In the room at the top of the tower, Jenger thought of using the signal flags that sometimes worked when the shafts were flooded. He hadn’t signaled her yet. She didn’t even know he’d made it up the slope, much less that he’d had time to bribe the boy at the abbey and make off with anyone. It had been a bit touchy getting up here. The shaft held more water than he liked to see. No one else would use it; that was sure. Not until it had drained a good bit more. Well, then. He had to let her know and there was no wind to stretch the flags so one could tell them apart. The flags wouldn’t work. Even if there were enough wind, it was already getting dark.
He sat down at the table and tried to write a message. The words wouldn’t come. Each time he finished he threw the thing away. He kept thinking of her eyes, the woman downstairs, her eyes. She had looked at him as though she didn’t believe he existed, as though she could not be convinced that he could be as he was. The woman’s eyes held no endless, deadly tunnel as did the duchess’s eyes. Instead there was a calm, fearless, reasoned judgment there. A cool judgment: no hatred in it, simply an assessment as to value, likelihood, possibility, reason. Those eyes knew that nothing existed without reason, and since they found no reason for his being, the eyes had decided Jenger did not exist.
The damned Great Bear of Zol thought Jenger existed! Jenger had found a reason for Bear. Money was his reason, money to pay off his bride-price. And for Mirami, power was a reason. Mirami knew he existed. And Alicia had found a reason for him. He gave her what she liked, did the things she liked. The duchess thought she wanted power, but it was pain she really wanted. Pain and fear. People with money existed. People with power existed. People who could inflict pain existed. But the woman downstairs discounted him, disbelieved he was.
He wrote again. “The Tingawan child and the driver have gone on to Elsmere. I have one of her servants, not the driver we met. What do you want me to do with her?”
He went to the Dark House cage and picked out a pigeon, glanced at the window, and realized it was already fully dark. The pigeon wouldn’t fly at night. He’d have to wait until morning. If the duchess wanted the woman brought down to the Old Dark House, he’d return some of the Vulture Tower birds to the Old Dark House at the same time. The cage was too full. Too many messages had come from both the Old Dark House and Ghastain, and he hadn’t had a chance to send any of the birds back. Very few travelers cared to go to the Old Dark House, even if well paid to do so. He rolled the paper and placed it in the message tube, leaving it on the table. It would have to wait until morning.
He was tired but he wasn’t ready to sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about the eyes of the woman in the cell. Eyes could be changed. People who did not accept reality could be forced to accept reality. Perhaps if this woman knew more about him, she would disbelieve less. He had changed people’s opinion of him in the past. He had pursued, won, delighted, then terrified, then killed or worse than killed. It was part of the game Alicia had him play, part of the game Alicia had played with him, too, only she had most often been the one to pursue, win, delight, and now and then, to terrify.
A mirror hung on the back of the door in the room where the cages were. He looked into it, trying to see into his own eyes. He couldn’t see anything. Perhaps he couldn’t believe himself. He would have to make himself believable. First he would change the mind of the woman downstairs and then he would come back and look again. Either that or get on his horse and ride as far as he could as fast as he could, which would do no good at all. The duchess would find him, somehow.
It was a good thing he hadn’t taken the little girl. He wouldn’t have dared touch the little girl. The duchess had said she had far worse things than rape to do to the little girl and she wanted those things to come as a lovely surprise. He had not seen her torture a child before. He was not sure he could bear it. But a woman the age of the one he’d taken prisoner shouldn’t be that surprised. Even if she were virgin, she should have heard of the things that some men had been taught to enjoy, guessed at those things. She had no right to disbelieve that he existed!
He went back down the stairs. Back in the mining days, the old tower had been both the communication center and the punishment tower, for workers who didn’t do what they were told to do. It was called the Vulture Tower because of the carrion that had lain around it. Vultures nested near carrion, when they could. Back then there had been flag towers all up and down the slopes to exchange messages. They’d used runners, then, kids with long legs and good lungs. Before. When things were normal. When things weren’t disbelieved.
He unlocked the cell door and opened it. The afterglow was almost gone. He could barely see the woman across the room, lying limp against the far wall, her clothing sagging. He had just a second to register that the clothing actually looked empty before something swung toward him from above, something gray that closed
