Waves of welcoming heat billowed toward her. The hall was antiquated but not neglected. The hearth was modern and sent smoke up an unseen flue instead of directly into the chamber. The snow on Louvaen’s cloak melted, turning it and her into a sodden mess. She shrugged it off her shoulders and held the dripping garment in an outstretched arm with a grimace. “Where can I put this?”
“I’ll take it, mistress.”
Louvaen whirled. The woman holding out her hand for the cloak was a small creature, no taller than Cinnia, but wiry with sharp features and brown hair streaked gray. She raked Louvaen with a gaze that measured, examined and judged. Whatever she saw made her eyebrows arch, and she offered a faint smile.
“Lou, this is Magda, housekeeper and cook for Ketach Tor.” She plucked the mantle out of Louvaen’s hand and passed it to the woman. “Magda, this is my older sister Louvaen Duenda.”
Magda inclined her head in polite greeting. “Welcome to Ketach Tor, Mistress Duenda.”
Louvaen returned both the gesture and the smile. “You keep a fine hall, madam.”
The housekeeper’s chest puffed up with pride, and her eyes sparked approval at Louvaen’s compliment. She held the dripping cloak and gestured with her other hand. “Give me your stockings and shoes. They’re bound to be soaked through. You can warm your feet by the fire.”
Cinnia pushed Louvaen gently toward one the two chairs facing the hearth. “Sit there. I’ll fetch some dry stockings. No slippers, mind. Your feet are bigger than mine.”
In no time, Louvaen was comfortably ensconced in a chair with a blanket draped over her shoulders, a mug of warm ale spiced with nutmeg in her hand, and a pair of Cinnia’s stockings encasing her feet and legs. Magda had vanished with her wet things, remarking over her shoulder they’d dry faster at the kitchen hearth. She disappeared behind a set of wooden screens carved in linen fold patterns.
Cinnia sat across from her, clasping her own mug. “Is Papa very ill?”
Louvaen shrugged. “A dry cough and a touch of fever. Nothing bad, but he shouldn’t be out in this weather.”
“No one should, not even you. You could have waited until the weather turned.”
“There were no snow storms until I was magicked to the edge of a cliff, dear.” Louvaen sipped her ale in an attempt to blunt her tongue’s sharpness. “I wouldn’t be here at all if you hadn’t run off with de Lovet.” She took in the hall once more and peered upward to the mezzanine and second floor. “Where is he, by the way?”
Cinnia shot her a wary glance from under a sweep of blonde curls. “Gavin? Why do you ask?”
Louvaen scowled. “So I can shoot him for spiriting you out of Monteblanco.” She pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “Do you understand what you’ve done to your reputation, Cinnia? I’ve told more lies in the past week than I have in my entire life trying to explain why you vanished.”
The girl had the grace to flush with embarrassment but raised her chin. “I’m sorry I made you and Papa worry, but you read my note. You knew I wasn’t in any danger.”
“I knew no such thing! What we know of Gavin de Lovet is only what he’s told us.” She gestured at the hall. “Wealthy or not, and I’m wagering on the ‘not,’ the de Sauveterres live in a fortress. A fortress, Cinnia, built on a spit of rock surrounded by a gorge. There are drawbridges and arrow slits and a hall filled with every manner of sharp implement. I can only imagine what the kitchen must look like. These people obviously have made enemies, ones who want to do great harm to them. You shouldn’t be here; neither should I.”
Cinnia thumped her mug on the floor. A frown line marred her brow, and she crossed her arms. Louvaen signed and braced herself for at least an hour of fruitless arguing. “This castle was built hundreds of years ago, Lou. Those enemies are long gone.” She passed a hand over her bodice. “As you can see, I’m perfectly well. Happy too. Besides, I don’t care what a bunch of old crones in the sewing society think of me.”
“You should care if you intend to marry one of their sons.” Cinnia was beautiful, intelligent and sweet. She was also mule-headed, and Louvaen fought not to tear out her own hair in frustration.
Cinnia stuck her nose in the air. “I’m not interested in any of their precious sons.”
Louvaen half rose out of her chair. “For gods’ sake, stop being so daft. A young, unmarried woman who runs off with a man makes herself a target for every Jimenin and his ilk to try and make her his bawd, willing or not.” Cinnia’s eyes, soft as a doe’s, filled with tears. Louvaen’s heart lurched. She abandoned her seat and sank to her knees in front of her sister. Cinnia’s hand trembled as Louvaen pressed her palm against her cheek for a moment before turning to kiss it. “That is a bitter life, my love. Something you’ll never suffer while I live.”
Cinnia’s sad smile was uncannily wise. She ran her thumb over the curve of Louvaen’s cheekbone. “You can’t be my savior knight forever, Lou.”
“Watch me.”
They both laughed. Cinnia sniffled and blinked back her tears. “Did you know ‘Sauveterre’ means safe land?”
Louvaen snorted. “That’s rich. What ancestor enjoyed a fine turn of phrase to choose such a title?”
“It’s fitting. I’m safe here—from Jimenin and anyone else who’d force me.”
“And Gavin and his family?”
“They treat me like a lady of the manor. Gavin courts me as any fine gentleman, and Ambrose is the epitome of courtesy. You’ve met Magda.” Cinnia grinned. “She reminds me of you quite a bit. I think she’d flatten anyone who so much as blinked at me cross-wise.”
Louvaen liked Magda more and more. She noticed Cinnia hadn’t mentioned the patriarch of the family. “And Lord de Sauveterre? Is he as genteel as his son and his retainer?”
This time Cinnia hesitated for a second. “I’ve met Ballard de Sauveterre twice. He prefers his solitude.” She lowered her voice. “He’s disfigured and goes cloaked and hooded so none may gaze upon his face.” Her brown eyes glittered with pity. “Poor man; I’ve seen his hands. Mangled things with black claws.”
“Claws?” Louvaen leapt to her feet, still holding Cinnia’s hand. She tugged the girl up beside her. “What manner of man sports claws?” The same panic that had driven her to Ketach Tor through a sleepless week of teeth-chattering cold returned. “Find my boots and cloak and dress yourself warmly. We’ll have to leave whatever you’ve brought. I’ll meet you at the stable. Plowfoot is big enough to carry two. We’ll ride pillion.”
Cinnia jerked her hand away. “Stop it,” she snapped. “Neither of us is in any danger, and I’m not going anywhere. You’re welcome to stay here with me.” Anger and pleading warred for prominence on her features. “I want you to stay with me, at least until Gavin can bring money to Jimenin to pay Papa’s debt.” She crossed her arms again. “But you’ll not make me go with you, no matter how much shouting and ordering you do.”
Louvaen slapped her palm to her forehead. “Gods, when did you become so stubborn?”
“When I stopped being ten years old and understood that while you’re my older sister, you aren’t my mother.”
Cinnia’s remark, declared in a matter-of-fact voice, stole Louvaen’s breath. She collapsed in her chair and gazed at her sister for several quiet moments. Something profound had just shifted between them. When Mercer’s second wife Abigail died, the thirteen-year old Louvaen had assumed the running of the household and the parenting of the five-year old Cinnia. While difficult in many respects, the tasks had come naturally to her, and both father and younger daughter had fallen easily into the pattern of following the forceful oldest child’s direction. Louvaen grew queasy at the idea that over the years she’d turned into the family tyrant in her bid to protect those she loved. For the first time, Cinnia had truly rebelled against her, and Louvaen floundered.
“If I return without you, Papa will never forgive me.” She reached for Cinnia’s hand. “Please, come home with me. We’ll figure out a way to defeat Jimenin.”
Cinnia clasped her fingers and squeezed. “Papa will understand and wish me well when you tell him I’m perfectly fine and enjoying my stay at Ketach Tor. And we already have the means to appease Jimenin.” She offered a tentative smile. “For once, you’ll have to trust that I can not only rescue myself but help our family just like you do.”
Louvaen studied her stocking feet, exhaled a long sigh and finally met Cinnia’s calm gaze. “I often tell people there’s far more to you than a beautiful face. Maybe I need to remind myself of the same occasionally.”
Cinnia grinned. “Maybe.” The grin transformed to a relieved laugh, and the two sisters embraced. “Will you stop arguing with me long enough to have some supper and see the room Magda readied for you? Even if I agreed to go with you, we’d have to wait out the weather.”
Louvaen’s stomach gave a loud gurgle. She patted it into submission. “I can use a bite.” She captured Cinnia before the girl could run off to the kitchen. “First, you tell me why your courtly Gavin isn’t here by your side to guard against me stealing you back from him.”
The most blood-chilling cry she’d ever heard answered her, reverberating up through the floor as if some poor creature was being butchered alive. The fine hairs on her nape stood on end. She wouldn’t be surprised if those on her head were doing the same. “Merciful gods, what was that?”
Besides a pitying flinch, Cinnia appeared unconcerned by the inhuman shrieks echoing throughout the hall. “Lord de Sauveterre is...ill.”
Louvaen gawked at her. “With what? He sounds like he’s being drawn and quartered!”
Cinnia cringed as the screams reached a crescendo before falling off to keening moans.
Horror wracked Louvaen with shudders hard enough to make her teeth clack together. “What in the name of hell is going on, Cinnia? No man makes noises like that.”
“Those who are tortured do.”
Both women jumped at the new voice. Louvaen stumbled back against her chair, tipping it over so that it hit the rushes and stirred up a small cloud of dust. A man emerged from behind the screens separating the kitchen from the hall. Short, compact and dressed in robes of faded azure shot with silver and embroidered with arcane symbols in black thread. White tufts of hair stuck from his head like the bristles of a frightened hedgehog. He peered at her and Cinnia with eyes made unnaturally large by the spectacles perched on his nose. That nose twitched—along with his pointed beard—as if he smelled something new.
“Ambrose. I’m glad you’re here.” Cinnia rushed to him and curtsied.
“The magician,” Louvaen said flatly.
“The magician,” he agreed and held out a bejeweled hand.
Unsure if he expected her to kiss one of his rings—for which he’d stand there waiting until he rotted—Louvaen took his fingers in a hesitant grasp. He brushed dry lips across her knuckles and straightened. “Mistress Duenda. Your sister and Sir Gavin have regaled us with tales of you and your father.”
“I’ll bet they have,” she murmured. She suspected Gavin’s commentary had been less than complimentary.
He released her hand, the thin smile curving his mouth indicating he’d heard her remark. “Your horse has been stabled for the night and a room made ready for you.”
Louvaen blinked. What strange madness gripped this place that no one—not even her sister who’d been known to weep over a crushed spider—seemed bothered by the horrendous sounds emanating from the castle depths? She recalled Ambrose’s first greeting. “Who is torturing Lord de Sauveterre? And where is his son?”
“He’s sick as well and in his room.” Cinnia gave her a weak smile.
“Is that so? Someone’s tearing his arms off too?”
Cinnia gestured to Ambrose, begging silently for his help. The sorcerer folded his hands in front of him and eyed Louvaen as if she were an interesting, if not particularly bright child. Louvaen suddenly understood why Cinnia snarled at her sometimes for what seemed like no reason. “Ketach Tor, mistress, lies in the center of a pool of wild magic. Sometimes the magic is weak, other times powerful—in flux. We call the strong periods high tide. Most of us suffer no ill effects from the flux. The most I deal with are potions reacting badly or spells turned backwards. The master and his son, however, are sickened by it. Gavin is bedridden with fever. His father suffers the worst.”
“Is there nothing you can do to relieve his suffering?” Louvaen wasn’t one to cry over a crushed spider, but the idea of a man repeatedly broken on such a brutal wheel made her sick to her soul. Gods, how she hated magic.
Ambrose shook his head. “No. The
dominus
is strong and the flux temporary. He’ll get through it.”
“Are you sure? He sounds like he’s being hacked into several pieces right now.”
“I’m sure. This isn’t the first time he’s survived a flux. It won’t be his last.”
The lackadaisical attitude of de Sauveterre’s household toward their master’s distress flummoxed her. The noises he made almost had her running through this unknown place in an effort to search him out and do what she could to put him out of his misery.
Cinnia must have read her thoughts in her expression. “There’s nothing we can do, Lou, except wait and give him comfort when it’s over.”
Louvaen had stepped into some twisted fairytale, complete with magic born of the left hand path, a sorcerer who deemed her intelligent as a turnip and a lord tortured in his own home by an unseen tormentor without a drop of mercy. She leveled a long stare on her sister. “Are you sure you want to stay?”