Faith of the Fallen

Chapter 51

Nicci wiped the sweat off her brow as she went down the line, checking to see if her clothes were dry. Summer was only around the corner, and it was already hot. Her back hurt from her earlier work at the washtub and various other chores. The other women were chatting in the warm sunshine.

They occasionally giggled over some quirk that one of them, after a round of amiable urging, would divulge about her husband. Everyone in the building, it seemed, had begun coming alive along with the new spring growth.

Nicci knew that spring had nothing to do with it.

That knowledge drew frustration up from her darkest recesses. She couldn’t figure out how Richard did it. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t unravel the knot he seemed to tie around everything. She was beginning to believe that if she took him down into the deepest cave she could find, the sunlight would make its way into the darkest recesses to shine on him. She would think it was some kind of magical luck, except she knew beyond doubt that he had not used any magic whatsoever.

The backyard, such an overgrown tangled place, so filthy, with piles of scrap and garbage, was now a garden. The men who lived in the building, after they came home from work, had rid the yard of the refuse. Even several of the ones who didn’t work had come out of their rooms to help cart away an item or two. After it was cleared out, the women of the building had turned the soil and planted a garden. They were going to have vegetables.

Vegetables! There was talk of getting a few chickens.

The single latrine off in the back corner, so overused and so foul, was now two privies in good repair. Now, there was rarely a wait to use a privy and there were no more urgent pleas or frayed tempers. Kamil and Nabbi had helped Richard build them—partly out of scraps of lumber salvaged from the refuse piles in the yard, before they were hauled away, and some they collected from other rubbish heaps.

Nicci had hardly believed her eyes when she had seen Kamil and Nabbi—in shirts—digging the holes for the new privies. Everyone thanked them profusely. The two toughs beamed with pride.

The outdoor cooking hearth had been repaired, so the women could set more pots in it and cook at the same time, requiring less wood to be hauled.

Richard and some of the other men of the building built stands for the washtubs, so the wives wouldn’t have to bend so far or chafe their knees raw. The men made a simple roof of canvas salvaged from the refuse so that the women could cook and wash without getting wet when it rained.

The people in the buildings to either side, at first surly and suspicious of the activity, began asking curt questions. Richard, Kamil, and Nabbi went over and explained what they had done, and how they could put their place in shape, too, and even helped them get started. Nicci had yelled at Richard for spending his time at other people’s places. He said that she was the one who had told him that it was his duty to help others. Nicci had no answer—at least, none that made any sense so as she could say it aloud and not sound a fool.

When Richard showed people how to improve their homes, he didn’t lecture, or teach, but rather, somehow—Nicci couldn’t understand how—managed to infect them with his enthusiasm. He hadn’t told them what to do, but rather he’d made them pant to figure out for themselves how they could make things better for themselves. Everybody took a liking to Richard. It made her growl under her breath.

Nicci collected her washing in the woven basket Richard had shown the women of the building how to make from thin strips of wood. Nicci had to admit that the basket was easy enough to make, and a better way to lug clothes.

She climbed the sturdy stairs—stairs that she’d once thought would be the end of her. The hallway inside was spotless. The floors had been washed.

Somewhere; Richard had come up with ingredients for paint, and the men had a grand time of mixing it up and painting over the stains on the walls. One of the men in the building knew about roofs, so he fixed the roof so it wouldn’t leak and stain the walls again.

As Nicci walked down the hall, she saw Gadi, without his shirt, sitting up the stairway, in the shadows. He was using his big knife to whittle at a piece of wood and in so doing make clear his dangerous nature. Later, the women living in the building would tsk and clean it up. Gadi, not happy about people nagging at him of late, leered down at her. She now had something for him to leer at, now that she had gained her weight back.

Richard’s second job at night enabled him to be able to afford more food. He brought home things she had missed for months—chicken, oil, spices, bacon, cheese, and eggs. She could never find such things in the city stores, Nicci had thought they sold the same food everywhere in the city shops, but Richard’s travels while delivering things, he said, took him to places where they sold a wider variety of food.

Kamil and Nabbi, sitting on the front steps, saw her through the open door. They stood and bowed politely as she came down the hall.

“Good evening, Mrs. Cypher,” Kamil said.

“Could we help you carry that?” Nabbi asked.

She found it all the more irritating because she knew for a fact that they were sincere; they liked her because she was Richard’s wife.

“Thank you, no. I’m there, now.”

They held the door for her and closed it behind her when she had passed into her room.

She thought of them as Richard’s soldiers. He seemed to have a private army of people who broke into grins when they saw him coming. Most people seemed only too pleased to do whatever they thought Richard might like done.

Kamil and Nabbi would have washed diapers, if he asked it, for the chance to ride with him at night in the wagon as he picked up and delivered things around Altur’Rang. He only rarely took them with him, saying that he could get in trouble with the workers’ group. The youths didn’t want Richard to get in trouble and lose his job, so they patiently waited for the rare times when he tilted his head for them to come along.

Their room had been transformed. The ceiling had been cleaned and whitewashed. The flyblown walls had been scrubbed and painted a salmon color—a color she had picked, thinking that Richard would not possibly be able to come up with the rare ingredients needed for the color. The walls were now mockingly salmon.

One day a man had shown up with an armload of tools. Kamil said that Richard had sent him over to fix their room. The man spoke a language Nicci didn’t understand. He waved his arms a lot and chattered and laughed good-naturedly, as if she must understand at least a little of what he told her. He pointed around at walls and asked questions. She hadn’t the foggiest notion of what he was there to do.

She suspected he had come to fix the wobbly table. She rapped the top with the flat of her hand and then showed him how it wobbled. He nodded and grinned and chattered. She finally left him to his work while she went to the city store to wait in line to buy bread. She was there the entire morning. In the afternoon, she waited in line for millet.

When Nicci finally returned home, the man was gone. The old window, broken and not only long painted over but also painted shut, had new glass, and it was raised. And, they had a new window in the other wall. Both windows were open. A cool cross-breeze let fresh air into the stuffy room.

Nicci stood in the center of the room, stunned to be looking through the window to the building next door. She gaped out the window in the wall where there had been no window before. She was able to see the street. Mrs. Sha’Rim, from next door, had smiled and waved as she’d walked past.

Nicci set down the wash basket and opened the window at the side, to get some air into the stifling room. She pushed the curtains back. With windows you could see though, she had decided that curtains were in order.

Richard somehow got her fabric. When she was finished, he told her she had done a wonderful job. Nicci found herself grinning just as everyone else grinned when Richard told them they had done well.

She had brought Richard to the worst place in the Old World, to the worst building she could find, and he somehow ended up making everything better just as she had insisted was his duty.

But she had never meant it to be like this.

She didn’t know what she’d meant.

She only knew that she lived for the times Richard was with her. Even though she knew he hated her, and wanted nothing more than to be away from her and back with his Kahlan, Nicci could not help feeling her heart rise into her throat when he came home. Through the link to Kahlan, she thought that at times she could feel the woman’s longing for him. Every inch of her ached with understanding of Kahlan’s longing.

The room grew darker as she waited. Life didn’t start until Richard came home. As the daylight faded, the lamplight took its place. They had a real lamp, now, not just a wick through a wooden button floating in linseed oil.

The door opened. Richard put one foot inside. He was speaking to Kamil as the young man was going off to his family’s place upstairs. It was getting late. Finally, still smiling, Richard came in and shut the door. The smile faded, as it always did.

He held out a burlap sack. “I came across some onions, carrots, and some pork. I thought you might like to make a stew.”

Nicci lifted a hand weekly toward the millet she had spent the afternoon in line to buy. It had bugs in it. It was moldy.

“I bought millet. I thought I would make you a soup.”

Richard shrugged. “If you prefer. Your millet soup saw us through some pretty lean times.”

Nicci felt that flash of pride that he had acknowledged what she had done as valuable.

She shut the windows. It was dark out. With her back to the windows as she watched him, she closed the curtains tight.

Richard stood in the center of the room, watching her, a puzzled frown creasing his brow between his eyes. Nicci closed the distance to him. She was aware of the exposed flesh of her bosom rising and falling above the top of her black dress. Gadi had just been staring at her bosom. She wanted Richard to stare at her like that. Richard watched only her eyes.

Her fingers tightened around his muscled arms.

“Make love to me,” she whispered.

His brow drew down. “What?”

“Richard, I want you to make love to me. Now.”

He appraised her eyes for an eternity. Her heart thundered in her ears.

Every fiber of her being screamed out for him to take her. She teetered on the edge, waiting, her life suspended in the exquisite anguish of expectation.

His voice came, not at all harsh. If anything, it was tender, but it was also resolute. “No.”

Nicci felt as if a thousand needles of ice were dancing up her arms.

His refusal stunned her. No man had ever refused her.

It hurt to her core—worse than anything Jagang or any other man had ever done. She had thought . . .

Blood rushed to her face, melting the ice in a flash of heat. Nicci flung open the door. “Come out into the hall and wait,” she commanded in a shaky voice.

He was standing in the center of their room, looking into her eyes. The lamp on the table cast harsh shadows across his face. His shoulders looked so broad, tapering down to his waist, a waist she ached to encircle with her arms. She wanted to scream. Instead she spoke softly, but with authority he could not mistake.

“You will come out into the hall and wait, or . . .”

Nicci made a snipping gesture with two fingers.

By the look in his eyes, he knew that she was not bluffing. Kahlan’s life now hung by a thread, and if he didn’t do as she ordered, she would not hesitate to cut that thread.

With his gray eyes on her the whole time, Richard stepped out into the hall. She put a finger to the center of his chest and pushed until his back was against the wall beside their door.

“You are to wait right there, on that spot, until I tell you that you may move from it.” She gritted her teeth. “Or Kahlan will die. Do you understand?”

“Nicci, you’re better than this. Think about what you’re—”

“Or Kahlan will die. Do you understand?”

He let out a breath. “Yes.”

Nicci marched to the stairwell. Gadi stood halfway up the stairs, his dark eyes watching. He arrogantly descended toward her, until he was at the bottom with her. He had a fine form, she supposed, displayed as it was without a shirt. He was close enough to feel the heat of him.

Nicci looked him in the eye. He was the same height as she.

“I want you to have sex with me.”

“What?”

“My husband does not adequately take care of my needs. I wish you to.”

A smirk spread on his face as his gaze slid to Richard. He looked back at her bosom, at what was within his power to possess.

Gadi was young and bold and stupid enough to believe himself irresistible to her, to believe his puerile primping had swept away her inhibitions to the point of helpless lust for what he had to offer.

One arm pulled her to him. With his other hand, he swept her hair out of the way. His thin lips kissed her neck. When his teeth raked her flesh, she moaned to encourage him to be rough. The last thing in the world she wanted was tenderness. There could be no retribution in tenderness.

Tenderness would not cleave Richard’s soul with anguish. Tenderness would not hurt him.

Gadi’s hands squeezed her bottom, pulling her hard against his groin.

He moved against her in a lewd fashion. She panted in his ear to encourage his confidence in his dominion over her body.

“Tell me why.”

“I’m sick of his gentle nature, his kind touch, his caring ways. That’s not what a real woman needs. I want him to know what a real man can do—I want what he can’t give me.”

She nearly cried out in pain when he twisted her nipple.

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I want what a real man like you can do for a woman.”

His rough hands squeezed her breast. She performed another moan. He smiled.

“My pleasure.”

His smirk sickened her. “No, mine,” she whispered in breathy submission.

He cast one more hateful glare at Richard, then bent to slip a hand up the front of her dress to see if she really meant it, if she would really let him have his way with her. His hand slid up the inside of her bare thigh, commanding surrender. She obediently parted her legs for him.

Nicci held on to his shoulders as he groped her. His upper lip curled in a haughty grin. His fingers worked without mercy. Her eyes watered. She trembled and bit the inside of her cheek to hold back her cry. Mistaking agony for lust, he was inflamed by her whimpers.

Jagang and his friend Kadar Kardeef, to name but a few, took her without her consent. None of it had ever approached the sense of violation she felt at that moment as she stood there in the hall letting that smirking little thug do to her as he would.

She forced her hand down between them and seized him.

“Gadi, are you afraid of Richard? Are are you man enough to take me while he is outside the room, listening to us, knowing you are his better with me?”

“Afraid? Of him?” His voice came in a husky growl. “Just tell me when.”

“Right now. I need it from you now, Gadi.”

“I thought so.”

Nicci smiled inwardly at his solemn look of lust.

“Say ‘please,’ first, you little whore.”

“Please.” She ached only to crush his worthless skull. “Please, Gadi.”

With his arm around her waist, Gadi gave Richard a taunting sneer as he swaggered past. Nicci’s fingers on Gadi’s back urged him to go on into their room and wait. He smiled over his shoulder and did as she wanted. Nicci paused to glare into Richard’s eyes.

“We are linked. What happens to me, happens to her. I hope you are not foolish enough to think I wouldn’t make you sorry for the rest of your days if you don’t stay right there. I swear to you, she will die this night if you don’t stay there.”

“Nicci, please don’t do this. You’re only hurting yourself.”

His voice was so tender, so compassionate. She almost threw her arms around him to beg him to stop her . . . but the flame of his refusal still burned shamefully in her heart.

Nicci turned back from the doorway and gave Richard a vicious grin. “I hope your Kahlan enjoys this as much as I’m going to enjoy it. After tonight, she will never believe in you again.”

Kahlan gasped. Her eyes opened. She could only make out obscure shapes in the swirling darkness. She gasped again.

A feeling she couldn’t define, couldn’t interpret, couldn’t put a nature to, welled up in her. It was something totally foreign, yet at the same time bewitchingly familiar. Something inappropriate, yet longed for. It filled her with a kind of passionate terror that undulated seductively to indecent pleasure, pushing before it a sense of shapeless dread.

She felt the weight of a shadow over her.

Feelings and sensations she could not grasp or control inundated her even as she fought them. Nothing seemed real. She gasped again at the crude sensation. It confused her. It hurt, and at the same time she felt a kind of wild hunger awakening.

It was as if Richard were there, in bed with her. It felt so good again. She was panting. Her mouth was dry as dust.

In Richard’s intimate embrace she had always felt a kind of expectant delight that their shameless lust could never be completely sated—that there was always a spark of something left to explore, to reach toward, to define.

She had always exalted in the idea of that endless quest for the unattainable.

She drew a sharp breath. She felt herself in that headlong rush, now.

But this was something she had never imagined. Her fists clutched at the sheets, her mouth opened in a silent scream against the ripping thrust of pain.

This was not human. It made no sense. She gasped again in panic as the most awful feelings burgeoned through her. She moaned at the horror of it, at the hint of pleasure in it, and at the confusion of nearly enjoying the sensation.

The realization came to her. She knew what this meant.

Tears stung her eyes. She rolled onto her side, torn between the joy of feeling Richard, and the pain of knowing that Nicci was feeling him in this way, too. She was slammed onto her back.

She gasped again, her eyes going wide, her whole body rigid.

She cried out at the pain. She twisted and struggled, covering her breasts with her arms. Her eyes watered at agony she couldn’t explain or completely identify.

She missed Richard so much. She wanted him so badly it hurt.

She gave in to him, even in this, she surrendered herself to him. A low wail escaped her throat.

Her muscles knotted as tight as oak roots. She was racked with wave after wave of startling pain mixed with an unsatisfied longing that had turned to revulsion. She couldn’t get her breath.

She burst into tears as it ceased, her body finally able to move again, but too exhausted to do so. She had hated every violent appalling brutal second of it, and grieved that it had ended because she had at least felt him.

She felt joy that she had so unexpectedly sensed him, and blind rage at what it meant. She clutched the sheets in her fists as she wept inconsolably.

“Mother Confessor?” A dark form slipped into the tent. “Mother Confessor?”

It was Cara’s whisper. Cara set a candle on the table. The light seemed blindingly bright as Cara looked down. “Mother Confessor, are you all right?”

Kahlan pulled a ragged breath. She was lying on her back in her bed, tangled in her blanket. It was twisted around between her legs.

Maybe it was just a dream. She wished it was. She knew it wasn’t.

Kahlan ran her fingers back into her hair as she sat up. “Cara—” It came out as a choking sob.

Cara knelt on the ground beside her and gripped Kahlan’s shoulders.

“What is it?”

Kahlan struggled to get her breath.

“What’s wrong? What can I do? Are you hurt? Are you sick?”

“Oh, Cara . . . he’s been with Nicci.”

Cara held her at arms length, her face a picture of concern.

“What are you talking about? Who’s been—”

Her words cut off when she realized what Kahlan meant.

Kahlan struggled against Cara’s grip. “How could he—”

“She no doubt made him,” Cara insisted. “He must have done it to save your life. She would have had to threaten him.”

Kahlan was shaking her head. “No, no. He was enjoying it too much. He was like an animal. He never took me like that. He never acted . . . Oh, Cara, he’s fallen for her. He couldn’t resist her any longer. He’s—”

Cara shook her until Kahlan thought her teeth would come loose.

“Wake up! Open your eyes. Mother Confessor, wake up. You’re half asleep. You’re still half dreaming.”

Kahlan blinked as she looked around. She was panting, still getting her breath. She had stopped crying.

Cara was right. It had happened, there was no doubt in Kahlan’s mind, but it had happened when she was sleeping, and in her sleep, it had taken her unaware. She hadn’t reacted rationally.

“You’re right,” Kahlan said in a voice hoarse from crying. Her nose was stuffed up so that she could only breath through her mouth.

“Now,” Cara said in a calm voice, “tell me what happened.”

When she felt her face go red, Kahlan wished for the darkness. How could she tell anyone what had happened? She wished Cara hadn’t heard her.

“Well, through the link”—Kahlan swallowed—“I could sense that, that, well, that Richard made love to Nicci.”

Cara looked skeptical. “Did it feel like when, well, I mean, are you sure? Could you tell it was him?”

Kahlan felt her face go a darker shade of red. “Not exactly, I guess. I don’t know.” She covered her breasts. “I could feel his . . . his teeth on me. He was biting . . .”

Cara scratched her head, averting her gaze, unsure how to frame her question. Kahlan answered it for her.

“Richard never hurt me like that.”

“Oh. Well then, it wasn’t Richard.”

“What do you mean it wasn’t Richard? It had to be Richard.”

“Did it? Would Richard want to make love to Nicci?”

“Cara—she could make him. Threaten him.”

“Do you think Nicci is an honorable person?”

Kahlan frowned. “Nicci? Are you out of your mind?”

“There you go, then. Why must it be Richard? Nicci may have simply found some man she had to have—some handsome farmboy. It could be nothing more than that.”

“Really? You think so?”

“You said it didn’t seem like Richard. I mean, you were half asleep, and in . . . shock. You said he never . . .”

Kahlan looked away. “No, I suppose not.” She looked back at the Mord-Sith in the dim light. “I’m sorry, Cara. Thank you for being here with me. I’d not have liked it if it had been Zedd, or someone else. Thank you.”

Cara smiled. “I think we’d best keep this between the two of us.”

Kahlan nodded gratefully. “If Zedd ever started in asking all his detailed questions about this, well, I’d die of embarrassment.”

Kahlan realized then that Cara was wrapped in a blanket that was open in the front enough to reveal that she was naked underneath. There was a dark mark on the upper half of her breast. There were a few more, but faint.

Kahlan had seen Cara naked, and didn’t recall there being any such mark on her. In fact, except for her scars, her body was exasperatingly perfect.

Frowning, Kahlan gestured. “Cara, what’s that there?”

Cara glanced down and then threw the blanket closed.

“It’s, I mean, well, it’s . . . just a bruise.”

A love bruise—from a man’s mouth.

“Is Benjamin over there in your tent with you?”

Cara got to her bare feet. “Mother Confessor, you are still half asleep and having dreams. Go back to sleep.”

Kahlan smiled as she watched Cara leave. The smile faded as she lay back in her bed. In the quiet loneliness, her doubts crept back.

She cupped her breasts. Her nipples throbbed and ached. As she moved on the bed a little, she winced as she only then began to realize how much she hurt, and where.

She couldn’t believe that, even in her sleep, a part of it had been.

She felt her face reddening again. She felt an overwhelming sense of shame at what she had done.

No. She had done nothing. She was only sensing something through her link to Nicci. It wasn’t real. She hadn’t really experienced it—Nicci had.

But Kahlan suffered the same injuries.

As she had at various times, Kahlan still felt that connection to Nicci through the link, and an aching sort of caring about the woman. What had happened left Kahlan feeling saddened. She felt that Nicci had so desperately wanted . . . something.

Kahlan slipped her hand down between her legs. She flinched in pain as she touched herself. She brought her fingers up to the candlelight. They glistened with blood. There was a lot of blood.

Despite the burning pain of being torn inside, the confused embarrassment, and the shadow of shame, she most of all felt a sense of relief.

She knew without doubt: Cara was right, it had not been Richard.