Jana tried to twist out of the woman’s grip, failed, and hung her head, her hair covering her face. Michaela studied the shiny, almost clean black hair. She sucked in a sudden breath, reached a hand and forced Jana’s face up as Reynaldo had when he captured us. Jana glared at the woman, one eye partially shut. She would have a real shiner tomorrow. If only that were all, I thought. If only that were the extent of our troubles.
Michaela laughed. “Not so sick after all.” She shook Jana hard by the shoulders. “What’ve you been up to, spying little rat?”
Jana said nothing. I was painfully aware of her childish confidence, knowing her mama and her papa could protect her, our crypta and our ‘Graven status surety against all catastrophes. She was afraid but not terrified, a natural state for her, I realized, as I began to understand the foundation of my daughter’s and my husband’s courage. Jana, like her father, had been driven by natural ability and this capacity for daring to early independence. An optimal level of controlled anxiety fueled their extraordinary achievements, well beyond the reach of average men and women. Risks that for me were overwhelming were acceptable to my husband and our daughter. Failure in small things was a distant possibility, total disaster unthinkable.
But defeat was all too familiar to me. I tried, and failed, to come up with a way to extricate Jana. Michaela also pondered what to do with this unconventional prisoner. With her hold on Jana, I could pick up her thoughts as she went quickly through her options. Her priority had always been to gain advantage with Reynaldo. After her daughter’s rape she was not so devoted to his interests, but she couldn’t think of any other use for this child. We were both too slow. Reynaldo sensed there was something good outside, something worth interrupting the negotiations for. He stood in the doorway, blazing with false indignation and open delight.
“Well, little lass,” he said, “I see you’re the only Aranyi who deserves to wear breeches.” He glowered at Michaela, knowing her disloyalty.
Jana scratched and fought like a cornered cat, broke free from the woman and ran past Reynaldo into the great hall, to Niall, hugging him around the waist. “Niall!” she screamed. “Niall, make him let us go!”
Niall shook his head. “My betrothed,” he said, hoping to comfort her, calling her by the pet name of their teasing at home. He stroked her shorn hair. “My betrothed, you know I would do anything for you, but I can only negotiate now.”
Reynaldo scowled at the word Niall had used, taking it seriously. “So,” he said, “you think you can wriggle your way into the Aranyi family, through the Margrave’s bed and into the daughter’s.” He was in a jealous rage, confronting a rival over the most valuable prize of all.
Niall rolled his eyes at the absurd misunderstanding. “She’s only a child,” he said, in a mistaken attempt at de-escalating the rage. “Margrave Aranyi has no plans for her marriage, not for years yet.”
Reynaldo assumed Niall was trying to divert attention from his own schemes. “You think Margrave Aranyi would give his daughter to his discarded whore?” He snapped his fingers and several bandits surrounded Niall and Jana. Reynaldo stared into Niall’s face, attempting to examine his mind, and apparently recognized some quality he had overlooked before. “Erebos take me, perhaps he would,” he muttered to himself.
Reynaldo broke off the incomplete communion, all pretense of good faith discarded. “He won’t get the chance,” Reynaldo said, aloud for the benefit of the entire troop. “I’m keeping the girl. Margrave Aranyi can bid for the wife and son, but the girl is mine.” Reynaldo grabbed Jana by the arm and yanked her away from her champion. Jana flailed her free arm, shrieking as if Reynaldo had stated his intention to murder her.
Niall made a conciliatory gesture with his sword arm. “Margrave Aranyi will be offering a substantial ransom. There’s no need to frighten the child.”
Reynaldo endured with uncharacteristic patience his latest acquisition’s attempts to free herself: alternately jerking her body and digging her fingernails, like peeling an orange, into the exposed flesh of his wrist where his glove and the sleeve of his shirt didn’t quite meet. Her fear and her fighting spirit were equally valuable, the one balancing the other to keep her both alert and docile. “Be still, lass,” he said, when the gouging drew blood.
Jana knew Reynaldo threatened worst when he spoke most quietly, and gave up her struggles. “That’s right,” he said, “You’ll learn soon enough who your master is.”
To Niall Reynaldo was dismissive; negotiations were at an end. “Go back to your whoremaster.” He pointed in the general direction of Aranyi as his men began nudging Niall toward the door. “Tell him all of ‘Graven Assembly couldn’t scrape together enough wealth to ransom this little filly.” He watched as the bandits marched Niall to the entrance and out. “Tell Margrave Aranyi he can buy back his wife and son, what’s left of them. But the girl is mine.”
Reynaldo deliberately worked himself up to heights of offensiveness, leaving no doubt that this had ceased to be a simple kidnapping. As Niall was escorted across the threshold he sent his parting shot of coarse humor. “Tell Margrave Aranyi he can fight me if he dares, or he can go down on his knees to me, as you do to him, and beg.” He grabbed at his crotch. “It makes no difference.”
The door was shut and barred, the inner and outer guards resumed their places. Niall would be conducted to the far periphery of the castle’s grounds, until it was safe to leave him to make his way to his own forces in their encampment. Reynaldo looked down at Jana, rigid with horror at his words. “The girl is mine,” he repeated softly.
Jana made a mighty effort and tore herself loose from Reynaldo’s grasp. “Niall!” she screamed, running to the doors that had already closed. “Niall! Listen to me!” There were thoughts in her head, thoughts so strong they blazed out like lightning flashes to any telepath close enough to read them.
In his fright Reynaldo had no time for gentleness or persuasion. He ran after Jana, caught her by the shoulder, spun her around and punched her in the side of the head. Jana gave one loud yelp, suddenly cut off, and dropped to the floor, where she lay still and silent. The scene went dark, my vision now blocked by Jana’s closed eyes, although I could still hear, even if Jana, temporarily senseless, could not.
Reynaldo picked up the limp little body, held her gently. “No, my little Amazon,” he whispered. “You mustn’t ruin things now. Not when we’re so close.”
He sent his own mind out as best he could, terrified that Niall had heard those loud warnings. He prodded around in the mental landscape, feeling for Niall, for Dominic, for anyone who might have learned the secret, the terrible thing that Jana had wanted to tell.
Nobody had. Nobody but me.
Arrows! Jana had shouted into the mental world. Arrows and– and the thing you shoot them with. Even in our martial household the words for a forbidden weapon were spoken infrequently, heard only in ancient ballads or read in histories. Jana, in her fear, had frozen on the word, but the image in her panicked brain had shone bright and clear. She must have seen the bandits practicing with their deadly weapons that Eclipsis’s strictly enforced Armaments Convention prohibits anyone from owning or making or bringing into our world. The picture of more than forty men with simple short bows, quivers full of arrows on their backs, shooting at crude straw targets in the shape of human figures, was as vivid in my mind as if I had watched it on a Holonet screen.
Feverish in my cell, I wet myself with terror, both at this new thing I had learned and at Reynaldo’s mental search. The psychotic waves of his crypta swept over me and passed through without registering, my inert body giving off no signals. My active mind was hidden in my daughter’s consciousness, leaving little for Reynaldo to perceive here. After seeing me sick and exhausted Reynaldo had all but forgotten me, and his clumsy explorations now, in his trembling haste, convinced him I was incapable of receiving thoughts, or making sense of them. Soon I would be dead, either through the natural progress of my disease or during the course of t
omorrow’s evil work. The “sibyl” ‘Gravina Aranyi, who must be starved into submission and powerlessness, was a distant memory.
Satisfied, Reynaldo slumped with relief. I felt motion as he carried Jana to his own place near the fire and laid her down. “When the lass wakes up,” he said to Michaela, “give her supper.” There was resentment in his voice as he addressed the woman. He was suspicious of her motives now but had no one else to trust. “But keep an eye on her. If the lass tries anything, or if she escapes, you’ll answer for it.”
Slowly, with infinite caution, I extricated myself from my daughter’s mind. Reynaldo had not so far noticed the presence of another, adult, consciousness there, masked as it was by the child’s less developed mental pattern. When he had explored my brain just now in his frantic apprehension, I had not been there to alert him to my continued survival. Now I must inhabit myself again to think over Jana’s warning and decide what to do about it. If I was careful not to emit any signs of activity, Reynaldo might not check with me again, at least not anytime soon.
Back in my own mind, I returned to the pains of sickness, the lethargy of mind and body, the headache that dulled the thoughts. The hunger and fear resumed their dominance, the fever disordered my judgment, the rash distracted my attention. Jana’s warning echoed and reechoed in my brain, adding a topping of terror to the layers of misery.
Bows and arrows. That was the “swift spear” I had sensed in the bandits’ thoughts, the reason for Reynaldo’s seemingly insane confidence. For all Dominic’s abilities as swordsman and strategist, he would be killed in an instant, he and any force he could raise, no matter how great their number, if they came up against just a few trained archers. In a world without firearms, the bow was as deadly and efficient as a machine gun. A practiced archer could shoot several arrows in just one minute and be certain of hitting his target. The weapons were easy to make, where wood for bows and shafts was plentiful, where animal sinew for strings and feathers for stability were the detritus of the skillful trapper’s every meal. Serviceable arrowheads could be made of bone or stone. If the bandits were lucky, if they had taken enough valuable booty, they could trade for worked metal spear points.
Tomorrow Dominic and his forces would approach the ruined castle and invest it for siege. They would surround the walls at close range, knowing they faced nothing worse than rocks and boiling oil, if the defenders could spare any. The work of assault would be done with battering ram and ladders, and would not take long, since time and weather had already accomplished most of their objective. No doubt Reynaldo had been delighted to have Niall get a good look at the crumbling walls, the fallen roof, the hollow watchtowers. Back at the Aranyi camp, he would report on the poor defenses, giving Dominic the last evidence he needed that the attack would be a walkover.
And when all Dominic’s men were exposed, the bandits would rise up from behind chunks of fallen stone and sections of ruined wall, arrows already nocked onto bowstrings, and let forth a silent volley that would kill or wound just about everybody. For the few miraculously untouched another barrage would follow in a second or two, before anyone knew what hit him, much less had time to run or find cover. Survivors could be finished off with swords and knives, or left to die in agony where they lay. The bodies would be stripped of armor and weapons, and clothes, the ransom Dominic had brought appropriated at leisure. By the time others learned what had happened, assuming they cared and could coordinate their forces, the bandits could be over the mountains into the renegade Andrade Realm, enjoying the good life that treasure would buy.
The only hope was a warning, as Jana had tried to give Niall. She was too young to have active crypta and had only hoped that Niall would use his to see what was inside her mind. But my gift was fully developed and active, or would be, if I were not sick and weak and under guard. I had two choices: I could try to find Dominic, gambling that Reynaldo would not pick up on the signals I was sending until I had achieved communion with my husband; or I could simply wait. Dominic must be coming in tomorrow, as Niall had implied and Dominic had hinted to me. Once Dominic was nearby, I could warn him as soon as we made contact.
Which was the right answer? If I warned Dominic now he would have time to devise an alternative plan and to find a way around the deadly ambush. But I would risk Reynaldo’s vengeance if he overheard me. I trembled—literally, physically shook—when I understood the full meaning of what form that vengeance would take. Reynaldo would kill me. He would race down to the cell and kill me, and Val, with a sword, as soon as he was aware of the telepathic communication between me and Dominic. We were still alive now and unmolested, as Reynaldo had admitted to Niall, solely because we would lure Dominic to his death, and were sick enough not to pose any threat. Once Reynaldo had the least hint I was still alive and mentally alert, I was dead.
I would wait, I decided. Perhaps Dominic would come to me in communion during the night or early in the morning, with a brief message of his love, to hearten me and give me hope, before beginning his rescue attack. I could warn him then. Until then I would rest, if not in sleep, at least at peace.
Another fit of ague shook me out of my complacency. If I waited, I might prevent ambush. But Dominic would have no time to think up a replacement plan for the simple assault. And while he thought and worked, Reynaldo would kill me just the same. It would take only a minute for him to come downstairs and unlock the door. I would save Dominic and Niall, and all the Aranyi men who had joined up to help, but I would bring death down on myself, and Val.
Despair overtook me; my thoughts would not coalesce. The prospect of certain death did not concentrate my mind in the least. All I did was vacillate, weak and sick, between the two positions: death now, from searching for Dominic, or death later, from waiting. I cried and moaned, facing the same death whichever way I turned. I thought of my dagger and Dominic’s lessons, how I should protect my honor. It was all meaningless. I didn’t want to die, although I would accept my death willingly enough if I could save my children. But my death only ensured my children’s death, and worse. Val would certainly be killed. And Jana? I couldn’t bear thinking of Jana’s fate, Reynaldo calling her “mine.”
She’s not yours, you fucking maniac, I thought, careful not to project the emotion outwards. She’s mine, and Dominic’s, and I must find a way to save her.
CHAPTER 12
Light penetrated the darkness, sounds came in clearly again with a muffled roar. “…don’t need to play that bullshit game anymore!” I recognized Reynaldo’s voice, loud with bravado.
I awoke as if from one nightmare into a greater one. It was Jana who had awakened from her unconscious state and, in my strong maternal tie, I had entered her mind as before, when I had located her under the stairs. Once again I observed the activity in the room above. In the firelight in the great hall I saw the faces of the bandits and heard their voices, as Jana watched and listened from her place at the front of the room where Reynaldo had left her.
“Why, brother?” One brave man dared to question Reynaldo. “Why stop the negotiations? That was only their first offer. They’ll have iron and steel, lots of it. Maybe even glass.” He spoke with kind patience, as if Reynaldo were unfamiliar with the ritual of bargaining.
The questioner was younger than Reynaldo, although not by much, with dark hair and a drooping mustache, and a vague family resemblance. He addressed his words, not just to Reynaldo, but to all the men in the room. He had become a spokesman for the majority, the ones who didn’t trust Reynaldo or understand his plans, but could not express or even dare think their objections.
“Let’s talk with Margrave Aranyi,” the man said, “let him believe we’ve come to terms. When he brings the ransom to us, then–” he made the same gesture as Reynaldo had a few days ago, one arm stretched outward, hand in a fist, the other held, fingers curled, near the shoulder. The posture of an archer, I understood now. Two or three others added their voices in assent. “It’s a good plan. Why spoil it by acting too soon
?”
Reynaldo looked ready to explode. The others, recognizing the signs, stepped back quickly. “What’s wrong with all of you?” Reynaldo said. “Afraid of a little girl and a faggot who sucks ‘Graven dick?” He stalked around the room in inarticulate fury, returning to confront the dark-haired man.
The man did not back down. “No, my brother,” he said. “We’re not afraid. But I think you are. I think you’re afraid the girl prefers the faggot to you.” He laughed and punched playfully at Reynaldo’s stomach.
The others gasped at the effrontery, but Reynaldo accepted the kidding in the sullen way of the elder with an indulged younger sibling. “The girl is mine, Roberto. I’m not giving her back.”
Roberto shook his head. “That’s another thing. What do you need this child for? Surely we have brats enough!” He swept his hand in an arc encompassing the clumps of women and children, laughing at the evidence of such fertility. Then he spoke seriously. “You’ve fucked up the negotiations, telling Margrave Aranyi you’re keeping his daughter.”
Reynaldo’s eyes widened. “I’ve fucked up? I’ve fucked up?” He stood face to face with his half-brother, attempted a kind of jovial humor, but the underlying rage shone through all too clearly. “Whose plan is this? Yours? You’re my father’s son, and I love you, but you couldn’t plan a drink in a tavern.” He smiled in a teeth-baring grimace that froze the blood. “The negotiations aren’t fucked up. The negotiations are over. We brought Aranyi here. Now there’s no need to talk, only to shoot.”
Roberto, the half-brother, was frightened like the rest, but he felt his argument was too important to give up. “Listen, brother,” he said, standing at a respectful distance, “killing a ‘Graven lord, that’s a serious business. We’ve all agreed it’s necessary; that’s why we’re in this, why we learned to use the forbidden weapons.” He looked around for allies, caught a few glances of cautious encouragement, and was emboldened to continue. “But it’s too soon. What if they don’t have all their ransom with them yet? The woman said Margrave Aranyi was coming from Eclipsia City. That’s a long trip to make in two days, with little time to raise all that coin. And we’ve got to be sure we kill him. We don’t even know he’s here yet.”
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