The Silent Tempest (Book 2) (21 page)

“Let me go!” she shouted, twisting, trying
to free herself.

“Not until you’ve learned your place,
slave,
”
he replied, kicking the door open and shoving her through as he released his
grip on her hair. Closing the door behind him, he leaned against it, taking a
deep breath and shutting his eyes.

Kate attacked, nearly breaking her hand
when she slapped his shield with all the might in her slender frame. “Ow!” she
yelped loudly.

Tyrion erected a shield within the room,
this one meant to prevent sound from leaving, then he released his personal
defense. “Try again,” he said, offering his cheek.

She eyed him suspiciously, “That shield
hurts.”

“I took it down…”

Before he could finish, her other hand
swung out, stinging his right cheek with a hard slap. Reflexively he rolled
with it, robbing the blow of some of its momentum, but it still hurt. Kate
hadn’t been holding back.

He caught her other wrist as she twisted
her body to pummel him with her dominant hand. She had made a fist with that
one, more confident now that she knew his shield was down. He then shifted his
weight, partially deflecting her knee as she attempted to do even greater harm.

She glared angrily at him as he held her
at bay, “I thought you were going to let me have a couple of good shots.”

“No,” he replied. “I brought you in here
so they would think the opposite.”

“But you aren’t going to really hurt me?”
she responded sarcastically. “Is that because you’re secretly not as bad as I
think, or as they think? In reality, inside that murderous, sadistic exterior,
lies a gentle soul crying to be understood—is that what you want to tell me?”

It hadn’t sounded so ridiculous in his own
mind. Nor would he have described himself as gentle, but the heart of his
message was something like that. “As cruel as I am, even I don’t enjoy hurting
my own children,” he told her. “Nor do I like hurting you, but if you take a
stand against me in public again, I won’t hesitate to do whatever is necessary
to maintain the illusion.”

He had relaxed his hold on her wrists, and
she took the opportunity to jerk her arms back before spitting on the ground at
his feet, “What illusion?! It wasn’t an illusion when you broke Ian’s ribs.
It wasn’t an illusion when you nearly killed Layla, and it
certainly
wasn’t
an illusion when you tortured poor Abby!”

He took a step toward her, “Look, I…”

She stepped back, keeping the distance
between them, “No,
you
look! I left my son—I
helped
you bring
those poor kids here. I kept them from running off or killing you when you
were down. I
believed
in you, at least I thought what you were doing
was a necessary evil, but this—this is sick Daniel! You’re sick!”

“You don’t have to agree with me,” he told
her. “In fact, it helps that you don’t, but if…”

“Why does it help?” she interrupted, her
eyes darting back and forth across his features, studying his face. Sudden
realization dawned on her then, “Oh. You want me to be the kind one, don’t you?
The mother figure to bandage their bruised pride and wounded bodies—is that
it? You want me to give them some kind of false hope to keep their spirits up,
so you can push them harder, so you can hurt them more!”

“What I’m doing is necessary.”

“Fuck you. There’s absolutely nothing
necessary about this. You can train them without torturing them. You can
teach them to fight. If you showed them the least amount of kindness, you’d
get far more from them. You’re wrong! You don’t have to play evil to get what
you want. You could do far better by being their mentor. Don’t you understand
that?”

Tyrion closed his mouth, thinking. Deep
down, he wanted to agree with her. He believed in the strength of the human
spirit, of cooperation, of love, and family. He had spent years considering
the reasons he had survived the arena, and in the end, he had decided his
greatest advantage over the slaves of the She’Har had been his upbringing. But
he also knew how hard it was to kill.

His first kill had been born of
desperation and luck. It was afterward, when he learned to truly hate the
She’Har and their wardens, that he had found the will to destroy his opponents
without hesitation, without compunction or mercy.

And he knew the teens he had brought back
from Colne were far from understanding that sort of brutal reality. They
hadn’t been tortured the way he had. They hadn’t experienced what he had, and
while some of them might survive their first fights in the arena, some most
definitely would not.

But he had no way to convince Kate of
that.

“When we leave this room, you’ll keep your
eyes on the ground and give every appearance that I’ve done something terrible
to you…”

“No. I won’t cooperate with your sick
plan. If you want me to look like I’ve been beaten, or raped, or whatever…
then you’re going to have to do it.” Kate raised her chin defiantly.

For a moment he was tempted, but he was
too heartsick to go through with it. Instead he had another idea. “You have
two choices then,” he told her. “You can walk out of here and show me for a
fraud, and I’ll double the number of painful lessons I give them. Or, you can
lower your head and pretend you’ve been beaten, and I’ll limit myself to one
object lesson a day.”

“Coward,” was her reply. Turning, she
walked to the door, but she came up short when she found herself unable to open
it. “Let me out.”

With a word, he released the enchantment
that sealed the room.

Kate threw the door open and ran out, head
down and sobbing. She seemed entirely convincing. If he had not known the
truth for himself, he would never had disbelieved her performance. Even her
aura was in turmoil. She was an actress down to her very soul.

“What happened Kate?” came a worried
voice. “What did he do to you?” It took Tyrion a moment to identify the
speaker.
David.

The young man hurried with her, trying to
soothe her as she quickly left the house.

He won’t have trouble finding
reasons to hate me,
thought Tyrion, but it gave
him no satisfaction.

The days passed in a painful parade of
training and misery. Things weren’t completely dark for Tyrion’s children,
though. They had one another. They had meals together and a growing sense of comradery.
They had Kate, a reminder of home and now something of a surrogate mother, but
most of all, they had a common enemy.

His lessons were hard. He gave them new
tasks and then pushed them until they failed. Sometimes the failures were bad
enough to be a punishment in and of themselves, such as when he drove them
until their shields collapsed, and they experienced first-hand the shock of
feedback. Other times the punishment came at an unexpected time, when he
determined that someone had performed too poorly.

In between lessons they watched him. He
could feel their eyes on him whenever he was outside of his room. Fearful
glances and occasionally hate-filled stares had become the norm. As he had
predicted, their fear was blossoming into a bumper crop of anger and antipathy,
except for Gabriel Evans anyway.

Gabriel had taken his new authority
seriously, and even though Tyrion made a point of putting him under the red
whip at least once, the boy had remained serious, perhaps even loyal to him.
He excelled at the exercises they were put to, and he exhibited a strong focus,
but he still worried Tyrion.

“He wants to please you,” said Layla as
they talked one evening.

Tyrion nodded, “That’s what worries me.”

“He is strong, and the first matches are
against younglings from the pens,” reminded Layla. “Most of them are weak, he
will probably win.”

“Probably isn’t good enough,” said
Tyrion. “I want to be sure that all of them make it.”

“Why are you so obsessed with making sure
all of them win?” she asked.

“They are my children,” he told her.

The warden shrugged, “You have many, one,
more or less, won’t make much of a difference.”

“If you had children, you might understand
better.”

“I have given birth twice already,” she
answered.

Tyrion gave her a look of surprise. “I
never knew that. How long did they let you keep them?”

“An hour,” she replied. “Once they’ve had
their first-milk, they are taken to be nursed by the nameless.”

“Are they still alive?”

Layla looked down, poking at the ground
with her finger, “I don’t know. Once they enter the pens, only the trainers
know where they go, or whether they even survive to adulthood.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tyrion.

“Don’t be,” said the warden. “I disliked
their fathers.”

He knew that the pregnancies had been
deliberate. The She’Har slave collars prevented anything like normal
intercourse, to prevent their stock from breeding unsupervised. If Layla had
gotten pregnant twice, it meant she had been chosen for breeding. From what
Tyrion had heard, the process was unimaginative; the mother to be was simply
ordered to lean over a rail and the chosen sire, frequently a warden or
occasionally one of the She’Har males, would then provide his contribution.

“Were they wardens?”

“She’Har,” she replied.

Tyrion left the conversation alone after
that, unsure how to continue.

***

The week was almost over, and Kate stood
at a table, chopping vegetables, preparing for the evening meal, even though
they hadn’t eaten lunch yet. Lunch was finished, except for the eating, and
there was much yet to do before supper, so she had gotten started early.

The window before her showed the yard in
front of the house, and she could see the teens practicing, their faces
intent. The level of concentration they displayed was hard to believe, unless
one knew what sort of punishment awaited anyone deemed unsatisfactory. Her
gaze fell on the man circling them, and her eyes narrowed.

How did it come to be like
this?
she wondered.

Daniel had been the gentlest of boys, a
kind soul—once. He had been her inspiration when they were young. The way he
had handled young lambs, his care with the sheep, the way he had handled dogs,
all of it had shown her a man possessed of uncommon compassion. That was why
she had loved him, his music had only been a wonderful extra.

When he had returned the first time, after
years away, he had been different, but his heart had still been there, tightly
bound and well hidden. What he had endured had changed him, but despite it,
his kindness had still been there. He had worn his anger like a cloak,
something that had covered his weaknesses, but without consuming him.

Now it’s more the opposite,
his occasional kindness is like a thin veil, hiding the rage of his inner self.

A sound made her turn, Layla stood not far
away. “Shouldn’t you be out helping?” asked Kate.

“My turn will come after lunch,” said the
tall woman, moving closer. She ran her hand down Kate’s hair before tracing a
line down her shoulder.

Kate felt a mild thrill at the touch.
“That’s something then,” she observed. “At least you don’t torture them.”

Layla shrugged, “I prefer not to get
worked up. I save my energy for—other things.” Leaning in, she nuzzled the
smaller woman’s neck, inhaling deeply.

“Stop,” said Kate. “I have too much to
do, and besides, I’m not in the mood.”

The female warden let out an
uncharacteristic whine, “but I’m
horny.
”

“I smell like onions.”

The other woman wrinkled her nose but
didn’t give up immediately, “Onions smell much better once you simmer them over
the fire.”

Kate pushed her away, “I’m serious. I
have other things to do. Find something else to occupy you.”

Layla sighed, “But no one else will play
with me.”

Kate had no illusions regarding what the
warden meant by ‘play’, but the statement gave her pause. She knew the warden
had had many ‘playmates’ before, but she hadn’t considered the possibility that
the woman might continue her polyamory now that she lived under Tyrion’s roof.

“Who else would you play with?” she asked
curiously.

Layla pursed her lips, thinking about the
question seriously. Looking out the window, she smiled, “Hmm, Gabriel looks
like he would be fun to train.”

Kate was a bit shocked, “He’s a child.”

“Tell that to his shoulders,” retorted
Layla. “My people don’t pay attention to such things anyway.”

Kate still didn’t approve, “Whether they
do or not, it’s still wrong.” She had never forgotten what her own mother had
done to Daniel once, long ago. She was also already aware that she was
unlikely to change the other woman’s opinions on pretty much anything. Layla
was stubborn, nor was she given to reflection or deeper thinking.

“It doesn’t matter,” said the warden.
“I’m pretty sure Tyrion would kill me if I took to playing with his offspring.
He’s almost as strange as you are when it comes to such things.”

Uncomfortable with the subject, Kate tried
to shift the topic, “I thought you preferred women anyway.”

“I get bored easily,” said Layla. “Women
usually entertain me longer.”

Kate considered her marriage and then her infrequent
trysts with Darla Long, and she had to admit that Layla had a point, but her
experience was too limited to really judge. She hadn’t felt the thrill with
Seth that she had once felt for Daniel, but then she had never really fallen in
love again. Darla had been lonely, and a kindred spirit in many respects; her marriage
had been dull and lifeless, much like Kate’s.

“Tyrion seems like he would be
interesting,” continued the female warden. “I like the dangerous ones, but I
wonder if he prefers men.”

Kate was startled, “What?”

Layla gave her a look usually reserved for
slow children, “Some men prefer only men.”

“Why would you think that about him?”

“Well, over the years he rarely came to
Ellentrea anymore, but when he did it was exclusively to visit Garlin, and he
has already told me that they were friends. Since coming here, I have yet to
see him show any favor to any of the girls, or you,” explained Layla. “He even
turned me down when I offered myself to him,” she added.

“You what?!”

“Like this,” said Layla slyly, pressing
her full body languidly against Kate’s. She ran her nails lightly down her
back.

Kate pushed her away, frowning angrily.

Layla sighed, “That’s exactly what he did,
no reaction at all. How did he get so many children? Did the women of your
village force him?”

Exasperated, Kate picked the knife up
again and turned away, “Let me do my work.”

“You’re so dull. I may have to start
punishing the students to entertain myself,” teased the warden.

Kate pointed the blade at her, “You wouldn’t
dare!”

Layla laughed, “Relax, I like breathing
more than that.”

“Huh?”

“Tyrion,” explained the other woman. “He
hasn’t forbidden it, but I can feel it. If anyone else were to touch one of
them, they wouldn’t live long. I certainly wouldn’t risk it, not after what
happened in Sabortrea.”

Kate had heard enough to know the name of
the camp that Haley had been taken to, but she hadn’t learned much else about
it. “What happened?”

“He killed two of the wardens there. The
story is that he attacked one of them in the presence of the She’Har. They
should have killed him for that, but his owner paid to preserve him, and then
paid to buy the ones he wanted to kill,” said Layla.

He really is going insane,
thought Kate. “What set him off?”

Layla shrugged, “Who knows? They say he
came across them taking favors from the girl.”

“From Haley?” asked Kate.

“If that is what they called her. I have
never understood your custom for giving names to unblooded children,” said the
warden.

Kate could understand his reaction, even
if it seemed alien to Layla. Every day was making it plainer to her just how
different the thinking of the people who lived among the She’Har was. Things
that should be abominations to them were commonplace, while things that should
be normal were frowned upon.

She was questioning her perspective of
Daniel when the screaming started. Glancing out the window she could see David
on the ground, writhing in pain. Daniel stood above him, holding the red whip
in one hand, while his face possessed the coldest, most impassive expression
that she had ever seen.

Kate’s hand slipped, nearly taking off the
end of her finger. She stared at the blood welling from a shallow cut, but
then Layla lifted it, putting it into her mouth.

“Mmm,” said the female warden. “You
should let me fix this for you.”

She tried to jerk her hand back, but Layla
held it tightly. Withdrawing the finger she took her other hand and traced the
cut, sealing the skin so that only a small silver scar remained.

From the yard David’s scream trailed off,
ending in a soft whimper. His punishment was finished. Kate pulled again, and
this time Layla released her hand.

“I can’t understand how that
doesn’t
bother you,” she noted.

“In Ellentrea such sounds are as common as
birdsong in the forest.”