"True," Tiernan agreed, "but I think Riain’s worry goes a tad deeper."
Innis pushed away his soup bowl. He stretched his long legs and braced his hands on his belly. "You are speaking of the madwoman."
"She’s locked away, isn’t she?" Flanna asked. "What worry could he have about her?"
"That she’ll escape," Duncan reminded her. His gaze darkened. "That and the hellish curse she flung at his head when we were leaving."
"Just the ravings of a lunatic," Innis scoffed.
"You forget—rather conveniently at times, I must say—that our little brother was granted Mama’s gift," Tiernan admonished the second eldest Cree son.
"And what exactly does that mean?" Innis shot back. "If he’s got this ‘gift,’ he’s never used it." He disdainfully shrugged one shoulder. "I doubt he even knows how to use it."
"Sometimes the gift comes in the form of just knowing when something is going to happen," Flanna said. She looked to her sisters-in-law. "Each of us is the daughter of a Daughter, so therefore we should have special abilities other women do not. But have we discovered these abilities?"
"No," Rebecca said quietly. "At least I haven’t."
"Nor have I," Ancelin put in.
"Yet each of us have had hunches that were proven correct," Rebecca commented. "That’s something."
"Aye, it is," Ancelin agreed.
"If Riain does, indeed, possess any degree of special ability, it could well come in the form of warnings to which others are not privy," Flanna declared.
"And his unease might well be that warning?" Duncan queried.
"It could be," Flanna replied.
"A warning we’d best heed, then," Duncan said sourly, and all those gathered at the trestle table nodded.
* * *
In his room, Riain lay on the bed, staring at the intricately carved ceiling. He traced the carving from one wall to the next, counting the tiny leaves and vines entwined around one another. He didn’t know what had made him so edgy of late, but he suspected it was his coming journey to Chrystallus. Long sea journeys were not to his liking and brought back savage memories of his stay aboard Olan Hesar’s ship, the Storm Maiden, and the terrible things he’d had to endure on his way to and from the Labyrinth.
Not to mention the Labyrinth penal colony and the brutality of its Commandant.
Riain shuddered and flung an arm over his eyes to block out the sight of the miles of red bluffs ringing the compound and the heat rising up from the baked sand. He could almost feel that heat searing the soles of his feet and smell the stench of hot, unwashed bodies toiling in the fierce sun. His stomach growled as he remembered the pitiful amounts of food he was allowed and the brackish water that had made him so ill the first week he was there. The Labyrinth was the closest thing to hell man could create and the island that housed it had to have been fashioned by the denizens of the Abyss.
Was the memory of that fiendish place what was causing the nervousness? he wondered. Chrystallus wasn’t that far away from the sea lanes leading to the mysterious island prison hidden deep inside the six-hundred-mile radius of Tyber’s Isle. Was there any chance the Banshee and her escort of nine fighting ships could be blown off course and shipwrecked on that savage shore?
"Stop it, Cree!" he snapped. Whatever was bothering him wasn’t going to be eased with thoughts of that nightmarish year’s incarceration.
Drawing in a long, calming breath, he forced himself to think of Miyoshi and the painting of her. It had been unveiled a few days before his parents had left for Corbin Montyne’s keep of Ravenswood at Derbenille in Ionary.
If the Emperor’s daughter was as beautiful as her portrait, Riain could only hope she was not vainglorious with that beauty and as arrogant with it as some of the Ladies-in-Waiting at his mother’s court. Usually devastating good looks signaled both an empty head and an inflated ego, and women so blessed with great beauty were not loathe to use that precious commodity to get exactly what they wanted from their mates. They could make life miserable for a man enthralled with that beauty and jealous of any other who might covet it. He’d known men to fight duels to the death over a woman who had pitted one against the other in her bid to advance her position within the keep. He seriously doubted he could live with a woman like that.
But, as Flanna had reminded him, Chrystallusian women were brought up to believe the word of their men was law.
No matter how bad the marriage might be, a woman of the Lotus Lands endured it with as much grace as was humanly possible. As a general rule, they were submissive, never talked back to their mates, and were loyal to a fault, even if their husband did not deserve such loyalty.
He hoped Miyoshi was no different. The Emperor’s man had said the third daughter was "highly intelligent, well-read, calm of temper, and merry of spirit."
The little Chrystallusian man had smiled. "She is the joy of her father. She is the one who makes all laugh. She, who can sing like the birds in the trees and play haunting music upon the harp."
"Is she shy?" Riain’s mother had demanded and cast her son a protective look.
"No, Your Majesty," the man said, shaking his head somewhat sadly. "Shy, the little one is not." His grin was infectious as he looked at Riain. "She and your son will make a glorious match, for she has the same fire in her eyes as does he!"
"Does she argue with her parents?" Christina Cree asked.
The man’s smile faltered only a little. He spread his hands. "She debates with them."
"Does that mean she is argumentative?" Aidan inquired.
"Not at all, Majesty," the man quickly assured them.
"Let it drop, Aidan," the queen had advised. "They’ll get along fine."
Now, pushing himself up from the bed, Riain stared out the window and wondered if his mother was right. Would they get along as well as Tiernan and Rebecca? Innis and Flanna? Riordan and Ancelin? His own parents? Duncan and his Glenna?
Since old enough to notice and understand such things, he had seen the wonder of what a good married life could be. He had witnessed the devotion and the fierce loyalty, the fleeting looks and casual touches that conveyed more than words ever could, the accidental brushing of one body against another, which usually signaled the impending disappearance of both parties. He had listened to the way his brothers spoke to their women and the way his sisters-in-law responded. He had watched love grow and lives settle into a comfortable, safe pattern. All these things made him want his own marriage to be like that—content and happy.
He had been brought up to lend his protection and support to the weaker sex, his sword arm to the glory and preservation of his way of life. He had been taught to be fair by his father, gentle by his mother. Never to lie, never to cheat, never to covet what was not by rights his.
He was a Chalean first and a warrior second.
"But you must always put your family first, unless by doing so you neglect your duty to Chale," his father had once said.
"Neglect your family," his mother had amended, "and you destroy the very fabric of Chale."
His wife would have to come first in his life, Riain thought as he padded barefoot to the window. He gripped the heavy velveteen curtain and gazed over the rich emerald green hills of his homeland.
Would she like living here? he wondered as he swept his gaze from the lush hills misted with rain to the crashing waves of the Chalean Sound, then to the high gray cliffs far to the north. Or would she miss her fairy-tale land of perfect gardens and opulent palaces?
Riain knew he would do everything he could to make his wife happy. That, too, was his duty as he saw it. Even if he were to never fall in love with her, he would attempt to make the most of the marriage his parents had so lovingly and thoughtfully arranged.
But deep in his heart, he felt a siren call that had plagued him since his stay at Vent du Nord, a mysterious, seductive song that had wakened him from that long bout of red-hot fever. He had sensed a presence somewhere in that great pile of stone, a comfort
ing presence that had called to him, had brought him back from the brink of death. He thought he had once known her name, but it was long gone. He had once called her name.
Or had he?
He mentally shook himself and threw open the window. Leaning into the fresh mist, he breathed in the scent of heather from the moors beyond Briarcliffe and the tang of saltwater. It helped to clear his head of the memory of a tantalizing liaison that would never be.
"I wonder what she looked like," he said to a cormorant gliding by overhead.
Somehow he knew the mysterious woman who had saved him from succumbing to the darkness was as beautiful as the voice that had sang to him.
As beautiful as Suzanna had been ugly.
The sudden intrusive thought of Gunter de Viennes’ psychotic daughter sent a shiver down Riain’s spine. He stepped back from the window and closed it, then jerked the drapes across the glass, for it was almost as though he could feel her glaring at him from out of the now-heavy rain pelting the keep’s stone walls.
"You are mine!" she had screamed. "No other shall have you save me!"
He feared her, he realized as he walked to the bed and sat down. He wrapped his hands around the tall column of his footboard and clung to it as though it was a lifesaver thrown to him in a raging sea.
Aye, he feared her as he had never feared anything else in his young life. Her intensity had put that fear in him, and her insanity had kept it there. Despite the fact that he knew for a certainty she was locked inside the high, barricaded walls of Baybridge asylum, he still feared her and what she was capable of doing.
That she would kill him if given the chance, he had no doubt. If her maniac threats were to be believed, she would skin him alive and feed him piecemeal to the vultures. Or she would disembowel him and tack his still-bleeding heart to her bedchamber door. Her cruelties knew no limits.
"You tell him what I have sworn!" she supposedly had screamed at the guards who had taken her to Baybridge. "Tell him what I have sworn!"
How the word had gotten back to Briarcliffe was anyone’s guess, but Riain had heard of it while eavesdropping on a conversation between his father and eldest brother.
"They have put her in one of the most secure cells within the asylum," his father had assured a concerned Tiernan. "She is chained by the neck to the wall and the cell door is never unlocked."
"How is she fed?" Tiernan asked.
"Through a slit in the door. No one speaks to her and no one visits. There is a privy hole in one corner, so there is no need for anyone to come into contact with her."
Despite the woman’s murderous promises, Riain felt sorry for her. It was obvious that she was deranged; he had known that from the beginning. But to be treated so cruelly, so inhumanely…
"She deserves her sentence," Duncan had suggested when Riain once broached the subject. "Should she ever get loose, son, your life would be in jeopardy. Do you think either your father or hers would take that chance?" Duncan laid a gentle, understanding hand on his student’s shoulder and squeezed. "Forget her, brat. She is precisely where she belongs."
But Riain could not forget Suzanna de Viennes. He wished he could, but her memory was like a bad taste left in the mouth.
Just as the vague, haunting memory of his mysterious savioress was like cool, sweet water on his tongue.
Chapter 7
* * *
The madwoman shielded her eyes against the bright glare of the lantern. She scuttled away like a rodent, plastering herself tightly into a ball in the corner of the filthy stone cell, drawing up her scabby knees into the protection of her thin arms.
"Up with you!" the warder snarled. "You got a visitor!"
Suzanna trembled so violently from the sudden appearance of the warder and his two vicious assistants that her teeth clicked together. As a result, she did not heed the man’s words, but buried her face into the corner of the wall in an attempt to hide.
"Get your slovenly arse up!" he bellowed. "We ain’t got all day!"
Brutal, uncaring hands grabbed her arms and jerked her to her feet. The chain attached to the slave collar around her neck slapped against the wall and pulled back her head. A low moan gurgled from her throat as she sagged in her jailers’ hands.
"Gawd, but the bitch stinks!" one assistant grumbled.
"We’ll have to bathe her ’fore she sees that swell, we will," the other snorted. He grabbed a handful of Suzanna’s limp, greasy hair. "You’ll like that, won’t you, dearie?"
Suzanna whimpered as she hung between the heavyset men. She had felt their rough hands on her many times over the last two years.
* * *
"Get her to the bath house," the warder said with disgust. "And no dallying." He held the lantern higher so he could look at his assistants.
Runyon Kullen shrugged disdainfully. "Ain’t nothing to me."
The warder knew he was wasting his breath. As sure as the sun would set in the west, Runyon and Jacoby would do more than bathe the madwoman. Not that he cared. He had no idea who she was. Since no one had visted her before now, he hadn’t wondered at her origins. But with the arrival of the gentleman this morning, he suspected she might well have been a servant at the Northwinds keep of Vent du Nord, for the swell who asked to see the woman named ’Zanna spoke like a Northzoner.
"Well, be about it!" The warder stepped aside as Runyon and Jacoby dragged the foul-smelling woman from the cell. He put up a hand to cover his nose, nearly gagging at the stench that had rolled off her body, and wondered how his two assistants could possibly mount her.
* * *
As she was propelled down the long stone corridor, with its iron-smelling water dripping from the ceiling and all manner of unmentionable detritus littering the slimy floor, Suzanna made no attempt to fight her jailers. She had learned long ago that to anger them was to receive more than her normal share of cuts and bruises. Runyon liked to use his fists on her; Jacoby was especially fond of the quirt he carried in his wide leather belt. The men enjoyed brutalizing her.
She knew today would be no different.
* * *
Guy du Mer was hard pressed to recognize the thin, ghost-pale woman who was led into the warder’s office. He stared at the apparition—striving to find anything of the old Suzanna de Viennes in the pathetic creature who stood before him with head down and hands clasped in front of her.
"Suzanna?" he questioned, taking a step toward her. He stopped when she cringed.
The warder chuckled. "Ain’t used to visitors."
Du Mer clamped his lips together. Despite his acute dislike of Suzanna, he would not have wished this fate on her. Obviously, she had been greatly abused. His attention fastened on the warder. "Who is to blame for her mistreatment?"
The warder’s eyebrows shot upward. "What mistreatment, Your Grace?" He looked dumbfounded. "Ain’t nobody laid a hand to this ’un. That was the order, Milord—solitary confinement and no visitors."
The Duke of Downsgate clenched his hands into fists. He regarded the warder with a malevolent stare. "I know abuse when I see it, man!"
"If’n there was any abusing done, Milord, it was a’done at her own hands." He drew himself up to his full five-feet, six-inch height. "Ain’t nobody done nothin’ to this ’un."
A muscle jumped in du Mer’s cheek. He flung a dismissive hand at the warder. "Leave us."
The warder shook his head. "Can’t do it, Your Grace. Got orders she ain’t to never be left alone with no one."
Du Mer grabbed the collar of the warder’s tattered jacket. He slammed the man against the wall and leaned down, his nose only inches from the other’s. "I gave you an order, fool! Disregard it at your own peril. Baybridge is within my landgrave and I have authority to dismiss you." He drew closer to the man. "Do I make myself clear?"
The warder stared wide-eyed. "Y—you are the D—Duke?"
Du Mer shook the man, then released him. "Aye!"
"W—why didn’t you s—say so, Your G—Grace!" The warder slith
ered along the wall, staying well out of the Guy’s way. He cast a parting look at the doxy, then slipped out of the office.
Guy waited until the man had shut the door before he turned to face Suzanna. When he found her looking at him, her dark eyes hot with speculation, he knew she’d heard and understood every word.
"Why are you here, du Mer?" she asked, her stare steady.
Why he felt so unnerved by her gaze, Guy couldn’t say, but the way she was looking at him made the flesh crawl along his neck. "I am afraid," he said, sweeping his hand toward a chair, "I have bad news, Suzanna. Why don’t you sit down?"
She lifted her chin. "He is dead?"
"Two days ago." He watched for a flicker of grief in her face, but there was none. "He died in his sleep."
"As all good men should."
Du Mer felt a flash of resentment at her mocking tone. "Your father was, indeed, a good man."
She cocked her head. "Some would think so, I suppose." Her mouth twisted into a predatory smile. "Excuse me if I am not one of his admirers."
This was a mistake, du Mer thought. According to Tribunal law, at Gunter’s death, his only living child was heir to Northwinds. The law made no distinction for sanity or insanity in its rulers; the Tribunal made, and upheld, the laws, anyway. The prince—or in this case, princess—was merely a titular head of the government. Since no treaty, agreement or alliance could be made without the Tribunal’s implicit approval, it mattered little that the now-reigning heir was interned in an asylum. The people needed a de Viennes to sit the throne, as one had for five generations—so the Tribunal had ordered Suzanna’s release.
"A grave mistake, Your Eminence!" du Mer had argued with the Chief Tribunalist, but the old man held firm in his order.
"Suzanna de Viennes is heir to the throne of the Northwinds and she will be crowned as such! We send you to bring her back to her rightful place!"
All the way to Baybridge, Guy had worried. Suzanna had always been a cruel, vindictive child; she had grown into an even more cruel, brutally vindictive woman. What two years in the asylum had done to her was anybody’s guess, but Guy was sure it had done nothing to improve her temperament. He had hoped to find a catatonic, blathering fool, incapable of understanding the simplest command. What he had found was a flint-eyed, steel-jawed woman whose face bore the unmistakable stamp of revenge.
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