Rogue's Pawn (4 page)

He sat on the bed again, frowned at my right hand still chained up to the hook and reached up to release it. He laid my hand down to rest on my stomach, smoothing the small wound on my finger with what I would have called tenderness, if not for the cool remoteness of his face. I could feel anger that wasn’t mine, a low tone in the background, along with several other muddier emotions. They were coming from him. He was upset.

“No,” he said, hand still over mine. “There’s a great deal going on you don’t understand, little girl. Can we focus on solving the immediate problem, please? Since it is
your
problem, not anyone else’s?”

I tried to be still and thought of a calm lake, no fish.

“That’s a start. You’re still thinking of
something,
but at least it’s something quiet for once.” He smirked at me. “Now, it may have escaped your attention, but you were recently savaged by a wild beast. You’re injured, you will not eat or drink—yes, I could hear
that
from downstairs, speaking of shouting—and we cannot use magic to heal you without releasing you from the silver, at which point you would likely destroy us all by accidentally setting off your nuclear warhead.”

His words settled into my spinning mind, the implications finally becoming clear.
I can do magic?
I asked the question as quietly and clearly as I could manage.

He regarded me with a mixture of amusement and sympathy. “Yes. Of course. What did you think you were doing?”

I didn’t know. I suppose I’d done my usual thing and had avoided thinking about it directly. Not that I’d had much leisure for contemplation.

“The crux of it is, you are a natural sorceress, but you are not natural to this place. You are like a diseased predator—dangerous and unable to control yourself. That’s why you were stopped.”

His eyes dark, he leaned forward and gently touched my throat. I gasped and my head spun as the pain reared up. He stood abruptly. Paced across the room, steps a sharp clip. He returned from the far corner with a silver hand mirror.

“Allow me to elucidate.” He held up the mirror.

My throat looked like it had been torn out.

Chapter
Four

In Which Quandaries Are Addressed

Why aren’t I dead?

My instructor sighed.

“At last she comprehends.” He started to lower the mirror but I managed to grab it from him, the silver chain chiming softly, and hold it up for myself. “The short answer to that is because you don’t want to be. Also I’m reliably informed that it’s not quite as bad as it looks. But then, don’t you think those Healer types all say that kind of thing?” He sounded irritated but genuinely interested in my opinion.

I tore my eyes away from the reflection, trying to form a clear response from the swirl of my thoughts, but he waved his elegant hand at me.

“Never mind. I digress and you have better things to think about. Go ahead and look your fill.”

He resumed his measured pacing, which I’d already come to think of as characteristic, staying quiet while I examined the damage.

It did seem to be somewhat less awful than at first glance. Dried blood—with bright fresh dribbles here and there—formed a contorted mass that obscured most everything else. I reached up with my left hand to gingerly probe the tissue, hissing at the fierce sting. There were definitely deep holes where the teeth had pierced the skin deep into the underlying muscle. The ridge of my larynx stood intact but massively bruised. Why it wasn’t crushed or how the Dog missed my carotids on either side was a miracle. However, unless they communicated telepathically with bacteria here, making peace treaties with the little beasties, I would be looking at serious infection problems very soon. It seemed cleaning the damn wound would be a great non-magical first step and then maybe some old-fashioned stitches. I laid the mirror facedown on my belly and looked at the stone ceiling.

Okay, Instructor, what now?
I tried to project gently.

“Still too loud,” he said from the window. “And call me Rogue—that’s my name.” I snorted out a painful giggle and he paced into my view. “I take it that translated oddly? Show me a picture of what that word means to you.”

I pictured Johnny Depp in
Pirates of the Caribbean,
scraped and bruised from escapades, a bottle of booze in one hand and a couple of girls in the other, wicked mischief on his face.

Rogue laughed, then winked at me. I found myself staring at his darkly glowing eyes.

“Not far off, really. You do envision detailed pictures—explains a great deal.” He sat on the bed again and smoothly withdrew the mirror from my hands. “Now to respond to what you were thinking while you examined your injuries, which I could quite clearly hear with no effort, since you have an unfortunate tendency to keep a most audible running commentary in your head. Yes, you can and likely will get an infection—I have no idea what the small beasties were that you were thinking of, though they sound most intriguing. Yes, we can wash you—believe me we’d love to—and we can stitch you up.”

“However—” and now he looked steadily into my eyes, “—it will hurt. Without magic we have no way to deaden the pain.”

No anesthetic, of course. Duh.

“Interesting concept, but no, no liquid that can be injected so you don’t feel the pain. Normally our healers work with a Familiar that specializes in pain removal—they’re quite good. And popular, as I’m sure you can imagine,” he added with an impish grin. An image flashed through my mind of a ball with furious endless dancing.

Wait—did I get that image from him?

“Yes, and you could hear more, if only you were quiet long enough to hear something besides your own internal—very loud—babbling.”

I pictured Johnny Depp again and smashed the rum bottle over his head, then smiled sweetly at Rogue, though I immediately regretted the searing pull on my neck muscles.

“And
that,
my little chit, is why we don’t dare take the silver off of you, and why it will take weeks for you to heal instead of an hour, if you don’t die first.”

Rogue stood, taking the mirror with him, took a few steps and paused with his back to me, the long tail of his hair caught in a leather tie, then spilling down in a perfect fall of jet. Tension rippled through his shoulders and I cringed. He was genuinely pissed. Maybe not just at me. Being as quiet and still as I could, I reached a finger of myself toward him…and caught an image of me in the aspen grove, tying a lock of my hair to a tree. Triumph. Possessiveness. Followed by…guilt?

What?
I thought at him, struggling to sit up, ignoring the searing pain.
What happened? Were you
there?

Rogue clapped his hands against his skull, dropping the hand mirror, which shattered on the unforgiving stone.

“By Titania, woman!” he roared at me. “Turn the volume
down!
” His eyes blazed blue lightning, the thorns on his cheek accentuating the snarl.

I quailed, my head spinning dizzily. I had failed yet again. At some point, I could quit just reacting and get a grip.

I apologize,
I thought in a whisper.

Rogue rubbed his temple and grudgingly nodded. “Better. And no, I won’t answer your questions until you demonstrate you can handle the answers. The very fact that you pulled that image out of
my
head—and yes, you yanked it out from a deeper level than you ought to be able to—only further proves what your detractors claim, so you’d better get that control you keep envisioning and never do that kind of thing to anyone else because they will assuredly kill you on the spot.” His face was black lines frozen in ice. “Believe me, no one here would mourn your passing.”

Guess he wasn’t my ally then.

“No,” he confirmed. “You are a child in the wilderness. You are without friends.” He stalked toward me. “Your only hope lies in getting some level of strength back so you can be trained to be of some use, rather than a threat. Or a liability.”

“Now observe.” He stepped aside. “Can you see where I dropped the mirror when you so rudely and arrogantly
shrieked
in my head?”

Yes.
I shaded the thought with contrition.

“Better, but leave the emotion out.” Rogue waved his long-fingered hand at the shards on the floor, then the intact mirror was in his hand, the floor clean as if it never happened. He arched a knife-edged brow at me and set it back on some object across the room.

He clasped his hands behind his back. “That could be you—if only.”

If only. If I could keep my thoughts quiet long enough for someone to heal me.

How long?
I whispered.
How long would I have to keep my head clear?

He watched me gravely. “Five minutes, probably. And don’t you dare think that’s not a very long time because in this little interview you haven’t been able to be quiet for longer than ten to fifteen seconds at a time.”

True. I could kid myself I had the mental focus to not think of anything in all that time, but I didn’t. I had tried meditating, but I always starting thinking of things to do. Running conversations with people in my head.

“Well, at least you’re no fool,” Rogue commented, which didn’t sound like much of a compliment.

Could I just stay quiet long enough for the magical anesthesiologist to put me out?

Rogue cocked his left eyebrow, the sharp spine above it rising also. “That could work. Though it has to be something you want with all your heart. This would be a deeper unconsciousness than just being knocked out like you were before. We can’t afford to have any stray dream-thoughts leak out. If you fight it in any way, you could blast our Healer’s Familiar, which I don’t think I need to tell you, would not add to your popularity and in fact, would ensure your death sentence.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Death sentence over my head, I get it already.
But I kept the thought deep.

“Close. I almost couldn’t hear that.”

I was tired. In every way a person could be. Vultures of despair lurked in the corners of my mind, circling. Organize your options, I ordered myself.

1. Endure the pain of cleaning, disinfection and stitches on traumatized deep tissue, then spend weeks convalescing chained to this bed, surrounded by people hoping to kill me.

2. Attempt to control myself long enough to be knocked unconscious, risking the possibility that I could harm someone else and likely be killed.

3. Do nothing and die here of starvation and infection.

Rogue regarded me. “I must say, you do have interesting thoughts when you’re not running in circles. So which of your three options will it be?”

I have to try
.
Will someone be ready to stop me if it looks like I’ll lose it and hurt someone?

Rogue nodded. “I’ll kill you myself.”

Chapter
Five

In Which Surcease Is Offered

So it came to be that I was surrounded by five women, a cat, and Rogue with a silver-bladed knife at my throat. At least none of the women were Nasty Tinker Bell.

“Relax,” Rogue murmured in my ear from his position next to my face.

This wasn’t easy to do, what with the knife and all. However, I was concentrating on being the most Zen I could be. Which was so not my forte.

They’d pulled the wooden bed out from the wall, and me along with it. As the bed was really just a simple frame with a pallet over it, this made it a good working surface—no headboard or footboard to get in the way. Turned out I was only chained to the bed frame and not to any iron rings in the wall. Why this seemed better, I couldn’t say. It just was. Plus, now I had a clear view of the door and everyone who came and went.

If I survived, I should probably start planning some kind of escape. And getting home.

Four of the women came in almost immediately after I agreed to the plan, answering Rogue’s verbal call out the door. Maybe not everyone was telepathic. The women were clearly of the same tribe of whatever they were, with long bones and large eyes, though several of them were significantly shorter—perhaps shorter than my own five-four. One of the more petite women had a striking pattern on her face similar to Rogue’s but with a different theme, which made me think of moth wings and moonlight.

None of them looked directly at me, as if they were afraid. A short brunette, with a plumper figure and the sensuous mouth of an odalisque, looked with interest at my dress, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. Rogue had directed one to stand at each corner of the bed. He gave each a silver key, then fetched the knife from the table by the far wall, where it had been lying all this time next to the hand mirror. Interview tools.

Rogue knelt down behind my head, knife in his right hand up under my chin, with the blade biased to my left, so he could make a good strong stroke. Then he nodded to the moth-woman and she went to open the door, standing back respectfully for the woman who entered.

I think I would have known her for a healer anywhere. She radiated a sense of restorative serenity that felt like cool water on a hot day, along with the godlike arrogance of a brain surgeon. Draped in layers of green, she glided across the room, earth-brown hair trailing down her back and onto the floor, a train behind her. A tortoiseshell cat trotted by her side. I felt a pang for Isabel but let it sink deep into my Zen-ness.

She sat on the bed next to my hip—I should set out a guest pillow there or something—lifting my hand as she did so, as if checking for my pulse, though her fingers were nowhere near the pulse point, all the while searching my eyes.

“You let it go long,” she said to Rogue, with some asperity.

“It couldn’t be helped—it was her decision to make.”

“Going soft, Lord Rogue?” Then she clicked her tongue and the cat leaped onto her lap, gazing at me with bright inscrutable eyes. “I am Healer and this is Darling.”

This literal translation thing was going to be totally unhelpful. Hopefully not all their names would be descriptions of character or professional occupations.

Healer stroked my hand. “Right now you are too injured to understand much.”

I caught a definite sense from her that she didn’t expect me to be all that bright, even if I wasn’t injured. Rogue returned my questioning gaze soberly, just the left side of his mouth cocked up in a twist accentuated by the inky pattern around it.

“Look at me.” Healer squeezed my hand to regain my attention. “Rogue, we need her as calm as possible—try to be helpful. Soothe her.”

Ha to that. The man had a knife at my throat. I could feel the keen edge of it, just brushing the skin under my ear. Rogue put his cheek down next to mine on the side away from the knife. I didn’t want him smelling my disgusting hair and tried to move away, but he put his left hand on my other cheek and held me firm. He lightly rubbed the patterned side of his face against me. Velvet smooth.

The heat of him felt good. With his left hand Rogue stroked my cheekbone. My eyes drifted closed and the hysteria melted away. So tired. I floated.

“Good,” Healer murmured. “Now Darling will lie with you. He will only soothe you, just like your own Familiar. Feel that attachment to her and let him settle on you.”

The kitty stepped onto my belly, padding delicately up to sink down on my chest over my heart. His hind end draped over my stomach. His purr filled my blood and it felt just like Isabel had crept up to cuddle while I slept, a warm blanket draped over me.

“Cat’s purrs are wonderfully healing. That’s why they survive impact and injury so well. Darling will also remove your pain and put you to sleep. You’ll let him. Do you trust him? Tell us in your head how you feel.”

I trust the kitty
. I was relieved to find it was true.

“She’s so loud.” Healer sounded annoyed.

“You have no idea,” Rogue said beside my ear. I tensed at the irony in his voice. “Shhhh,” he said. “Just relax, no worries.” Other words followed, sounds that had sense in themselves but connected in nonsense like a lullaby I’d known once but since forgotten. They lulled me. Darling purred, softly warm on my chest.

“Ladies,” said the healer, “insert your keys, but do not turn them yet.” Their cool hands clasped my wrists and ankles. Metal links softly chimed.

“Now,” Healer began. Paused. “Do we know her name?”

“Gwynn,” Rogue murmured beside my head. Something stirred in me to protest that wasn’t exactly right, but he crooned in my ear, “All is well, lovely Gwynn,” and I sank back down into my half-sleep, yielding to the exhaustion.

“Yes, so tired, time to sleep, Gwynn,” Healer crooned hypnotically. “Open your eyes, Gwynn, just enough to see Darling.” I struggled to raise my lids to find the cat had inched up enough that I could look into his eyes. They were the green of new leaves in spring.
Don’t think.
I tried to let the thoughts spin away.

“Look at Darling. Let him lead you into sleep. Be without thought. Forget we are here. Quietly and gently, ladies.”

The silver fell away and I felt a spark of panic. Rogue tensed, a quiver running through him. Their wariness and fear rose up around me. This had to be how the tiger in the zoo felt, being anesthetized for some surgery or tooth-cleaning. The knife bit into the flesh under my ear.

“Control!” Rogue hissed.

I pressed my cheek into his and dissolved the image of the tiger into tiny bits.

“Look at Darling!” Healer urged. “Follow Darling.”

I focused again on the cat’s eyes, let go of something tight in myself. I threw it into the green depths, slumberous, beckoning. I could do this little thing. I followed him down and away.

* * *

This time when I woke, at least I knew where I was.

Not in the grander scheme of things, but at least the same stone ceiling greeted me. I appeared to be in the middle of the room still. Amazing what a relief it can be to have the world
not
change while you’re unconscious. I stretched and a great rush of well-being filled me. A sense of joy, even. I probably deserved to be happy, since I was still alive and not bleeding out like a kosher lamb. But it was more than that—I felt better than I could ever remember feeling. I touched my throat. Smooth, intact—and encircled by a metal collar.

Nice.

Ready to try the sitting-up thing again, I raised myself on elbows, delighted that my head didn’t swim. One happy development—though I once again wore the silver cuffs on my ankles and wrists, they were no longer attached to chains. Unfortunately, however, my hair seemed to be still glued to the back of my head in a disgusting mass. You’d think they could have cleaned me up a little.

Spotting a mirror on the opposite wall, I hopped off the bed and padded barefoot over to it. The hand mirror lay on the wooden cabinet. No knife.

I looked like death warmed over.

Maybe death microwaved—because my eyes shone and my complexion looked fantastic. I could be almost pretty, if I weren’t such a freaking mess. The final tattered remnants of party makeup clung to the corners of my eyes and ran in smudged dribbles on my cheeks. The hair and dress were beyond belief. Kind of a Medusa does Ann Taylor look. Not good. The black of the dress did its best to absorb the bloodstains and various other fluids I didn’t want to contemplate, but it had been pushed to the limits of the fabric and now looked uncomfortably reminiscent of the battered exoskeleton of some unfortunate squashed beetle. I wet my fingers and wiped the cosmetic dregs off as best I could. I tried to finger-comb my hair, only to fail utterly. The stuff felt shellacked. How long had I been out?

The door opened and Healer walked in. After unlocking the door. I was unchained, but not free-range, apparently.

“You’ve been out for a full moonrise and moonset,” she said to me, which explained why the light seemed much the same. As soon as she left I would look out the window—said something about me, I guess, that I’d beelined for the mirror first. “And work on toning down that volume or Rogue will be in here shortly—he’s not very patient about that sort of thing.”

Nor was she, I recalled.
You are without friends.

“Can you say something?”

“Thank you, Healer,” I tried.

“You are most welcome. We can discuss payment later.” Approaching me, she held up her hands. “Tilt your head back.” Her palms tickled me with little points of heat as she ran them over my throat. She nodded to herself and backed up a step, rubbing her hands briskly, like a surgeon snapping off her latex gloves after an examination.

Payment. What kind of currency could they possibly use—and how would I get some? Escape could solve that problem—get free and ditch the bills in one fell swoop. Not very honorable, but ethics seemed especially gray under the circumstances.

“How can your magic work, if I’m wearing these?” I held up my arms, and the wristbands gleamed dully in the misty light.

Healer smiled serenely, a practiced look that began to grate on me. She had her share of Rogue’s and Nasty Tinker Bell’s vast superiority. Didn’t bode well for me that I was already wearing thin on it.

“There are many things in what you are calling magic, Gwynn. In fact, what you mean right now behind that word doesn’t apply at all. It’s more like the mind-to-mind talking that you’ve been doing—”

“Telepathy.”

She frowned. “That’s almost right. The healing takes magic that can be blocked through certain measures.” She gestured to the collar around my throat. “Obviously we couldn’t take this precaution before, but around the throat is the second-best possible containment.”

I knew right then I never wanted to find out what they thought the best containment was. Probably something like the man in the iron mask wore. Serious heebie-jeebies on that.

“But in the same way that Lord Rogue and I can still hear your thoughts, I can sense how your body is doing. Which seems to be quite well. I fixed other things while I was at it—you won’t need those glass slips in your eyes to assist your vision, though that was a clever idea of yours. And I took out the poisonous mercury in your teeth—was that a punishment for something?”

“What, my fillings?”

“Yes, they packed it into your teeth, which I, naturally, fixed. What a barbaric people you must come from, to punch little holes in your teeth and fill them with poison.”

Instead of gritting my teeth, I ran my tongue over them to find they were smooth, without any rough edges. And how had I not noticed my contacts were gone?

“You’ll find us much more civilized,” she assured me. “Lord Rogue treats his pets very well, in general. Not like some you could be sent to.”

She was really too much. Of course, there I was in my little doggie collar, so who was I to argue?

My palms oozed cold sweat and my heart gave a hard thump. Now that I wasn’t dying, I had the wit to panic about being trapped. Not caring that Healer watched me, I went to look out the window.

Nothing but fog, deep and impenetrable. Same thing out the other window. The outside wall was the same gray stone as inside, but disappeared into the mist after a few feet. I could possibly crawl out the window, jump onto the lawn and scamper away. Or irretrievably bash my skull on pointed rocks after a forty-story drop. I wondered if they’d heal me again, what the limits of her ability to reconstruct were.

“So, what is this place—where am I?”

“Why, you’re in Lord Rogue’s castle.” She frowned at me, considering, as if she might have missed knitting my brain together.

“I meant in a larger sense—what do you call your…world?”

“Ah.” She smiled. “This is the Land of the People.”

Of course it was.

I didn’t like this. I should be grateful for all Healer had done, but now even my own body wasn’t the same. All the information I so desperately needed to make decisions was self-referential. I needed to take some steps to regain control—who am I kidding?
Gain
control—of this situation.

“Well, thanks for everything!” I turned my back to the window and propped my rear against it. I gestured to the dress, my nasty hairdo, trying to look humble. “I know I have no grounds to impose further, but any way I could bathe? Maybe borrow a clean outfit from somebody? Add it to my tab?”

Healer smiled, comfortable now that the pet was wagging her tail. “But of course! You know, we would have bathed you while you were out but we didn’t know the customs of your people.”

Oh yeah, I could just picture the people I might come from—where blood gook was the new mousse. I made an effort to keep that thought to myself, too, and Healer didn’t seem to hear me. Maybe I was getting better at this.

“And, of course, the spell on your dress.”

The door opened. Not locked this time—I was keeping track now. Two young men, heads bowed so they could only see the floor, tromped in carrying a brass-looking tub, which they deposited on the floor. They tromped out again as if the room were empty. No lock click behind them.

“That was fast,” I remarked.