Blood of Dragons - Страница 44

Selden awoke to low voices. A man’s voice, insistent and almost mocking, a woman’s voice, indignant and venturing toward anger. ‘I will tell my father.’

‘Who do you think gave me the key? Who do you think ordered the guards to allow me to come and go as I please?’

‘You have not married me! You have no right to touch me! Get away! Stop!’

It took Selden a time to realize that he was awake, that this was not a dream, and that he recognized the woman’s voice. He dragged himself to a sitting position on the narrow divan. The fire in the little hearth had burned low: it was late at night, then. He looked around the small study. No one was there. A dream, then?

No. A man’s voice, low and angry, from the next room: ‘Come here!’

He clutched his head to make the room stop spinning, then went off into a coughing fit and abruptly the voices in the other room were stilled.

‘You’ve wakened him,’ Chassim exclaimed. ‘I have to see if he is all right. You would not want him to die before my father has the chance to kill him.’ Her voice was full of disgust for whoever she addressed.

‘He can wait until I’m finished,’ the man replied abruptly. His words were followed by a crash of falling furniture, and then a woman’s shriek, suddenly muffled.

The long robe she had given him to wear was twisted around his hips and swaddled his legs. Selden swung his legs off the bed and then struggled to free himself. ‘Chassim!’ he called, and then choked on his coughing. He stood, feeling too tall, swaying like a reed in the wind. His knees started to buckle under him. He grabbed the back of the divan and took two staggering steps until his outstretched hands met the stout wood of the door. He had not been out of this room since he arrived here; he had no idea where the door led. He slapped at the heavy panels and then found the handle and tugged at the catch. The door swung open and he followed it in a stagger. Chassim was pinned on the bed by a heavy man. His one hand clutched her throat while with the other he was dragging her nightrobe up her body. Her hands tugged hopelessly at the hand that choked her. Her head was flung back, her braided hair coming loose, her mouth wide open and her eyes bulging with terror at not being able to breathe.

‘Let her go!’ he shouted, but the words took all his breath. He staggered forward, coughing. He caught at a pot of flowers and threw it at the man. It bounced off his back and fell to the floor, unbroken, rolling in a half circle, spilling soil as it went. The man glanced over his shoulder; his face, already red with passion, went purple with fury. ‘Out! Get out, or I kill you now, you freak!’

‘Chassim!’ Selden shouted, for her tongue was beginning to protrude from her mouth. ‘You’re killing her! Let her go!’

‘She is mine to kill! As are you!’ Ellik shouted. He released her, lifting his body off her to come at Selden.

A brass figurine was at hand. Selden threw it at the Chancellor, and watched it sail past him to land with a thud on the floor. Then Ellik seized him by the front of his robe, lifted him off his feet and shook him like a rag. Selden could not control the wild whipping of his head. He rained blows on his attacker but there was no strength in his hands or arms. An angry child would have fought more effectively. Ellik laughed, mocking and triumphant, and flung Selden aside. He struck the door and clutched at it as he slid down it. Darkness made the room small and then it did not exist at all.

Someone gripped his shoulders, rolling him onto his back. He flailed, trying to land a telling blow until he heard Chassim say, ‘Stop it. It’s me. He’s gone.’

The room was in darkness. As his eyes adjusted, he made out the paleness of her nightrobe, and then the faded gold of her tattered braids hanging around her face. Seeing her face with her hair half loosened around it made him realize she was younger than he had thought. He pushed his own hair back from his face and suddenly realized that he hurt. All over. Badly. It must have showed on his face for she said wearily, ‘He saved a few kicks for you, on his way out.’

‘Did he hurt you?’ he asked, and saw small sparks of rage light in her eyes at the stupidity of his question.

‘No. He only raped me. Not even in a very imaginative way. Just plain old-fashioned choking, slapping and rape.’

‘Chassim,’ he said, shocked; almost rebuking her for how callously she dismissed it.

‘What?’ she demanded. Her mouth was swollen but her lip still curled in dismay. ‘Did you think it my first time? It was not. Or will you pretend to be surprised, and claim that this is not the way of your kind?’

She touched him kindly as she spoke so harshly, taking him by the shoulders and pulling him to a sitting position. He coughed again and was ashamed when she lifted the corner of her sleeve and wiped his mouth with it. When he could speak, he said, ‘Among my people, rape is not condoned.’

‘No? But I am sure it still happens all the same.’

‘It does,’ he had to admit. He gently pulled free of her. If she had not been watching, he would have crawled back to the divan. He could feel where Ellik had kicked him. Once in the ribs, once on the hip and once in the head. It hurt, but it could have been worse. Once, he had seen a man beaten down and then stamped upon. It had happened right outside his cage when he had first been put on display. The attackers had all been drunk, all mocking spectators, and he had not felt kindly toward any of them, but he had still screamed at them to stop and yelled for help, for anyone to come and intervene.

No one had.

‘I tried to make him stop,’ he said. Then he wondered why he had pointed out his own failure to her. He got himself to his feet and crossed the short space to the divan, catching at furniture as he went. When he reached it, he more fell than sat on it.

Chassim watched him accomplish this, then went to the hearth’s edge and added a stick or two of wood. In a few moments, flame woke and ran along the sticks. In the additional light, he could see her cheek starting to purple. ‘Yes. You did,’ she said, as if there had been no gap in their conversation. Then she turned to look at him directly. Sitting on the floor, with her braids falling down, her pale nightdress catching light and shadow from the fire, she looked more childish than ever. Like Malta, when she was a girl and he a small boy and they had sometimes crept down to the kitchen at night to see what treats the cook might have tucked away in the pantry. It had been a very long time ago, he suddenly realized. A tiny bit of a pampered childhood that had lasted only a short time before war and hardship had shattered it forever.

Chassim’s eyes were not a child’s as she asked him, ‘Why? Why did you do that? He might have killed you.’

‘He was hurting you. It was wrong. And you had been kind to me …’ He was shocked that she would ask him why he had tried to help her. Was it such a strange act? He reached deeper, pulled up a painful honesty. ‘It happened to me once.’ He blurted out the words and then was horrified. He had never intended to speak of it to anyone. Having someone else know about it made it real.

She stared at him, her blue eyes wide, and he wondered what she thought of him now. How much less human did it make him in her eyes?

‘How?’ she said at last, and he saw that she did not grasp what he was saying.

He spoke roughly and suddenly understood her own callousness when she had spoken of what Ellik had just done to her. ‘There was a man who wanted me. As a novelty, I think, as when some men mate with an animal, just to see what might be different. He paid the man who kept me captive well. My keeper let him into my cage and walked away. And … it was like he was insane. Like I was a thing, not even an animal. I defied him, and I fought him, and then, eventually, I pleaded, when I knew he was far stronger than I was. It didn’t help. He hurt me. Badly. And then he got off me and walked away. There is something about knowing that someone is taking pleasure in giving you incredible pain … with no remorse. It changes how you see yourself; it changes what you can believe of other people. It changes everything.’ His words ground to a halt.

‘I know,’ she said simply.

A silence fell. The fire crackled and he felt more naked than he had when he was displayed bare for all to see. ‘I was sick for days afterward. Really sick. I had so much pain. I bled and I had a fever. I don’t think I’ve been completely healthy since then.’ The words tumbled out of him. He lifted his hand, covered his own mouth to stop them. Tears he had not shed then nor since burned in his eyes. The tears of a torn and battered child, helpless against violence done to him. With his last shred of manhood, of dignity, he fought to hold them back.

‘Flesh rips when you are forced.’ She spoke the harsh fact quietly. ‘I have heard people, other women, make mock of it. As something that some women deserve, or as a fillip of excitement to the act. Something to pretend, for titillation. I cannot understand it. It makes me want to slap them and choke them until they understand.’ She stood up slowly and he could see the pain it cost her. She took a few breaths and then leaned over him to pull a blanket around him. ‘Go to sleep,’ she suggested.

‘Maybe tomorrow will be a better day,’ he dared to say. He coughed again.

‘I doubt it,’ she said, but without bitterness. ‘But whatever it is, it will be the only day we have.’ She left the room slowly, pausing at the door. ‘Your dragon,’ she said. She cocked her head at him. ‘Did it hurt when she changed you?’