Retribution (44 page)

Thankfully, once the cell was working, we
forgot everything else. We were out, flying over the mountains in
autumn, the season growing later, rain and wind, ice and snow and
heavy clouds impeding our vision. It didn’t matter; we didn’t work
by sight. It is a kind of smell or taste, this searching for metal
that does not visibly betray its presence on the earth’s
surface.

When we found gold the miners were polite but
unenthusiastic. Gold is a semi-precious material on Eclipsis, not
worth the trouble of mounting a mining operation with winter
breathing down our necks. We marked the location on the map that
Berend had copied for the project, a marvel of perspective, with
sections drawn to show coordinates in three dimensions. The gold
was deep underground. “Please,” Gwynn, the leader of the miners,
asked, “if, nearer the surface, something there is, for that search
you will?”

The second week of work we located a large
streak of iron ore. We drew the contours on the map, the inches on
the parchment representing miles of terrain, meandering under rock
and earth. As the little inked blob grew with each day’s patient
testing the miners became increasingly restless. On the third day
they spoke up. “There,” one of them said, pointing with a grimy,
callused thumb, “near the surface that is. Three men, maybe two,
with pick and shovels, dig it up they could.”

They were off that day, another sketched copy
of the map in hand, to make good their claim. They could signal to
me with their own intuitive telepathy once they had determined
whether our coordinates had proved accurate.

We worked on, filled in the rest of the iron
lode, spent a few days finding nothing, then hit some uranium near
the surface and some deeply-buried nickel. “Uranium is still
valuable on Terra,” I said. “If ‘Graven Assembly allowed the miners
to trade with the Terrans—”

“Bugger the Terrans,” Dominic said.

“And their ancestors,” Naomi said.

“And the horse they rode in on.” Niall
completed the curse that was as old as Terran encroachment on
Eclipsis.

We worked on the nickel, which has intrinsic
value on Eclipsis.

We had not yet heard anything from the
miners’ advance party by the time Naomi confirmed my suspicions
that she was pregnant. She would show early with her willowy
figure, a round little baby bump.

Niall watched over her with typical
new-father protectiveness. “You mustn’t work too much,” Niall
warned her each day. “You must tell us when it’s dangerous for the
child.”

“Oh,” Naomi said, “a puny little prism like
Lady Amalie’s wouldn’t hurt a litter of kittens.”

But we worried. At La Sapienza, should a
woman be only a few days pregnant, all work stopped until she went
home, safely away from the electric forces of
crypta
combined with the radiation of the full spectrum of light. “I wish
we’d hear from the miners,” I said every morning. If they were
successful, if they had found some iron to prove the efficacy of
our method, we could stop and wait until spring, when they could
dig up the entire lode during the few months of good weather. After
Naomi’s child was born we could resume the work if the payment was
deemed insufficient.

“Now, Amalie,” Dominic said one day as I
fretted. “It would have taken them at least two days to reach their
own land, then a week or even two to get into the mountains. Then
they have to locate the exact coordinates, and dig—”

I had stopped listening. “Two days from
Aranyi to their own land?” I repeated Dominic’s estimate, thinking
back to my captivity, when Dominic and Niall had force-marched to
cover the distance from Eclipsia City to Aranyi, and Dominic had
continued on to the miners’ land. “But– but how did you get there
in a day, to ask for help?” I stared at Dominic’s annoyed face as
he clamped his lips together, caught by his own words.

“He teleported.” Niall answered my question.
“For your sake, he teleported, took the risk of miscalculating by
an inch or two and materializing inside a wall, or
underground—”

“Shut your mouth, beloved,” Dominic said, too
late.

The
crypta
cell did not work that day,
not without its nucleus, who was too agitated to concentrate. Even
a seminary-trained telepath cannot guarantee a safe or successful
teleportation. It is a maneuver attempted only when the risk of
teleporting is deemed less than the certainty of defeat that will
occur without it. The brave—or foolhardy—traveler must use all his
crypta
in one great burst, sending his body in a stream of
energy to the desired location, and reincorporating it there. As
Niall had pointed out, landing inside a wall or in solid ground—an
easy mistake when one is unfamiliar with the destination—is
fatal.

“There are times,” Dominic remarked that
night, anticipating another tirade, “when materializing inside a
stone wall seems comparatively restful.”

“Go right ahead,” I said, waving my arm at
the castle’s solid stone walls. “Take your pick.”

Dominic laughed as he saw he had misread
concern as accusation.
Beloved
, he said,
I would gladly
risk my life for you, many times over. Do you think I would leave
you alone with bandits one day longer than I had to?

“But what good would it have done,” I said,
“if you had died?”

Dominic pulled me on top of him to lie chest
to chest, face to face. “What good would it have done me if you had
died by my delay?” He chanted the words into my ear, just as he had
calmed Thundercloud. We lay quietly in communion while the words
triggered their memories.
And have you not done the same for
me?
Dominic asked.
Or do you value your own deeds so
little?

In communion we came together, lovers and
equals, all debts paid. I owed my life to Dominic’s brave, quick
action, but I had given him his own life in return. By stopping
their duel, I had saved Niall’s life and Dominic’s as well.
If I
were to lose my lady wife, it would kill me, as assuredly as if I
lost my companion.
Dominic shook his head at my ignorance, that
he had to explain what should be obvious.

I heard from the miners that week. They had
found it, the vein of iron ore that would provide for them and
their families, their whole community, for generations. We could
stop our work.

Dominic held a last court session in the
great hall before winter locked us indoors and ended all business
for the year. There were only one or two intractable cases that
required the ultimate humiliation for an Eclipsian, asking another
man for help in resolving his own problem. One man wished to undo a
divorce action. “I acted out of jealousy, in anger,” he explained
to Dominic in his role as arbiter. “I thought my wife had been
shamed, but I was mistaken. I divorced a good woman, and I want her
back.”

“Marcin,” Dominic spoke from the seat of
judgment at the high table, “why must you tell me? Ask her.”

“I have, my lord,” Marcin said, “but she
won’t come back.” He pointed to a boy a bit younger than Jana and a
girl close to Val’s age where they sat beside their grandmother,
Marcin’s mother. “We have two children, my wife carries a third.
They need their mother, and I need my wife.”

Dominic summoned my maid. “Katrina, how do
you answer your husband’s petition?”

Katrina stepped forward, nervous in front of
all these people—Dominic in his gray uniform, the members of the
household letting their work wait while they enjoyed the free
entertainment—but she spoke clearly enough. “I answer him as he
answered me in my time of need.” She turned to face Marcin. “When I
was desperate for my children you denied me. Now you want me back.
I say to you, you are no longer my husband. You are nothing to me.
Go back to your farm and leave me alone.”

“But the children?” Marcin wielded the
strongest weapon in his arsenal.

“Yes,” Katrina said. “You would bribe me with
the children, to come back to you.” Her voice grew louder. “When
you didn’t want me as your wife you wouldn’t let me see them. Now
you think I will come back to you because of the children.”

Dominic interrupted the bitter argument.
“Katrina, that is the choice you face. If you want your children,
you must return to your husband. Be thankful he has changed his
mind.”

Katrina shivered in the center of the room,
her head bowed in defeat. “Yes,” she said to Marcin. “I will come
back to you. Not your wife, but your slave. For my children, I will
be a slave all my life.” She stood beside Marcin but kept her eyes
averted from him.

“Tell her,” Marcin said to Dominic. “She must
be a real wife to me, not this—”

“No,” Dominic said with a sardonic smile.
“That is beyond my jurisdiction. What kind of wife she is is up to
you.”

Katrina knelt to her children and opened her
arms. “Come to me, my darlings. Come to Mama.”

The older one stared with the cold, wounded
face of abandonment. He was old enough to know his mother had left
him, too young to understand that Katrina had had no choice. He
turned his back and held tight to his grandmother’s hand.

The little one, a baby like Val, looked
confusedly from grandmother to father to long-lost mother. She had
a hazy memory from weeks ago, of this woman who had held her and
loved her every day of her life, then suddenly disappeared. She had
cried, as her brother had been too old to cry, night after night,
her father pacing angrily in the room, Grandma scolding and loving
and helpless by turns. Now this woman was back, holding out her
hands. She scrambled off the bench, ran to her outstretched
arms.

“Mama!” she shrieked. “Mama!”

Katrina crushed her baby to her breast and
smothered her face with kisses. The older one, unable to help
himself, turned on the bench to watch the affecting scene. He was
not so old, nor so strong, that he could starve herself forever of
such love. In a week at the most he would be demanding his
share.

Katrina rose as Marcin laid a hand on her
shoulder. The woman’s flesh shrank from the touch.
For them
.
I could read her resolute, unyielding thoughts, was certain Marcin
knew them as well as I did.
My love is for them. You will have
my body, not my love. Not me
.

The second case was easier. Pavel, the young
guard, resplendent in a clean shirt and mended uniform, fully
recovered from his wound, cheerfully absent from his post at Stefan
Ormonde’s, formally requested that Dominic take him into service at
Aranyi.

Dominic studied the fresh young face and the
well-formed body a few minutes longer than was strictly necessary.
Even with men who are not
vir
and are not gifted, Dominic
can cause a certain rise in temperature, an acceleration of the
pulse, if he sets his mind to it. Pavel stood his ground like a
man, though his cheeks flushed.

“What are your reasons,” Dominic asked after
the long pause, “for wishing to leave your current position?”

The young man swallowed and took a breath. “I
don’t, my lord,” he said with endearing honesty. “It’s a good
position, and Ormonde’s a fair master. But the woman I’m going to
marry works here, and she says she won’t leave.” Everybody laughed
at the plain speaking and the innocence of young love. A married
woman was required to follow her husband to his home. If she
wouldn’t, she remained unmarried.

I was fairly certain of the outcome, having
personally interceded with the judge beforehand. Isobel was an
excellent nursemaid, as the past weeks had given me ample
opportunity to recognize—and if close to six years of service
hadn’t already proven it. She was warm and maternal and kind. Val
liked her and behaved himself with her, as much as he would with
anyone. It was unthinkable that she could leave now.

Dominic prepared to accept the new man into
his service. “There is one problem,” he said. “If I deprive Stefan
Ormonde of a guard, I must make good on the loss. How do you
propose I do that?” Unlike Pavel, most men would jump at the chance
to improve their status by serving at Aranyi; few would accept the
demotion of moving to the small-holding of a younger son living on
his wife’s dowry lands.

Today we were fortunate. Another young man
stood up. Despite the scar that crossed the bridge of his nose and
continued down his left cheek, he looked, if possible, even younger
and more innocent than Pavel. “My lord,” he said, “I am willing to
work at Master Ormonde’s. I should like to see more of the
world.”

“You won’t!” his mother, Magali, shouted out.
“All you’ll see is more mountains and forest, more work and less
food, and no family there to look after you.” She was near tears at
the thought of her oldest boy leaving home.

Wilmos, the guilty deserter, cringed at his
mother’s words but held firm to his purpose. “I am willing to go,
if Master Ormonde will have the exchange.”

The business was swiftly concluded. The two
guards swore their oaths, one promising loyalty to Aranyi, the
other renouncing it, and the calendar was cleared. Dominic stood up
to end the session but Pavel had another request. “If you would not
object, my lord,” he said with a shy smile, “Isobel and I would
like you to marry us.” As magistrate and as a lord of ‘Graven
Assembly, Dominic has the authority to perform civil ceremonies,
although most people prefer a religious one, at a shrine of the
mother goddess or one of the monotheistic religions’ temples.

“We’re as good as married now,” Pavel
explained to the by-now fascinated audience. “Why waste time on a
lot of old rituals?” He held out his hand to his intended. Isobel,
pushing Val toward me, joined her man in front of Dominic.

“Why indeed?” Dominic said. He resumed his
place at the high table and, not wishing to squander any more of
the groom’s obviously valuable time, launched into the preliminary
questions, establishing that both parties were of age and free to
wed.