Outside, she saw something that looked as though it might be the start of a battle. There were soldiers lined up now, blocking the road back to Ashton, while half a dozen watchmen stood before them, accompanied by a masked priest who pointed at Kate as soon as he saw her. Will was there too, although there were soldiers in his way, obviously there to prevent him from interfering, or even talking to her. She just hoped that they hadn’t hurt him because of her.
“That’s the one!” the priest said, and Kate could hear the fear in his voice. “She came to the House of the Unclaimed and she murdered men, women, and children!”
“That’s not true!” Kate snapped back, and it wasn’t. She hadn’t touched any of the orphans there, just their tormentors. The distinction might be a fine one to anyone else, but to her, it was the only one that mattered. She had given them what they deserved.
The soldiers around her ignored her, but they did move in on the watchmen, silently and stoically. Right then, Kate felt as though she didn’t matter to them so much as this intrusion onto their territory did.
“This is our prisoner,” one of them said. “We’re holding her until Lord Cranston arrives to decide what to do with her.”
“We are representatives of the law,” one of the watchmen snapped back, but he let go of Kate’s arm. Briefly, she considered running, but Kate doubted she would get a dozen steps without being cut down. The soldiers were only keeping her there for their commander’s judgment, after all.
“And we’re the ones who make sure there’s enough of a country for there to be a law in,” the soldier shot back.
“You? Mercenaries who fight for the highest bidder?”
Kate could sense the tension rising now. It was obvious that the men disliked one another, resentments rising to the surface that had nothing to do with her. In the fragments of thoughts that she caught around her, she found hints of old scores and older resentments, of mercenaries who came into the city with too much money and fists that were too ready to fight, of watchmen who would never be real soldiers, but who insisted on harassing those who were.
“That girl is a murderer!” the priest repeated, pointing at Kate once more as if the identification hadn’t been clear enough the first time. “A murderer, a runaway, a thief, and more.”
“All of that?” the soldier asked. “Well for us, she came here and beat our men in the training ring, then killed our sword master and half a dozen other men besides.”
“All the more reason to hand her over to hang,” the priest insisted.
Kate had the feeling that she might as well not have been there. They barely looked at her as they argued, bickering more because of who they were than because of what she’d done. She found herself half hoping that they fell to fighting one another, because if that happened, she might have a chance of escaping in the confusion. Will was the only one who looked her way, and he was in no position to help.
“We have our orders,” the soldier said. “You think some of us don’t want to kill her here and now, get it over with?” He did shoot a glance Kate’s way then, so full of venom that she took a step back automatically. One of the watchmen caught her arm.
“We have the right to her,” he said.
“And we have orders to hold her until Lord Cranston arrives,” the soldier shot back, grabbing for Kate’s other arm. “By force, if necessary.”
For a moment, Kate suspected that she might be about to be pulled in half like some frayed rope in a tug of war. The two men jerked at her arms, and it was only the fact that there were still guards there, ready to fire on her if she ran, that kept her from throwing them both from their feet.
They were still pulling at her when Kate saw the rider. He was approaching at a brisk trot, a feathered hat shading him from the sun. He wore a uniform that had probably been a fine gold once, but now looked almost gray with wear and sun damage. Despite that, he sat tall in the saddle, one hand resting on the hilt of a duelist’s sword, just a little way from one of a pair of matched pistols. As he rode closer, Kate could see that he was at least forty, with an oiled beard that was nevertheless running to gray.
None of that impressed her. What did was the way the soldiers around Kate responded to his approach. The ones on the road parted as smoothly as corn before a scythe, standing erect, their weapons held up in a kind of salute. Every man there watched him as though waiting for something to happen, taut as a bowstring with the readiness to answer any order. They seemed utterly in awe of him.
Kate had seen plenty of people who had been able to inspire obedience through fear, and a few who had managed to do it through others’ faith. She’d felt the power that Siobhan had. This was something different. There was respect, real respect there, shading into something close to admiration among the older soldiers. It was enough to catch her interest, even if fear rose at the same time that this would be the man who condemned her.
Of course, none of the watchmen there so much as noticed him until he was almost level with them. The priest, in particular, was so busy staring at Kate with hatred that when the newcomer rode up next to him, the man practically jumped in shock.
“What is going on here?” the newcomer said. “I received a message about a fight in my company, yet I get here and I find half of it guarding one girl, while the rest are surrounding the watch.” He turned to the priest. “Who might you be, sir?”
“I am Kirkus, priest of the Masked Goddess and second secretary to the high priestess herself. I demand that you hand over that girl!”
“Oh, you demand, do you?” the newcomer said. Kate knew instantly that it had been the wrong way to put it. He dismounted with a certain stiffness. “I am Lord Peter Cranston, and you will be silent until I require more of you. Jerrel, you’re a sensible man. Report, please. What is all this about?”
“The girl came to our camp before with the recruit Will, sir,” an older soldier said, stepping forward. He gave a salute so crisp he practically vibrated with it. “She demanded to fight and was beaten on the orders of sword master Evans. She came back while we were practicing with the recruit—”
“Practicing, or punishing?”
The soldier hesitated only a moment. “Punishing, sir. The sword master wanted an example made.”
“An example of his stupidity, perhaps,” Lord Cranston said. “What then?”
“She cut Evans to pieces, sir, along with half a dozen other men. She was faster than I could see for some of it, although my eyes aren’t what they were, I’ll admit.”
The older man looked thoughtful. Finally, he did the one thing that none of the others had bothered with. He turned his attention to Kate.
“Is all of that true?” Lord Cranston asked, and there was something about the sharp lines of his face that warned Kate not to lie. This was a man who’d spent enough time around liars to know the difference.
“Yes,” she said. She could have injected remorse into her tone, but that would have been another kind of lie.
“You tried to join our company? Why?”
Kate shrugged. “I wanted to learn to fight. I thought it would be a good life.”
“Even though young women don’t usually join the free companies?”
Kate didn’t flinch under his gaze. “I don’t have much time for what’s usual.”
Lord Cranston nodded, then, snake fast, he struck at Kate. She reacted on reflex, catching his arm in midair, despite her chains. He nodded thoughtfully.
“Good enough,” he said. He turned back to the others. “You, priest, Kirkus or whatever your name is. What is your complaint?”
“My complaint?” the priest said. “My complaint is that this girl murdered priests and priestesses, set light to the city’s House of the Unclaimed, and released half of our charges into the streets.”
Lord Cranston turned back to Kate, raising one bushy eyebrow. “Is that part true?”
Kate nodded. How could she expect this man to understand what she’d been through, or the reasons for it all? ?
??They beat my sister senseless and sold her to a slaver. I’d have burnt it years ago if I could.”
The nobleman stood there, and Kate knew that he couldn’t understand, yet a look at his thoughts said that he did. There were thoughts there of a childhood where the whip had never been far away, and of blood spilled in a long life.
“Yes,” he said, “I imagine you would.” He turned to the priest. “I’m sorry, priest, but this is clearly a case where military law must take precedence.”
“But you have no right!” the priest complained, and the watchmen gathered around him as if they might try to drag Kate away by force. She saw some of the soldiers shift; not much, but enough.
Lord Cranston stopped them with the barest movement of his hand.
“How familiar are you with the laws of the land, priest?” he asked.
“I know all of—”
“Good,” Lord Cranston said. “Then you will be familiar with the right of authorized companies to take on criminals as part of their sentence?”
Kate wasn’t sure that she’d heard that right. She was expecting to be told how she would die, and now… now it sounded as though she was being offered a position in the company. She saw the priest redden at that.
“But you can’t—”
“I can, and I am,” Lord Cranston said. “Because I have what is known in military circles as more men than you. Are you familiar with the concept?”
Now, the red of the priest’s complexion turned an angry white. Kate couldn’t blame him. She could barely overcome her own shock.
“The high priestess will hear of this.”
“Tell the Dowager herself,” Lord Cranston said. “But I doubt that she will object to it. This girl can fight well enough to down half a dozen of my men. She beat my sword master, and although he was a vile man, he could fight. There is war coming, and not just the petty wars that have filled the continent for a hundred years. This New Army they talk about is sweeping away all who stand before them, and killing anyone who tries to stand for anything. In the face of that, I will take anyone I can get. Someone like her is a definite improvement on farmers who barely know which end of a sword to hold. Now go, please, before I show you which it is.”
The priest looked as though he might say something, but one of the watchmen caught his arm, pulling him back.
“You haven’t heard the last of this,” he called.
“You know,” Lord Cranston said, “I rather think I have. Now, Jerrel, get these chains off her, would you? It makes it look as though our whole company is afraid of one girl.”
The old soldier cocked his head to one side. “Most of us are, sir.”
He went to do it anyway, loosening the shackles. Kate shook them off, rubbing her wrists. She looked over to Will, who looked just as stunned as she felt by all this.
“What now?” she asked.
“What now, sir!” the old soldier, Jerrel, corrected her.
“That’s all right, Jerrel,” Lord Cranston said. “I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it. What’s your name, girl?”
“Kate… sir,” Kate said.
“Well, I’m Lord Cranston. You can call me that, or ‘my lord’ or ‘sir.’ I really don’t care which. Do you still want to join my company?”
Kate considered the alternatives. It didn’t take long.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Evans was right about one thing: we can’t have a girl as a raw recruit. Luckily, I have a need of a bagman. You will stay by me, follow my orders, run my errands, and learn whatever I wish to teach you of the arts of war. Is that understood?”
It was brusque, but Kate could sense a certain friendliness behind it all.
“Yes, my lord,” she said.
“Good,” Lord Cranston said. “And let’s hope that you’re as good with a blade as the men claim. War is coming.”
Kate knew that.
She’d seen it.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sophia fought to get free of Rupert’s bed as he approached her, but tied as she was, she could barely move, let alone run away. There was no mercy in his eyes, no sense that he might change his mind about what he was going to do, or realize the full horror of it.
He stripped off his shirt with the kind of languor that in Sebastian might have been sensual, but Sophia could see his thoughts, and she knew that he was merely taking his time, enjoying her helplessness. In another man, the muscled torso he revealed might have been an object of desire, but here, it was only a sign that Sophia was one step closer to the moment when he would do all the things that for now were only contained in his thoughts.
He was imagining what he would do as he moved closer. Sophia did her best to shut it out, but even so, the thoughts mingled with the reality until Sophia wasn’t sure which was which. Rupert moved closer to her still, kneeling on the bed beside her and reaching for her in a delicate parody of tenderness.
“No,” Sophia begged as he touched her face. “Please.”
His hand went to her throat, tightening just enough that Sophia couldn’t beg.
“We’ve been through this,” Rupert said. “Whores don’t get to say no to their betters.”
He forced another kiss on her then, his mouth hungry and brutal in equal measure. His hands moved over Sophia, seeking out the stays of her dress, undoing them one by one. When she moaned in complaint, he reared up over her.
“You see, I knew you’d enjoy it if only you tried.”
Sophia didn’t reply. She knew there was nothing she could say, nothing she could do, that would change his mind or stop what was to come. She shut her eyes against it instead, determined to give her tormentor no satisfaction, to pretend that she was no more than a dead thing in the face of his assault.
Distantly, Sophia heard the click of a door.
“No, that won’t do,” Rupert said above her, and slapped her, bringing Sophia’s eyes open with a jerk. “I want to see those pretty eyes. I want to see the hatred there, and the moment when it turns into obedience.”
Sophia wasn’t looking at him then, though. She was looking past him, to where a figure in one of the indentureds’ plain clothes crept forward on silent feet. Sophia recognized Cora, the servant who had helped her to disguise what she was. Her heart swelled as she picked up one of the gilded statuettes that decorated the room, weighing it in her hand.
“What are you staring at?” Rupert demanded.
Too late, Sophia realized that she was giving away Cora’s presence with her staring. She tried to look up at Rupert, tried to give him what he wanted, but it was too late. He was already turning.
“Who in all the hells are you?” Rupert demanded. “No matter. You just earned yourself—”
Sophia didn’t get to hear the rest of his threat, because in that moment, Cora hit him with the statuette, and Sophia felt a moment of almost complete satisfaction as it struck Rupert just above the temple, the thud of it audible around the room.
The prince staggered for a moment and then fell off the bed, facedown on the floor. He didn’t move.
“Oh, goddess,” Cora said. “I think I’ve killed him. I had to hit him. I had to help you, but… I’ve killed him!”
“You haven’t killed him,” Sophia said, although right then she would have been happy if Cora had. “Look, he’s still breathing.”
“He’s still breathing,” Cora said, her breath coming fast. “He’s still breathing.”
Sophia suspected that she should have been the one panicking, but right then she just felt numb. She felt empty with all the things she’d seen in Rupert’s thoughts. All the things that he’d been planning for her. He might not have had a chance to do them, but even so, the images wouldn’t go away.
“Untie me,” Sophia said. “Cora, you need to untie me. Focus.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” Cora said. She let the statuette fall to the floor and went to Sophia, working at the knots that held her. “They’re going to execute me. I hit a prince with a statue!”
“To save me,” Sophia reminded Cora as she rubbed feeling back into her wrists. She tried to stand and almost fell, but managed to find her footing. With fumbling fingers, she started to refasten the stays of her dress. She couldn’t get them because she was shaking too much now as the full horror of what had just happened seeped into her.
“It won’t matter to them,” Cora said. She fastened the stays where Sophia couldn’t, helping her toward the door. “Assaulting a prince is treason and I… I’m not even free. It would be the lead mask for me, or the breaking wheel.”
“For us,” Sophia said, because it was the truth. There was no way that Rupert would let her live now. At best, she would find herself hanged or beheaded. At worst… at worst, he might decide to do it himself in ways that were too horrific to contemplate.
A part of her wanted to go back as she thought that. She wanted to go back and hit Rupert with the statuette again and again until there was nothing left but a stain on the floor. She wanted to kill him, both for what he’d tried to do and what he might do in the future. Only the thought of Sebastian stopped her. How would she feel if she’d been told that he’d killed Kate?
No, she couldn’t do it.
“We need to get out of here,” Sophia said. She caught Cora by the arm. “Come on, Cora. You can’t stay here now. We need to walk out of here, and we need to pretend that everything is normal.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Cora said.
“You can,” Sophia said, forcing herself to sound more confident than she felt. She felt like an empty shell then, but if she let Cora see that, she suspected that the other woman would fall apart. “It’s easy to pretend. I managed to be a noblewoman for weeks. You can pretend that you’re okay for a few minutes.”
She pulled Cora toward the door, then out into the corridors of the palace. They moved slowly, because right then, Sophia wasn’t sure she was steady enough to do more, and because the last thing they needed to do was run. If they ran, guards would stop them, wanting to know why, and Sophia suspected that they would see the guilt written on their faces in an instant.