Captivity (13 page)

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I
glanced at the innocent subject of this dreadful debate,
half-asleep in my arms. If Val had followed this proposal he gave
no hint. “Reynaldo wants ransom,” I said. “Money and goods.” There
was no point in discussing Val’s worth to me as my child. “It’s
because Val’s the heir that Reynaldo knows Papa will pay to get him
back.” Just in case she had any doubts, I wanted to reassure her,
too. “Of course, Papa will pay for all of us because he loves us.
But Reynaldo knows the heir to a Realm has to be ransomed.”

Jana frowned with impatience. The most
important point was yet to come. She couldn’t wait to construct the
labored inflected phrases of formal speech and tried Terran again.
“But Struan can be the heir!” The brilliance of her idea
exhilarated her; she was almost dancing with pleasure. “See?
Reynaldo can keep Val, and Papa can have an heir anyway!” She
looked with something approaching affection at Val, the only time
he had possessed any value. “Struan would be a good heir. Papa
likes him better.”

Val, groggy with milk, had picked up only a
little of what had been said. “
I’m
the air,” he said,
transliterating into ordinary Eclipsian. “Struan is
natural-born.
” He shut his eyes, secure in his unalterable
position in the scheme of things, and returned to his interrupted
nap.

But Jana had spoken aloud what I had seen
only too well to be the truth. Struan Ndoko was, as Val had
correctly stated, Dominic’s natural-born son, conceived and born
out of wedlock, but acknowledged as his. The boy had his mother’s
surname, my nemesis, Lady Melanie Ndoko. He had been there in
Stefan’s house along with his mother, had been able, for the first
time, to meet his father and his half siblings. For some of them,
it had been love at first sight.

It was ridiculous, I told myself, shameful,
but I couldn’t help it: I had not taken to the child, although
there was nothing objectionable about him, either in appearance or
in substance. He was tall and slim, like both his parents, with his
mother’s looks and coloring, pale red hair and a long aristocratic
face of strongly carved yet delicate features. Only something about
the set of his thin mobile lips and the round, direct stare of his
blue-green eyes betrayed the identity of his father. A handsome,
well-behaved child of eight, quiet and intelligent, he obeyed his
mother without fuss, yet possessed all the proper boyish virtues.
He handled weapons skillfully for his age and enjoyed the outdoors.
I had looked at this model child with distaste.

Lady Melanie had introduced him to us,
leading him forward to receive Dominic’s fatherly blessing. Struan
bowed gracefully to Dominic and recited the ritual greeting, “My
lord, please accept the service of a loyal son,” while Dominic
glanced from mother to son in tacit amazement. He kissed the boy on
both cheeks and responded with the appropriate reply, “I welcome,
with a father’s gratitude, so courteous an offer,” but adding his
own little embellishment: “from such a worthy young man.” Dominic
had not seen Lady Melanie or their son since shortly after the
child’s birth. This reunion, unexpected as it was, had not
displeased him.

I had felt it then, Dominic’s twinge of
guilt. Struan had been fathered deliberately. Eight years ago
Dominic had had no thought of marrying. His adopted son, Tariq
Sureddin,
vir
like his adoptive father, was no more eager to
marry than his adoptive father was. In his love for Tariq, Dominic
had decided to provide an heir of the next generation so that Tariq
need feel no pressure to marry without affection or to father a
child in a semi-commercial relationship.

Dominic had less delicacy than the younger
man; such an obligation did not disgust or trouble him. Meeting
Lady Melanie had changed the duty to a pleasure. Her brother had
been Dominic’s companion at the time, and the strong resemblance
intrigued Dominic. It had been no hardship to extend the affair to
include the sister, a joy to know that she had conceived, an easy
task to stay with her, helping her through the pregnancy and birth,
as ‘Graven custom demands. Then, duty satisfied, desire fulfilled,
Dominic had not been sorry to part. The child would stay with his
mother until it was time for Dominic to take him and rear him as
the heir to Aranyi.

By then the situation had changed. Despite
all expectations, Dominic and I had met and, linked in an intense,
irresistible connection of
crypta
, had married and produced
Jana—a daughter, beloved and desired, but not an heir. It was
through my actions three years later, choosing to bear another
child, a boy, without consulting my husband, that the balance had
been upset. Val, the legitimate son, conceived and born within the
‘Graven Rule, displaced Tariq and Struan with his first breath. And
while Dominic loved and accepted Val, had assured me that our child
meant more to him than his child with anyone else, he knew he had
not done well by his former lover or their son. Still, with eight
years of absence, the problem had faded from his mind. Now here was
the boy himself, and his mother, in the flesh, in gentle
reproach.

It had needed no prompting from Lady Melanie
for Dominic to say, frowning with compunction, “We must talk of the
boy’s future. It is a shame he should suffer for his father’s good
fortune.”

Lady Melanie smiled blandly at her former
lover, showing no hint of the emotions she must have been feeling.
“You should never blame yourself for doing as all men ought,
marrying and fathering children.” She answered Dominic in her
reserved manner that seemed to please him. “But I don’t deny I
would be grateful to hear any suggestions you might have for
Struan.”

During our stay they had talked together
often, at meals and at leisure, sitting at the hearth or riding out
together on fair days, both of them enjoying and excelling at that
activity that had never tempted me. I had not thought much of it at
first; the few scraps of conversation I had picked up did seem to
concern Struan. If there was some reminiscing involved, I could
hardly blame them after eight years. It would all be over in a
little while. We would not impose too long on Stefan’s hospitality
with a newborn baby in the house, and Lady Melanie, heir herself to
the matrilineal Ndoko Realm, and a professional seminary telepath,
had her own pressing duties to return to.

Like her father, Jana had been drawn to the
boy, her half-brother. At first the concepts had puzzled her:
Dominic’s child but not mine, a brother she had never met, who did
not live with us. But there was no jealousy in her thoughts. Struan
had not displaced her from her original solitary splendor, nor
stolen my affections. Jana had felt only curiosity at first, soon
to be replaced by a kind of love. Unlike Val, a despised baby,
Struan was older by three years, a hero, in the yawning gulfs of
childhood’s rapid development, to be idolized. Jana had followed
the boy around like a devoted dog every waking moment of the weeks
we spent with Stefan and Drusilla. Struan, kind and forbearing, had
not chased her away or tried to escape from her worshipful
attentions.

In truth they were good companions, Jana’s
strength and size compensating for the age difference, her taste in
activities the same as any boy’s. She and Struan had roamed freely
within the safety of the enclosed grounds of the manor, climbing
trees, grubbing in the shallow streams and ponds, stalking birds
and small animals, trying to hunt with short spears and snares. As
children will, they had stayed out late one evening, engrossed in
their fascinating pastimes, while Lady Melanie and I had waited and
worried, she calmly, with aristocratic control, I cursing and
frantic, until they straggled in, flushed and dirty, when supper
was almost over. We had welcomed the truants home, Melanie with a
mild reproof, I with a tirade of scolding, followed by a crushing
hug and devouring kisses, and a warning not to scare the wits out
of me again.

Jana had been sorry to part with her friend
at the end of our visit. Here, in our desperate situation, Jana saw
a way to help herself and her mother, while also benefiting her
friend. She was familiar with the concepts of inheritance, had been
told early in her life that she could never be Margrave Aranyi,
because she was a girl. It would only have been cruel to let her
grow up hoping for the impossible. Ironically, Struan, a boy, could
not inherit his mother’s eventual title, for the same arbitrary
reason of his sex. It had made another bond between them.

“I’d like Struan to be Papa’s heir,” Jana
said now. She smiled in an unnaturally shy way. “I could marry him
when I’m older. I used to want to marry Papa, but now I’d like to
marry Struan. He’s not married. He’s not even betrothed.”

“At eight,” I said, “I should hope not.” I
glanced at Val again. He remained blissfully unaware that his
sister planned to dispose of him so easily. There was no need for
me to disabuse Jana of her clever ideas, when there was no chance
of them being implemented. I contented myself with one gentle
demur. “Papa won’t let a bandit keep any of his family. It would be
dishonorable.” That ought to settle it.

Jana shrugged. As I had hoped, she had no
answer to the demands of the inflexible code of honor. “I guess a
bandit doesn’t want a stupid baby, either,” she muttered under her
breath. She paced the room, an engine of energy, while Val and I
lay back in our weakness. I scratched myself, wondering how long it
would take the rash and the bites to heal once we were home.

My motion awakened Val to the same feelings
of discomfort. “I’m itchy, Mama,” he said. “Rub my head.”

I rubbed the boils on his hot little head.
Did he have a fever? He wasn’t sneezing, had no cough. “Is your
throat sore?” I asked.

Val shook his head, rubbing against my slack
fingers. “Rub,” he said, imperious. “Rub my back.” I obeyed, using
my nails as Val wanted, first him, then me, with barely enough
strength to move my arm.

This inactivity was worse than laziness; it
was potentially fatal. Today was the first of the two days before
Dominic was to arrive. By the end of tomorrow I would be completely
helpless and useless. If I was to learn anything to help my
husband, I must do it now. My failed attempt to read Reynaldo’s
thoughts last night had undermined my confidence in my abilities.
Going in undetected seemed beyond me. If I dared not try Reynaldo
again, I thought, why not try the other bandits?

I had kept a mental distance from them so
far. What I had picked up from their minds had revealed only the
expected brutish range of concepts: desire for ransom, lewd
thoughts of me, a general and undirected violence. Probing with
revulsion from man to man now, I learned nothing to reward my
initiative. Reynaldo might be planning something innovative or
daring, but he had not shared his ideas with his troops.

There was one thing I didn’t understand. It
had to do with their daily activity, some kind of weapons practice,
but the vague images I received meant nothing to me. “The swift
spear,” was the best I could make out. Their visualizations were so
crude I knew only that they held the weapon in their hands and
aimed it at their target, a revelation of the obvious that would
help Dominic not at all. Each minute in contact with them left me
feeling weaker and more dispirited, and I stopped trying. My brain
was turning to mush.

Jana paced the room the way Dominic would
whenever he was forced into inactivity. I watched my daughter’s
feet and ankles in her little riding boots striding by below her
long skirt.
What had I seen earlier?
I struggled to recall.
What had snagged my attention, when I was too tired or distracted
to react? “Don’t watch me,” she had demanded whenever she used the
pot, and I had always obeyed. Jana was growing up, wanted her
privacy. It was a small enough gift to offer in this wretched
situation where I could do little else for her. This morning I had
watched, not on purpose, but only because I was tired, and Jana had
thought I was asleep and had not reminded me.

Breeches
, I thought. I had seen
breeches. Not the linen, feminine, riding breeches, but leather
ones, boys’ breeches. “Jana,” I said, “come here a second.” She ran
over at once, hoping I had reconsidered her proposal for Val and
Struan, and I grabbed her ankle, slid my other hand up her leg.
There they were, hidden under the skirt, the forbidden garment that
no Eclipsian female, not even a child, should ever wear.

Jana wrenched her leg out of my feeble grasp.
“You looked,” she said. “It was supposed to be a secret.” She
watched me, defiant but worried. She knew she had done wrong, far
worse than the pre-breakfast assault on Val, so much so that even
I, her loving and kind mother, might feel obligated to extract a
severe punishment.

I could never be angry over something so
fundamentally trivial. And at the moment an evil plan was hatching
in my head. “You kept that secret very well,” I said. “All this
time, with no chance to be alone.” I guessed where she had gotten
the breeches. “Struan won’t blame you. You didn’t tell.”

Jana’s face hardened. “I swore an oath with
Struan, Aranyi to Aranyi, that no one would ever know.” Horrified
at her unintended betrayal, she said, “But it was my idea. It was
my fault. I made him do it.”

That I could well believe. Jana had always
been hampered by her long skirts, had pleaded with me to let her
wear breeches, to no avail. However I might be tempted to humor her
at home, I would not shame Dominic in public by exposing his
daughter as unfeminine. With her new companion and their athletic
activities, Jana had felt the handicap more than ever, and had
found an obvious solution. She must have persuaded Struan to give
her a pair of his old breeches, too small now, that Lady Melanie
had brought for Stefan’s new baby, for him to wear when he was
older. I very much doubted that Struan, the paragon, had the
imagination for such an improper suggestion. “You could corrupt a
saint, and he’d thank you for the favor,” I said.