Retribution
Authors: Ann Herendeen
Tags: #sword and sorcery, #revenge, #alternative romance, #bisexual men, #mmf menage, #nontraditional familes
ECLIPSIS
Book Six of Lady Amalie’s memoirs
by Amalie, Lady Aranyi
edited by Ann Herendeen
Copyright © 2011 by Ann Herendeen
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are either products of the author’s
imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is purely
coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the
author or publisher.
Cover image: Boulevard Photografica/Patty G.
Henderson
www.boulevardphotografica.yolasite.com
Smashwords Edition: December 2011
HERENDEEN
Harper Paperbacks (Kindle and Nook versions also
available):
Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander (2008)
Pride/Prejudice (2010)
Lambda Literary Award finalist, Bisexual Fiction
category
E-Books
ECLIPSIS: Lady Amalie’s Memoirs
Book One:
Recognition
Book Two:
Choices
Book Three:
Wedding
Book Four:
Birth
Book Five:
Captivity
Book Six:
Retribution
Short Story
A Charming Ménage
In
Gay City
Volume 4: “At Second Glance”
THE AUTHOR/EDITOR
A
NN
H
ERENDEEN is the author of two Harper Paperbacks:
Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander
(2008); and
Pride/Prejudice
(2010), a Lambda Literary Award finalist for
Bisexual Fiction. Her short story, “A Charming Ménage,” is in the
4
th
GAY CITY anthology: At Second Glance.
She lives in Brooklyn.
www.annherendeen.com
http://www.facebook.com/AnnHerendeenAuthor
Dominic’s successors; and to Niall Galloway, sui
generis.
PART I:
RETRIBUTION
Chapter 1
R
eynaldo died three times
that day. Dominic, quick to detect the death of our enemy and
proficient now in the technique of resurrection, revived him each
time.
The Aranyi men joked at first, saying they
were ready to convert to the Christian superstition which preaches
resurrection of the dead as a reward to its adherents. But as each
successive death rattle was followed by a brief silence, then by
pitiful grating breaths and sobs as the life returned, they grew
quiet. A few of them began to make the sign against evil when
Dominic passed. It was not meant as disrespect, only protection
from a lord who dared take upon himself the power of the gods.
I spent most of the day semi-conscious,
trying to lie still, shivering occasionally in my fever while the
men and horses sweated around me. Dominic, whether leading the
troop or taking a turn at carrying my litter, rarely left me in our
thoughts, of that I was sure. The narrow trail forced us to single
file; only two overburdened men, one at head, one at feet, could
carry each heavy makeshift litter, a piece of the “turtle” that had
shielded my rescuers from the bandits’ arrows, that now bore me and
the four wounded men.
Jana insisted on riding with me and Val.
Small as she was, it was too much weight to add, and she had the
active child’s inability to sit motionless for any length of time.
My bearers were kind, insisting that carrying ‘Gravina Aranyi was
an honor, but I could sense the ache in backs and arms and
shoulders with every step.
“Don’t you want to ride with Papa?” I asked
Jana. She shook her head. “Or Niall? Your betrothed will think you
no longer care for him.” Jana merely shrugged at a game that had
ceased to amuse her.
Dominic waited in the bracken at the side
while the procession passed, swooped down on Jana and plucked her
off my litter. “You must help me find the way back down to the main
trail.” He had carried her to the head of the column before she
could protest, and seated her in front of him on Thundercloud, his
edgy black warhorse, a treat Jana used frequently to beg for but
which had seldom been granted. “You traveled this way recently on
Topaz,” Dominic said, as if to an adult. “But I haven’t been
through this part of the woods in years.”
At first Jana was reluctant. “I don’t
remember. It was dark.” Dominic has a knack with her. He stopped a
few times, indecisive, then deliberately started down a wrong turn.
“No,” Jana said despite herself, “it’s that way.” Pointing, her
head lifted proudly, gray eyes and hawk nose sighting the way
ahead, she became again the superior predator she was born to
be.
Every couple of miles the men put down the
litters and there was a rest and changeover from carrying to
walking or riding for the next stage. Dominic and Niall and Ranulf
all took turns. Only when Dominic helped carry my litter was Jana
allowed to ride with me and Val.
It was dusk before we reached the main trail.
Aranyi was less than a day’s journey away, but we could go no
farther tonight. As my women and guards had done when I was
captured, we turned away from the direction to Aranyi, following a
winding path that led to a fortified manor house. Lady Ladakh,
alerted by her gift to our approach, came out to receive us at the
gate. Her gray eyes glittered with tears, her voice was warm with
genuine sympathy for me and our people, and she welcomed me and
Dominic, Niall, the children and the men as graciously as if we had
arrived for a Midsummer festival.
At Lady Ladakh’s direction Dominic carried me
upstairs into a guestroom. There the household women took over,
clucking and shaking their heads. They washed me with warm, damp
cloths, as I was too weak to go in a tub, dressed me in one of Lady
Ladakh’s voluminous nightgowns and spoon-fed me possets and soup
and tea. It was only now, safe indoors, knowing my children were
well looked after, that I was free to lie back and succumb to the
typhus which had not loosened its grip on me. I floated in and out
of sleep, never sure if it was night or day, but always finding a
willing hand at my side to feed me or give me a sip of cool water
or wipe my brow.
Val slept beside me most of the first night
and day, trying to nurse, whining and crying when my dried breasts
gave him no milk but determined to suckle until they grew generous
again. I would wake to the pain, detach him from me, hardening
myself against his screams, wrapping the borrowed nightgown over my
chest and using my arms as a barricade. Val began to suck his
thumb, a distasteful habit I had never thought to see in my own
children.
Each time a cup of milk was offered Val
refused it, although he drank water. “If you don’t drink this milk
you’ll grow as pale and thin as an alien,” I said in one of my
conscious moments.
Val giggled. He knew my stern tone was a
facade. “I’m an alien,” he announced to the attending women,
stretching his arms and neck to achieve an elongated look.
By the end of the first day I lost patience.
“You have been resurrected,” I said, “brought back to life from
near death.” Val always liked new words, paid attention when a
difficult, adult concept was introduced. “We were both in the
crypta-death
.” I made the inner flame, the little blue light
flickering at the tip of my thumb, so that Val would know I had
been in control of the situation, while I spoke of death as a deep
sleep from which one never wakes.
“But
we
woke up,” Val said.
“Yes,” I said. “We were not really dead, just
pretending. But even though it was only
crypta-death
, still,
any death changes us.” I pointed to my breasts. “I have stopped
producing milk. And you—” I smiled and stroked his hair. “You are a
boy now, not a baby. You must drink milk from a cup, the same way
you drink water or juice.”
People say you mustn’t try to reason with a
young child, simply state your rules for him like commandments from
the gods. But Val has superior intelligence, and with it comes
self-respect, pride in himself as a sentient being. He listened to
my words and thought about what he had learned, drank the milk and
ate the offered food. By the end of the second day he was on his
way to recovery, his fever gone, running around underfoot, asking
his usual myriad questions and terrorizing the household.
Jana stayed in the room with me the entire
time. She had lost her mother once and would not risk losing her
again through inattention. Lady Ladakh found some old clothes
belonging to her married daughter, Drusilla, and Jana threw off the
once-treasured shirt and breeches, putting on the worn petticoats
and dress gratefully. She curtsied to our hostess like the little
lady she had been taught, but had never until now wanted, to be.
Someone dug a ragged doll out of the attic and Jana played house
with it at the foot of my bed, carrying the little bundle at her
breast. “It’s all right,” she would say to it, “I won’t leave you.
But you’ll have to drink from a cup now. You’re not a baby
anymore.”
My dreams came and went, gripping me before I
knew I was asleep. Sometimes I was back in the bandits’ castle,
lying in my dark storeroom prison; other times I was home, or at
Stefan and Drusilla Ormonde’s manor house. I sensed Reynaldo, still
alive, caught in Dominic’s net of torture, but calm, not begging or
sobbing. He came to me in thought.
Lady Amalie
. He spoke
almost rationally.
You know me, as I know you. Tell your lord
husband I have the right. You know I speak the truth
.
It was difficult, in my weakness, to shut him
out.
No!
How dare you say a word to me? My lord husband
will make you suffer for it.
Reynaldo persisted, calling to me over and
over:
Amalie
. He used my name, as Dominic would.
Amalie,
please, you know me
. The shithead even imitated Dominic’s
beautiful voice, his deep, melodious bass-baritone.
Shut up, you filth, you piece of shit, you
fucking bastard!
I screamed at him in thought, furious at the
sacrilege, wasting energy on replying to him instead of building a
mental shield.
You will not speak my name. You will not think
it
. The effort of using my gift sapped my strength. Once or
twice I cried out, or tried to, frantic with rage.
Lady Ladakh’s women bent over me, clicking
their tongues and whispering…
And I was back at Drusilla’s—was
it only a week ago? Sitting with the other women after dinner.
The talk had been boring but unavoidable as we admired Drusilla’s
little son, his naming day the reason for our gathering. She had
shown him off to us, noting his progress in the time-scale of
newborns where every day brings a new wonder, and the female
guests, all of us mothers, had offered advice and compared our own
memories.
Val had ventured from my side to watch
Drusilla feed her baby. He stared closer, peering at the little
sucking mouth as Drusilla switched him over to her other breast,
then looked up in excitement to share a discovery with me. “Her
nipples are
red
, Mama!” Val announced in a loud clear voice,
always remarkable at his age for his neat enunciation and lack of
any lisp or childish mistakes. “Bright red!”
Everybody burst out laughing. “Ladies’ man at
his age!” somebody exclaimed. “So handsome a boy—you wait and see,
he’ll get what he wants!” “‘Gravina Aranyi,” one wit warned,
“you’ll have to hire old women and men as nursemaids.” I picked up
a few thoughts from people who either didn’t know or had forgotten
how strong my gift is:
His grandfather all over again
. One
friendly soul lowered her head to Val’s and asked, “And what color
are your mama’s then, if not red?”