“Very true. My sister, when she saw I’d come along, very nearly gave it all away in her panic. She wanted to protect me, begged me to go back before I was found out.”
“I can understand that,” Ursula commented.
Of course she would, being the eldest sister, always taking care of the others. “But my mind was made up and I refused.”
“Stubborn, even then.”
I let that go as true enough. “The farther we traveled from the Imperial Palace, the laxer the seraglio rules were in the noble households where Rodolf planned to overnight. In the smaller manors and keeps, it’s simply not practical or healthy for the women to live in a closed set of rooms all day, every day. That openness would work in our favor. I also knew once we reached Arynherk, I’d be dealing with people loyal to Rodolf, so if I was going to help my sister escape, then it had to be before then.”
Ursula sat up and looked at me. “You helped her to escape?”
“Of course.” I frowned, puzzled. “That was my plan all along.”
“Oh, thank Danu,” she breathed and framed my face with her warrior’s hands, kissing me deeply. “I can’t stand suspense. Tell me she escaped with you.”
“She escaped with me.”
Ursula let out a long breath. “Unreal. You are a remarkable man.”
I smoothed a wayward lock of her hair back from her temple. “Thank you, but I was mostly insanely lucky. When I look back at all the ways my plan could’ve failed…” I shook off the specter of those nightmare scenarios, some that still visited me in harrowing dreams.
“I broke her out in the middle of the night and we traveled through… a cold climate.” I hedged my way judiciously through the details I’d sworn not to reveal. “And made for a… place where we could travel out of the empire.”
Ursula settled back against me. “This is like a riddle. I’m guessing you went through remote countryside, probably crossing mountains if it was so much colder, to a coastal city where you could sail elsewhere. Smart plan.”
“Not so much. As with all plans, but especially those contrived by inexperienced fools, it went awry.” I sighed heavily. “I need to move.”
She obligingly stood, uncoiling herself with grace and a hint of the speed from her shapeshifter heritage. Taking the opportunity, she refilled our wine goblets and met me by the window with them. Handing me mine, she touched hers to it in grave salute. “To an idealistic boy who did what no one else had the courage to attempt.”
I smiled slightly, mostly to please her, and sipped, steeling myself for the next part. “We couldn’t travel as swiftly as I’d assumed. My experience had been with other men, ones properly dressed for bitter weather and skilled at riding. My sister… she had never even sat a horse before. Though I’d found outdoor gear for her, it had all been designed for men.” I swallowed some wine, grateful for the way it blurred the sharp edges of those desperate memories.
“And she’d been hurt,” Ursula supplied, gaze full of sorrow.
“Yes. The women… they used teas and a soothing smoke to ease pain. Another aspect of life in the Imperial Palace I’d been aware of but never thought through.” I lifted my wine in grim acceptance. “My sister had been drugged into a stupor and I made her give up the smoke and tea so she’d be alert for the escape.”
“You had to.” Ursula nodded crisply. “No choice there. And she did it, which speaks to her strength of character.”
If only I’d known someone like Ursula then. I could’ve used her clear thinking. “She was so brave, Essla. She never once complained, but she was in terrible pain, injured far worse than I knew, where no one could see.”
Ursula nodded, understanding, the ghost of old pain tightening her face. I nearly asked again if I should stop, remembering what she’d told me about herself, how she’d been so young, and she’d bled, telling no one. She wouldn’t thank me, though, for treating her as too fragile to hear this.
“I didn’t know until we reached the hunter’s cabin I’d been making for. We’d made it away clean and rode through the night, but morning would bring discovery of her absence and inevitable pursuit. I’d hoped to rest a few hours, then continue. But her saddle blankets…” I rubbed a hand over my face, wiping away the cold sweat. “Soaked in blood.”
“Not surprising, really,” Ursula said the words very softly, laying a hand on my arm and stroking me. “A young and virgin bride and a man of Bloody Rodolf’s reputation…”
“Yes, well.” I wrapped my hands around the goblet, holding onto it. “I didn’t know that. I wasn’t even entirely clear on how women differed from men, other than ribald jokes and improbable tales. But I had to do something. She was so pale and weak—even I could see she’d die if we kept going that way.”
“What did you do?” Ursula asked, the knowing in her eyes.
“She was ashamed, embarrassed, didn’t want me to know and certainly didn’t want her baby brother seeing her that way.” It had been so surreal, her embarrassment and mine, along with the keen awareness that her life, at the least, rode on both of us setting those niceties aside. My lovely sister, and the savagery of what he’d done to her tenderest, most intimate self.
“He’d torn her badly, in her sex, so I sewed her up. I knew enough of field dressing wounds, how to clean them, of stitches and so forth. What I didn’t know was…” I gave Ursula a look I hoped was wry, though it felt like it fell short. She only watched me with solemn attention. “I didn’t know what a healthy woman’s sex should look like,” I explained. “I didn’t know what was a natural opening and what—” My voice broke.
Ursula took my goblet, set it aside, and drew me into her arms; so much slighter than I, but strong enough to hold me as I dropped my forehead to her shoulder. “Oh, Harlan,” she murmured. “You are an incredible man, then and now. And she lived. That’s what matters.”
“She lived. And I made myself some promises that night.”
“You swore to learn your way around women so well that you would know what to do both to give them pleasure and to heal?” Ursula suggested, a wry knowing in her voice.
I lifted my head and kissed her forehead. “Yes.”
“I can vouch for your success.” She kissed me, a tender brush of her lips against mine, gentle in a way she rarely was. “What then?”
“We were extraordinarily lucky—or so I believed—and though we stayed in that cabin for days, long enough for her to heal sufficiently to at least ride, we weren’t discovered. We made it to my planned destination, and I paid for passage on transportation to leave in the morning. My sister had shorn her distinctive hair and we’d found a sympathetic blacksmith to cut off her wedding bracelets, and unchain her ring. We’d—”
Ursula held up her index finger, stopping me. She’d broken that finger a few times in sword practice or battles, and it had a crooked bent, as if it asked a question. “Cut off her bracelets, and… unchain a ring?” she inquired, a hint of danger beneath the smooth surface tone.
I sighed. She was going to hate this. “Dasnarian wedding bracelets are an old tradition. They’re jeweled and very pretty—all different designs—but traditionally they’re locked onto the bride during the wedding ceremony, never to be removed.” More like manacles than jewelry, it had occurred to me much later in life.
Ursula assimilated that with a cool and remote expression, saying nothing.
“The ring… Well, Bloody Rodolf had this extraordinary diamond ring, an Arynherk tradition, that he gave my sister to go with the bracelets—and attached to them by a chain. They all had to be cut off and the jewels were going to pay for our new lives.”
“‘Our’?” She still sounded distant, mastering her revulsion, I knew.
“I planned to go with her. My sister… she knew nothing of the world. She’d been raised very deliberately that way. I’d never thought about it—as I’d never thought about so many things back then, in my selfishness—but she’d been educated only in pleasing her husband. You know already that Das
narian women can’t handle money or make trade transactions of any kind, by law of the empire, but my sister couldn’t even count.”
“Of course you had to go with her.” Ursula picked up her wine again and sipped, considering me, her thoughts obscure.
“And I had no wish to return to my life,” I admitted. “I couldn’t be a part of a family who did that to their own. I wanted nothing more of being an Imperial Prince and all that entailed.”
“Which is why you were so angry with me the day Kral arrived at Ordnung, and I called you Prince Harlan Konyngrr,” she noted.
“Yes.” I grimaced, acknowledging. “You understand more now why I am not… entirely rational on the topic.”
“I do.” She gazed out the window at the lovely summer afternoon, her profile sharp, her bearing so regal. “I won’t beat you up about this, but you could have explained. It would’ve helped to know before now.”
I brushed a hand over her hair, less an apology than an effort to demonstrate what I had no words to express. She gave me a sidelong look, and shook her head. “Finish it. What happened?”
“Kral found us.”
“Kral.” She pressed her lips together. “I see.”
“He tracked us. Caught me naked in the bath, my weapons on the other side of the room.”
She winced in sympathy and I knew she, of all people, would understand that level of nakedness, of powerlessness.
“He intended to escort us back to face our father, said all would be forgiven if we gave him no trouble. My sister, of course, would be returned to her husband, who owned her under Dasnarian law.”
Ursula set down her goblet and leaned against the window sill, breathing the fresh air, her knuckles white. “I’m sorry I stopped you from killing him,” she said conversationally.
“No, it’s good you stopped me.”
“Oh, right.” She gave me a lethal smile. “Because now we can go kill him together.”
Chapter Ten
She meant it, too, gray eyes sharp as a silver blade. No matter that Ursula claimed the priorities of the High Throne overrode all else, where she loved, she loved fiercely and without reservation. And as Danu’s avatar, she couldn’t abide injustice, especially wrongs against other women. I laughed, running a hand down her back, more in love with this warrior of a woman than ever.
“Jepp would never forgive us,” I pointed out.
“Jepp,” she said reflectively. “How she can love a man like that?”
“Because he’s changed.” I held up my hands when her gaze narrowed and sparked. “He has. You have to realize he was only a youth, too. At seventeen, he had years of bulk and fighting skill on me, but he was, if anything, more selfish, more narrow-minded, able to see only one path, one ambition.”
She snorted, but didn’t interrupt.
“He believed that he’d be made heir in Hestar’s place, as a reward for bringing us back.”
“Would your father have done that?”
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “Who knows? Kral believed he would, and his mother Hulda molded him to want nothing but that, except perhaps her approval—which, along with her love, hinged entirely on Kral ascending to the throne instead of Hestar. Kral…didn’t have it in him to have compassion for our sister. None of us were raised to have compassion for the weak, or for the women we believed existed to slake our needs and nothing else.”
She contemplated that—and me. “However did you emerge from that as the man you are now?”
I refilled my goblet and hers. “I broke into pieces and put myself back together in another pattern.”
“I see. So, Kral had you trapped and captive…?”
“Kral underestimated her. It never occurred to him that she’d act without my help, so he left her for the night in her own room at the inn and made me sleep in his.” I raised my brows. “Anything else wouldn’t have been proper.”
“She escaped in the night?” Ursula breathed, a hint of delight in it.
“She did.” I couldn’t help smiling also. “She must’ve climbed out the windows and made her way over the rooftops. No one saw or heard a thing. She was a dancer, did I mention that? I saw her dance the ducerse the night before her wedding, and she was stunning. You would appreciate the athletic skill of it. She wore bells, but danced so that they remained silent until she allowed them to chime.” I shook my head, remembering Jenna, her ivory hair like a banner of silk, gleaming with pearls and sparkling with diamonds, dancing as I’d never seen anyone dance, before or since.
“In the morning she was gone, leaving only that diamond ring behind. She arranged it just so, in the carcass of the fowl Kral had eaten for dinner. You should’ve seen Kral’s face.” I laughed, and Ursula laughed with me, the light of vengeance bright in her eyes.
“Good girl,” she murmured. “Good for you.” Her expression sharpened. “Surely Kral searched for her.”
“Of course—and dragged me with him, also of course. She wasn’t on the transportation I’d booked. No one had seen her.”
Ursula looked interested, loving the puzzle. “She left the diamond but had the other jewels, and you have to be talking sailing ships. So, she set sail for somewhere else.”
I lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “Or she was enslaved.”
Ursula frowned, shocked out of her reverie. “Excuse me?”
“You, yourself, accused me of being from a race of slavers when we first met,” I pointed out. “While not entirely accurate, it’s also not entirely untrue. My sister was a lovely, nubile young woman, clearly of gentle birth, with no protection, no way to defend herself beyond a few last-resort moves I showed her with a dagger.”
Ursula smiled briefly. “Of course you did. But she might’ve found friends. There are good people in the world, too.”
I touched her cheek. “You are the idealist, though you try to act so tough.”
She narrowed her eyes in menace. “I am tough.”
“You are,” I conceded. “My sister… was not.” I could only wish she’d been trained as Ursula had, to be a warrior, to survive.
“I don’t know, Harlan.” Ursula thoughtfully turned the goblet in her hands. “The woman you describe is no fragile flower. She gutted it out on that ride, gave up the drugs when she had to be in horrendous pain—climbed out a window and disappeared. She sounds like a survivor to me.”
“Then why didn’t I find her? Why didn’t she find me?” I tossed back the rest of my wine, the grit in the dregs of it scraping my throat.
“I take it you looked.”
“Later, yes. After I left the third time.”
“The third?”
“Yes. So, once Kral—to his intense fury and frustration, which I greatly enjoyed—couldn’t find any trace of our sister, we journeyed back to the Imperial Palace. No surprise, though I went peaceably enough, all was not forgiven.” I smiled without humor as Ursula’s gaze darkened. “My father, the emperor; Empress Hulda; my brother Hestar; Kral—they all brought considerable pressure on me to reveal where my sister had gone.”
“You didn’t tell them you didn’t know?”
“Sure I did. They didn’t believe me. If I hadn’t helped her final escape, then they’d have to accept that a young woman, barely more than a girl, whom they’d devoted enormous effort into molding to be obedient and helpless, had somehow succeeded at defying them all. Which is more likely?”
She nodded, slowly, then looked at me with concern. “What pressure did they put on you?”
I lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “It was long ago, and the young man I was no longer needs defending.”
“I’ll decide what needs defending. What pressure?”
“The usual, Essla,” I told her wearily. “What you’d imagine—beatings, flogging, starvation, back-breaking work, humiliating me by stripping me of rank, of what little power I possessed.”
“I’m so sorry, Harlan,” she murmured, looking bereft.
“As I said, it was long ago, and it did
a great deal to strengthen me. I learned a lot about myself and what I could withstand. I discovered they couldn’t do anything to me that I wouldn’t willingly suffer, as I always had in my mind’s eye how much worse my sister had suffered, simply for existing. Eventually, however, they discovered something I couldn’t bear.”
“Your mother, and your other sisters,” Ursula guessed, then smiled ruefully at what she saw in my face. “Standard technique for breaking someone, yes? If you can’t break them, hurt someone else in their stead. I bet it worked, too.”
“It did. You know, through all that, I still hadn’t seen Helva. She was only fifteen and not old enough to leave the seraglio and attend the wedding festivities. But they brought her out to be flogged. Her and Inga both. I couldn’t stop it.”
I thought I’d done well, making it through the story thus far—past what I’d thought were the worst parts—without giving into the wracking grief. But the stricken look on Ursula’s face did me in. I’d shed tears for her before, and now she wept for me, mirroring my terrible sorrow.
“I couldn’t stop it,” I told her again. Suddenly weak with the memory, I slid down the wall to sit on the carpeted floor. Ursula sat with me, her silver-clad legs crossed under the split gown, looking almost girlish, nothing of the regal queen or vicious warrior in her now.
She took one of my hands in hers. “No, Harlan, you couldn’t have stopped it. They did it, not you. You bear no guilt for this.”
I nodded so she’d feel better, though I knew the guilt was in fact all mine, and knuckled away the tears. “Fortunately, they didn’t whip Inga and Helva much.” I barked out a laugh, bitter. “Much. How’s that for temporizing?”
“It’s meaningful,” Ursula insisted. “Your sisters were young, naïve, tender—it would’ve been easy to make them cry without hurting them severely, especially if the goal was to goad you.”
“I’m not sure that helps.”
“Set it aside for now, but you might find it does help, over time.”
“When did you get so smart?” I touched her cheek and she smiled at me, watery.
Seasons of Sorcery Page 35
