Chapter 11

Somewhere in the house a door creaked open. Isabel barely heard it herself - she was half asleep on the couch, the retrieved bottle of wine drained down to a quarter of its former glory. The sound of the door opening was like the ringing of a gong, its echoes running through the huge mansion that reminded her so much of a yet-vacant tomb.

Murmuring half-hearted curses at Elias, she rolled over and pulled the blankets closer. It was drafty. She'd thought about getting up to look for a bedroom, but by the time the thought had crossed her mind she had already well-insulated herself with blankets and had been loathe to leave her spot.

She'd had a lot of thoughts of what she ought to do. Not five minutes after Elias had left, she had started to imagine ways of escaping back to Erenton and Rane. To the Void with her uncle and his speech; she was being held prisoner here and she'd be damned if she didn't see it that way. That Elias was her uncle she didn't doubt (there was too much of her mother's blue-blooded vanity in him), but it was hardly a rare thing when uncles were less kind than your parents. What was to stop Elias from treating her worse than Rane ever had?

That was what she had thought. But after Elias had taken her on the tour of the graveyard, her perspective had changed. It was one thing for her mother to go on about the age and power of House Thorington. It was another to walk among her ancestors' graves.

That this had been Elias's plan she had no doubt. He wanted her to take responsibility for who she was and awe her with the sight of hundreds of years of Thoringtons, of whom - if Elias was to be believed - she and her uncle were the last.

But even that hadn't changed how she saw things. After paying her respects at her mother's grave - she owed the self-righteous witch at least that - she hadn't planned on hesitating to get back to Rane. She hadn't intended on compromising.

It was that last grave that had done her in. She should have just ignored it and walked past. But the empty hole had drawn her curiosity and she'd read the damned inscription.

Sir Elias Thorington.

Looking at him then, she'd seen him as if for the first time. Clearly and without bias. She saw him standing there, smirking self-deprecatingly at the foot of his own plot; the mage in the heavy coat, though he didn't look like a magus then. He looked like an old man who had nothing but death to keep him company in his huge, empty mansion and his sprawling, untended estate. She wondered why he had never married.

She thought of the calm way he had stormed Rane's inn and a bizarre idea struck her like lightning. It was simply too much - too brazen to believe on something as small as suspicion.

But what if it was true? What if he was impotent?

The irony of the theory wasn't lost on Isabel. Gifted with power that common men could only dream of wielding and he was helpless to procreate. And perhaps there was a doubly ironic helping: That he - who could not continue the line - was the last male heir of a decimated dynasty.

Perhaps none of these thoughts (which assailed her as she stood before her uncle's grave) would have affected her so strongly if it had been the first time they had overwhelmed her. But it was not. She had seen the face of Elias's noble doom before. It had been on her mother's face, and it had been there as long as she had known her. It had made Melissa Thorington impossible to live with and nearly impossible to love. Elias's quip that she was a whore like her mother had cut more deeply than Isabel had dared let on. Because what had a young Isabel thought of her mother as if not a disgraced slut?

And it was that same doom that Isabel saw again. When Melissa Thorington told her daughter of the great heritage she had been born of all Isabel had been able to think of was how she had been born the way she had. And certainly her mother knew it and by knowing it was a hypocrite. Melissa trying to convince herself that she was a Thorington and a noblewoman and that she was raising a noble girl.

She saw that in Elias's grave. That he was trying to convince himself that he was his family's savior… and knowing that that was exactly what he was not.

If I should die…

So she had stayed. Damn him to undeath, she had stayed. She would not abandon Rane, but now she couldn't abandon Elias either. Like she hadn't been able to abandon her mother.

It was with these thoughts that she had made company for herself. She added the presence of the wine, which she had had to retrieve from the pantry, and had curled up on one of the couches long enough for her to lay comfortably. Her lover, her uncle and her mother wandered the walkways of her mind as she drank and slipped in and out of slumber.

The opening of a door somewhere in the house intruded on her dreamy, sleepy self. She recoiled from it and buried herself more deeply in the cushions and blankets. By all the gods, it was drafty in here, but she had never enjoyed a couch so comfortable in all her life. She could only dream about what the beds here must have been like. Perhaps this whole noble business wouldn't be so bad.

The soft sound of clink dink drew her back from the edge of sleep. With a moan she rolled over. If Elias was forcing her to stay here, then she would have access to the alcohol. She would make it clear that this was non-negotiable.

But it wasn't Elias that was taking away the drink. When Isabel shifted to speak, she saw Owen standing over her, frowning his Owen frown at the wine bottle in his hand.

"There's more in the pantry," she murmured to him, and made to roll back over.

But he jumped like he had been struck. Isabel watched in a sort of comical disbelief as the bottle tumbled out of his hands, flipped once, and landed with a crash on the floor.

On Owen's face, shock suddenly gave way to fright. "I'm sorry Miss Isabel," he said. He immediately went to his knees and started to pick up the pieces of glass, faster than she would have expected of a servant. "I'm so sorry, I… I didn't mean to wake you… I…" he trailed off, now picking up the pieces in softly whispering silence.

"It's all right Owen," she forced herself to say somewhat brightly. As brightly as she could, anyway. With an effort, she pulled off her blankets and crawled off the couch. "Let me help."

"No, no. Please. No."

"Owen, it's all right. I was just resting, not sleeping. Watch yourself now. They're sharp."

As they picked up the shattered remnants of the bottle - which of course had gone to pieces instead of just snapping off in a few large fragments - she added that warning because he seemed recklessly quick in shoving the shards into the palm of his hand. She already saw one cut. He only had eyes for the floor and the glass. He was like a startled rabbit ready to bolt once it had cleaned up its mess.

"Oh, I'm sorry miss. I didn't mean it, honest."

"I know it Owen. Stop apologizing."

He obeyed her command, though the guilt was as clear as it was spoken on his face. Once he had all he could carry he dashed for the pantry.

"Owen!" she called. He slowed to a stop and looked back. She indicated. "To the window. Elias doesn't need to know." And she winked at him, carrying her own pieces to one of the massive window panes that framed the woods and darkened sky so well. After a moment, he joined her.

The windows did open, as Isabel had suspected they did. But they were locked and it was a bit of an effort to force them up. Owen tried to intervene and force it open himself, but Isabel growled him off and he veritably leapt back. With his coordination and luck, he would shatter the pane from top to bottom. Then she would know what a real draft felt like.

She finally got it to wheel open a crack and a damp coolness slipped in. She dumped her glass down into the rain. While Owen stepped forward to do as she had done, she went back and gathered the rest of the big pieces. Thinking herself more dextrous than she was, she slit one of her thumbs. Cursing under her breath, she swept the rest of the glass-crumbs under the couch with her boot.

She helped Owen close and lock the window again. Once she was sure it was as it had been, she gave Owen an encouraging smile.

Still, he looked anxious. "Do you think he'll know?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Maybe." She didn't care, but when it was clear that Owen did she added, "I don't think he keeps track of inventory." She doubted he kept track of much in the place. How could he?

"Oh," was all Owen said. Then, "I'm sorry I woke you."

She forced a smile. "It's fine Owen. Really it is. I'm sorry I scared you."

"You're not scary, miss Isabel."

For some reason that made her really smile. "A girl likes to know that Owen. Thanks."

He looked down, as if ashamed of the attention. Then he frowned, and he sounded upset. "You're bleeding," he said.

A girl doesn't like to know that, she thought. She tried to wave his concern away and realized she was doing it with her bleeding hand. Thumb, at least. It did sting.

"I'm fine," she told him. "It's just a little thing."

"Can you fix it?"

Her smile slipped sideways up her cheekbone. "Hm?"

"Can you…" He looked at a loss for words, so he used his hands. They were even more confusing. They were rotating around each other. "Magic?" he tried.

Her tongue clicked the roof of her mouth. "Oh," she said. "No. The arcane can't do much in the way of healing. Or at least, I don't think it can. Perhaps Elias knows a healing spell. But I know very little."

"You knew enough to get him back home," he said.

Again, Owen's slipshod way of talking took her a moment to decipher. "Oh," she said again, and felt her face warming itself. "I just surprised him is all. It weren't nothing special. He handed me my ass on a platter once he got going."

The look on Owen's face was priceless. She imagined that he had just unintentionally visualized the expression.

"So," she shifted the subject. "How the hell did you get mixed up with my uncle?" It still felt strange saying it out loud. My uncle. "You're not one of my long-lost relatives too, are you?"

Owen shook his head. Isabel imagined it flying off his neck and bouncing off down the hallway. "No," he said. "He saved me. He was looking for you like they were."

"Who's they?"

"The dead people."

Forsaken. Doh. "They were after you?"

"No," he murmured. He rubbed the back of his neck. "They were after you."

The night Isabel had lost her maidenhead (and it hadn't been to Rane) had been the same night she had been hit with something like a carpenter's board. It had stung and it had almost made her cry. It had overwhelmed her and she hadn't really known what it was then, when the man had held her hair and kept her down, grunting like a man on the docks grunts when he goes about his work, throwing barrels over his shoulder and lugging crates and supplies. It had been that same kind of snort men make below their throat, where their chest meets their neck. He'd made that noise again and again

But what had really stung like the blow of a flat weapon hadn't been any of that, or any noise he had made. What had stung had been the poison that leaked into her then - into her heart, that was. A poison of shame.

In some ways what she felt now, as Owen stood there rubbing the back of his broad neck, saying that the Forsaken hadn't been after him but had been after her, was worse. It stung worse.

"Owen…" She realized that she had murmured. Clearing her throat, she said quietly, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. How did they know you knew me?"

Owen shrugged. It was a very helpless gesture, like a fly might make upon discovering that it was a spider's web that it had been caught in. "I don't know," he said, and he was so quiet that Isabel barely heard him. "I think… I don't know."

Isabel took a step forward. She carefully laid a hand on Owen's arm. This time his eyes were the only thing that jumped. She saw for the first time that he had eyes like wet grass. She pulled him towards the couch and she sat him down beside her.

"Tell me everything," she said. "Tell me about everything. Please."

Owen shook his head again.

"No." Isabel felt herself squeezing his arm and imagined it must have hurt, but Owen didn't flinch. "Tell me. You have to. I have to know. What did they do?"

Owen looked bleakly up at her. Down at her, really. He had half a head on her even sitting down. "It isn't for… a lady to hear."

Isabel almost laughed, but it came up her throat hollow so she let it curl up and die there. Elias must have been rubbing off on him. Before she could stop herself, she was telling him, "It's my fault. No, it is. Everything that happened to you was my fault. You have to tell me what happened and how they found you. Everything." She squeezed his arm again, lighter this time. "All right?"

Owen was looking down at where the bottle had landed and shattered. Other than a few scrapes in the floor, it looked good as new.

"All right," he said.