by Barb Hendee
“Thank you for doing this.”
With a fresh stab of guilt, Céline closed her eyes. She didn’t want to do this, so she prolonged her state of falling into a trance. Holding Rhiannon’s fingers, she felt a strong energy. Rhiannon was possessed of a resilient spirit. Céline could feel it, as she often felt the spirit of those who came to patronize her shop.
But within seconds, she knew she would need to begin to sway and to pretend small jolts were passing through her body, and then she would be forced to open her eyes and probably ruin the rest of a young woman’s life.
Then suddenly…without any warning at all, Céline felt a real jolt as if her body was being swept along a tunnel of mist, and she forgot everything but the sensation of speeding along through the mist all around her as it swirled in tones of gray and white.
The mist vanished and an image flashed before her. She saw a large bedroom with chipped stone walls.
A huge four-poster bed stood in the middle, and Rhiannon was sitting beside the bed in a chair, staring into space with a hollow look in her eyes. Just the sight of her filled Céline with alarm, as if Rhiannon had given in to despair.
The door creaked and opened, and Captain Kochè stood on the other side.
Rhiannon looked over at him absently. “Yes? Did you need something?” The tone of her voice suggested that whatever he needed didn’t matter.
But he came inside and closed the door, and she stood up in mild alarm. “Captain, you should not be in here. This is my private bedchamber.”
He crossed the room quickly and grasped the back of her neck, pulling her up against himself and pressing his mouth down onto hers. She tried to struggle but seemed halfway lost in shock.
Almost as if following a cue in a play, Sub-Prince Damek walked in with three of his own guards. His hair was long and dark. His skin was pale to the point of being white, and he wore a dark blue embroidered tunic.
He stopped cold at the sight of Kochè kissing Rhiannon, and then he said, “Harlot.”
Kochè let her go, and she gasped. “No…my lord. I did not—”
“I have eyes!” Damek shouted. “You are an adulteress. I’ve suspected for weeks now.” He moved closer. “The risk of placing a bastard as head of a noble house is treason.” He turned back to his guards. “She is guilty. Have her strangled. Now.”
As Céline watched this, she wanted to scream. She wanted to call for Amelie, but she had no voice. She was just an observer.
Rhiannon’s eyes widened, and she tried to dodge around Kochè and make a run for the door. But one of the guards grabbed her easily and forced her to her knees. Another one wrapped a piece of rope around her neck and jerked it tight with both hands. She choked and struggled with a wild expression on her face, but he twisted the rope tighter and cut off her breath.
Damek looked on with a pleased smile.
Céline finally cried out, “No!”
The stone room vanished, and Rhiannon was sitting across the table from her, staring. Céline pulled her hand away and dropped the glove.
“What?” Rhiannon asked in alarm. “What did you see?”
Céline was still so lost, so horrified by what she’d just experienced, that all her defenses were gone. “He has you strangled,” she blurted out. “He has you falsely accused of adultery and strangled right there in your bedroom…. I think it was only weeks into your marriage.”
Rhiannon stood up. “Strangled?”
The women looked at each other, and Céline tried to force herself into a calmer state. What had just happened? Had she just seen someone’s future, like her mother had done? It had all been so real.
But then the actual scene began to make sense. Damek wanted Rhiannon’s dowry—enough to marry her. Yet before having children, he’d want a bride from one of the great houses. For that, he’d need to be free.
“You cannot marry him,” Céline said.
Rhiannon closed her eyes briefly. “I will have failed my father again.”
Céline had no idea what that meant, but she didn’t care. Rhiannon had been worried about being trapped in a loveless marriage, and Céline had been fully prepared to send her there, but this was something else. “If you marry him, he’ll have you murdered.”
Rhiannon opened her eyes and nodded. “I will send my answer this afternoon. I will tell him no.” Digging into a pouch at her waist, she took out two coins. Feeling sick, Céline wanted to refuse them but knew that would appear strange.
“I suppose I should thank you,” Rhiannon said, her voice shaking. “But I have no idea what will become of me now.”
At least you’ll be alive, Céline thought.
Rhiannon put on her cloak and went to the door. With her back turned, she said, “I do thank you. I suppose I knew. I always knew, or I wouldn’t have come here.”
She slipped out the door, leaving Céline reeling with her own thoughts.
Two questions rushed around inside her mind. First, was it possible that she might be a true seer? And second, what would Sub-Prince Damek do when he received Rhiannon’s answer?
* * *
Lieutenant Jaromir had been watching the shop from inside the tree line all day. For hours, the only activity had been the sight of a pretty, short-haired girl dressed like a man—and well armed—leaving via the front door in the late afternoon. No one that young could possibly be a seer, so he assumed the seer was still somewhere inside.
But besides that, nothing had happened.
The rain was beginning to let up, though, and he began to seriously consider going back to his horse to get his cloak. He’d stuffed it in a saddlebag that morning to try to keep it dry in case he ended up needing to use it as a blanket tonight.
“How long does the prince want us to stay here?” Corporal Pavel asked, standing beside him.
Although Anton’s official title was sub-prince, most of his own people had been calling him “the prince” for years.
“Long as it takes,” Jaromir answered. “Until we learn something useful.”
Pavel grunted, clearly not happy with this assignment. But Jaromir was still glad for his company. Pavel was in his midtwenties, with cropped dark hair and a long, lanky build. To look at him, one would assume he’d be positively ungraceful, but that wasn’t the case. He was good in a fight, and Jaromir often requested him for journeys away from Castle Sèone.
“Wait,” Pavel said suddenly. “I hear hoofbeats.”
A small contingent was coming down the road toward the village. Both Jaromir and Pavel dropped lower into crouched positions as they watched the riders pull up near the apothecary shop. It was a contingent guarding a single lady in a dove gray cloak. She dismounted, and part of her hood fell back, exposing a flash of brilliant red hair.
“That’s Lady Rhiannon,” Jaromir said. Of course he’d never spoken to her, but he’d seen her at a few state dinners while he’d been playing bodyguard to Anton. Her hair was unmistakable.
“So she’s gone to visit that seer?” Pavel asked.
“Looks like.”
They waited, but Rhiannon was not inside for long, and when she came out, she rushed for her horse so quickly that she tripped and nearly fell over the hem of her cloak.
“Something’s wrong,” Jaromir said in frustration. He wasn’t going to learn anything hiding in these trees. “Come on.”
“What are you going to do?” Pavel asked in alarm.
“Just hurry!”
They ran back for their horses and swung up. Jaromir’s gelding was fast and sure-footed, even in the mud, and he pushed hard through the trees, coming out onto the main path a short ways outside the village. Then he slowed, as if he and Pavel were simply on a leisurely journey heading into Shetâna.
Within moments, he could see the contingent coming toward him, with Rhiannon in the lead, and he swallowed hard.
For most of his life, something about him had put women at ease. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but he wore a small goatee and kept his light brown hair t
ied back at the nape of his neck. From his weathered skin to the scars on his hands, most elements of his appearance screamed “hardened soldier.” But he could live with that. After all, he was a hardened soldier. He was comfortable inside his own skin, and he liked a good joke and a good story, and women seemed to respond well to his easy nature.
He was about to put that to the test now and fervently hoped Lady Rhiannon would not take offense…as he was going to try to speak with her.
When her contingent drew closer, he got a good look at her face and knew his instincts had been right. She was pale and appeared to be fighting tears.
Guiding his horse to the center of the road, he smiled. “My lady. It is good to see you again.”
Her own guards pulled up, and one of them gripped the hilt of his sword, but Jaromir held his ground. True to her breeding, in spite of her distress, Rhiannon raised her eyes and seemed to be trying to place him. “Oh, you are Anton’s man…Lieutenant…?”
“Jaromir,” he finished, widening his smile. “And I hear congratulations are in order. When will I be escorting my lord to your wedding?”
She winced, as if about to be sick, and gripped her reins more tightly. “There won’t be…there will not be a wedding.”
He knew he was already pushing his boundaries well past the limit, but she was in a moment of weakness, and he asked quickly, “Because of something that seer told you?”
She jumped slightly in her saddle, as he’d just given away the fact that he’d been spying on her, but he didn’t expect a verbal answer. He wanted to see the expression on her face when she heard his question.
And that’s how he got his answer. Her eyes widened, and her lips parted. That seer had told her something.
Then she drew herself up, with the demeanor of the lady that she was.
“You may tell your lord,” she said coldly, “that he need not fear his brother’s coffers will be filled with my family’s money anytime soon. There will be no wedding.”
Jerking her horse, she rode around him and went on her way.
He felt small and cheap to have taken advantage of her like that, but he’d do it all over again if necessary.
Once they were alone on the path, Pavel said, “Well, that’s done. We can go home to Sèone now and tell the prince.”
Yes, that would be the prudent thing to do, just head back now.
But Anton had told him to keep the seer safe…and Damek was about to get some very bad news.
“No,” Jaromir said. “I think we’d better stay here a little longer.”
Corporal Pavel sighed.
CHAPTER 2
“You did what?” Amelie asked that night over dinner, incredulous. “You told her to refuse him? Are you insane?”
Céline had been trying for hours to figure out a way to tell her sister what she’d done, and then she’d finally just blurted out that Damek was the intended groom and that she’d counseled Rhiannon not to accept him. But how could she explain it all? Amelie had often expressed unhappiness over the fact that Céline brought in most of their money by playing the seer. How would she feel if Céline told her that some of their mother’s power may indeed have been passed down the line…directly to Céline. Such news might create a barrier between them.
The flames in the hearth cast shadows on the walls, and neither of them had touched the fried lamb chops on the table.
“I had to,” Céline said lamely. “I couldn’t advise her to marry him. Damek is dangerous.”
“Isn’t that the point?” Amelie nearly shouted. “And who do you think he’s going to blame now?” Her face was turning red. “After the way our father and mother both died, didn’t we make a pact to look out only for ourselves?”
That stung, but Céline couldn’t think about their parents. Not tonight. “Just listen,” she said, getting up from the table. Hurrying to one of the shelves, she pulled out a sealed letter hidden between two jars. “I’ve written to Madam Zelinka, and I enclosed the silver coins she gave me. I told her that I counseled Rhiannon to marry Damek with all my best efforts, that I promised her she would be happy, but that she’d already decided against him before arriving, and there was nothing I could do.”
Amelie looked at the letter with the coins sealed inside, but her expression was difficult to read.
“We’ll pay one of the village boys to carry the letter tomorrow, first thing,” Céline rushed on. “Zelinka can’t fault me if she thinks I made my best effort, then returned the money when I failed. Damek probably won’t be ready to give up on Rhiannon yet. He’ll take at least one more run at her, maybe two. By the time he realizes it’s a lost cause, he’ll have forgotten all about us.”
She could see her words calming her sister slowly.
Finally, Amelie nodded. “All right, maybe we can still come out of this alive.” She leaned back in her chair. “But even so, that was a lot of money, Céline. Couldn’t you have just told her to marry him?”
“No,” Céline answered firmly. “I could not.”
As things stood, she’d be having nightmares about Damek smiling while he watched one of his own guards strangling Rhiannon on the bedroom floor. But Céline pushed the image from her mind, went back to her chair, and sat down. She’d done her best to help Rhiannon, and life must go on.
“We should eat these chops before they get cold,” she said. “Do you want bread?”
Amelie nodded, and her silky black hair swung forward and backward as if it had a life of its own. “And you really think we’re safe? That Damek won’t try to punish you?”
“Not if Zelinka shows him my letter, and anyway, punishing me won’t get him what he wants, so why would he bother? This isn’t like someone openly complaining about his lack of leadership. He might even want to keep my involvement hushed up.”
As it turned out, however, she was wrong on all counts, and she never even had a chance to send the letter. Instead, just as she reached for the bread, the blade of a long sword smashed through the shutter of their one front window, and then something came flying inside, hitting the floor and rolling.
It was a bottle.
The bottle was filled with oil, and a rag had been stuffed in its mouth.
The rag was on fire.
A second burning bottle followed, but this one shattered and oil spread across the floor, creating a long, running flame.
“Céline!” Amelie cried, jumping to her feet and grabbing her cloak off a peg, trying to put out the fire.
Céline cast about in panic, looking for anything she might grab to help her sister, but her own cloak and their blankets were all upstairs. No matter how hard Amelie beat at them, the flames kept spreading, and then a third bottle came flying through the window. This one smashed into a set of shelves and set the wall on fire.
“We have to get out!” Céline called over the growing roar. “Run for the back.”
Amelie was not one to quit at anything, but the entire room was nearly engulfed, and smoke was filling the air; only a second after Céline’s shout, they both bolted for the back door. Amelie stopped long enough to grab her sword. She almost never took off the dagger, so it was still on her hip.
Céline flew out into the night first, running through her beloved herb garden, jumping over the tall lavender and the catnip, with Amelie right on her heels. But even amidst the panic, amidst fleeing for her life, Céline could not help the horror washing through her that their shop, their home, was burning, and it was her fault.
Worse, she couldn’t stop remembering the sight of the long sword crashing through their shutter, and she had a terrible feeling this wasn’t over yet. She stopped for a second to make certain Amelie was right behind her.
“Out the back gate and into the trees,” Amelie said as quietly as she could and still be heard over the flames. Clearly, she was afraid the worst might yet be to come as well.
Céline ran for all she was worth, flying over more of her herbs and clutching at the handle of the back gate, pulling it
open. With the roar of the fire behind her, she could think only of reaching the safety of the trees—and someplace to hide.
But she’d barely passed through when a strong hand grabbed her hair and she was jerked hard until her back was pressed up against someone’s chest; he held the point of a knife to her throat.
“Amelie!” she screamed.
She couldn’t see her captor, but she could feel his chain armor through her shoulder blades, and in the moonlight, she could clearly see two men in black tabards in front of her. One of them rushed through the gate, and then she heard Amelie’s angry cry, followed by the clank of steel.
The other soldier didn’t move for a few seconds. But when he turned to look at her, her heart nearly stopped. She could see the protruding belly and greasy hair of Captain Kochè. In the darkness, his eyes glowed as they moved slowly from her hips all the way up to her face.
“Don’t kill that one yet,” he told the guard holding her. “I want some time with her first.”
She went cold and sick to her stomach at the same time, and over the roar of the fire, she could still hear the clanking of steel coming from the garden. Amelie was better when she had the element of surprise, and Céline didn’t know how long she’d last in a stand-up fight against a trained soldier.
Céline cursed herself. What a fool she’d been.
But then, just for an instant, Kochè took his eyes off her and turned his head back toward the sound of the fight in the garden, perhaps wondering if he should go help his man end this quickly.
A loud thud sounded in Céline’s ears, and she was freed so fast she stumbled forward. A flash of tan blurred past her, and as Kochè whirled to look back, a soldier in a tan tabard swung a club and caught him across the jaw.
Kochè, caught completely unaware, hit the ground like a sack of grain.
Céline glanced backward to see that the man in the black tabard who’d been holding her was now unconscious on the ground, and another soldier in a tan tabard stood there gripping a club. Panting and anxious, he was tall, with cropped dark hair.