“Um…um…” After a moment's thought, Ulkra gestured them to follow. He did not, Ingrey noticed, hesitate to turn his back upon the girl. This prisoner did not fight or bite or scratch her jailers, it seemed. Her pace, following him, was steady. At the end of the next passage, Ulkra waved to a window seat overlooking the back side of the keep. “Will this do, my lord?”
“Yes.” Ingrey hesitated, as Lady Ijada gracefully swept her skirts aside and seated herself on the polished boards. Should he retain Ulkra, for corroboration, or dismiss him, to encourage frankness? Was the girl likely to become violent again? The unbidden picture of Ulkra crouching in the corridor above this one, waiting in the dark for screams to stop, troubled his mind. “You may go about your tasks, housemaster. Return in half an hour.”
Ulkra frowned uncertainly at the girl, but bowed himself out. Boleso's men, Ingrey was reminded, were out of the habit of questioning the sense of their superiors' orders. Or perhaps it was that any who dared were got rid of, one way or another; and these were the remainder. Residue. Scum.
A little awkwardly, for the short length of the seat forced them uncomfortably close together, Ingrey sat beside her. His presumption of prettiness, he decided, had been inadequate. The girl was luminous. Unless Boleso had gone blind as well as mad, she must have arrested his eye the moment it fell upon her. Wide brow, straight nose, sculpted chin…a livid blotch darkened one cheek, and others ringed her fair neck, a pattern of plum-colored bruises. Ingrey lifted his hands to lie lightly over them; she flinched a little, but then bore his probing touch. Boleso's hands were somewhat larger than his own, it appeared. Her skin was warm under his fingers, fascinating, transporting. A golden haze seemed to cloud his vision. His strangling grip tightened-he whipped his hands away, his gasp masked by hers, and clenched them on his knees. What was that…?
She sat back, her startled glance altering to a piercing regard. He caught her scent, neither perfume nor blood but grown woman, and, targeted by that gaze, for the first time wondered what he looked like-and smelled like-to her. Riding reek, cold iron and sweat-stained leather, chin dark-stubbled, tired. Weighed with sword and knife and dangerous duties. Why did she not recoil altogether?
“Which beginning?” she asked.
He stared at her for a blank and stupid instant. “From your arrival here at Boar's Head, I suppose.” Was there another? He must remember to return to that question.
She swallowed, possessed herself, began: “The princess had started out in haste for her father's hall, with only a small retinue, but she was overtaken by illness on the road. Nothing out of the usual, but her monthly time brings her dire headaches, and if she doesn't rest quietly through them, she becomes very sick. We turned aside to this place, for it was as close as anything, and besides, Princess Fara wished to see her brother. I think she remembered him from when he was younger and less…difficult.”
How very tactful. Ingrey could not decide if the turn of phrase was diplomacy or dry wit. Caution, he concluded, studying her closed and careful expression. Wits, not wittiness, kept close about her.
“We were made welcome, if not to her custom, then to this place's ability.”
“Had you ever met Prince Boleso before?” “No. I've only been a few months in Princess Fara's service. My stepfather placed me there. He said-” She stopped, began again. “Everything seemed usual at first. I mean, for a lord's hunting lodge. The days were quiet, because the prince invited her guardsmen out to the hunt. Prince Boleso and his men were very boisterous in the evenings, and drank a great deal, but the princess did not attend, being laid down in her chambers. I took down complaints from her of the noise twice, but I was little heeded. They set the dogs on a wild boar they'd caught alive, out in the courtyard beneath her window, and made bets on the fight. Boleso's huntsman was very distressed for his hounds. I wished Earl Horseriver had been there-he could have quelled them with a word. He has a deadly tongue, when he wishes. We bided here three days, until the princess was ready to travel again.”
Her lips thinned. “Not that I could tell. He was equally obnoxious to all his sister's ladies. I knew nothing of his…regard, supposed regard, until the morning we were to leave.”
She swallowed again. “My lady-Princess Fara-told me then I was to stay. That this might not have been my first choice, but that it would do me no harm in the long run. Another husband would be found for me, after. I begged her not to leave me here. She would not meet my eye. She said it was no worse a barter than any, and better than most, and that I should look to my own future. That it was just the woman's version of the same loyalty due from a man to his prince. I said I did not think most men would…well, I'm afraid I said something rude. She refused to speak with me after that. They rode away and left me. I would not beg at her stirrup, for fear the prince's men would mock me.” Her arms crossed, as if to clutch a tattered dignity about her anew.
“I told myself…maybe she was right. That it would be no worse than any other fate. Boleso wasn't ugly, or deformed, or old. Or diseased.”
Ingrey couldn't help checking himself against that list. At least he did not match any of the named categories, he trusted. Though there were others. Defiled sprang to mind.
“Then what happened?”
“At nightfall, they brought me to his chamber and thrust me within. He was waiting for me. He wore a robe, but under it his body was naked and all covered over with signs drawn in woad and madder and crocus. Old symbols, the sort you sometimes still see carved on ancient wooden foundations, or in the forest where the shrines once stood. He had his leopard tied up in a corner, drugged. He said-it turned out-it seemed he had not fallen in love with me after all. It wasn't even lust. He wanted a virgin for some rite he had-found, made up, I am not sure, he seemed very confused by this time-and I was the only one, his sister's other two ladies being one a wife and the other a widow. I tried to dissuade him, I told him it was heresy, dire sin and against his father's own laws, I said I would run away, that I would tell. He said he'd hunt me down with his dogs. That they would tear me apart as they had the pig. I said I would go to the Temple divine in the village. He said the man was only an acolyte, and a coward. And that he would kill anyone there who took me in. Even the acolyte. He was not afraid of the Temple, it was practically the property of kin Stagthorne and he could buy divines for a pittance.
“The rite was meant to catch the spirit of the leopard, as the old kin warriors were supposed to do. I said, it could not possibly work, nowadays. He said, he'd done it before, several times-that he meant to capture the spirits of every wisdom animal of the greater kinships. He thought it was going to give him some sort of power over the Weald.”
Ingrey, startled, said, “The Old Weald warriors only took one animal spirit to themselves, one in a lifetime. And even that risked madness. Miscarriage. Worse.” As I know to my everlasting cost.
Her velvety voice was growing faster, breathless. “He hauled the leopard up by its strangling cord. He hit me and threw me down on the bed. I fought him. He was muttering under his breath, spells or raving or both, I don't know. I believed him, that he had done this before-his very mind was a menagerie, howling. The leopard distracted him in its death throes, and I wrenched out from under him. I tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. The door was locked. He'd put the key in his robe.”
“I suppose so. I scarcely know. My throat was raw, after, so I suppose I must have. The window was hopeless. The forest beyond seemed to go on forever, in the night. I called on my father's spirit, on his god, for my aid, out of the dark.”