Captivity (10 page)

For what?
I was about to ask, then
realized in time that it was a diaper. Again I thanked the woman
with exaggerated courtesy. Perhaps this moment was my last chance.
“May we have another candle? The children are afraid in the
dark.”

Michaela had done with me now. “They’ll get
used to it,” she said.
Far too dangerous giving light to a
‘Gravina witch
. She moved through the doorway for the last
time, muttering to herself, “By the time we see any of it, I’ll
have earned my share of the ransom and more.” She locked the door
and we heard her footsteps going up the stairs.

Jana scowled at me with a combination of
guilt and frustration over her thwarted stratagem. “I’m sorry I ate
the food,” she said.

“Don’t be,” I said. “You can’t help me if
you’re hungry.”

“I tried to save you some.”

My heart fluttered at her courage.
Five-and-a-half years old
. “I know you did. You were very
clever and brave, but it’s not as easy as it sounds to trick people
into doing what we want.”

I sat down again, sprawling in the straw, not
bothering to avoid the wet spot from Val. This dress had known
worse in its years of wear. It smelled of unwashed body, grease and
smoke, goat and sheep and chicken shit, and menstrual blood.
Michaela’s daughter was old enough to get her period, perhaps
recently. I hugged my arms across my breasts, feeling the tight
cloth giving way across my shoulders and around my hips. The wool
irritated my skin and I fought the urge to scratch, to take the
dress off again.

I had almost nothing left now. Only my
dwindling gift, my steel bracelet, and my cloak which, thankfully,
the woman had overlooked in the dark. And one other thing. I felt
around in the straw beneath me. There it was, my spare dagger in
its boot-top sheath. I had been able to shake it out unseen when
Michaela had demanded my boots. Most ‘Gravina have only the one,
but here in the mountains, where the men fight two-handed with
sword and dagger, even the women are expected to carry a spare.

The dagger was my insurance, and Dominic’s, a
defensive weapon only. It had no prism in the handle, only a blade.
Threatened with violence and rape, the loss of honor, I was
supposed to use it to kill myself, if I could not manage suicide
with
crypta
alone. It was Dominic who had insisted I carry
it, Dominic who had taught me to use it. He had been deaf to my
protests. “The gods forbid you should ever need to use this,” he
had said, his face gray with the thought. “But a thousand times
worse if you should have to, and did not know how.”

Dominic had shown me how to find the artery
in my neck by feeling for the pulse with my fingers, had
demonstrated on himself how to hold the blade. Then he had taken me
outside to the butchering shed when a hog was to be slaughtered,
had made me cut the animal’s throat myself so I could have the
experience of slicing through living skin and flesh, would know the
level of force required, the reality of the blood.

There had been no playfulness, no
inattention, as with the riding lessons. In my communion with
Dominic, our sharing of minds, opposite yet complementary, our bond
of love, I understood Dominic’s concern. I lived in his world now,
a world where violence lurked at the edge of every trail, a threat
to any ‘Gravina who could not protect herself. I had applied myself
to the dagger training, and had killed the frantic, squealing
animal without faltering. After I had done it, I had
felt—confident. There is comfort in knowing that one need never try
to endure the unendurable.

I had carried the little dagger every day
away from home, everywhere I wore boots: to Eclipsia City and to
neighbors’ manors, to weddings and dances, holiday feasts and
naming days. It had become automatic with me, to keep it in my
boot, and it was lucky I had remembered it in time to save it.

I motioned Jana over to sit beside me,
stroking her hair when she turned her face away. The smell of the
dress repulsed her but she was trying not to show it. I unsheathed
the dagger, ran my thumb along the blade that I had been diligent
about keeping honed and clean. Jana looked around at the motion. “A
dagger!” She knew now to keep her voice down. “How?”

I showed her how I had shaken it into the
straw in the dark. My stock with her had risen sharply. “Please,
Mama, may I hold it?” As Val, like me, had had no breakfast, and
was demanding to be fed, I was glad to use this time to nurse him
while Jana entertained herself with the knife. Dreamily I watched
my daughter wield the weapon, switching it rapidly from one hand to
the other, aiming it at places on the wall, slicing the air and
bisecting pieces of straw.

Here was the unsolved part of the equation. I
had children to think of, not merely myself. Dominic and I had not
discussed this aspect of things, although I had been pregnant with
Jana during my dagger lessons. There had been no need to ask a
question to which I already knew the answer. Honor and suicide are
luxuries when one is a mother. I wouldn’t dream of killing myself,
no matter what was done to me, not while Val and Jana were at the
mercy of bandits. But a knife is always useful.

“Don’t dull the blade, sweetheart,” I said to
Jana. “We may actually need to use it.”

Jana turned to me with shining eyes. “We can
kill them all, at night when they’re asleep.”

Dominic could, I supposed. Not me. “And how
do we prevent the others from waking while we kill the first one?”
I asked, smiling at her earnest face, her body taut with coiled
energy, ready to explode into action.

“With
crypta
, Mama,” Jana said,
disappointed that I had not known this myself.

It was coming now, I thought, disillusion and
its offspring, fear. Jana would begin to wonder why I couldn’t do
more with my powers. To tell her the truth would only frighten her
needlessly.

“That’s too risky,” I said, working to keep
my voice level and calm. “Better to wait until Papa and Niall get
here. Then there’ll be three of us to work together.”

“But–” Jana frowned as she tried to balance
all the factors in her mind. “But you’ll be too hungry then!”

My daughter knew me well. I had indeed led
the soft life Michaela so resented. Even at home, with plenty of
food at every meal, I had been quick to notice my hunger, to feel
diminished by a small portion or a meal delayed an hour. Jana, like
her father, had a healthy respect for my appetite, aware that Mama,
petite though she was, required regular meals and generous
servings. With good reason: pregnant twice, nursing each child for
at least a year and a half, there would have been no virtue in
dieting.
And always the gift to feed as well
.

I patted my little pouch of stomach. “Yes,” I
said, deciding partial truth was more convincing than total denial.
“I’ll be very hungry. But I’ll be fine, with water to drink.” I
nodded at the skin of fresh water, let Jana bring it to me, and
took a few small swigs.

Jana, not wholly convinced by my words, but
unable to sustain her end of the argument any longer, resumed her
knife play. Val, never as robust as his sister, sat contentedly in
my lap, suckling determinedly, draining both breasts as he had last
night, with no solid food to slake his appetite.

Reynaldo must have thought of it, I realized,
must have learned from his own experience, the terrible effects of
starvation on the mind’s abilities. The use of
crypta
is a
physical act, no different from walking or riding in its caloric
demands. Just as the muscles require fuel to perform adequately, so
does the brain. Without the essential energy food provides, my gift
would become a passive talent, allowing me merely to receive
others’ thoughts. And without a prism or the full spectrum of
light, I had no way to do much more than listen.

I went over it all, drearily, around and
around, like riding in the Aranyi courtyard, my mind unable to
focus long on anything. For a little while my body would live off
my stored fat. My plump belly that Michaela had laughed at would
sustain me at first, but soon my body would break down its own
muscles and bones to keep me alive and to make the milk for Val. It
was as if I could sense the goodness being sucked out of my body
through my nipples into Val’s greedy little lips, could feel the
calcium draining out of my bones, taking my teeth one by one, as
Michaela’s had undoubtedly gone.

The first thing to go would be my
crypta
powers, in the body’s unreasoning, instinctive,
rationing of scarce resources. No use powering wasteful mental
activity if the rest of the body cannot function. I would be lucky
if I could manage to prevent myself and the children from
succumbing to disease.

Val’s mouth loosened at last, his head
nodded. Together we lay down in the straw, my cloak around us.
Try to conserve my strength. Lie still; move as little as
possible
. Watching Jana’s faint shadow as it played along the
wall and faded gradually with the waning daylight upstairs, I moved
in and out of a dozing sleep.

Once again I was awakened by loud voices. Reynaldo
stood in front of me, backed by some of his men for moral support.
“Where is he?” he said. He put his hands on me, like last night,
hoisting me to my feet. “Where is your lord husband with your
ransom?”

The sudden rise was too quick for me. Black
spots obscured his face. Before I could faint I sank down on the
straw, kneeling with my head hanging. “My husband?” I said in a
whisper.

Reynaldo hauled me up again, and again I
knelt, unable to stand with not enough blood to my brain. “Stand up
when I talk to you!” he screamed. His foot went back to kick me,
then he thought better of it. He kicked a clump of dirty straw
instead. “We waited all day. We will not keep you alive forever,
little lady. Your husband must bring us ransom.”

My heart and head pounded at the words.
“Eclipsia City,” I choked out the words. “When you captured us, he
was on his way to Eclipsia City.”

Reynaldo squinted at me in the darkness.
“Don’t lie to me! He was here, with you, last night. Now a whole
day has gone by with no sign of him.” He shook his fist at the air.
I warn you
, he thought into the formlessness of the
telepathic ether, hoping to hit Dominic’s mind at random,
I will
not keep your family alive forever
.

Slowly I woke to full consciousness, some
blood oozing its way up through the arteries in my neck, my mind
beginning to function. I thought to Reynaldo, more convincing than
speech,
Margrave Aranyi was in Eclipsia City last night
.

The bandit leader seized my arms, held me up
in a strong grip. He knew what it feels like, how unwanted and
unexpected physical touch is like a laceration to a telepath, while
the invasion of an unwelcome mind is like rape. He forced himself
on me deliberately.
Prove it
, he said.
Bring Margrave
Aranyi here to protect his precious little wife
.

Reynaldo’s mind slithered around inside mine
like a snake in a jar, scaly and sinuous, coiling itself through
the channels of my thought. He saw my disgust, too overwhelming for
me to conceal, and the knowledge of my reaction both enraged and
pleased him. Slowly, purposefully, he made use of the fact,
attempting the kind of sexual communion which Dominic forms so
naturally with me. All my reflexes cried out for escape, for
barriers, like shutting my mouth to shit, until my mind rebelled,
slamming down on his like the chop of an ax. But in the act of
freeing myself I did what he wanted.
Dominic!
I called to
him, a mantra of salvation, and my husband heard me and
responded.

Dominic flew to my aid like a missile. His
consciousness entered Reynaldo’s with such power that the man’s
thoughts were pulled completely out of my mind in an instant, my
arms released from his hold. Dominic knew what the bandit had been
attempting, and my husband chose an appropriate punishment. He
assaulted Reynaldo in a simulation of brutal rape, using his
telepathic abilities at an expert level of complexity, generating
in the bandit’s brain all the impressions of being anally
penetrated.

Dominic imagined himself ramming into the
bandit repeatedly in an obscene vision of sexual performance.
Reynaldo, forced to his knees by his own mind’s reception of
Dominic’s thoughts, cried out in pain, struggling to free himself,
caught in a bewildering net of violent sensations. As his body
quivered with the motion of Dominic’s thrusts, Reynaldo reached a
hand to me, pleading for release. I stared back, silent and
unmoved. Reynaldo knew it was not I who raped him. He had compelled
me to bring Dominic here; what Dominic did when he arrived was
beyond my control.

In my weakened state I shared Dominic’s mind,
easier than using my own, feeling his murderous rage at what I had
endured. Dominic’s fury produced a communion of war between us,
made us comrades in arms as I was carried along on the surge of his
emotion. I experienced my husband’s active thoughts as if it were
my body that entered Reynaldo’s, my consciousness that violated
his, sending the carefully-constructed messages of pain and
violation to his mind. Though I recoiled at this union with
Reynaldo, as repulsed as when he had forced himself on me, the
completeness of my connection with Dominic made my participation
unavoidable. I stood propped against the wall and, linked in
communion with Dominic, fucked Reynaldo until he screamed.

To Reynaldo’s men the spectacle was the more
frightening for its unintelligibility. They had no clear idea of
what was happening, saw only that their leader was having some kind
of fit, could barely speak, could not stand upright, and shook
like–
Like a man being buggered
, one man thought. But the
idea made no sense; there was no visible rapist. The men stood well
away, their hands on their weapons, muttering incantations and
making the sign against evil in my direction. “Sibyl, witch,” they
whispered of me. “Better to let them go and have done with it.”