Nobody's Lady (21 page)

Did his healing powers “heal” the curse right off a man? Could he have freed him when I asked and he chose not to, or did Ailill himself remain unaware of that fact? I never even thought about it!

“But it was just a moment. I remember … the lord said something more, something quieter then. ‘If only you knew what you took from me. It was not even your fault. But I confess I cannot help myself even still.’ As the pain rolled back over me, so did my longing for Elfriede. I was growing delirious, blind to everything about me. I asked for help, for some explanation, but they ignored me. I don’t really remember what happened after that. I don’t remember what happened for a
long
time after that.”

“It wasn’t just you, Jurij. Ailill didn’t make you forget the next month. That was the month that no one seems to remember.”

“But you do, don’t you?”

I picked up my skirts. “We should go.”

Jurij crumpled the paper in his hand, then seemed to notice what he was doing and smoothed it out. “The two of you keep so many secrets from the rest of us. And you wonder why I was so reluctant to ask you to play your role in this plan.” Jurij held the paper showing Luuk up above him, trying to get the filtering effects of the moonlight to show him his brother. “What would he lock them up for?”

I rolled my eyes. “Breaking into his castle against his edict might have had something to do with it.” I clutched Master Tailor’s page in my hand, the paper with the message written so coldly for me on its reverse side. Some of the men in the image stood, and others sat. There wasn’t much change. “We’ll get it straightened out. He won’t hurt them.”

Jurij laughed, but there wasn’t any joy in the sound. “You mean like how he didn’t hurt me?” He pointed to his scarred eye.

“I don’t think he meant to do that.”

Jurij stuffed Luuk’s paper into his pocket. “Well, I’m glad you don’t
think
he meant to slice a gash down my face. Or take me captive thereafter.”

“It was the earthquake!” I grabbed Jurij’s hand, and he stopped, stiffening. “Before the curse broke, Ailill was doomed to cause the ground to shake if he left the castle. And he was trying to treat you when you woke up.”

Jurij’s features softened. I could just make out a glint in his irises in the silver light that trickled through the leaves above us. “So he didn’t cause the earthquake on purpose?”

“No. Yes.” I shook my head. “Whenever he left the castle back then, he’d cause an earthquake. He knew that, but he didn’t control the tool that cut you.”

“Why just him? The rest of us may have been cursed, but I don’t recall any other man making the ground shake just because a woman looked at his home. Or because he stepped out of it.”

“To protect him.”

Jurij’s gaze drifted over my head. The cavern lay behind me. I wondered if for some reason it was calling him too. “I have a feeling you know more, but you won’t tell me if I ask.”

I dropped Jurij’s hand and moved forward, pushing the call of the cavern away with each step. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Tell me anyway.” Jurij’s hand gripped my shoulder, pulling me back to face him.

I faltered a moment. The castle gates were there, just in sight at the edge of the path. The cavern still called me in some way I couldn’t explain. I could run away to either of them to avoid answering him, to avoid thinking about my past—but both were the places I was most likely to remember. “I’m the first goddess.”

Jurij’s hand slackened. “What?” He was almost laughing.

I drew a deep breath. “The one from the legend. The one who balanced inequality and cursed the men.”

“Huh.” Jurij dropped his hand from my shoulder. He looked about to say something more, and then he shut his mouth again. “Are you sure he wasn’t deceiving you?”

I sighed and kept marching forward, crumpling my message tighter in my fist. “Never mind.”

“I’m serious!” Jurij said. “What if he gave you visions while you were with him? Why else did I feel those things I felt while in his castle?”

“Visions?” I repeated. We’d reached the castle gates, and I didn’t even blink when they drew open. I’d yet to approach the castle walls and find them slammed shut. To me, anyway.

Jurij stepped between me and the open gate, suddenly forgetting his haste to rescue his friends and family. “If you go in there, will you see visions again?”

I clenched my fists at my sides. “Jurij! I’m not seeing, nor have I ever seen, visions!” I thought about my experiences in the pool and shook my head. No need to explain the things the pool showed me. I pointed back down the path. “You know the cavern?”

“The cavern?”

“
Our
cavern! The one with the glowing pool.”

“The one you almost drowned in.”

“Yes.”
The one where you rejected me, then tried to force me into your arms.
“I traveled to … well, I guess I traveled to the past there.”

“In the cavern.” Jurij looked at me as if worried I was unwell. I remembered too vividly his looks in that alternate time he didn’t remember, the time when the lord never was, and my parents were gone.

“Through the pool,” I corrected. He stared at me blankly, and I threw up my hands. “Ugh! Never mind! I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

Jurij glanced over his shoulder and held his hands out as if to stop me. “All right, all right. Let’s say I believe you.”

“Sure.
Let’s say
.”

“How did
you
have the power to curse all of the men?”

“I just used the power I was born with.”

“Which was?”

“Being able to control any man who found the goddess in me.”

I could tell Jurij desperately wanted to check over his shoulder again, but he also didn’t want to let me out of his sight. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. “So in
the past
, and we’re talking a long time ago, the lord was there?”

This was hardly the time or place to get into this. “Yes. But I didn’t mean he was the one who found the goddess in me. Not
just
him anyway.” Jurij let me lower his arm without resistance, and I walked past him.

“There’s only
one
man for every woman,” Jurij said as he stepped beside me. “At least before … ” His gaze fell over the darkened room, and his jaw opened. “What happened here?”

I’d spent so long thinking of the castle as some sort of prison for just me, the lord, and the specters, I’d forgotten that Jurij had been here a few times himself to deliver clothing.

The place was a mess. The door to the inner garden was open and swinging in time with a gentle breeze, slamming against the wall every other moment. Moonlight illuminated the rest of the room, even if the torches went unlit. There were barrels lying on their sides throughout the foyer, small puddles of liquid seeping out through a number of them. A pile of rumpled black clothing lay scattered between the entranceway and the stairway, boot prints clearly visible on the fabric, like someone had kicked and stomped on them rather than picking them up and moving them out of the way. I could see why the specters had asked for less bread to be delivered. There was a stack of green, rotting bread near the foot of the stairs, knocked over like a mountain after a landslide.

What has that man been up to?

“So where is he?” asked Jurij. “Hello?”

“Shh!” I put a finger to my lips, not even sure why. He was here, obviously. Our friends were here. But the place was too quiet, and I was reluctant to make a sound. I reached for the slip of paper in my sash. “Let’s just get the guys and go,” I whispered, not at all convinced it was going to be that easy. “If they’re where my Mother was being kept—”

“What is
that
?”

I turned around. “Jurij?” He was walking toward the dining hall. “Jurij, it’s not that way.” But he went into the room without a moment’s pause. Satisfied the men remained holed up in their pen, I stuffed Master Tailor’s page back into my sash and followed. “Jurij?” There wasn’t much light in the room. It was almost like he’d vanished.

“What are these?”

I walked toward the noise and knocked into Jurij as he stood up, his hand gripping something he’d picked off the floor.

I blinked. “A bangle. It used to keep a veil up over the table.”

“A veil?”

I bent down to grab another bangle that glistened in the dark. My fingers brushed the fallen veil. Had it laid there since that day he’d vanished?

“Did you used to dine together? Before he could remove his mask?” Jurij cleared his throat. “I mean, his veil?”

“Yes. Sometimes.” I reached into my sash and pulled out my gold coin. It also glistened in the slivers of moonlight.

“The gold in the castle, like you told us about.”

The gold on Elric’s arm. The bangle he wore that glistened in the firelight.

“Where’d he get it?” Jurij asked.

“I don’t know.” I swallowed and tucked the gold coin and bangle into my sash. I grabbed Jurij’s arm. “The prison cells are upstairs. On the third floor.”

Jurij wrenched his arm away, like he thought I would grab for his bangle. For the first time in this conversation, his voice didn’t sound incredulous. “If you’re the first goddess, why did you curse the men?”

I clutched at my chest, unable to contain the pain I felt there. “I was trying to save the women. I meant to punish
some
men. The men who deserved it.”

“How would men
deserve
it? For loving the wrong women? For not obeying their goddesses quickly enough?”

“You think I’d punish helpless men over something so trivial as that?”

“I don’t know what I think. You—”

“They hurt women.” That caused Jurij to shut his jaw quickly. “Really
hurt
them. I don’t know if you’ve ever even thought about it, but men are physically stronger than women for the most part, and these men … Their actions … ”

The door to the foyer slammed shut, and the air hissed with the scrape of steel on firestone.

“And you made the innocent men suffer for it.”

The wood in the dining hall’s fireplace roared to life.

Ailill stood gazing at the flames, his forearm pressed against the mantel.

“Did you come for your marriage certificate?” Ailill stood back from the flickering fireplace and gave Jurij and me a faltering smile. “I suppose it is unfair that I denied you one when asked. But then, I could not be sure you both felt ready.”

Jurij, all fire and flame when he first sprung the marriage announcement on me, took a step backward, fading into the darkness.

I straightened my shoulders and took a step toward the firelight, my rapid heartbeat be damned. “How do you know when someone is ready?” I pulled Master Tailor’s crumpled page out of my sash. “Would this have something to do with it?”

Ailill laughed. “I see you got my message.”

I shook the paper in the air. “You see a lot of things.”

“Yes, well, since there is no sound, I have to imagine the rest of the story.”

I tore my eyes from Ailill’s face, not sure if the gaunt features were a trick of the dim firelight or a sign of poor nutrition. If it was the latter, he had no one to blame but himself. The specters did all the cooking and cleaning, so—

Where were the specters?

“Our friends. Are they in the prison cells?”

Ailill nodded toward the paper. “What does it look like?”

“
Why
have you imprisoned them?” Behind Ailill, a speck of light danced among the shadows. The glistening of Jurij’s golden bangle.

If Ailill heard the door to the entryway cracking open behind him, he didn’t show a sign of it. Only, I didn’t believe he was that stupid. “I said that no one was to set foot in my home, and I have had half a dozen visitors tonight already. Would you really blame me for enforcing my edicts?”

I lowered my hand and bent the paper slightly, keeping it out of Ailill’s sight so he wouldn’t notice me checking it for signs of a specter near Master Tailor. Or a foolish Jurij. But it was too soon for that. “Your home is a mess.”

Ailill raised an eyebrow and stood straighter, dropping his elbow off the mantelpiece. “Am I to believe these boys are on a cleaning mission?”

“
Boys
?”

He crossed his arms and shrugged. “They are all boys to me.”

Then am I nothing but a little girl to you?
“What happened to the spec—the Ailills?”

“You just saw one tonight.”

“Why haven’t they cleaned up after you?” I looked him over, head to foot, noticing the way his usually tight clothing seemed to bunch and hang loose here and there. It was dirty, too, no longer the sharp, dark black he once wore. “Or cleaned
you
?”

Ailill tossed his head back and started pacing the room, taking a step away from the fireplace and me. “I am grateful, as ever, for your apparent concern.”

I scoffed. “I’m sorry I asked. If you want to rot away in this castle when you’re finally free to go where you please, that’s your business. But my friends—”

“Free to go where I please?” Ailill stopped pacing, his back to the door and the sliver of moonlight let in when Jurij had opened it. He scuffed a boot against the floor. “And where would I go, pray tell? To the tavern to fill myself with drink? To the fields to whack sheep with sticks?” He shook his head. “No. I am quite trapped in this place. Same as you, or any other of the oblivious people here, but it feels worse when you know just how trapped we all are.”