Retribution (5 page)

Just before I made contact with Dominic’s
mind, I understood what Reynaldo wanted. He was planning an
ingenious revenge for my husband and me, if we were stupid enough
to fall for it.

Rape is rape, whether in the flesh or, like
mine, in the telepathic receptors of the brain. It is the weak
man’s revenge on his enemy, taken on the body of the innocent, the
wife or companion, the defenseless one, when the real object of the
rapist’s anger is too powerful to touch.

A man whose wife is raped has no choice—he is
obligated to kill the rapist. And Dominic, for all his ‘Graven
superiority, was still a man who had lived his entire life by
Eclipsis’s code of masculine honor. Dominic would be forced to kill
Reynaldo, with sword, like any wronged husband. It was clever of
Reynaldo to find a way to humiliate Dominic after all, while
ensuring his own quick death.

No, I decided, it would not, could not, be so
easy for him. I relaxed into the bed, trying to ease what felt like
a crushing weight on me. Let him think he had me, that I could
fight him no longer. Just let me get him out of me.

I pulled my thoughts, scattered and broken,
from the blasted edges of my mind. Considering everything Reynaldo
had endured these last three days, his mental power was most
impressive. But he would have to be weakening, while I was getting
stronger.
A mental shield, that was all it took. The first day’s
lesson at La Sapienza.

Once I formed my barrier the obscenity within
me would be forced back into the suffering, maimed shell of his own
body. He must not escape in death. Dominic would drag him home as
planned, I vowed, would flay him, mind first, then body, would peel
off each layer of skin, the muscles and nerves, sinews and tendons,
until only the brain was left intact to feel every agony. There
would be no release for him in sleep or forgetfulness, no dulling
of sensations with drugs or
crypta
. Dominic would see to
that.

No
, I answered my attacker,
I will
let you be the one to tell my lord husband of your manly deed. See
what it gets you
. I would say nothing to Dominic of what had
happened. Reynaldo could boast all he wanted. So long as I denied
it, Dominic would dismiss it as the ravings of a lunatic, driven to
the depths of madness by torture. If I was consistent in my
account, Dominic would see it as a ploy, Reynaldo’s attempt to
trick Dominic into granting him death. The more Reynaldo spoke of
it, the worse his torture would grow.

I pushed up with my back against the phantom
bloody body that lay on me, took in one long gasping breath.
Was
it worth it?
I taunted my rapist as he had taunted me.
May
my lord husband keep you alive for years
. I had my shield in
place; the mental wall slammed down with an almost audible clang.
Reynaldo was gone in an instant, the space in my mind suddenly
white and empty like a room without a roof. Empty, but not
quiet.

The groans and cries had not stopped. They
were in my head but not coming from me, and growing louder. The
pain was no longer within me, but was connected to me…

Niall
. It was Niall who was crying,
Niall who was being raped—by Dominic. I had not lost communion with
my husband. In the room next door a parallel scene to what I had
just suffered was being enacted, as Dominic forced Niall. Seemingly
in synchrony with his hated enemy, Dominic raped his beloved
companion while Reynaldo raped the wife.

Get away from me, you—
Niall’s voice,
breaking like a boy’s in his fear, was drowned out by Dominic’s
wild laugh. The inhuman sound rang in my head, the screech of a
hunting hawk preparing to stoop and kill, to tear living flesh with
its beak…

My eyes popped open. I was lying on my back,
the woman snoring beside the remains of the fire. Jana and Val
slept undisturbed. I blinked several times. The quiet was
absolute.

A dream. Just a stupid dream, the whole
thing.

It was still dark outside, with only a
glimmer of light from a setting moon. I felt at my body. No pain,
barely even a memory of it. A phantasm. Yawning, I rolled on my
side, pulled the covers up over my exposed shoulder. There was time
yet to sleep, not that I could.

When I was awakened in the predawn twilight
it was to Reynaldo’s voice.
Amalie
, he said, while I sat up
in a cold sweat.
Amalie, you know me now. I have the right. I am
your true lord husband. Tell Dominic the truth.

The intrusion was like a second rape
. Eat
shit
, I said, the disorientation of early morning making me
fall back on my Terran vocabulary.
Stay out of my mind, you
fuckhead
. Tears rolled down my cheeks and fear made me tremble.
“Eat shit, fuckhead. Leave me alone.”

Dominic’s touch brought me back to life, to
the reality of the soft bed and the embers of the dying fire. My
Terran insults made him laugh. In the first days of our marriage,
unused to being roused from deep sleep, I had responded with words
not much nicer than these to Dominic’s overenthusiastic attempts at
morning lovemaking. “I’m sorry, beloved,” he said. “But it’s time
to get ready to leave if we wish to keep our promise to Lady
Ladakh.”

Niall stood drooping in the doorway, naked,
too tired to care for propriety. Dark bruises showed against his
white skin, front and back, visible even in candlelight.

I could be seeing the marks of battle, I told
myself, not believing it. Soldiers here wear no armor other than a
thick leather coat. A heavy blow from the flat of a sword can leave
marks. But not on the legs, not the back—
The gods protect
me.
Even Niall’s long, slender cock was discolored.

Niall raised his head at my insistent touch
of communion. His eyes were wet with tears as I had never seen
them, the eyelids red and puffy. The expression on his face was
tragic, a mixture of disillusion and loss, like bereavement.

Dominic felt my shock, followed my look. “Put
some clothes on,” he said. “Unless you’re planning to visit that
boy again.” His voice betrayed no other emotion than
irritation.

I reached for Dominic with my mind but he was
closed to me. With fingers as numb as my thoughts I dressed in the
borrowed gown Lucretia had laid out for me, woke Jana and Val, and
let Dominic carry me downstairs to the waiting litter. We would not
stay for breakfast, but would eat on the road after we had traveled
an hour or two.

The fever returned, mounting higher than
ever, bringing hallucinations and delirium. Reynaldo’s ghoulish
face—matted red hair, beard streaked with blood, the hole where his
nose had been—danced before my eyes all the way home. By the time
we reached Aranyi, I was raving.

O
f our entrance into the
courtyard of Aranyi Fortress I retain few memories. We had left
Lady Ladakh’s house at dawn and made reasonably good speed on the
main trail, yet it seemed dark when our journey came to an end and
I was brought triumphantly home. Torches lit our way on the gravel
road that leads to the front entrance and flared in the sconces at
the posts of the gate. Faces peered through the murk, voices
murmured and shouted, hands were extended to bless the mistress on
her safe return. It all brought back my arrival at the bandits’
castle, the gloom and the smoky air, and made me shrink from the
press of bodies.

A tall man leaned over, dared to lay his
hands on me. His arms lifted me from the litter. It was not
Reynaldo but a darker man with a cruel face. “Leave me alone!” I
screamed. “My lord husband will kill you if you touch me.” I fought
with the last of my strength, was overpowered, and sobbed as I was
carried back to prison.

The man was laughing with pleasure at the
prize he had taken. “Yes,” he said, “your lord husband is a most
jealous man.” My words did not frighten him; he seemed to care
nothing for Dominic’s revenge.

All the others, the men and boys, the women
and the children, enjoyed the scene of rape. They lined the way,
cheering my abductor on as he carried me into the castle, grinning
and calling out their lewd suggestions, as I was conveyed, not to
the cellar, but upstairs.

Someone reached for Val. “Please,” I said,
“don’t hurt my son. I’ll do what you want, but let me keep my
baby.”

A woman’s face hung in the air above me.
“Lady Amalie,” she said. Her voice was vaguely familiar. “My lady,
you mustn’t worry. No one will hurt you now, or your children.”

Of course, Jana! How could I have
forgotten her?
I felt for the glass comb in my hair, the
priceless Aranyi heirloom. That was what the woman wanted. “Take
it,” I said. “Take my jewels and my clothes, but let me keep my
children.” I rotated the steel bracelet on my bandaged left
wrist.

There was a frightened silence, a low
disapproving hum. The woman’s face disappeared from my line of
vision and my abductor’s arms tightened around me. His pale eyes
bored into mine but I squeezed my eyelids shut and tried to plan
ahead. When he lowered me to the floor he would be off balance. I
could use the little dagger hidden in my boot to free myself.

We passed through a doorway and I was laid
down. I clawed at the man’s face with one hand, scrabbled at my
bare ankle, the boots stolen days ago.
Oh gods, Jana had it
still.
The man restrained my hands, whispering words I would
not listen to. He had me now, pinned to the floor, in the straw. It
was a large pallet, fresh and soft, almost like a bed. Once he
raped me I would have to die. ‘Graven honor demanded it. Not
crypta-death
, but bloody suicide, with a knife in my throat.
I tried again to fight him but it was useless.

Amalie
, he thought into my mind.
Don’t you know me?

It was Reynaldo after all. He had disguised
himself somehow, shown himself to me dark-haired and clean-shaven.
But I could tell. The pattern in the brain, he could not disguise
that.

Bastard!
I screamed into his mind,
knowing he disliked that word because it was true.
Eat shit, you
motherfucking bastard
. That is a deadly insult in any language.
In Eclipsian, most insults are meant, and taken, literally. Weak as
I was I could still curse him, could wish on him the worst.

Some ‘Graven have the gift of the curse, can
make their words real with the force of their thoughts. I had never
dared try before, but I put all the power of my gift into it now,
imagining the shit—hot, soft and stinking—filling his mouth,
choking him. He would die from it. I would not have to try to find
the face and body of his dead mother in his memories, the pathetic
gifted woman with
crypta
, stolen by a bandit and never
rescued, would not have to work at making Reynaldo fuck her in his
mind.

The man withdrew abruptly from my brain. I
sensed his anger, his indignant shock at the realization of my
curse words, and waited, tense and hopeless, for his assault. But
the hands that touched me next were a woman’s, with the
professional healer’s expertise: gentle confidence, unimpeded by
the amateur’s emotional qualms. She was in my mind also, feeling
carefully for the bruised areas that had known so much fear and
thwarted vengeance. I relaxed as the healing began its work, was
lulled into a dreamless sleep.

When I woke it was to semi-darkness. I tried
to look peripherally at my surroundings, afraid to turn my head and
betray that I was conscious, moving only my eyes to try to see what
kind of place I was in. It was a large room, richly furnished, the
shutters open to show summer sky, one of the moons hanging low on
the horizon. Surely I was not imprisoned, I thought more hopefully.
I remembered now, the rescue, staying at Lady Ladakh’s.

But I could see this was not a Christian
house. A large woven panel depicting the female deities Isis and
Astarte hung on the wall. On the bedside table there was a clay
statue in the form of a seated woman holding a baby. The figurine
was as detailed as a portrait, cleverly modeled to show that the
woman was ‘Gravina. Its left arm was dimpled above the elbow with
the deep scar of the marriage brand and the face was finely
sculpted and painted, with a straight nose, small mouth and
greenish hazel eyes. The baby girl in the woman’s lap was lovingly
represented, its fuzz of dark hair applied over thin
cross-hatching, its features depicted with a few strokes of the
sculptor’s stick. In a surprisingly accurate guess, its face was
shown, not as an infant’s, but as it would look in a few years,
with an aquiline nose and gray eyes.

There was only one statue in the world
exactly like this one. Silently, in my memory, I recited the words
of the inscription incised around the base. “To Her who is the
Mother of all,” it read, not naming the goddess who watches over
childbirth, “in gratitude for the safe delivery of my wife,
Amalie-Katrin, and for the life of my daughter, Jana-Eleonora. In
fulfillment of my oath: Dominic-Leandro, Margrave Aranyi.” It was a
votive statue, a replica in lesser material of the worked-glass
portrait of me and Jana that Dominic had donated to the goddess’s
shrine after my near-death giving birth to our daughter.

My room, my bed, my home. Judging by the moon
and the light, it was early morning.
How could I have been so
frightened last night, so mistaken in my thoughts?

Aware of my return to consciousness, Naomi,
the healer who serves Aranyi, rose from the truckle bed at my side.
She laid her hand lightly on my forehead.
Lady Amalie
, she
thought to me.
It is good to have you home again
. Her true
meaning, barely concealed, was clear: she was relieved that I was
myself again and knew where I was.

Even Naomi, practiced in the telepathic arts,
no stranger to the ways in which fear and sickness can derail one’s
thoughts, was uncomfortable.
What had I done or said? Or
thought? What had she picked up of Reynaldo’s intrusions?
I put
out a feeler. “Did Margrave Aranyi bring a prisoner with him?”