DemonWars Saga Volume 1 (29 page)

"Earthquake," Juraviel muttered, but even given his grim demeanor, his melodic voice could sound only a bit ominous.

"From that direction," Tallareyish agreed, pointing to the north in the direction, they all knew, of the wastelands of old, a tom and battered mountainous region known as the Barbacan.

"Not so unusual an event," Viellain reminded the pair. "Quakes happen in all times."

Juraviel understood his fellow's reasoning and knew the elf was speaking those words for his sake mostly. For Juraviel's anxiety was clearly etched on his fine features — how could it have been otherwise when he had been speaking to his protégé Elbryan about this very subject not a week's time past?

Viellain was right, Juraviel knew logically. Earthquakes and thunderstorms, swirling tornadoes, even exploding volcanoes, were more often than not natural events. Perhaps it was coincidence.

Perhaps, but Juraviel knew, too, that such events might accompany a larger and darker phenomenon, that earthquakes that could tear the earth as here, that goblin raids upon villages, like the one that had orphaned Elbryan not five years before, might signal something evil indeed.

He looked to the north again, peering hard just above the horizon. If the day had been clearer, his keen eyes might have spotted something, some flicker, some-confirmation. For now, the elf could only worry.

Had the dactyl awakened?

They took. it slowly, very slowly, with eager Connor coming to understand Jilly's needs and hesitation. He sensed the way she tensed every time he moved near her, every time his face was within a few inches of hers, his lips and hers seeming to pull together as if magnetic.

But Jill inevitably turned away, her face flushed with frustration as deep as that which Connor felt. On those first few occasions, Connor took the rejection personally, as a slight, despite Jill's proclamations otherwise. He couldn't help but feel that she did not find him attractive, that he somehow revolted her. No novice in the ways of love, the nephew of Palmaris' baron was surprised and pained but also intrigued. Jilly was a challenge he had not before faced and one he was determined to overcome.

Gradually, as he came to see the light in Jill's eyes every time he entered the Way — a more and more common occurrence — the proud young man began to understand and accept that her problem was within the mysteries of her past and not with him. That realization didn't lessen the challenge, though, and Connor found he wanted Jill more desperately than he had ever wanted any woman.

To Connor Bildeborough, Jill became perhaps the ultimate challenge of his young life. So he would be patient, would spend his nights walking with Jill and talking. His other needs could be taken care of in the many brothels that openly offered their wares in the city, but of course he didn't need to tell Jill, his Jilly, about that.

For Jill's part, her night always got better when Connor entered the Way.

She found herself thinking about him constantly, even dreaming about him. She took him to her private place, the roof down the alley, and together they sat for hours watching the stars, talking comfortably. It was up there that she finally allowed Connor to kiss her — actually kissing him back — though she kept it brief and pulled away as soon as those dark wings of some past event she did not understand began to flap up around her. In kissing him — in kissing anyone, she supposed — Jill was sent back to a moment of pain, an event in her past too painful for her to remember.

But she suffered that pain, and let Connor kiss her, every once in a while.

It was up on that rooftop, under a sky that was streaked by clouds and stars, that Connor first mentioned the prospect of marriage.

Jill found it hard to breathe. She couldn't look at the man but kept her eyes locked on the stars, as if seeking refuge high above. Did she love Connor?

Did she know what love was?

She knew it made her happy to be with Connor but also that it terrified her. She couldn't deny the longings, how parts of her body seemed to grow very warm, how she felt as if she were on did, verge of trembling whenever she looked upon him. But neither could Jill deny die — fear of getting too close — to Connor or to any man. The sweetness was there, but somehow just out of Jill's reach.

Her first instinct told her to refuse the proposal. How good a wife might she be, after all, when she wasn't even sure who she really was? And how long would Connor remain with her when even a kiss was a strained thing, something she had to force past this great black block that she did not understand?

But what of Pettibwa and Graevis? Jill had to consider. What of her duty to the couple who had taken her in and given her a home? How much better their lives would be to know that she was well wed! Perhaps her ascension into local nobility would even raise their own station in life, and Jill would treasure that above all else.

Jill finally found the nerve to look back at Connor, to stare into those marvelous brown eyes, sparkling more now in this starry light than she had ever seen.

"You know that I love you," he said to her, "only you. All these weeks, nay months, I've sat beside you, wanting to make love to you, wanting to wake beside you. Ah, my Jilly, do say you love me. If you do not, then I shall walk into the Masur Delaval and let the cold waters take me, for never again will this body know warmth."

The words sounded so beautiful to the young woman, except for his reference to her as "Jilly," which she really didn't like much, which made her feel like a little girl. She believed him with all her heart, and she had come to love him, so she thought: What else could it be called, after all, considering that her smile came so easily whenever he was in sight?

"Will you wed with me?" he asked softly, so softly that Jill really didn't hear the words but felt them as if they were transferred to her by his gentle touch as he ran the tip of his finger from the side of her nose and down her cheek.

She nodded and he kissed her, and she let him hold her close, their lips together for a long while, and all that time, while Connor was making soft, satisfied noises, Jill was beating back black wings, was furiously fighting to divorce her mind from the current situation, was remembering beer orders from her work in the Way, was thinking of the man she had seen get run down by a rushing cart the week before — anything so that the moment would not send her careening back across the lost years to something, some horrible event, that she could not face.

The reaction of Pettibwa and Graevis to the news of the marriage was not hard to predict. The bartender nodded, smiling, and gave his precious Cat — he still called her that — a generous and warm hug. Pettibwa was distinctly more animated, hopping up and down, breasts and belly bouncing wildly, and clapping her hands together, her cheeks fast streaking with an outburst of tears. All that Graevis and Pettibwa had ever wanted for the girl was for her to be happy: as unselfish a love as anyone could ever know. And now that seemed so certain.

To wed nobility! Jill would never want for anything, so they believed. She would dress in the finest gowns and attend the highest social events in Palmaris, even in Ursal!

Their reaction confirmed to Jill that she had made the right choice.

Whatever her personal problems, the sight of Graevis and Pettibwa so animated and so sincerely happy warmed her heart. With all that they had done for her, how could she have ever chosen otherwise?

The wedding was planned by Connor's family, of course, since they had the wealth to do it right for late summer, and with all of the preparations ahead of them, Connor and Jill actually saw less of each other over the next few months than before the proposal.

"Finished already?" Grady called as he descended the wide, sweeping staircase of House Battlebrow, the most renowned brothel in all of Palmaris.

Connor, sitting back on one of the plush chairs in the lobby, turned an absent gaze his companion's way.

"What, only one this night?" Grady chided. "To be sure then, there are at least two disappointed ladies in the house!"

"Enough, Grady," Connor replied, his commanding tone leaving little doubt as to which was the dominant one in this relationship. Grady's standing was nowhere near Connor's, and the only reason the baron's nephew suffered the almost constant companionship of the upstart commoner was for the sake of his adopted sister.

Grady knew too much about Connor's nighttime pursuits for the nobleman to discard him, and though Grady had never even hinted at blackmail, Connor understood him well enough to fear him.

"What is wrong, my friend?" Grady asked, tying his belt and sliding into the chair beside Connor. "Your cheer has been left behind, I fear. Might the bonds of approaching matrimony be tightening?"

"Hardly," Connor replied. "Would that the day were the morrow! How long I have waited!"

Grady spent a long moment digesting those words, trying to find any hidden meanings.

"And do not doubt my, love for your sister," Connor went on. "She is surely the most beautiful, the most tantalizing and teasing . . ." He let it go with a profound sigh.

Grady put his hands in front of his mouth to hide his grin. "So it seems that she is driving you mad," he offered. "Her charms have put you into the arms of three women a night for, lo, these five months!"

Connor glared at him, hardly appreciating the sarcasm. "And if you tell her a single word of it, I shall stick my sword into your belly and wriggle it about," he warned, and there was little doubt he meant every grim word.

But Grady understood he had the upper hand and he would not back away.

"You do so like sticking and wriggling," he teased.

"As any true man must!" Connor insisted. "Am I to let Jilly drive me to madness? But that does not mean I love her any less. Understand that. So fine a wife."

"Have you bedded her?"

Connor's expression forced Grady to lean the other way, fearing the man would slap him. "An honest question," Grady protested, "and not one aimed in protection of my sister's honor. Know that I would bed her myself, except for the consequences I would face from my parents."

"And from me." Connor's words sounded as a low growl.

"No longer do I desire such a thing, of course," Grady wisely conceded.

Even hinting that he still had amorous desires for Jill to Connor would be akin to reaching under a crowning eagle to pull away its meal. "She is for you, and only you. A swooning girl, if ever I saw one. No man but Connor Bildeborough could bed her now, but by force.

"And what of Connor Bildeborough?" Grady bravely pressed. "Has Jill surrendered?"

"No," the frustrated nobleman admitted. "But the time is near."

"End of midsummer, I should say," Grady agreed, "or will you wait that long?"

"I give her until the wedding night," Connor replied. "She is fearful —

virgins always are — but of course, my rights on that night are absolute. She will offer it, or I shall take it!"

Grady wisely bit back a remark questioning the virginity of his adopted sister. It really didn't matter; all that mattered was what Connor believed.

And indeed Connor believed! Grady could see that in his every fidget, in his almost animal-like intensity. Why, even the practiced whores of House Battlebrow were losing their charms for him!

"Dear Jilly," Grady mumbled under his breath as Connor rose furiously from the chair and stormed across to the exit. "You teasing little wench. Putting your maidenhead on a barbed hook and jiggling it before the baron's nephew."

Grady silently applauded his conniving little sister, though his perception of her actions almost scared him; he had never thought her capable of such a beautifully treacherous play. "Ah, good enough for both of them, I say," Grady remarked more loudly, addressing a pair of ladies sitting on the bottom step of the wide stairway as he walked past in pursuit of Connor. The women cocked their heads curiously. "I'll be rid of you, dear sister," he went on; speaking to himself once more, "and let Connor Bildeborough learn in his own time that you were not worth the waiting!"

Another prostitute entered from the street just before Grady went out. He cupped her chin in his hand, drawing a smile from her. "The little teasing wench," he said, moving near the woman, who was one of his favorites: "Poor Connor will learn soon enough that she hasn't your charms nor your talents."

He kissed her, then rushed out behind Connor. The night was young but getting on, and Connor would soon enough have to get to the Way to meet Jill.

But perhaps he'd have time for a few drinks and a dice game before.

It was a ceremony that had all of Palmaris talking; the women swooning, the men standing tall, feigning importance, wishing they were in the carriage in Connor Bildeborough's place as it made its winding way, through the streets. Any reservations that the nobleman's family had held toward the peasant orphan girl had been washed away when they met Jill, truly beautiful both inside and out.