Retribution (8 page)

Isobel stood irresolute for a moment or two
until her good sense prevailed. She lunged at Jana while I tried to
get a firm grip on some part of the ball of writhing young humanity
rolling around on the bed. Jana managed one last sucker punch
before Isobel and I pulled the children apart. In the melee the
positions had reversed: Jana ended up in my arms, Val with Isobel.
Val, red-faced and howling, his nose streaming, clung to his
rescuer but reached back to me with one pathetic hand, a prisoner
being carted away to execution, as I nodded at Isobel to take him
out.

I hardened my heart, welcoming the turn of
events that had left Jana in my embrace. To her surprise I rewarded
her murderous attempt on her brother’s life with a barrage of
kisses. There would be plenty of other opportunities to impart the
lesson that assaulting someone merely for stating the truth is less
than honorable behavior. “Is that scary?” I said as I planted wet,
motherly kisses on her face and neck, where she was ticklish. “Ooh,
that’s so scary.”

Jana lolled in my arms, beginning to trust
again. She could recognize me now, saw I was her own mother as she
remembered, not the deranged woman who had fought her own husband
with tricks of
crypta
. Relieved at my resurrection, Jana
laughed at the tickling and returned my kisses eagerly, her inner
eyelids slowly retracting.

A speck of moldy straw went up my nose and I
sneezed. “You’re not really afraid of me, are you?” I asked.

“No,” Jana said with less than complete
honesty. “But everyone else is. Even Isobel and Magali.”

“Naomi’s not,” I said.

“Naomi has
crypta
,” Jana said. “Papa
said she could figure out what to do when—”

She didn’t want to admit that even Dominic
had been scared, hadn’t known quite how to cope with me. I could
alleviate that fear, at least. “Papa was in to see me already,” I
said. “You know how early he wakes up. He brought me breakfast and
helped me have a bath.”

All the lingering tension dissipated from her
coiled, muscular body. “You’re not angry at Papa anymore,” she
said.

“I was never angry with him.” I sneezed
again, wiped my nose on my sleeve.

Jana stared at the blatant falsehood,
determined to be brave, as she used to be, and speak her mind. “Yes
you were. You were angry at him because of Lady Melanie. Because he
went riding with her.”

Had my jealousy been that obvious? “Yes, I
guess I was.” Dominic had always insisted that we not lie to the
children. “But that was silly. I’m over it.”

Jana nodded agreement. “You don’t like to
ride,” she said. “Papa just went riding with her because you don’t
like to and she does. Now we’re home he’ll go with Niall. You don’t
get angry at Niall.” The voice of reason.

“No,” I said. “I don’t get angry at
Niall.”

“Thank all the gods for that,” Niall said,
entering the room. “I would rather face forty bandits single-handed
than ‘Gravina Aranyi in a rage.” He smiled down at mother and
daughter; other than his lowered inner eyelids, his face betrayed
none of the fear of his mocking words.

He must have been following the conversation,
either with
crypta
or simply by overhearing. In a ‘Graven
household such things happen all the time. It had been strange to
be back at home and yet feel so isolated, and I was glad to find
someone acting more or less normally. “You’d make short work of it,
either way, bandits or me,” I said. “Which reminds me, I haven’t
had a chance to thank you properly—”

“Niall’s not afraid of anything,” Jana broke
in, giving her hero the worshipful look—round hawk’s eyes studying
a being larger and deadlier than itself—that only her papa and his
companion were privileged to receive.

Niall laughed at her ardor. “No, my
betrothed,” he said, “credit me with more sense. I’m afraid of
things when I ought to be.” He saw her blink in disappointment,
tried to tease her out of it. “I’ll be afraid of you when we’re
married. I won’t dare say two words to another woman for fear of
ending up like that poor creature.” He pointed to the remains of
the doll scattered on the bed and the floor.

The head was still recognizable, a child’s
face created out of scraps of cloth and bric-a-brac: pink lips,
blue eyes, a nose sketched in dark thread, braids of orange yarn.
It was oddly moving, a reminder of the scene in the bandits’
castle, the women and children...

Jana’s face crumpled in the prelude to tears.
“I killed her. I killed Flavia.” Her eyes darted, horrified, from
Niall’s sword to the doll’s head, making a connection she wasn’t
quite ready to handle.

Despite the carnage we had recently
witnessed, this was Jana’s first experience with death—real death,
the loss of a friend. Jana had a doll of her own, made especially
for her, with gray eyes and dark hair, but it had remained in
pristine condition, more a decorative object in the nursery than a
companion. This ragged old thing, loved almost to death by Lady
Ladakh’s grown daughter, had been given a second life by Jana’s
need for something to cling to. And once we were safely home it had
been sacrificed in a fit of rage. Best to patch things up
first.

I put my arm around Jana. “Flavia isn’t
dead,” I said. My gift really must be functioning erratically; I
hadn’t even known the doll had a name. “We can heal her, just the
way Naomi heals people. With fresh straw and a new dress, she’ll be
fine.”

Jana’s eyes were still riveted on the severed
head. Niall picked it up and placed it in my outstretched hand,
thinking to me.
I must speak with you alone, my lady
.

I transferred the head to Jana’s cupped
hands. “Take her to Saskia,” I said. “She’ll know what to do.”
Aranyi’s seamstress would be more likely to put her important jobs
aside for Lady Jana than for me.

Niall gathered up the larger scraps of cloth
and added them to Jana’s little bundle. “Your mama’s right,” he
said. “If you love your doll and take good care of her, she can’t
really die.”

Jana’s eyes narrowed at Niall’s words; when
she saw he wasn’t making fun of her she ran out the door, up the
stairs to the sewing room on the third floor.

“Since when have you become such a
philosopher?” I asked Niall.

“Living at Aranyi,” he said in his old ironic
manner, “teaches a man stoicism, if not cynicism.”

I motioned for him to sit but Niall remained
standing, in a hurry to say what was on his mind and be out. He was
dressed for riding, in high boots and a belted tunic, sword and
dagger at his hip. He glanced toward the open door several times,
too polite to interrupt as I thanked him for his part in my rescue.
His fear of me was genuine after all, not just his usual teasing
familiarity. “Tell me the truth,” I said, finishing my rehearsed
speech. “What did I do? Why is everybody avoiding me?”

Niall’s face grew solemn at my request. There
were dark circles under his eyes and his skin had a crepey texture.
“Lady Amalie, if you truly do not remember what happened, I’m
probably not the best one to tell you.”

“Not you, too,” I said. “Please don’t tell me
I attacked you.”

“No, honestly,” Niall said. “I was fortunate
in being merely an observer.” His natural insouciance broke through
his depression and he dared to laugh at what to him couldn’t help
but be a somewhat humorous situation. “I only meant that perhaps
Dominic should be the one—”

“Dominic told me what I did to him,” I said.
“But I’d rather not—” I wouldn’t say it, that I was afraid to
summon Dominic up from the dungeon to answer my questions.

Niall understood; he took a deep breath and
shut the door. If Dominic caught us we were dead, both of us, but
we could not speak freely of such things with the door open. He sat
down in the chair and, forcing himself not to rush, narrated the
whole disaster of my dramatic return home. His gift for imitation
made the scene come alive as he reenacted each episode: Dominic
carrying me into the house; Magali and Katrina, Isobel and many
other women rushing over, eager to resume their accustomed jobs of
caring for me and the children; and my horrifying greeting, a
barrage of Terran insults, filthy words and obscene phrases, as I
battled the confusion in my mind.

People had laughed at first. “If you’d just
spoken Terran,” Niall said, “it wouldn’t have been so bad.” It was
when I switched to Eclipsian, recapitulating all the fears of
captivity, that I had found the exact right way to mortally insult
each of my three closest companions. I had fought Isobel when she
attempted to take Val from me, begging her not to hurt him. I had
promised my clothes to Katrina in return for her help. Worst of
all, I had offered my glass comb to Magali as a bribe for sparing
my life and my children’s.

My words could be taken only one way, as
accusations of both disloyalty and greed. Alone, face to face, such
charges were grounds for a blood feud; I had said them in front of
the entire household. “I’m ruined,” I said. “I might as well have
died in captivity. If it wasn’t for the children I’d kill myself
now.”

“How can you even think such a thing?” Niall
said. “Do you want to confirm everyone’s suspicions? How do you
think Dominic would take that?”

I had no answer to this.

“Lady Amalie,” Niall said, “it’s not as bad
as you imagine.” He tried to speak lightly but his voice had a
sharp edge. “Do you think yours are the first mad ravings ever
heard at Aranyi? What do you think went on when Dominic’s father
was alive? And with Dominic himself? Once you’re well again people
will say it was just the fever talking.”

He saw the hurt in my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he
said. “The fact is I only wanted to say good-by, to thank you for
all your kindness the past year and more, and to wish you a speedy
recovery.”

“Good-by? What do you mean?” I took it in at
last, that his outfit was for travel, not simply a morning’s
recreation. “I hope nothing is wrong with your parents, or your
sisters?”

“No, thanks for asking,” he said. “My family
is well, as far as I know.”

“Well then, where are you off to so
suddenly?”

“Anywhere, nowhere. Maybe Eclipsia City.”

“Is Dominic going with you?”
I can’t
,
I thought.
I can’t stay here, alone, without Dominic, and on bad
terms with everybody
.

“No, of course not, that’s the point,” Niall
said. My look of surprise seemed to annoy him beyond containment.
“I’m out of here before he kills me. Or I kill him.”

I could only stare.

“I owe him a death,” Niall said in formal
speech, the same prophetic words Jana had used to her bandit
captors.

“Please, Niall,” I said, holding out my hand
in an attempt at communion, “don’t joke like that.”

Niall sat back, rejecting the proffered
touch. “How could I joke about something like this? Dominic has—”
His voice cracked in a way I remembered, an unpleasant memory. “He
has broken faith with me.”

It was the tremor in Niall’s voice that
breached the wall of my imposed forgetfulness. I recalled it all
clearly now: Dominic’s frightening duality that began after the
battle, the “dream” I had had at Lady Ladakh’s, Niall’s bruised
body and the shattered look in his eyes I had seen the next
morning. However imaginary my encounter with Reynaldo, between
Dominic and Niall there had been real violence, with very real
consequences.

He raped you!
The thought was in my
mind before I could suppress it. In my idealized notions up to now,
broken faith could not occur between true lovers.

Niall was on his feet, his hand reaching for
his sword in a reflex. The blade was halfway out of the scabbard
before he rammed it back with a bark of angry laughter. “Lady
Amalie,” he said. “You really must be careful with that kind of
language.”

The physical injuries were easier for Niall
to accept than the word. In this world of ‘Graven honor, to admit
to being a victim means assuming a heavy burden: suicide for a
woman, vengeance for a man.

“Please, Niall,” I said. “Sit down and listen
to me.” I told Niall what nobody had ever heard, what nobody knew
except Dominic and me, the story of my first night alone with
Dominic, our natural communion of love warped by a powerful
telepathic weapon into mindless sexual abandon. Afterward I had
felt violated—not by Dominic, but by an evil force that had wanted
to humiliate and destroy me. Dominic had almost killed himself the
next morning, out of remorse. Only later had he come to accept that
the weapon fed off our worst qualities and made use of them.

“You see,” I said, wrapping up my personal
history, “I did not blame Dominic for acting under the influence of
something beyond his control—our control.”

“Yes,” Niall said. “Dominic told me this when
we met.”

I shut my eyes against the betrayal, but
Niall was not looking at me. “You’re lucky, in a way, as a woman,”
he said. “When you were dishonored, Dominic could make it right
simply by marrying you.”

I forced myself to speak without shouting.
“Niall, excuse me, but you did not understand what I was trying to
tell you. I wasn’t ‘dishonored.’ Dominic and I were both
manipulated by a telepathic weapon. I was making an analogy between
what happened to me then and what’s happened to you now.”

Niall shook his head. “I do understand.
You’re saying that you were not forced, that you lay with Dominic
by your own choice. That’s not so shameful as you seem to think.
With a ‘Graven lord, attractive as Dominic is, I imagine few women
would even bother to put on a show of resistance. But at the time
Dominic felt he was at fault. He still does. And in a way he’s
right. A man of honor does not take advantage of a lady, even if
she’s willing.”

He took my speechlessness for confusion.
“Surely you, of all women, know that love between men is
different.”