Return to Alastair (18 page)

It was a long night. Tahn could scarcely sleep, and he woke at dawn feeling restless. Something was stirring, he knew. He rose to his feet with new tension and woke Marc Toddin in time for him to hear the first vigorous shouts down the street.

“What is it, Tahn?” Marc asked immediately.

“I don’t know.” He started in the direction of the sound, pausing only to secure his sword at his waist. Shouting in Alastair! It put a chill in him.

Marc was right behind him, trying to sort out the sounds they were hearing. A banging noise. The shouts of more people now. A scream. “We don’t have to get involved,” he said.

“You’re wrong.” Tahn kept going, quickening his pace.

“Dorn—”

But Tahn paid no attention to him. Ahead of him he was beginning to see a crowd gathering, drawn from neighboring houses by continuing calls for punishment of a crime committed. Is this how Alastair dealt always with such things? Noise and an angry assembly? He ran toward the people, afraid of how he would react if forced to witness a hanging again on this street.

Suddenly a child burst from the crowd and almost ran into him.

It was the little girl, Rae. “Mr. Dorn, sir!”

He took her arm with his heart pounding. “What is it? Are you in danger?”

“No.” She shook her head, and tears streamed down her face. “It’s Miss Ti—”

He didn’t wait for an explanation. He shoved his way toward the source of those shouts, tormented inside over what might have happened to his sister and that he hadn’t gone looking as soon as he knew of her absence. Martica lay dying. In what shape was Tiarra?

“We all know the due for thieving!” a man was shouting. “Caught in the act! There’s no denying it!”

There was a struggle in process, just to his left. Three men were trying to hold their kicking prisoner. Tiarra. Her hands bound and her arms held, she was fighting still, her face an angry red.

“Bring her to the post!” the tall, well-dressed man shouted. “She’s got to learn her lesson! We’ll not tolerate a thief!”

They would whip her, he realized. Bind her to the post erected for such a purpose and give her whatever lashes the supposed victim might require.

He stepped forward, aware that there were eyes on him now, prepared for whatever trouble he might bring. But most of the people had not yet noticed him, and there were shouts of assent to the first man’s judgment.

“Stop!” he cried, the pressure like a knot in his heart. Here he was in the midst of this crowd, surrounded by people. “Stop!” he yelled again, and heads turned. Tiarra stared at him, her face suddenly paling. “People!” he cried. “Would you do judgment without hearing the matter?”

The well-dressed man looked at him in anger. “You cannot walk into our town and interfere. You’re not part of us. There’s nothing more to hear. This woman broke into my home to steal my wife’s necklace! We caught her in the act. My neighbors know what justice is! In Alastair we flog a thief!”

“It is rightfully mine!” Tiarra turned her face tearfully to Mr. Ovny. “You know it was my mother’s!”

“It was fairly bought,” he told the crowd. “It is my wife’s. And this girl tried to steal it. Those are the facts, and she cannot deny them.” He nodded to the men surrounding Tiarra, and they pulled her forward. A broad-shouldered man followed them with a whip.

“There’s nothing you can do, Dorn,” Ovny told Tahn with a smile. “You know it is not wisdom to stand against a crowd.”

Something shuddered within him, but he kept his steel. “If you speak the truth, I will bear the lash for her.”

“What?” Marc Toddin stepped to Tahn’s side. “You can’t be—”

“I will bear it,” he repeated. “Let her go.”

The crowd stood in stunned silence. Mr. Ovny looked long at Tahn. And then he nodded. “Someone has to be punished. It is a brother’s right.”

“No!” Tiarra cried.

Tahn met her eyes with a calm that hid the tempest inside him. “Best to give it to an experienced back, miss, and not mar the fresh.”

“No,” she said again, shaking her head. “You can’t do this! I’m the one responsible! I did what was said! He knew nothing of it!”

“He is older, girl,” Mr. Ovny said. “With your father gone, it is his decision.”

Tahn glanced up at the man. He was a cruel one, to make mention of their father that way and throw Tiarra under the authority of someone who was a near stranger to her. But at least it would work to spare her the blows. Her mother’s necklace? That would be something to hold, all right. The theft was wrong, but who could fault her for the longing?

He removed his sword and handed it to Toddin, who shook his head in dismay. “You need your strength, man.”

“I have enough.”

“Untie the girl,” Mr. Ovny was saying.

“You can’t do this,” Tiarra protested. She turned to Tahn in stormy bewilderment. “Why are you doing this?”

“Go home to Martica,” he commanded. “Please hurry. She needs you.” He looked at the crowd around him and shook his head, sorry for her. The town would link her forever in their minds with him now, with cutthroats and criminals. Perhaps she had been her own once, but how would she ever escape their harsh opinions after this? And whatever comfort Martica might have been would be gone soon enough.

He walked to the post of his own accord, and Tiarra, as soon as she was untied, ran forward. But Marc Toddin caught her by both arms.

“His mind is made up, Miss Dorn,” he said. “We’ll not change it, much as we would wish to.”

She stared at this stranger, and tears met her cheeks. “I—I am not Miss Dorn,” she stammered. But she was. She knew she was Dorn as much as he was. And now he was being a brother to her in a most terrible way.

“Take your shirt off,” Ovny was telling Tahn, who obeyed in silence.

Tiarra caught her breath. His back! The scars! He had said he was experienced. And there were stripes, but the skin around them looked strangely taut, almost waxy. The burns? The torture Lorne had told her about? It was too much for her. “No!” she cried again, pulling away from Toddin.

“Keep her back,” Ovny commanded. “Or we’ll have them both.”

“He aims to spare you, miss,” Toddin said, grasping her again. “I’m not liking it. But he gives us no choice.”

Still Tiarra struggled. “No!”

“He’s claimed the family right, girl,” Toddin told her, staring at the coldhearted man at the head of the crowd. “We can only hope your accuser has decency enough to respect the mercy that should be in such a case.”

She stood shaking her head, wanting to scream. Why was Tahn doing this? Why would he come back . . . and then do this?

“In the face of courage, and sacrifice, it is a time for mercy,” Toddin loudly insisted.

But Ovny would not hear him. “Tie his hands at the top,” he commanded his men, but Tahn shook his head.

“Fine,” the wealthy man smirked. “Fall in the dirt if you want to.”

The crowd was restless around them, unwilling to cross Ovny’s will or deny the crime. Yet Tahn’s gesture had taken them by surprise. It seemed that mercy would indeed be an appropriate response to the courageous gift, even for this fearsome stranger. But Ovny was not so minded.

Tahn gripped the bar at the top of the post and closed his eyes. “God help me,” he whispered. “What else could I do?”

He stood straight as the first lash fell, not moving to betray the shock of it. But as the second fell across his back, he could hear Samis’s screaming voice, and he started shaking. He couldn’t run. He could feel chains now tight at his wrists. There was nothing he could do. Up against a wall in a darkened room, he’d just had to take it.

Somehow he kept his hold on the bar above him. He stayed on his feet, though the dismal room swirled around his mind and Samis kept on, blow after awful blow.

But a shout in the crowd drew him back to Alastair, the place of deadly mobs. Another lash fell across his back, and then another, and he could hear the shouting growing around him. “Killer!” someone shouted. “Hang the killer!” He was a child again, and he shuddered as the memory pressed over his mind. The chase of the crowd. The senseless terror.

Another blow. He wanted to scream. His neck, his back, even his legs were touched by liquid fire. This was Alastair.

He didn’t know how long it went on. He stood silent, quivering, his knuckles white around the bar he held.

“Tahn.”

Someone touched him, and he shook his head.

“Tahn, let go. It’s over.” Marc Toddin put his big hands around his friend’s and pried them open. In his weakness, Tahn nearly fell, but Marc caught him. “Let me carry you.”

“No.”

“For God’s mercy!” Toddin exclaimed. He pulled Tahn’s arm up over his shoulder and supported him as he led him away from the people who stood watching in silence.

It was all so unreal. That there was a friend this time, bearing his weight, seemed nothing short of a miracle. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“We’re closer to the church than to that woman’s home.”

But Tahn shook his head again.

“You’re bleeding,” Marc explained. “I need to have you down away from these fools to tend to it.”

“Let me help you.” It was Tiarra’s voice, and suddenly she was taking Tahn’s other arm over her own shoulder.

He glanced up at her, and their eyes met for a moment before she turned her face away from him.

There was fear in her eyes, he knew. More of it, and of a different nature than she’d had before. He couldn’t understand, and he hung his head. “Please go home,” he told her again. But she wouldn’t leave them.

They laid him down almost as soon as they entered the church doors. But they hadn’t been there more than a minute when they heard a rapping at the door behind them. Tiarra answered it and found a bowl of water and a pile of cloth abandoned on the church step.

“See what someone has brought us,” she told Marc. “Perhaps they were shamed.”

“They should be,” he replied. “How are you doing, Tahn?”

“We shouldn’t stay here. The old woman is sick.”

“We’ll move on soon enough. Just try to relax and let us help you. I’ll bandage him, miss. Wash him, will you, while I lay out the cloth?”

Tiarra worked with tears in her eyes. She’d brought on this trouble. It was hard, bathing the blood from her strange brother’s back, seeing the awful welts and wounds laid out on top of a barrage of old scars. What must he be like on the inside? Maybe he was just as Lorne said. No wonder his eyes were so deep and haunted. But she couldn’t talk to him. She was afraid of whatever he might say now, whoever he might really be.

Suddenly there were footsteps behind her, and she whirled around. It was Lucas, the someday-priest, standing there in his black clothes and dangling golden cross. For a moment he didn’t move, and then he jumped forward in recognition.

“God above! Tahn!” He knelt at his side, searching their faces. “Why? How could they do this? What happened?”

Toddin glanced up at Tiarra but didn’t answer.

“Lucas,” Tahn spoke. “Thank God, Lucas.”

But Lucas jumped to his feet again. “Let me get you a drink. And a cover.” He turned to Toddin. “Will you need more cloth?”

“Don’t know yet.”

Lucas was gone for only a moment. He left a blanket and cloth at Tiarra’s side and took a bottle and knelt at Tahn’s head. “Let me help you drink,” he said. “This should help you. God knows it’s good to see you again, but not like this.” He looked up at Tiarra and took a deep breath. “Surely not the bandits—”

“No,” she said. “The town. He took it for me. I—I tried to steal.”

“Our mother’s necklace . . .” Tahn whispered.

And Lucas looked at him in surprise. “This is your sister?” But he didn’t wait for a response. “Can you raise up enough for a drink?”

“No,” Tahn answered, and Marc and Tiarra both looked at him with concern.

“Pray for me, Lucas,” Tahn went on. “I lost myself, I think.”

“What do you mean?”

“At the pole. I wasn’t there. I was . . . I was in the memory.” Lucas sighed. “Lord give you peace. Tahn, what do you expect? This town? I thought they’d have to drag you in chains to get you to come back here.”

“I found a sister.”

“Yes.” He looked up at Tiarra. “God bless you both. You’ve had need of each other.” He set the bottle down and laid his hands on Tahn’s hair. “You asked me for prayer. How did you know you could do that, brother? When I left you—”

“You’re in the church now. It must feel like home.”

Lucas smiled. “It does. In its strange way.” He bowed his head and prayed a short and careful prayer. Tiarra watched him closely.

“You should stay here,” Lucas told Tahn. “You need a place to heal for a while.”

Tahn shook his head. “Tiarra must go home. The old woman’s worse.”

“I can take her,” Marc offered. “You stay here with your friend.”

“Yes,” Tahn told them. “Go. But be careful. There’ll be trouble soon.”

They went out quickly at his urging, leaving Lucas to finish tending to Tahn’s wounds. “The old woman cannot last long,” Tahn said with quiet voice. “My sister will be left alone. And I think she’s never had much.”

“You’re right.” Lucas sighed. “They’re very poor. And I saw the old woman bitter and hard with the girl. It can’t have been easy, living in her charge.”

“Burle is after her. And after you. I tried to find you yesterday.”

Lucas shook his head in disgust. “What does he want? That a girl should lie still and let herself be violated? Or that I should hear screams and turn my head? I have a conscience toward these people now, Tahn! Let him come if he will.”

“He will.” Tahn took a deep breath. “I fought him off. Wounded him. Now he has a blood grudge. He’ll come.”

Lucas was silent for a moment, considering. “Burle has plenty of men. Fifteen. Maybe more by now. We should bring your sister back here. You should stay in the church. The people would not be pleased to see it desecrated. There’ll be no fighting within its doors.”

“The Trents claim St. Thomas’s,” Tahn protested.

“Yes, Tahn. But they’re seldom here.”

“Their friends? Their soldiers?”

“The priest?” Tahn asked.

“I believe he is sincere.”

“Did he tell you I met him?”