Boyett-Compo, Charlotte - Wyndmaster 1 (2 page)

The cell door squeaked as it was closed behind the guard’s departure and the hollow clunk of the lock

engaging sounded loud as it echoed through the long stone corridor outside the cells.

“You’re a good man, sir,” the other guard said as he and his partner left.

Alone once more in the semi-darkness of his cell, Sierran looked down at the pitiful sustenance he’d

been given then returned his gaze to the wall. Although his mouth was cotton-dry and he felt feverish, he

had no intention of drinking the water in this vile place. He knew without doubt it would make him sicker

than he already was.

“A good man,” Sierran said to himself. He lifted his head a bit higher.

And where had that gotten him? Fighting with the Ibydosian Forces against a people who had long since

been subjugated beneath the iron boot of Ibydosia and who no longer had the will to fight back.

For almost fifty years, the two warring factors in Emardia had fought for control of the country. The

Ibydosians lived in the southern portion of the lands. They were under the leadership of the Federation

which was loyal to King Edmond and Queen Tatiana of the Justonian Throne. The Emardian Guards

living in the northern portion of the country fought for a democratic government ruled entirely by the

people and without the yoke of a monarchy.

Many of Sierran's own family—staunch loyalists of the king—had been slain at the hands of the

Emardian Guard. He was the last of his bloodline left in Emardia—his parents, brothers, and three sisters

having long ago fled the war-torn country to settle inArgonne , an island country held by the Justonian

throne. When he died, there would be no one to mourn him and he courted that death with every breath

he took for he knew he was living on borrowed time. It was just a matter of the when and how of his

death that he didn’t know.

Letting his rigid shoulders relax, he winced at the fiery pull on his torn flesh. His hatred of Felix Thurston

became a burning coal in the pit of his gut.

He had good reason to despise Thurston and to wish for him the same fate the insane man had decreed

upon one of the northernmost Emardian villages.

“Take a battalion of men and eliminate the whole of Quintain,” Thurston had ordered. “I don’t want

anything living in that village when you are finished!”

It had been a reprehensible order given by a man who had lost all reason over the course of the last five

years. Sierran was convinced Thurston—having witnessed the savage destruction of the general’s own

family—had become unhinged, a snarling, foaming-at-the-mouth incompetent. Most of his orders were

outrageous and many of his junior officers found ways to circumvent them while striving to bring the

matter to the attention of the governing members of the Ibydosian Federation, the governing body who

now controlled Emardia as well as its own lands. Sierran knew it wouldn’t be long before someone—and

now he thought it might well be him—would put a dagger into the general’s evil heart.

“No, sir,” Sierran had told Thurston with an emphatic shake of his head. “There are no rebels in

Quintain. They are nothing more than a village of women, children, and the aged. To kill them would be

sinful. I won’t do it.”

"That is beside the point. They are Emardian! They must die!"

"No, sir. I will not commit such a crime against the innocent."

"You are a WyndMaster!" Thurston bellowed. "You must obey me without question!"

"A WyndMaster does not war on those unable to protect themselves, sir."

Thurston’s face had turned crimson at Sierran’s refusal to carry out the order and he had drawn back a

doubled fist to strike his subordinate. That the intended object of that hit caught the general’s fist in a

steely grip and had stared levelly into the general’s eyes without flinching had infuriated Thurston even

more than had Sierran’s rejection of his order.

“Twenty lashes!” Thurston had screamed.

And thus Sierran had ended up with his uniform shirt ripped from his back and his body stretched to the

whipping post at the mercy of Thurston’s own
ta’zeer
or whips man.

As he sat there the remainder of the night, Sierran could not stop himself from wondering what further

punishment Thurston had planned for him. That it would be brutal and unjust he had no doubt. He only

hoped he’d be man enough to take it.

Anna Celeste Allen sighed loudly as she watched the scullery maid and her lover as they met beneath the

oak tree just beyond the kitchen gardens. She was sitting in her window seat with her chin resting on the

backs of her crossed hands, doing what her father would no doubt chastise her for were he to find out.

It had been by chance that Celeste spied the lovers as she glanced out the opened window and her

attention had been caught and held as the lad pulled the maid into his arms. Such a thing was unknown to

her so she had stopped to watch, ashamed at her illicit spying but unable to look away. The sight of the

handsome young man embracing his lady then placing his lips to hers had made Celeste’s heart beat

faster and she—like any impressionable teenager—had begun to daydream. But then the lad had put a

hand to the doxie’s breast to caress her through the coarse material of her woolen gown.

“Oh, my!” Celeste said, feeling her face burning. She was shocked into utter stillness—her eyes nearly

as wide as her mouth—and when the lad’s hand had delved down the maid’s bodice, she had nearly

choked as she gasped.

Unable to step back from the window for she was rooted to the spot with shock, Celeste watched as

the maid and her lover sank to the ground. The maid lay sprawled on her back as her lover tossed her

skirts up to reveal long legs bare of stocking, garter or…

“Oh!”Celeste gasped. The maid wore no underthings at all and the juncture of her legs was thrown wide

for her lover to caress—and caress he did with a feverish intensity that stunned Celeste.

Tearing her eyes from the vulgar display of the maid’s near nudity, Celeste stared at the woman’s face as

her lover continued to knead her busily between the legs. The woman’s lips were parted, her eyes

closed, her hands buried in her lover’s dark blond hair. With the bodice of her gown pulled down over

one breast and the fiery triangle practically gleaming in the morning sun, surely the woman was headed

straight for the fires of hell!

Though she did not see what the young man pulled from his pants as he fumbled at the front of them,

Celeste nearly cried out with mortification as the woman threw her legs around her lover’s hips and

arched up to meet him, her ankles crossed over his waist.

Thrusting his lower body hard between the maid’s thighs, the young man slid his hands under the maid

and lifted her higher. Only then did Celeste look away, hurriedly getting up and moving away from the

window, putting distance between her and the temptation to see what else the brazen lad would do.

Fanning herself, Celeste fled to the safety of her bed and sat down. She was breathing so quickly she

felt lightheaded and reached out to wrap her hands around the tall mahogany four-poster column. “Oh,

my,” she whispered again.

Was that what all men and women did together?she wondered. How would she ever know when no one

could—or would—explain to her what went on behind the closed bedchamber doors of a man and his

lady?

Celeste had never known her mother—Lady Alinor had died giving birth to her only child—and those

women with whom she came into daily contact rarely spoke to her unless Celeste initiated the

conversation. The women certainly never answered the questions she asked. The healer her father had

hired to care for her over the years was a woman and it had been from her Celeste had learned of certain

taboo subjects about which her parent otherwise would not have spoken. Had it not been for Madame

DeAnce, Celeste would have believed herself bleeding to death the day her menses had begun.

“It is natural, child,” the healer had said with a
tsk
-ing sound. “Do not be afraid. It happens to all

women of your age.”

“My chest is getting bigger, too!” Celeste had complained.

“As it should,” Madame replied. “Soon, there will be hair where hair has not been before. Do not be

alarmed. That, too, is natural.”

Forbidden to speak of certain topics—such as what made women different from men and how children

came into being—Madame DeAnce could not answer many of the questions Celeste had. What she had

done, though, was hint that there were things that were natural to the world that Celeste’s father thought

inappropriate for his daughter to learn.

“He would keep me a child forever!” Celeste had complained to the healer.

“Aye,” Madame had agreed. “I believe that is so.”

“Is it wrong for a man and woman to be together?”

“No, child,” Madame stated. “It is a beautiful thing between the right man and the right woman. Love is

a wondrous gift given to us by the gods.”

And so Celeste stayed ignorant of many things her father did not deem decent for her to know. He kept

her a virtual prisoner in a satin-lined tower and away from all that might corrupt her.

Her suite of rooms—one floor up from her father’s—occupied the massive tower with its sweeping

three hundred and sixty-degree view of the surrounding countryside. Restricted to that room, Celeste

was only allowed down the stairs when accompanied by her father—which of late was infrequently the

case for he was often away on Federation business since the war with Emaria had deescalated. Her

meals were eaten in her luxurious suite but she dined alone, aching for company and something more she

could not rightly define.

On rare occasions, her father would take her riding in his buggy for a breath of the sweet country air and

especially so when the leaves upon the trees on the mountains were changing color. Even then, she

neither saw the groomsmen who had readied the buggy nor the guards at the gate who allowed them to

pass over the drawbridge.

“Where are the guards, Papa?” she’d once asked.

“You have no need to see such coarse individuals, Anna Celeste,” her father answered. “Nor do they

have the right to see you.”

Not once in her eighteen years had she ever spoken to any man other than her father. Though from time

to time she’d spied the male servants going about their business on the estate, she knew her father would

not approve of her intently watching them and she had not, until today.

She lifted her head and looked at the window beyond which temptation was drawing her. Her heart was

hammering in her chest, her hands shaking as she slid down from the bed and made her way slowly,

hesitantly, to the window. With her lower lip tucked between her teeth, she climbed up on the window

set and cautiously looked down.

Fascinating by what she was seeing—although she knew it was wrong and should she be caught,

punishment was a certainty—Celeste knelt there on the window cushion and watched. Her heart was

pounding so furiously in her chest, she was getting a headache from it but nothing could have torn her

away from her spying. She knew in some untutored part of her mind that she was observing what men

and women did with one another and the revelation was exciting. When the lad shuddered then collapsed

upon the maid, Celeste held her breath, waiting for what might come next. She was unprepared when the

lad rolled off his paramour, his lips pulling free of the maid’s bare breast.

Gasping, Celeste nearly fell from the window seat as she scrambled away from that sinful sight. Had the

lad been suckling at the maid’s breast? Surely not! Was that not an animal thing? Had she not observed

one of the stray cats feeding her brood in that fashion?

Her eyes moving back and forth as she thought about what she’d just seen, Celeste crept back to the

window but did not climb up on the window seat. Her face was hot, her breath coming in ragged little

gasps of nervousness. She hovered there with indecision for a long time so that by the time she dredged

up enough courage to take another look, the lad and the maid had vanished.

Relieved—yet oddly disappointed—Celeste went back to her bed and lay down. Her head was

throbbing unmercifully and she prayed she wasn’t getting one of her brutal migraines. Putting a hand up to

rub her temple, she could not get the image of the lad pulling away from the woman’s teat out of her

mind. Some part of that image gave her the strangest feeling and each time the picture flitted across her

mind’s eye, she would feel a tightening in the lower part of her belly and an odd heaviness between her

legs.

“Stop this, Celeste! You should not be dwelling on such sinfulness,” she cautioned herself and turned

over to bury her heated face against the silk of her pillow sham.

That what she had seen would be a sin in the eyes of her father she had no doubt. Many had been the

time over the years when she had sat through his lectures on the evil of men and to what base depravities

they could sink.

“Get down upon your knees and thank the gods that I love you as I do, Daughter,” he had often said to

her, “for I shall never let such evil lay hands to you!”

Of what depravities her father spoke she had no idea and when she would timidly venture to ask, his

eyes would bulge, his lips would peel back from his teeth, and he would extend his lecture to include