The Heretic (17 page)

3

Observe:

Mahaut did not die.

There were times she wished she had. The pain was impossible, especially after the shock wore off and her body grasped in its thoughtless but no less living manner the completion of agony, the outrage, that had been perpetrated upon it. For days she lay in all-clenching hurt, half-comatose, half-inflamed suffering. Her eyes were closed, her teeth grinding.

There was the smell as her body rotted for company. Always the moment when any who visited her, even those prepared, those who
knew
what to expect,
flinched
at the stench.

Except for the Scout. He had come with her brother to visit and had seemed not disgusted by, or piteous, but—this was the strange thing—angry. Angry that this was happening to her.

It was a feeling she shared.

“I will not let this happen again.” She’d heard his voice in her delirium, wasn’t even sure whom he was speaking to. To her it sounded like a dialog, but with one listener and speaker located in such a way that he was impossible to hear.

I am dreaming,
she thought at one point.
A fever dream.

But such lucid moments were few and far between.

“There has to be something, thrice-damn it. I can’t let what happened to my mother go on and on in the Land bring needless death to—”

A pause.

“Yes, she does look a bit like her. What of it?”

A pause.

“I do not expect to save every person, or every woman. At least not at first. Just her.”

A pause.

“I am aware she is married.”

A pause.

“Why don’t you just consider it an experiment? You foresee no long-term imbalances, so let me do this with the knowledge you have given me. In exchange, I will see to those breechloaders.

A pause.

Then a laugh. And something else he’d said, something she later couldn’t believe she’d heard, had to believe was blurred by her fever into incomprehensibility. “Anyway, Zentrum is the local enemy. Zentrum works for death, even if he doesn’t know. I want to work for life. I couldn’t save my mother, so let me save her.”

Then curses and orders to servants. The others, the servants, responded to his voice; it was no longer a one-way overheard dialog, but the words she remembered were
his
.

The Scout is caring for me. He has taken me as his charge.

“I want all of these bandages boiled, do you hear me! Better let me do it, as a matter of fact. I do not want the wound touched without instruments that have not been boiled. Not once, not ever. I will set my Scouts on you if you do it. You know they are one step away from a Redlander. They might boil
you
alive.

“And I will provide salve for the wound. Take this nightmare sludge away and bury it. Better yet, feed it to the carnadons at the lake. They are getting to be a menace, and it will kill them straight off!

“Yes, I’ll be consulting with her physician, as well. He won’t give you any trouble about following my orders after he and I have a good talk. I’ll tell him about my Scouts, too, and their very large cook pot.”

She rotted. But only to a point. Something was strong within her, something that was not her will, but was a blind urge to overcome, to thrust out the creeping death. She took no credit for it. She often just wanted to die.

And she received the new bandages every day of impossibly clean and white linen—no cloth in the Land had ever been so well-washed, she thought—and the salve the Scout had concocted and brought.

So many others died of much less, and she believed for time that she was undeserving, that being alive, getting better, was punishment. It was punishment for letting him, the one who had shot her—oh, she remembered the squinting eyes, the careful aim, she knew
him
—take the girl.

Take the girl alive into the Redlands.

I should have shot Loreilei,
Mahaut told herself.
And if not with the gun, well, then I was close enough to even put an arrow in her eye.

Better her niece were dead than what lay in store for her in the Redlands.

And so Mahaut had taken her own healing as Zentrum’s judgment upon her, as the punishment of the Law for the stupid mistake of believing that the Blaskoye would have any mercy whatsoever. That if he did not release the girl, he would at least have the decency to kill her on his way out.

But he had not done so.

And then the pain of her wound slowly abated from mind-burning to endurable. The smell lessened in pungency. The maggots the Scout lieutenant had so carefully picked from her flesh week after week one day did not return. And the scar tissue began to form its jagged welt of remembrance.

And it was the Scout who told her that the ball was still within her, that he could not extract it without risking her death.

Then the other news: that the ball had likely destroyed her womb. That it would be a miracle if she could have children now.

The dreams began. Of the minié ball pushing through her flesh. Pushing deeper, deeper into her, like some unholy nishterlaub
seed that had been planted deep.

No. The Blaskoye’s
seed. His loathsome seed. And in the dreams, she was pregnant with the Redlander’s bastard. A creature, not a child, a parasite that ate her from within. That whispered to her from the
inside
,
where only she could hear, “I am his, and you are his, and you will take me to him, drag yourself to him, so that I can be born, so that he can draw me from you as he might a weapon from a wound.”

Edgar, her husband, had taken one look at her and had not returned to see her. He was rumored to have journeyed to Garangipore to see about a crop on family land there and oversee the transfer of grain to the barges. She supposed she was still married to him, that he wouldn’t cast her off in this state. She was certain the family had told him about her now barren womb.

Her mother and father could not bear to witness what had happened to the one they had known as an innocent child, and had only occasionally visited after an initial flurry. Only Xander, her brother, came and kept coming. And the other, the lieutenant. Abel Dashian.

Why?

She’d asked herself that several times, and had no answer. She had even asked him, at one point demanded, that he go and never return. But he hadn’t answered, and he hadn’t obeyed.

Finally she had told him about the dreams. She’d told him in hopes that this would disgust him, make him hate her for a traitor to both womankind and to the Land, to Zentrum Himself.

But he’d only listened and nodded.

“I think I understand what it’s like to have thoughts, things you can’t control, rattling around in your mind,” he’d said.

And she’d asked, “How could you?”

And he’d answered, “Oh, you might be surprised.” But had said no more on the subject. “What will you do when you get better?” he’d asked.

This had set her to quiet thinking for quite some time. She hadn’t even considered the matter before. But now it appeared she might live, might walk, might one day get rid of the bedsores on her back and shoulders, stand up and be able to take a shit without soiling her linens. One not inconceivably distant day. And then what?

Edgar? She’d been bought cheap. Her father’s position and a not inconsiderable dowry from her mother’s family had been the attraction. Those must have been the prime attractions, for she’d always known herself to be not homely, but boyish in her ways. This she blamed on her father and her brother, for drawing her in on the play battles, the fights with wooden swords and knives, and most of all the archery and the sharpshooting. It hadn’t helped when they found that she was by far the best shot in the family.

And she blamed her mother for letting them do it. For never sitting her down and telling her that this is not what young ladies
do
. For perpetually believing she’d outgrow her urge to—

Say it.

To fight. To battle. To overcome a foe. To conquer within the small domain she ruled.

These were not the sentiments a woman should possess. Not in this town, in any case, military brat or no.

She knew what she ought to want. To beguile. To ensnare. To fulfill. To complete.

These were the traits of a woman.

She’d worked at it, become competent in the arts. Dress. Comportment.

But she never stopped beating the boys at their own games, and liking it.

Until the one came along who put a bullet in her gut and showed her that she could not beat all boys at all games.

For a while, she’d believed she’d met her match in Edgar. He had not put up with her willfulness, had showed a cool disdain for her uppity nature.

And yet he had clearly liked her, and liked her a lot—to the point she’d had to fight him off before the betrothal, claw him away, until she was ready for it, for him in that way.

“Nobody ever denies me,” he’d said. “But you deny me, and it just makes me long for you more.”

And so they’d gone on with him insulting her, and yet always returning, and driving off the few other suitors who had had the temerity to risk this one, the carnadon girl who would bite your head off as soon as look at you if you dared to suggest she was weak or changeable or was any other of the traits that made up and defined a woman.

Despite it all, she’d been flabbergasted when Edgar had asked her to marry him.

She still wasn’t sure exactly what he’d been thinking, for they’d gone for one another’s throats on the wedding night itself when she’d refused him what he believed was his manly due.

Oh, not the sex. She’d given that willingly enough, and liked it, too, for that, too, proved to be a kind of battle.

No, the other. When he told her she would have to give up her bow and arrows. When he told her he would now see her light-skinned and not tanned from the sun, and what was more, she would show herself to others, reveal her new class and status by the clothes she wore, which would have to change.

It would all have to change, for he intended to show them all, all the others, that he was the one who could tame her, tame the wild DeArmanville girl.

Did she not know she’d become quite a legend?

And by winning her, he had won a bet, a rather large wager, with a friend that
no one
, ever, would tame that woman.

So it was all a sort of rich boy joke, according to him. But now that he had her, the joke was over, for both of them, and life must begin. Respectable life. Doing things the way they had always been done.

Had he not known her before? Had he thought her entire way of being in the world would disappear from the sheer act of marriage under the Law and Zentrum?

They’d fought. Endlessly. And of course he could not bloody her lip, twist an arm, or bruise her body, without the aid of a servant or two to restrain her, which proved far too embarrassing to him to do more than once or twice.

She was a much better fighter than he, and—if
she’d
had a mind—could repeatedly have beaten him to a bloody pulp.

The sex had remained good, got even better, until, after two years, the good sex was all there was other than the hatred.

No child resulted. Of course he blamed her.

Now that was gone. At least, she thought it must be gone along with her torn flesh. She had no doubt that in appearance, her vagina would seem little more than the extension of the mass of scar that was forming upon her inner thigh and belly. Unless, of course, she could convince him he was hurting her, opening the wound once more, by fucking her.

Edgar was the sort who would go for that.

But she knew herself that it would become just too…wearying to keep up. She’d laugh one day instead of cry, and he’d be on to the fact that she was enjoying herself once more, and that would ruin everything for him.

Yet he would not divorce her. Jacobsons didn’t divorce. It was almost unheard of in Treville, in any case.

So the solution would be—living apart. But how could she manage that?

Because she still would want and need. She could feel it now. She was still a woman, despite her ravaged womb. And if Edgar wouldn’t have her and she could take no other lover…

Why didn’t he kill me? Why did he aim low? Did he know he was letting me live? Allowing me to crawl the earth, with me knowing I did so only because of his passing whim?

It was going to be a long and painful life, any way she looked at it.

Then the day came when she could stand. He was there at the moment she did so, Abel. He was the one who helped her to her feet, who braced her from behind as she slowly learned to use her legs again.

There would always be the limp, yes. Always the reminder to the world of what she knew she was inside now. Torn. Broken. Barren. But she learned to walk again.

* * *

I calculate that this representation is an accurate interpolation to nine-six point seven-three-five hundreds of a percentage point,
said Center.

Observe
what
?
Abel thought.
What did you want me to learn, to see? Her state of mind? Why did you show me this, Center?

I think he’s pointing out the fact that you are falling in love with her, lad,
Raj said.

And how this may become a problem,
Center added.

Shut up, both of you. Let’s see to the breechloaders.

* * *

“So you understand, muzzle loading is the issue,” Abel said to the priest.

Raf Golitsin sat back in the chair in his small office. They were in the rear of the armory, which itself was one of the four primary structures in the temple compound of Hestinga. It was where the muskets came from.

Abel had passed through what had seemed an erupting hot spring of heat and activity on his way back to the office. He’d been blindfolded by Golitsin, as was required of all nonclerical entrants to the area, but Golitsin had used muslin gauze, which was the understood blindfold of choice for officials who were in small danger of misusing priestly secrets. Abel had seen all.

The firing mechanisms of the muskets in for repair were dismantled to a degree Abel had not imagined possible. Flaws were annealed in glowing forges. Other parts were filed, planed, oiled. Barrel bands were pulled from rifle stock, and barrels themselves were dismantled, reamed. Rifling was done with an enormous handcranked screw, itself made of a metal of a hardness Abel had never seen before. Golitsin called it a drillpress and die.