No Greater Pleasure (25 page)

They were nearly there when the ice exploded all around them.

Chapter 10

 

 

 

 

 

A
long, black column of smoke shot from the center of the pond. Smoke without fire beneath. Chunks of ice and snow flew forward, and Quilla threw up her hand to cover her face. Her forehead stung and she let out a small cry as she slipped and went to her hands and knees. She put her fingers to her face, and they came away speckled with blood.

The ice beneath her knees cracked with an ominous sound. It shifted under her, and she spread out her weight so as not to crack it further. Ahead of her, chunks of ice as thick as her fist rolled toward her, spraying water and grit.

She heard Jericho yelling. Dane screaming. And another voice, that of a creature teased to rage, a beast not meant for the air.

She lifted her head to see Jericho clutching a screaming Dane and pulling the boy away from the column of black smoke, which, she realized, wasn’t a column at all but the body of the eel itself. It had risen from the water and now slammed its head across the ice, snapping its jaws and spraying more water and chunks of ice.

Its body was the thickness of hers, though all sinewy sleekness and boneless fluidity. Its jaw seemed to open out directly from its neck, wide as it now gaped and snapped while the beast writhed its way across the ice toward the man and boy.

The water churned where its tail thrashed. The water tossed up onto the ice made everything even slicker, though thank Sinder it didn’t seem to be breaking further.

The eel heaved itself one measure farther out of the water, humping its way along the ice as a snake moves along the ground. The great jaws snapped again, needle-sharp teeth coming down on the ice hard enough to send chips of it skittering toward her.

Jericho could not seem to get Dane off the ice. He pulled the screaming, flailing child by the back of his coat, but as Quilla watched, they both slipped and fell.

The eel lunged forward, its small dull eyes seeming to focus on the boy. Quilla, on its other side, scrabbled on her hands and knees toward it. She grabbed up the stick Dane had been using to tease the eel. First, she used it to get herself standing. Next, she whacked the eel with it as hard as she could.

The beast’s body writhed, the blunt, triangular head swerving in its pursuit to face her. Quilla lifted the stick again, bringing it down so hard upon the eel’s body the wood splintered and broke in half.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Jericho pull Dane upright and fling him toward the shore, out of the eel’s reach. The boy’s wail reached her ears but Quilla could do naught but wield the broken-off end of her weapon as the eel began sliding back into the water.

The movement was a retreat, and yet it brought the creature closer to her and shook the ice around the hole it had made hard enough to send her to her knees again, her hands splayed on the frigid surface, praying to the Invisible Mother that the cracks appearing would hold together long enough for her to get off the pond.

“Quilla!”

Jericho ran and slid toward her, reaching for her hand. The eel snapped but couldn’t reach him as it continued its smooth slide back below the pond’s surface. It seemed to struggle for an instant upon the ice, but the momentum of its retreat must have been greater than its desire for attack, because in another moment even the great jaws had slipped below the surface.

Jericho’s hands gripped her shoulders. The next moment found her in his arms. Without thinking, she returned the embrace, her heart still hammering and breath coming in gasps.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded.

“You’re bleeding.”

She’d forgotten the scrapes on her forehead. “I’m fine.”

Concern filled his eyes and he drew a hand along her face, showing her it had come away streaked with blood. “We should get you inside.”

“Dane?” Quilla looked for him. The boy had made it to the edge of the pond, where Jorja had gathered him to her while she screamed and wept.

“He’ll be fine.”

Quilla shivered, a combination of cold and shock setting in. She looked at Jericho’s face. The warmth of his breath, redolent of mint, caressed her cheek. He still had an arm around her shoulders.

“Are you all right?” she asked him.

Before he could answer, the ice beneath them moved. The cracking sounded like festival flameballoons exploding. Less than a breath later, icy water soaked her skirt and stung her legs beneath.

“Move!”

Quilla didn’t hesitate. She moved. She pushed with her knees and got to her feet, slipping and falling at first but then managing to stay upright as Jericho yanked the shoulder of her cloak.

No more time for speaking. No time for thinking. Only time for running as fast as they could across the slick and breaking surface of the ice.

Behind them she heard the moist
thwap
of the eel throwing itself once more out of the pond. Ice and water sprayed her back. Quilla didn’t dare look back, though a gust of breeze and the clash of teeth on teeth told her the beast was snapping, literally, at their heels.

They were only a few arrows from the shore when the ice broke out from beneath them. She sank in water up to her thighs, her cloak and dress soaked and weighing her down. Jericho fell in beside her with a bigger splash. Something moved around her legs, the swirl of her hem or perhaps a smaller eel. The larger one still writhed behind them, the ice cracking and disintegrating under its weight as it moved.

Quilla flailed her arms with Jorja’s screams echoing in her ears. She had no voice to scream. The water had stolen her breath. All she could think of was getting out.

And then, his hand in hers, pulling. Jericho curled his fingers around hers, his strength moving her through the water faster than she could have made it on her own. She pushed, he pulled. Soft mud sucked at her boots, but she could not kick them off. He pulled harder. A wave of water, pushed forward by the eel’s attempts to reach them, aided them at last and the water reached her knees, then only her ankles, and finally after an eternity, Quilla stumbled onto ground.

Jericho lay beside her, panting, his fine clothes covered with muck. His blond hair looked darker with wet. He looked more like Gabriel than ever.

She turned her head toward the pond. Chunks of ice bobbed in the churning water, but of the eel there was no sign.

“Thank the Invisible Mother,” she murmured, spent. “I thought it might leap out onto the shore after us.”

Jericho sat up. “I told you it did not care to eat Handmaidens.”

How could she find a smile, after that? Somehow, she did. “No. It would seem its meal of choice is little lads who poke at it with sticks.”

Jorja was still screaming. Dane appeared to have been stunned into silence. Quilla’s feet and legs had gone numb, and the weight of her sodden clothes almost kept her on the ground, but she knew she would need to get inside and out of her wet things if she hoped to avoid freezing to death.

“Shut your hole,” she snapped at Jorja, who had tried Quilla’s not-quite-infinite patience to its very limit. “Get the boy inside. Check him for injuries. Get him into a hot bath. For the love of your mother, Jorja Pinsky, stop your blubbering and tend your charge as ’tis your duty to do!”

Jorja stopped screaming like Quilla had bound her mouth. She grabbed Dane into her arms and began going as fast as she could with him toward the house.

“We must needs get us both inside, too.” Jericho put his arm around her. “Come, Quilla Caden, before we both become as iced solid as that pond once was.”

She wasn’t sure she could make it into the house, but once again Jericho’s strength aided her. Walking kept her warm enough, at least, though by the time they reached the doors to the house she was breathing hard and her teeth chattering so fiercely she had bitten her tongue.

The household was in an uproar. Lolly and Kirie accosted her as soon as she entered, grabbing off her cloak and stripping her down right there in the back kitchen hall. Quilla made no protest; nudity did not concern her, and false modesty had no place in this situation. She helped them as best she could with numb and shaking hands, buttons flying from the throat of her dress as Lolly tugged it off her. She stood for only a moment naked before Kirie wrapped a blanket around her but in that moment Quilla looked up and saw Jericho’s eyes upon her. His own clothes had been stripped from him, though he still wore his underdrawers. He looked quickly away, and in the next moment Rossi led her toward the small garden parlor usually used as a place for the ladies to sit and arrange flowers. The fire had been stoked to blaze, and Billy was already pouring pitchers of steaming water into a basin in front of it.

Quilla was pushed into the chair in front of the fire and her feet plunked into the steaming water. Lolly brought a towel to dry her hair. Rossi was doing the same for Jericho.

“Where did they take the lad?” Quilla found the voice to ask.

“To the nursery. He’s already in the tub,” said Rossi. “Playing with his boats and singing songs. Jorja fainted and needed to be revived.”

“Who did that, I wonder?” Quilla’s chattering teeth slowly stilled under Lolly’s ministrations.

“Florentine slapped her so hard it left a mark,” said Kirie from her place by the fire, where she was warming towels. “And Jorja said not a word. Can you imagine?”

“I can imagine very well,” replied Quilla. “If she does not lose her place here, I will be greatly surprised.”

“Or us ours,” said Jericho. “As we were the ones watching him.”

Billy reappeared with a robe which he helped Jericho put on, while Kirie brought a warm gown for Quilla. She slipped it over Quilla’s head, and though she would still need a bath to rid herself of the dirt and muck, at least the ice had begun to disappear from her veins.

“Has anyone told my brother and his wife the fate that nearly befell their son?”

“Yes, my lord. Florentine herself has gone to fetch the master from the gentlemen’s games,” said Lolly.

“And the lady mistress?” Quilla accepted the hot rum Rossi had handed her. She sipped. “She will want to know, too.”

“She’s not been found, as yet,” said Lolly with a quick glance at Kirie. “Though our lord Delessan has begun tearing up the house in search for her.”

Quilla met Jericho’s gaze, which had shuttered itself but was not unreadable. His mouth thinned, and he waved Rossi away impatiently. From the hall came the sound of shouts and running feet, though no one entered the garden parlor.

“They will find her soon, I am certain,” said Jericho. “And Sinder’s Mercy when they do.”

“She will need more than Sinder’s Mercy,” murmured Quilla.

“You’re right,” agreed Jericho. They shared another look of understanding. “She will need my brother’s.”

 

 

 

T
here had been more shouting from abovestairs. More slamming of doors. By the time Quilla could convince Lolly to let her get up and leave the garden parlor, however, silence hung over the entire household. It was the hush of every ear being turned toward something waiting to happen, and Quilla was fair certain she could guess what it was.

She went to Gabriel’s chamber, passing doors cracked open to provide listening ears with easier access. The door to his workroom was closed, and the moment she lifted the latch, shouting broke the silence in the house.

“Damn you to the Void!” Saradin’s shrill voice echoed in the hall, providing, Quilla thought, ample interest to the held-breath residents. “Damn you, Gabriel Delessan!”

The sound of shattering glass came next. The thud of some heavy object being thrown. The crack of flesh on flesh.

Quilla threw open the door and stopped at the sight in front of her. His table had been overturned. Beakers and vials on the floor. Books and paper scattered everywhere, with a pot of ink spilled in a spreading puddle on the desk. Saradin stood in the midst of the destruction, hand upraised.

Quilla watched as Saradin slapped Gabriel’s face hard enough to turn his head. The sound of it hurt Quilla’s ears. The sight of it hurt her heart.

“Don’t you dare judge me!” Saradin screamed. “Don’t you dare! Not when you have your own whore to serve you night and day, your dripping-cunt slut to warm your bed!”

She used the back of her hand this time, sending him staggering one step in the opposite direction. “The whore you parade around in front of our guests to humiliate me! The whore who eats and drinks and shits and fucks in my house! My house! My. House!” She punctuated the last words with two more slaps that looked hard enough to break her fingers.

She had raised her hand again to strike him when his hand came up and caught hers. His fingers closed down over hers, forcing them to curl into a ball. Saradin made a pained yelp and tried to get away, but Gabriel held her fast.

“She is not my whore,” Gabriel said in a voice so thick with contempt and loathing it made Saradin recoil as though he’d been the one to slap her. “She is my solace and my comfort, two things you, my lady wife, have never been.”

Saradin’s scream rose from her throat like smoke into the sky. “You bastard! You cock-sucking son of a whore! How dare you! I am your wife! I am the mistress of this house!”

“And you are a whore who was fucking a man not her husband while our son nearly died, Saradin!” Gabriel’s voice shook. “Dane could have been dead an hour gone and you’d not have known it because you were so busy putting Boone Somerholde’s cock down the back of your throat!”

She slapped him with her other hand, and he grabbed that one, too, yanking both her hands down between them to hold her still.

“You are the whore, lady,” Gabriel said, his voice colder than the ice on the pond. “You are unfit to be a mother, unfit to be a wife. You should go to your lover, if that’s what you please, and leave me and my son without the benefit of your poison presence in our lives.”