Treason Keep dct-2

by Jennifer Fallon

  “I wish I could say my offer was entirely motivated by the knowledge that you’d rather die than live without me, but the fact is, neither you nor I want a Karien heir to your father’s throne. The whole world will be safer with you in my bed, rather than Cratyn’s.”

  “You are the most arrogant pig I have ever met.”

  “Probably. Will you come with me, or not?”

  “Is sharing your bed a condition of the deal?”

  “No. If you want, I’ll never touch you again. I’ll escort you to Hythria and kill any man who tries to lay a hand on you against your will. Myself included.”

  “You’d throw yourself on your sword for me? Somehow, I doubt that, Damin.”

  “It sounded rather noble, though, don’t you think?”

  Adrina kissed him again. Mikel couldn’t tell how long it lasted. He was too busy wiping away tears of anger and disappointment. Adrina knew that Cratyn was on his way to rescue her. The only reason she was doing this was the one he had refused to contemplate until now.

  “I have conditions,” she said, when they finally broke apart.

  “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.” Damin gathered up the mare’s lead rope and led her to an empty stall next to the one where Mikel was hiding. He held his breath.

  “I’m a princess of royal blood, Damin, not some whore you picked up in the followers’ camp. I expect to be treated as such.”

  “My men shall treat you with the utmost respect, your Highness, or I’ll whip them myself.” He closed the gate on the stall and walked back to her. The sun had almost set and it was getting hard to see them in the gloom.

  “I wasn’t referring to your men, I was talking about you.”

  “I’ll ignore that. What else?”

  “The remainder of my Guard, those men the Defenders are holding prisoner, are to be released.”

  “I think I can arrange that.”

  “And I’m not your damned prisoner, either. If I go with you, I go of my own free will. I’ll be free to leave anytime I want.”

  “Was that all?”

  “No. I want it clearly understood where we stand with each other.”

  “And where is that, exactly?”

  “I don’t love you, Damin, and I’m damned sure you don’t love me. I’ll admit that there is a certain... physical attraction... between us, but that’s all it is. I get a thrill out of flirting with danger and you are about the most dangerous thing around. I don’t want you mistaking this affair for something it’s not.”

  Damin didn’t answer her for a long moment. Then he smiled. “You’re a consummate liar, Adrina.”

  “I assure you, sir, I meant every word.”

  “That’s what makes you so believable. Very well, I agree to your conditions. I’m planning to break camp the day after tomorrow. Be prepared for some hard riding. If your husband should happen to discover where you are, we’ll have every Karien on the border chasing us all the way to Hythria.”

  “Then you’d better hope your Medalonian friends don’t tell him. I wasn’t planning to leave him a note, you know.”

  “Now there’s a thought,” he laughed. He picked up her cloak from where she had thrown it over the railing and held it out for her. Adrina turned and allowed him to drape it over her shoulders. “Let me see, how would it go? Dear Cratyn —”

  “Cretin,” she corrected. “I always called him Cretin. The Kariens thought it was my accent.”

  “Very subtle... Dear Cretin, sorry I can’t be here to meet you dear, but I’ve run off to Hythria with a dashing warlord —”

  “Dashing?”

  “Handsome sounded a bit arrogant, I thought... Anyway, where was I? I’ve run off to Hythria with a dashing warlord with whom I’ve been making wild, passionate love every night for... how long has it been?”

  “One week and two days...”

  “Are you counting?”

  “Only out of curiosity.” She turned to face him, her expression suddenly serious. “We shouldn’t joke about this, Damin. He’ll kill us both.”

  Damin kissed her forehead. “It will take more than – what did you call him? Prince Cretin the Cringing – to kill me. And I swear I’ll kill you myself before I hand you back to him.”

  “Well, that makes me feel so much better.”

  Mikel shrank down as they walked past his stall exchanging that odd mixture of intimate secrets and insulting banter that seemed to characterise their conversations, tears of bitter disappointment sliding down his cheeks.

  The truth burned in his stomach like a bad meal. He waited in the darkness surrounded by the moist smell of the horses for a long, long time after they were gone. His heart was breaking; his childish illusions well and truly shattered.

  By the time he forced himself to move, his fingers were numb with cold. But he had made a decision. When the Karien army crossed the border, Mikel would find a way to gain an audience with the prince.

  He was going to have to explain to Cratyn that his beautiful, noble princess was nothing more than a traitorous slut.

  Part 4

  CONSEQUENCES

  Chapter 54

  The walls of the Citadel defined Brak’s prison. He had discovered this annoying detail quite by accident as he had tried to follow Lord Terbolt to a meeting with another Karien agent in the small village of Kordale, west of the city. He had met an invisible wall as solid and impenetrable as the wall that cut him off from his power. Brak had tested its limits right around the Citadel, but could find no weak point. He wondered if it was entirely Zegarnald’s doing or if the Citadel itself was aiding the War God, although he could think of no reason why the Citadel would ever cooperate with Zegarnald.

  He spent his days watching and worrying over R’shiel. His frustration was a palpable thing and his worry enough to make him physically sick. He had watched Loclon tormenting her and the demon, helpless to intervene. He had watched him punish her then cut off her hair, tearing uselessly at the invisible barrier that separated him from the ordinary world. But worse, he watched as every day R’shiel sank a little lower into despair; a little closer to giving in; a little closer to the day he might have to kill her.

  Brak had an odd relationship with R’shiel. Part guardian, part teacher, he had been sent to find the demon child and bring her home to Sanctuary. His first impressions of her had not been good – she was spoilt, manipulative and rebellious. She bore long grudges and tended to be rather single-minded when it came to getting even. Brak had not liked her much in the beginning. It had taken a long time for him to discover how much of R’shiel’s behaviour was a result of her upbringing as much as her true nature. She carried a lot of hurt inside and those who hurt her would suffer for it. He was also cynical enough to realise that the very qualities that made him distrust her were just the sort of characteristics one needed if one was destined to destroy a god.

  When he had first set out to find the demon child, he had vague visions of a noble young man with a pure heart, who would take on his appointed task with a solemn vow and then... well, he’d never really got to that bit. He had not expected R’shiel; not expected to find a complicated, troubled young woman, who had been raised by the most ruthless and unloving mother that the Sisterhood had ever spawned.

  It wasn’t until he learnt how much of her suffering had been sanctioned by the gods, that he truly began to sympathise with her. Zegarnald’s “tempering” had been a cruel and rocky road for R’shiel and she was a long way from the end.

  If he stood back from it, he understood the logic. Xaphista was a master of seduction, in his own way. He had seduced millions of Kariens into believing him. One half-breed Harshini would hardly be a threat, unless that half-breed was inured to his enticements. R’shiel had to be so determined to destroy him that nothing would stop her. She had to be ruthless enough to stand back and watch everything and everyone she held dear threatened with extinction, and not waver from her purpose. She had survived being raised by Joyhinia, raped by Loclon, imp
risoned by the Sisterhood, a near-fatal wound, and the discovery that she was a member of a race that she had been raised to despise. The experience had left her battered and bruised, but it had not even come close to breaking her. Brak was beginning to wonder if her current situation would succeed where everything else had failed.

  When she regained consciousness after Loclon left her room, it had taken her a little while to get her bearings. Her face was a mess – her forehead puffy and bruised and covered in dried blood. She lay for a time, staring at the canopy over the bed, as if trying to recall how she came to be there. Then she sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. She stiffened with shock, then looked behind her at the carefully laid-out halo of dark red hair that was left behind on the pillow.

  For a moment she did nothing but stare at it in bewilderment, then she leapt off the bed and ran to the mirror hanging over the dresser. Brak winced as she looked at her reflection. Vanity was not a quality he associated with R’shiel – she had always seemed rather unconscious of her beauty – but even the plainest woman would have gasped at the reflection staring back at her. Loclon had hacked off her hair with little care. It stood up in clumps in places; elsewhere it had been cut so close to the scalp that the skin showed through. Her eyes were blackening, the cut on her forehead a red slash across a purple landscape of bruises. Her long neck was livid; white blisters already visible above and below the thin silver collar. Several had burst when she began to move, leaving weeping patches of raw flesh to rub against the metal.

  R’shiel stared at her reflection for a long, long time, then she sank down onto the floor and sobbed like a brokenhearted child.

  Brak could feel her anguish but could do nothing to relieve it.

  He could not imagine what it must be like for her to cope with Loclon in Joyhinia’s body. Added to that, she had failed in her attempt to coerce the Sisterhood. Mahina was imprisoned. Affiana and Lord Draco were both dead. Garet Warner had changed sides and the Kariens effectively had control of the Citadel. If that wasn’t enough, when the order to surrender arrived at the border, Tarja’s life would be forfeit. He had no way of knowing, but Brak suspected R’shiel’s tears were as much from failure, as they were from pain.

  But while her reactions up to that point had been typical, since that day R’shiel seemed sunk so far in misery, that she no longer cared what happened.

  Terbolt had been quite appalled at the state she was in when he returned from his prayers and livid over the loss of the demon. He had chastised Loclon severely, but the Karien still needed a cooperative Joyhinia, so he had done little more than make his displeasure known. He had ordered the priests to treat her wounds and Garanus, in a rare show of compassion, trimmed her hair until it was, if not quite styled, then at least tidy. Once the bruises faded, she wouldn’t look too bad, Brak thought. She had that sort of bone structure.

  But R’shiel cared no more for how she looked than she did about anything else, at present. She ate only if the priests stood over her, and then it was mechanically, as if she didn’t taste a bite. She said nothing unless directly addressed and then answered in a monotone. She washed when they told her, ate when they ordered her, and when she was alone she simply sat where they left her, staring blindly into the distance.

  Two days after Loclon’s attack some of the blisters under the collar began to fester. She did not even flinch when the priests held back her head, lanced the sores and poured saltwater onto the open cuts. They did not remove the collar, simply worked around it, but even that rough handling got no reaction from her. He remembered how vague she had been after he rescued her from the Grimfield, the night she had tried to kill Loclon. She had been animated then, compared to her present state.

  And there was not a damned thing he could do about it.

  Two weeks after R’shiel’s capture at the Gathering, Lord Terbolt finally announced his intention to leave the Citadel and return to Karien. Brak had been certain he was waiting for something, but could not work out what it was. The arrival of a tall, dour-looking Karien who introduced himself as Squire Mathen was apparently what the duke had been expecting. The two of them remained closeted for hours. When they emerged, Terbolt announced his plans to leave.

  Loclon had been fairly panting in anticipation for that moment, and his chance at unfettered power as First Sister. Brak had wondered if Terbolt would be so foolish as to leave Loclon in charge. The Karien Duke was not stupid and Loclon’s loss of the demon and his attack on R’shiel had done nothing to foster any trust between them. Brak thought it would be better for everyone if he simply slit the throat of Loclon’s senseless body and let his soul wither and die.

  They kept Loclon’s body in a room in the First Sister’s apartments. The priests tended it with businesslike efficiency. Transferring the mind of one person into the body of another was not such a difficult feat to arrange, by Harshini standards. It was just one of those things that was only done if there was a good reason for it – and that was rare. Had they thought about it, they could have done the same to Joyhinia themselves, although considering the way things had turned out, it probably would not have made a difference, given that Zegarnald actually wanted to push R’shiel to breaking point.

  There were risks, though. If the host body died, then the mind automatically returned to its own body with little more than a nasty shock. But if the vacant body died, the soul had nowhere to go. It would survive a day or two, no longer, before joining its physical counterpart in death. Loclon’s transfer was nothing like the subtle removal of wit that Dacendaran had performed on Joyhinia. This was the working of a clutch of Karien priests who lacked the finesse of a god. They had simply taken Loclon’s mind – lock, stock and barrel – and dumped it into Joyhinia’s unresisting body.

  Squire Mathen would remain behind to “assist” the First Sister. Loclon was furious, and could do nothing but agree. Two priests would remain behind also, Terbolt declared, then made a great show of handing Mathen the key to the room where Loclon’s body lay. The message was clear, even to Loclon.

  Terbolt’s announcement of their imminent departure drew no visible reaction from R’shiel. She barely even glanced at him. Loclon waited outside the door, fidgeting with Joyhinia’s long skirts. As soon as Terbolt emerged, he began demanding to know exactly who Squire Mathen was. Brak made to follow them, until he spied Garet Warner entering the apartment. He said something to guards on R’shiel’s door that Brak didn’t catch then went inside. On impulse, Brak followed Garet.

  The commandant seemed shocked at R’shiel’s condition, but she was as unresponsive to his arrival as she had been to anything else in the past week. Garet knelt down beside her chair and gently shook her shoulder.

  “R’shiel?”

  She ignored him, or perhaps she was so far inside herself, she really didn’t know he was there.

  “R’shiel?”

  Finally she turned to him, her eyes blank. “What?”

  “You’re leaving today. With Lord Terbolt.”

  “I know.”

  “They’ve ordered the troops on the border to surrender.”

  “I know.”

  Garet muttered something under his breath that sounded like a curse.

  “Do you understand me, R’shiel? Do you even know who I am?”

  “I know you,” she replied tonelessly. “You betrayed me.”

  He nodded, satisfied with her answer for some reason. “I didn’t betray you, R’shiel. I just can’t help anyone from a prison cell. Do you understand? Do you know why I did what I did?”

  She turned to him, showing some real interest for the first time. “You did what you said you would do. Brak called you an honest man.”

  “Not a description I’d use myself, but I think I know what he means.” He reached into his boot-top and withdrew a thin sheathed blade. “Can you hide this somewhere?”

  She stared at the knife incomprehensibly. “What for?”

  “To escape, maybe? Or do you want to go to Karie
n?”

  “I have to face the Overlord. He wants me to join him.”

  Garet sighed and pushed the knife into the top of her boot. “You do what you have to, R’shiel. The only thing I’m concerned about is Medalon. I’ve done all I can for you.”

  The commandant left after that and the guards came in to escort R’shiel downstairs. She let them drape a plain woollen cloak over her shoulders and lead her away without resistance. Brak followed her and the Karien party as they descended the stairs, wanting to scream with frustration. Once they left the Citadel, she would be entirely out of reach.

  Garanus handed her into the carriage and then climbed in beside her. As soon as the door snicked shut the carriage moved off toward the Main Gate where Terbolt and nearly a thousand Defenders awaited the order to move out. Brak had never felt more helpless in his entire life.

  “Zegarnald!”

  The grey limbo in which he was trapped seemed to quiver with the strength of his cry.

  “Zegarnald! Let me out of here!”

  The silence he received in reply was absolute.

  Chapter 55

  Adrina had just finished packing, if throwing her few meagre possessions into a sack could be called that, when the door flew open and Tarja appeared.

  “If you’re leaving, your Highness, you’d better do it now,” he warned. “The Kariens are on their way.”

  “How can that be? Damin said Jenga had agreed not to surrender until we’d gone.”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps they know about the order from the Citadel. They may even have had a hand in it somehow. All I know is that there’s a whole troop of knights riding this way under a flag of truce.”

  Adrina cursed in a most unladylike fashion. “Tam, go and find... no, on second thoughts, you’d better stay with me. Someone might recognise you. Are you certain they’re heading this way?”

  “Yes.”