Storms of Destiny Page 17

  “It is hard enough for us to keep body and spirit together.

  We have no luxuries, like the Pelanese do. And who provides them with the wealth to have such luxuries, my friends?”

  “We do!”

  “And, my friends,” Castio’s voice was growing louder, slowly, steadily, “how does our esteemed viceroy repay the citizens of our colony for the sweat of their brows, for facing the dangers posed by the renegades he and his constables have loosed upon our new land? How does our viceroy repay us?” Castio leaned forward, his blue eyes bright with anger, “My friends, Prince Salesin taxes us! More each year! Today we groan under the weight of the King’s tax, but who’s to say that by midwinter we won’t be screaming for mercy?

  And does Prince Salesin care about how we are faring? Does he listen to his people?”

  “NO!”

  Castio stood there for a beat, then said, simply, “My friends … we can stand here and shout our protests all day and all night, and it will make not one whit of difference to Agivir and Salesin and their lords. They have denied the colonies a proper seat on the council. The time is rapidly approaching, my fellow Katans, when we must do more than speak, more than shout. We must act!”

  “Yes!” the crowd shouted. “Yes, yes, YES!”

  They went on chanting, each “Yes!” coming with increasing fervor. Talis was relieved there was no royal garrison in North Amis. If there had been, this crowd was angry enough to march on them, and such a display would ill serve the cause.

  The crowd was yelling and shaking their fists as they shouted. Castio let them go on for another long minute, then raised his arms high into the air. The crowd hushed, listening.

  “My friends, remember this moment, remember this hour.

  It will not be long before we will be asking for your support—your coins, your harvest surplus—and, mayhap, your very bodies and the arms you can bear. The day is coming, my friends! Soon Agivir will have no choice but to listen to us, if he wants this colony to remain loyal to the Crown! In the meantime … in the meantime, my friends, we will protect ourselves, our land, and our families. We will march and we will drill, and if Salesin tries his butchery on us, we will not go tamely to the slaughter, will we?”

  “NO NO NO NO!”

  “Our forces are gaining strength and numbers every day!

  If the King will not pay heed to us, it will be time to take up our guns and march! And, my friends, if that day comes, I will be proud to march with you!”

  “We’ll be ready!”

  “We’ll march, Castio!”

  “Fight and win for Kata!”

  The shouts of the mob engulfed Talis. She looked up at Castio, saw him looking down at her. He gave her a tiny nod, and she smiled.

  Carefully, she stepped back, easing herself out of the crowd. As she did so, she raised her dark red shawl and slid it over her head, hiding the thick, luxuriant waves of black hair that fell down her back, almost to her waist.

  Usually Talis wore her hair braided tightly and pinned into a knot at the nape of her neck, but her guise today called for unbound hair to go with the low-necked blouse and kilted-up skirts of a tavern wench. Talis’s generous curves and enticing smile often enabled her to gain information for Castio and the Cause. Drunken Pelanese would frequently babble to an attractive, green-eyed tavern slut, where they would guard their tongues in the presence of a Katan male who might secretly be a member of one of the militia groups

  that were forming all over the colony, or one of Agivir’s agents.

  A few more cautious steps backward, murmuring “excuse me’s,” and she was out of the crowd. Pulling her shawl tightly about her face, Talis hurried across the weedy grass of the square, crossed the cobbled expanse of Main Street, then turned onto the unpaved stretch of churned mud that was Bay Lane. She was heading for the White Horse Tavern.

  Talis was careful to keep her head down, lest she be spotted and recognized by any passersby, who would be shocked to see Gerdal Aloro’s daughter dressed like a round-heeled strumpet.

  Talis lived on a large farm called Woodhaven, a league from North Amis, where her father raised sheep, cattle, emoria fiber, and vegetables. Talis, more than any of her brothers, was Gerdal’s “right-hand man,” a term he applied to her with a mixture of pride and chagrin. Her father was a royalist, still. Talis had stopped arguing politics with him three years ago, when she’d become involved with the Katan revolutionary underground.

  Yesterday morning she’d found a note in the hollow of a tree on her father’s land, warning her that a certain merchant named Levons might have important information for the Cause, and that he would be in North Amis today. Generally, Talis preferred to do her spying and information gathering farther from home, when her father sent her to market with their herds and crops, but this time she’d made an exception, knowing that Castio was planning to come to North Amis and speak.

  So she’d been up long before dawn, leaving a message for her father and her gentle, ailing mother: “Gone hunting on the mountain. Don’t wait supper for me.”

  Since Talis was the best hunter in the family, and the flocks were migrating south, she’d hoped her father wouldn’t question her absence too much. Of course he’d be surprised and disappointed when she returned empty-handed, but there was nothing she could do about that. She wished she could have ridden into town, that would have made her journey much easier, but she’d worried that some passerby would recognize one of Gerdal’s riding horses. So she’d alternately run and walked into town, reaching it a little before noon.

  Talis had been glad of the excuse to sneak into town; she hadn’t seen Castio for months and was eager to share all the news she’d accumulated. She was a bit shaken by Castio’s ve-hemence today—never before had she heard the fiery-worded orator suggest that war with Pela might prove inevitable. Talis frowned worriedly. She’d considered herself a loyal servant of the Crown until just a handful of years ago. She wasn’t sure she wanted Kata to be free of Pela … she just wanted Katans to have the rights they were guaranteed under Pelanese law.

  While Agivir had ruled Kata, there had been stirrings of dissent and grumbles over the ever-present taxes. But it was Viceroy Salesin who had hit upon the idea of “cleaning out”

  the Pelanese gaols by shipping convicts across the sea to Kata.

  When Talis was a girl, Kata had been a safe place to live, a place where nobody locked doors and any stranger was invited in and given a hot meal and a place by the fire to sleep. Those days were no more. Too many robberies, murders, and rapes had terrorized those living on Katan farms.

  Nowadays, any stranger who approached a Katan farm did so in peril of his life, in the sights of a musket-toting farmer.

  Rape … The thought made Talis shudder violently and grit her teeth to keep them from chattering. Her stomach clenched.

  The young Katan revolutionary would be twenty-one on her next birthday, and she remained unpledged and unwed, much to her family’s distress. Talis frowned behind the folds of the shawl. Marriage, marriage, that’s all they can think of. No matter how much I do, I’ll never be any good in their eyes unless I marry.

  And that, she would never do. She hated men—well, most men, Castio being one of the rare exceptions. The very thought of the intimacies of marriage made her want to retch. Marriage! Not likely! But all the work I do for Dad, overseeing the farm, working alongside the slaves in the fields, doing the buying and selling of the crops, keeping the accounts—Goddess forfend, I manage the whole place these days!—and yet, all Dad can think of is marrying me off.

  Just last week Talis and Gerdal had had a terrible row. Her mouth tightened at the memory …

  Gerdal Aloro waved his arms in frustration as he paced back and forth. The candlelight gleamed faintly on his bald-ing forehead. “Daughter, this cannot go on! People are beginning to talk! Three men have asked me if they may court you, but you will have none of any of them. ’Tis not right!

  You’re of an age to wed
these past three years and more! You need a husband to support you, daughter! Are you intending to be a spinster?”

  Talis stared at him stonily. “And if that’s what I decide? I have told you and told you, Dad, I have no wish to marry.

  Are you telling me that I’m a burden?”

  “A burden, yes!” he shouted, losing the last vestige of his temper. “A burden to your mother and me! We raised you right! We don’t deserve such a willful daughter!”

  Talis gazed at him in silence, then turned and walked out of the room.

  She had barely spoken to her father since that time.

  We used to be so close, she thought sadly. I knew they loved me. Now I’ve shamed them and I’m a burden, am I?

  Well, that’s too bad. I work twice as hard as my brothers, but I could work until I dropped and it would mean nothing, I suppose. Only marriage will satisfy them. If I’m now considered a burden, then perhaps I should just leave. I could join the Cause full-time. Nobody there would think I’m a burden. Nobody there would nag me to marry.

  Her face twisted in a grimace as she thought of her father and all the young men he’d pushed at her in the past three years. She’d refused to even dance with them, much less go out walking with them. No man will ever touch me that way again. I’ll die first.

  Talis felt the reassuring weight of the dagger strapped to her calf and was comforted. When she was seventeen she’d vowed to learn to use weapons as well as any man, and she’d kept that promise, learning wrestling, swordplay, knife-fighting and throwing from some of Castio’s top military advisers, and practicing whenever she could find an opponent who was willing to coach her without getting any lewd ideas.

  She was also an excellent shot with both pistol and long rifle, but it was her father and brothers who had taught her to shoot. The Aloro homestead lay at the edge of the wilderness, and farm children of both sexes were taught to shoot at an early age because of the danger from predators.

  If I had to, I could shoot Jasti Aloro dead, cut his throat. I could kill him in so many ways … The thought came unbidden, but was accompanied by a satisfying vision of a bloody corpse.

  Her breath caught in her throat and Talis had to stop, stand pressed against the wall of the tavern. Oh, no. It’s been over a year. I thought I was over it. I can’t let it happen now!

  But it was coming, and Talis knew it. She managed to stumble a few steps farther, until she was hidden by a large rain barrel. Squatting down with her back to the wall, she wrapped her arms around herself and fought to stay calm. Breathe …

  breathe … She gasped, fighting to draw air into her lungs. It felt as though a blacksmith’s vice were being pressed down onto her chest. Her attempts to draw breath resulted in inef-fectual squeaks. Black spots danced across her vision.

  She closed her eyes, willing herself not to be sick, and for a moment she was back there, on that awful night …

  She opened the door of the privy and stepped out, ready to head back to the family party. Inside the big, sprawling farmhouse she could hear the music and the stamp of dancing feet, the clapping and the singing.

  As she headed back up the path, a large shadow stepped out from behind a tree. Talis stopped dead, then backed up a

  step. “Uncle Jasti, I told you, no more of your ‘games,’ ” she said, trying vainly to keep her voice steady. “I don’t like it anymore. It’s nasty. Besides, I’m too old for those games, I’m sixteen now. You leave me alone or I’ll tell Dad what you made me do.”

  Jasti Aloro was a big, broad-shouldered man with graying hair. He was five years older than Gerdal, and his gut revealed his fondness for ale. The yeasty reek of it reached Talis as he laughed softly. “Aye, you’ll get no argument from me, niece. You’re too old for little girl’s games. Time for some big girl games. Come here … you’ll like it.”

  For the past three years, he’d been saying that hated phrase to her, and Talis had kept silent out of fear and shame. But not tonight. She glared at him. “Get out of my way. I’m telling my father what you’ve been making me do.”

  When Jasti didn’t move, she turned, stepping off the path.

  The blow to the back of her head stunned her so badly she found herself on her knees, not realizing what had happened to her. As she struggled to rise, another slap caught her across the face. Jasti grabbed her by the hair and dragged her up, and when she cried out in pain, he slapped her mouth, splitting both lips. “Shut up, you whorish little slut! I won’t hurt you none! Just want to have a little fun, and you want it, too, you’re just too pigheaded to admit it!”

  Panicking, Talis struck out, scratching, clawing, kicking, opening her mouth to scream. Two hands grabbed her by the throat, squeezing …

  Talis did not quite lose consciousness. But all the strength left her limbs, and she sagged and would have fallen had he not swung her up into his arms. She managed to gasp, and he laughed harshly. “Oh, you’re not dead, missy. You’re not hurt, just relax …”

  Talis managed a faint cry, but she knew it was hopeless.

  Jasti lurched along the path, heading for the hay barn.

  By the time they reached it, she could breathe again, and again she tried to fight. He slapped her again, so hard that everything went gray and distant.

  She was roused by pain, sharp and piercing. The air was chill on her legs, for her skirt was kilted up. He was on top of her, grunting ale-breath into her face. Some vague instinct of self-preservation made Talis keep her eyes closed. Jasti gathered himself and rammed into her again, cursing. “Tight …

  too tight … slut …” he panted. “Never dreamed … you’d be virgin …”

  She was being torn in two; he thrust again, sending a jab of agony through her.

  Drawing breath, Talis screamed at the top of her lungs.

  Cursing, he clamped his hand over her mouth, and kept it there while he finished.

  Crouched in the alley in North Amis, Talis raised her head from her arms, glad to be able to breathe normally again. It’s over. Over. You’re not hurt. Breathe.

  Talis forced herself to exhale, rejoicing that the vise-crushing pain was gone. Relax. He will never touch you again, and if he tries, he’ll die for the privilege, she reassured herself. He’s older than Father, almost an old man.

  And I’m young and strong. He could never hold me down and do … that, again.

  For just a moment Talis found herself imagining meeting Uncle Jasti here on the street, and he would be drunk, so drunk he wouldn’t recognize the niece he hadn’t seen in years. Not since the night when his brother had heard his daughter’s anguished cry and burst through the door of the barn mere seconds after Jasti had finished. One look at his daughter, beaten and bloody, had told the story, and Gerdal had grabbed Jasti and thrashed him thoroughly, then ordered his drunken, babbling brother to never darken his door again. As Jasti had stumbled away into the darkness, Gerdal gathered Talis into his arms and comforted the sobbing girl, pointing out that she had “taken no real hurt.”

  But Gerdal, not wishing to blacken the Aloro name, had told no one of his brother’s act. He allowed his clan to believe that he’d broken with Jasti over money his older brother had borrowed. So Jasti Aloro continued to attend family gatherings, bold as brass and with a smile for any

  young girl, always ready to invite them to sit on his knee.

  Three years ago Talis had dug in her heels and refused to attend any events where her uncle might be present. Her father angrily expostulated with her. “ ’Tis two years past, Talis! He’ll never hurt you again, you know he wouldn’t dare. He was drunk, Talis. Drunken men do lecherous, un-holy things. But you took no real hurt—and besides, who’s to say that you didn’t give him the wrong idea, eh? Young girls flirt innocently, not knowing how such flirting can inflame—”

  Talis had given her father a look so filled with utter loathing that he sputtered to a halt. In silence, she’d turned away, and since that time they had spoken only of surface things. But Talis stopped attendin
g family gatherings, and that was that.

  I could get him, she thought. Just a glimpse of a bared shoulder, a teasing smile, and he’d follow me into the alley like a bullock to the butcher. And he’d never come out again.

  Talis took a firm rein on her imagination. She wasn’t here in North Amis today to indulge in visions of vengeance. No, she was here to pick the brain of a certain farmer named Levons, who had sold a flock of sheep to the King’s garrison in Venra Bay last week.

  Squaring her shoulders, she picked up her skirts and forced herself to hurry. When she reached the White Horse, the tavern keeper, a thin, sour-looking man named Toneo, shouted at her. “Lazy slut! Where have you been? Get busy!”

  Talis hung up her shawl and made a rude gesture at the man, bringing guffaws from the patrons. Time to get into character, she told herself. She deliberately twitched her hips as she went to pick up the tray loaded with ale tankards, eliciting whistles and catcalls. She smiled at them archly, never revealing the disgust these drunken, lecherous men inspired in her. Talis was a good actress, and hence a good spy.

  While she picked up the rest of the loaded tankards, Toneo winked at her and whispered, “Master Levons is the one you want. The red-cheeked fellow sitting alone by the fire.”

  Talis winked back. Toneo was a strong supporter of the Cause.

  Hefting the tray, she quickly distributed the drinks, ending up at the portly sheep farmer’s table. When she handed him his ale, she gave him a dazzling smile. Levons smiled back and flipped her a coin. Talis made it disappear, then busied herself wiping up a splotch of spilled ale. “Can I get you anything else, Master?” she asked with a coy smile.

  Levons shook his head. “The only thing I want in this place, dearie, might be your sweet self.”

  Goddess spare me. Another lecherous swine. Talis sim-pered at him. “Oh, sir, you’ll turn a poor girl’s head, you will. Where are you from?”

  It turned out he was from some tiny village in the south that Talis had never heard of, not far from Casloria, which she had. Levons had been on the road now for two weeks and he was feeling lonely. Having a pretty young thing hanging on his every word suited him just fine.