Authors: Charlotte Boyett-Compo
"It was a hard choice Ardy made that night," Euryleia Brae, Aradia's best friend, said. "She did the only thing she could do. She is our leader and we should never question her decisions."
"Some leader," Ky scoffed, sneering. "How hard was it to throw herself into the arms of the Diabolusian and allow him to use her as he did?"
"I did not throw myself into his arms," Aradia said, jaw clenched. "He ran me down."
"You weren't running very fast, were you?" Ky questioned.
"How dare you make such an accusation?" Phillipa flung at her. "She gave up much for you, you ungrateful pup! It took bravery to--"
Ky threw back her head and laughed; an ugly sound. "It took a slavering male and a sniveling coward who knew her womanhood could save her hide from a Diabolusian stake if she let her captor thrust deep enough and hard enough inside her! Lykopis is no leader. She is a whore!"
A concerted intake of breath among the other listeners drew all sound from the clearing. Women stepped back, away from Ky and her half-sister, expecting trouble.
Aradia stood still, infinitely aware of the charged atmosphere. She felt the women's eyes on her, heard the nervous sounds as their breaths returned to them in anticipation of her reprisal. She looked into Ky's hostile face, saw gloating in the stare that fused with her own, and understood--as she never had before--just how much Ky resented the sacrifice she had made for her three years before. For the first time, she saw the guilt in her half-sister's face and knew Ky was as ashamed of the outcome of that fateful night as she, herself, was.
"You are right," Aradia said, surprising Ky. "I am not nearly the woman you are. Perhaps you should relieve me of the responsibility of these warriors and take it for yourself. It takes a woman who has known the fire of the cauldron and survived it to lead. You have given up much, so you should be the one to whom the rest of us come for help."
Phillipa sat back on her haunches and stared with pride at Aradia. There could have been no better way to diffuse the situation than the one she had used. Ky spoke a good fight--often started one--but it was always Aradia to whom she ran for protection, Aradia to whom Ky went when she needed advice and help. And despite her repeated vocal condemnations of Aradia and all she had been forced to do and endure for the sake of their family, Ky could not deny who was the better woman.
"You accepted the mantle of our leadership!" Ky snapped as though it were an accusation.
"Aye, but I am not worthy of the honor," Aradia replied. "Have you not as much as said so? My only use was through my body." A wry look passed over her face. "Thank the gods I knew how to use it to our advantage, eh?"
Ky drew herself up, straightening her shoulders beneath her heavy leather vest. A muscle jumped in her jaw, but when she spoke, no condemnation laced her voice. "I did not say we did not trust you as our leader," Ky answered in a begrudging tone, as if knowing she'd gone too far. Her worry over Orithia's plight had likely pushed her beyond the bounds of sanity. "We've no need for another."
Aradia bowed her head at what, for Ky, passed as an apology. "If that is what each of you want..."
A chorus of "ayes" came from the women.
"Then I shall remain as your leader for as long as I am needed and useful."
"And Orithia?" Ky pressed, loath to relinquish her anger.
Expectant glances shifted to Aradia, who smiled for the first time that evening. "I'll go after her. Perhaps an influential Rysalian will find me as appealing as the Diabolusian did and I can use him to help me retrieve our sisters."
Ky's face turned a darker crimson, and her white teeth flashed in anger.
"We can not allow her to go alone to that heathen land," Okyale Kreousa said.
"Nor will we," Phillipa agreed. "We will accompany Aradia."
Aradia shook her head. "I can not ask it of you, Sisters. It is my place to go after Orithia. I--"
"The matter is settled," Phillipa proclaimed. "We will go with you as far as the outskirts of the city. We will be your eyes and ears. If you need help, we will be there."
"I, too, will go," Ky said. When the others turned to stare at her, she raised her chin. "If nothing more, I can hold the horses."
"When you can't even ride?" Okyale murmured.
Ky's eyes turned flint hard. "I will do what I have to do. Don't worry about me, Kreousa!"
"Worrying about you never crossed my mind."
Aradia exchanged a look with Phillipa. She knew the older woman understood the dangers involved in going into Rysalia. It would be necessary to hide behind the camouflage of disguise, something they had done often when traveling outside Amazeen lands. But there was always the chance a keen eye would see beneath the subterfuge.
"Are you up to this, Ardy?" Phillipa asked.
"Do I have a choice?"
Phillip drew in a long breath. "You can always send someone else."
"Aye," Euryleia agreed. "Let us draw straws."
Aradia shook her head. "It is my place to do this. If one of us is to be caught, best it is the spoiled one."
Phillipa cursed lewdly, drawing all eyes to her. She had been a nun before escaping the infamous convent at Galrath, and each time she mouthed such words, it unnerved her listeners. "You are not the only one of us who is no longer a maiden, Aradia."
"Well, you certainly can not enter the fortress," Ky chuckled hatefully. "As ugly as you are, who could you seduce, Telamon?"
Her face aflame from the insult, Phillipa put a hand up to the savage scars that gouged her face. Keenly aware of the disfigurement placed there by a Hasdu blade when she was a young girl, the reminder cut as deep as the steel once had. With tears pricking her eyes, she looked away.
"You know, Ky," Okyale said, "there may come a day when you're going to open your mouth one time too many and someone is going to relieve you of that offensive instrument you call a tongue!"
"The Rysalians do that as a matter of course with women they wish to bring to heel," Euryleia commented.
Aradia grabbed Ky's long braid, twisted it around her wrist, and viciously pulled back her head. "Apologize! Right now!"
"I meant nothing by it," Ky whined, not daring to reach up to extract her hair for fear Aradia would pull harder. As insensitive as the young woman was about the feelings of others, she was very sensitive when it came to her own welfare.
"I said apologize!"
"I am sorry, Phillipa," Ky whimpered. "Truly I am."
Aradia let go of Ky's hair. She reached out to Phillipa, but the older woman stepped back, not wanting her friend's pity. Understanding Phillipa's pride, Aradia let the matter drop. She turned to the others. "I think it best we leave now before the sun is up."
"Or before our mothers come looking for us," Okyale said with a sigh.
"Shall I go back to the keep and get the disguises we used last time?" Euryleia asked. "They will hide us better than the ones we used in Serenia."
"Aye, the robes of the pilgrims, wasn't it?" Aradia returned.
"Egad, those shapeless sacks of wool?" Okyale asked with a shudder. "They made me itch for a month after I shed them."
"I haven't washed those enough yet," Phillipa mumbled. "They still smell like the offal we smeared on the hems."
Aradia grinned. "That may be to our advantage. No one will get too close."
"Terrific," Okyale grumbled. "I can itch
and
stink. And a delightful time was had by all."
"I don't have a disguise," Ky complained. When the others ignored her, she folded her arms over her chest and pouted.
"What will we do for rations?" Okyale questioned.
"We can buy what we need along the way," Aradia replied. "Euryleia, go to my chambers. Bring back as much as you can carry. The sooner we get going, the sooner we can set our sisters free."
"If
we can," Phillipa whispered.
"We will," Ky said, and once again, no one looked her way.
"Go home, Kydoime," Aradia said. "You will be of no use to us with your leg."
"You will not let me go with you?"
"What good would you be?" With her eyes narrowed, her face hard, Aradia looked her half-sister in the eye. "As ugly as your body is, who could
you
seduce, Valsca?"
Ky gasped, never having had such words said to her by anyone, leastwise Aradia, who was always mannerly. Seeing the brittle gleam in Aradia's glacial blue eyes, knowing her as she did, Ky realized it would do no good to argue. She nodded, turned, and headed toward the keep.
"Will she tell her mother what we're up to?" Euryleia inquired.
"Not if she knows what's good for her," Okyale stated.
"She won't tell." Phillipa raised her head and shook herself, ridding her of the pain that had momentarily clouded her world. "She will not want it known she was involved if we fail, nor will she want it bandied about that Ardy refused to allow her to go. If she is nothing else, the little bitch is prideful."
"Remember what the Midworlder told us?" Aradia asked, reminding the others of the sailor from Odess who had washed up on shore after a storm.
"'Pride goes before a fall,'" Phillipa replied with a smile.
"Aye, and Ky's fall is overdue."
Aradia rode in silence. The night air had turned colder, and though the foul-smelling robe made her eyes water, it kept her warm. She ignored the scratchy stiff wool and concentrated on breathing through her mouth so she would inhale as few of the noxious fumes rising from her apparel as possible. Now and again, snatches of conversation from the other four women made her question the advisability of what they were doing.
"It's not wise to second guess yourself, Ardy," Phillipa whispered.
Stretching in the saddle, Aradia rolled her head from side to side to relieve the tension in her neck. "I am thinking the others were right in deciding not to come with us. Perhaps Ulivia was right and we should have let my mother ransom Orithia."
Phillipa shrugged then brought a perfumed handkerchief up to her nose and spoke through it. "I am not saying they were right or wrong not to join us, but I don't have their conviction that your mother will be able to intervene and get our sisters back by diplomatic means."
"No, that's not going to happen. I should know better than anyone."
"If we wait until your mother can open diplomatic channels between Amazeen and Rysalia, we might be toothless and crooked over like summer squash."
"She's going to be furious that I am doing this."
"Do you care?"
"Not really. It doesn't seem to matter what I do or don't do. I can't get anything right with her. Mother and I have been at loggerheads since I came back from Deseo."
At the mention of the three years Aradia had spent in the Diabolusian capital, both women grew quiet. Aradia pulled an amber pendant from inside the bodice of her short gown. She stroked the faceted honey-gold surface of the charm that hung between alternately strung jet and amber beads, then enclosed the pendant in her palm, molding it lovingly with her fingers.
Phillipa looked away. Watching Aradia caress the teardrop-shaped pendant irritated her, for it was a habit Aradia indulged in more than Phillipa thought healthy. "She blames herself for what you had to endure, Ardy," Phillipa, the same age as Aradia's mother, commented at last.
"And I've never understood why. She did everything she could to have me released." Aradia's gaze softened. "He ignored her every attempt. It would have taken a full-scale war, and even then, I doubt we would have won. He had the might of both Necroman and Serenia behind him."
"At least he was good to you."
"He was very good to me." Aradia looked at the firefly embedded within the amber, then tucked the pendant into her bodice. "Had he not been forced to marry the Viragonian snow slug, I might still be with him."
"Can you blame the woman for not wanting you around?" Phillipa asked. "If you had been in her place, would you have allowed him to keep his mistress, as treasured as you were by him?"
"I would have gouged out her eyes, pulled out every hair on her head, and sliced away her love pearl. Then he could have kept her."
"Be thankful your Viragonian ice princess did nothing more than require her new husband to send you back to Amazeen. You could have wound up in the love dens of the common soldiers." Phillipa's voice quivered. "Or locked in the cold hell of Galrath."
"He would not have allowed that to happen."
"Who knows what a man will do once he loses interest, Ardy," Phillipa said, her words dredging up memories of a past best left buried.
Aradia shook her head, flinging away her memories of Prince Viento Sabina and the many nights of quiet sighs and loving touches in the keep at Devil's Nest. He had not only made her his woman, he had taught her what it meant to be cherished by a man, a concept unknown to the Amazeens. "If the Goddess so wills it and we can't get to Orithia, perhaps she will come under the protection of a man as honorable and gentle as was the man who held me captive."
"These are Hasdu of which you speak. There is no honor among them, lecherous fiends that they are."
"You and I both know if Mother does not meet the demands the Rysalians put forth, Orithia will be sold to the highest bidder."
"How high is high?"
"Mother offered five-hundred-thousand gold sovereigns for me, but he responded by saying ten times that much would never be enough."
Phillipa made no comment. Sometimes the pride in Aradia's voice when she spoke of the Diabolusian prince made her uneasy. Like those who rode beside them, Phillipa could not understand how Aradia could have fond memories of her imprisonment, nor why to this day--five years after her ordeal began--the young woman would not say the prince's name. Not for the first time did Phillipa wonder if Aradia had fallen in love with her captor.
"I don't know Marpe? Are you acquainted with her?" Aradia asked.
A frown drew the heavy scars on Phillipa's face downward. "I know her all too well. She is a wild girl, prone to violence. Her mother has had trouble with her since the day she took her first step. Frankly, I cannot imagine why Marpe and Orithia are good friends. They are as different as day and night."