor, legs folded before her. She pulled her long, fine, golden hair behind her shoulders, and again ran the stole along her cheek with a melancholy smile, used it to hide the split ruining her lip. “So, friend, why is it that you have been allowed to roam the order passages, to spy upon Mothers, to witness a Thull?”

  Cary picked himself from the floor and took the cushion next to her. The question reminded him of the ones nagging at the back of his mind. Probably it was nothing, but since he was here, since he had to back off from his true pursuit, maybe he could learn something useful. Broom before beer, his dad had always said. “Juhn and Nyel asked me to spy on the other Mothers,” he admitted. “They seemed to think that I might find something that would help the negotiations in the Thull.”