Treason Keep

nodded. “I see. You are more devious than I suspected, Korandellan, but the glamour that holds back her emotions cannot last forever. Brakandaran, I suggest you take the demon child into the mountains for a day. Let her breathe the air outside of Sanctuary for a time and then ask her the same question. Her answer will differ a great deal, I suspect.”

“What do you mean? I feel fine.”

“And happy, and calm, and contented,” Zegarnald agreed. “But can you feel pain? Or anger? Or grief? I think you will discover such emotions beyond you while you live within these walls.”

R’shiel looked puzzled, uncertain. Korandellan looked decidedly unhappy.

“Is this true?” she asked the Harshini king. “Have you done something to me that stops me feeling those things?”

“It was necessary, child,” Korandellan told her, as incapable of lying as he was of causing pain.

“But it can’t be,” she insisted. “I have no holes in my memory. I remember everything. And everyone.”

“And yet you feel nothing?” the god asked. “You feel no loss for your friends, no anger at being betrayed, no fear for their safety? Take my advice, leave these walls for a time and see if you feel the same. When you wish to return to your friends, call me. I will see you delivered safely to them.”

The god was gone an instant later, leaving a very confused young woman behind. Brak glanced at the King and shook his head. “You cannot fight the inevitable, Korandellan.”

The King sighed. “I’m Harshini, Brakandaran. I cannot fight anything.”

Chapter 17

Adrina intended to make Cratyn pay for striking her, and pay dearly. Such an act was beyond unforgivable. In the finest traditions of mort’eda – the ancient Fardohnyan art of revenge – she quite coldly and deliberately planned to make him rue the day he ever laid eyes on her.

Her first step was acquiescing to his demands. Overnight, Adrina became the perfect Karien Princess – so perfect that it brought suspicious stares from Madren and Vonulus, both of whom viewed her transformation with suspicion. Lacking proof to the contrary, however, there was little they could do, given Adrina’s exemplary behaviour. Cratyn did not seem surprised. He no doubt considered it a direct result of his ultimatum, and Adrina was happy to let him think that way until she was ready to teach him otherwise.

Adrina dressed according to Karien custom, wore her hair in a snood, as was proper for married Karien Ladies, and followed Cratyn the required three paces behind him whenever they appeared in public together. She converted to the Overlord with remarkable conviction and even attended morning prayers in the chilly Temple with Queen Aringard each morning at dawn. She embroidered with her ladies and planned menus with commendable frugality. She gave alms to the poor on Fifthdays and met with the nobles of her husband’s court with eyes lowered demurely. She wore no cosmetics and trimmed her long nails to the short blunt shape the Kariens preferred. In short, she gave nobody a single excuse to fault her behaviour.

Of course, there were any number of ways to get at Cratyn, the easiest target being the hapless Lady Chastity.

Adrina suddenly decided that she preferred the Lady Chastity’s company to others’. She began to foster a friendship with the girl that culminated some three weeks after her wedding in a long session of “girl-talk”, which centred mostly on Cratyn. A single afternoon was all it took to reduce the poor girl to tears as Adrina waxed lyrically about the prince, about how many children they would have, about how handsome he was and how lucky she was that some other woman hadn’t snatched him up before now. When Chastity had all she could stomach she excused herself hastily. Adrina could hear her sobbing from down the hall.

Teasing Chastity was poor sport, though, and it put Cratyn in a foul mood. He burst into her rooms as she bent over her needlework and ordered Tamylan out, his pale face flushed with rage.

“What did you do?”

“I wasn’t aware that I had done anything, your Highness. Could you be a little more specific?”

“The Lady Chastity is distraught! What did you say to her?”

“We were merely discussing married life. I was endeavouring to enlighten her about the joys of conjugal bliss.” She smiled at him sweetly and added, “Such that it is.”

“You are not to discuss such things with her!”

“Why ever not?” There was nothing she had said or done that he could fault her for without crossing into dangerous moral territory, and they both knew it. “Could it be that the Lady Chastity still harbours some affection for you, my dear? Now that would be awkward wouldn’t it, you being married to me...”

She let the rest of the sentence hang. The young prince stormed out of the room, muttering to himself about foreign whores.

Adrina was getting very tired of being referred to as a foreign whore.

But there were other ways to punish him. Her first real chance came when they began their preparations for their trip to the border. Adrina held Cratyn strictly to his promise to see her accommodated in a manner befitting her station, and by the time they left Yarnarrow, her entourage was almost as large as the force of knights and foot soldiers accompanying them. She would happily have beggared him, given half a chance, and it was only Jasnoff’s intervention that prevented her from doing just that. As soon as the King complained, Adrina ceased her outrageous demands, but by then the damage had been done. Adrina and her ladies were going off to war in style.

Adrina’s most subtle, and by far her most effective revenge she aimed at Cratyn’s manhood. The nuns had dutifully visited Adrina the day after her wedding to discuss her cycle in rather unpleasant detail, and they determined the most opportune time to conceive was eight days after the wedding. Adrina’s bed remained empty until that time. When the designated night finally arrived, Adrina excused herself early and spent a considerable amount of time preparing for Cratyn’s visit, including preparing a small quantity of the mixture that would ensure that in the unlikely event that Cratyn actually desired her, his body would not respond.

Getting Cratyn to accept the laced wine had been easy. She had a feeling he could only bring himself to touch her if he wasn’t entirely sober. She then waited, with an expectant look, for Cratyn to make the first move. His fumbling and ultimately futile attempts to consummate their union left her weak with ridiculing laughter. Cratyn fled the chamber in embarrassment and she did not lay eyes on him for two whole days afterwards. Altogether an entirely satisfactory outcome, she decided.

But Adrina was determined that no child would ever come from this union, so she set about making certain it never did. She knew enough herb lore to ensure she would not suffer an unwanted pregnancy – it was a necessity for any woman in a society where court’esa were the norm. But the easiest way to prevent a pregnancy was simply not to let Cratyn into her bed on the days designated by the nuns as suitable. There was also the added bonus that if the marriage remained unconsummated for a year and a day, under Karien law she would be free of Cratyn entirely.

One of the lesser-known advantages of being instructed in the arts of love by a court’esa was learning how to cool a man’s ardour as easily as arousing it. It was a skill every court’esa owned – even professional lovers needed a night off occasionally – but it was a skill rarely passed on to their masters or mistresses. If one’s paramour knew what one was up to, it was impossible to guarantee success. It only worked on an inexperienced lover, and that description fitted Cratyn better than his custom-made armour. There were drugs too, one could use, although they were a closely guarded secret among the court’esa. Adrina had extracted those secrets from Lynel, a dark-eyed court’esa from Mission Rock in southern Fardohnya, for the promise of a minor title. So grateful had she been to learn the arts and acquire the drugs, that she even kept her promise, and as far as she knew, Lynel was still happily ensconced in his own small manor near Kalinpoor on the Jalanar plains. In the days and weeks that followed her marriage to Cratyn, she often had cause to silently thank the man.

But her revenge did not stop there. While it was intensely satisfying to her to watch Cratyn crumble with mortification every time she glanced at him, the real fun came from making it known that the Crown Prince of Karien was impotent.