SIX

 

 

He was daubing a cloth on his shoulder, scowling at the smudges of blood as if he’d never had a cut upon him before.

"Do you think it will leave a scar?" she asked with light malice.

"I don’t scar," he said. He gave her a half-smile, almost an apology.

It was true that he had no flaw on him. But for the place her teeth had scored, now turning black-and-blue, the skin of his chest and face and arms was perfect in the candlelight, unscathed by any injury. He blotted at the abrasion again, hissing air between his teeth. But still he had that odd ghost of a smile.

He dropped the linen and took up a box, bejeweled and enameled, lined with silver, and held it open to her. It was full of many-colored grains, their hues reflecting in the shiny lid. He dug his fingers into the mound, the grains clinging to his skin and falling through his hand. He took some from his palm onto his tongue and savored it. "Confetti." He raised his hand to Elayne’s lips.  "Something sweet to mend our hurt."

Some of the grains on his fingertips clung as he touched her mouth. She licked her lip in spite of herself. The rich flavor of candied seeds of coriander and spices filled her mouth, bitter and sweet at once, drowning out the lingering taste of his blood.

"A particular specialty of Monteverde," he said.

She sat down on the carpet-covered chest, biting the sticky grains from her lip, each seed a burst of aromatic spice. "My sister always said she missed this."

"Poor damsel," he said. "Breaking her heart over sweetmeats, is she?" He poured more confetti into his palm, shut the box with a snap, and set it aside, as if the topic bored him.

"She never spoke of missing you," Elayne said pointedly.

"I’m certain that she didn’t. She was acutely pleased to be rid of me. Are you jealous that I loved her once?"

"No!"

"Alas," he said lightly. "Will I never win a lady’s heart?" 

"You can hardly expect to win my heart by the manner of your courting!"

"Then it’s fortunate that all I require is the use of your body." He lifted his chin and tossed the confetti into his mouth. Then he offered his open palm, covered with a frost of the glistening grains. "Wound me again, hell-cat," he said, holding it to her lips.

She turned her head. "Don’t call me that." It was too close, too near a twisting of Raymond’s endearment into this underground mating like barbarians.

He dusted the seeds away between his palms. "My graceless love talk!" he said. "I beg your pardon, most worshipful and obedient wife."

"I’ve made no vow to obey you."

"No, I place no dependence on vows." He reached out and brushed a clinging grain from the corner of her mouth with his thumb. "They’re easily made and easily broken. I don’t aim to direct your whole existence, but when I require that you obey me, you may be certain that you will."

"Demon!" she said sullenly. "I must be halfway to Purgatory."

"Yes, it’s a desolate place," he said, disregarding her insult casually. "I’ve felt so myself, banished here, but we won’t be condemned to this island for long."

Elayne glanced quickly at him. "You’re condemned here?"

"Did you suppose I live in exile by choice? You named me outlaw, and it’s the vile truth. I’m a declared felon."

"If you will turn to piracy—how else?"

"I was cast out for who I am, not what I do. If I prey upon Riata commerce, it’s not robbery, but justice."

"Blessed Mary, all this?" She lifted a hand toward the riches that surrounded them. Her fingertips barely showed beneath the overlong sleeves of his robe. "Only of the Riata?"

"Your province is great in trade, Princess," he said.

She looked aside at him. "Did you build this castle?"

"I had the walls and towers raised. The foundations lay here in ruin before I came."

"That strange black stone, and the fine porticos, and the Moorish tiles, and the frescoes in your chambers?"

"I brought the stone from the mountains of Atlas. The porticos and chambers, and my observatory and study and—other things—aye, I caused them to be made to my desire."

"A curious exile! I don’t believe you rob only the Riata."

He looked at her with a wicked gleam. "I have certain friends. Sometimes they make me gifts, in return for—dispensation— from pillage on the seas."

"An opportune arrangement!" she said. "From your pillage, I conceive."

"How you rejoice to abuse my character!" His brows rose in a pained expression. "Can you not believe that I do my friends an honest service?"

"No doubt you serve them as honestly as you’ve served me," she snapped, with a lift of her chin.

He shrugged. "You’ll be more satisfied when we return to Monteverde."

"Monteverde." She looked away uneasily. "Depardeu, I would rather by far live banished here." 

"Pah, this barren island?"

"It’s not so unpleasant. Your castle, and the clear sea." She surprised herself, to realize that she meant it. 

"You’ve forgotten the sweet airs of your own home. The passes of Monteverde are protected, but the breeze still comes cool from the north. The mountains give such shelter to the lake that it’s warm in winter and refreshing in the summer. There’s no finer place in the world."

"With no doubt rainbows every eve!" she said mockingly.

"No, but I’ll order it for you if you like," he said, with a slight bow.

"Certainly—when you’re ruler there—pirate."

He leaned over her. "I think you prefer me as a pirate." She tried to avoid him, but he caught her wrists in his hands as she pushed away. "I think you’re half-brigand in your heart yourself."

"No." She could feel the dust of the confetti still on his fingers, a faint sandy grit, a scent of spice between his skin and hers. Her body ached where he had forced himself upon her. But when he touched her, leaned close to her, the pain seemed to turn and twist into an unspeakable throbbing sweetness. She stared into his beautiful dark eyes.

"Do you claim your sister made you into such a tame rabbit as she? Or did she only succeed in teaching you to fear the place that belongs to you?"

Elayne jerked, but could not free herself. "You speak as if there’s nothing to fear there."

"No more than here, or your freezing English mud pit, or anywhere that men live and die by fortune and the will of God Almighty."

"What lies! When you say you’re a murderer yourself by trade."

He let her go and stepped back. "I am." 

Elayne released a breath. "And you profess I have nothing to fear?"

"There is much to fear," he said quietly. "Everywhere."

She thought suddenly of what he had said, that he dreaded to be defenseless. She lifted her eyes and met his. "Are you afraid, then?"

He tilted his head, watching her. "It’s foolish not to fear," he said, "but it is a grave error to give way to it. So I’ve learned to keep my wits in the face of any fell thing."

"And your weapons always within reach," Elayne said. "We didn’t have to live that way at Savernake."

"Not you perhaps, my lady. But someone did."

She opened her lips to make a denial, and found that she could not. There was always a guard on duty at the gates of Savernake, and through the night the familiar calls and clatter of men changing watch upon the parapets. Even there, they had seen smoke from the property of the King’s tax collector when the peasants revolted. Sir Guy had ridden out with men-at-arms to block the rebels on the road to the castle, while Cara had wept and prayed for two days and nights in succession. Even at peaceful Savernake.

"But you’re banished by law from Monteverde?" she asked with faint hope. "You may not travel there?"

He crossed his arms and leaned back, looking down at her through his heavy lashes. "I’m declared dead if I enter there, or any allied country. I cannot come into most of the Tuscan provinces, nor set foot in the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. I’m outlawed in Aragon and the kingdom of Sicily." His hair fell over his shoulder, shadowing his one-sided smile. "The Pope of Rome has excommunicated me, and the anti-pope has, too, though it must be the only matter those pious jesters have agreed upon yet."

For several moments she stared at the flawless line of his jaw, his face, his mouth—absorbing the full force of what he said. Easy to say to herself in a moment of wrath that she would live with him in wickedness, but she began to comprehend the depth of what she had fallen into.

"When they sort out who is the true pope," he said, "I’ll go and throw myself on my knees to beg for absolution. But pray don’t expect me to do it twice."

"And you mean to attempt to claim Monteverde for yourself?" she asked incredulously.

"For both of us."

"Do me no such kindness!" she exclaimed.

"Providence has done it for you. My father meant to unite our blood. Princess Melanthe denied him that prospect once, but fate bestows it now again."

"An evil fortune," she said. "Bound by rapine to a man outlawed from church and home!"

"Better for you by far than if you’d married the Riata, my beloved." He smiled at her as sweetly as a fallen angel. He reached out and touched her hair, brushing his hand tenderly over her cheek and her lips. "You have me now for your sword and shield—instead of your assassin."

 

* * *

 

They ascended by his secret tunnels, turning and climbing in the light of a common lantern. A deep sound began to grow as they mounted a set of spiraling steps, a rumble that became a howl. At the top, the dim light cast flailing shadows on the back of a tapestry, highlighting the uneasy motion of the woven folds. He shoved the hanging aside.

Beyond, the gale lashed the castle, raging through the open galleries and whistling in the shuttered windows. The lantern’s fitful light showed his bedchamber, the great arcade doors creaking and straining ominously. Elayne realized that driven rain was seeping over the thresholds.

"Mary and Joseph," he muttered, gripping her elbow. "On guard."

He pulled her into the chamber. As they ran across it, the wind rose to a yet higher scream, as if it boiled up at the very hope of reaching them through the walls. An ungodly cracking rent the air. The lantern flame vanished into utter blackness. She heard wood strike stone, the deafening thud of timbers collapsing. One of the arched doors burst open as if smashed by a battering ram. The explosion of wind threw her back, tearing her from his hold.

He shouted at her. Elayne had no time to cry out. In the dim confusion she found his arm. He gripped her elbow with an agonizing clench, dragging her with him through the roiling darkness. She heard the scream of air rushing past into hollow passages. He yanked her forward. With a deep boom, some unseen door closed behind them. The storm receded to the faint bellow of a distant beast.

Elayne drew in a gasp of air. "God defend us!" She had never experienced a tempest of such savagery, that pounded and screeched and attacked like a living thing. She crossed herself in the blackness. "God spare us."

"You’re not hurt?" His grip on her arm did not lighten.

"By mercy, no." She had a moment of vast gratitude that he had led her from the headland when he did. The force of the tempest had increased a hundredfold; she would have been carried long since into the sea if he hadn’t brought her away to shelter.

Abruptly he plunged on, finding his way through the tunnels without a flicker of light, pulling her along behind him. She tripped over the hem of the robe, stubbing her toes and cracking her elbows until he stopped so suddenly that she collided with him.

Light poured into the tunnel as he opened a door. She heard the storm again, though not so loud, along with human voices. There was a peculiar geometry to the corridor before them: corners and ceiling that didn’t seem to meet in the expected places.

Standing in the half-light, he smiled at her. A dark smile, as if there were a mortal secret between them. He curled her hair about his fist and bent his face into it, drawing a long breath. Her lips parted on a silent whimper, a secret moan of bitter pleasure.

Abruptly he let her go and turned to face the blank stone of one wall. To her shock, he walked right into it.

It seemed to disappear as he did it; become an opening that she had not realized was there. He looked back at her. "Come."

Elayne stepped forward, almost expecting to find the stone spring up before her. For an instant, from the corner of her eye, it seemed as if a red figure leaped at her from behind. Elayne jumped ahead in startlement, but the figure disappeared as if it had never been. Then they stood in the gloom of an unlit gallery overlooking a huge stone-walled kitchen. Wind whistled in the chimneys. The smell of smoke and cookery hung thick from the activity below.

A deep-voiced dog barked, and at the same moment a young man shouted joyously, "My lord!"

The multitude of faces below turned up toward them. In the clamor everyone pushed forward. The white puppy came bounding up the stairs, leaping on Elayne’s damp robe with frantic exuberance.

Il Corvo stepped to the rail. The dark mantle he had thrown about his shoulders flared, showing a blood-red lining. Talk ceased instantly. All in his household fell to their knees. The sound of the storm rumbled beyond the heavy walls like a hidden breath that made the torches shudder. Elayne saw Margaret’s yellow head lowered deferentially among a throng of boys and girls. The great dogs roamed between the tables and cook-pots, pure white, the size of wolves.

"Rise," their master said. He spoke in the quicksilver tongue of Monteverde. "I have contrived to recover my bride, as you see."

"God is great!" the young man exclaimed. He rose, a handsome, dark-eyed Ottoman with the forceful look of a man full-grown, though he was yet beardless. He wore an infidel’s headpiece, a capped turban fancifully embossed with brightly hued patterns. "We’ve waited here as you commanded, out of the storm."

"Well done, Zafer," Il Corvo said.

The young man exhaled a visible breath. He nodded. "My lord."

"Make a place for us. Dario—see to a meal laid. Fatima, bring us claret. Zafer, Margaret, come up—I desire your attendance."

The assembly burst into motion. Behind Zafer, who mounted the stairs three at a time, Margaret hurried up to Elayne. The maid’s blue eyes brimmed with tears. She fell to her knees at Elayne’s feet, holding the damp scarlet hem to her lips. "Your Grace, I was so frightened! I never meant to displease you so, that you would depart from the castle and stay out in such a storm!"

"It was no fault of yours," Elayne said, disliking the apprehension in the young girl’s voice. She picked up the excited puppy, hefting it in both arms as she looked over her shoulder at the pirate. "It was another entirely who displeased me."

"I’ll order myself tossed from a cliff," he said cordially. "Go down now. Zafer—make ready to depart."

The pup squirmed and twisted. Elayne looked down, struggling to hold it and disengage its scrabbling paws from her deep sleeve. As she did, a flash of light burst in the smoky room—a flare that threw everything into blinding relief, a sizzle as if lightning had struck inside.

She pivoted. Through the vivid after-shapes that danced in her eyes, she saw no one behind her. The pirate and Zafer were gone.

There was a moment of full silence, and then the others went about their business without any sign of bewilderment.

Elayne blinked. She looked along the whole length of the gallery where they had been standing not moments before, up the curved ribs of stone to where the ceiling vanished in smoky darkness. The walls stood solid—or seemed to. There was no other stairway. The black stone gave back shimmers and shadows in the erratic light of the torches below.

Margaret curtsied, as quickly turned to smiling as she’d been frightened a moment before. Elayne realized how young she was; how youthful they all were. The pirate had assembled a strange court in his island exile. Not one of Il Corvo’s household seemed to have more than twenty years, and most of them were much younger. While they seemed handy enough at their kitchen tasks, as they went back to work their high spirits bordered on glee.

To move from the underground darkness into this cheerful throng required a stretch and twist of spirit that left Elayne feeling remote from her very self. She couldn’t seem to connect the easy mirth and chatter of his household with what had happened to her deep in his hidden chamber—with the person she had become there, violated and violent in return.

A troupe of boys and girls decorously bore a multitude of tablecloths into the cavernous chamber, under the distracted eye of a young man who was setting up the trestle. When he turned his back, the children began covertly pinching one another. A squeal broke out. The group hurtled past Elayne trailing a sail of damask cloth. The puppy barked, scrambling free of her arms to join the game. Its sharp teeth closed on the cloth.

"Softly!" Elayne said, reaching out to catch the damask.

They all halted, five or six wide-eyed faces turned to her, as startled as if a tree had spoken. The pup tugged and shook at the cloth.

They were just of an age with her sister’s child Maria, nine or ten years, except for one young boy who couldn’t have been more than six. But having checked them, she hardly knew what to say. It was herself who was usually the object of a scold—Maria had always been the best of children, docile and eager to please.

Elayne felt a moment of exquisite longing for her home, where Cara’s reprimands were the worst fate she’d had to fear. This brood looked as scared of Elayne’s disapproval as she had been in awe of her sister’s reproach.

"It would be a shame to injure this fair cloth," she ventured, uncoupling the puppy from its fervent assault on the rich fabric. "Come here, my little witch."

She received a series of ragged bows and courtesies. The children edged away from her, folding the damask with more care to keep it from the floor, and then hurried off with a sudden burst of giggles. The pup danced away after them and then bounded back to Elayne. 

"Ach, they are rude babes, my lady, forgive them!" Margaret whispered in English. "My lord has not yet taken that company in hand."

"Margaret—where are the elder folk?" she asked.

"Oh, Dario is here—" Margaret waved toward the young man who had finally placed the carved bench to his satisfaction in front of the vast, blackened hearth. "My lord took Zafer with him. Fatima has gone to the cellar. She’ll return in a moment with refreshment for my lady."

Neither Zafer nor Dario appeared to have more than a year or two beyond Elayne’s own eighteen.

"They’re the eldest?" Elayne asked.

"Your Grace, I know not. I believe so. Will you take this place of honor? Here is Fatima with your drink."

Elayne recognized the same comely Moorish maid who had served Elayne and Countess Beatrice in their captivity. As Elayne sat down at the trestle, Fatima approached with great deference. She knelt before the table, placing two goblets. "Will you take wine, Princess?" she asked.

This maid had not once seemed to understand Elayne’s French, nor Latin, nor Italian. But Fatima spoke now in the tongue of Monteverde with more fluency than Elayne owned in it herself.

Elayne gave a short nod. Fatima beckoned a young boy to her side, one of the merry crew that had sailed about the chamber with the damask cloth in tow. He made a deep bow, serious now, rubbing his fingers quickly on his shirt before he took the jar. His hands were barely large enough to hold the heavy vessel as he poured an unsteady stream of rosy liquid and placed the goblet before Elayne. He stepped back with another nervous bow, kneeling down to one knee.

Elayne gave him an encouraging smile and reached for the wine.

"Hold!" Il Corvo’s voice froze her, ringing harshly in the great high chamber. Elayne let go of the goblet. He strode forward from nowhere, his hair dewed with moisture, the dark mantle flaring. "Taste it, Matteo!"

He stopped beside the table, glaring down at the kneeling boy. The child had already dropped his face to the tiled floor, quaking. 

"Matteo," the pirate said in a voice of ice. "You fail me. Drink of what you poured. Discard the rest. And then I don’t wish to set eyes upon you again."

The boy raised his pallid face. Still on his knees, he crawled forward. He lifted the goblet and took a sip.

"Drink deeper," the pirate demanded.

The child took a full swallow, and then another. The entire household watched in silence. Matteo appeared as if he might retch, his mouth screwed into a tight, unhappy rose. Elayne watched with horror. It was an undisguised tasting for poison, credence without the pleasant rituals she had seen at court that made it seem only ceremonial.

For long moments everyone stared, but beyond the grimace, Matteo seemed to take no ill effect. He sat upon his knees, very still, his head bowed in disgrace.

Il Corvo turned his brutal look upon Elayne. "Never...never...take food or drink without credence."

She had forgotten. Lady Melanthe had warned her of such; this pirate himself had taken advantage of her trust to stupefy her when he pleased. He sat down, dismissing Matteo with a disdainful motion of his hand. The boy backed away on his hands and knees, in full health enough to rise and run when he reached the wall.

The pirate watched him go. He looked around at his petrified household and narrowed his eyes at the maid. "Fatima. Matteo’s life is in your hands. If you allow him to make such a mistake again, you’ll be the one to put a poison cup to his lips yourself. Replace the wine."

Fatima went to her knees. "You command me, Your Grace," she said breathlessly.

She rose and turned, hastening after Matteo. Elayne gripped her hands in her lap.

The Raven looked aside at her. "Remember this, my lady. You, too, are responsible for their lives. Do not allow yourself to be imprudent, or to be served carelessly. If there is any injury to you, those who caused it—by mistake or by malice—will suffer an ill fate."

She tried to appear composed, sitting with her back rigid to control her trembling limbs. "He is but a child," she said faintly.

"The better to do murder unobserved."

"Do murder!" she echoed. "The boy can’t yet have eight years to his life."

"I had but nine, at my first," he said. He took the seat beside her, throwing off his red-lined mantle. "I don’t ask so much of Matteo yet. But they all know the price of an error in my service."

Two of the littlest boys bore his cloak away, their faces solemn and scared. At his order, Margaret brought a golden dish and set it upon the table. Stiffly Elayne offered her hands to be rinsed from the pitcher of perfumed water. The fragrance didn’t mask the scent that lingered on her, the scent of lust and coupling—the scent of a manslayer.

The one called Dario came forward. He was a thick-muscled, broad-shouldered youth with blunt strong features, but he bowed with a precise elegance, taking the napkin from his left shoulder and drying Elayne’s hands.

"Your pardon for this crude meal, my lady," the pirate said gruffly. "It’s not what I intended. We’ll have a proper feast in Monteverde to celebrate our marriage."

"It’s nothing," Elayne said in a stifled voice. If she never had a feast in Monteverde, she would be pleased.

"Pour into three cups," he instructed Dario, and watched as the youth performed a careful ritual, tasting deeply at each before he served it.

The Raven took a slow sip of one goblet, and offered it to Elayne from his own lips. She drank a convulsive swallow, assured at least that this was safe. He lifted the next cup and held it out to her. But as she raised her hand to steady the goblet, he drew it sharply away.

"Don’t drink of this," he said. "Be careful. Smell it."

She lifted her eyes in mistrust. He met her look under his black lashes, a steady stare. Elayne drew in a breath over the cup.

"Do you smell it?" he asked.

She shook her head. "It smells of spice."

He offered the first goblet again. "Look in it. Observe the color."

Elayne looked at a claret wine that seemed ordinary in its honey-red color and sweet scent of spices. "I see nothing."

He held up the second cup. "What of this?"

She frowned down at the silver goblet so close to her nose. He tilted it—and she saw the thin film that threw transparent colors across the surface.

"Oh—" she said. "I see it."

"At last," he said in a tone of great congratulation. "Fortunate that it’s only a drop of olive oil." He pushed the third goblet over the cloth toward her. "This one contains bane enough to kill us both. Smell it."

Gingerly Elayne sniffed at the last goblet—one of the cups that Dario had tasted not moments before. He stood by, erect and unconcerned, bowing his head when she glanced at him.

The faintest odor of burnt syrup, of almonds blackened beyond mere roasting, tainted the scent of the last cup. It seemed to go instantly to the back of her nose and linger there. She pushed the cup hastily away. "But he drank of it!"

Il Corvo looked up at Dario with a slight smile. "Enlighten the princess to what passed."

The youth bowed to his waist. "Your Grace, there was no bane in it when I drank. My lord diverted you with the second cup and envenomed the last one while you were distracted with looking at what he showed to you. It’s a common ruse."

"Common?" she repeated weakly. Her voice rose. "This is common in Monteverde?"

"No doubt they’re clumsier about it," the Raven said, "and easy to detect. But you make a credulous target. You must learn to take notice of what happens around you."

"Helas," she cried. "God forfend that I ever came here!"

The pirate scowled. "By Christ, can’t you yet see what true profit it is to you?" He waved his hand for Dario to remove the cups. "Madam, you were bound for Monteverde and certain death in your innocence. Whatever I’ve done, whatever I may be—there’s no one alive who can school you better in the wiles of murderers, or keep you more surely from any human menace. Do you doubt me?"

She stared at the white tablecloth before her, where a cup of the claret had left a mark like a bloodstained new moon—a mark of poison, or of sweet safe wine; she knew not which. Once she had trusted her dark angel to keep her from all harm. But that happy illusion was broken now; it was an assassin who proclaimed himself her protector with such forbidding certainty.

There are a hundred dangers, Lady Melanthe had warned her, in a voice of anguish. There is no time to teach you.

Her godmother had known this pirate.

Elayne could not reason that Lady Melanthe had somehow sent her to him. To her family’s enemy. To the same assassin who declared that he would have killed her himself if she had wed Franco Pietro of the Riata.

She could not reason it, and yet she remembered Lady Melanthe’s cool ruthless demeanor, her own sister’s awe of the countess, the respect tinged with dread that was never spoken. And she knew that her godmother was closer in spirit to the Raven than to anyone else Elayne had ever encountered.

"I am yours," the pirate said to her. Softly. Simply. He watched her out of shadowed eyes. "To my death."

She took a deep breath, staring at the shape of the half-moon stain. There was yet the hot soreness inside her, where he had taken her, left his man’s seed in her body. Black mystery and pain, and she wanted it again—she wanted him before her, his head arched back, at her mercy. The strength of what she felt, the power he gave her to hurt him—her desire for it shocked her. Thunder cracked and rumbled overhead. Sullen smoke curled from the chimneys, the tempest exhaling like a living thing from the darkest corners of the lofty kitchen. The grave faces of children gazed at her from the shadows.

"Do it, then," she said, lifting her eyes. "Teach me what arts of malice that you will. I’m certain that you know them all."

His lip curved in dry mockery. "I couldn’t teach you one-tenth of what I know of malice," he said. "But I can put you on your guard against it."

Zafer appeared at that moment, emerging from the smoky shadows, his tabard and exotic headpiece darkened and dripping with rainwater. As the Raven looked toward him, the young infidel made a bow, but no words passed between them. There was only a glance, a moment that seemed to convey some grim meaning between the youth and his master as the storm wailed outside.

"Attend me well, then, my lady," the pirate said, turning back to her. "Place no faith in such useless concoctions as the powdered horn of a unicorn or the color of a moonstone—such false alchemy is for fools. Open all of your senses. Each poison has a character of its own. Each murderer has a nature that betrays him, if you observe closely enough."

She lifted her chin. "And what is yours?"

His gaze lingered on her hand upon the table, then moved upward to her face. No more than she could fathom a panther’s mind could she have said what was in his.

"Let that question be your ultimate examination," he said. "We’ll discover if you’re cunning enough to solve it."

 

* * *

 

He had a name, such a deceptive, unapt name that she could not bring herself to employ it with him. Allegreto. The English tongue had no such word, but in the language of Monteverde it meant something cheerful and light—even joyous.

He did laugh, but only in mockery. He smiled as a cat might smile while it toyed with a mouse. She wondered if he had ever in his life had a fit of honest mirth, the way she had laughed sometimes with Raymond, both of them falling into hilarity, piling one childish jest upon another until they could not draw breath.

She doubted it. Fitting enough, to call him Raven, after the black-winged harbingers of death and war.

For four day and nights, as the storm still slashed and rumbled overhead, she became another student of his evil arts.  She learned to distinguish the scent of three poisons at each supper, and watched Zafer empty a vial of powder, hidden in his napkin, into the salt. She watched him do it a half dozen times, and never once detected the faint turn of his wrist until he slowed the motion and lifted the cloth for her to observe each step of the action. Then Margaret—composed and determined—demonstrated how to apply venom to a cloak pin and stab Zafer as she aided him to dress. She wasn’t very accomplished at it, and apologized profusely to my lord and my lady for her inexperience while Zafer held a dagger to her heart, having turned off the maid’s assassination attempt with a move as quick and simple as a striking snake.

The pirate watched his apprentices with calm attention, remarking quietly on their work in the way a good master would appraise his students’ efforts and offer methods of improvement. He slipped the daggers he wore from their sheaths and showed how poison subtly discolored a blade—the one for his left hand was always envenomed, he warned her, the one for his right was clean.

His hands fascinated her: their swift ease with the blades, on a wine cup, the memory of the rough jerk in her hair as he had yanked her away when she bit him. He had smiled then—smiled—and the thought of it sent an ache all down her body, a liquid pain that seemed like bliss.

He drew her to him, a lodestone against her own will, as if all she had been taught of good and right, all she knew of joy and mirth, held no strength against the beckoning darkness. She wanted to wound him again. She craved to do it. Just that way, that shocking moment of power, to make him hurt and shudder and lose himself in her again.

Despicable it was, as wicked as the way he put children in the study of such evil things. And yet they all—girls and boys, from the youngest up to Dario and Zafer and Fatima—looked to him eagerly, vying to show the degree of their scholarship in his deadly skills. In his own manner he treated them with a grim sort of kindness. When Margaret’s babe had begun to wail from its basket slung on ropes near the hearth, she was granted reprieve from any further mayhem in order to attend her child.

Matteo, skulking miserably in a half-lit corner, was called forward to make another try at a proper poison tasting. After a multitude of attempts, he possessed himself sufficiently to pour a full cup without shaking so that he spilled drops all over the tablecloth, and performed the credence. When at last the Raven, without praise or censure, simply lifted Matteo’s offered goblet and drank from it, the boy’s face broke into a glow of tear-stained relief and pride.

She was given scrolls to study. They were nothing like the texts that Lady Melanthe had provided for her education. She read a Latin compendium of toxic substances, divided into sections, first those natural and then those made by the hand of man: their manufacture, their modes of delivery, their effects. Dry mouth; rapid heartbeat; hot, dry; agitation and delirium...certain death.

In the margins were notations. Other effects—large pupils, muscle spasms; the names of men, some of them scratched through.

She might have been studying her notes of Libushe’s herbs and potions. Except she was not. She was reading how one man might kill another, or make him impotent or blind, while children sat about her chopping dates and talking cheerfully and Dario pumped the wheel of a whetstone, making a pitched whine above the rumble of the storm as he sharpened their proffered daggers and little knives, sending sparks flying to the tiled floor. Margaret’s baby played at her feet while she mended buttons on Elayne’s torn shift.

Il Corvo sat midway up the stairs to the kitchen gallery, dressed in black velvet—like an illumination in a book Elayne had seen once, of a nonchalant fiend overlooking the souls in Purgatory, lounging between the curves and struts of the letter E.

His languid glance came to hers as she lifted her eyes. Heat suffused her, dread and pleasure. She would have looked away, looked down, but it seemed as if that would be weak—an admission that she even noticed him. That she remembered—vividly. 

He held her look. With a slow move, like a lazy caress, he touched his fingertips to his shoulder, stroking the place where she had bitten him. Instantly she felt a spring of hot sensation, a violent dream of her power to mark and wound him as he arched under her hands. He smiled at her, a mere hint in the greenish light of the storm.

Elayne looked down, snatching a quick breath, as if the atmosphere had closed upon her.

Perchance it was a spell he had laid on her, that made her blood run in a tangle and her breath come strangely when she thought he was remembering as she was. She had never in her life before wanted to hurt any creature. It wasn’t anger, though anger was a part of it. But it was more than that, more—it was all twined and twisted with the way he looked beneath his lashes and smiled as if he knew.

Perhaps it was a curse to make her foreign to herself. He would perceive how to make such a thing, and not bungle it with mismatched feathers.

He rose from the stairs and came down in one graceful bound, scooping up one of the youngest ones as the child was about to reach for a newly honed knife that Dario had just laid aside. With a flick of his wrist, Il Corvo sent the blade spinning end-over-end above them. It reached a zenith and flashed downward; Elayne’s heart stopped as the little boy looked up at the weapon descending toward his head.

An arm’s-length above the child, the pirate plucked the dagger from the air.

"Hot," he said, holding the blade before the boy’s face. He set the child on the floor. "Don’t touch it too soon."

The boy shook his head vigorously.

"It’s cool now," the Raven said. "Take it."

The little boy reached for the knife, but the pirate moved it. Instantly the child assumed a stance, his short legs spread, rocking forward on his toes; an echo of Il Corvo’s agile pose. For a few minutes they feinted and sparred for possession of the blade. Fifty times the cruel edge came within a hairsbreadth of slicing the child’s soft skin, but he ducked and twisted, moving in under Il Corvo’s arms. Somehow the pirate made it appear as if the boy really did dispossess him of the weapon, emitting a suitably foul oath and dropping the knife when the child cracked him on the knee-cap with a sudden, awkward kick.

"Well-placed," he said as the student bore his prize away. He sat down next to Elayne, rubbing his joint, and gave her a sideways smile. "A promising brat."

She did not return the smile. "Wouldn’t grown men serve you better?" It came out like an accusation. "Why children?"

He leaned back, his elbows on the table. "Because they are wholly mine."

Elayne turned her face away from his faultless profile. "They seem a frail force."

"Do they?" he asked idly.

She rolled the edge of the scroll under her finger. Her heart seemed to pound in her ears when he was so close to her. "Would you bring up your own child in such a manner?"

She felt him look at her. Before he spoke, she added, "And you need not enlighten me—I’m certain it’s how you were fostered. Would you make the same of your own blood?"

The sound of the whetstone wailed, searing metal to stone. His body was perfectly still beside her. She thought he was more frightening when he was motionless than when he wielded any weapon.

"Tell me what choice I have," he said softly.

Elayne wet her lips. She had not expected him to give her a serious reply. But he waited, as if he meant it. She frowned down at her knuckles. It seemed utterly wrong, to corrupt children, to bend them to such service, and yet she could only offer platitudes about abandoning his iniquity and seeking rectitude. Platitudes to the man who swore to guard her from such murderers as himself.

"I asked your sister the same once," he said. "And she had no answer for me either."

She took a deep breath and looked toward him. "If you desire that I will bear your children, then you must find one."

He never moved. His lashes flicked downward and up again. He remained gazing at Dario’s back as the youth pumped the grinding wheel.

"Libushe taught me many things," Elayne murmured, barely above a breath. "Even if you force me, I can prevent a child."

It was a lie; Libushe had taught her herbs and methods that might prove successful at preventing a conception, but the wise-woman had not promised certainty, and warned her it was a deadly sin to use them. But Elayne thought even a wizard might not be sure of what a woman of knowledge could impart.

He looked at her then. Instead of the cold fury or disgust she had prepared for, it was a mystified look, as if she had spoken some riddle that made no sense to him. "Why?’

"Because it would be mine, too," she said, "and I won’t have any child of mine brought up to be what you are."

His fine mouth hardened. "You wish him to have no defenses?"

She paused at that. "No," she said. "But..." She put her palms together, trying to find words for what she meant. "No more than other people. Not corrupted and trained to slay as if it’s a game."

She thought he would mock her and call her foolish. He only frowned a little, then sprang up. He walked to the foot of the stairs, put his boot upon the lowest step, then turned and came back. He looked down into her eyes, still with that faint frown. "If I swear this to you, then you’ll not resist me?" he demanded in a low voice. "You will conceive?"

She felt her cheeks burning. She didn’t want to be his wife. The idea of bearing him sons and daughters was horrifying and frightening and exhilarating all at once. "If God wills it," she heard herself say, in a voice that barely whispered in her throat. But it did not seem that God’s will could have any link to what she felt.

"Then I swear," he said at once. "Man child or girl, their education belongs to you. I will not teach them what I know."

 

* * *

 

The storm at last swept past, leaving wreckage and a cold crystalline atmosphere. Elayne huddled close in her mantle as they toured the storm-clawed rooms and loggias. She felt as shattered as the beautiful carved doors—as if she were someone unknown to herself, born of the destruction to a new and harsher spirit.

The white puppy trailed behind her, endowed now with the name of Nimue. The young dog cared for nothing but play and theft, skirting broken tiles and jumping over the smashed pot of a palm tree, the only cheerful presence amid a grimly silent household. The castle stood, but the open arcades lay in ruins, their heavy beams torn askew and flung into the shuttered chambers. Elayne doubted if Amposta’s ship could have survived such a tempest. She said a prayer for Lady Beatrice, but the countess’s fate seemed distant now, in God’s hands.

Her own pressed much closer. The Raven appeared unconcerned about the damage to his castle. The gleaming horizon seemed to trouble him more—he stared out at the empty blue sea and posted watches at all the corners of the fortress.

"Is there danger of attack?" she asked when he had sent Zafer away to discover how the town had fared.

He glanced down at her. For an instant the flash was there, that promise of fire and pain that bound them now whenever he met her eyes. He had not touched her since they left the tunnels. And yet it seemed as if his presence saturated the very air she breathed.  Elayne forced herself not to look away.

He looked back out to sea. "My comrades are to gather a fleet here, in preparation for our return to Monteverde."

"A fleet." She pushed back from the marble parapet, startled. "So soon?"

"The time was appointed many months ago. When first I had news that Franco Pietro was to take a bride—and her name was Princess Elena."

"A fleet," she said faintly.

"A great fleet, of sixty ships and four thousand men-at-arms, to bring about the absolute destruction of the Riata. It’s taken me five years to assemble it."

"Depardeu," she whispered. She looked at him, and then at the empty horizon. The sea was fresh and running high. Huge waves crashed far below, rolling in under the precipitous castle wall. Nothing else interrupted the expanse of vivid blue.

"Yes," he said, "they do not come."

Veiled by the wind-tossed mass of her hair, Elayne looked down, twisting the band on her finger. She had wished with all her heart to depart on Amposta’s vessel for England and home. But she didn’t believe anything could have kept it afloat in such a storm. Even if his comrades were marauding pirates, she could not wish so many such an end. Her throat felt tight and queasy.

"Perhaps they did not all perish," the Raven said evenly. "Some might have made shelter."

"God defend them," she said, signing the cross.

The pirate stood still, an ironic tilt to his mouth. The breeze played with his black hair and lifted the dark cloak, flashing wings of bloody red. He might have been the Devil indeed, standing there deadly and alone in the dazzling sun. He cast one look at the empty horizon and turned away.

"We leave tonight," he said. "Take what you want. We won’t return here again."