Captivity (6 page)

Val took his mouth off me. “I know! I know!
He says it’s an
opal
.” He had loved learning that word,
perhaps because it referred to something he didn’t see every day.
“Ope-ul, ope-ul, ope-ul,” he said.

“That’s right,” I said, pleased that one
child was momentarily diverted. I stroked Val’s cheek and he
returned to the breast. “Then the giant asks why Ciaran’s eyes are
silver. And Ciaran says—”

This time Jana made the effort. “He says he’s
blind.”

“Very good,” I said. “Now answer this, my two
clever children. Why didn’t Ciaran tell the giant the truth? Why
didn’t he say, ‘I have silver inner eyelids because I am ‘Graven
and gifted, and this is a prism that I use to work my magic’?”

Val was too engrossed in feeding to ponder
such a philosophical riddle, but Jana got the message. “Because he
wanted to trick the giant!” she shouted in her excitement. “He
didn’t want the giant to know what he could do!”

“That’s right,” I said again. “If he had told
the giant the truth, that he had the gift of
crypta
and that
the ‘stone’ on his dagger was a glass prism, the giant would have
stolen it, and Ciaran would not have been able to escape with the
giant’s iron treasure.” I looked into Jana’s eyes. “Do you see,
now, why I told the bandits you were only a girl, and that Papa
wouldn’t pay for you?”

Jana’s face lit up with her rare smile,
showing her sharp little teeth. “Because you wanted to trick them,”
she said while I nodded my approval. “Because I’m worth the most!”
She thought some more. “But it didn’t work!” She glared at me with
her old jealous fury. “They didn’t believe you.”

“No, they didn’t,” I said. “They were a lot
smarter than that stupid giant in the story.” I stretched an
apologetic hand out to her. “And anyone, even bandits, can see how
much you look like Papa, and that makes you valuable. I wanted to
keep you out of this. I hoped you could get home safe and help Papa
rescue me.” I saw no reason to mention Val.

Jana mulled over all this information. She
took my offered hand, then fell against me in a hug, kissing me and
petting me, careful not to come into contact with her brother.
“It’s better I came with you. You need me more than Papa does. I’ll
help you until Papa comes.” She looked confidently around the fetid
little cell.

She stood up, filled with new determination,
and her stomach growled in unison with mine. It must be long past
suppertime at home. I couldn’t decide whether to call attention to
ourselves by shouting and demanding food, or to be grateful for
being left alone.

Jana, as always, chose the active course. She
stood below the little grate that looked out onto the floor of the
great hall, gauging the distance to the ceiling. Feeling for cracks
and irregularities in the stone wall, she climbed nimbly to the top
and hung onto the bars, peering into the realm of our captors.

Reluctantly I opened my mind to my
daughter’s, as if to read her thoughts, but instead following her
consciousness on a reverse course that led inside her mind. I would
be able to see through Jana’s eyes, could spy on our captors
without having to move from my place on the straw. Jana would feel
nothing, was unable to detect another presence in her mind, any
more than an ungifted adult could. The ease with which I
accomplished this migration of outlook is proof that Jana is my
biological daughter despite our lack of outward resemblance, but
such an intrusion into my child’s being always feels unethical, and
I would do it only in an emergency.

One look made me wish I had kept to myself,
or that my daughter was not quite so agile. “Come down, Jana,” I
called softly. “Come back down and sit with me.” It would do no
good to scold or to make her feel that she was watching something
wrong.

Jana wasn’t listening to me. She had news to
report, unaware that I had shared her moment of discovery. “Captain
Reynaldo has his penis in that woman’s mouth!” she said, fascinated
at this activity she would be unlikely to observe in the barnyard
at home. Like all country children, she had learned the facts of
animal life early and had absorbed, in an abstract way, the idea
that something similar went on between human beings. What she was
seeing now went against all the knowledge she had acquired on the
subject so far.

Val stopped nursing for a moment, his
attention caught by yet another example of adults’ absurdities.
“That’s silly,” he said. He nuzzled my right breast, having drained
the left one, and I switched him over to the other side.

I tried to keep my voice neutral. “Don’t
shout,” I said to Jana in a stage whisper. “We don’t want the
bandits to know we can see them and hear them.”

Jana looked down and around for me, briefly
acknowledging my warning, before returning to stare again at this
unusual entertainment. “Why, Mama? Why is that woman sucking on his
penis?”

I gave Jana the short answer, the one that
didn’t really answer her question. “To get my comb,” I said,
fighting back the tears I had hoped I had conquered earlier. I had
seen the comb in Reynaldo’s free hand, the one that wasn’t holding
the woman’s head to her task. He had gone through our baggage, had
found the heirloom that Dominic had given me for a betrothal gift,
the priceless piece of worked glass that had been in the Aranyi
family for countless generations, that I had worn to honor Stefan
and his new family. And now this slut, this bandits’ whore,
Michaela, was going to wear it, just as soon as she finished
earning it.

Jana watched the bandits a little longer,
confirming my explanation, then dropped to the ground. She stood in
front of me, hands on hips. “Don’t worry, Mama,” she said. “Papa
will get it back. Papa will cut that woman’s head off for stealing
it, and give it back to you.”

I shook my head, forced to smile in spite of
everything. She looked so much like Dominic, even sounded like him
at times. “Yes, sweetheart,” I said. “He will.”
Try to maintain
some perspective
, I told myself. The loss of a piece of
jewelry, the least of my worries, should not upset me so.

Something else troubled my daughter. “Does
Papa stick his penis in your mouth? Is that how you make
babies?”

Darkness and damnation
, I thought,
sounding like Dominic myself.
Why now? Why did I have to deal
with this now?
“No, love,” I said. “You know how babies are
made. Remember when we mated my mare with the chestnut stallion? He
put his penis in her vagina. Then, later, she dropped the little
roan foal?”

Jana nodded uncertainly.

“Well, that’s what people do when they make a
baby.”
Other parents get to have this conversation at home
,
I thought. In my wretched state it felt as if the bandits had
deliberately contrived to add psychological torture to my physical
woes.

Jana could not, of course, be satisfied with
my evasions. “Does Papa stick his penis in Niall’s mouth?”

I had to laugh. “You’ll have to ask Papa,” I
said.
Serve Dominic right
, I thought, still harboring my
grudge against him over Lady Melanie. It would be just about right
if the first thing Dominic heard after rescuing us was Jana
demanding to know if he sticks his penis in Niall’s mouth.

In the silence while Jana pondered this
answer and formulated her next question we heard footsteps coming
down the stairs. I struggled to my feet, not wanting to be caught
in an awkward position on the floor. Val stiffened in my arms and
Jana stepped back to stand beside me. The rusty lock squealed, a
bandit pushed the door open and Reynaldo himself entered with a
bowl of what I hoped was food in one hand and a skin of what might
be water in the other. After the unrelenting siege of Jana’s
uncomfortable questions, it was almost a relief to see him.

Reynaldo’s sexual interlude had left him in a
good humor. He studied our little tableau complacently. “I see my
fine lady is not too proud to use her tits for their purpose,” he
said, his eyes lingering on my bare breasts.

I extracted my nipple from Val’s mouth and
tried to close my dress over myself. Never before had I felt
exposed or embarrassed while nursing my children. In my years as
wife and mother I had acquired the ease of an Eclipsian woman, who
thinks nothing of opening her dress to feed her child, whether
alone in her room or at a feast in the great hall, surrounded by
company. But this one mad, dangerous man made me feel naked and
obscene.

Val whimpered as I separated myself from him,
but did not otherwise protest. He had emptied both my breasts and
had continued to suck more for comfort than nourishment. I spoke as
politely as I could fake, hoping to divert Reynaldo’s attention
from my body. “Thank you for bringing us supper.”

Reynaldo could never make things easy. “It’s
not yours yet,” he said, holding the food away. “You must earn your
keep.” He thought his meaning to me, all too clearly. Apparently
the activity Jana had witnessed had only whetted his appetite for
more.

I was still too weak to block his thoughts
out, and shook my head as if to clear the disgusting image from my
mind by force. “That’s not a good idea,” I said, trying to sound
calm and rational. “My husband will not want me back at all, much
less pay ransom for me, if I am unfaithful.” The word, that implied
I would do anything with Reynaldo by choice, made me want to puke,
but I dared not express what I felt.

The bandit leader took this thought well.
“Nobody misses a slice off a cut loaf,” he said. He set the bowl
and the water skin down and moved closer, reaching a hand toward my
open dress.

I took a step back, meeting the wall behind
me. There was nowhere farther to retreat. “But
my lord
husband
will know,” I said, hoping the authority of the ‘Graven
phrase would make an impression. “I can keep nothing secret from
my lord husband
, not with his powerful gift.”

When ‘Graven marry, we address each other
respectfully as “my lord husband” and “my lady wife,” during the
ceremony and afterward, at court, whenever we use formal speech.
Country people rarely hear of “my lady wife,” because a nobleman
does not speak of her in public. The words “my lord husband” alone,
without their counterpart, have a harsher sound, a sense of the
hierarchy of power, of dominance and submission, wife to husband,
servant to master, that was never intended by the innocent words of
loving esteem.

Reynaldo stopped and considered. I could
share his thoughts, had been trapped in his mental processes,
unable to disengage, since he entered the room and saw me. He
weighed the possibilities, finding it, in the end, easy to make the
choice. Amusing though it might be to force himself on ‘Graven, one
woman more or less makes little difference. What he hoped to gain
from Dominic by capturing me was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Why
risk it for something he could get elsewhere?

He looked around the room, unwilling to leave
us in peace without finding fault, saw the candle that was near the
end of its life, a guttering wick in a puddle of wax on the ledge.
“I told you not to use your gift.”

Oh gods! I hadn’t thought twice about
lighting the candle. ‘Against me,’
Reynaldo had said. “I
didn’t,” I said. As Reynaldo stared into my eyes, trying to
initiate some sort of forced communion, I spoke slowly and firmly.
“I did not use
crypta
to light the candle.” I felt safer
engaging in semantic quibbling than challenging a madman with his
own words.

Reynaldo put a rough hand on Val. “I told you
if you used your gift I would take the boy.” Val broke into screams
as if he were already being cut into pieces at the remembered touch
of this man who had so abused him. Reynaldo, momentarily taken
aback by the sound, dropped his hand.

“Leave my son alone!” I said. “I used the
inner flame!”

Reynaldo shook his head; the words meant
nothing to him.

I repeated the words then demonstrated,
making the little blue flame and stretching my arm in his
direction, the fire flickering at the tip of my thumb.

The man stepped back in fear. Had he never
seen anyone make the inner flame? His mother must have killed
herself while he was still a child, or perhaps his father had
punished her for doing that too. There had been no one to teach
Reynaldo the fundamentals of his gift, no one to explain about
neurons and synapses, and the spark of electricity that jumps from
axon to dendrites. I could sense no understanding in him of
how
prism and bent light activated the telepathic brain
cells, only a vague knowledge that they did. All he had was the
gift itself, the ability to read people’s thoughts, and a few
self-taught tricks of manipulating the ungifted: telling them their
most guarded secrets and causing a few uncomfortable sensations by
stimulating their brains’ pain centers. He had thought that by
taking my dagger he made us equals.

While he watched me from the far corner I
pressed my advantage. “I am ‘Graven,” I said. “‘Gravina Aranyi.
When my lord husband comes for me he will know how you have treated
me and the children. You will not be able to hide the least little
insult or oversight from him.” I saw my flame was dwindling with
the last of my energy, knew I had to get him out before he saw how
weak I really was. I tried for a regal, commanding tone. “Leave us.
Leave us, and prepare yourself for Margrave Aranyi’s anger.”

Reynaldo took me at my word. He groped for
the door, backing out and urging his man to lock it quickly in case
I was in pursuit. He need not know that I could have popped the
lock at any time, but had no way to escape through the crowd of
people in the castle and the miles of forest beyond, or that, at
this moment, I was equally grateful for the protection of the lock
between us.