Retribution (30 page)

His deep bass-baritone, rich and resonant,
turned my knees to jelly. I bit my lip, sagged against the wall. In
my entire married life Dominic has sung to me only once, when he
found me in the bandits’ cell in the grip of the
crypta-death
. Alive and awake I have never merited this
great sacrifice. But he did it for these two strangers whom he had
wronged. Whatever he had claimed in his anger, they were men like
him—
vir
, his own kind.

After that they were Dominic’s sworn men for
life. Even the piper succumbed. They went over Dominic’s suggestion
for the song until they had rhythm and harmony perfect, then worked
the conversation around to Niall, encouraging Dominic to talk. In
the end it was they who volunteered to do what Dominic had been
hoping to ask. The next day they set off for Galloway to deliver
Dominic’s marriage proposal. In the guise of plying their trade
they could scout the enemy territory and see if there were any weak
places in the defenses for Dominic to exploit.

I ran to the end of the corridor as Dominic
took his friendly leave of the men. Now was not the time, if there
would ever be one, to complain of any perceived slights. I would
treasure my few memories of Dominic’s glorious voice rather than
resent their rarity. I knew Dominic was
vir
when I married
him; I could not expect, as a woman, to share every facet of his
life.

I turned the corner, ducked into a nearby
guestroom and sank into a chair to put my sandals back on. There
were soft cooing sounds in the room, little breathy noises of love.
The room was not empty; certainly the bed was well occupied.
Isobel—I recognized the dress she had not taken the time to
remove—sat semi-upright, straddling her lover and bouncing
energetically up and down. I could not see her partner, whose hands
she guided to her large breasts spilling from the open front of her
dress, but had no doubt it was the guard Pavel, his wound no longer
troubling him overmuch.

Isobel gasped with pleasure and sank forward
into her lover’s arms, kissing his sweaty face. “My strong lad,
didn’t I say you’d be up and about in no time?”

Pavel laughed. “You were half right, love.
I’m up, thanks to you. About doesn’t matter so much.”

I made good my escape while they discussed
the possibility of Pavel’s rising again. The consensus seemed to be
that it was likely and imminent. Neither one noticed the door
opening and shutting quietly, for which I was grateful. I am
‘Gravina Aranyi, but they were not my slaves, were not committing
adultery, and would probably think to change the sheets before we
needed the room for guests. Val was napping in my room under the
watchful eyes of Katrina. Why make a fuss over something I would
never have seen except for spying on my husband?

During the next week, as I settled back into
my regular routine, I resolved to be the “housewife” that Lady
Melanie had recognized, upsetting me so irrationally. Dominic would
need my full support right now, a smoothly running household and
undemanding family. Approaching Niall to call off the feud and beg
forgiveness would require patience and tact, qualities Dominic did
not possess in abundance. The important thing was to show him that,
whatever I had learned about his family and his background, things
he would never have chosen to reveal, they had not changed my love
for him, nor my commitment to our marriage.

Back in Berend’s study, working with the
young steward, I was reminded that I could no longer put off
telling Dominic of my plan for the miners’ reward, of forming a
telepathic group, a cell, to search for underground ore in the
no-man’s land of the mountains. I spoke to him that afternoon.

Dominic looked grim as I explained why his
tenants would not accept miners as landlords, but it was the truth
of my message he had not reasoned out for himself that put the
frown on his face. “My love,” he said when I finished, “I dumped
all this in your lap without thinking. There was so little time to
act, and I was so desperate for help, I would have handed over
Aranyi itself to get you and the children back.”

After that, and a few kisses, it was easy to
tell him the solution Berend and I had thought up. “If we’re
lucky,” I said, “we’ll find ore without too many false starts and
the men will be satisfied.”

Dominic wasn’t so sure. “That’s a job for a
seminary cell.” He went over it all as I had with Berend.

“We have Naomi.” I listed the third name for
my planned cell.

“That’s three people,” Dominic said. “We
can’t possibly manage with fewer than four.” The truth hit him.
“Oh, no. Niall and I are at feud. Even if our visit to Galloway is
successful, if he is gracious enough to listen to what I have to
say and to forgive me, I can’t turn around and request yet another
sacrifice. You can’t plan on dragging him into some amateur
crypta
experiment that would demand so much of his time and
energy. I owe him more than I can ever repay. He owes me
nothing.”

Dominic stood up to pace as he does when
thinking over any difficult problem, and I followed him, grabbing
his hand. “But you’ve sent a marriage proposal. Maybe he’ll say
yes. If he agrees to marry you, he won’t object to working in a
cell with you.”

Dominic shook his head. “The marriage
proposal is like that Trojan Horse you told me about. It’s a trick
to get us inside Galloway without having to breach the walls, so to
speak.”

“But you really want to marry Niall, don’t
you?” I asked.

Dominic sighed. “Of course I do. But I’m not
making an offer for him to his parents, as if he were a girl. The
last thing I want to do is humiliate him.”

I was becoming confused. “Well, what are you
proposing? You said marriage.”

“That’s it. Just marriage. Nothing specific,”
Dominic said, grinning down at me. “Maybe I’ll look over Niall’s
sisters, see if any of them would make a suitable
companion—
ow!
” He cupped a hand over his balls where I had
shot a tiny pinprick of
crypta
.

“That’s just a taste of what my wedding gift
will be,” I said. “Now give me a real answer.”

“The gods protect me,” Dominic said. “I’ve
married a– a perfect wife. But I told you the truth. I’m offering
anything and nothing. Let them wonder. That’s why they’ll let us
in, to find out.”

“What if they’re not interested?” I
asked.

“The Galloways have one son and five
daughters,” Dominic said. “An offer from Aranyi is like doubling
their land holding overnight. They’ll welcome us, if not with open
arms, at least with every courtesy, just to hear the terms. Then we
storm the citadel.”

“How romantic,” I said. “But why ‘us’? Why
not go alone?”

“Marriage is between families. I want
Galloway to think the offer is serious. I need you and the
children, Isobel and your silly maid Katrina, Ranulf and as many
others as we can justify, to make a full household.”

“You will ask Niall privately, though, won’t
you?” It seemed so strange, using deceit to resolve a disagreement
that Niall had insisted was all based on the highest notions of
honor.

“If he doesn’t challenge me first,” Dominic
said, almost nervously. “We’ll be guests, so he’d be committing a
worse offense than the original reason for the quarrel. But if his
anger is still as great as it was, he might not care.” Dominic was
talking to himself aloud, working out the plan in his mind.

He smiled at my apprehensive look, returning
to the immediate problem. “It’s all a gamble. And the miners might
also turn down our proposal. But by all means ask Naomi. And
remember, you must ask her, give her a choice. You can’t simply
expect her to jump when you snap your fingers.” Dominic knew I went
a little in awe of the healer.

It was for me, the female head of the
household, to make such an unusual request of a household woman. I
had been putting off having to beg assistance from this aloof young
woman who seemed to know much more about me and my relationship
with Dominic than I knew about her and who seemed not to have
learned anything to my advantage.

I knocked on Naomi’s door that evening,
deciding that what I could not get out of I would get over with as
soon as possible. As I had feared, Naomi seemed cool to the idea.
“A telepathic cell?” she asked. “With you and Margrave Aranyi?” I
could feel her rejection forming in her head.

“Not just the three of us. Three isn’t enough
for a cell.” That sounded so condescending, just what Dominic had
warned me not to do. I gave up trying to keep Dominic’s plans a
secret. “We’re going to ask Niall. We’re visiting Galloway soon,
and you’re welcome to come with us.” I rushed in, exposing all my
private, half-baked ideas to Naomi’s careful scrutiny.

Naomi didn’t answer right away. She watched
me with her cold green eyes, read every thought I had, some of them
so vague I didn’t quite know them myself, and smiled. “Niall
Galloway,” she said, rolling the l’s and the round vowels in a long
highland hoot, so that the name emerged like “Golllloowhee.” The
sound seemed to please her, and she accepted the invitation that I
had extended only as a ploy. “Thank you, my lady. I shall enjoy a
visit very much.”

When I reported Naomi’s answer to Dominic he
was still glum. We had no better plan, and the miners were growing
impatient. They’d been guests of Aranyi a long time. It was
expected, in the beginning, that they would enjoy the hospitality
of the house whose family they had saved, would be treated as
visitors, not as mercenaries waiting for their employer’s bank to
deliver payment. But weeks had gone by with no real offer being put
forward, and the men needed to know the particulars of their
reward.

Dominic called a conference to present the
plan. He had me sit in, to give us the benefit of the double
crypta
. “I offered you Aranyi land,” he said, after bottles
of wine had been poured out and appropriate toasts drunk. “But to
be honest, I know that can’t be of much interest to men like
you.”

Gwynn, the leader, exchanged meaningful looks
with the others. “Something else it is, you to offer have?” Gwynn
asked.

Dominic described the idea briefly. The men
were excited at the mention of ore and metal, but disappointed as
they learned of the way it would have to be found. They muttered
together a long time while Dominic and I sat back, sipped our wine,
and tried to appear unconcerned.

Finally the men reached a consensus.
“‘Gravina,” Gwynn asked, “this thing, done you have? Metal in the
earth, with your power located you have?”

I told them a prettified version of my
seminary experience, omitting the facts that I had failed in my
communion with the others and that the cell searching for ore was
the senior group, made up of the experienced telepaths. After all,
I would have no problem maintaining communion with Dominic and
Niall; adding Naomi to the cell would put the burden more on her to
fit in than on me. The cell in La Sapienza had covered areas not
expected to contain anything of value. They had done the survey
specifically to save the land from Terran or Eclipsian
exploitation, by proving it was worthless. The land Dominic and I
would be exploring, by contrast, was known to be rich in mineral
ore. It had just never been practical to search for it until
now.

The miners watched my face closely as I
spoke. Miners don’t have
crypta
as we know it, but they are
not completely ungifted. They have something more precisely defined
as intuition, and they read a great deal from people’s faces,
especially one like mine, which has always been a reflection of
every little variation in my emotions.

There was more conferring when I finished.
“My lady,” Gwynn said, “so generous an offer prepared to accept we
are. One condition only, make we must.” He paused to allow Dominic
and me time to imagine the worst. “That the work, observe we may.”
It was not that they didn’t trust us, simply that watching so
miraculous a process would give them all great pleasure and would
be something to tell their grandchildren. He spoiled this cozy
explanation by adding, “Only in the beginning, my lord and lady,
watch we will. Once ore you find, you to your privacy leave we
will.”

It was now Dominic and I who had to consult,
which we did through our communion, without turning our heads or
changing expression, so that the men were surprised when Dominic
spoke. “That is fair enough.” His relief at so minor a condition
came through only to me. If we could form a successful cell with
Niall and Naomi, it would make no difference if all of Eclipsia
City watched. If not, we were fucked anyway, as I might have
expressed it in Terran.

There was no real reason for us to fear the
miners. But there was the problem of honor, or the lack of it,
lurking in the background. To make an offer and fail to deliver was
far worse than a simple, honest defeat in battle. There was more at
stake now for Dominic with Niall than patching up a broken romance,
important as that was. We had committed ourselves to a course of
action that depended on Niall’s cooperation. Surely, I thought,
Niall would not wish to revenge himself so completely on my
husband.

The next evening, after supper, I was
examining my breasts in the mirror of the Margrave’s bedroom while
Dominic brushed his teeth. We still enjoyed sleeping together these
days, even though that was about all we did in the bed. It’s true
what people say, I saw. When you stop nursing, your breasts get
smaller—and they
sag
. I lifted the droopy little pouches of
glands and fat on the palms of my hands, thought with longing of
the Terran reconstructive work Dominic would scoff at were I to
suggest it.

There was a knock on the door and I pulled up
my gown. The musicians had returned from their mission to Galloway.
Dominic had given them the freedom of the house and they had not
wanted to wait until morning to deliver their report. The lutist
tittered at the sight of me; the piper cleared his throat and began
to back out, dragging his companion by the hand.