The False Martyr (109 page)

“
So I have been blamed for
what happened to Noé?”

“
As you knew you would. It
was almost too brutal, really. If anyone had stopped to think about
it, there was little chance you could have done it, especially
without her screaming sooner, but no one wanted to stop and think
about it, and it wouldn’t have matter anyway. You were always going
to be guilty.”

Cary pushed down his
spiking anger. He’d been preparing himself for this, knew that Juhn
would come, that he would have to brag, that revenge was pointless.
All he wanted now were answers. All he wanted to know was why.
“What happened to her?”

“
She lost the baby,” Juhn
answered immediately. He tried to keep his voice steady, his gaze
indifferent, but Cary caught the waver in both – so he does feel
some remorse for what he’s done. “They tended her wounds and
removed her from the lodge. She was ruined by an outsider. The
first woman in known history to have laid with a guth – even if it
wasn’t by choice – one of only a handful of women to be cast from a
lodge in the whole of our history.”

Cary’s teeth clenched. He
knew that his anger would do no good but could not help himself. He
bounded from the bed and saw the spider twitch just in time to keep
himself from drawing its attention. “You’re a bastard,” he snarled.
“She’s just a girl. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“
It’s not about right and
wrong. Her part has been written in the Tapestry from the moment
she was born, from the moment my master saved her from exposure.
Without doubt it would have been more merciful to let that baby
die, for that tortured life to never exist, but that was not the
Order’s plan. The pattern dictated that she be in that room, that
she be the shell of a person that would allow Zhurn to use her as
he did, that you would find her, that you would try to save
her.”

“
That’s why I was spying,
wasn’t it?” Cary saw it now. That was the piece he had missed. Why
would they have ever needed him to spy? It was always pointless. It
had always been a trap.

“
Yes.”

“
It had nothing to do with
the Thull?”

“
It had everything to do
with the Thull. It was the only way to keep them from siding with
Liandria. It was the only way to keep our people from joining
yours.”

That set Cary back. He
knew that they had been set up, that Juhn had actively sought to
destroy them, but he had thought it was just about them, that Noé
had scorned Juhn as a child or some such nonsense. He had never
considered that it could be about something more than that. “What .
. . what do you mean?”

Juhn laughed. “This isn’t
about you. You are nothing more than a string that we could pull to
change the pattern.” He leaned forward, growing serious. “An
outsider just raped and beat not only a Morg woman, but the Mother
of an ancient lodge. He caused her unborn daughter to miscarry. Do
you think the punishment for that would stop with you? Zhurn called
immediately for revenge on the Liandrin people who allowed such a
monster to infiltrate the Fells under the guise of negotiation. The
other lodges joined him immediately. Even Nyel turned on you. She
had no choice. Even the Lost Sons would not do what you had
done.”

“
And the
ambassador?”

“
You’ll see what’s left of
him and his entourage when you leave.”

Cary felt his stomach
turning. He thought he might throw up. By the Order, he had ruined
everything. He had been manipulated, but they had been his
decisions. In the end, it had been him thinking with his cock. If
he had only stayed in the wall, had only left her alone . . .
.

“
It was never your
choice,” Juhn said as if reading his mind. “You were positioned
every bit as much as Noé. Do you think that your childhood was an
accident? An only boy with his four aunts.” Cary retracted at that.
He didn’t have any aunts that he knew of. “Your mother slept with
many men in that estate,” Juhn clarified, “but almost never with
your father. He preferred her daughters, and your real mother was
one of them. She died giving birth to you, your father’s only
child. And the woman you knew as mother hated him for it, hated her
daughters for letting him, hated you because you were never hers to
start with. You felt the same way about them, about all of them but
one.”

Allysa
, Cary thought. The only one younger than him. Sweet and kind
and beautiful. He could almost accept what happened in the mornings
when his mother went to work in the kitchens and his father came to
get one of his older ‘sisters’ to take her place. They had always
hated him for it, were cruel to him as if it were his fault. And
Cary had hated them for going. They were nothing but whores.
Everyone knew that they gave themselves to any man who asked. Every
man in the stables, the kitchens, the whole damn estate had been
with one of them. Why shouldn’t their father have a piece as
well?

Then there was Allysa. She
was just a girl, a year younger, barely twelve. She was Cary’s best
friend. They shared everything, slept next to each other, talked
deep into the night, joked and laughed and played. The only time
his father ever hit him was when he came to get her in the dark of
the morning. Cary had argued, had tried to protect her, had tried
to pry her from his father’s hands. A backhand blow had ended the
rebellion, a foot to the gut made sure it did not reoccur. And she
had gone willingly. She hadn’t screamed or fought or called for
help. She had gone with him, leaving Cary retching and gasping and
listening to her terrible, muffled crying.

That night had ruined
everything. Allysa was never the same. And neither was Cary. He had
not been able to get over the fact that she had wanted to be with
their father, that she was a whore just like their sisters. He had
barely been able to look at his father, barely been able to work in
the stables for seeing him smiling the next day, for knowing what
he had done. And he had blamed Allysa, had pushed her away, refused
to talk to her, had never again defended her when their father came
to get her. Soon there were other boys, just like her sisters. They
would brag about what they had done to her and beat Cary bloody
when he tried to stop them. Soon enough, he stopped trying. And she
just spiraled down until there was no farther to fall.

Everyone knew what the
duke’s youngest son liked to do with the servant girl’s he bedded.
Everyone knew where the bruises came from. But he was the son of a
duke, ward of the King. There was nothing that any of them could do
but warn their daughters away from his smooth talk and sparkling
gifts. Allysa knew it too, but that didn’t stop her. Cary found her
after. She’d begged him not to tell, had defended her lover – the
man who had whipped her until she bled, the man who had tied her to
a bed and left her for dead – had told him to leave, to forget
her.

Cary had listened. He ran
away and joined the royal couriers that very day. He left her. He
escaped, but he never forgot. And the duke son spent the next six
months torturing her – the only girl stupid enough to keep coming
back. In the end, he killed her. He strangled her and left her body
to rot in the cottage where he’d been keeping her. She was sixteen
and pregnant.

“
So you see,” Juhn
disturbed Cary from the worst memory of his life. “We prepared you
just as we did Noé. We knew exactly how you would react when you
saw Zhurn beating her. We knew because we made sure you had felt it
all before, made sure that the thing you wanted most in their
entire world was to save her, to save a girl just like
Allysa.”

“
You . . . you . . . how .
. .?” Cary could not get the words out. He fell to the bed, head in
his hands, eyes stinging, breaths ragged. He could only see Allysa
tied to that bed. Tiny and fragile, just a girl, covered with
lashes, crying, and begging. “You did it,” he finally managed as
Juhn’s words came together. “You killed her, so that I would ruin
these negotiations, so that the invaders would win.”

“
Yes,” Juhn whispered,
finally seeming to feel the weight of his crime. “My master and the
other members of the five started it. I made sure the pattern was
completed.”

Cary forgot about the
spider. He leapt from the bed, hand stretched toward the neck the
order keeper. Juhn was bigger than him, and Cary could barely see
him for the tears standing in his eyes, but he didn’t care. He was
going to kill him. If it was the last thing he ever did, Juhn would
die.

The spider wasn’t there.
Cary barely noticed as he lunged forward expecting a hairy body the
size of his hand to spring toward him. Instead, he saw Juhn raise a
knife. Sparkling and distorted through his tears, the blade caught
the light of the lamp before Juhn drove it into his own chest. Cary
stopped, caught between the shock of what had happened and a desire
to grab the knife and stab the bastard again. In the end, he just
stood, shaking, overwhelmed by memories and horrors, by the
knowledge that they had all been planned, that the Order that was
supposed to protect them had been used to destroy them.

“
Go,” Juhn sputtered. He
coughed blood. It stained his teeth and ran down his chin. “Your
part in the Tapestry is not complete. You can still have what you
want most. Remember,” he coughed again, “remember that. Maintain
the pattern by being the man your sister needed.” The order master
fell to the desk, shuttered, and was still. In the distance, bells
rang. The weekly lessons were complete. The Morgs would be
returning to their lives. Cary didn’t have much time. He wiped his
eyes and ran.

Chapter 61

The
46
^th
Day of Summer

Cary eased open the door
that led from the order passages to the main halls of the lodge.
Pivoting in, it came open just far enough for him to peek out. The
bells had stopped ringing almost before he was out of Juhn room. He
had sprinted through the dark passages, racking his brain to
remember the turns that would bring him to this spot. Still, there
had been a missed turn, a moment of backtracking, minutes lost to
scrabbling about in the dark. He tried to calculate how long it
would take the men to walk from the temple in the center of the
lodge to their quarters here on the southern edge, but it didn’t
matter in the end. His only chance was to go now.

The hall to his right was
clear. Sanded wooden walls, floor, and ceiling stretched for
hundreds of paces with nothing more than the periodic lamps to
disturb them. It was almost dizzying to look down that hall, like
falling into a hole that never ends. The other side was just as
empty, but it ended in the enormous dining hall twenty paces away.
Anything could be waiting there, and he’d have to pass it to get to
the only exit from the lodge he knew.
Now
or never
, he told himself. He took a deep
breath and ran.

The passage was as clear
as advertised. The dining hall was not. Cary ran through it like
his hair was on fire and the only water was on the far side. The
smell of breakfast foods – bread and sausage and cheese – hit him,
but he did not look into the huge room as he passed through it, did
not see the men streaming in through the doors at the far end. And
they almost missed him as well. He was only a few strides from the
far side, only a matter of seconds from disappearing into another
empty passage, when the call went up.

“
Guth abadat!” a man
yelled. A chorus joined him a second later. “Guth abadat!” they
screamed with all the fury the title deserved.
Outsider rapist, was there any more effective phrase in all
the world to send a group of men into a fury?
Certainly, Cary could imagine the mob he would have joined if
such a call went up around the barracks in Lianne. But it wasn’t
even the rape. It was the outsider. It was the fact that someone
from outside had violated the community. That called for mobs and
dogs and torches. There would be no trial. There would be the mob
and the worst punishments it could possibly imagine. A rape by
someone from with the community – if it were believed at all –
might bring out the rage in the woman’s husband or kinsmen. But
there would be no mobs. There would be a trial, a measured
punishment requisite with the Order.
And
if it happened within a family?
Cary knew
exactly who was punished then, and it was certainly not the
man.

Heart leaping from his
chest, Cary hit the door that led to the baths with his shoulder
before he could work the latch. He nearly fell to the ground as he
bounced from the surface. His shoulder screamed. He cursed himself
as his hand found the latch and fumbled in its shaking anxiety to
work the simple mechanism. Already, he could hear the mob forming,
could hear their yells, their hatred, as they surged through the
dining hall mere seconds behind him.

The latch clicked. The
door flew open, and Cary bolted through. He slammed it behind him,
pushed over a bench to block it, and ran.

The steam of the baths hit
him a second later. He sprinted through it, water from the floor
splashing to his knees with each step. Cries of frustration told
him that the bench had done its job. It would never hold the men
for long, but it was enough that Cary released a breath he did not
realize he’d been holding. The distraction nearly cost him
everything. His foot hit a bucket that was almost perfectly
obscured by the fog permeating the room. He lurched forward and
splayed across the floor, head stopping mere inches from the side
of a tub. Powered by fear, he was back on his feet in seconds. The
pain in his knee was an afterthought, but the limp it caused was
real as was the sound of a door crashing open behind
him.