Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) (29 page)

Neither of them realized
just how true that promise would prove.

Chapter 16: The Flight and the Beginning of the
End

First her mother
was shaking her, asking the same question over and over again, as if Marta were
not speaking any language she understood. Then her father appeared. Marta could
have killed her sister after seeing the pain on her father’s face.

“What do you mean,
she has gone?” he kept saying. “Did someone steal her away?”

She had to repeat
the same thing, over and over. “Lillitha has gone with Prince Scearce. They say
they will be married.”

Damn Lillitha and
her cadian tricks for leaving her behind to weather this storm! Oh, if only
Ersala would stop weeping....

Lendenican turned
from the young sentinel she’d been berating and regarded Marta with frantic
eyes.

“You helped your
sister sneak away in the dead of night?” Lendenican fairly quivered, with rage
or fear Marta could not be sure. “Have you any idea what you have done?”

“How could she do
such a thing?” Ersala moaned. “How could she?”

Marta merely stood
surrounded by bewildered adults. She shifted from one foot to the other. She
could not look at her father, who had sunk speechless onto a stool and seemed
to be contemplating the dirt beneath his feet.

“Take those robes
off, child.” Cadia-dedre Osane pushed through the small crowd of onlookers
who’d gathered outside the tent. She looked at Marta with the cold and
unflinching eyes of a carrion bird. “Did you hear me? I said take those robes
off now.”

Lendenican began
to babble but the dedre waved her away. Osane pushed Marta behind the changing
screen that stood in a corner of the small tent.

“Impossible,”
Ersala was saying in a low voice, as if arguing with
herself
.
“Impossible...how could she?”

“My lady,” she
heard her father address the dedre. “What do we do? Can she...just change her
mind like this? Is it allowed?”

Marta stripped.
She was only too happy to take off the wretched burlang and wimple. She tossed
them to the ground,
then
stepped on them once for good
measure.

“Vidor Rowle, I do
not know,” the dedre spoke. “Someone send for King Tullus. You there, go find
him. Hurry!”

Her discarded
dress from the day before was still draped over the screen. She put it on again
with a sinking heart. That Lillitha should have taken her new dress and left
her with this rag was the last straw. Angry tears streamed down her face as the
dedre stepped behind the screen.

“Tears will do no
good now.”

Marta tossed her
head, tilting her chin forward. Her blood boiled at the idea that Osane had
mistaken her tears for anything but impotent anger. She held her tongue and met
the woman’s eyes.

Osane’s expression
softened, almost imperceptibly.

“You and your sister
were not close,” she said lowly. “Were you?”

“In the normal
sense of the word, no, not at all. I hate her. I’ve always hated her.”

“Yet you helped
her escape.”

“Escape? You say
that as if she was a prisoner.” Marta couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice.
“I thought
cadia
had to come of their own free will.”

Osane’s lips
tightened but she nodded stiffly, as if conceding the point.

“Nonetheless, she
has abandoned her duty and you have assisted her in that venture.”

“I had no choice,”
Marta said sullenly. She could hear voices outside the tent beginning to rise,
along with the voices of her own parents on the other side of the screen. “You
of all people should understand.
You and all your cadian
magic.
I hate all of you.”

“So I see. I think
I’m beginning to understand. Lillitha was extremely empathic and I can feel a
similar talent in you. Was she really so afraid of being shallana
breda
that she would throw it all away?”

At least the dedre
was speaking to her as an adult, not screaming questions at her as if she were
some child. She nodded and swallowed hard.

“She was
terrified. I could feel it. She said she’d rather die than join with the
shallan and I was afraid that she might...”

Shouts rang out in
the rising buzz of noise outside the tent. Marta followed Osane as the dedre
hurried toward the commotion.

Rowle and King
Tullus stood in the center of a growing mob. A small bald man shouted louder
than the rest. Marta vaguely remembered him from the ceremony. He had been
beside Shallan Varden. Heavy golden rings glittered as he waved his hands
about.

“This is
blasphemy! She is the chosen bride of the shallan and your son has stolen her
away—”

“Sweet Mother,”
Osane sighed. “How did he get here so fast?”

“My son has stolen
nothing!” Tullus’ voice was thunderous. “How dare you!”

“My other daughter
says Lilli went of her own free will,” Rowle yelled, towering over the little
man with the elaborate robes. “Please, we can discuss this like reasonable
men—”

Osane waded into
their
midst, pleading for everyone to stop shouting. Marta
saw her draw along side the little man and put her hand on his arm. He shook it
off.

“This is not the
place for this,” the dedre was saying. “We need privacy, not a public shouting
match—”

The crowds around
them were growing thicker. Fear thumped in Marta’s stomach as she looked at the
faces. Some were filled with uncertainty but even more were tight with outrage.

“It’s the
Jeptallan’s
fault,” a male voice shouted. “They’ve always
thought they were too good for the rest of us!”

“What witchcraft
does your family use, old man,” another voice rang, “to sire only sons, never a
daughter for the consecratia?”

Marta couldn’t
hear Tullus’ answer. She could only see the old man’s ferocious glare and
gesturing arms.

“The same
witchcraft his son used, no doubt, to seduce the shallana
breda
!”

The hairs along
the back of her neck prickled; she could feel the hate and mistrust swelling
like a storm cloud, black and monstrous. The tension was thick enough to smell,
noxious as a rotting corpse, and her stomach roiled violently. She wanted to go
to Osane, beg her to stop this before it was too late. But people were crowding
in front of her, pushing her farther and farther away from where her father
stood looking humiliated and cornered beside his oldest friend.

Marta had expected
outrage from the cadia and the bene, but the ugliness of the crowd’s reaction
stunned her. Then again, she had never been one of the faithful, had never
understood all the praying and fasting on holy days. Now her lack of understanding
came fully home to her and she shuddered. These were the same people who’d
stood for hours in the scorching heat just to get a look at the shallana breda
as she passed by, people to whom religion was a very real and sacred thing.
Some of them had traveled for weeks by foot just to see the Chosen One
anointed. And it was the most faithful who had gathered in the encampment this
morning to see their new shallana breda come forth to her calling only to find
that hope stolen from them.

Marta spotted the
same old woman who’d fallen on her knees before Lillitha days before and begged
for her blessing, as if her sister had the power to heal her twisted body. The
old woman’s weathered face was contorted with the outrage of someone who’d been
robbed of her most precious possession.

She never saw who
struck the first blow, only heard the terrible scrape of a sword being
unsheathed and the flash of early morning sun on its blade.

“Father!” she
screamed.

She lunged forward
but the press of bodies shoved her to the ground. Screams of anger and terror
rang out, ugly shouts of unintelligible words. Feet stepped on her and over her
as she crawled under the shifting sea of legs as best she could. A heavy boot
came down on top of her hand and she screamed again, this time in pain as she
heard the bones breaking.

When she gained
her feet again, she could see nothing but a swarm of angry bodies, all
converging on the spot where she’d last seen her father and Tullus.

The clash of metal
rang out again and again, more than one weapon singing now. It was unclear just
who was fighting whom in the confusion. She saw a man stagger toward her with
blood running down his face and another man coming after him with a long wooden
pike, murder in his eyes. She jerked away as the bleeding man fell again
practically at her feet.

Some of the women
were running now, screaming, clutching children to them in blind panic. Others
had picked up stones and were hurling them in every direction. She strained to
find her mother and father in the crowd and instead saw Osane shoving people
aside as she struggled towards her.

“Come with me,”
she yelled, grabbing Marta’s hand and pulling her away.

“My father! I want
to find my father!”

“You can’t help
him, you can only get yourself killed—Lord General Bastrop! Over here!”

Marta nearly wept
with relief. Lord General Bastrop and his troops
would
stop this madness.

“Sweet Mother,
what has happened!
”
His horse was skittish, dancing
around as men, women and children stumbled past him. “Osane, what’s going on?”

“Find Rowle and
Tullus,” she screamed, still holding tight to Marta’s hand. “This mob has gone
mad! And find Paglia! He’s the one who started all this—”

He nodded curtly,
then
tugged at the reins. The horse wheeled and galloped
into the thick of the fray.

“We must get out
of here,” Osane shouted.

With one last look
over her shoulder, Marta allowed the dedre to pull her away from the crowd
toward Omana Teret.

***

The cadia who
cleaned and bound her hand did not speak. Marta was glad of her silence. She left
Marta with a bowl of water, a towel and a sponge, along with a clean burlang.

Her swollen hand
made undressing difficult. With her good left hand, she bathed herself clumsily
while listening closely for any approaching footsteps. She
hurried,
glad to be rid of the dirt but nervous about being naked in so strange a place.

She ducked into
the burlang and kicked her own dress into the corner. She would be happy never
to see that rag again. It had been torn when she fell, probably beyond
repair.
 

The noise in the
streets had lessened. From the window of the dedre’s private chambers she could
see the Guardians galloping through the streets. She could also see three
separate fires raging, one of them near the consecratia encampment.

This was all
Lillitha’s fault but she found it hard to summon up much real anger towards her
sister. What she’d seen this morning was too overwhelming to comprehend. Who
would have imagined that such a battle would break out just because one girl
had run away?

The door opened
and Osane came into the room. The dedre was covered in dust, her eyes red and
face streaked with dirt.

“My father?”

It was the dedre’s
hesitation that answered her. Before she could speak, Marta sank to the floor.

“Oh, my poor
father!”

Osane knelt and
tried to put an arm around her. Marta shook her off and glared up at her.

“They killed him,
didn’t they? All because of Lillitha and your silly god. They killed him!”

“Yes. He’s dead.
When the crowd fell upon King Tullus, your father drew his sword in his defense.
Both of them are dead.”

“And my mother?”

“Alive and here in
the palace, being tended to as you are. I think they had to give her a
sedative. You should go and see her.”

Impossible. Her
father was dead. Her handsome, vital father was dead.

“No,” she said in
a stony voice, “no, I don’t want to see my mother. I want out of this place,
I’m going to find my sister and tear her heart out—”

“You still don’t
understand, do you? You can’t go out there; it’s too dangerous. The Guardians
are ordering people back into their houses but there are still four or five
different mobs roaming the streets. Oman only knows what they’d do if they
found you.”

“What do you
mean?”

“They know you
helped your sister escape.” Osane raise her hand to still Marta’s protests.
“They won’t care why you did it. This is what they call hysteria. People are
afraid and confused and they’re lashing out at whomever they can get their
hands on. Some twenty or thirty people besides your father and Tullus are dead,
and dozens more are wounded. The hall downstairs is flooded with people seeking
refuge and medical attention. Chancellor Paglia has issued an edict in Shallan
Varden’s name calling for the immediate capture of your sister and Prince
Scearce.”