Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Verna opened her eyes with a groan.
She felt like she’d been through the grape press.
Her head throbbed and her eyes burned. The lingering smell of the foul cloth, mixed with the stale mustiness of the air, made her want to gag.
She forced back the bile and squinted through swollen eyes around the room.
She recognized where she was immediately.
It was the old hut at the far edge of the back vineyards where she had played as a child.
She was on her own estate.
The hut was small and low-ceilinged, with two rooms, the stone walls rough and dark with damp.
She was lying on the cold floor in what once was the kitchen-living room; her wrists were bound in front of her and she could feel a weight around her neck.
Tentatively, she reached up and touched it with a finger.
They had put a leather collar around her neck.
A single lamp sat on the floor in the corner that threw a muted glow over part of the room.
Four figures were sitting in the half-light, watching her.
She struggled to a sitting position and peered into the shadows.
They were dressed in dark hooded cloaks with no house colours or insignia, armed with short swords.
Verna couldn’t make out the three at the back, but the fourth was closer.
She was a woman in her fifties, sitting on an upturned crate with her arms folded and her eyes on Verna with an expression of cold hatred.
The rope attached to the collar lay across her lap.
Verna flinched. Mercenaries, and only one person could have sent them: Bain.
She should have thrown him in the dungeons while she had the chance, and not sent him into exile.
Now she was in a pickle. No one knew where she was, and she doubted she could take them all down at once with her magic.
Not hardened people like this. One of them was sure to have time to gut her with a sword.
Her best bet would be to talk her way out of it.
"Whatever Lord Bain offered you, I’ll double it," she said, trying to keep the panic out of her voice.
The woman jerked the rope, pulling Verna to her knees. "I have no idea what you are talking about."
"You weren’t sent by Lord Bain?"
"You are the woman who bought Kalen at the slave auction in Castine aren’t you?" she said.
"Yes," Verna said. "But it isn't what you think."
The older woman studied her for a second, then rose to her feet.
"We have come for Kalen. She was due home over a month ago.
We heard she had been taken to Castine and sold at auction to Lady Verna of Eclipsia.
" She said the last three words as though they tasted of something foul. "As. Her. Slave."
"If you'll let me explain," Verna said.
The woman strode forward and pulled her to feet by the collar. "It’s been months and she is still on your estate. Have you put leg irons on her?"
Verna croaked out as she tried to ignore the leather biting into her neck, "She chose to stay."
This produced a reaction, though not the one she’d hoped for. The three women in the shadows bounded forward. One made a sound that was brief and contemptuous. The second exchanged a look with the third that said everything about what they thought of this claim.
The older woman glared at Verna. "Chose to remain as your slave?"
"Sort of," Verna said. "She’s not a slave and has never been treated as one. She was brought here because—"
"She came here," the older woman snapped, "because you paid money for her and therefore, by your laws, you owned her." She pointed at the collar around Verna's neck. "As you can see, it’s not pleasant being a slave."
"I know," Verna said. "That is exactly why I have spent years helping girls from the auction house."
The older woman looked at her contemptuously. "You are a wealthy woman who purchases human beings. I spit on you."
Verna narrowed her eyes. "I treat them fairly. They live on my estate and when they are ready, I help them build whatever life they want."
"And Kalen," the younger woman said, the one who had been watching her with the barely controlled anger. "Why hasn’t she been freed? Is she still here on your estate or have you sold her for a profit?"
The words landed harder than Verna expected. "She’s here and free."
"Then why hasn’t she come home?" the older woman said in a dangerously quiet voice.
Before Verna could answer, one of the younger women slapped her across the face. "You’re a liar."
The older woman held up a hand. "That’s enough, Arlie.
" She looked at Verna with cold eyes. "I have heard about women like you, wealthy women of the empire who believe that kindness and ownership are compatible things.
Who believe that buying a person and then being gracious about it is the same as never buying them at all.
In the morning, I will go to your house and find Kalen. Then it will be your life for hers."
"And if you find she is here because she wants to be?" Verna said, her ears ringing from the slap.
"Then we will have a different conversation."
She turned away from Verna and said something to the three younger women in a low voice.
Two of them settled into positions against the wall.
The third, the one with the barely controlled anger, sat down directly in front of Verna and looked at her with the steady hostile attention of a guard who took her responsibilities seriously. The older woman went into the bedroom.
Verna sat on the cold stone floor with her hands bound in her lap, the collar heavy around her neck. The ring was warm on her finger but strangely didn’t seem agitated.
She thought about using it, then about what Kalen would say if she hurt the four women from her own community. So, she held off.
Kalen and her guards would be out looking for her now. She thought about what would happen when Kalen walked through the door of the hut and saw the three guarding Verna on the floor with a rope around her neck.
She wanted to see it.
Deciding a little bit of discomfort wouldn’t hurt her, she lay in the dark on the stone floor and waited.
At first light, the door burst open and Kalen strode in, followed by her six Abrensia guards with their wide bladed swords drawn.
She took in the room in half a second. Her eyes found Verna on the floor, the collar, the bound wrists, the bruise coming up along her cheekbone, and something happened in her face that went past anger into something considerably more dangerous.
She was across the room before any of the three younger women had fully risen to their feet. She put herself between them and Verna, eyeing the three of them with an expression that made them take an involuntary step back.
"Who put that collar on her," Kalen demanded.
Nobody answered.
"Who collared her," Kalen said again, this time in voice that made it plain she wasn’t going to ask a third time.
Arlie opened her mouth, then closed it again.
"I want to know," Kalen said, "which of you thought it was acceptable to come onto this estate, drug this woman in her own courtyard, drag her to a hut in her own vineyard, bind her hands and put a leather collar around her neck and then," her voice dropped further, "hit her across the face."
Verna guessed her cheek must have come out into a bruise during the night.
"Kalen," Verna said from the floor.
"Not yet," Kalen said, without turning around.
Arlie had gone red and the other two were shuffling their feet.
"We thought—" Arlie began.
"You thought wrong," snapped Kalen. "And the three of you can stand there and think about that while I help her up."
She crouched in front of Verna and cut the cord at her wrists with her belt knife. Then her hands were at the collar's buckle with a furious expression on her face.
After the collar was off, she helped Verna to her feet, holding her arm while she steadied herself.
"Are you hurt anywhere else?" Kalen said, in a completely different voice from the one she had been using.
"I'm fine," Verna said. "Nothing serious."
Kalen looked at the bruise with an expression that suggested she did not entirely share this assessment. She turned back to the three women. "Where is your leader?"
As if on cue, the door to the back room opened and the older woman came through it.
She stopped when she saw Kalen.
They looked at each other with an expression that Verna couldn't fully read. Then Kalen said, in a voice that had lost all of its anger, "Aunt Merle."
"Kalen," the older woman said. Her voice had changed too. The cold hatred she had directed at Verna was gone, now she had the face of a woman who was enormously relieved.
She crossed the room and put her arms around Kalen.
Kalen held on for a long moment before she stepped back and said sternly, "What the hell were you thinking, Aunt? You came onto Verna’s estate, drugged her in her own courtyard and then put that damn collar around her neck. And you let them hit her."
Merle looked at the bruise on Verna's cheek and something moved across her face. Not quite remorse but close. "We heard she’d bought you as her slave. We feared she’d collared you to stop you escaping."
"By all the Gods, woman, if I wanted to escape, I would have. She treated me well."
"We didn't know that."
"You didn't ask," Kalen said. "You came here with three warriors and you acted first instead of trying to find me. All you had to do was knock on the bloody door and ask for me."
Merle threw up her hands. "How was I to know that?"
"These people aren’t barbarians as we were led to believe. Before we go any further, you are going to apologise to Verna."
Merle turned to Verna and said stiffly, "I apologise. We acted on incomplete information and we caused you harm. That was wrong."
Verna looked at her, thinking about the night on the stone floor, the collar, the slap, and the rope in her lap.
Then she thought about the small band of women tracking Kalen across half the empire from a place beyond its borders.
"You were looking for your family," she said.
"I understand that better than most people. "
Merle looked at her with a softer expression. "Thank you for being so understanding."
"You’re lucky she didn’t hurt you," Kalen said curtly.
Merle eyed her incredulously. "Hurt us? What are you talking about? She looks like she’s never held a sword in her life, let alone thrown a punch."
"Come up to the house," Verna said hurriedly, glancing at her guards who had no idea what she was.
"All of you. It's cold and I suspect none of you have eaten since yesterday.
" She nodded at the three younger women, at Arlie who was still red and not meeting her eyes.
"There is a great deal to tell you and a warm kitchen is a better place to discuss it than a cold hut. "
She walked to the door and stepped out into the early morning.
The winter dawn was pale across the vineyard rows that were pruned back and coated with frost. The four women from the east came out of the hut behind Verna and stopped with expressions of people seeing the estate for the first time: the terraces, the vines and the sea beyond.
It was a similar reaction in the frightened women who arrived at the estate damaged, who came through the gates to find something they hadn’t been prepared for.
She gave them time to look.
Then a sound came from the lower terrace, a low rumble. There was no doubt it was a warning sound, that required no translation regardless of where you came from or what language you spoke.
Dulcie stood at the corner of olive grove wall, enormous in the early morning light, her dark coat nearly black, her breath coming in slow visible clouds in the cold air. She peered down at the four strangers and growled.
Not the full war bear one that she made in the arena, but the growl of a large, dangerous animal that had found something on its territory.
The effect on the four women was immediate.
All three of the younger ones stopped walking. Arlie, who had been in the middle of what appeared to be a muttered attempt at apology to one of the others, stopped mid-sentence with her mouth still open. The third grabbed the second's arm.
Even Merle stopped.
She looked at Dulcie and the bear looked at her and the seconds stretched. Verna touched the ring and projected to the bear, "These guests are friends of Kalen’s."
She felt the acknowledgement come back, grumbling but present.
Dulcie looked at Kalen, who nodded to her.
Dulcie sat down on the path to presumably make a statement rather than a concession. She didn’t stop looking at the four women.
"She won't harm you," Verna said. "She is making a point which I think under the circumstances she has earned the right to make."
Merle stared at the bear, then back at Verna. "You have a war bear?"
"She lives here. She chose to."
Merle went quiet.
"Inside," Kalen said, to everyone present. "I'll explain everything. But I want tea first, and I suspect Verna wants something considerably stronger than tea."
"Wine," Verna replied. "Definitely wine."
She walked up the path toward the house with Kalen beside her and four warrior women from the eastern edge of the known world behind her. Her guards peeled off at the second turn to the barracks, but Dulcie followed at the rear to the front steps as if she had decided her presence was necessary.
The whispering trees caught the morning wind and murmured as they passed.
Verna thought they sounded, if she were honest, rather pleased with themselves.