Count On Me

by Abigail Graham

  “What did I do to anger you so?” Adrian gasps.

  “Nothing. You’re improving. I’m pressing you. Continue to improve.”

  Adrian looks achy and tired as he stumbles back to sit on a barrel, but Conrad is fresh. He calls for the wooden swords and Nina darts over to spar with him.

  She actually seems to be enjoying herself. She’s learning, too, as much as she can learn against someone almost twice her height. Conrad shows her some movements and has her practice on her own while she strides over to me.

  “I’d like your help with something else today,” he says.

  I barely hear him. I’m too busy staring at his sweaty body and rippling muscles to process language very well.

  “Roxanne?”

  “Right. Help. Help you. With what?”

  He starts to say, and then he’s cut off.

  The guard, the big man with the mustache, greets him with a sharp nod.

  “Bors,” Conrad says.

  The guard’s voice is like gravel. “My lord, your brother cannot be found. It seems he took twenty men and rode out under cover of darkness.”

  Conrad eyes him then glances at me.

  “No search party. He’ll come back. He always does. If he’s spotted, I would know. I am not finished with him.”

  Bors nods, and turns smartly to march off and do whatever it is he does around the castle. The yard continues to bustle with activity.

  Conrad shrugs into a jacket, leaving it open over his bare chest.

  “Come with me, unless you’d like to spar some today.”

  I think of him whacking me on the butt with a wooden sword and politely decline, but smile at the memory.

  “This way.”

  He leads me up a narrow stair to the top of the outer wall, where we look out.

  Even from here, I can see all the activity in the village. Trails of dust head toward it, and there are people milling about in all the streets.

  “The autumn is short here,” he says. “Winters are bitter cold. The small villages huddle together for warmth and bring most of their stores of food to the castle, the better to avoid fighting over it when times grow lean.”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  “I need your help overseeing the counts, managing the stores. I have many duties, and with your aid these burdens will be eased. You can teach my children at the same time.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  Well, it’s not like I have anything better to do. I shrug. How bad can it be?

  “Katerina will show you.”

  Manfred’s wife is waiting at the foot of the stairs for us. Slender and pale, she seems delicate, sickly even. Conrad nods to her and gives me a lingering look.

  “I will attend you later,” he promises again.

  When we’re alone, Katerina looks at me.

  “I’m sorry,” she says softly.

  “Why?”

  Her voice is breathy and soft, and she looks down at the ground most of the time.

  “My husband,” she says. “Please accept my apology.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, but, yeah, I accept.”

  She seems relieved. “Shall we?”

  After collecting Nina and Adrian, I join her in counting. There’s so much stuff, it takes all afternoon to write handwritten ledger after handwritten ledger, tallying it all up.

  Adrian helps. Nina just runs around like an animal, and one time comes out hollering and chasing a rat until Adrian traps it with a bucket.

  I spend most of the afternoon fumbling to write with a quill and a bottle of ink. I mean an actual feather quill. I make a smeary mess at first, but get the hang of it after a while.

  By the end of the day, I’m exhausted, Adrian is in a daze, and Nina is sitting in a corner dozing off. So much for teaching them. Katerina works diligently.

  “So what’s your story?” I ask her.

  She gives me a shy glance. “A long time ago, I was promised to marry Conrad.”

  I sit up. “What?”

  “You needn’t fear. There was never anything like that between us. He would have been dutiful, I’m sure, but when his father announced the match he looked at me like a sack of grain. He already had his heart set on another.”

  “His first wife,” I say.

  “Yes. Adrian and the girls are hers. She passed in childbirth with Nina. That was ten years ago.”

  I nod slowly. “I see.”

  “I’ve never seen him look at anyone the way he looks at you. Not even her.”

  “What was her name?”

  “I’ve said too much already. You should ask him; he’ll tell you if you ask.”

  I frown at that. Asking him about his ex, even if he’s a widower, isn’t exactly at the top of my list. I almost wish Katerina hadn’t mentioned her to me.

  “At least tell me what she was like.”

  “Beautiful. She was a village girl. It was not such a grand romance as you may imagine. Things were difficult. I think by the time Nina was born they were having another child just to try to bring things back to what they were.”

  “Oh.”

  Adrian walks up.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Katerina is silent.

  “I was just asking about the castle.”

  Adrian looks past me. I turn and find his father approaching, freshly shaven and richly dressed.

  He takes my hand and half sniffs it, half kisses it.

  “You smell like ink.”

  “I’ve been busy. How much more of this is there?”

  The storeroom is huge, part of the keep. The ceiling is high overhead and there are only narrow paths between stored barrels and sacks. The grain goes into a granary, on the other side of the castle, pushed up against the walls.

  “Much more,” he says, a note of happiness in his voice. “We’ll be well supplied for winter. Adrian, take your sister. Katerina, if you’ll excuse us.”

  Conrad sticks out his elbow. I gawk at it for a moment before I realize why, and slip mine though it. I press close to him, my heart in my throat.

  “Walk with me.”

  I nod and go with him, keeping pace. He slows, his stride so long that I have trouble keeping up if he walks normally. First we head into the yard, and then he leads me toward the inner walls, not to the tallest tower where he lives, but another.

  We spiral up, eventually stepping out of the staircase onto the wall itself. It’s narrower than I realized, with high, spiky walls on either side of us. The spikes are curved inward, toward the mountain, for some reason.

  I don’t know why, but that bothers me. I shudder.

  “You’re troubled.”

  “I’m still thinking about that dream,” I say. “It was so vivid.”

  “It was just a dream. It’s difficult not to have nightmares here, I fear.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Turn away from all that.” He moves to face out, looking over the outer courtyard. “The harvest festival will be soon.”

  “Harvest festival?”

  “You see all the villagers gathering, do you not?”

  “Yes.”

  He nods out, toward them. “This is a special time. Most of my people never travel any farther than from their home village to Rienni. Here they meet. Old friends and family are reunited. New couples find each other. There will be a dozen weddings birthed from meetings in the coming week.”

  “I see.”

  “They rarely marry within their own villages,” he says. “They seek outside it instead. There are a hundred fathers down there dreading losing their daughters.”

  “What about you? Do you go?”

  He shrugs. “Once I did. Now it’s been years. Almost…”

  “Ten?”

  He gives me a questioning look.

  “Yes,” he says. “No, eleven. My son is old enough now that he should go. I haven’t allowed it yet.”

  “You don’t want him to, uh, date?”

  He leans on the wall. “I’m afrai
d. He’ll stay here, of course. When he marries, his wife would join us, but I feel as if I’ll lose some part of him anyway. If I haven’t already. There’s always been a wall between us, ever since…” He doesn’t say it. “And my youngest.”

  He just sounds exasperated. I can’t help but laugh.

  “So you’re going this year.”

  “Yes. I’d like you to join me.”

  “Of course!” I shout. “I wanted to absorb some culture ever since I left home, but I never got the chance. I’ve had to keep running and running.”

  “Why?” he says, after a time.

  The wind howls. It sounds like the echoing cry of a large animal. I turn around to look at the looming mountain slope, its bulk heavy overhead.

  “It’s hard to explain if you’re not familiar with the life I come from.”

  I almost say world I come from. It seems oddly accurate.

  “Try.”

  I shrug. “I left home to get away from my father, and what he did. He destroyed my life.”

  I hesitate for a moment, expecting the inevitable follow-up question. He doesn’t ask it.

  “Every time I used my credit card or my cell phone, it made it easier for him to find me. Once he knew where I was, people came after me. I had to keep moving to where he couldn’t find me. I had some cash that my grandparents gave me but it wasn’t much and I was getting desperate.”

  “No one could help you?”

  I shake my head.

  “He’s a powerful man?”

  I nod.

  I never knew how powerful.

  “You needed to disappear,” Conrad says, studying me.

  It’s hard not to turn and face him.

  “Yeah. I needed to disappear.”

  “You came to the right place.”

  I sigh. “I guess. I wonder if everyone thinks I’m dead. I used my credit card for the plane ticket, and since it went down…”

  I shrug.

  Maybe it’s over now. Maybe there won’t be anyone else following me. No more looking over my shoulder. I stand up, away from the wall, and face him.

  Conrad eyes me warily, as if he’s suddenly become aware of some danger. I put my hand on his.

  “I don’t know how things are here, but back where I come from they can move pretty fast. I’ve never felt about anyone else the way I feel about you.”

  Conrad looks away.

  “Why do you keep doing this? You pull me in and push me back, pull in, push back.”

  He says nothing.

  “There are forces at work here that you don’t understand.”

  I snort. “Yeah, I am well aware of that. There are lots of these forces that I am not understanding, aren’t there?”

  He sets his jaw, proud and defiant and achingly handsome. I think of that moment when he first slipped his fingers inside me, the way he lusted after me so hungrily it was almost frightening. He trembles even now, resisting something, fighting back some secret.

  “Talk to me,” I beg him. “Just say something. I don’t care what, just talk to me please.”

  He sweeps toward me so fast I barely have time to yelp. His arms lock around me and he pulls me in, pressed tight against his body. For a moment neither of us speaks. He breathes against me, his stomach pressing against mine as I draw air. It’s hard to breathe, so close to him. I feel like a candle flame under a sudden blast of wind.

  I slip my arms around him and he tightens his grip, pressing his fingers into my back as he slips them into my hair.

  He shakes his head, his chin grazing my scalp. I breathe against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.

  “You can’t stay here,” he tells me. “When the moon turns, you must leave. You must.”

  “What if I don’t want to?”

  “You don’t realize what you’re saying. You deserve better than a prison.”

  He relaxes slightly. I pull back enough to speak to him.

  “Conrad,” I say. “Hear me out. I’m starting to like it here. Your creepy brother aside, everyone has been nice to me. I liked sharing the bed with you. I felt safe.”

  He’s safe. When I’m in his arms, they feel more secure than any castle. Conrad is hurting. I can see the pain in his eyes, and the way he closes them as I touch his cheeks with my hands. He shivers under my touch, trapping my wrist when I begin to pull away, and nuzzles his chin against my palm.

  He kisses my fingers.

  “You deserve better than a monster,” he says.

  All at once he snaps back, away from me.

  “I’ve had you moved to better quarters, near Marta. Manfred will trouble you no further.”

  He stands for a moment, a tug of war going on in his features. Then he turns and leaves me on the wall, in the rising wind. I lean out and stare into the distance.

  Why won’t he just let me in?

  Then I turn the other way and lean over to look down into the inner courtyard, at the silvery corpse of a tree. As the gusts pick up and swirl down into the open depress, the branches rattle, clacking together like old bones, but not a one comes loose.

  The spikes on this side of the wall all face in. The towers have a commanding view of the courtyard itself. The walls are lined with arrow slits on the inside, but not the outside.

  It’s like the place was built to keep something in, not to keep something out. A shiver goes down my spine.

  I find my own way back to the yard. No one pays me much mind as I head for the kitchen. When I arrive Marta sends a serving girl off with me, with a wave of her oversized spoon. The mousy girl leads me to new accommodations higher in the keep, and brings me something to eat for dinner. Hard bread and cold beef.

  My new room is about three times bigger, and has a window that looks out over the yard. After I’ve eaten I wander back to the library.

  When I arrive, I run my hands over the stack of books Adrian left on the table.

  Then I pick up the poker and rap on the floor of the fireplace. It’s definitely hollow. The impacts echo off somewhere.

  Dropping the poker, I kneel and feel around the edges. I pick it up again to see where the hollow starts. Yes, there’s a trap door here, in the fireplace itself.

  Thankfully it hasn’t been used in a long time, maybe years. My poking around yields nothing but soot and filth on my fingers.

  Falling back to sit on my butt, I stare at it.

  There’s an opening where there shouldn’t be one.

  It’s a secret passage. It has a secret entrance. A trigger, a switch, something. I hop to my feet and circulate the room. I try the wall sconces, jiggling them with my hand, but they don’t budge. The candelabras on the tables aren’t attached to anything.

  A secret book? It would need to be near the door, wouldn’t it? Biting my lip, I wander the room, thinking. Where would it be?

  Pulling on every book in here would take hours, even if I start from the closest and work my way out.

  The knight by the door stares sullenly, helmet drooping.

  Wait.

  Grasping his visor, I flip it up. Inside, there’s a rope. I give it a pull, but nothing happens. Another, and I feel resistance. I set my grip and pull harder, grunting.

  Behind me something groans, and the floor rumbles under my feet.

  The entire hearth pulls back into the wall, exposing a staircase.

  Hesitantly I move closer. The darkness within smells of dust and dirt and damp, the stink of disuse. No one has been down there in a long while.

  I take one last look around, and descend.

  9

  Beneath

  Roxanne

  My footsteps echo in the dark, and I dart back up to grab a candle before heading down. As I descend the stairs, I wonder how anyone lived before people had flashlights and table lamps.

  I guess that’s what I’m doing now. The flame flickers with every step, and panic grips my neck. I take a deep breath and ease down a bit farther, a bit lower. The stairs head straight down, very ste
ep and narrow, just wide enough for me to walk. A taller person would have to stoop and twist to fit.

  At first I think I’ve reached bottom, but it’s only a landing. No sign of any door here. I turn and keep going.

  The second time the stairs bottom out, I find myself at a junction. I must be under the keep. There are halls going off in every direction, narrow and short. Conrad would have to bend his neck to make it, but I’m fine.

  The only question is, which way? What am I even looking for?

  Frowning, I think of my orientation. My back is to the stairs, so I must be facing the opposite direction from which I started. That would put the inner courtyard over my left shoulder and the front gates over my right.

  I turn left.

  There are three tunnels. I pick the middle, holding the candle well out in front of me. Something scuttles in the dark, and I freeze.

  Okay, Roxanne, go back to your room and go to sleep. The last thing you need is to stumble on the torture lair.

  It was just a rat, I think. I saw one earlier. Breathing in fresh courage, I head on.

  The tunnel doesn’t go all that far before it curves up. I hesitate to pass an iron gate. It locks, I see, and though it stands open now, if it swings shut I could get trapped down here. A shudder passes down my body at the thought of being stuck in these tunnels, no hope of rescue, slowly starving.

  The candle flame dances in my hand and almost beckons me on. I kick a loose rock in front of the grate just to be sure and keep going.

  Finally it begins to slope up. That’s progress. Picking up my pace, I stride up the curving tunnel until it comes to an end. There’s a complex mechanism on the door, but it’s simple to operate from the inside.

  I emerge from the tunnel just inside the inner gate. I’m in the courtyard.

  My heart pounds in my chest. I shouldn’t be here. The air is too still, as quiet as a grave. The castle is full of noise, people moving around, guards stomping about, people. In here, you’d think I was alone in the whole wide world.

  Last time I was here it was getting dark. The hour grows late now, but I have more time to look around.