They would all take their turn being interrogated by Baron Harvey Cawdor.
There was a warm glow from the lamp that stood on an old, polished round table near the barred window. The draperies had been closed, leaving only a chink near the top. It was full dark outside.
From where he lay on the floor of the chamber, Ryan could hear the noises of the ville as life went on. He guessed that the news of his return would already have raced through the big building until the meanest scullery boy would know that Ryan Cawdor was back at Front Royal.
"Oiled and ready to tear some ass," Ryan said out loud, managing a wry grin. He was resigned to that fact of his imminent death. It was simply a question of how and when. J.B., Jak and Krysty would also perish. That was also destined. There was a slim chance that Doc and the girl might get away. Ryan hoped so. He liked Lori, but he was coming to love the eccentric old man.
The only hope left now to Ryan was that they might get careless at the end and give him a chance to at least settle the old debt by killing his brother. He could do it easily enough with his bare hands, given just a couple of seconds and a scant yard of space.
Somewhere he could catch the distant sound of a piano playing, and he wondered who was at the keyboard. An aunt of his had come to the ville when Ryan had been eight years old, an immensely tall, skinny woman whose name escaped him. It was some sort of flower, he thought. She'd loved dancing and had teased the solemn young boy by snatching him as they'd passed in one of the long corridors. Pressing him to her flat, bony chest, she'd called out, "Heel and toe, heel and toe, one-two-three, one-two-three. Lovely, Ryan, lovely."
As the wasting sickness that had killed her had begun to set its teeth in her body, she'd grown more melancholy. Once she'd been playing an old tape of music, a dance tune called a tango. She'd looked up at him from the thin birdlike face, with eyes bright and fevered, the bones scraping at the inside of her skin.
"They say the tango is a merry rhythm, Ryan. It is not. It is infinitely mournful."
She'd died a week later and been buried in the family plot with the rest of the line of Cawdors, back to the long winter.
Ryan didn't recognize the tune the piano was playing. After a while it ceased, and he slipped into an uneasy sleep.
The rattle of the spyhole woke him, and he peered across the room. The lamp was burning low, near to guttering out, and the chamber smelled of oil. There was a momentary flash of brighter light as the door opened a narrow crack and then closed again. Someone slipped through the gap, and for a split second Ryan allowed himself a glimmer of hope, knowing the foolishness of such a thought.
He heard a voice, speaking with a frighteningly cold intensity. "On your life, trooper. I'll spill your heart blood myself. Not until I knock to be let out. Understand?"
One of the sec men murmured his assent as the door closed.
There was plenty of light for Ryan to immediately recognize Lady Rachel Cawdor, wearing the same dark clothes and carrying the same worn leather purse. Without a word she knelt at his side, drawing a slim-bladed stiletto from her belt. The point rested for a moment on the material of his pants, just above his groin. She began to push, the steel slicing through the material, touching cold on the flesh of his stomach.
"Now," she said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The knife was very old. Ryan had never seen it before, but he knew that the ville had once housed a remarkable collection of early weapons of all sorts. The hilt was silver, heavily embossed with floral decoration, and the blade was steel.
He tried to relax against the sharp pricking of the knife as she moved it lower and lower. Despite himself, Ryan winced and tried to ease himself down, avoiding the steel as it brushed the top of his penis.
Lady Rachel Cawdor laughed delightedly, a soft, gentle sound in the stillness of the room.
"So brave, brother-in-law, yet so like all men. Filled with stupid pride until your pathetic little pricks are threatened."
"Harvey wouldn't like me spoiled."
She patted him on the cheek, running a sharp nail along the jagged scar that furrowed his face. "He did that. And the eye. He talks of it. When he sleeps, racked by horrors, he talks of you. He knew you'd come back one day. Knew it. You're his walking nightmare, Ryan Cawdor."
He didn't speak. The knife was still poised, like a honed nemesis, ready to descend and hack at his manhood. She was very beautiful. Ryan corrected that thought. She had once been very beautiful. Now she was raddled by the jolt.
"You can't move. I could do anything to you, dear brother-in-law. Anything. I could rape you. Use that cock of yours, then cut it off. I could kiss you. Make you kiss me. Make you use your tongue on my body. Would you like that, brother-in-law?"
She was leaning across him, her breath running faster. The front of her dress gaped open, and he could see her breasts, the nipples erect with desire.
"What would you like, Ryan?"
"I'd like you to die, and take your husband and that sick little bastard of a son with you."
He waited for the thrust of the knife, but nothing happened. Ryan had closed his eye, and he opened it when he heard her laugh. She had sat back on her heels, the velvet dress hitched up between her knees, showing a smooth expanse of pale thigh.
"You talk big for a helpless one-eyed man, Ryan Cawdor."
"Why've you come?"
Rachel's dark eyes were almost invisible in the half-light. "I wanted to see you. Wanted to see you before that sottish husband of mine had you thrown to his boars or his dogs or whatever unoriginal way of chilling he picks."
Ryan didn't reply. There was nothing to say. He'd read pulps where the captured hero talks to the mistress of the villain and uses his charms to persuade her to release him. Life wasn't at all like that. Steel cuffs held him helpless, and the chain around his throat made it impossible for him to move. Tomorrow they'd come and take him to Harvey, and then he'd be dead. The best to look for was a quick passing, which was why he'd tried to provoke the woman into wasting him with her knife. That had failed, and there wasn't anything else left.
"Don't want to talk?" She was becoming more nervous, hands moving, head turning from side to side. He recognized the symptoms from the dinner table. The woman needed more jolt.
"Need a snort," she said, voice as taut as a bowstring. "Need something to rest my mirror on. You'll do, brother-in-law."
She took the knife again and slit his clothes, opening the jerkin and pulling it back across his flat, muscular stomach. Then she cut through the crotch of his trousers. Placing the knife on the floor, she tugged his trousers over his thighs. She touched him, very gently.
"Oh, my dear relative, I've cut you. A tiny ruby that glistens here. Should I kiss it better for you, Ryan?"
Despite the effects of the jolt on her appearance, Rachel Cawdor was still an attractive, skilled woman. Ryan tried to pull away from her, fighting for control.
She laughed. "Very good, Ryan. But I shall win. Like all men..." she began, then bent once more to her task.
When she lifted her head again, the woman was grinning. "There, brother-in-law, that wasn't so awful, was it?"
Ryan didn't reply, feeling soiled by the contact, certain only that he would kill Rachel Cawdor if he was given half a chance.
"Bad loser," she said. "While you're here like this I might give myself some..." She stopped, and her body suddenly twisted with a violent shudder. "Oh, the cramps are... First things first."
Rachel took out the little brown bottle and uncorked it. Holding the mirror in her hand, she looked round the room for somewhere to set it, eventually placing the chill metal on Ryan's stomach. She cut the powder into finer grains, then formed it into several narrow lines.