Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) Read online

  Marta felt dizzy. She steadied herself by grasping the edge of the table with both hands.

  As you wish, little one. The voice was soft and silky now, as if the cadia were pleased and not much surprised that Marta had answered her. Your head is not a very pleasant place to be. Filled with resentments that writhe like snakes....

  I said get out!

  “Marta? Marta!” Ersala banged her fist on the table.

  “W-what?” Marta turned to her mother with a dazed expression.

  “Mayhaps you are about to faint from hunger,” her mother snorted, holding out the bowl of stew impatiently. “Take it.”

  “I almost forgot,” Rowle said as he speared a chunk of lamb with his knife. “Tullus sends his greetings.”

  “Tullus? You went as far as Jeptalla?” Ersala’s voice peaked with disapproval.

  “‘Twas not so very far, wife. Only another half-day’s ride.”

  “Jeptalla, father!” Lillitha’s eyes were alight. “You saw King Tullus? And Scearce?”

  “Yes, how are they, father?” Marta joined in, her heart twisting at the smile he aimed towards Lillitha.

  “You supped with King Tullus?” Paul leaned his elbows on the table. “I met him once, didn’t I? When I was very little?”

  “I hardly see how you could remember,” Marta said loftily. She could barely recall the long-ago trip to Tullus’ Seat. If she had been just five, Paul had to have been only two summers along. “You were still wearing a dress.”

  “Not the time we all went to Jeptalla, you dolt,” Paul chided her. “Of course I don’t remember that. At the fair, in Margarie, I mean.”

  “Yes, you did, Paul.” Rowle grinned at his son. “I seem to recall you squealing like a piglet when Tullus swung you ‘round and ‘round in the air.”

  “He was fun,” Paul observed sagely, munching on another biscuit. “I liked him.”

  “Well you should. We served together in the Border Army many, many summers ago. I wasn’t much older than you when my father sent me to learn a man’s duty under Tullus’ father, who was then general of the Legion’s Third Arm. Should it please Oman that you will one day have a friend as great as Tullus was to me.”

  “How is the good Tullus managing these days?” Ersala asked. She was genuinely concerned. She liked Tullus and had been fond of his wife. Adaila had died with the fever only a summer ago. Tullus and Adaila had not enjoyed the depth of passion she and Rowle were blessed with, but then so few were. But the two were well-matched and Tullus seemed to dote on the frail pretty woman who shared his bed, more like a father than a husband.

  “He’s getting on with it,” Rowle said. “His son Scearce is growing into a fine young man, though Tullus says he’s had his share of woes with the boy.”

  Ersala frowned and Rowle feared his wife was thinking of her own eldest, who would have been about Scearce’s age. In his preoccupation, he did not see the light that came into Lillitha’s eyes or how eagerly she hung on his words.

  “Nothing serious,” he explained quickly, “just the usual high-spirited troubles of a boy growing into a man.”

  Nothing like Jonil, was what he meant.

  ***

  Jonil had been their firstborn, blessed with a pleasing face and a smile to light a thousand candles. But from the very first, the boy had shown a disturbing knack for getting his own way. Worse, he didn’t seem to care who might be hurt in his single-minded pursuit.

  Like the hapless stable boy that had been thrashed for not shutting the corral gate securely. It had been a serious lapse, halting other work on the vidoran as everyone clambered across the meadows to gather the horses. “He won’t forget again, Vidor Rowle,” the boy’s father had assured him.

  Not a day later, Rowle saw his own five summers’ son opening the gate and waving a shooma stalk at the bewildered animals. Rowle’s first thoughts were for the life of his firstborn and only son. His heart in his throat, he sprinted across the hard-packed dirt of the stable yard.

  Jonil was gurgling happily as the horses thundered past. Rowle grabbed him and swung him high onto a stone wall.

  “You could have been trampled! What in Oman’s name do you think you’re doing?”

  The sweet face had dimpled as he looked down at his father, who was still breathing heavily.

  “I am watching the horses run.” He spoke in the grown-up manner that usually amused his father. “I like to see them make clouds on the ground.”

  “Did you open the gate yesterday as well?” Rowle demanded, his fear displaced by growing anger.

  “Yes, father. I did.”

  “But you saw poor Thomas take the punishment in your stead! Why did you not speak up?”

  “And be punished for it? It would not be a sensible thing to do when Thomas was there to take it for me.”

  “Your punishment would have been a mild thing, as you well know.” The worst Jonil would have suffered was bed without supper. “Have you no concern for Thomas then? He is your best friend!”

  “Oh, he is but a peasant. He is used to beatings from his father.”

  Speechless, Rowle watched his son climb down from the wall and skip away.

  The Vidor of Kirrisian went to apologize to his seven summers’ stable boy. Then he had a word with the father. Like all parents, Rowle believed firm discipline often-times required a beating or two, but he didn’t like that the stable boy was beaten so regularly that even Jonil spoke it of as a matter of little consequence.

  It would not be the last time the Vidor of Kirrisian would apologize for his son.

  Jonil kept the household on pins and needles. He would disappear for hours as Ersala worried what he could be up to. Was he climbing onto the roofs in the village again, dropping hard-packed balls of sheep dung onto passers-by? Or was he in the east pasture tying the sheep’s tails together again? Just as Ersala reached a fevered pitch of worry, the boy would saunter in and present his mother with an armful of wildflowers. “I picked them especially for you, muma.”

  Ersala would dissolve in relief.

  Moments later baby Lillitha’s cries brought her to the nursery, only to find Jonil pinching the poor mite hard enough to bruise.

  The boy had a temper. When crossed, his screams could be heard all through the house. When screaming did not get his way, he stamped his feet and pounded walls until sweat broke out on his forehead and his mother feared for his health. Even the half-hearted beatings of his father could not stop Jonil’s tantrums. Nothing would stop him until he got what he wanted, namely the freedom to come and go as he pleased, getting into whatever trouble he could find.

  As he grew to manhood, the trouble grew less frequent but far more serious. At a younger age than Rowle found decent, Jonil discovered that women would fall over themselves whenever he looked their way. And he looked their way quite a bit. Bitter fathers of ruined daughters had confronted Rowle twice. The second time it happened, Rowle had been angry enough to consider making Jonil wed the unfortunate girl. Jonil had been a mere fourteen summers old and Ersala’s tears convinced him to make a sizable contribution to the girl’s dowry instead. It was gold they could ill afford; even so, Rowle had only to remember the expression on the man’s face and the terror in the downcast eyes of the daughter to think he had gotten off too cheaply. His own son had turned him into a vile panderer, buying a girl’s virtue with a purse full of gold placas.

  By sixteen, Jonil was too strong to be beaten and he gave up any pretense of obedience. Instead of working on the vidoran, he wandered the village, in and out of the dockside taverns and bellinta houses. He listened neither to his father’s angry commands or his mother’s tearful pleading.

  Rowle cut off the boy’s small allowance and no longer entrusted him with trips into the village for the few supplies they could not manufacture themselves on the vidoran. The family’s fortune was already a fragile and dwindling thing. The gold that Jonil threw away so freely on ale, women and wagers was meant to buy boots and plows.

&
nbsp; Things of value disappeared from the house. When confronted the boy only tilted his head haughtily.

  “You would deny me what is mine as your firstborn son? Even Danaus’ scab of an heir walks around clothed in the finest silks and leathers while you would have me looking like a tinker.”

  And still creditors appeared in the audience hall to collect Jonil’s debts.

  Ersala pleaded. Rowle roared, demanded and raged, all to no avail. Jonil was driven by some inner demon that would not be tamed.

  Until he picked the wrong dock man to cheat at talimockra.

  Jonil had been at the Blue Darma for two nights straight. He’d been rough with one of her girls and Tanra Jille had asked him to leave. He only laughed at her, swatting her ample backside and demanding more ale. She’d seen the dangerous look in his eyes and the edge in his laugher. She allowed him to stay on the condition that he confined himself to the gaming tables and left the girls alone.

  Jonil had been playing talimockra with a trio of sailors. He was losing terribly until his luck suddenly changed. It wasn’t the first time the son of the Vidor was accused of cheating.

  Tanra Jille said at the inquest that Jonil had obviously misjudged the man. The sailor had been small, lean and sinewy, without the usual thick arms that came from a lifetime on the docks. Had Jonil been any judge of character, he should have known a dock man of such slight build would rely not on his fists but his dagger.

  The firstborn of Kirrisian died with a knife in his throat. He was two keels shy of his eighteenth birthday.

  Rowle looked at his wife’s bowed head as she knelt before the candles. This was the only time in her frantic day that she allowed herself to grieve for her lost son, so he kept quiet until she finally rose to her feet and extinguished the flames.

  “Come to bed, wife. I’ve missed you sorely.”

  “And I you, my husband.” She crawled under the coverlet and buried her face against his chest.

  “Ay! You’ve missed warming your icy feet against me, that’s what you missed!” he laughed. “Confess, woman! You females only marry to keep your feet warm.”

  In the darkness, he could not see her smile but he heard it in her voice. “It is one of the few things men are good for. Though I suppose a large hound might work as well.”

  His laughter shook the bed. “Tis lucky I am you didn’t think of that before you agreed to wed me.”

  “Ah, but think of all I would have missed.” She sighed and snuggled closer, her fingers playing with the thick mat of hair on his chest. She sensed something weighing on him. “Did your journey go well, truly?”

  It was his turn to sigh. “As well as could be expected. I convicted two thoroughly disreputable naves of violating a young village wench. Staking was too good for them.”

  Ersala shuddered to think of the poor girl’s shame. She offered a quick silent prayer to Leah, Mother of Belah, that her own daughters would be safe from such violence. Such things were rare in Kirrisian and, indeed, in all of the Omani lands—but from time to time they happened. When they did, honorable men like her husband were swift to administer justice. Among the Omani, rape was equal to murder for it was murder of woman’s innocence. The violation of the most sacred rite of life was blasphemy.

  She knew her husband had found little pleasure in his duty. He needed her to voice his own guilt and pity; as man, father and vidor, he could not say such things himself. Not even here, in the privacy of their bedchamber.

  “Too good for them, certainly,” she said softly. “But such a death is always a pitiable thing to watch. No matter how richly deserved.”

  She had seen a staking once—completely by accident, for women (other than the victims) were not encouraged to witness such executions. Staking was reserved for the most offensive of crimes. A mere thief would be flogged or pilloried in the village common. An adulterer would be shunned, possibly forever. Only murderers and violators were staked.

  In her twelfth summer, Ersala had been out gathering herbs when she heard them coming. Her mother would be furious if she found out that Ersala had disregarded her instructions to stay clear of the western hills, so she crouched in the brush waiting for them to pass.

  The violator was an old man, convicted of an abomination that no one ever explained to young Ersala; she’d only heard vague whispers that she did not understand. But she recognized him from the town market where he sold vegetables and cheap wooden trinkets. He stumbled past her, hardly able to keep his balance. She was close enough to see the blood left by his footprints. She hardly noticed his nakedness, dressed as he was in his own blood flowing freely from the whips of the men who drove him onward.

  Revolted yet fascinated, she crept after them, taking care to remain hidden in the bushes.

  The old man was crying as the men forced him down onto a mound of dirt in a clearing. His sobs were unintelligible even before he started screaming.

  Ersala’s stomach loosened as the first of the wooden stakes was driven though his body.First in the stomach, then his left shoulder, and finally a third in the groin until he was no longer recognizable as a man at all. He was only a screaming mass of bloody flesh pinned to the mound like a bug.

  The faces of the men—including her father and brothers—were untouched by pity. Ersala vomited in the grass, then rose to her feet running.

  “Did they die quickly, my husband?” She hoped they had, then wondered if she would feel differently if Lillitha or Marta had been their victim. The memory of the old man’s screams echoed in her heart.

  “No.” His voice was hoarse. “The scavengers were creeping upon them even as we turned to leave.”

  They used blunt stakes in soft places not likely to bring immediate death. Criminals were whipped brutally so that the scent of fresh blood would bring the eraat cranes that were fond of picking the eyes from still twitching skulls and the tongues from screaming mouths. Then the slinky black foxes would come to take their feast, slowly, a piece at a time.

  “Are you still cold?” he asked, drawing her closer. “Another blanket, perhaps—”

  “No, don’t you dare get out of this bed. I’ll be fine in a bit,” she lied. Imagine a husband who would rouse himself from a warm bed to get his wife another blanket! Her mother, were she alive, would have laughed scornfully at the very idea. But her mother had known nothing of love.

  “Lilli seemed quiet tonight,” he said. “She hasn’t been ill, has she?”

  “Not at all. Her health is fine. Yanna watches her carefully, don’t worry on that account. She always was a quiet child. And Yanna says it is part of the training, learning to be silent and listen. Tis a pity that she can’t teach Marta as well.”

  Rowle laughed. “What has calla Marta done now, wife?”

  Ersala sighed. “Nothing. She just...is. She’s willful and she does naught but complain from sunrise to sunfall. Usually about her sister.”

  “Tis hard on her, she’s but a child.”

  “Marta has no idea what her sister sacrifices for us. For her. I’m just sick to death of her whining about clothes and hair combs—I swear, husband, if she starts in again about that lace collar in the tailor’s shop, I may strangle her. Don’t laugh! She worries me to death over Bethossian lace while I’m trying to figure out how we can patch this roof through another winter.”

  “Hush, wife,” he said, patting her shoulder. “I know, I know.”

  Let Marta watch a three-day old child of her own womb freeze to death for lack of firewood, then she would understand what hardship was. Let her go without bread for a week so that her children wouldn’t go to bed with hunger gnawing at their bellies. Let her bury a son and wonder if she’d failed him somehow. Ersala had known these things and they had scarred her soul, leaving her little patience for a child’s ridiculous longings. Bethossian lace, indeed!

  Marta had no idea just how hard life could be, how few options lay ahead of her. It seemed a lifetime ago when they had hoped to make a match between Lillitha and Prince Sc
earce.

  But bad luck had stalked them the way the starving wolves stealthily hunted down the weakest lambs of the herd. Two of their last three ships had gone down in the worst winter storm the Far Sea had ever seen, taking with them three summers’ worth of wool meant for the Modan harbor, where wool still fetched a good price. Then Jonil’s troubles had begun and the boy’s scrapes were always dear. The gold in the vidoran chest just kept dwindling until they were bartering with jewelry, books, lambs, vegetables—anything at all—for any essentials they could not manufacture themselves or do without.

  By Lillitha’s eleventh summer, it was apparent there would be no dowry for her. Rowle could not bring himself to offer a dowerless daughter to the king of Jeptalla, friend or no. In fact, Tullus’ friendship made it worse; Rowle could not bear the idea of Tullus feeling pressured by that bond into a poor marriage for his only son.

  There was no question of a dowry for Marta. What little they had would be spent to give Paul his place as vidor. Marta would end up wed to the first man with enough gold in his pocket not to care that she came with no worldly goods. She’d have little choice in the matter. Neither would her parents.

  Ah, but if Lillitha became shallana breda, everything would change. Not only would the family gain immeasurable honor, but every province in the realm would pay a tribute: crops or livestock, perhaps a troop of soldiers or even gold. These traditional offerings to the breda’s family were made to gain favor with Oman and to make retribution for what the loss of a fine, marriageable daughter can cost even the greatest family.

  Paul would be able to build up the vidoran that his grandfather had squandered and Rowle had scrabbled to hang onto. House Kirrisian could sail the seas again as a proper vidoran should. And Marta would have enough honor and dowry to choose a man she could love, perhaps. A man who would be kind and gentle, not the first aged widower who would drag her far away where she would be alone and at his mercy.

  “Still, I worry about Lillitha,” Rowle said lowly. “Have we done the right thing?”

  “Tis a bit too late to ask that now,” Ersala said, more sharply than she intended. She stroked his chest to soften her words. “One way or the other, either she or Marta would have to go to the cadia. It’s too much to hope that we could marry them both safely.”