Gate to Kandrith (The Kandrith Series) (37 page)

She was talking about his father.

Lance couldn’t stand it. “He wasn’t your true love.”

A gasp of outrage. “You don’t know anything about it,” she said sharply. The tip of the dagger dug into his ribcage, drawing a drop of blood.

But Lance was accustomed to much worse pain, and he was too angry to hold his tongue. “I know everything about it. Daffyd was my father.”

* * *

Sara cut her hand on a sharp bit of obsidian embedded into the tunnel wall. The relief she’d felt when the earthen tunnel had connected to an older, better built one of stone drained away.

The floor, too, was rough, and she saw traces of blood from those unfortunate enough to have no sandals—slaves, in other words. Obsidian was not a local stone. It had to have been imported specially for this tunnel. Why?

Her uneasiness grew when the lead guard turned the wrong way at a branch in the tunnel, going west when the Primary Residence lay east. Sara said nothing, telling herself she’d lost her sense of direction.

But when the lead guard halted and gingerly stepped over a trip wire, her memory was prodded into life.
The slave stumbling, a twang and the arrow that appeared in his shoulder. Her father, laughing
…

Sara stopped walking. “I’ve been here before.” Her memories seemed distorted, smeared—as if she’d been drugged.

Her father looked at her with curiosity, not at all perturbed. “Yes, you have. I didn’t think you remembered that night.”

The night of the banquet when the blue devil had been attached to her soul. He didn’t even try to deny it, which meant—

Sara felt faint. She hadn’t expected free rein of the Primary Residence, but she’d presumed there would be some fiction of treating her like a guest. Her arrival had been unexpected, her father should have been scrambling for a strategy. She’d expected time, to plan, to escape. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

He smiled, seeming to enjoy her fear. “Where I took you last time. To the Temple of Vez.”

Vez. Sara saw malice all around her, embedded in the walls. “He’s your patron.” A statement not a question. Vez must be the Dark God, who’d grown jealous of Loma’s worshippers.

“Very good,” her father said, as if she’d worked out some mathematical problem he’d set her. “But Vez is your patron too. He has been very good to the House of Remillus, restoring our depleted fortunes.”

Anger cleared the miasma of fear from her mind. “You can’t manipulate me with guilt anymore. Julen told me the truth. Our family was never beggared.”

Her father showed no remorse or shame for his lie. He changed the subject as if what she’d said was inconsequential. “Where is Julen? When Evina told me you’d returned with some man pretending to be a servant, I expected it to be Julen in disguise.”

“He stayed behind,” Sara said shortly. She would not explain Julen’s circumstances and have them mocked.

“Still trying to discover the secret of slave magic?” her father asked.

Sara had a revelation. “You never thought I’d be able to find it. You gave me the task strictly as a goad to Julen, didn’t you?” All those hours wasted worrying that she wouldn’t live up to her father’s expectations, when he’d never had any faith in her to begin with.

“Of course,” her father said. “Though, frankly, I was hoping he would ask the wrong person the right question and get himself hanged as a spy.”

“What?” Sara stared.

“Well, there’s still time for that,” her father said. “And if Julen does make it back with the secret then Vez will be happy and I’ll have a competent servant back—his replacement isn’t as able. I win either way.”

Sara cleared her throat. “I don’t understand. If Julen is so competent, then why do you want the Kandrithans to hang him?”

Her father’s smugness turned to cold hatred. “Vez had his eye on Julen. I’m certain He planned to make him an acolyte.”

“Julen worships Vez?” Sara asked faintly. Oh, Goddess, she’d brought him into Kandrith—

“No, no. Julen wasn’t ready yet to learn who he served. He merely obeyed my orders. But he did them well. Vez had noticed him.” Her father’s lips thinned. “I had to get rid of him. I won’t tolerate a rival.”

So Sara had inadvertently saved Julen’s life. And possibly his soul, as well. She remembered the apology Julen had offered her during their last conversation. Whatever Julen might have become had he stayed in the Republic, his feet were on a different path now.

Her father seemed to notice that she’d stopped moving forward. “Nor,” he said, “will I tolerate disobedience. Walk, Sarathena.”

Sara thought about triggering the arrow on purpose, but she couldn’t make herself do it—and then the opportunity was past. Lost. Like herself and Lance and Wenda.

Now that it was too late, she wished she could turn back time. She’d been wrong, so wrong, to repudiate Lance. She should have fought by his side as soon as the guards tried to seize him. The fight would have ended the same way, with them both prisoners, but at least that way Lance would have known she loved him.

* * *

Madam Lust didn’t seem to notice the hatred in Lance’s voice. The dagger fell away. “Bring the light closer.” When one of the slaves complied, she cupped Lance’s face, studying him. “Yes, yes, Daffyd did have a son.”

For all the scrutiny she paid his features, she didn’t see him, Lance, at all. He could have been a statue to her. He had a sudden desire to crack his forehead into her face—to make her see—but he turned his face away instead.

“Bas’s Miracles,” she breathed. “My true love returned to me in the form of his son on the very day I’m free of Paulin.”

Lance’s skin crawled. “I’m not your true love and neither was my father.”

“He was true. He came to my bed willingly. I didn’t have to chain him.” She said this as if it were a point of pride.

She was deluded. It would be wiser not to speak, but Lance couldn’t keep silent. “He went with you because you threatened to kill his daughter.”

She seemed not to hear Lance, lost in some distorted dreamland. “My first husband found out about us and had him killed. He claimed Daffyd escaped, but I knew that was a lie. Daffyd would never voluntarily leave me.” She blinked back an actual tear.

Lance ground his teeth. “He didn’t love you,”
you stupid twotch
, “he loved my mother.”

Ottavio took a half step forward, an iron bar in hand, but stopped when his mistress gave him no signal.

She laughed. “I know you’d like to believe so, but it was me Daffyd loved. He told me a hundred times.” Something shifted behind her eyes. “Tell me you love me. Say it, Daffyd.” She hiked up her gown, showing her lack of underthings, then crawled onto the bed. She straddled him and leaned forward so that her breasts almost over-spilled her purple gown into his face. “Say it.”

This was what she’d demanded of his father, words of love. And he must have given them in fear for his family.

She kissed him, thrusting her tongue into Lance’s mouth.

Panic rose inside Lance. His chest started to constrict as the asthma returned. He concentrated on breathing through his nose.

“Say it! Say you love me, Daffyd!” She grew rougher, nipping his lip and drawing blood.

“I’m not Daffyd.”

She slapped him. “If I say you are, then you are.” It was a game then. “Try again.”

Refusing would only earn him a beating. He should just appease her, but something inside Lance balked at saying the words. Words that belonged to Sara, not her aunt.

He sought to distract Madam Lust instead. “I—” Lance cleared his throat. “I would like to be alone with you.”

She smiled, pleased. “Very good. I want to be alone with you, too, Daffyd. Leave!” She flung the order at her servants.

The slaves bobbed their heads and scurried out. Ottavio lingered, frowning in worry. “Mistress, the slave is a new one. He’s not broken in yet. I fear—”

“I said, leave!”

Bowing his head, Ottavio backed toward the door. “Yes, mistress.”

“Leave the keys on the floor.” Madam Lust caressed Lance’s face. “I don’t think I’ll need the chains for long.”

Yes
. Lance’s chest leaped with hope.

Looking unhappy, Ottavio unhooked a ring of keys from his belt and let them clang to the floor. He left.

“We’re alone, my love,” she crooned.

Apparently, Claudius and the other man chained to the wall didn’t count. Lance made a split-second decision not to mention them. “Will you take off the chains?”

She smiled. “Not yet. You know I like this game.”

“But I don’t like it,” Lance said evenly.

“Yes, you do. Daffyd.” She bent and bit his nipple. Simultaneously, she raked her fingernails up his inner thigh.

Lance had heard that other men roused to such treatment, but for him it was just pain. He wished she would get off him.

His sense of being smothered increased as she pulled one breast out of her bodice and shoved it in his face. “Kiss me!”

He turned his head aside, breathing slowly in and out.
Please, Loma, let me not have another attack
. “No. Free me first.”

Her expression became petulant. She yanked on his hair, hard, tearing at the scalp. “I am your mistress. You. Don’t. Say. No. To. Me.” With each word she yanked again. “If I tell you to—” she uttered a coarse suggestion, “—then you will.”

Madam Lust was breathing hard, excited. The keys were a tease. She and Ottavio probably performed the same little scene every time she had a new victim to play with. She had no intention of releasing him.

Defiance rose inside him. She could hurt him, but he wasn’t going to pander to her sick sexual desires. “No,” Lance said again.

Madam Lust gave a shriek of rage. She slapped his face and scrambled off him. Praise the Goddess, he could breathe again.

But she was back again in moments with the dagger. “Now I’m going to have to punish you.” She held the shiny blade up so he could be dazzled by its sharpness.

“Tell her what she wants,” the second prisoner urged.

Lance kept his stony silence.

Madam Lust climbed back onto the bed, forcing her way between his knees in a terrible parody of a lover. She positioned the flat side of the blade against his penis. “Well,” she said coldly, “Is there anything you want to say?”

“Yes.”

“I’m listening,” she purred.

“I wear the Brown,” Lance told her with equal mixtures of grimness and anger.

“What?” she squawked. She turned the blade so the tip touched his tenderest flesh. “Think carefully,” she warned.

If he didn’t give her what she wanted, he had no doubt she would castrate him and let him bleed to death on the spot. Her eyes held not the smallest spark of mercy.

“I’m a healer. But I cannot cure the insane.” He brought his thighs together and, with a sharp twist, broke her neck.

* * *

The tunnel ended in a large brass-bound door.

The hairs rose on the back of Sara’s neck, memory prodding her with cold fingers. She did not want to go through that portal.

The lead guard unbarred the door. Her father entered and the guard with the cleft chin pushed Sara inside, into a small temple.

On one wall was a large golden eye weeping, not water, but from the harsh smell, acid. The basin below, in the shape of a large ear, collected the fountain’s acid. On the wall opposite was a matching fountain with Vez’s other eye and ear. This one wept green poison.

In the center of the temple’s rough stone floor stood a giant golden mouth. The thick lips gaped open, exposing iron knives for teeth and the black pit of its throat.

Her stomach twisted with revulsion. She could not quite remember what had happened to her here, but it had been bad.

Had she been put inside that dark well?

“Chain her with the other one,” her father ordered the cleft-chinned guard.

The other one? Belatedly, Sara realized that what she had at first taken for a heap of clothes was in fact a—dead?—woman, crumpled at the foot of Vez’s mouth.

Cleft Chin reached for her. Sara took a step back, evading him, and he smiled as if they were playing an enjoyable game. He’d held Lance for his beating. He was at least half again her weight, armed, and trained by Nir. Any fight between them would be hopelessly lop-sided.

The old instructions drummed into her by Aunt Evina passed through Sara’s head:
smile at him, flirt with him, use your beauty
.

Sara blinked up at Cleft Chin as if he were a hero. “Please, help me. My father has gone insane. Oh, please!” She took his hand in both of hers and pressed it between her breasts.

Cleft Chin smiled. “Well, now—”

Be as wild as you want
, Lance had said.

She bent his thumb back, in a quick hard motion. She heard the crack of breaking bone. Cleft Chin cried out. She dodged around him, running for the door.

She’d caught everyone by surprise. Only one more guard stood between her and freedom. Her legs pumped harder. But as she ran past Vez’s mouth the woman chained there moaned, alive after all, and Sara saw russet hair peeking out from beneath her blindfold.

It was Wenda.

She couldn’t leave Lance’s sister behind.

Sara swerved left away from the door. She put her head down and charged her father, hands snatching the keys at his belt. Her weight shoved him backward a step, but then his hands caught her elbows.

Twisting desperately, she smashed her forehead into his nose. If she could just hide the keys in her pocket…

Her father swore as blood burst from his nose. “Get her!”

The hilt of a sword crashed into her temple, stunning her. The floor rushed up to meet her, and stars swam in her vision. Her fingers went nerveless as she tried to shove the precious keys in her pocket—

Hands grabbed her, shoved her. Sara struggled to think, to clear her head. A cold iron bracelet closed over her wrist, but instead of attaching her to a chain like Wenda, the guard yanked Sara’s arm up and manacled her wrist to an iron ring set into one of Vez’s teeth. The position left her awkwardly bent on her knees, and Sara had to hold her wrist carefully or be cut on the razor-sharp edges.

“Who’s there?” Wenda asked, turning her blindfolded head from side to side, trying to track their movements. “Did you bring more drugged food? I won’t eat it. I’ll starve first, and then you won’t have anyone to execute in front of the crowds.”