Baroness of Blood

TWENTY-EIGHT

Ilsabet lay belly-down above Jorani's study and held the lamp at just the angles he requested. Jorani, his face and body wrapped in strips of cloth as if he were a mummy, had already determined the spider had left its globe. Now he tracked it through its kills, from the roach to a pair of dead rats, one near the center of the room, a second close to a crack in the wall. The tiny creature, always shy, had likely found a larger, more perfect home.

"If it's gone into the wall, we'll have to rip apart the tower stone by stone to find it," he called to her. "Build up the fire, and be ready to help me."

Ilsabet backed away from the trapdoor and slipped on a pair of long, leather gloves. Below her, Jorani began unwinding the strips of cloth that covered his clothes and body. He fully expected to feel the sudden tingling, to fall. The floor itself was covered with the fine spider web, so if he hit the floor, he'd die soon after. He climbed out of the room, careful not to touch the rungs of the ladder with his clothes.

He sat on the top stair and handed his boots to Ilsabet, who fed them to the fire in the hearth. He pulled off her gloves and did the same to them, then let his own fall from his hands into the flames. The two vials he had gathered from the room below were heavy in his pocket. Later, he would put on new gloves, pull the vials out, and clean them well, for they were needed now as never before.

"Are there any drawn plans of the castle?" Ilsabet asked. "If so we could trace the places the spider might exit."

"I don't know of any, but I think the wall goes all the way down to the dungeons. It's possible the spider is still in the room and I can't find it."

He closed the trapdoor, took a hammer and nails, and began nailing it shut.

"What are you doing?" Ilsabet asked.

"I don't want anyone finding the door and going down," he said.

"Anyone spying on you deserves what he gets."

"But someone might manage to get out of the room and die in here, and I could give up this space as I have the one below."

"Such a delightfully lethal pet, yet so fragile that someone could easily step on it and never know," Ilsabet said, her eyes sparkling. He hadn't known how much pleasure she'd gotten from his fear until now.

"Then track its venom through the castle."

Ilsabet hadn't considered this. "How long do the spiders live?"

"I've had it twelve years. I understand that if you feed one regularly it'll live a century or more."

"Well, there's plenty to eat in these walls. Maybe there'll be a dearth of rats for a time."

"Pray that we have an infestation. The spider is a lazy animal, and it needs fresh meat. You might also want to consider putting netting around Lekai's cradle."

Her look of horror twisted into a sardonic smile. "We're all gamblers now. I'll leave you to your bath."

Throughout the day, Peto had sought some understanding of what Jorani's parting words had meant, but nothing came to him. He did, however, listen to the footsteps of servants coming and going in the hall, and felt relief that everything sounded normal. Later, Lekai was brought to him. They slept together. Peto liked to think they shared their dreams. When he woke, the child was gone, and Jorani sat beside him once more.

"I survived," Jorani whispered. "Now let's see if the fates intend for me to cure you."

The liquid flowed down Peto's throat again. This time his heart raced less quickly, and the tingling in his hands extended to his arms.

"There's no one here but you and me, Baron. I won't tell anyone about your progress. Now try to wake."

Peto's eyelids fluttered, and with a sudden burst of will, he managed to brush his fingers against Jorani's hand. Peto had felt such euphoria only once before-on the day his son had been born.

"We seem to be on the right track," Jorani said. "By the end of the week, we'll know how far you can recover. We'll have to. I'm just about out of this potion, and the means to make more has, shall we say, moved out of my grasp for a while." He told Peto about the room, and the spider with its lethal web. "Fortunately," he added, "I think the effects of the antidote don't wear off. We'll go as far as we can with what I still possess, then you'll have to wait until I can collect the ingredients again. That may take some time."

After Jorani left him, servants came to bathe the baron. When they were done, they covered him with a blanket and left.

Peto lay in the darkness, wiggling the fingers of his right hand. He was hardly surprised that the strength in his sword arm was returning first.

The castle grew quiet until the footsteps of the guards patrolling the halls were the only sounds he heard. Peto had just begun to doze off when lisa bet came to him.

She walked past the guards and into his chamber, latching the door behind her. He saw the candlelight flickering through his closed eyelids, felt the heat of her body as she stretched out beside him.

"Peto," she whispered and kissed him as passionately as she had before.

A wave of revulsion coursed through him, a revulsion all the more terrible because he was helpless to push her away. His expression could not have changed, yet he was certain she guessed his emotion.

She laughed, and kissed him again.

"Someone's been plotting against you. Tomorrow Shaul is going to find evidence linking your poisoning to the escaped rebels. Someone will have to pay for this crime. Fortunately, we have a few rebel sympathizers in chains below. I'll have to think of a suitable end for them.

She lay a hand on his cheek, gentle as any lover's.

"No rebel escaped, of course. Shall I tell you how they died?" Softly, she whispered the tale of the book she had found at Shadow Castle, of Emory, and of Arman, and how they'd feasted together.

When she'd finished, she kissed him again. "I've much to do tonight. I'll give Lekai a kiss for you when I see him," she said. Her body moved away from his. He heard her footsteps heading for the door. As she opened it, he felt a cold, damp draft.

"Go down and shut those doors!" Ilsabet screamed at the guards in the hall. Peto had never heard such fear in Ilsabet's voice before. The servants had been speaking of the unnatural fog for days. He wondered how thick it had become.

The shut doors kept the fog out of the upper floors of the castle but did nothing to dispel the dampness in the lower halls and the dungeons.

The newest prison guard made the night rounds of the dungeon passages. He hated the work-the rats were bolder at night and the dampness so thick he seemed to swim through it-but lack of seniority gave him the most despised duty.

He carried a smoky torch in one hand, a pike in the other. So far, he hadn't had to use the weapon, and he hoped he never would. When he reached the farthest occupied cell, he saw a thin beam of light in the passage beyond it. He leveled the weapon and went on. "Who's there?" he whispered. "Identify yourself, or I'll call the guards."

"It won't be necessary," came the reply. The form moved closer, and he recognized the baroness.

"My lady, why are you here?" he asked.

"Making sure everyone is doing his job," she said.

As she walked toward him, her foot slipped. He reached out to break her fall.

"Thank you," she whispered and reached up, stuffing an oily rag into his mouth.

The following morning, Peto was hurriedly washed and dressed, then lifted from his bed and placed on a slant-backed settee. With his body covered, he supposed he looked as if he were recovering, or were somehow controlling the mock trial Ilsabet orchestrated.

Three of the rebels were brought up in chains from the dungeons. Peto smelled the scents of filth and fear, heard them whispering to each other, trying to keep their courage up in the face of damning evidence.

A guard had been found dead outside their cell, a poisoned rag just out of reach of the prisoners. The pike that they'd probably hoped to take had rolled beyond their reach as well.

"They may have hoped to get the keys to their cell," Shaul explained, "but that was impossible, since the night guards never carry them." Shaul slipped on a pair of gloves, brought out the poisoned quill, and compared the oil on it to the that on the rag used to kill the guard. "I've shown it to Lord Jorani. He agrees that it is the same."

"How would we know?" one of the prisoners said defiantly. "Do you think the fates came to us in our cell and handed us the poison? You'd best look to your own nobles if you want to solve this death."

The man indicated Jorani, and the Kislovan lord answered dryly, "I had nothing to do with this."

True, Peto thought, but he was also keeping much to himself; a wise move, given the circumstances.

"I would like permission to question the servants," Shaul said.

"Granted," Ilsabet said. "First, execute these men."

"Baroness?" Shaul said, unable to believe the order. "I may need to question them further."

"Then take those two back to their cells, but execute the defiant one."

Peto's chair shook as he felt the man's chains beat across his legs. "Baron Peto, please!" the man pleaded. "I'd never harm you. I celebrated when your troops invaded and brought down the tyrant Janosk. I…"

"You speak of my father," Ilsabet said. "Now take him away. Weigh his body down with rocks and throw him into the river. Let him feel helpless for the moments before he dies, as my husband will feel helpless for the rest of his life."

They took the man away still pleading. His chains rattled as the guards pulled him out the door and down the stairs, cursing the ever-present fog.

At least her method of execution was humane, Peto thought. She was doing exactly what she'd agreed to do in that matter, as in the others-the mark of a truly loving, grieving wife.

As he'd expected, she become more bloodthirsty in the weeks that followed. Her nature seemed to demand it. Completely in control, she sought out the poisoners with fanatical zeal. Judging from the wooden way some of the servants gave their testimony, they'd been bribed. Others needed no prompting. In exchange for mercy, they embellished their stories with rumors they swore were true.

When the evidence against the rebels had been collected, and the implicated rebels found and imprisoned, Ilsabet had Peto carried down to the dungeons to listen to the interrogation of the prisoners. Often they had to be tortured before they knew what to confess. For this, Ilsabet called on some of her father's old guards, men as skilled with a whip and a brand as they were with keeping order among their troops.

Nearly blind, unable to speak or to move, Peto's sense of hearing had become painfully acute. The screams of the victims tore through him. Ilsabet's death sentences, done in his name, sickened him as the poison had never done. For the first time since he'd fallen, he began to wish for death.

And if her acts weren't enough, there was her past.

Each night, she told him, in graphic detail, of one more despicable act-how Marishka had died, how Mihael had been driven to attack him, how Greta had discovered the poison and had to be silenced.

All that kept Peto from despair was the thought of Lekai being raised by a creature such as Ilsabet. He had to survive to save his son.