She came back to herself when a bucketful of intensely cold water was thrown in her face.
Coughing and sputtering, she tried to jerk away from this new source of torment, only to find she was restrained to an even greater degree than she had been before. She was propped against the same support post as Gunther now, sitting at a ninety degree angle to him, their shoulders pressed together – in fact, her head had been slumped against his shoulder until she'd raised it with a start when the water had hit her.
Her arms were still tied behind her, and now she was bound to the post as well, in the same way that Gunther was.
As for Gunther, she felt his body stiffen in response to her own movements, heard his sharp intake of breath as he realized that she was conscious again. Then something amazing happened – something small but something that was, under the circumstances, an incredible gift.
Despite their bonds, he somehow managed to grab her nearer hand and twine his fingers through hers, his action hidden by the angle of their bodies.
She shuddered in reaction, clamping down on his hand so hard it hurt – and he squeezed back, even harder.
Then, "here, my lady, allow me to assist you," came a voice from her other side, and another hand, one that was definitely not Gunther's, pushed her sopping hair out of her eyes. Blinking, still badly disoriented, Jane turned her head and got her first look at the outlaw captain, Marten Broadcloak.
He was hunkered down in front of her, putting them more or less on eye-level; a broad-shouldered, raven-haired, dark-eyed man of perhaps thirty-five. His clothing – all of it – was as black as his hair. When he saw that he had her attention, he gave her a small smile.
"My lady, I must apologize for the behavior of my man Hugh." He gestured back over his shoulder and Jane saw Hugh standing just inside the tent flap, arms crossed over his chest and glaring murder at her. He was sporting the beginnings of a rather spectacular black eye.
"He has his uses," Marten continued, "but he is… impulsive. Also surprisingly naive, in some ways at least. For instance, assuming that you have no worth simply because you are not the princess. I would never underestimate you like that, Lady Jane. You see, unlike my second-in-command, I am fully aware that you and your husband here – (a look of shock flashed across Hugh's discolored face at this) – will likely prove to be of… significant value. You can rest assured that Hugh will not touch you again… without my leave."
Jane said nothing. Her head was spinning. Broadcloak stared hard at her for a moment, then flashed her that quick, cold, disconcerting smile again. And then he bent his head and took up right where Hugh had been so lately obliged to leave off – unlacing her jerkin.
"No!" she croaked, trying to wrench away.
"Get your filthy hands off her!" Gunther snarled, lunging against his own restraints in an effort to reach the man in black. He would have pulled his hand from Jane's but she tightened her grasp still further – something she wouldn't have believed possible a moment before. She was desperate, though. She needed that contact more than ever now. It felt like the only lifeline she had left.
Because he was working calmly and methodically, Broadcloak was able to manipulate the laces easily, unlike Hugh in his earlier lust-fueled frenzy. In a matter of seconds he had worked them quite loose. Jane's breaths were piling up, one atop another – she realized, with a queer sort of detachment, that she was beginning to hyperventilate.
This nightmare was never going to end. It was just going to keep spiraling down, into fresh depths of horror, down and down and d–
The outlaw captain pushed the leather aside, just enough to bare her shoulder – no more. "My apologies, Sir Gunther," he said calmly. "I mean no disrespect to your wife's lovely person. I simply had to indulge my curiosity. Extraordinary."
And he reached out a single black-gloved finger to trace the shape of Jane's tiny silver scar.
She gasped in a shuddery breath, trying to flinch away from his touch, unable. Gaze still riveted on her shoulder, Broadcloak murmured, "no one survives one of these wounds unless Jack intends him to survive. Have you even the least idea how miraculously lucky you were?"
"It was not luck," she whispered rawly. "It was Gunther."
He returned his eyes to hers, then abruptly pulled back, settling himself cross-legged on the floor a couple of feet away from her.
"Do you know why I wear all black, my lady?" he asked, changing tack completely.
Jane simply stared at him for a moment, panting, shocked and bewildered and thrown completely off-kilter, still teetering on the knife-edge of pure, mindless panic, trying to reel herself back in with only limited success.
"Wh – what?" she managed. She barely recognized her own voice. It was still little more than a painful rasp. Hugh had damaged something in her throat, it seemed.
It felt like he had damaged something in her mind, too. She couldn't clear the fog, despite the fact that she was trying, trying hard.
Hugh at least had been predictable in his single-mindedness. This man was as changeable as sunlight on moving water, and all her instincts were screaming that he was ten times more dangerous than Hugh had ever been, his gentler aspect and courteous words notwithstanding, and she couldn't keep up with him, God help her, she was so… so compromised. She just couldn't.
"I wear black," he said, "because I am grieving. Grieving my brother, who took a wound of his own on the very same day you took yours. Sadly, he did not have your luck. Or was it only that he did not have your… Gunther?" His eyes burned into hers. "I wonder what you would do if you did not have your Gunther? I loved my brother, Lady Jane, and yet I have had to learn to make my way without him, painful as it is. Perhaps it is time to settle the score and see just how well you would cope with the loss of someone you love, hm?"
It was as if he'd thrown a second bucket of ice-cold water on her. Her breath caught. It almost felt as though Hugh's hands had closed back around her neck, and sheer panic was trying to claw its way up her throat and she couldn't let it, she couldn't, because if she did she'd start screaming and if that happened she wouldn't be able to stop herself. She would just scream, and scream, and scream forever because this man was threatening to kill Gunther and she didn't think she could survive that – not, at any rate, with her sanity intact.
Then Gunther squeezed her hand again and she heard him whisper "breathe, Jane," and she managed to swallow back the terror and the panic and suck in something that at least marginally resembled a breath of air, wounded and hitching though it was.
Broadcloak, who had been watching her intently through all of this, said quietly, "I imagine you would do just about anything to prevent that, would you not, my lady?"
"Yes," Jane croaked.
"That," said the outlaw captain, "is very good news." He raised a hand and beckoned. "Now please, Hugh."
The other man stooped, picked up something that lay on the floor by his feet, and brought it over, depositing it beside his commander. When Jane saw what it was she automatically pressed herself back, as far back as she could against the unyielding wooden post. A tiny whimper was wrenched out of her. Her control was slipping. God help her, it was nearly gone.
Marten brought the quiver – for of course that's what it was, a quiver of very distinctive and recognizable arrows – onto his lap.
"I have new reason to grieve today," he said. "My friend Jack has fallen, I am told, among many others. I trust your heart is not broken by the news. His legacy, however –" he pulled out an arrow, twirled it casually between his fingers – "well, that endures."
He smiled at her again; a sharp, white, feral grin gleaming briefly out from his tanned and weathered face. "So here is what is going to happen, my lady. You are going to tell me what I want to know, and all will be well. Defy me, though –" abruptly he snapped the arrow in two, pouring the liquid that had been contained within the hollow shaft out onto the earthen floor. "Defy me, and you get to watch your husband die. Slowly, and in agony. All it takes is a scratch, as you well know. Do we understand each other?"
"What –" she had to break off and swallow back a wave of bile. "What do you want me to say? What do you want to know?"
