Captivity (15 page)

The nursery woman looked up, awakened from a
nap. “What’s all that fucking noise?” She saw Jana racing away.
“Bloody boys. You keep away from those chickens, you little
bastard.” She made no move in pursuit, knew a boy was impossible to
catch.

Jana pounded down the stairs, breathless and
laughing, pushed into the unlocked door. I closed it quickly,
turned the squeaky bolt, my inner flame pulsing with its eerie blue
light as I worked. I was shaking, faint but jubilant. “You
darling,” I said. “Come here, you fearless commando, let me give
you a hug.”

Jana grinned with pride but kept her
distance. “You’ll break the eggs, Mama.” She put down the pail of
milk, felt inside her shirt. She brought out six tiny eggs and set
them down carefully on the ledge beside the smear of wax from the
old candle.

I lifted the pail, my hands and arms
trembling with the weight. Jana helped to steady it while I
swallowed in great gulps. It was warm and thin, but it tasted like
nectar to me. I drank half of what Jana had brought. “Now you have
some,” I said, “before I hog it all.”

Jana took a few swigs and stuck her tongue
out in disgust. “Yuck,” she said. “That tastes like horse piss.”
She never wasted a chance to talk like a soldier. With typical
childish pleasure at a revolting idea, she added, “I bet they use
that bucket for—”

“No, they don’t,” I said as I examined the
eggs. Two of them would make one normal egg. I picked up the
biggest, tipped my head back, and cracked the egg into my open
mouth. A few bits of shell went down along with the unbroken yolk
and the white. Clear, viscous strings stretched from my chin to the
shell, and I wiped them away, licking my hand. I took another egg,
repeated the process. The rest I would save for later.

I looked anxiously at Val. The poor diet had
changed my bright, inquisitive, talkative little hellion of a boy
into a docile, pathetic baby. “Open your mouth and close your
eyes,” I said to him. He would never swallow a raw egg except by
trickery.

Jana’s smile changed to a scowl. “I didn’t
get them for him,” she said. “He’s all right. He can nurse.”

I wanted her to understand. “Sweetheart,” I
said, “all the nursing makes me weaker. If he can eat something, it
will make things better for me, too.”

Sorry now for her unintended hurt, Jana
turned her back in defeat.

I cracked the egg into Val’s open mouth. He
swallowed automatically, then opened his eyes wide in outrage.
“Wasn’t that good?” I said in a high, artificial voice. “Yum, yum!”
I rubbed his stomach. “Yummy in your tummy.”

“That did me greatly disgust.” Val, his trust
in me betrayed, spoke in formal speech. He clamped his lips against
any further indignities and turned his head away. In a few minutes
he fastened onto my sore nipple again, sucking for dear life. I
felt like the goats, underfed and over-milked.

Hoping to return Jana to her happy mood, and
searching for a way to decrease the hatred between my two children,
I told my daughter there was something we had to get clear. Jana
stared at my stern voice. “Papa tells you about his battles,
doesn’t he?” I began. “And you listen to his men.”

Jana agreed, sitting beside me in friendly
companionship, relieved to have avoided a lecture, and glad to be
discussing something interesting. “They always win,” she said.
“They’ll fight Reynaldo and his bandits and kill them all.”

“Yes,” I said, hoping the last statement was
a prophecy. “They have won all their battles up to now. And do you
know why?”

Jana gave the question a great deal of
thought. “Because Papa knows everything about fighting,” she said.
“He teaches them.”

I accepted this explanation. “And when Papa
decides they’ve learned enough, he lets them wear the Aranyi
uniform,” I said. “Even if they’re not Aranyi by birth. Even if
some of them don’t like each other, even if they come from families
who have a blood feud between them. Isn’t that right?”

Jana nodded uneasily. She could see a little
of where this was going. “Papa says they must learn to fight as a
unit. He says that when they pledge to Aranyi all personal enemies
must be put aside.”

“Enmities,” I said. “That’s right. Now, you
see my point, don’t you? You, and I, and Val, are part of Aranyi.”
I held out my left arm with its deep, puckered scar of the marriage
brand. “I pledged to Aranyi when I married Papa, but you had no
choice. You were born Aranyi.” I stared into my daughter’s cold,
pale eyes. “Yet I think you’re proud to be Aranyi, aren’t you, even
if you didn’t choose it?”

Jana took the bait. “Of course I am!” she
shouted while I shushed her. “Aranyi is the best.”

“Well, then,” I said, “Val is in the same
position. He’s Aranyi by birth, whether you like him or not. And no
matter how you feel about each other, you are both on the same
side. Enemies of Aranyi are your enemies. You are not each other’s
enemy.”

Jana looked ready to cry. “But,” she began.
She wouldn’t say it aloud, but I read her unspoken thought.
Val’s not a soldier. He’s not good for anything
.

I spoke to the thoughts. “I’m not a soldier,
either. And right now I’m not good for much. But look how you
helped me, just the way an Aranyi soldier would help another who
was sick or wounded.” I waited while Jana pondered the
implications. “We’re Papa’s family,” I said before her attention
wandered. “All three of us. We’re Aranyi. And we’ll work together
here and get out of this together.”

“And Niall,” Jana said. “Niall is Aranyi,
too. He’s part of the family.” She spoke as if I had deliberately
omitted him.

“That’s right,” I said. Niall’s inclusion
reinforced the argument of my little homily. “Niall is Aranyi while
he’s Papa’s
companion
. He’ll be coming with Papa to rescue
us. And he’ll help us, all of us, even though he is Galloway by
birth, not Aranyi.”

Jana hadn’t always been Niall’s champion. It
had been a hard transition for her when Stefan left to start his
own family. Stefan had been Dominic’s companion since before Jana
was born, before Dominic and I had married. He had been like a
third parent for Jana. And when Jana had barely turned four, he had
deserted us, or so it had seemed, marrying Drusilla Ladakh and
setting up his own household a full day’s ride away on his bride’s
dowry land.

The timing had been less than ideal, coming
not long after the arrival of the hated baby brother. Every day
Jana had asked when Stefan was coming back. And Dominic, feeling
rather deserted himself but too proud to admit it, had not been
very helpful, answering her questions with sour clichés like “when
streams flow uphill,” and “when there’s no snow in winter.”

A few months later, when Niall had joined the
family, Jana had been standoffish at first, out of loyalty to her
first love. Gradually, Jana decided to accept one of the newcomers.
Niall, unlike the mewling infant, had attractive qualities. He
could throw a knife backwards over his shoulder without looking,
and hit a spot marked on the wall. He could ride a horse while
crouched down on the side of the animal, one foot in the stirrup,
and spear a rabbit or, possibly, a man. Dominic had forbidden Niall
to show this trick to Jana any more, saying he was too old to risk
a heart attack every time Jana went riding. Nor were Niall’s
abilities all athletic. He was educated, could recite great chunks
of epic poetry, or sing them in a warm baritone that brought tears
to the eyes. He knew magic and card tricks, and could produce
trinkets or nuts from Jana’s ears at unexpected moments.

In fact, Niall was perfect, and Jana had let
him know it. If Struan was a hero, Niall was a god. And he was not
too proud, at nineteen, to be pleased by such recognition. He
called Jana the Queen of Swords, after a figure on a deck of cards,
and he also called her his betrothed, in a high-pitched, simpering
voice, so that Jana knew he was only teasing and enjoyed the game.
He tugged at her skirts and ruffled her hair, and won her over so
thoroughly that, when we visited the beloved Stefan at last, Jana
had been smug. She, and Papa, had someone better now. No need to
feel sorry for us.

“How can you think of marrying Struan,” I
asked now, “since you’re betrothed to Niall?” I wanted to enter her
game, to let Jana know there were to be no hard feelings over all
the rough words that had been said in the past couple of days.

“We’re not really betrothed,” Jana said.
“Niall is
vir
. He says he won’t ever marry a woman.” She
spoke solemnly, with obvious pride at being entrusted with her
god’s deepest secrets.

I doubted that Niall, mature though he was
for his soon-to-be-twenty years, could be so certain. “I see,” I
said, smiling. “Like Papa.”

Jana opened and shut her mouth, then let it
pass.

I decided to risk standing up. The food,
little as it was, had given me a brief surge of energy. We had half
of half a pail of milk left, and three eggs. Supper, if I could
hide it. If I could continue to eat I could restore my
crypta
’s strength, could be more than a sack of potatoes for
Dominic to sling over his saddle on the way home. I put the eggs in
the milk, set the pail behind the door. “When Michaela brings
supper, eat in the doorway, so she won’t see behind the door,” I
said to Jana.

Jana nodded. She understood things like that.
“Let me go out again,” she said. “It was easy. I can get more food.
I can find out things.”

“We’ll see,” I said. After tomorrow, I could
hope for rescue. One more day to survive until Dominic got here. If
things looked as safe as today, maybe I’d risk it. But I was never
one to press my luck.

Jana spent the rest of the day quietly. She
climbed to the window grate a few times, but there was little to
see. Later, as the light faded, the men and women came back from
their outdoor activities and the women prepared the evening meal.
We heard the slap of bare feet on the stairs, Michaela bringing
supper. Jana put the dress on over her shirt and breeches while I
remembered her shorn hair.

I snatched up my cloak from the bedding
straw. “Put this over your head,” I said in a whisper. “Like a
shawl. If she asks, say you’re cold. And stay by the door.”

Michaela paid little attention to us. She had
only one question for me. “Is it true that bracelet can’t come
off?”

I showed it to her, unconcerned by any darker
implications. This was one thing they wouldn’t get from me. “When
it’s new, it slides over the hand easily,” I said, proud of the
technology I did not fully understand. “But the molecules of steel
contract over time, until it’s a snug fit at the wrist.” I slid a
fingertip under the bracelet, wedging it tight. “I’ll be buried
wearing this bracelet.”

“That’s a waste of good steel!” Michaela
said. “Don’t you ‘Graven have any sense?” She thought of the
answer. “It’s because you lot have never been hungry. But you know
what it’s like now, don’t you?”

I said that I did indeed.

After she was gone, I drank the rest of the
milk and ate the eggs with perverse pleasure at the deception. I
would sleep better tonight, with something in my stomach. But first
I would make another attempt at reading Reynaldo’s mind.

I went more carefully than before, expecting
the man’s deranged consciousness to sound the alert at any moment.
He was wary as a hunted animal, reacting to any penetration with
alarm, like a deer lifting its head at stealthy footfalls. I had
learned to infiltrate people’s brains without betraying myself, but
spying on Reynaldo was like fishing for sharks, to be pulled into
the water and devoured instead by one’s prey. As I entered his mind
at last, I stayed on the most superficial level of sight and
sensation, waiting to see if there was any reaction before going
deeper.

Tonight Reynaldo was relaxed and my intrusion
was not detected. Lounging by his place near the front of the hall,
he saw the young girl, Michaela’s daughter, running by as she
helped her mother serve supper. “Come here, you,” he said, grinning
in what was supposed to be a friendly way.

The girl hesitated, but Reynaldo was not to
be disobeyed. As she approached, his foot shot out, hooking her
leg. She fell heavily, the breath knocked out of her. Reynaldo
knelt with his weight on her legs, preventing her from rising.
“Where did you get that dress?” he asked, the transition from calm
to rage so sudden I gasped in fear in my cell. He was so angry he
could hardly spit the words out.

The girl was winded and afraid. She tried to
answer, but the words wouldn’t come. Reynaldo lowered his inner
eyelids, a reptilian mask that frightens the ungifted even if it
makes little difference to close-range thought-reading. I felt him
use his
crypta
, picking the answer out of her consciousness.
I could share his thoughts now, and the girl’s, with my own
reviving power.

While I watched through her eyes, Reynaldo
opened his breeches, the girl still pinned beneath him, and pushed
up the skirt of her dress—my dress. He entered the girl roughly,
without warning, worse than how most men would treat a whore, while
she screamed and struggled. He raped her, much as Dominic had raped
him last night, mechanically, brutally, and this rape was very
real.

I shuddered and recoiled from the girl’s
pain, jumping out of her mind and into Reynaldo’s to spare myself.
I felt trapped, unable to do the obvious sensible thing and sever
contact with both of them. The girl tried to break free; when she
knew it was hopeless she lay as still as she could, sobbing like a
child, while the assault continued. A few men watched, laughing.
Most people ignored the scene altogether.

Reynaldo sensed my presence in his
mind—perhaps he had known of it all along—and spared a thought for
me.
I’m imagining it’s you
, he said to the rhythm of his
thrusts.
It’s you I’m fucking
. The thought extended his
flagging potency. He lowered his head to the girl’s heaving chest,
snuffling at the material of the dress.
Your dress, your smell.
You’ll cry like this when I do it to you
.