“I went to him because I pitied him!” she shouted. “I went to offer him my love when I was beautiful and all men desired me! This is the result!”
“No,” said the man in the jet cloak, entirely unheard. “You went to him because you were ambitious. And you went when I told you to go. I understood his need far better than you did.”
Her voice seemed to turn the torchlight the color of blood. “He must pay!”
Lebbick! Pay! Lebbick!
“Think about this gambit, Joyse.” The man in the jet cloak was no longer grinning. “Save him if you can. Stop me if you can. You thought to play this game against me, but you are outmatched.”
Then he cocked an eyebrow in mild surprise and peered over the heads of the crowd as a figure wrapped in a brown robe stepped unexpectedly up onto the dais beside Saddith.
Lit by torches and looking like an image out of a dream, the figure turned sharply; the robe seemed to swirl through the air and float away, thrown off as the man revealed himself.
Castellan Lebbick.
He wore the purple sash of his authority over his mail, the purple band of his position knotted around his short, gray hair. He had a longsword in a scabbard on his hip, but he didn’t touch it; he didn’t appear to need it. His familiar scowl answered the torches blackly. The lift of his head, the thrust of his jaw, the movements of his arms and shoulders were tight with passion and command. He wasn’t tall, yet he made himself felt everywhere in the hall.
He had never looked more like a man who beat up women.
“All right.” His voice carried; it promised violence, like a hammer knocking chips from stone. “This has gone on long enough. Get out of here. Go back to your rooms. The Masters don’t like having their precious laborium invaded. If they decide to defend it themselves, they might translate the whole lice-ridden lot of you out of existence.”
An interesting threat, thought the man in the jet cloak – plainly hollow, but interesting. Nevertheless everyone stared at the Castellan. He had clapped a hush over the mob. Surprise and old respect and inbred alarm did more for him than fifty guards.
Saddith ignored his threats. She ignored his appearance, his proven capacity for harm. After what he had cost her, she had nothing left to lose, no more reason to be afraid. And she hated him – oh, she hated him. Her face was a scabbed and deformed clench of hate as she spat his name:
“Lebbick.”
Despite his authority and fury, he turned to look at her as though she had the power to compel him.
“What do you wish here?” she asked thickly. “Have you come to gloat? Have you come to lay claim to your handiwork? Are you proud of it?”
“No.” His voice was quiet, yet it could be heard throughout the hall. “I was wrong.”
“ ‘Wrong’?” she cried.
“It wasn’t your fault. It probably wasn’t even your idea. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
At a calmer moment, the crowd might have been utterly astounded to hear Castellan Lebbick say something that sounded so much like an apology, almost a self-abasement. But the people weren’t thinking as individuals: they were feeling like a mob, ugly and extreme. Lebbick, someone murmured – and another, Lebbick – a chant began, far back in the throat, through the teeth, a hunting growl, Lebbick, Lebbick.
“ ‘Wrong’?” repeated Saddith. She was breathing hard, trying to get enough air for her vituperation. “You admit that you were wrong?” Her damaged breasts shone with sweat. “Do you think that heals me? Do you think that one small piece of my pain is made less, or one small scar is removed?” Her arms beat time to her respiration, Lebbick, Lebbick, the snarl of the mob. “I tell you, you will pay with blood!
“Blood!” she howled, matching the rhythm in the halclass="underline" “Blood!”
And the mob responded, “Lebbick! Lebbick!”
The man in the jet cloak grinned with undisguised relish.
Nevertheless Castellan Lebbick wasn’t daunted. Maybe he wasn’t even afraid. “Oh, stop it!” he snapped over the heavy shout as if the people surrounding him were nothing more than bad children and he had no time for their misbehavior. “Do you think all this surprises me? I knew it was going to happen. I’ve been ready for days.”
His voice wielded enough of the whip to slash through the beat of his name, the outrage. Men and women faltered, began to listen.
“I had you driven in here so I could do what I wanted with you. You didn’t know I was here. You don’t know how many of my men are here. Well, I’ll tell you. Ninety-four. All disguised. All pretending to be one of you. The person standing next to you shouting Lebbick, Lebbick like a dog with the mange is probably one of my men. If anyone raises a hand at me, he’ll be cut down where he stands. And the rest of you will be remembered!”
It was a remarkable ploy. The man in the jet cloak was virtually certain that it was in fact a ploy, that the Castellan was in fact undefended, as vulnerable as he would ever be; but that changed nothing. It worked. Like water on hot coals, it transformed the fury of the mob back into fear.
All the shouting stopped. Men and women glanced at each other, tried to edge away from each other. When the Castellan barked, “Now get out of here. Open the doors and get out of here. You’ve all been stupid enough for one, night,” the people near the doors undid the bolts, and the crowd began to move.
This was too much for Saddith – as the man in the jet cloak knew it would be. Of course, he was as surprised as anyone by Castellan Lebbick’s appearance in the hall; and more vexed than most, although he didn’t show it. From the beginning, however, he had been prepared for the possibility that she might fail – that the crowd might refuse to gather, that it might not become a mob, that the mob might not rise to bloodshed. And then she would break. The hate inside her would refuse to be contained.
That was why he had given her a knife.
She had it in her hand now, and she wailed in a high, shrill voice as she flung herself at Lebbick.
Maybe he wasn’t as ready as he pretended to be. Or maybe something had distracted him. Or maybe this was what he had had in mind all along. Whatever the reason, he was slow turning, slow with his hands; too slow to prevent Saddith from driving her blade through his throat.
Nevertheless she didn’t so much as scratch him.
While she swung, Ribuld came up onto the dais in a headlong charge and spitted her on his longsword, ran her through so hard that they both crashed into the throng on the far side and fell to the floor.
Just for a second, the Castellan’s features seemed to crumple as if he were disappointed. Almost immediately, however, he swept out his own sword and went to stand over Ribuld so that no one would try to strike at the guard who had saved his life.
The man in the jet cloak was mildly entertained to hear Castellan Lebbick rasp at Ribuld, “Next time don’t be in such a hurry.”
The time had come to go with the crowd. If the man in the jet cloak lingered, he might get pulled along when the crowd’s departure became flight, people hurrying and then running to get away from the Castellan and trouble. With a shrug, he eased out of the hall.
The next morning, however, he was gratified to hear that some of Saddith’s supporters had been sincere enough in their outrage to burn everything flammable they could find before guards arrived to drive them out of the laborium. She deserved at least that much recognition. She had become too ugly to go on living, of course; but while she lasted she had been worth the risk of knowing her. Although he wasn’t exactly grieved by her loss, he admired the aesthetic judgment of the man or men who had tried to commemorate her death by doing a little trivial damage to the laborium.