Retribution (39 page)

It was Niall who thwarted this plan.
“Margrave Aranyi,” he said, “it is not fitting for a guest to risk
himself in our trouble. My father and I are quite capable—”

“That’s right.” Sir Nicholas sided with his
son. “It’s my land and my border that’s been threatened.”

“No,” Dominic said. “It is my trouble that I
have inflicted on you. These are the remnants of the force that
kidnapped ‘Gravina Aranyi. They are here because I failed to pursue
and kill them. It is the least I can do, after such warm
hospitality—” He stared, covered eye to covered eye, at Niall, who
had the decency to blush. “—to eliminate this problem that I have
caused, however involuntarily.”

Jana reappeared in the room, no one having
noticed her absence in the general commotion. “I’m coming too,” she
said. “I can help.”

“No, cherie,” Dominic said, a smile of
unconscious pride on his lips, before he turned to look at her.
Over the collective gasp of horror his was the loudest.

Jana had put on shirt and breeches again,
having found some of Niall’s old clothes, but was not receiving the
same approbation she had had from me in our captivity.

“Jana-Eleonora.” Dominic focused his parental
wrath on his beloved daughter. “What do you mean, shaming yourself
like this?” He had had a hard night; he could never have spoken to
her so harshly otherwise.

Jana’s eyes opened wide in surprise but she
didn’t yet know the enormity of her sin, the wasps’ nest of
Eclipsian taboos she had poked with her innocent stick. “I can ride
better in breeches,” she said. “I can help capture the
bandits.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Dominic said. “Just because
Reynaldo cut your hair and forced you to wear boys’ clothes,
doesn’t mean—”

“No, Papa.” Jana wrinkled her nose in a sneer
at the memory of her captor. “Mama did it. Mama cut my hair
and—”

The full force of wrath was now directed at
me, flowing over me with a power that could stop a phalanx charging
at double-time. “Is this true, Amalie?”

“Dominic,” I said in a weak voice, “I was
sick, starved. I thought Jana could help me.” I smiled reassurance
at my daughter. “And she did help me.”

Dominic gaped from immodest daughter to
deceiving wife.
Amalie,
I will deal with you when we get
home.
He glowered at Jana. “Upstairs!” Dominic roared as loud
as Sir Nicholas, arm outstretched, finger pointing. “Take those
clothes off, and if you ever pull such a stunt again I’ll whip you
until you can’t sit down for a week.”

Jana’s face went dark red. She stumbled
toward the stairs and ran headlong into Niall. He caught her in his
arms and wouldn’t let her escape however she twisted and fought,
picked her up and kissed her teary face, murmuring words of comfort
until she was calm. Then he put her down and stalked over to
Dominic.

“You can do it to me.” Niall spoke low and
guttural through clenched teeth. “You can do it to Amalie, although
I bet she’ll have something to say about that. But I swear by
Helios and all the gods, if you lay a finger on Jana you’ll have me
to answer to. You may think you’re the world’s best swordsman,
Dominic Aranyi, but—”

“No,” Dominic said, so angry he forgot
manners and modesty and protocol. “I know it. And if you dare to
cross swords with me,
companion—
” He put an obscene emphasis
on the word. “—you will know it too.” His hand had moved to the
hilt of his sword as he answered Niall’s challenge.

I stepped into the maelstrom. “Dominic, don’t
fight a man in his own home.”

“Amalie,” Dominic said, “I don’t need lessons
in conduct from you, who would turn our daughter into an Amazon or
a Terran. This is for men to sort out, not women.”

Like sticks of a cottage after a tornado I
was flung, broken and twisted, out of the whirlwind.

Sir Nicholas intervened, taking my place near
the antagonists who stood eye to eye a few feet apart, hands on
weapons, knees bent in the crouch that precedes the
en
garde
. “Margrave Aranyi,” he bellowed. “I can’t promise to be a
match for you either. But I am not yet decrepit and I know which
end of a sword to hold. Before you try any more of your bullying on
my son you will have to get through me.”

“A pleasure,” Dominic said. “Is this a new
form of northern hospitality?”

“No,” Sir Nicholas said. “It’s what a man
does to save his family from bandits, whatever titles they use or
fancy uniforms they wear.”

The swords were out before we could do
anything more. The rest of us gathered in the corner of the room
near the door, ready for a quick exit in case the fight became
mobile but prepared to do our part as observers, as custom
requires. I pulled my dagger from its sheath and held it with the
prism facing up, at waist level. I would not embarrass Dominic if I
could avoid it, but I would not allow him to kill his host, the
father of his companion, nor would I let him be seriously wounded
by a chance mishap.

Sir Nicholas was, as he had said, no match
for Dominic. He was not incompetent or unskillful, but he had no
more chance of inflicting damage on Dominic than a kitten on a
bear. Of medium height, robust and only slightly thick around the
middle, he wielded his sword confidently with furious energy. Like
waves against a sea wall he threw himself at Dominic, battering and
thrashing. Like water on rock his assaults broke harmlessly to
slide back into the sea.

Dominic, to his credit, did not take
advantage of his superior ability. There was something insolent in
the way he kept the unequal contest going. He rarely moved his
feet, merely shifted his weight and the position of his upper body
accordingly as the attacks came and went from either side. Dominic
parried and blocked, parried and blocked, the patient master with
the overeager pupil, while Sir Nicholas exhausted every trick he
knew, attacking from all angles, using every combination of
footwork and thrusts. Clara, who had had bright red spots of worry
on her cheekbones and the panting breaths of fear at the beginning,
began to regain a more even color and respiration as she saw that
her husband, for all his efforts, was in no real danger.

I had had no intellectual worries when it
started. No man had ever beaten Dominic in a contest of
swordsmanship, and I had seen my share. Dominic was the defending
champion in an annual tournament in the city, facing the best
opponents the Realms could provide, and had rarely broken a sweat.
But a real duel, as I found out now, a battle motivated by genuine
anger, is far more frightening. Watching Sir Nicholas hurl himself
at Dominic, knowing his sword was deadly sharp steel, not a
practice weapon with dulled edges, made my heart pound and my
vision blur. My camisole stuck to my back as the cold sweat of fear
ran down my sides in a clammy discomfort I had not experienced
since leaving the heat of Terra. The shock of Dominic’s rage and
his hostile words to me were all forgotten. Like Clara, I felt only
relief that there would soon be an end with no casualties.

Sir Nicholas made the signal for a recess
with his free hand. Dominic complied at once, lowering his sword
point to the ground. “Are you satisfied?” Dominic asked.

“No, my lord,” Sir Nicholas said. He fought
for breath, smiling as his manners returned along with his veneer
of equability. “But it appears I must be. Forgive me, my lord, for
challenging my guest.” To himself he was thinking,
Damned if I
know what the hell that was all about.

Dominic bowed his acceptance of the apology.
Before he had straightened up Niall jumped in to take his father’s
place. “Margrave Aranyi!” he said. “I am not satisfied so
easily.”

Dominic shook his head. “No, beloved. Your
father has done well. There is no more quarrel between us.”

Niall drew his sword and swiped it against
Dominic’s as he stood leaning his weight on it, knocking him off
balance. “There is,” he said. “There is the greatest quarrel of all
between us. Or does honor mean as little to you as your marriage
proposals?” He lunged at Dominic while he was still recovering his
equilibrium, so that Dominic got his proper grip on his sword only
just in time to prevent Niall from slicing his arm off.

There was a snarling sound as Dominic went on
the attack. While we watched in fascinated horror we were treated
to a display of swordsmanship we were unlikely ever to see again. I
had teased Dominic once about not daring to match swords with Cadet
Galloway. But Dominic and Lieutenant Galloway had matched swords
every day for a year and a half, essential practice for staying in
fighting trim. They knew each other as swordsmen as intimately as
they knew each other as lovers, had often combined the two into one
game. I had frequently overheard them at practice, “making it
interesting,” they called it, the loser agreeing to pay with a
sexual favor of the winner’s choice. Niall had occasionally accused
Dominic of losing deliberately, eager to receive Niall’s
penalty.

Neither man was treating this duel as a game.
Niall held Dominic off easily enough at first, but I could see
already he would not be able to keep it up indefinitely. Niall was
better than his father, twenty years younger, a natural-born
swordsman. Dominic had restrained himself with Sir Nicholas out of
courtesy, not wishing to humiliate so overmatched an opponent. With
Niall he had no such scruple. Now Dominic was fighting on pure
rage, a hot red anger—of love too long thwarted, of jealousy and
shame—and he lost nothing of his skill because of it. What would be
a crippling disadvantage for most men only concentrated Dominic’s
focus. He whirled in the deadly dance I had shared in our communion
during the battle against the bandits, a dazzling vision of precise
movement and killing fury.

The two combatants locked swords, fists
white-knuckled gripping sword hilts side by side, mouths set in
grim lines, eyes boring into the other’s, until Niall pushed
Dominic off and resumed the fencing. He drove Dominic back along
one wall until Dominic found the weak place in Niall’s defense.
“When you fight a taller man,” Dominic used to warn his companion,
“you must keep your guard up.” Niall had never taken the criticism
seriously; Dominic was the only taller man he knew. “When I
challenge you, I will,” Niall would promise, laughing at the
unlikely eventuality.

But Niall had forgotten this instruction and
Dominic took advantage, forcing Niall to retreat, loping in reverse
with the swordsman’s bent-legged, rocking gait, until he backed
into a table we had not had time to move. There was a wild flurry
of thrusts, the clang and scrape of swords too quick to see, and
Niall leaped sideways to attack Dominic from a different angle. His
breath was loud, sobbing in his throat, but he fought with greater
intensity after the scare, his guard well up now against his taller
opponent.

Clara was weeping, her head held high, eyes
straight ahead, too proud to let her son die while she ran away or
spared herself the awful sight. And Naomi—the woman was dancing
herself, following the steps of the duel on the edge of the area of
combat, her thoughts all trained on her new lover, reinforcing
Niall’s ebbing strength with her raw love and the force of her
healing
crypta
. My heart went out to her, another woman
terrified to see her man die.
Lady Amalie.
She acknowledged
my presence in her mind.
Can you not end this?

I tried to think while Naomi’s fierce animal
energy threatened to overwhelm me in my fragile morning condition
after the sleepless night. The empathy Naomi had claimed to
possess, that she had learned to control as a healer, showed her
the truth almost immediately. She dimmed the force of her great
power, like turning down the flame of a lamp, to accommodate my
weakness.
There,
she thought, as she sensed my recovery.
That’s better. We can work together if you will allow me to
help.

Here was my ally, I saw. Why had I ever
thought of her as my enemy? Naomi was the stronger of us
physically, but my gift was powerful and I had had the seminary
training. We should be able to handle a problem like this, I
thought, as Dominic trapped Niall in a corner and the watching
crowd held its breath.

I explained the principle of the force field
that Naomi had seen me use on Dominic before. We did not waste time
on speech but exchanged our ideas mentally, in the fraction of a
second it took for Dominic to raise his sword, for Niall to see and
react. Naomi understood at once and nodded her readiness. Her
dagger, too, had been in her hand since the beginning of the fight.
Together we agreed on the shape and the texture, threw the force
field over both men like a tightly-woven fishing net.

I made one mistake, did not allow for Naomi’s
novice technique. My side of the net fell more quickly than hers
with a more immediate effect, so that Dominic was frozen stiff
while Niall remained in active slow motion. At the last minute, as
the invisible field descended to stop the men in their tracks,
Niall’s sword continued its thrust that Dominic, in his paralyzed
condition, could not parry or evade. The sword penetrated Dominic’s
chest. A few drops of blood spurted out, solidified and fell like
hailstones, clattering on the stone floor. The men stood like
statues, Dominic’s hand raised in surprise, Niall’s hand on the
hilt of his sword, the tip in his lover’s breast.

With his last conscious thought Dominic
looked into the stricken face of his companion. As he had with the
musicians, Dominic took an artist’s work and subtly changed it to
suit the circumstances, all without losing the rhythm or sense of
the original.
Though the dead forget their life when in the
House of Death—
He quoted the speech of Achilles to his beloved
Patroclus.
—I will remember, even there, my dear
companion.