The Traitor's Daughter (15 page)

“No conditions.” Onartino’s opaque gaze never flickered.

“You pique my curiosity, maidenlady,” Yvenza conceded. “I will allow you to state your condition.”

“If I’m truly to wed, then the marriage must be legal and as decent as possible under the circumstances,” Jianna returned steadily. “The ceremony must be properly performed by a magistrate or some other equivalent authority.”

“We’ll decide who does the mumbling.” Onartino shrugged. “You’ll take what comes.”

“It must be done right. That’s the only way I can ever in good conscience consent.”

“Your consent isn’t required,” he reminded her. “Haven’t you gotten that through your head yet?”

“Softly, son,” Yvenza advised. “Your bride makes a good point. Nothing must compromise the legitimacy of the next Belandor heir. My grandson will be conceived safely and solidly within the confines of matrimony. I’d keep that in mind if I were you.”

“Well, you aren’t me, and you’re pitching a silly female fit over nothing.”

Yvenza backhanded him across the face so hard that he staggered. Onartino pressed a hand to his reddening cheek. For an instant his eyes came to glaring life, then went dead again.

“That’s no way to speak to your mother,” Yvenza pointed out.

“Sorry, Mother.”

“That sort of talk makes me feel that I haven’t trained you well. Am I right about that? Is additional schooling called for?”

“No, Mother.”

“I truly hope not. Now listen to me. Aureste’s girl here transparently plays for time, but she happens to be right. Your son and heir must be legitimate.”

“And who’s to judge that? I’ll take the title of magnifico by double right as Onarto’s oldest son and Aureste’s son-in-law. My own son by this one”—he jabbed an indicative finger—“inherits, no questions asked. When that time comes, you really think anyone will be asking who performed the marriage ceremony, maybe decades earlier?”

“Stranger things have happened,” Yvenza observed serenely. “It is a chance we are not going to take.”

“That should be my decision.”

“Yes, it should, and it grieves me to find you unequal to the challenge.”

“You should know better. All right, Mother. What do you mean to do? Lead this stolen cow into Orezzia to stand up before a justice of the peace? I wish you well with that.”

“Are you attempting sarcasm, my son? You’ve no talent for it. Spare yourself and your listeners,” Yvenza advised. There was no reply, and she continued, “The East Reach Traveler is an official representative of the Orezzian courts—”

“Appointed by a turd of a Taerleezi governor,” Onartino observed.

“No matter. He’s a magistrate with authority to perform marriages. We’ll intercept him.”

“That could take weeks.”

“A few days, more likely.”

“Too long to sit around waiting. No need, anyway. Look, we rule this stretch of countryside. Let’s just declare her my wife on our own authority and get on with it.”

“You’ll have to restrain your ardor, my young gallant.”

“That won’t be hard.” His contemptuous glance raked Jianna’s body. “But I don’t like wasting time.”

“Your consent isn’t required.” Yvenza favored her son with a steely smile. “Haven’t you gotten that through your head yet?”

He shrugged.

Turning to the prisoner, Yvenza remarked, “You’ve made a sensible decision, daughter, and your title of maidenlady is safe for a little while longer. I am already planning the wedding, however. It will be small and modest, but deeply satisfying to some of the parties concerned.”

FIVE

“Downstairs? Taerleezi soldiers in the reception gallery?” Aureste Belandor demanded.

His informant puffed her air sacs. Distended membranes quivered, and croaking affirmation emerged.

“In Faerlonnish,” Aureste directed. Confronting empty golden eyes, he repeated the command sharply. These Sishmindris often feigned linguistic limitation, but almost all of them had mastered the language of their masters to some degree. He bent a piercing gaze upon her.

“Yes. Two,” she replied in her hoarse inhuman voice, adding with palpable reluctance, “and other.”

“What other?”

She flexed her brow ridges, the Sishmindri equivalent of a shrug. The impertinence deserved punishment, but he was pressed for time and therefore dealt her greenish face the most perfunctory of slaps—more of a threat than a real blow. Even such fleeting contact with the cool, slightly moist flesh of the amphibian was distasteful. He drew his hand back quickly. She neither flinched nor uttered a sound. Her silent impassivity was appropriate but annoying, and he found himself wondering whether the stroke of a riding crop across her shoulders would draw some livelier response. Before he had made up his mind to perform the experiment, she bowed deeply and withdrew.

Aureste descended to the reception gallery, there to encounter a brace of Taerleezi guards, one of them an underofficer. With them waited a travel-stained civilian of Faerlonnish aspect.

“Gentlemen.” Aureste inclined his head to the angle precisely calculated to convey the obligatory respect due Taerleezi authority while maintaining the superior dignity of a Vitrisian magnifico.

The Taerleezi guards saluted correctly, in minimal acknowledgment of their host’s rank but without the vigor or deference undeserved by a member of the conquered Faerlonnish.

“Communication from the Eleventh Section Watch Station, Magnifico,” announced the underofficer. “This traveler here—what did you say your name is?”

“Rivviu Chelzo, in service to His Lordship the Magnificiari Abbevedri of Orezzia,” the civilian replied.

“This Chelzo here brings news that concerns you, Magnifico,” the underofficer continued. “You’d best hear it.”

“Speak, then,” Aureste directed.

“According to your will, Honored Magnifico.” Chelzo bowed in typically gauche Orezzian style. “I was traveling upon my master the magnificiari’s command to the city of Vitrisi, along the VitrOrezzi Bond. Scarcely halfway to my destination I paused along the way, and in a clearing a few paces from the road happened upon a scene of destruction. A fine carriage stood there. The horses were gone, but the passengers remained—two women, both dead by violence. Seven men liveried in grey and silver likewise lay dead on the ground, together with one other corpse, plainly dressed, a kerchief hiding his face. It was clear that the carriage had been attacked by a gang of highwaymen. Alone I could do nothing for the dead, nor would I entrust the news of the massacre to the folk at the wayside inns, for fear of looting. Thus I continued on to Vitrisi, where I told my tale to the authorities at the first Watch station I could find. And they have brought me here to you, Honored Magnifico.”

“This Orezzian has described the arms on the carriage door,” the underofficer clarified unnecessarily. “Three wheels of black fire upon a silver field. These are the arms of House Belandor.”

 … the passengers remained—two women, both dead by violence
.

Aureste Belandor scarcely heard his own roar of furious anguish. The surrounding atmosphere seemed to boil and burn. He struck out reflexively and only dimly sensed the impact of his fist on flesh and unyielding bone. The reddish haze momentarily clouding his vision cleared, and he looked down to behold Rivviu Chelzo stretched out on the floor, blood streaming from a split lip. The luckless messenger coughed and spat out a tooth. The two Taerleezi soldiers stirred a little but made no move to interfere.

Aureste restrained his impulse to kick the fallen man. The blood was thundering in his ears and a feverish heat possessed him, but he could not afford to give way entirely to rage. Two dead women, only two, when three had embarked from Vitrisi. A constriction in his throat threatened to muffle his voice, but he managed to command steadily enough, “Get up.”

Rivviu Chelzo cowered. His eyes jumped to his Taerleezi companions in vain search of assistance.

“Come, man, I won’t hurt you,” Aureste promised impatiently. “Get up.”

Chelzo obeyed with reluctance.

“Describe the two women.”

Chelzo’s gaze wandered anew in search of help or escape, found none, and returned to his interrogator’s ashen face. Wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, he answered, “One inside the carriage, of middle years with greying hair piled up in a tower, generous girth, fur-trimmed cloak, a lady. The other on the ground, much younger and smaller, hard to judge what her face might have been, light brown hair all in curls, ordinary clothes, not a lady. Maidservant, I think.”

“And what of another—young, slender, well garbed, very beautiful, with dark hair and black brows?”

“No. Nobody like that.”

“If you are lying to me, pig, I’ll exterminate your entire family down to the newest suckling.”

“I speak the truth, Magnifico.” Chelzo swallowed fervently. “There were only the two women, neither as you describe. Believe me, Magnifico.”

Believe him
. He burned to believe. Jianna, still alive out there. She was clever and resourceful. Somehow she had managed to escape. She had run off into the woods, eluded her assailants, gotten clean away, and soon she would send word to her father. She would easily find help—anyone she encountered should consider himself privileged to serve her—and very soon a messenger would arrive, any minute now—

Or perhaps she had not actually escaped, maybe that was too much to expect. They had taken her prisoner, but they wouldn’t harm her, not when they discovered her identity. Jianna would have sense enough to name her father, or else they would simply recognize the Belandor crest on the carriage, and they would demand a high price for her safe return, but he would pay gladly, anything they asked, and then they would send her home.

But he should have heard from them by now. The demands of the kidnappers should have flown on the wings of greed, easily preceding this ordinary traveler Chelzo to the door of House Belandor. Where was the ransom note?

Could there be some forgotten enemy out there whose lust for vengeance exceeded the lust for cash? Someone who would kill Jianna and relish her father’s agony above money? Had he ever crossed paths with anyone that unnatural?

Aureste did not take time to review the long list of potential nemeses. Turning to the Taerleezi underofficer, he commanded, “You will dispatch a party of your men to the site of the attack. This Orezzian will guide you. You will search the area for my daughter, the Maidenlady Jianna Belandor.”

“Outside our jurisdiction,” the other informed him. “Go to Orezzia and try your luck with the commandant there. As for the gathering of your Faerlonnish dead, that’s no concern of ours.”

For one moment, the urge to kill almost overpowered Aureste. He wore a dagger at his waist. A single quick, enjoyable thrust would wipe the look of cold contempt off that Taerleezi face forever.

And then he would be tried as a partisan murderer, noble rank notwithstanding. A Faerlonnishman convicted of killing a Taerleezi soldier would suffer public execution by torsion, and his friendship with the governor, expensive though it was, would not save him. He would die horrifically and then there would be nobody to rescue Jianna—at least, nobody as capable as her father. No, he could not afford to indulge his appetites. Someday the opportunity would arise, but not now.

“You waste time.” Aureste charged his restraint with precisely modulated menace. “The governor will confirm my orders. The delay will displease him.”

“I can’t speak for the governor.”
And neither can you, Faerlonnish kneeser
. The underofficer’s silent postscript hung in the air.

“You will be hard-pressed to speak for yourself when your superiors are informed of your conduct. You may go,” Aureste decreed. “This Orezzian will remain.”

“I cannot stay,” Chelzo objected. “My master the magnificiari expects me. My master—”

“Must survive without you for a time,” Aureste advised him. “You have now entered my service, where you remain until dismissed.”

“Truly, I cannot,” Chelzo mourned. “You must understand that my master the magnificiari will not endure it. My master the magnificiari is of a choleric disposition. Should I fail to complete my errand promptly, I shall suffer the magnificiari’s extreme displeasure.”