“I don’t know, Julia,” Wulfston replied. “I don’t even know who they are.”
“You don’t?” she asked, Reading only bafflement from him. “But Wulfston, they’re all black-just like you!”
The Watchers reported Wulfston’s defeat of his attackers, so Aradia had calmed herself by the time her family returned to the castle. It had cost all her patience to obey Lenardo’s instructions to stay, after he finally bethought himself to contact her.
After all the excitement was over.
Aradia’s Reading abilities were minimal, but Lenardo was the most powerful Reader yet known. He and Wulfston were rowing out to the ship before his mind touched hers, letting her look through his eyes, Read through his powers that her brother was unharmed.
Assigning Julia to escort their captives to the castle, the two lords boarded the ship and instructed the Nubian captain and crew to move the ship into Dragon’s Mouth.
Their interrogation of the ship’s crew provided little information. The ship had been hired by one Sukuru, the Adept who had attacked Wulfston. He and the others who had gone ashore were the only passengers, and the captain had asked no questions about their strange destination. They paid him, and he took them where they wanted to go. All the way from Africa.
The mystery plagued Aradia long after Lenardo broke contact, and she went down to see the captives being brought to the castle. Sukuru was carriea in unconscious. The other men were obviously awed, and the woman with the little boy would say nothing. She was veiled, so that only her eyes showed, but mahogany skin was revealed around her eyes and on her hands. Every one of these people was as black as Wulfston.
More irrational thoughts flickered through Aradia’s mind: in retaliation for her jealousy of Lenardo’s adopted daughter, some god she didn’t believe in had sent these people to take away her beloved adopted brother.
But Wulfston had not come from Africa.
His parents did, she reminded herself.
What if he were the long-lost heir to an African throne?
Then why did they attack him?
Besides, he had his own throne right here, his own lands, his own people.
And he is feeling restless, unhappy. …
The moon was riding high by the time Lenardo and Wulfston returned. Lenardo wanted Aradia to go right to bed, but she insisted on talking to Wulfston first.
She knew where to find him: an Adept had to replenish his strength, and his cook had prepared him a meal worthy of three ordinary men. He should have eaten hours ago, and long since been asleep, so it was little wonder Aradia found him uncooperative.
“But why did you go out there in the first place?” she wanted to know. She was really asking why he seemed so alien, and his response only heightened the impression.
“Aradia, why do you ask me when you know I don’t have the answer? Don’t give me that innocent look.
I know that you were in contact with Lenardo the whole time.”
You’re wrong there, little brother, she thought, but Wulfston continued, “For the last time, I don’t know why I left a celebration I’m supposed to be hosting and went riding along the cliffs. Now, will you please leave me alone?”
His harsh words wounded. Reader or no, Wulfston must have realized it, for he reached across the table to put his hand over hers. “I’m sorry. I–I guess I’m more upset than I want to admit… especially about losing Storm like that.”
She nodded in sympathy. Wulfston had planned to use the beautiful stallion to improve his stock, but it was more than that. He had always had a strong affinity for animals.
“Do you think it’s possible,” she asked tentatively, “that you might have… Read that the ship was there?”
To learn Read was his fondest dream-and Aradia, too, yearned to meet her brother mind to mind.
There were times, such as now, when words were inadequate.
But Wulfston shook his head. “If I could sense a strange ship several miles away-which neither Lenardo nor Julia did until they started following me-then I should be able to pick up someone’s thoughts nearby.
But nothing has changed for me. I don’t know what drew me into that confrontation, but it wasn’t Reading. I’m still your mind-blind little brother,” he said with a rueful chuckle.
Yet something had drawn him away from his family- something that frightened Aradia.
When she went upstairs to the room she shared with Lenardo, her husband was already in bed, although still awake. His mind met hers, Reading her conversation with Wulfston and the vague, unsettling fears this day had brought.
Without speaking, Lenardo got up and pulled on a soft woolen robe against the castle’s chill. Aradia’s maid was in the antechamber, waiting to help her mistress undress, but Lenardo went to the door and told her, “Go on to bed, Devasin. I will help the Lady Aradia tonight.”
Devasin handed Lenardo Aradia’s chamber garments, and Lenardo closed the door. Then he turned to his wife. “You are upset.”
“My brother was attacked today.”
“His attackers were fools. Aradia, their combined powers are nothing to Wulfston’s. He didn’t need my help, or Julia’s. By the time we got there, the battle was over.”
“I know. Yet… Lenardo, I have such a strange feeling about these people. Why have they come here, all the way from Africa?”
“We’ll find out tomorrow,” he reassured her, and reached to take off her outer robe of silver-bordered velvet. Then he unhooked the satin overgarment, and helped her out of the layers of silk undergarments and into her chamber robe.
She didn’t really need the help, of course, but her husband’s hands made every move a caress, soothing away her unexplained anxiety.
When she sat down and began to unbraid her hair, Lenardo’s strong hands took over that function, too, untangling the pale blond strands, then brushing them smooth.
Such ministrations were not routine. Lenardo did not even have a valet, having grown up in an Academy of Readers. Once he had professed surprise that a Lady Adept should require a maid to dress her, but he accepted Devasin as custom, and usually left Aradia to her care.
Tonight, though, when Aradia needed the comfort of her husband’s touch, he gave it, putting her to bed as tenderly as he might a child. Then he lay down beside her, taking her in his arms.
Lenardo was a tall man, with a body well formed by years of work and exercise. Aradia rested against him, feeling the lean hardness of his muscles irrationally reassuring. Even diminished by pregnancy, her powers far outweighed the physical strength of any man, even one as huge as Zanos the Gladiator.
Nonetheless, she felt secure in her husband’s arms.
Perhaps it was that Lenardo, with only Reading and no Adept powers, had proved his strength to her when they first met, defending her with his sword when she had exhausted her powers in their first battle with Drakonius. Later, Lenardo had learned to develop the Adept portion of his powers, but since exercising the abilities to affect the physical world with the mind impeded Reading, he had never become a Lord Adept. Master Reader satisfied him, and he satisfied her, in every possible way.
“Lenardo?” she murmured.
“Hush,” he said. “Go to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“No-tell me. What did you see today?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you were just humoring me when you went after Wulfston-but now I wonder. You had one of your visions, didn’t you?”
For a moment he didn’t answer. Then, “Yes,” he said reluctantly.
“What was it? Did you see him being attacked?”
Again the pause, and even though Lenardo was far too skilled to let someone of Aradia’s meager ability Read what he didn’t want her to, she knew with a wife’s certain knowledge that he was considering lying to her. But he didn’t. “I saw Wulfston on board ship, that Nubian woman and her child beside him, sailing away to the south.”