Blood Storm: The Second Book of Lharmell Page 18

  Twin blue points of light hovered near my face. Rodden’s eyes. He was once again the blue-eyed phantom, the form he’d first appeared to me in.

  ‘Hello,’ I croaked.

  The eyes widened, dazzling me. He spoke rapidly, his words bursting like bubbles before I could catch them.

  Cool fingers ran through my hair, traced the curves of my ear, my mouth, my fingers. And then he was gone.

  When I opened my eyes in the morning, he was there. In the flesh. He sat on a three-legged stool by my bedside, face in his hands. I lifted my head and the sheet came up with it, stuck fast to my cheek.

  ‘You’re here,’ I croaked.

  He raised his head and looked at me, bleary-eyed. His face was spattered with blood. Leaves and dirt clung to his shirt.

  With a shaking hand, I pulled the sheet from my face. ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Me?’ he said, incredulous. ‘Not three days I am gone and you get flogged in the woods. What on earth happened?’ He stared at the bandages that encased the top half of my body.

  ‘The prince and I disagreed about proper brant-wrangling procedure.’ The pain in my back, which had been dormant embers, sprung up again and burned merrily.

  He cursed.

  ‘Is he dead?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ he replied, voice tight. ‘Did he . . . do anything else?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The brant attacked him mid-flog.’

  He nodded and rubbed his hands over his face.

  ‘How long have you been here? You look exhausted.’

  He sighed and reached down absently to rub my hand. ‘A few hours. I rode all night. With one or two stops.’ He scratched at the crust of blood on his trousers.

  ‘Did you get enough yelinate?’

  ‘I did. It’s there with the bennium,’ he said, indicating his bags in the corner. ‘I can’t think of a safe place to store it so I just prefer to not let it out of my sight.’

  ‘Good idea.’ I gripped his hand hard. ‘Oh, Rodden. We’ve done it.’

  ‘Yes. But look at what’s happened to you.’

  ‘We’ve gathered all the materials we need. We’re still alive. That’s what really matters. And besides, this had nothing to do with the Lharmellins.’

  I heard the door open. ‘Who is it?’ I called, unable to turn my head.

  ‘Eugenia, miss. Come to change your dressings.’

  ‘What salve are you using?’ Rodden asked her.

  ‘Clover ’n’ goldenseal, sir.’

  ‘I have something better,’ he said. ‘Leave the bandages with me.’ Eugenia hesitated and he snapped, ‘Come on, woman. Hand them over!’

  I heard Eugenia harrumph and slam out. ‘She’ll tell Mother you spoke to her so,’ I mumbled into the sheet.

  ‘I couldn’t care less. Besides, if your mother comes in she’s a lot less likely to have hysterics when she sees me smearing blood all over you.’

  ‘Blood?’

  ‘Harming blood. From a Turned harming. I thought I would just use my own on you but I ran into a coven of the things and thought, this is even better. It should help you heal quicker.’

  ‘Good. I want to be gone from here.’

  He washed his hands in a basin and began peeling the bandages from my back. I saw the look of horror on his face when he saw the welts and was alarmed.

  ‘Is it that bad? I mean, I shan’t die, shall I?’

  Rodden shook his head. ‘Heavens, no.’

  ‘Don’t look so stricken, then. Get on with it.’

  ‘It’s just . . .’ He didn’t speak again until all the bandages had come off. ‘I thought I understood violence. What is your mother thinking, trying to bind you for life to a man who would do this to you?’

  The cold air was at once a pain and a relief on my ravaged skin. ‘She thinks it’s for my own good. But what I don’t understand is, why would he want me if he thinks I’m a bastard slut?’

  ‘Is that what he called you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Rodden was silent.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘There are men who . . . enjoy having their low opinion of women confirmed.’

  ‘Why?’

  He didn’t answer. I thought about Folsum’s glee as he had pinned me beneath his boot and was glad all over again that I had sustained only a whipping.

  ‘Oh. Be quick, please,’ I said.

  He snapped out of his reverie and unscrewed a flask. ‘This might sting. Or it might not. Or maybe it will do nothing, I’m not sure.’

  ‘You haven’t tried this before?’

  ‘No, only read about it. Here goes. Scream if it hurts.’

  ‘I will.’

  He dampened a cloth with blood and dabbed at my shoulder. It stung, but in a clean, cold way, like it was doing some good.

  ‘Is it all right? Do you want me to stop?’

  ‘No, it’s – it’s good, actually.’

  He worked steadily over the cuts, the blood first stinging and then soothing the pain, putting out the fire. Once he’d finished with my back he started on my arms. Lash marks crisscrossed the backs of them. By the time he’d finished he was angry again, swearing to kill Folsum in his bed. ‘Unless you’d rather,’ he offered.

  ‘So now I’m allowed to kill someone in cold blood?’

  ‘I’ll hand you the knife.’

  The door opened. Rodden looked up, and then bowed.

  ‘Hello, Mother,’ I said wearily.

  ‘Daughter – have you been bleeding again?’

  ‘No, Your Majesty,’ Rodden replied. ‘It’s . . . a special treatment.’

  ‘When can I move?’ I asked Rodden.

  ‘Soon. Only a few days.’ He looked back to Renata. ‘Have a cot brought. I will sleep in here until we depart.’

  I grinned at hearing him order Renata around as if this were his palace and not hers.

  ‘You will do no such thing, Lothskorn.’

  ‘You will bring a cot or I shall sleep on the floor. The prince’s men are in the castle and I don’t trust them not to murder Zeraphina in her sleep. Dispose of the evidence, you might say.’

  ‘I have my own guards,’ Renata countered.

  ‘Yes, but they might be alarmed at all the blood drinking that will go on in here. Besides, one of them might be a harming and your daughter is rather unpopular with them at this time. I shall stay.’

  Renata began to protest, but he cut her off. ‘Madam, I shall stay.’

  FOURTEEN

  I fell asleep, and woke much later in the day. Rodden was slouched in a chair by the window, reading, boots propped up on the stone window ledge. Leap was sprawled over his lap, head lolling against Rodden’s thigh. Sunshine washed over them. Dust motes floated in the air. Seeing me watching, Leap blinked his pale green eyes and flexed his claws.

  ‘Ow,’ Rodden muttered, detaching Leap’s claws from his leg with one finger without looking up from the page.

  They were the perfect tableau, and I watched them for several quiet minutes before asking, ‘What are you reading?’

  He looked around. ‘You’re awake.’ He gazed at me a moment, his eyes running over my face, my back. I could see the concern in his eyes. I thought I saw traces of guilt, too, and wondered if he thought my injuries were his fault.

  ‘It’s about Lharmellins,’ he said. ‘Found it in your library.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘The old name for Lharmellins is the Cold Ones. Your mother must not know that.’ He read aloud. ‘“The cold spreads from areas of lower mean temperature outwards, rather than from north, where the Cold Ones reside, to south.” Amentia is naturally cooler than the countries surrounding it, you see, because of the elevation. That has made it easy fo
r the Lharmellins to influence it in the past.’

  In the past. I clung to those words. If we were successful at the coming Turning in Lharmell, killing more Lharmellins and harmings, we might be able to disrupt them even further. Innocent people wouldn’t be taken from cities and ships, and killed or forced to become harmings.

  ‘I remember those words. Cold Ones, Cold Times. They were in a book on your desk that day I went snooping in your room. I didn’t know they had anything to do with the Lharmellins.’ I looked at the stack of books by his chair. ‘Are they all about the Cold Ones?’

  ‘Mostly. Some are about alchemy. I’m appropriating them in the name of King Askar. Sounds grander than stealing, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Alchemy? Shall we be transmuting urine into gold?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘All shall be revealed. How do you feel?’

  I moved my shoulders. The dried blood had stiffened the bandages, but the pain had lessened. ‘A little better.’

  He got up, and Leap was deposited on the chair, rumpled and blinking. Rodden peeled off the bandages. ‘I’ll change the dressing now while the blood’s still fresh.’

  ‘How does it look?’

  ‘Your back? Like raw meat. But I see signs of healing. Rapid healing.’

  ‘How soon can we leave?’

  ‘In a few days, I expect.’

  ‘Let’s leave tomorrow.’ I was anxious to go before Folsum recovered. I never wanted to see his loathsome face again. Or what I had done to it.

  ‘Not a chance.’

  When he’d finished with the bandages I said, ‘Read to me?’

  ‘What would you like me to read?’

  ‘Anything. Whatever you like.’

  He went back to his chair and picked up his book. Scanning the pages, he said, ‘It’s very dull. Just theories, and not very good ones.’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  He read, and it was dull. But I enjoyed the cadence of his voice, and his profile as he frowned at the pages. Several pages later he laid the book in his lap and stared out the window. I wondered if he was thinking about the passages he’d just read, but he turned back and said, ‘To be wounded or die at the hands of one who is meant to love you. Is there a more miserable thing in the world?’

  I did not need to read his mind to know he was thinking of Ilona. ‘The Lharmellins,’ I suggested.

  He shook his head. ‘No. Not even close.’ He looked back to the page, trying to find his place. Then he put the book aside and stood up. ‘I have chosen three guards. They are outside your door should you need them. I must take some air.’ And then he left.

  The next morning I was able to sit up without screaming. Rodden brought blood from the kitchens and I drank until my stomach was fit to burst. ‘Bring me that hand mirror on the dresser,’ I said to him when I’d finished my breakfast. ‘And bring that standing mirror closer to the bed.’

  ‘Why?’ His eyes were haunted. I knew he’d lain awake most of the night as I’d heard him tossing and turning on the cot in the corner and sighing at regular intervals. Something was bothering him.

  ‘I want to see.’

  ‘Wait a day or two more. Once the bandages come off.’

  I held out my hand. ‘Please. Or I’ll get it myself.’

  He fetched the mirrors, but scowled the whole time. The standing mirror he placed at the bedside.

  I eased my shoulder out of my nightshirt. ‘Can you peel the bandages away?’

  With reluctant fingers, he pulled at the bandages. Holding out his hand he said, ‘Give me the hand mirror.’

  I gave it to him, and he angled it so that I could see the reflection in the big mirror. Thick, dark red lines crisscrossed my skin. They were no longer swollen and I could see how deep the cuts were.

  ‘I will scar, won’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Our eyes met in the mirror. ‘Good.’

  He put down the mirror and sat beside me on the bed. ‘What?’

  ‘The scars are evidence. If Folsum tries anything I’ll take him to the Crown Chamber and get his head cut off.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The prince. The night before you left for the mines he threatened to petition the Crown Chamber at Pergamia to have you beheaded if I wasn’t found to be pure.’

  ‘Oh, that. You needn’t worry about that. I can’t be convicted by a Pergamian court for a capital offence.’

  I thumped the comforter. ‘I knew King Askar would never let it happen.’

  ‘Oh, the Crown Chamber does not answer to the king. That’s the whole point. But one of my conditions when I began working at the palace was that I not be considered a Pergamian subject and that the severest punishment that could be meted out to me was banishment. I needed to be sure that nothing untoward would happen in the event that I am accused of revealing state secrets.’

  ‘Like the ones you have told me about the Lharmellins?’ It hadn’t occurred to me at the time that he could be breaking the law by telling me everything he knew.

  ‘Yes. But it also comes in handy when uppity suitors want to cut my head off.’

  ‘Does that happen very often?’

  He smiled. ‘Every now and then.’

  I grasped his hand. ‘That is a great relief. I was worried that when we returned to Pergamia you would be arrested.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Why? I haven’t done anything, have I?’

  ‘Oh. No, you haven’t.’ I turned a question over in my mind. ‘Rodden, why haven’t you?’

  ‘Why haven’t I what?’

  ‘We’ve been travelling alone together all this time, and you did kiss me at the masquerade ball. Those things you did when you were younger – none of it was any of your fault, but . . .’ I hesitated. ‘Your expression when you saw the cuts on my back. I mean, they’re bad, but not horrifyingly so. It’s because of Ilona, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re not making any sense. What’s because of Ilona?’ He sounded exasperated.

  I repressed a groan. Sometimes he could be very stupid. ‘You’re scared that if we become lovers you might hurt me. Might even kill me.’

  Rodden yanked his hand from mine as if it had been burned. He stood, backing away.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I? Please, Rodden, sit down.’

  He turned away to the window, a hand to his mouth.

  ‘Rodden?’

  Without a word, without even looking at me again, he strode from the room.

  Suddenly I was made of thorns and needles. Rodden still slept on a cot in my room but he barely looked at me. I realised then how easy we had been with one another. Now it seemed he could not put enough distance between us. Every exchange was awkward. He did not trust his hands, and kept them clasped at his back or balled into fists. On several occasions I caught him looking at me, but his eyes were troubled and unhappy. I chafed under the silence and the bandages.

  Two afternoons after what I’d begun to think of as our fight, I got out of bed and went to the mirror. I was alone. I stripped off first my nightgown and then the bandages. I stood naked before the mirror. Looking face-on, I could barely tell that I’d been whipped. A ribbon or two of red snaked around my neck, and the marks were visible on my arms only when I held them a certain way.

  I turned around. Looking back over my shoulder I saw the extent of the damage. My upper back was covered in angry red striations. They were thin now, thanks to the time that had passed and the blood Rodden had applied. But my skin was no longer smooth. It was ridged, like the frets of a lute.

  No one will make me marry Folsum now, I thought with triumph. I am walking proof of his violence.

  I wiped my face and upper body over with a wet cloth. The day seemed warm and I donned a Pergamian dress. The short sleeves showed the mark
s on my arms, as did the neckline at the back. I felt a pang as I realised that my scars would be visible to all in dresses like these. I remembered the beautiful peacock gown Rodden had given me for the masquerade ball. It had been strapless and cut low at the back. There would be no more dresses like that for me.

  But today I wanted my cuts to be seen.

  On somewhat shaky feet I went in search of Renata. One of the guards offered his arm but I refused. To my surprise and annoyance, they escorted me as I made my slow way down the passages. ‘Is this absolutely necessary?’ I asked the one who’d offered his arm. ‘I am in my own home.’

  He looked at me in surprise. ‘Begging your pardon, princess, but recent events seem to suggest that yes, it is.’

  I found Renata in her sitting room, thumbing through ornamental garden designs. She glanced up as I limped in, and then back at her papers. ‘Is topiary hopelessly outdated, darling? You must know the current trends. You have been gallivanting all over this great continent of ours.’

  I eased myself down in the chair opposite.

  ‘Or perhaps a hedge maze . . .’ she mused. After another minute’s perusal she looked up. ‘I must say, it’s good to see you up and about again. I wish I could say the same for the prince.’ There was an edge to her voice, and her eyes had grown flinty.

  ‘He is still abed?’

  ‘Yes, Daughter. He lost a great deal of blood. And an eye, if you remember.’

  I did remember. I remembered the gory red hollow of his eye socket all too well. ‘I rather think it serves him right, don’t you?’

  Renata put down the designs and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Be that as it may, you have crippled the future king of Ansengaad. If you think this will go unnoticed you are very much mistaken.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  She spread her hands. ‘Who can say? Folsum’s sister is on her way here as we speak. She will advise her father how to proceed.’

  Ansengaad was hundreds of miles away. Penritha wouldn’t reach the castle for days. Rodden and I still had time. ‘We will go, and the princess will not see us, though I would dearly love to show Penritha what her brother has done to me.’