Califia's Daughters (31 page)

Then came the pain, first a sharp, wounding jab deep into the breast, and then the fire, the glove growing hot and then hotter, burning itself into her flesh, building into something beyond fire, into acid that seared and bubbled its way deep into her, and there could be no fighting the body's response to it, no self-respect or control, no dignity, nothing but the pain. Dian arched back against the glove and a scream came from deep in her throat, a full, deep shriek of outraged agony. After long seconds something inside the orange eyes was satisfied, and the glove was withdrawn.

The imprisoning arms instantly let her slump into the soft cushions. The Captain sat back, untwined her knees from Dian's legs, removed the glove and tossed it casually into the open mouth of the bag, and sat studying Dian. Under her gaze Dian fought for control, forced down the whimpers spilling from her throat, tried to make her lungs breathe normally instead of grabbing great gulps of air, concentrated on relaxing the bruised muscles of her yammering arms and legs and head, fought more than anything to keep from her face any sign of the hatred she felt for this woman, sitting patiently between Dian's trembling knees, watching her calmly, oblivious of the sickly stench of burning flesh that filled the room.

I will kill this woman, Dian swore to herself, kill her and bring the place down around her ears. In response, the Captain's jaws clamped down as if she was biting through something, and she leaned forward again and slid one hand around the nape of Dian's neck, pulling her forward until her mouth was on Dian's, forcing Dian's lips apart with her slick, cool tongue. Before Dian's abused limbs could react, the wicked, hot taste of blood washed into her mouth, and then the Captain sat back, pulling a clean square of white linen from a pocket, deliberately wiping the smear of blood from her lips while before her Dian gagged and spat and dragged her sleeve painfully across her mouth in a desperate urge to be rid of this woman's lifeblood. The Captain paid her no heed but folded her handkerchief, stood up, and looked down at Dian's face, filled with loathing and mortal fear. She smiled gently.

“You are mine,” she said conversationally, “and my name is Breaker.”

. . . THE QUEEN WAS A DOUBLE PRISONER OF BOTH HER BODY AND HER HEART.

T
WENTY-FIVE

W
HEN
M
ARGARET CAME BACK IN SHE FOUND
D
IAN
naked in the bathroom, water running in the basin and the sour smell of vomit strong in the air. There were droplets of blood sprayed across the basin, the floor, the mug, and the toilet, most of it from a new gash in Dian's hand where she had hammered at the tap in a fury of frustration. Margaret soundlessly wrapped the ice she carried into a wet cloth, replaced the cloth Dian was holding to her breast, and went efficiently about the business of cleaning and bandaging the new cut.

“Fuck,” croaked Dian after a few minutes, “what was in that glove? I can't get it to stop burning.”

“You won't. It fades with time, but it never goes away. Some kind of acid. It irritates the nerve endings but doesn't quite kill them. You do get used to it,” she added, and under her breath, “sort of.”

With exquisite care Dian peeled the cloth from the angry flesh and saw, for the first time, the emerging brand that she would live with until the day of her death: a stylized figure an inch and a half tall, two sweeping lines forming a rough triangle surmounted by a pair of wings. An angel.

“But why? It's—diabolical!”

“Oh, yes. It's a very effective reminder of who we are. You know what they call us?”

Us, thought Dian.
Us.
“Angels?”

“That's nothing, even we call ourselves that. The civilians call us Vampires, when they think we can't hear. It's not allowed, of course, but they whisper it among themselves, write it on walls sometimes. Can I get you something to drink, other than the water?”

“Something hot and sweet. And can you help me up first, I can't—”

Margaret put an arm around Dian and pulled her up onto the toilet seat, rubbed her hand in simple affection between Dian's bony shoulder blades, and went out. Dian heard the sound of water running into the kettle, and as if in sympathy her gorge rose, vomiting the water she'd drunk back into the basin. In a minute, Margaret returned to bathe Dian's face with a wet towel. Dian rested her bruised cheek against the porcelain and closed her eyes. It's over, she told herself. She'd wanted in, and she was in, and that she had paid a price did not change that. In a few minutes she vomited a final time and allowed Margaret to clothe her in the other black robe from the closet. She sat on the toilet and tried to gather the shattered pieces of herself together. In a few minutes Margaret brought her an infusion of hot mint and honey, brushing casually against the door in passing so that it swung nearly shut. The Angel held the cup to Dian's lips and helped her to drink. The process was painful, but the tea warmed her and cleansed her mouth of the raw taste of bile and the lingering impression of another's blood.

“The bathrooms aren't usually monitored,” Margaret said in a low voice.

“What?”

“The other rooms in our apartments occasionally have listening devices and viewholes, but we're allowed the privacy of our bathrooms, so long as we don't seem to be ducking in too often.”

“I see. Thank you for the warning.”

“You didn't give me to her today.”

“No. Why didn't you tell me? I thought she was going to rip your head off when she saw I didn't know what was going on.”

“I don't know why I didn't. No, really, I don't. Stupid, my God, but the idea of preparing you—I started to, any number of times, but I just couldn't face it. It wouldn't have made any real difference to you, though, even if I had,” she added.

“I see,” Dian said again, and she did, if dimly. “But look, next time you get the urge to commit suicide, give me a chance to get clear first, okay?”

“I know. It was a hell of a thing to do. Temporary insanity,” she said, and smiled, not very successfully. Dian smiled back, with her eyes if not her swollen lips.

“Help me to bed,” Dian asked, and once there she touched Margaret's hand and said, “I'll have one of your painkillers, I think. A mild one.” Margaret went away and came back with a needle, and Dian slept until the afternoon.

         

A knocking woke her, followed by the deep burn of her breast and then the tedious shooting aches and pains in the rest of her. The knock came again a minute later, and she realized it was at her door.

“Come in,” she called, and heard the sound of someone opening the door in the next room, depositing a rattling tray in the kitchen, and Margaret was at the bedroom door.

“You knocked,” Dian commented. “I didn't think anyone here bothered.”

“Not for a C, no, but as of noon you're a B4. You got status now, lady. Can you get up?”

“I think so. Open the curtains a little, would you?”

“Glad your headache's going. Can't say the same for the women who have to work down near where your dog is kept. He's howling now—at least, they assume it's him and not a banshee or a generator about to blow up.”

“That's Tomas. Can I get him now? Thanks.” This last was for Margaret's help with an errant and ridiculous fuzzy slipper that had appeared at the side of the bed while Dian slept.

“Eat first.”

“I'd rather get Tomas first,” she protested, although the smells that awaited her at the door to the kitchen sent sudden spurts of saliva into her mouth.

“Orders,” Margaret said succinctly, and handed Dian the wrist-spoon. She managed most of her lunch before the muscular shakes set in, despite the morning's treatment, and told Margaret she thought her teeth could manage something firmer that evening. She half-expected a joke about bacon or steak, but Margaret only nodded, deposited the bowls in the sink, and disappeared into the bedroom. She came back with the black jumpsuit over one arm.

“Think you can get this on without help? It has a zipper,” which put it into a realm of luxury goods beyond anything Dian had ever owned before, including the Meijing silk blouse—God only knew where it was. “Can you handle the zip?” she asked a few minutes later. “I tied a loop through it.”

Dian did manage it, by hooking the thumb of her left hand through the loop, though she needed help getting the soft cloth shoes—black—onto her feet. She followed Margaret out, and as they turned left into the maze she glanced at the plaque next to her door. It did indeed say
Dian—B4
. Thoughtfully, she followed Margaret through the hallways filled with Angels. Before long she could hear Tomas, whose full-chested, eerie hound howl made even Dian's hair stand on end and set her teeth on edge, two changes of level, a ninety-degree turn, and a hundred yards of corridor before reaching the room where he was being kept. She stood outside the remembered door, and the next time he paused to draw breath she addressed the wood with one sharp word.

“Tomas.”

The silence was deafening. Two half-shouted conversations down the hallway cut off abruptly, and half a dozen Angels looked out from various doorways at Dian, relief dawning on their faces. She nodded at them and turned back to the door.

“Tomas, down on the bed,” she ordered, and heard an instantaneous scrabble and thump from within. She looked at Margaret.

“He's going to need to run it off. Is there someplace I can let him out? He'll hurt himself in the hallway.”

“There's an entrance to the garden straight below. Will he be dangerous when you let him out of there?”

“Oh, no, just fast.”

“I'll have someone spread the word downstairs, then. How long?”

“Ready when you are.”

“Three or four minutes ought to do it. Hold on a second.” She went to consult with one of the onlookers, who made rapidly for a door and disappeared. Dian waited for Margaret to come back and work the bolts, and she went in.

Tomas lay on what was left of the mattress, onto which he had pulled what had once been Dian's clothes. He was barely down, lying up on his haunches, quivering all over like a huge furry pressure cooker about to explode. She did not look directly at him, lest she set him off, but limped across to the bathroom door, saw that he had been drinking, stepped around several putrefying hunks of meat and his chosen toilet corner (what room lay beneath this? Dian wondered, secretly amused), and went out the door.

“Heel, Tomas,” she said. One huge bound brought him halfway out into the hallway, another one and he was rigidly attached, six inches from her left leg, his nose seeking her hand. She allowed him to have it, to snuffle her palm and lick her, even let him nibble at her fingers, the pleasure of the contact overcoming the sharp twinges of pain that shot up to her shoulder. He stayed at her side, holding perfect obedience down the awkward stairway, out the door, adjusting his eagerness to her slow gait with tight jerks, down three stone steps that were wet with half-melted snow, on which her leg failed and she would have collapsed but for Margaret's arm, out into the mushy parkland grass of the hidden garden. Finally she stood still and looked down at him, at his bristly face and open mouth, eagerly pricked ears, the blatant joy of the dog at his heart's return. She grinned back at him through a tight throat, stepped back, and swept her arm out in a broad, all-encompassing wave that freed his bonds.

The dog shot out across the stunted, half-frozen winter grass and a hundred yards away dove into a stand of rhododendrons, which heaved violently and spewed hunks of sodden snow in all directions to record his passage. At their end he erupted out again into a mad racing turn, skidded and recovered and turned to cover the ground between himself and Dian in two score of ground-hugging, overlapping, spine-flexing bounds. Twelve feet from her he launched himself into the air. As Margaret exclaimed and reached out belatedly for Dian's right shoulder, he soared at chest level an inch from her left one, landed in a huge spray of gravel behind her, and raced past them to circle around the rhododendrons and do it all over again. Half a dozen times he raced and circled and flew, but on the seventh time, instead of pelting up to them and launching himself, he slowed to a trot and came to stand in front of his beloved mistress, heaving and blowing clouds of steam and looking up at her through bushy eyebrows with eyes that held no reproach, no question, only love and joy at her return. Her heart went out to him then, in a way it had not in the Valley or on the road, in a way she had never given of herself to anyone but Culum. She dropped painfully to her knees, hardly noticing Margaret's hand on her elbow, and when he came forward to butt his head against her chest, she draped her arms around him, sinking her face into the thick, foul-smelling hair over his shoulders. His solid presence and utter faithfulness were infinitely comforting, and despite the pain in her knees and breast and the cold and the wet that was seeping into the legs of her trousers, she remained bent over him for a full minute before she put up her arm for Margaret to help her rise. In her affection for this woman who had risked befriending her, she took Margaret's hand, wrapped it gently as far as it would go around the dog's heavy muzzle, and nodded his head with it.

“Friend, Tomas,” she told him. “This is a friend. Margaret. Margaret, meet Tomas.” She turned to look into Margaret's eyes and abruptly realized that she had made a bad mistake. Revealing her vulnerable spot, her love for this dog, to Margaret might not be a problem—somehow she knew that Margaret was to be trusted that far—but the windows that opened onto the garden . . . Nothing to be done now—and the worst thing that she could do would be to ignore or try to hide this, her one weakness. She tried for a smile.

“You're safe around him now. He would probably even take something to eat from you. He'll regard you as a friend.”

“I'm very glad he's not an enemy,” said Margaret, eyeing the animal whose shoulders came to her hip, who outweighed her by a good thirty pounds. “I thought he was going to knock you into the next building. Can we go inside now? I'm not dressed for this, and you're turning blue.”

Dian deferred to Tomas. “Are you finished, Tomas? Yes, I think he's finished for the moment. Would you like some food, Tomas? Food? I'd say he was distinctly interested, wouldn't you? Yes, let's go in. On you go, Tomas,” and he leapt gaily up the steps, tail high and flailing furiously, waiting as his new Friend helped his Dian up the stairs. His mistress was back in her heaven; all was right with the world.

         

Dian was granted thirty-six hours of peace. She ate, began cautiously to chew, took three more pink-gel baths, had a haircut, and slept twelve hours at a stretch. Tomas ate, was bathed, combed, and exercised by the increasingly infatuated Margaret, and slept in profound satisfaction on the floor beside Dian's bed. Dian's headache faded, her ears stopped ringing, the bruised flesh turned yellow and her eyes returned to normal, bandages and one set of stitches were removed, her fingers regained their skill and a portion of their strength, she met two of her neighbors and the D who cleaned and brought her supplies, she was measured for clothing, and on the morning of the fifth day, four and a half days after she had first entered Ashtown's gates, the midwife came and Dian heard for the first time the amplified heart sounds of the being that lay in her womb, a breathless bird-beat that shook her more profoundly than anything that had happened since Robin's abduction.

The midwife had no sooner left than another knock came at the door and Dian, thinking it was Margaret, called out her permission to enter. It was not Margaret, but another Angel, whose face was familiar but whose name Dian did not know. She wore a handgun at her hip and spoke with a military formality that did not mask her underlying scorn.

“The Captain will see you now,” she said. “You are to bring the dog.”

Dian did not say anything but went for her cloth shoes—a pair of boots had arrived, but their laces were difficult unaided and they pinched her still-swollen feet. She sat on the bed and pulled them on, slowly, of necessity as well as to gather her thoughts, which had scattered unreasonably at the sound of the rapid
thuppa thuppa
given out by the midwife's Artifact machine pressed to her belly. There was no more time for disability or woolly-headedness, no time at all for weakness. She was, for better or for worse (
in sickness and in health,
her mind threw in,
all the days of my life
) an Angel, and her Captain was summoning her. An Angel among Angels, as brutal as was required to do the job. She would find Robin, and she would get them both out, but in the meantime she was her Captain's Angel. She had a hard moment with her jacket, half on and her arm awkwardly stuck, but she forced it up at the price of awakening her shoulder, took a deep breath, and went out to join the guard.