Baroness of Blood

NINETEEN

Jorani could never understand madness, yet now it seemed to be all around him. Word of the killings at the border guardhouse rolled like a deadly tidal wave through the castle, then Pirie, then all of Kislova. The fact that six of the dead were from Sun-dell was ignored. The fact that the Kislovan soldiers had been new recruits and one had fought for the rebels before the invasion seemed to be all that anyone considered. Suddenly, Baron Peto was not a savior but a tyrant, more hated than Janosk, who had at least been one of their own.

Nobles of various Kislovan estates were waiting for Ilsabet at Nimbus Castle. She wore the silver gown, the crystal jewelry, the matching silver shoes. When she stepped from the carriage, pale hair in delicate ringlets over her back, Lord Ruven took her hand and escorted her into the great hall, past the assembly, to the seat of honor her father had once occupied.

Jorani waited beside it, and as she climbed the stairs, he thought how right it was that Janosk's most able child should finally sit in his place.

The silence that greeted her arrival was the last for hours. Though Ilsabet was undoubtedly exhausted from the long journey, she listened carefully as nobles gave their opinions on what should be done. Most wanted to continue the alliance with Sundell-as if anyone had a choice in the matter-which had proven so beneficial to the country. A few suggested ways of appeasing the peasants. One old lord, a staunch supporter of Janosk, was inexplicably in favor of invading Sundell.

"They'd hardly expect such a move. And we'd have the support of the people, that's for sure," he said.

Ilsabet listened politely to the man, then explained to him that Sundell was far too strong for the remnants of the Kislovan army. "Besides, the work of one insane officer cannot be allowed to undo what has become an economically advantageous alliance."

Jorani was surprised at his relief. Had he really thought she would do something foolish out of revenge? As he listened to her propose imprisonment for those speaking against the occupation and execution for anyone who took up arms against Sundell, he realized she was as harsh a ruler as her father had been. With a pang of regret, he also decided she might have fallen in love with her husband.

When they were alone in her chambers, she dispelled that last thought by throwing her arms around him and kissing him. "I thought of you every day," she said and moved away from him. The silver fabric of her gown caught the light, and as she walked toward the window, it seemed to glow.

"Do you care for Peto at all?" he asked.

She shook her head. "But I've learned to lie so perfectly," she answered. "And I'm pleased I went there. I've discovered so much." She told him of the plans she'd made for the castle, then took him to her room where servants had uncrated the books she'd borrowed and piled them on her reading table.

Given her interests, she'd chosen well, Jorani noted. There were neatly written and illustrated volumes on plants of the region, on the uses of molds and chemicals, on the spread and treatment of disease.

"They're a strange people," she said. "So many of the books were covered with dust or crumbling with age. I was in awe of the knowledge they ignored. I've already read some of the ones I borrowed, but I wanted to share them with you. And just before I left, I discovered this behind a shelf of books. I doubt anyone knew it was there." She held out a slim pile of pages, crudely bound.

He sat at the table and opened it. The writing was faded to a pale brown, almost unreadable against the yellowed pages. He read the first page slowly, then looked up at her with concern. "Don't keep this, Ilsa-bet. This does not deal with healing, nor even with poisons. This is sorcery, black and terrible. It also mentions a curse connected with the potion's use."

"It describes how to raise the dead. If you had fallen, wouldn't you want me to use such a thing on you?"

"Never! Don't even think of ft." If there had been a fire in the hearth, he would have flung the volume into it, half expecting it not to bum.

"I've read nearly all of it already," she lied. "I never forget what I learn. If you don't want me to share the knowledge contained here, I'll bum the book as soon as I'm finished."

"No," he said. "I won't destroy such knowledge, though I'll never use it." As he spoke, he knew this was a decision he would one day regret.

When Jorani turned to leave, she gripped his arm and drew him inside, kissing him again, then going to the table, filling a pair of crystal goblets. "I told you we would rule together." She handed him a glass.

He took it, sipped it, thinking there was something inevitable and tragic about the love he felt for her. Nonetheless, he stayed.

Beside him in bed, Usabet thought about the amber potion she had deliberately stopped taking. The time for a child had come. No heir of Peto's

would rule Kislova or Sundell. Someday Peto would know the truth of that as well.

Later that night, she dreamt of her ghosts-Mar-ishka with her white wolf, Dark with the girl she'd seen in the camp, the rebels she'd poisoned in the dungeon, even the soldiers in the guardhouse. They were together, moving toward her across the mist-covered Arvid River, up the narrow winding staircase that led to the room where she lay, tossing in the nightmare.

She screamed and tried to fling off the covers and run from them, but the mists were all around the bed, the room. She was lost in them, lost in the horror of what she had done. She forced herself awake and with a broken cry reached across the bed for Jorani. He had gone. She was alone, and the dreams had somehow followed her into the waking world. She saw the shifting forms of her victims floating through the dark room, their white hands reaching out to brush her face.

She cringed back, but the ghost of Marishka moved closer to plant a frigid kiss on Ilsabet's cheek. "You must not destroy him, Sister," she whispered, "or you will destroy yourself, as well."

Pulling the covers over her face, Ilsabet lay in the bed, her heart pounding, her body shaking, terrified like the child she almost was.

Emory's father had been a rebel, captured and executed in the last days of the fighting. After the failed invasion and the fall of Janosk, Emory had done his best to take his father's place around the farm, but found it impossible. Before, he had managed the flocks in the hills south of Pirie while his father and younger brother tended the barn and the fields. Now Emory wished his family were larger.

Even a little sister would be welcome to help with spring planting.

By spring, he conceded to his mother and took on a Kislovan soldier. The man worked as diligently for the family as he had for Janosk, and a few months after arriving, married Emory's mother. In time, Emory saw the soldier as just a man, worthy of respect, and abandoned his hatred for his mother's sake.

Then came the guardhouse massacre, where a boyhood friend of Emory's was slaughtered by a Sundell officer. Some said the officer had gone mad, others that the murdered soldiers had stumbled onto a Sundell plot and were killed to keep them silent.

Emory wasn't certain which theory he believed, but he finally had an outlet for his anguish and hate. He would slip from the house at night and meet his comrades at an outlying farm, where they would sit and talk of independence from Sundell.

Emory knew it was only a matter of time before their plots were discovered. When he heard the soldiers riding toward Pirie, he woke his brother. They grabbed scythes and ran to the neighbors' houses, rousing their friends. The group of four fanned out, moving through the little town, waking comrades, who armed themselves with whatever was handy. If they were to be taken, they'd go down fighting.

They assembled on the docks. The few tiny fishing boats behind them provided a ready means of escape, and the river mists were thick enough to hide their flight.

They waited silently as the sounds of the patrol's horses grew louder, until they saw the soldiers ride out of the mists.

Shaul held up his hand, a signal for the others to stop, and stared down at Emory and the rest of the band. "Catch anything?" he asked.

"We haven't gone out yet," someone replied. A few of the men chuckled. They'd expected to be attacked, not to bandy lies with the enemy.

"We're on our way to the border guards. If any of you know the men, I'd be happy to take them a message," Shaul said.

The offer deflated nearly everyone. But in the back of the crowd someone, probably from the group who'd left the tavern, called out loudly, "Tell them to go home. We don't serve Sundell."

A few of the men hooted.

Shaul turned his horse toward the crowd and advanced. Someone stabbed with a pitchfork. The horse reared and in an instant the battle was on.

The townsfolk were no match for the well-armed soldiers, and the battle turned into a rout. As Emory dragged a wounded comrade toward a boat, soldiers pulled him back and wrestled him to the ground.

That was all he remembered until he woke, tied and tossed with prisoners and wounded alike into the back of a cart rolling slowly down the road to Nimbus Castle. In the dim light of the cart's lamp, he saw that the man he'd been helping lay beside him, his hands also tied behind his back. The man's shoulder wound had opened and his shirt and Emory's were soaked with blood.

"Help him please," Emory called to one of the Sundell soldiers. The man moved ahead in the line without a word.

A lamp flared in a cottage on the edge of town. Emory raised his head and saw the man's father standing in the door, the worried frown on his face accentuated by lamplight.

"Leka is here," Emory cried out. "He's been…"

At the first sound, the soldier returned, kicking Emory hard on the side of his head. He lay back and listened to Leka's moans, his labored breaths, until finally, mercifully, Leka trembled as death touched him and the terrible noises stopped.

By then, the walls of Nimbus Castle were rising above the mists. They rode through the fog on the narrow peninsula. Emory raised his head enough to see the doors swing open like the great jaws of some half-formed misty beast, swallowing them all as they rode inside.

Emory got only a glimpse of the castle before he was pulled out of the cart and dragged to the dungeons. He heard two other boys from Pirie talking in an adjoining cell. He wanted to call to them, to tell them he was all right, but he'd become too frightened to say a word. Rats, his father used to say, loved the scent of blood, and his shirt was soaked with it. He pulled it off, wiped the blood from his body, then flung the dirty cloth through the bars of his cell. With his back to a corner, his knees tight against his chest, he tried to sleep.

Jorani had left Ilsabet's room just after midnight and returned to his tower rooms. He wanted no scandal, no hint that they were anything but an aged teacher and his apt pupil. He'd just dozed off, thoughts full of her, when a soft knock at the door roused him.

"Come in," he called, and a stableboy entered.

The youth wiped sleep from his own eyes, then said, "I was told not to rouse the house, but to come directly to you and say that four of the soldiers have returned. They bring two of their own wounded and three prisoners. Lieutenant Shaul wishes to speak to you."

"I'll inform the baroness," he said.

Kashi already had. Jorani found Ilsabet in the kitchen, sitting with the healers as the wounded soldiers had their cuts bathed and wrapped.

Without kohl and rouge, her features seemed younger, more delicate. What was I thinking last night, he wondered, then realized ruefully that he'd hardly been thinking at all.

Shaul drew Jorani aside and described how the prisoners had been captured, adding that he believed the men on the dock were acting in self-defense when the clash occurred. "One Sundell soldier is dead, along with two men from the village," he concluded. "It's a serious matter, but the prisoners are scarcely more than children. I request that you take their age into account when you decide their punishment."

"I'll discuss it with the baroness." Jorani returned to where Ilsabet was sitting, whispered a few words to her, then asked, "Do you want to see the prisoners?"

She nodded and followed him to the dungeons, her hard-soled slippers making sharp clicks on the damp stone stairs.

The dank lower levels of the castle were as familiar to her as the upper floors. She could have walked these passages in total darkness, yet she listened dutifully as Shaul warned her about sinkholes, places where the hall narrowed, where the next set of steps were, where the passage became treacherously slippery.

The two prisoners that shared a cell were a little older than Ilsabet. The bravado had left them in the last hours, and they were more than willing to petition for their ruler's mercy. The third and youngest prisoner did not move when they came to his cell. Though his eyes glowed with a fierce pride, his face was a mask of fear, both emotions so intense that either might underlie his refusal to come forward and greet the baroness.

"The man beside him in the cart died on the way to the castle, Baroness," Shaul said. "This one hasn't moved from that place since we brought him here."

Ilsabet took the torch from the soldier and thrust it through the bars. The cell, with its oozing walls and slimy floors, looked all the worse in the firelight.

"Why won't you come forward?" she asked.

"The rats," he whispered.

"There are no rats here," she replied. "Come. Bow."

He stretched out his legs and stood, walking toward her. Something in his expression reminded her of Dark, enough that she pulled the torch back and returned it to a servant. "I'll bow to Kislova but never to SundelL"

"I am Kislova."

He lowered his eyes and bowed his head more out of acceptance of her station than obedience. "My name is Emory," he said.

"Why did you attack the patrol, Emory?" she asked.

"We thought they were coming to arrest us. It happened often even before the revolt."

Ilsabet looked to Jorani. "It's true," Jorani said. "What do you want to do with these three?"

Jorani had expected that the boy had already made his death certain. However, Ilsabet surprised him. "Let the other two go. This one has the mark of a leader. I want him kept in the castle for a while." She saw the look of horror on Emory's face. Amused by it, she smiled. "Somewhere secure, but more comfortable, someplace where there are no rats, where we can sit and talk and think of ways to bring quiet to this land."

"I'd… I'd scarcely have any ideas, Baroness," Emory stammered, still hoping to leave with the others.

"Even so, I want you to stay. Don't worry, I'm going to give you my sister's rooms. Tonight, bathe and rest. Tomorrow, we'll meet." She left him, giving orders to the guards.

As soon as she was gone, they unlocked Emory's cell and escorted him upstairs. He didn't feel quite like a prisoner any longer, but he wasn't a guest, either.