Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Dara appeared on the portico steps as the carriage rattled into the courtyard.
When she came down to greet Verna, she noticed Kalen with her battered face, and exclaimed, "Good lord, Kalen, you look a mess."
Kalen gave a crooked grin. "All in a day’s work."
"Go into the —" the words died in her throat when the bear lumbered into view. She gaped at it. "By the gods, what’s that?"
Dulcie stopped a few feet away from her, raised up on her hind legs and sniffed the air. In the fading afternoon light, she looked even larger than she had in the arena.
Dara's mouth opened, but this time nothing came out.
"Her name is Dulcie," Verna said, hiding a smile. "She'll be our guest for a while."
Dara's mouth closed. Opened again, then closed. The housekeeper, who had remained unflappable through difficult harvests, floods and the arrival of hundreds of damaged women over the years, was lost for words.
"That," she eventually managed, in a voice that was considerably smaller than her usual one, "is an enormous bear."
"She's very gentle," Verna said.
Dara eyed the bear. She looked at Verna, then looked at the bear again.
"Gentle," Dara repeated, as though testing the word and finding it inadequate.
"Completely," Verna said. "Dara. Are there soldiers at the gate?"
It took Dara a visible effort to drag her attention away from Dulcie and back to the matter at hand. "The guard reported they turned up fifteen minutes ago. A troop of twenty wearing Imperial colours."
"Right," Verna said. She nodded to Kalen and her guards. "Let’s get to the gate. And Dara," she added, "Leave the bear be until I get back, and get someone to help Marleen take the cases inside."
"Of course, My Lady," she said faintly, and went back up the steps without taking her eyes off the bear until she was through the door.
As soon as they rode up to the front gate, Verna saw the guards had done exactly what they were supposed to do. Even though it was the emperor’s troop, they didn’t open the gate, instead sent word to the house. Verna climbed the parapet steps and looked over.
Twenty soldiers in imperial colours sat their horses in the road below. Their officer was in his late thirties, with the look of a man who had been given an order, but was now confronted with a situation his orders hadn't prepared him for.
"Lady Verna," he called out. "By order of the emperor, you are required to surrender the imperial property, namely one war bear, and present yourself at the palace to answer charges of theft."
Beside her, Kalen made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
Verna looked down at the officer, with the expression she kept for idiots. "Thank you for delivering the message," she said. "The answer is no."
The officer blinked. "My Lady, the emperor's orders—"
"Your emperor sent twenty soldiers to my gate," Verna said.
"He has considerably more than that at his disposal.
Which suggests he's not entirely certain of his legal ground here, and neither, I suspect, are you.
" She let that sit for a while. "The bear is not imperial property.
She was taken illegally from the Kathran territories, which aren't under imperial jurisdiction regardless of what the palace maps say.
As well, I am a blood member of the imperial family, and as such, should have the right to borrow palace property. "
The officer looked at his soldiers. They looked at the wall, at the guards on it, at the gates which were very solid and showed no sign of opening.
"I'll have to report this refusal," he said.
"Of course you will," Verna said pleasantly. "Safe journey back."
She watched them from the parapet until they turned their horses and rode out of sight down the coastal road.
Kalen leaned against the parapet wall with her arms folded, looking at the empty road. "That won't be the last of them," she said.
"No," Verna agreed. "But it'll do for tonight. Now let’s go home."
Not long after she changed out of her silk gown, Verna heard a commotion in the kitchen courtyard. Dulcie had followed her nose to the smell of food.
She was standing in the middle of the kitchen courtyard, where two kitchen workers were on top of the woodpile, another had backed herself against the far wall and the cook was brandishing a broom.
The youngest of the rescued girls, the one who had stopped flinching at sudden sounds, was standing in the doorway to the east wing with her eyes the size of dinner plates.
"She won't hurt anyone," Verna said, coming into the courtyard and putting her hand on Dulcie's furry arm. The ring was warm and steady. "I promise you she's gentle. She's had a terrible few years and she just wants somewhere safe, the same as all of you when you came here."
Several people looked marginally less alarmed. The two women on the woodpile didn’t come down.
Dulcie looked around the courtyard. They are frightened of me.
Verna nodded. Give them time. They'll come around.
Dulcie made a sound low in her chest, not a growl, something quieter than that, and sat down in the middle of the courtyard with the deliberate care of something very large trying to make itself smaller.
One of the kitchen workers on the woodpile made a small sound.
Then something unexpected happened.
From the doorway of the east wing, one of the women Verna had bought at the auction the previous year, came running out. Xania was a quiet young woman who spoke the Imperial tongue well enough but with an accent that Verna had never been able to place.
She slowed down to a walk until she was three feet from the bear.
When Dulcie's head came around, Xania began to speak. It wasn't words, just a series of clicks, in a varied pattern that sounded like language. The sounds came from the back of Xania's throat as she kept her eyes fixed on the bear's face.
Dulcie went completely still, then something moved across her face that Verna felt through the ring.
It was a recognition so profound and so painful that it hit her in the chest like a physical thing.
Images flashed into her mind, a fragment of a memory of a village in the mountains, trees, firelight, a boy, young, running, and the same clicking language coming from his mouth as he led this bear on a rope through a summer morning.
Xania was crying, tears running down her face while she kept making the clicking sounds, and Dulcie's enormous head had dropped until her nose was almost touching the ground in front of Xania's feet.
After a moment, Xania turned to Verna, her face wet. "She knows me. She was my brother's bear."
"Your brother," she said carefully.
"He was killed." Xania's voice didn't waver.
"The emperor's soldiers came to our village three years ago for the bears.
Them and whatever else they could take." She looked at Dulcie.
"They killed my brother because he wouldn't let them have her and took her anyway.
They sold me to the slavers on the road south.
" She sniffed. "I didn't know what happened to her. I thought they killed her too."
She put her hand out and Dulcie pushed her enormous head into it.
Verna looked at Kalen, who had come quietly into the courtyard at some point during all of this and stood by the arch with her arms folded and wearing a sour expression.
Verna smiled at Xania. "Would you like to look after her? I'd feel better knowing she had someone who understood her properly."
Xania looked at her, then she nodded. "I’d love to."
Good, came Dulcie's voice in Verna's head, low and gravelly. She smells like home.
Verna felt a wave of emotion and when she spoke, her voice wavered a little. "Right. Somebody please get this bear something to eat and the rest of us as well. It’s been a very long day and I am absolutely starving."
Dara appeared at Verna's elbow with a cup of wine and the expression of a woman who had witnessed everything and was going to need a little time to process it.
"Well," Dara said.
"Well," Verna agreed, and drank the wine.
Dinner that night was louder than usual.
The household needed it, the release of people who had been holding their breath for days and were finally allowed to let it out.
The kitchen had produced a feast of roasted lamb and flatbreads and three kinds of cheese and a dish of preserved olives that someone had been saving for a special occasion.
Three of Verna's best bottles came up from the cellar, which drew a murmur of appreciation from everyone at the table.
Patrice was holding court at the far end of the table with the story of the bear in the kitchen courtyard, which was getting more dramatic with each telling.
Xania, who had been invited to dine with them, ate quietly.
She had gone back to Dulcie after the courtyard scene and spent an hour with her on the lower terrace before dinner, sitting beside her in the winter dark, making the clicking sounds.
She had come in for dinner with red eyes but with a smile as well.
Verna caught her eye across the table and gave her a small nod.
Kalen ate steadily and said very little, which was normal, but she was present in the way she usually wasn't. She laughed at something Patrice said, the real laugh, brief and unguarded, the one that changed her face completely. Verna smiled when she heard it.
By the time the plates were cleared and the third bottle was finished, they drifted off to bed. Patrice kissed Verna's cheek on the way out with a simple, "Well done."
Dara was last to go. She stood and looked at Verna with the expression that meant she had something to say.
"Say it, Dara," Verna said.
"Tomorrow," Dara said. "When you've slept."
Verna sat alone at the table for a few minutes, her hands around the last of her wine, listening to the estate settle into its night sounds, the distant sea, and the wind in the whispering trees.
Then she went upstairs to bed.
A knock came on the door ten minutes later.
Kalen looked at Verna from the doorway. Verna moved to one side of the bed and pulled back the blanket.
Kalen came in and closed the door behind her.
She didn’t say a word, simply climbed into the bed and took Verna into her arms. This time after they kissed, Verna took over.
She lavished her with her tongue and kisses, gently so as not to hurt her sore body.
She ghosted her lips over the bruises, showing her how sorry she was that they had been inflicted on her behalf.
And when she lowered her head to bring her to her peak with her mouth, she let her magic surge into her.
Kalen arched her back as her climax hit and gasped out Verna’s name.
And when she had gathered her breath, she brought Verna to a long, hard orgasm that racked her body and left her trembling on the sheet.
Afterward, they lay in the dark, Kalen on her back, looking up at the ceiling. Verna lay with her head on her shoulder, her leg over Kalen’s thighs.
She was drifting off to sleep when Kalen said abruptly, "Tell me about the power."
Verna twisted slightly to look up at her face. "What do you want to know?"
"How long have you had it?"
"I sensed it that first time we made love. Then I felt the full power in the arena," Verna said.
Kalen was quiet for a moment. "I did too."
Verna blinked. "You did?"
"When you climaxed… it was the most exhilarating feeling I’d ever experienced."
"You never said anything," Verna said a little chidingly.
"I thought it was me."
"I didn't know what was happening," Verna said. "Not until I found my great-grandmother's journals afterward. She wrote about the ring and the power, though not as clearly as I would have liked." She lifted her hand and looked at the ring in the dim light. "She called it the Wending."
Kalen went still and Verna felt it immediately. She propped herself up on one elbow to scan her face. In the moonlight Kalen’s expression was difficult to read, the bruising from the Trials still there across her jaw, the stitched cheekbone, the eye that had mostly opened again.
She studied Verna, with the expression of someone deciding something.
"It's a myth," she said. "Where I come from."
"What kind?"
Kalen was quiet for long enough that Verna thought she might be done. Then she said, "One that’s been passed down through generations."
"And?" Verna asked, holding up the ring.
Kalen looked at it. The gold caught the moonlight and threw a small warm reflection onto the ceiling above them. "They say a witch will come when she is needed. A Wending Witch."
"Oh. So, I’m a Wending Witch. What does that mean?"
Kalen shrugged. "I have no idea. But our Wise Woman will know."
"You have a Wise Woman?"
"Yes. Meredith is our Oracle."
Verna lay back down against Kalen's shoulder and stroked her hand. "We don’t have anything like that here."
"I know. We believe there is magic in the world."
"There is magic in my veins, which is very odd because I don’t believe in it," Verna said, with a hesitant smile.
Kalen pulled her tighter against her. "You have much magic, Verna. You can control a bear and summon the wind."
Verna was quiet for a few seconds, then took a long breath. "You are free now, love. You can go if you like."
"I haven’t finished what I came to do."
Verna blinked at her. "Came to do? You were caught in the war and made a slave."
Kalen gave a quiet chuckle. "You think those soldiers caught me?"
"They didn’t?"
"Of course not. I allowed myself to be taken to get into Castine."
"By the gods, Kalen, why?"
"To kill the emperor."