Nobody's Goddess (32 page)

My heart skipped a beat. “Your brother?”

The lord gave me a look of bemusement. “You did not know?”

My jaw went slack. I couldn’t form the words. “Then you … you ordered your own mother’s death?”

Her own child killed her.
I couldn’t believe it. And here I’d been, thinking he was needed in the village, my heart half softening to him, even though I was still so angry with him. Until then, I’d pictured Ailill’s mother as my own. Ailill nudged his face deeper into my side. The lord laughed.

“I did. She was nothing to me. I was rather annoyed by the hold she had over my father and this brat, to tell the truth, and once my father was dead, there was no reason to suffer her any further.”

I choked. I couldn’t find the words to speak the monstrous anger that spread throughout my blood.

“Get off of her,” said the lord coldly. He reached a black-gloved hand into Ailill’s hair and tugged hard. “This one is mine.”

Ailill moaned. His face pulled backward, tears lining his cheeks.

“Let go of him!” I shouted.

The black-gloved hands let go.

Ailill and the lord both stared at me, their faces reflecting the same puzzlement I felt. And then I knew. I knew for sure what my heart had been trying to tell me.

I shot upward. “Give me my sheath and blade!”

The lord unfastened the loop, removed the sheath from his belt, and handed it to me with both hands. I snatched Elgar from him and tied it back around my waist.

“Lord Elric. I want you to listen
very
carefully. Set all of the women free from the castle and send them to the commune inside of the carriages. Tell the men you tire of them and do not want a single woman here for the rest of the night. Speak to no one of these orders—in fact, forget them as soon as you have followed my instructions. Now go. Go!”

The lord, his face as empty and nearly as pale as a specter’s, turned and left.

I looked down at Ailill and smiled. He breathed heavily, his face flooded with tears as he gazed up at me.

I grabbed his hand gently, but he tore it away.

“I think you should come with me,” I said.

Ailill shook his head and stumbled back toward the rose bush from which he had first appeared in the garden.

I heard a loud ruckus coming from the entryway beyond the garden door. Voices, whispers, screams, and gasps. The thunderous clomping of the hooves of horses from outside.

“Ailill, come with me! Hurry!” I shouted.

Ailill shot out from the rose bush to my side. We joined the bewildered rush of fleeing women, the men still shoving and pulling them this way and that.

As we climbed into a black carriage, I caught a brief glimpse of Ailill’s face in the moonlight. His eyes were wide with terror. He had seen a monster.

“We strike tonight!” I shouted. “Before the rest of the men have time to think about what might happen with all of the women gathered here in the commune.”

I stood before a roaring bonfire in the middle of the commune, still clad in my white gown and black shawl. All of the women and girls of the village crowded in a circle around me. Some still clung to each other, but quite a few more than usual now seemed ready to stand on their own.

Avery stood beside me with a few of the potential rebels. Ailill still wept into the folds of his sister’s skirt, while one of his free hands clutched Livia’s beside him.

“You have seen what I can do!” I said. “In my village, each woman commands the man who longs for her.” I laughed. “But here, the men long for every woman! I can tell the men to do as we please!”

And I had. On the way back to the commune, I’d knocked on the carriage door and ordered the guard men to go door to door in the village, bringing forth any woman or girl taken for the night to be set free and sent back to the commune. Remembering Alvilda’s words about my passed message to Master Tailor, I ordered the guards to tell any questioning man they encountered that I had ordered these women set free.

And they had been.

“So why don’t you order the men to slit their throats now?” barked one of the standing women. “If your words carry such power?”

“I could … ” To tell the truth, the idea was unsettling, even if these men were not the men I knew from my village.

Avery shook her head. “No. We do this with our own hands.” She shot me a sideways glance. “And rely on Olivière only if things go sour.”

I smiled and turned back to the crowd. “I know you’re scared. But I heard your voices calling me. I came from beyond the mountains.” It was true, after a fashion. “I’m here to show you that you can fight, that you have the power to end this nightmare! I know what it’s like to live without love. I know better than any other could. Never more! Never more should you labor and birth and die!”

A number of women raised their fists and shouted.

“Who’s with us?” I screamed.

More and more women raised their fists and shouted.

Avery cupped her hands over her mouth. “Just don’t forget to leave a few for breeding!”

Laughter broke the last of the tension that held tightly on to the crowd.

Avery grinned and placed her hands on her hips, satisfied. “Let’s go!”

The women shouted and screamed.

“Olivière,” Livia spoke quietly beside me. “Not all of us are able to go.”

I looked at Livia, her face covered in wrinkles. My gaze fell upon a few women still with child or nursing and the little girls in the crowd. Some were still scared and moved nervously to the outside of our circle.

“If you don’t feel you can fight with us, do whatever will keep you safest during our battle.”

Ailill dropped hold of Livia’s hand and Avery’s skirt and took off down the dirt path eastward.

***

“Where did Ailill go?” I asked Avery as she strode to a tool shed in the commune and ripped the doors open. She started pulling out axes, knives, pitchforks, and hoes and passed them down to her comrades, who spread them throughout the crowd of women.

She shrugged. The furor coursing throughout her body was too strong for her to bother with the safety of her brother, even if he was the only one of the two she could possibly love.

“If he’s smart, he’ll head to that cavern we went to earlier,” she said. “I’ve shown it to him before.”

I nodded, the nausea rising from my stomach slightly cooled. But still, I felt uneasy. “Why didn’t Ailill heal your mother?”

Avery grimaced and picked up her ax and gouge from the tool shed, the last weapons that remained inside. She turned them over in her hand hungrily. “He tried. She was too far gone.”

“Does their power not work on all wounds and illnesses?”

“The deeper the wound or illness, the longer it will take and the more power it requires to save someone. He would have had a better chance with a serious illness, but it would take all of his power, and it would take a long time. Tear a person into too many pieces too quickly, and no man has the power required to heal all the wounds in time to save them.”

I felt sick at the thought of Ailill weeping before his fallen mother. What did she mean, too many pieces? Had he removed her hands and feet? Her arms and legs? Did her small, innocent child—a boy who still had a heart—stand there, watching the blood pooling around the last recognizable pieces of her body until she vanished, free of her pain at last?

I’ll never forgive him. Never. I don’t care what role he played in my village.
I had the sudden urge to fight.

“That’s useful to know.” I pulled Elgar from its sheath and held it before me, allowing the moonlight to heighten its violet glow. “We’ll have to make sure we don’t leave behind too few pieces.”

Avery grinned.

***

We strode through the woods down the dirt path, my mob of women and I. Avery stood beside me, her ax raised high in the air, a battle cry escaping her lips every few moments. Every time we encountered a man between the commune and the castle, I ordered him to go inside a building and stay there until a woman came for him. I told him he was never to hurt a woman again. And I ordered him to pass along my message to any man or boy he came across in the future.

No, we would save our bloodlust for the castle. At least at first.

As we passed the area where I always broke off for the cavern, I sent my best wishes in that direction, hoping Ailill had done as Avery had said and that he was out of harm’s way.

We left the last of the trees behind us, and Avery and I stepped forward. Avery lifted her gouge in the air to signal the mob to stop behind us.

Goncalo and his usual group of men snapped out of their lazy conversations and looked at us. They seemed surprised to meet with so many pairs of defiant eyes.

Goncalo fumbled with the back of his belt and pulled out his whip. As if a whip had a chance against a blade and an ax.

“What are you women doing?” he barked.

I smiled. “We’re changing how things work around here.”

Goncalo scoffed. “I’d like to see you try.” He cracked his whip on the ground.

“Whip yourself,” I said, devouring both words with my tongue.

Goncalo did as bidden, whipping the weapon across his legs. He yowled in pain. The men behind him murmured, pulling out their blades shakily and pointing them toward us.

“Settle down,” Goncalo said to his men. “My fault. A rare mistake.”

“Whip the man next to you,” I said.

Goncalo did as bidden. The man jumped back and screamed. Blood dripped from an open wound on his arm. He lifted his other hand and pressed it over the wound, letting a violet glow pour forth. He looked at Goncalo with the confusion of an obedient dog kicked by its master. The crowd of women behind me burst into laughter.

Goncalo picked up his whip and strode toward me. The veins on his forehead throbbed to life, distorting his otherwise flawless features. “You insolent woman.”

“Let us pass,” I commanded. “All of you.”

They could wait. It was time to say goodbye once and for all to the lord in black.

The men shuffled sideways, clearing the path before us to the castle door. More than one seemed lost in thought; others, like Goncalo, shook and trembled, doing their best to fight the orders given. But they couldn’t move until my entire mob had passed through the door.

As the last woman stepped inside, Goncalo and the other men forced their way through the crowd, shoving women as they went.

I parted my lips to speak a command, but Avery thrust out her hand to cover my mouth.

“They’ll get what’s coming to them,” she said coldly. “For now, let them think they have the upper hand.”

I wondered how they would explain the whip and the way they let us pass. Perhaps they wouldn’t be willing to admit that they had been dumbfounded and obedient at a woman’s words.

“What is going on here?”

The lord entered the grand entryway from the inner garden door. I wondered briefly if he had been looking for me there. Had my orders muddled his memory, caused him to remember leaving me last at the end of our chess game? The door shut behind him, but that large crack I had noticed the first time I ventured inside the castle was present even then, and a trickle of moonlight fled into the foyer. The fire still burned brightly in the open dining room hall, but there was no longer any music, no longer any laughter.

“Lord Elric,” spattered Goncalo. “There are women walking freely out of the commune, disrespecting men, waving around those playthings—”

The lord lifted a tired hand. “Enough, Goncalo. I can see.”

Goncalo’s face burned darker, and he took his place standing behind the lord. His hand still gripped the whip’s handle and not the blade at his hips. He would regret the choice later.

The other men were not so sure of themselves. Many of them drew their swords as they gathered around the lord and Goncalo, and the rest tensed their hands on their hilts uncomfortably.

The lord put his hands on his hips. “The question is
why
are these women here?”

I put Elgar back into its sheath so that I could mimic his stance, the one that had always stirred rage inside of me.

“We come bearing a message,” I said. “And it’s for all men, not just for you, Elric.”

The lord raised an eyebrow. “You have never been one for courtesy, Olivière. I believe you are addressing your lord.”

“I have no reason to give courtesy where there is none owed.”

The lord laughed. “As disdainful as ever,
woman
—Olivière.”

He looked puzzled. I smiled. He hadn’t intended to speak my name aloud. I had ordered him to address me by my name, after all, even if I didn’t know at the time what I was doing. “One day you will surely beg to forget my name,
Elric
.”

Goncalo surged forward, cracking his whip. “You insufferable woman—”

The lord halted him with a wave of his hand.

“No, please,” said the lord. “Let her speak. She went to the trouble of bringing all of her friends for a visit. Let us hear their message, and then we can be done with this mess and punish the lot of them.”