Retribution (21 page)

“That’s right, I drink, then I imagine
things. That my
vir
husband had a companion. That we were
actually happy.” I shook my head, angry at Dominic’s persistence in
denial. “When Niall sang it,” I said, enunciating each word
carefully, “whatever else you felt, you weren’t insulted.” Without
consciously choosing it, I had used the same word that is the
‘Graven euphemism for rape.

Dominic’s face went white with outrage. “You
would speak of Niall, compare him—an officer in the Royal Guards, a
swordsman—to these effeminate– cocksuckers?” He flapped his wrist
in derision at the musicians, put his hand on the hilt of his sword
and began to draw it from its scabbard. “I will show you,” he said,
“just how pleased I am.”

I barely heard the threat. My mind was still
trying to take in the earlier word. “Cocksuckers? You’re upset
because these men are
cocksuckers
?” I looked for the
decanter but couldn’t see it. “I need another drink,” I said,
muttering to myself. “My cocksucking husband has lost his
cocksucking mind.”

Had I been any less inebriated it might have
occurred to me that Dominic would never attack two unarmed and
ungifted men unless he was seriously disturbed. It was the most
dishonorable act imaginable, both as ‘Graven and as a soldier, to
use superior ability and training against people who are unable to
defend themselves. Yet Dominic had hurt both of the musicians in
his unthinking rage, had acted like a bully and a despot in his own
hall, where he was lord and law, and where there was nobody with
the power or authority to stand up to him.

Now Dominic was about to use the ultimate of
conventional weapons, his sword. If he had gone for his prism first
we might all have been dead, but I suspect his pride required the
masculine weapon to avenge an offense of honor. Sober, I would have
been paralyzed; now I felt a serene lack of constraint, even a
certain satisfaction in accepting my responsibilities. As ‘Gravina
Aranyi, I was the one person who could stop Dominic from whatever
he was about to do.

I kept the light from my prism angled into
the telekinetic area of my brain, focusing on the sword as it
emerged from the scabbard. When Dominic had it free and clear I
twisted it from his hand and pulled it toward me at a stately,
measured pace. My drunken confidence had not prepared me for how
heavy it was. When I grasped it with my right hand as it floated
into range the unexpected weight pulled me over comically, but I
recovered well, I thought, pretending to be laying it down at my
feet. “Not in the house,” I said—the same words, in the same tone
of voice, I had used so often with Jana.

The words startled Dominic into loud, angry
laughter. Our unwilling audience winced, men and women hunching
their shoulders and bowing their heads at the screeching sound.
“What will you do, Amalie? Send me to bed without a fuck?” He
stepped toward me, his voice deepening to a suggestive growl, using
the barracks language of his soldiers. “You’d be punishing yourself
more than me, you drunken little slut. I could nail you now, right
here, in front of everybody, and you’d beg for it.” He began
unbuttoning his breeches. “You’re so tanked you’d go down on your
knees and swallow my cock like any bandit’s whore. Is that what you
did for Reynaldo?”

I met Dominic’s crazed glassy stare, my
alcoholic stupor cushioning the full impact of the mental assault.
There was terror behind his rage, the fear of the possessed caught
in the grip of another’s power, but I was incapable of any kind of
analysis or insight. I stood up straight and proud in my wifely
virtue, a superior smile on my face, able at last to dispel the
cloud that had overshadowed my life for too long. “No, Dominic.” I
answered his offensive question, my mind suddenly illuminated with
the perfect response. “If that’s what you want, go back to Lady
Melanie.”

Dominic staggered back, staring blankly as he
registered the name. He made an inarticulate choking sound of fury
and stumbled forward again, up onto the dais. The separated light
from my prism still bored into my eyes and brain, cutting through
the smoke of the torch flames. I kept my inner focus, maintaining
my
crypta
strength, shaking now, finally alert to the danger
that had crept up on us when we were least prepared. When Dominic
was close enough to touch I created a reverse-heat force field and
threw it over him, immobilizing him as if frozen in a block of
ice.

I reeled with the expenditure of so much
energy, found my chair and sank down. When my head cleared, as so
often these days, I heard sobbing.
Val!
I thought, sicker at
the thought that my children had witnessed such a display than at
the incident itself.
Jana!
I searched the crowded hall, by
crypta
more than by sight, but they were not here. At the
first sign of trouble, Isobel had taken them out and put them to
bed. I will be forever grateful to the woman, that she did her job
when it mattered most.

But there was real weeping all around me. The
wounded musicians, many of the women and a fair number of the men
were all crying with pain or fear. I stood up again and stepped
down from the dais to walk beside the benches. “Everybody go to
bed,” I said, doing my best to sound authoritative. “The night’s
entertainment is finished.”
How very amusing
, I thought,
still in my alcoholic haze,
how admirably self-possessed I
am
.

Naomi was tending to the musicians.
That’s
under control
, I thought.
What next?
I noticed Ranulf,
impassive and reliable, standing in the back of the hall. “Ranulf,”
I said, “would you please have some of the guards carry my husband
upstairs?” I wasn’t sure how difficult the task might be. “He’ll be
a dead weight, but he won’t struggle or fight, and he’ll thaw out
while he sleeps.” I pointed with my prism at the light and then at
my eyes. “I’m sorry to burden you, but I’ve exhausted my
strength.”

Even Ranulf was jumpy. His hand went
reflexively to his own sword hilt but he recovered quickly, bowed
to me, and said he would see to it himself. “It won’t be the first
time,” he added, “that I’ve carried the master to his bed.”

Upstairs, I was still puzzling over that one
as Katrina helped me undress. My maid seemed to have lost all her
coordination. She yanked my hair as she withdrew the clasp, caught
my dress on the bedpost and tore it, dropped my nightgown on the
floor and stepped on it. Before I could ask what the trouble was I
was engulfed by such a sense of fear emanating from the woman that
I had no need to speak.

What people had seen in the hall must have
been terrifying. Not only Dominic’s behavior, but mine. Oh gods, I
would have to apologize to everybody all over again. I was too
tired to think about it.
In the morning,
I told myself as I
lay down,
in the morning I’ll deal with it
. The whisky had
me snoring before I had completely pulled up the covers.

I
woke with the kind of
thirst that only too much alcohol can bring. It was that same
dismal hour, neither day nor night, which had seen such strange
goings on a month ago. My mouth was dry and fibrous, as if it had
lain open beneath an overflowing dustpan, catching the dirt and
fluff as it fell. I felt shriveled inside, completely dehydrated,
all the water sucked out of my cells to help my bloodstream
counteract the massive influx of poison. I forced myself to sit up.
Shit. My water pitcher was empty. In last night’s thrills we had
forgotten the mundane business of life.

When I stood up my stomach heaved and my head
throbbed. I sat down again, waiting for the spasm to pass.
Eventually I managed to make it to the bathroom, sat despondently
on the toilet while I gulped down a tall glassful of cool water and
filled it again from the tap. My hand shook as the words Dominic
and I had exchanged came back to me.
The gods protect me,
I
thought,
we had really done it this time
. Dominic was right
about one thing. I would be swigging it from the bottle soon if I
didn’t watch myself.

The water worked its magic in me. I felt my
tissues expanding, the sickness beginning to fade. A third glass
and I’d have few lasting bad effects from my night of
overindulgence, at least few physical ones. Water, the great
enabler.

Amalie
. The voice spoke in my head.
Amalie, please, let me die. Please, Amalie
. Reynaldo called
to me, over and over, in the same hoarse voice I had thought to
have heard the last of a month ago.

I was still drunk; I was hearing things. The
shithead was dead, had been dead and buried for weeks. Dominic had
sworn it to me. I pressed my fingertips to my temples, as if to
squeeze out the lingering contamination.
Fuck off
, I told
the illusion.
You’re dead. Dust and ashes, and shit. You are
what you eat
. I could afford to make a stupid joke. It was
merely my own bad memories returned with the last of the whisky
working its way through my system. I swallowed another mouthful of
water.

No
, he said,
I’m alive, your true
lord husband. Come to me, Amalie, my lady wife
.

The glass slid through my trembling fingers
and shattered on the tile floor. He had spoken to me, had heard my
thoughts and answered them. He still lived, tormenting me even now.
Amalie
, he called again. His voice grew soft, eerily
seductive.
Amalie, come to me, die with me. We will lie in one
tomb, together for all eternity
. Only ‘Graven did that, the
bodies of husband and wife laid side by side, as in the marriage
bed.

I stood up, ready to run at full speed to a
safe hiding place like any hunted animal. A sliver of glass
embedded itself in my foot, sending waves of pain through my body
as I hobbled back to bed. For one dreadful moment I thought my
heart would rupture, pounding in my chest like a separate being
trying to be born. Bright lights burst behind my eyes. No, it was
my brain that was going to explode. I moaned with terror, felt at
the sole of my foot, pulled the shard free, blood smearing my
fingers. I put my sticky fingers in my mouth, tasted the copper and
salt of my life fluid.

Amalie
, he called again.
I have
defiled you, made you mine. Come to me, my lady wife. I am your
true lord husband
.

My fear changed to anger. Dominic had done
this to me. He had tricked me, enacting a maudlin scene that I had
swallowed like an idiot to prevent me from doing what I had known
to be right. He had promised to kill Reynaldo but had instead kept
him alive all this time, poisoning his own mind through continued
contact with the bandit’s lies and filth. Emotionally wounded by
the loss of his companion and swayed by the jealousy and
possessiveness that Eclipsian husbands call “honor,” Dominic had
succumbed to the noxious influence of Reynaldo’s madness, which had
led to the unpardonable lapses of last night.

I used my inner flame to light my bedside
lamp, found my prism-handled dagger and bent the light into my
eyes, stroking my cut foot until the gash was mended sufficiently
to bear my weight. I pushed my feet gingerly into my boots and tied
a shawl around my shoulders. Dominic would not escape his duty this
time. If the force field had not yet dissipated I would blast it
off him, rouse him from enchanted sleep with a whiff of my
hung-over
crypta
.

I clomped through my bathroom, crunching bits
of glass under my boot heels, and yanked open the door to the
Margrave’s bedroom. “Dominic! Wake up, my lord murderous cocksucker
husband! It’s your lady drunken slut wife.” The room was empty. I
stormed through Dominic’s bathroom, cursing out loud to keep the
sinister voice at bay, and into Dominic’s bedroom, the one he had
shared with Niall. The bed held only the imprint of a tall, slender
body.

Amalie.
The voice was still harassing
my senses.
Please, Amalie, help me die. Come to me, my lady
wife
.

If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought
that was Dominic.
Shut up
,
fuckhead
, I thought to it.
I’m coming, and if you call me your wife one more time, you’ll
be sorry
.

Icy rain hissed against the windows like a
raspy, whispering voice. I shielded my mind as best I could from
further intrusion, stepped out into the corridor and tiptoed down
the main staircase. I met nobody. If others were sleepless after
such an eventful night, they had the sense to stay in their
rooms.

At the first cellar I hesitated. It was pitch
black. The only light down here would come from a torch carried by
someone searching for stored goods. Nobody searched for anything at
this hour. There were several more levels to descend, all the way
to the dungeon. I had never been down that far. Dominic had offered
to take me once, but I had declined. “Thank you all the same,” I
had said, smug in my innocence, “but I think I’ll leave the inside
of a torture chamber to my imagination.”

Walking slowly, I headed toward the rear of
the castle where the stairs continued beside the main water lines.
I picked my way down some narrow steep steps to the second cellar,
then climbed backward down a sharply-spiraling staircase with no
handrail, gripping the dusty, hollowed-out stone steps above, to
the third cellar.

I was deep underground now, the uneven walls
of roughly-hewn, unfinished stone. There was the smell of earth, of
caves, of dankness and stale moisture. Something oozed from the
cracks between the huge stone blocks, flowed sluggishly down the
creviced walls to form viscous puddles on the floor. I was glad
there was no light. I didn’t want to see the life forms I sensed
around me, the rats with their long naked tails and red eyes, the
bugs with their crooked hairy legs and waving antennae...