has worked for. I can’t allow that. That’s why I must take over.”
“She is the last,” Eliora said. “Maynard may not remove her from his will, for if he does, the Gemcroft line dies with the stroke of his pen.”
“Stop it,” Alyssa said. “All of you. I will not let you kill him. He will not banish me, not forever. I know my father. Given time, he will accept me back.”
“Time you may not have,” Eliora said darkly.
“Ladies, I believe my lovely needs a rest,” Yoren said. “If you might give us some privacy? Perhaps tomorrow morning we’ll have a reasonable plan prepared. For now, I think we’re all a bit upset over how things fell apart.”
The faceless women slipped through the trees, with only Eliora glancing back. She said nothing, though Alyssa felt her eyes peering at her through the thin white cloth.
“I’m sorry,” Alyssa said as she sat back down by the fire. She wasn’t sure what for, but guilt weighed heavy on her shoulders. Whether by her own actions or not, she felt she had failed so many people. Yoren put his hand on her shoulder, and she was thankful for his kindness.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” Yoren said. He paced behind her, and the silence she hoped he’d end stretched out longer and longer.
“I couldn’t bear to see him dead,” she said. Yoren’s pacing made her nervous. What was troubling him so badly?
“Sometimes good men must die to further the cause of something greater,” Yoren said.
“Yes, but I-”
She felt a hand grab her shoulder. Before she could scream, another was around her throat. Yoren lifted her up and flung her against a tree. She whimpered, the sound muffled against his gloved fingers as her back pressed hard against the rough bark. When she looked into his eyes, she saw that same fire that had always aroused her lust and called her to his bed. This time anger mixed with the lust. She felt she looked into the eyes of a stranger.
“Listen well, girl,” Yoren said. He was trying to remain calm, and he had to grit his teeth to keep himself from shouting. “We have gambled everything on your ascension. Do you understand that? You are an outcast and a bloody fool if you think your father will not write you out of his will this very night. You are dead to him. He might as well be dead to you.”
He paused as if waiting for her to answer. She weakly nodded her head.
“Good. You understand. Since you’re in a listening mood, let’s get a few things straightened out. You serve me now. When I am not near, you serve my family. We will do everything to put you back into power, and I mean everything, you stupid girl. I expect our loyalty repaid. Our children will inherit the Gemcroft fortune. Our grandchildren will dance in the mines your father chokes with axes and slaves.”
He slowly removed his hand from her mouth. Her whole body quivered. When he kissed her, she fought down an impulse to throw up.
“The Gemcroft name is doomed,” he said. “We Kulls will replace its glory. Everything of Maynard’s will be mine.”
He stroked her hair.
“Everything…”
He undid his trousers and took her there, pressed against the tree. As her back bled across the bark, she swore to make him pay. As his hands fumbled across her breasts, her tears running down her face, she swallowed her anger and shame and let it burn away her self-illusions. She didn’t know how, she didn’t know when, but come her ascension to the estate that was rightly hers, she would not let a dog like Yoren have a single taste of its power.
Yoren is right, she thought as he grunted louder. I am such a stupid girl. But that girl dies tonight.
Yoren would be the next to die, and unlike her, he would not be reborn wiser, stronger. He’d just stay dead.
6
R obert Haern remembered his comment to Thren Felhorn about the cruelty of King Vaelor’s prisons, and his dry, bleeding lips cracked a smile. How prophetic those words seemed now. His arms were chained above his head, each shoulder pulled out of socket. The tips of his toes brushed the ground. Every morning, a guard came in and raised him higher, so that with the stretching of his skin and the greater pull on his dislocated joints, he still brushed the ground with his toes.
He’d come to fantasize about those toes. He wanted to feel the weight of his body on them, to flex and curl them in grass while his back lay comfortably supported on solid ground. Robert sipped soup from a spoon at midday, which was held by a small boy who went from cell to cell carrying a little wooden stool.
What madman lets such a young child work in this pit? he had wondered the first time the door opened and the dirty-haired boy stepped in. Now he didn’t wonder. Instead he tilted his head back, opened his lips, and waited for the soothing liquid.
Dreams came and went. They did so easily enough with old men, and the droning boredom only increased their vividness and frequency. There were times he thought he stood at the bedside of the king, telling humorous stories to scare away the nightmares that pierced his mind. Other times he was with his wife, Darla, who had passed away of dysentery a decade ago. She hovered before him with startling brightness, looking as she did when they first met. Light streamed through her blonde hair, and when she touched his face he pushed against it, only to have soup spill across his cheek.
“Stop it and hold still,” the boy told him, the only time he’d spoken.
Robert drank the soup while tears trickled down the sides of his wrinkled face.
Now it was night, although he only knew because of the changing shift of the guards. The bars were thick around him, and there were no windows. He marked the days by the tasting of his soup, and by his estimate, it had only been four.
“Four,” he muttered, hoping he wouldn’t cry again. He was tired of crying. “Only four.”
He remembered men Edwin had sentenced for ten, twenty, even thirty years. Often the punishments had little to do with the crime, and more to do with the look of the man and his ability to grovel convincingly. Robert wondered what his own punishment might be. No matter how much he hoped, he knew his imprisonment was until death. He was old; it wouldn’t be long.
The bars rattled, and he heard a soft bang on the door. His head tilted backward almost instinctively. Part of his mind thought it was too early for soup, but perhaps he had dreamed, or maybe he was just too hungry and thirsty to care about the time of day.
Arms wrapped around his waist. When he opened his mouth to scream, a hand rammed over it to stifle the noise.
“Silence, old man,” a deep voice rumbled in his ear. Robert opened his eyes to look, but they were full of tears. Through blurred vision he saw three strangers, cloaked and almost invisible in the darkness.
“This will hurt,” said another voice, this one feminine. Then fire erupted through every joint in his body. His shoulders felt like the center of the inferno. He might have screamed again, but if he did, he wasn’t aware. All he knew was that the giant hand across his mouth pressed tighter. The chains rattled above his head. He heard a click. A sudden lurch followed, and though his whole body flushed with pain, he felt a wonderful, delirious satisfaction in the sudden feel of his weight resting no longer on his dislocated arms but instead the chest of another.
“We don’t have much time,” said a new voice, male and not as deep as the first. “We need to go, and quick.”
“We’ve killed too many,” said the deep voice. “Thren will not be pleased.”
“As long as we’ve got Robert, he’ll keep his displeasure in check. Now hurry!”
The ache in Robert’s shoulders had begun to fade, and a dim part of his mind was aware that they were no longer dislocated. That knowledge was little comfort when he felt himself thrown over the shoulder of what must have been a giant man. The sudden movement churned his stomach, and he vomited all over the man’s back.
