Shattered (15 page)

“How many?”

Denrick leaned one heavy arm against the armrest.  “Five will do.
  But you better mean them, or you keep going until I find five that count.”

Five was nothing, they both knew it, and Robin hatred his easy victory.  She snatched the handle off the table and turned quickly, before Denrick’s self-satisfied grin could make her lose control.  She let the length of the whip drag along the floor behind her.

Robin touched Lily lightly and the girl’s trembling stilled.  She ran her hand across her shoulder and brushed the length of her hair back in front of her, clearing the fresh canvas of her back.

“Thank you,” Lily whispered, tears already flowing down her
face.  Robin couldn’t afford to look her in the eyes, lest she lose her nerve now.

“Face
forward.  Count each one aloud,” Robin said.  They were words she had said so many times before.  But never to Lily.

Lily nodded once and leaned her forehead against the wall.  Before she could take in a breath, before she could start to anticipate and fear, Robin swung.

That first scream cut through Robin’s chest like a knife.  She looked down at her hand as it trembled around the handle.  She couldn’t stop her shaking.  She could only stare at it, as though the moment she looked away it might betray her and drop the whip to the floor.  Her useless, twisted fingers coiled against the handle.  Only the use of her thumb on that hand allowed her to wield the whip at all.  The same way it allowed her to pick up that lantern.

“One.”

Robin swung again.  The cue was automatic, that counting of a punishment, and the blow landed before she gave it thought.  Lily shot up and screamed again.  Her voice trailed off into a sob as her whole body trembled.  A second red streak swelled with blood, parallel to the first.

Robin looked down at her hands again.  She couldn’t see those scars without remembering the ugly agony of the flame.  It seeped into everything, until every memory she had was ruined by it.
  She couldn’t think of home, the smells of dinner or sweet breads, without smelling her flesh in that hearth as well.

“Two.”

Another swing, another scream, but Robin’s mind was elsewhere.  She saw her little brother taking damp leaves from the ground and sticking them to his forehead.  In the center was a bright red leaf, an autumn leaf, but as he pulled it off she saw he was peeling back skin instead.

“Three.”

How could anyone, filled with such ugliness, be anything but ugly.  She made a life out of causing pain.  She could vent hers into another.  Nathan was wrong, there was nothing beautiful about that.  And if Nathan was wrong how could Denrick be anything but right.  Yet Robin felt no relief in the revelation.

She didn’t wait for Lily to count the fourth.  She wound her arm back and swung, crossed over and followed through with another.  Two thin red lines appeared, crossed over one another.

“Five,” Robin said as she dropped the whip.  She turned back towards Denrick and clenched her right hand shut as tight as she could.

Lily hung limp and sobbed as a guard lifted her sagging body from the wall.  When he set her down though she stood, albeit awkwardly, hunched over and una
ble to straighten her back.  Her arm pressed against her breasts to keep her tattered dress up.

“What do we normally pay your whore for her body, sparrow?”

Robin gritted her teeth again.  “Five a week,
m’lord
.”

“One for each blow.  How perfect.”

Denrick withdrew each coin, one at a time, and they clinked together as he stacked them at the corner of the table.  When he finished he looked up at Lily, one eyebrow raised at her stillness.  Only then did she move forward.

He
waited until she reached the table and her arm was outstretched before he grabbed it.

“A week’s pay for one day’s work.  You should thank me.”

“Thank you m’lord,” Lily said in a whisper.

He pulled her arm towards him until she leaned forward and her face was close to his.  His eyes scanned hers, drank in her fear.  “That’s not how a whore says thank you.”

His other hand flashed up and seized the back of her neck.  Lily let out a yelp and tried to jerk away, but it only forced his fingers to dig deeper.  She went still.

Denrick yanked the tatters of her dress forward with his free hand
and Lily surrendered that shred of cover without a fight.  Robin bit back her words until her jaw ached.  She knew his game, he was doing all the things to Lily he couldn’t do to her.

Lily’s arms hung slack and she maintained her deadlock with the floor, even once he started touching her.  Denrick
ran his palm over her breast and squeezed, but it elicited from her no more than quiet whimpers.  He seemed to lose interest in that quick enough, but when he released his hold on her it was to pull back his hand, and a second later he struck her across the face.

Lily took a step back and brought one hand up to her tear-streaked cheek.  Her eyes flashed up to his and whatever she saw there made her lip tremble.  She dropped her hand slowly, drawing out the motion like it could delay for an extra second what came next, and when she took that half-step forward he slapped her again.

“No wonder you like this one so much, sparrow” Denrick said, and he didn’t take his eyes off her.  “She’s so easy to hurt.  I bet you two have a lot of fun.”

It seemed
that his words, more than his actions, caused a sob to break free of her.  She stood just out of range and clutched her arms to her chest.

“Come here,” Denrick said, but Lily looked paralyzed.  Denrick stood and grabbed her by the back of the neck again, yanked her down with him, and she stumbled to an awkward kneel.  He hit her but didn’t release her, pulled back and hit her again.

“You’ve made your point,” Robin growled.

Denrick brought his hand down across her face
one final time and let her go.  She tumbled the rest of the short distance to the floor, crumbled there at his feet, and let out a soft, exhausted sob.

“Have I?” Denrick’s attention settled back on Robin and for the first time his anger showed itself.  “Do you have any idea how badly you’ve jeopardized everything? If anyone else had done this I would take them apart, piece by piece.  But I never thought I’d be betrayed by you.”

“I didn’t mean to…,” Robin whispered, but in truth she had no idea what to say to him.  His words pinched a sharp pain around her chest, exactly the same way it had when she struck Lily.  Robin was beginning to realize now how badly she miscalculated her ability to stop this.

“Be quiet sparrow.  I am on the verge of losing it with you.”  He drew in a deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose.  “I don’t give a damn about your conscience, that’s your problem, but if you think that you can just walk away with your hands clean you’re more a child than I thought.
  If they condemn me they will be coming for you next.  Like it or not, we’re in this together now.”

Robin knew he was right, her hands would never be clean.  Her past weighed her down, it made her tired.
  She was as tangled up in this as the rest of them.

“I’ve had your old room cleaned out,” Denrick went on, though his words were quieter now.  For the first time Robin could hear the weariness in his own tone.  “You’re going to stay here until I decide what to do with you.  For now we wait and see just how much damage you’ve caused.”

“Yes m’lord.”

Denrick swept his hand across his desk and th
at little tower of coins went toppling to the floor.  “Your whore is free to leave.  I think it best if you didn’t have the distraction.”

**

"
I’m so sorry,” Robin said.  She crouched at Lily’s feet and pressed her forehead against the girl’s bent knees.  “I never thought he’d come after you.  I never wanted you involved in any of this.”

“I know
.”  Lily’s hands came down on Robin’s head and her soft fingers stroked through her curls.

Robin wanted to stay there, nestled against her thighs.  She took a deep breath into the folds of Lily’s dress, taking in the lingering scent of soap, the soft earthy cotton
, and the familiar hues of the girl beneath.

“It’s because of that man, isn’t it?”

Robin nodded against her hands.

“Who wa
s he?” Lily asked, and her fingers stilled in Robin’s hair as the latter brought her eyes up.

“It’s better if you don’t know,” Robin whispered.  She reached up to touch at Lily’s cheek, where Denrick had struck her and the red beneath her skin had not yet fully receded, but Lily recoil, if in her eyes only.

Robin dropped her hand back down to her lap and stood with a sigh.  Lily’s attention followed her, head tilted to one side, questioning, waiting.  The underside of her eyes shimmered from tears that had not yet dried, dark from too many nights without sleep.

Denrick was right; the girl did look easy to hurt.

“I’ll find you something to wear.  You should leave today, before Lord Denrick changes his mind,” Robin said, but it wasn’t him she was worried about.  Things between her and Lily could never be the same.  She wasn’t sure what they would be if she stayed, only that she didn’t want to find out.

***

Nathan drank in the daylight, tasted it on his skin, let the noon sun warm his face.  A light breeze rolled over him and tugged at
the loose ends of his sleeves.  Laying on his back, staring up, he could see nothing but sky.  That endless blue was streaked through with clouds, like someone had taken a single ball of cotton and stretched it until wispy strands covered the whole world.  He shut his eyes.

A gust of wind rushed up the side of the stone walls and carried with it all the noise of the courtyard below.  He turned his face towards the ground and the pillow of granite beneath his head crunched his hair as he rolled to the side.

Forty feet below a swarm of small people moved around like ants.  Each one walked towards some destination, as though following along an invisible path that Nathan couldn’t make out from atop the castle wall.  Their purpose was obscured from him, but like ants, he didn’t mind that much.  He’d figure it out eventually.  For now he turned his face back towards the sun.

“There you are.  I’ve been looking for you all morning.”

Nathan peeked open one eye to the shadow eclipsing his sunlight to see his eldest brother leaning over him, filtered in blue.

“Sit up, if you fall asleep here you’re likely to fall to your death.”

“You used to come up here with me all the time,” Nathan mumbled, and made no move to rise.

“When we were children, yes, and it was dangerous then too.  Have you been up here all day?”

“And yesterday, and the day before.  What do you want Trent?”

The blue shadow that was his brother let out a sigh.  “I want to talk to you.”

“I already told you, I don’t remember anything.”

“And I still don’t believe that, but that’s not why I’m here.  I can’t keep expending so much energy into worrying about you
Nathan.  It was bad enough when I thought you’d been abducted, but then you reappeared,” Trent said, his hand moving a little too animated as he spoke, as though it might help him expel everything that had been building up these last few weeks.  “And you turn away my guard, walk back?  Suddenly I had to wonder who she was that you couldn’t just fuck her here, but now I’m not so sure.  It’s been two weeks and you hardly eat.  You don’t speak to anyone and frankly I’m not even sure the last time you bathed.”

Nathan turned his face back to the courtyard and watched the chaotic mess of life below.  He felt like it should have a pattern.

“Nathan,” Trent said, but Nathan didn’t turn back.  “You can’t continue on like this.  You’ve done absolutely nothing since you returned.”

“I d
id nothing before I left either,” Nathan snapped.  He took a deep breath, focused on the yard below.  He followed some darker skinned woman carrying a load too heavy for her with his eyes.  “Please, dear brother, attend to your war.  I should hate it if some poor savage remains free because of me.”

“I don’t like your tone Nathan,” Trent warned.  “What happened to you in those thirteen days?”

Silence answered him back and Trent sighed again.

“You never bemoaned the benefits of our conquests before, not when you and Jeremy were so busy whoring and drinking away at the spoils.”  But then he fell silent again, no doubt realizing the futility of this conversation.  He may as well have been speaking to stone.

When Nathan looked up again Trent was gone.  He was alone and he raised his hand up until his palm obscured the sun.  The dark silhouette of his fingers against the sky made his hand feel so much heavier than it ought.  He let his arm collapse across his face and he breathed in through his sleeve.  He wrinkled his nose and frowned.

Nathan peeked beneath the shade of his arm to the flow of life below him in the co
urtyard.  He wondered if he could emulate it.  Just for today.

With that he swung his feet off the high ledge of the wall and back onto the walkway atop it.  It wound around the inner wall of the courtyard
and he followed it, until the path terminated against the main building.  It was darker inside but he need not see to find his way.  This was home; he could trace his way through these halls blind, and the only variable, the people, parted a path for him as he walked.  Why then did he feel like such an outsider here.