Captivity (27 page)

He turned back to the door to the courtyard,
picking his way over and around the congealing dead things on the
floor. His horrified recoil sent my own mind reeling as he spotted
Michaela’s daughter, spread-eagled, her throat cut like her
mother’s. Blood had soaked through the fine wool of my dress and
obscured the intricate woven pattern, but the distinctive ‘Graven
sleeve was still discernible. The girl lay in a gruesome parody of
receptive sexuality, her legs exposed as the dress had risen in the
acts of falling and dying, her arms outstretched to embrace her
lover, her head thrown back as if in ecstasy, the dark red gape of
her cut throat mirroring the red between her slender thighs.

My heart pounded like Jana’s as Dominic’s
vision was superimposed on our memories. How many times had Dominic
laughed with pleasure to see me in the same pose? How often had he
told me that just imagining me with my legs open made him hard? His
arms tightened around Jana, crushing the breath out of her.

Then they were out, in the courtyard, gulping
in breaths of fresh air, heads hanging. “I want to see Mama,” Jana
said.

“So do I, sweetheart,” Dominic said. “So do
I.” He straightened up from his bent posture as voices preceded
bodies appearing from all directions.

The miners and metalworkers, having killed
every human being overlooked by the Aranyi forces, regrouped in the
back courtyard. “Margrave Aranyi!” their leader shouted. “Finished
it is. No more bandit-scum find we can.” He pointed a bloody knife
in the direction of the carnage. “Good work, yes, we did? All dead,
your lady safe?”

Dominic turned his cold, clear eyes on the
man. He said nothing. These men were not soldiers, not
professionals, had had only two days of on-the-march training from
Dominic in the arts of war. They had recently been victims, not
victors, had known massacre and indiscriminate death from the
losing side. The code of the officer, of ‘Graven and the Royal
Guards, was unknown to them, as to all novices. If his own men had
done such a thing…

“Yes, Gwynn,” Dominic said after a pause,
“you did well. And ‘Gravina Aranyi is safe.” That much was true.
Dominic was not used to being a petitioner. He had begged these men
for help in his need, and they had come through for him. Despite
what he had done to them not so long ago, they had proven
themselves loyal and valuable allies.

Dominic and the miners’ leader exchanged
formal words of thanks and acceptance, and agreed on a sharing of
the spoils. The men were welcome to take all the bandits had
possessed, such as it was, and Gwynn and a couple of others would
accompany us back to Aranyi for the settlement of their land claim.
The rest would return to their homes, having pledged to respect
people and property on their route.

Dominic brought Jana to me the long way
around, circling the castle’s perimeter to the front entrance,
through the crush of dead bandits, the mangled, stripped corpses in
the great hall. At least there were no women or children here. I
became aware of Niall as he accompanied them, speaking in his
lighthearted, humorous way, hoping to distract Jana while Dominic
ran past the ugly sights.

Reynaldo, the one bandit left alive, the one
who had only begun to pay what he owed for the days of captivity,
the threats and privations my children and I had endured, awaited
us in the front courtyard. Ranulf, a grim look of satisfaction on
his rugged face, guarded the bleeding, groaning prisoner while he
cleaned his sword and supervised the Aranyi troops.

I struggled to sit up as I heard my family
coming down the stairs, felt their minds in mine—all of them, Jana
and Niall—but it was mostly Dominic, his worry and anger, his
warrior’s energy turning slowly into a husband’s concern, who
occupied my consciousness. Propped on one elbow, Val dozing beside
me, I reached my other arm to enfold both my husband and my
daughter in the half embrace I could manage.

Jana got to me first, leaping out of
Dominic’s arms and running to me. “Mama! Mama! Mama!” she screamed,
sounding more like Val than the too-mature ‘Gravina she had been
forced to be these past days. She hadn’t been so effusive with me
since she was nursing at my breast. She practically knocked me flat
on my back as she hugged me, and I rolled over with her on the
straw, returning her frantic kisses, crying with the joy of the
reunion.

Like Dominic, I was overwhelmed by my love
for her, my firstborn, my daughter, my little female version of my
husband. “My brave girl,” I said, “my darling, it’s all right now,
it’s all right.” I could think of nothing else to say, but it
didn’t matter. It was like the dreams I had sometimes, dreams in
which I was in my mother’s arms, as Jana was in mine. My mother,
not so long dead, a year or two before I came to Eclipsis. Despite
Dominic and Jana and Val, all my happiness, it was always misery to
wake and find that it had been just a dream. My life must be
forever imperfect when my own mama could not be with me to share
it.

I wrapped both arms around Jana, Val
momentarily forgotten, and continued to spout the usual silly
motherly endearments. “You see I’m fine,” I said in answer to her
anxious questions, clenching my teeth so they wouldn’t chatter with
the ague. “All I need is dinner and a bath, just like you.”

Jana couldn’t speak yet of her real fear; the
loss was too terrible for her to express. She could only revel in
my physical presence, filthy as I was, not willing to let a
particle of air come between us, an arrangement which suited me
just fine. Can she ever forgive me, I wondered, when she remembers
that it was I who sent her out on her own, I who stayed quiet when
Reynaldo told her that her mother was dead, and did not contradict
him?

Dominic leaned down to take his share of my
affection. His eyes glittered, tears and the remains of bloodlust
mingling in a strange expression. Had he caught my guilty thoughts?
Well, I would have to tell him eventually. But not now, not here.
Let me get home and regain some strength, then we’ll have to
confess everything that led up to this moment, both of us. But not
yet.

The screams penetrated my woozy brain at
last. Terrified, wild screams. Val, it was Val, howling as he had
when Reynaldo had grabbed him. He had buried his face in my side,
the side that Jana’s body had not claimed, and was trying to hide
himself in me like a large animal attempting to stuff itself into a
smaller creature’s burrow, all the while shrieking as if the miners
and smiths were pursuing him with their bloody knives.

“What is it?” I asked, making no impression.
I felt him all over, expecting I didn’t know what—wounds, broken
bones, biting insects. “Val, sweetheart, what’s the matter?”

Dominic leaned down closer, also wondering.
He reached a hand to his son and Val screamed even louder, rolling
behind me, putting me in front of the dreaded apparition. “I hate
bandits!” he said. “Make him go away!”

I met Dominic’s knowing gaze, then shook my
head. “It’s Papa,” I told Val. “The bandits are all– gone.” I
thought in time to avoid speaking of death. “Papa’s here to take us
home!” I stressed the word, repeated it. “Home.” That should
help.

“No!” Val screamed as if he hadn’t heard. “No
more bandits!”

I studied Dominic more carefully. He was
blood-spattered and dirty, with lines of fatigue and worry carving
deep furrows in his cheeks from his prominent nose down to his
chin. His eyes showed the remaining effects of his recent battle
and thoughts of vengeance, with glassy inner eyelids in which the
silver of tranquility was just beginning to return around the
edges. It was true Val had never seen his papa like this, yet
surely Dominic’s face, his dark hair, his eyes, even in this odd
state, were distinctive. Val, with his precocious powers of
language and observations, should know his own father.

But something about Dominic was different.
The eyes and the face were merely the outward manifestations of a
change that had occurred over the days of my captivity. The madness
I had sensed, had shared, on the trail from Eclipsia City, and just
now when he caught Reynaldo, was there to be observed by those with
the ability. Val had seen it, had picked up on it as if his own
gift had already developed, as it would be ten or more years from
now.

My love
, I thought to Dominic.
We
are both delirious, my son and I. Once we’re home we’ll return to
our true selves.
I spoke of my son and myself, but thought of
my husband as well.

Jana lifted her head from my bosom. She
touched Val on the cheek in a surprisingly affectionate gesture.
“Shut up, brat,” she said softly. “Don’t make Papa angry or
he’ll—”

“No,” I said. “Papa isn’t angry, not at his
children.” I looked helplessly at Dominic. Slowly his inner eyelids
silvered over, until I could see myself in their opaque rounded
surfaces. I shivered uncontrollably in the fever. Val sobbed, his
voice trailing off as he succumbed once more to the fatigue of the
simulated death and his own fever.

Niall had stayed discreetly in the
background, taking the opportunity, like the miner before him, to
clean his bloody weapon on Michaela’s skirt. Now he stepped forward
to help, dropping the soiled garment carelessly to reach for Jana.
“Come on, betrothed,” he said. “Let’s go find the best tent for
your mama to sleep in tonight.”

Jana shook her head and didn’t budge. My two
children were determined never to be parted from me again. I tried
again to sit up, fell back.

Dominic knelt beside Jana, stroking her hair,
kissing her face as he spoke in a low voice into her ear. “I must
carry Mama,” he said, “and your little crybaby brother. And such a
big girl as you are, three of you is too heavy for me to carry.”
Jana at last looked up into his face. Dominic managed to pry one
grubby hand from my side. “Walk with Niall. He’ll be right beside
me. Then we’ll all go together to the Aranyi camp, and you can stay
with Mama the rest of the day and all night. How’s that?” It was
the voice, more than the words, that worked its magic, the deep,
mellifluous sound that was impossible to resist with its rumble of
underlying laughter.

Jana stood up and extended her hand to Niall.
He bowed to Jana with a courtly flourish and pretended to flick the
sweat of rejection from his face. “I was afraid you’d jilted
me.”

As Dominic rose he caught a glimpse of the
dead woman’s bare legs and staggered back in horror. “Isis and
Astarte forgive us. Cover the woman,” he said to Niall.

Niall stared at the brusque command, noting
the signs of Michaela’s attempted butchery before her death.
“Considering the woman was trying to remove ‘Gravina Aranyi’s
hand,” he said, “your regard for her modesty seems a bit excessive.
One might even say misguided
.
” In the strained silence
something of Dominic’s traumatic memories came through. “As you
wish, my love.” Niall tugged the skirt down as far as it would go,
to the middle of the dead woman’s calves.

The blacksmith guard, who had watched the
‘Graven family’s strange reunion with undisguised interest and
curiosity, interjected his own defense of Niall. “‘Gravina Aranyi,”
he called in Dominic’s direction, “her wrist, bleeding badly it
was.” He pointed to a filthy rag tied tight below my steel
bracelet. “But with my own shirt, bind her up I did.” He pulled the
garment in question from the waistband of his breeches to display
the torn tail.

The makeshift bandage was soaked with blood,
turning brown now that the normal clotting process had begun. The
man and his tourniquet had indeed saved me from a serious loss of
blood, bandaging me without my knowledge while I was but
semi-conscious, lost in Dominic’s actions and thoughts in the
recent battle.

My husband was startled back to the present.
He examined my wrist, remembering the sights that had greeted him
when he had climbed out of the tunnel into my cell. He bowed to the
man, thanking him for his care of me in the graceful way he has, so
that the man, caught by surprise, felt as if the sound of the
voice, and the fluent words, more than compensated him for any
small service he had been only too glad to render. Dominic removed
a small ring of a strange dull material from the little finger of
his left hand and presented it. “For the life and health of
‘Gravina Aranyi,” he said, “there is no single object that can
compensate. But please take this as an inadequate reminder of what
I owe.”

The man held the little circle in the palm of
his hand. His excited intake of breath was loud as he understood
what he was holding. “No, Margrave,” he said finally, regretfully.
“‘Graven steel, that, most eagerly, accept I would. But
foreign
work—” He shook his head. “Wrong it is, you from it
to part.” He held the ring out for Dominic to take back.

The “foreigners,” what I knew as aliens, are
the descendants of genetic experimentation from the early days of
the original settlement. They are a dwindling population, secretive
and isolated, mythical to most of us, who will never see one. Their
artifacts are museum pieces, or would be, if Eclipsis had museums.
Dominic’s ring, a memento from his alien mother, was priceless.

Dominic smiled at the man’s discernment. He
inclined his head in agreement. “Carry it for me,” he said. “Wear
it or hold it as a pledge of my faith, until we return to Aranyi.
Then redeem it for what you think it is worth.”

The man was much happier at these words. He
stammered his thanks, his elation acting on our gathering of the
gifted like another presence in the room. By drawing the short
straw earlier, and by acting humanely and with initiative to
fulfill the true terms of his guard duty, he had come out far ahead
of most of his fellows, who would return to their country with only
the scrap and refuse that bandits possessed, or a strip of barely
habitable Aranyi border land. By killing one woman and taking good
care of another, this man had earned himself a fortune.