Battles of Salt and Sighs by Val Saintcrowe

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ONIVIA AWOKE TOLarent standing over her couch. She scrambled up, pulling the blanket she had over her up with her, even though she was well covered beneath. She slept in the same clothes that she wore all the time, only removing her structured undergarments for comfort. Once a week, she wrapped in a towel to wash everything and then hang it out to dry. It was often not dry by the time she had to put it back on for dinner, and on those days, she simply wore damp clothes.

“It’s not only Akiel, you know,” he said. “It’s everyone. You are human and you are hated. Your people have not afforded my people any kind of consideration for generations. So, most fae believe there is no reason that we should treat you with any niceties at all. You have raped our women, so we’ll rape you. It’s a certain crude logic that I’m sure you can appreciate.”

Was she supposed to react to that? What could she possibly say?

“Well, I don’t agree,” he said. “On the other hand, I can see arguments that can be made. After all, generally speaking I think killing is wrong, but in the case of this war, it must be done, because the atrocities visited upon my people must end, and this is the most efficient way of making sure that happens. One could argue that visiting atrocities on human women shows them rather efficiently that they have no power over us, that it strips away their ideas of superiority to the fae rather handily. What do you think, domina? Do you feel superior to me?”

“Our superiority lies in our morality,” she said. “The death fae are evil—”

“Come now.” He raised his eyebrows.

She looked away. He was right, of course. Morally speaking, the humans were no different than the fae, and perhaps worse. “But the death magic, Larent,” she murmured. “You don’t have magic, but the magic is—”

“Natural,” he said. “There is nothing evil about death and decay, about frost and cold, or about the extinguishment of flame. These things are all natural, normal things.”

She had not thought of it that way.

“The magic itself is not evil. It’s the application of it,” said Larent.

“Does it matter what I think?” she said.

He sat down on the couch next to her. “I can’t get out of it. Do you understand that? Even if I could stop Akiel from wishing to watch me have you, it would still… nearly every fae man in the cohort indulges, and none of them want to hear me say that what they are doing is rape or a crime. They won’t listen, and they will turn on me. So, I have no choice.”

“Well,” she said, “I don’t have a choice either. You have already indicated to me that you will take me no matter what I say, so I don’t know why we’re having this conversation. Even if I agree, I’m under duress. I’m a captive here, and I can’t leave, and you’ve already violated me, so I have no ability to consent, not in this position.”

“I understand that,” he said.

“But it doesn’t matter?”

“It’ll be easier for us both if you are physically cooperative.”

“It’ll be easier for you, because you won’t have to fight me.” Her voice rose.

“It will be easier for you as well, because otherwise, I will be forced to hurt you, and then there will be physical pain and lingering damages that need to heal. I can spare you that.”

“I’m not going to agree to this. I’m never going to agree to it.”

“You don’t have to agree. You can internally curse me. You can curse me out loud when we’re alone, for all I care. But if you can pretend to enjoy yourself and to be willing, even eager, that would be best.”

“No.”

“There must be something you want that I can provide for you.”

“Always with bargaining.”

He shrugged. “I find people respond better that way than to threats. So… what about your Cassus?”

“I’m not whoring myself out for you to leave Cassus in the dungeons.”

“I’ll free him.”

Her lips parted. She was stunned.

“Well?”

“You can do that?”

“I could find a way, yes,” he said. “It wouldn’t be easy for me.”

Her mind began to churn. Cassus was young and stupid and inept. He wanted to help Magdalia, but could he? He had connections with his brother, but certainly he’d never be able to employ those against the Croith. He wasn’t skilled with fighting or anything like that. He wasn’t cunning. He…

“Not enough?” said Larent quietly. “I realize it’s not nothing, what I’m asking of you. For it to be convincing, we’ll need to prepare, so that will be another invasion of your body.”

“What do you mean by ‘prepare’?” What preparation could they need?

“Practice, I suppose.”

“No, I’m not submitting to you—”

“I don’t mean fucking, I just mean… women’s bodies are not all the same, and I am not familiar with the topography of yours, that is all. I need to, er, explore a little.”

“You put your hands all over me at dinner.”

“Not your breasts or cunny,” he said. “I have never touched you there.”

“You have, when you put your cock in my…” She couldn’t say the word he’d used, though she’d heard it before. It was vulgar. “In me.”

“All right, I touched it, but barely, and not your clit, and I didn’t… I barely remember—”

“Well, it doesn’t seem necessary, then. You seemed to achieve it fine then, so what is different now?”

“It’s necessary.”

She set her jaw. “But—”

“It is.”

“Fine,” she muttered. “In that case, Cassus is definitely not enough.”

“All right, so then what can I offer you?”

She licked her lips, and then it tumbled out of her mouth. “Free me.”

“Is that really what you want? How will that be different than what we spoke of before?” he said. “If I somehow pretend to have lost track of you, then you’ll be out in the punishing wilderness alone. It’s better for you if you let me deliver you to your sister as we already planned.”

“I want to go now, with Cassus.”

“No. Impossible. I need you through the winter.”

“Are you going to be fucking me at every opportunity, then?” She couldn’t believe she’d said the word out loud.

“No, not unless we have an audience,” he said.

She shuddered in spite of herself.

“Ask for something else,” he said.

“That’s what I want,” she said.

“No, there must be something else.”

“There isn’t. What I truly want, I can never have. I want to be home again, safe in my villa, my sister down the hall in her bedchamber, my family alive—”

“Yes, well, I want to have grown up in a world in which I wasn’t owned,” he said, glaring at her.

“You speak as if that’s my fault, when you participated in the slaughter of my family, and I never owned you.”

“You owned others like me.”

“I was a good dominissa,” she said. “I was never needlessly harsh or cruel. I was—”

“Stop,” he said, his voice hard. “Stop, before I forget this entire thing and decide you deserve it rough.”

She cringed, backing away from him.

He got up from the couch, and he began to pace.

This was becoming familiar between them, her sitting here, him pacing, the cracks in her widening and deepening. Soon she’d shatter and she’d be nothing but little pieces of herself.

He stopped and turned to look at her. “I could teach you some things, basic self-defense, things you can do even without a weapon. That way, after you leave me, if you don’t wish the attentions of someone else, you can perhaps hurt him and run away.”

She had never thought of such a thing before.

“The truth is, domina, you are never going to be as strong as a man. There may be some weaklings you could overpower, but even a half-grown adolescent will be able to beat you. Men and women are simply built differently, and you are not…” He looked her over. “You have never used your body at all, built any strength. Even so, there are some techniques that I know of, things that can be used against a man, ways to use his strength against him. I used to teach girls at my villa. Our dominus would be stumbling about drunk and usually didn’t remember the next morning where he’d been or what he’d been about. Even if he did, it was sometimes worth it to them to get free of him.”

She swallowed. “And you wished to protect them, because of your mother.”

He sighed. “My mother… the worst of it with my mother was that she was beaten in here.” He touched his temple. “Generations of helplessness mean it’s easy to think that you must simply go along with it all, make the best of it. The other slaves hated her for her seeming submission, and they hated me too. I wanted to show them that I wanted to fight, that I wasn’t willing to roll over and accept—” He threw up his hands. “Why am I telling you this?” He bowed his head, dragging his fingers over his face. “Never mind. Never mind it all.” He started to walk towards his bedchamber.

She got up from the couch. “Wait. You’re just leaving? That’s the end of the negotiations?”

“Why am I negotiating with you?” He strode through into his bedchamber. “It makes you think you have power in this situation, and you don’t. I’m giving it to you, and why? You belong to me. Every part of you does. I can do whatever I like with you, and I will, and I don’t need your permission.” But she could hear that he was trying to convince himself of this, and that was why he was saying it out loud.

She went to the door of his bedchamber and hovered there. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter. You have already taken my virtue. I don’t know what I’m protecting.”

He raised his gaze to hers and touched his temple. “Protecting yourself here. In your mind. You know that’s the only thing that truly matters.”

Perhaps he was right.

“Maybe it would be easier for you if I just broke you, however.”

She let out a noise, and she didn’t know what it was, but it was something anguished.

“Quicker,” he said. “All the suffering at once.” He was talking to himself. “Then it would be over and done with for you.”

“No,” she said.

He didn’t respond.

“Look at me,” she said.

He didn’t.

“I’m not going to break.” Her voice was strong and defiant, even though she’d just been thinking that she was about to shatter. “No matter what you do, I won’t, and if you’re brutal with me, it will only make us into enemies, and I know your weaknesses.”

He did look at her now, and there was a glint of respect in his gaze. “Aren’t we already enemies, domina?”

“I’ll tell,” she said. “I’ll tell that you aren’t fucking me. I’ll tell the women, and they’ll tell their men, and soon everyone—”

He crossed the room to her and cut her off, one thick, large hand wrapped around her neck.

She gasped.

“I wouldn’t make threats like that, domina,” he said. “I have no qualms with eliminating you if I need to.”

That made no sense. He was hesitant to sexually assault her but killing was nothing? Perhaps the killing was simply quicker and easier.

“If you’re dead,” he said, “there will be no one to help your sister.”

Curse him for knowing her weaknesses. She gritted her teeth. “Look, I’ll take your stupid offer. You free Cassus and you teach me to defend myself and I’ll let you…” Her voice died. “I’ll let you fuck me in front of Akiel,” she whispered.

He let go of her neck. “You’d say anything to save your life, I suppose. I should kill you now, anyway. I can’t trust—”

“You can trust that I care about my sister,” she said, and she was horrified, because she’d lost every bit of leverage that she’d had before. Now, her life was a gift. He was giving it back to her. She hated him. She wanted to scream.

“You realize that I don’t have to free your human boy, and that I don’t have to teach you anything?”

She nodded.

“But I will say that if I kill you, I’ll have to find another girl, and the ancestors only know what she’d be like, or if she’d be as easy to work with as you. Furthermore, I’ve already fucked you once, so maybe it’s less…”

It wasn’t, but she wasn’t going to contradict him at this point.

He looked down at his feet. “I’m sorry about all of it, do you know that?”

“Doesn’t matter how sorry you are if you won’t stop doing it,” she said.

He inclined his head. “Out of my bedchamber.”

“We’re not going to shake hands this time?”

“Would you like that?”

She turned on her heel and stalked out.

He shut the door behind her firmly.

WHEN THERE WASa knock at Magdalia’s door, she assumed it was Duranth and called out, “I thought you were busy all day running everything!”

The knock came again, more insistent. “Please, dominissa, let me in,” said a low voice.

She hurried to the door, drawn by the honorific more than anything else. No one called her that now. No one spoke to her except Duranth. Even though she knew it was pointless, she seized the door knob and tried to turn it. “I can’t let anyone in. I’m locked in here.”

“Ah,” said the voice. “Of course. Well, perhaps that’s better. We can speak through the door.”

“Who are you?”

“I am here with a message from your sister, that’s all you need to know. She asks if you remember the year that the harvest festival was delayed due to the roast turkeys all being burned?”

“Of course,” said Magdalia, thinking this was a very strange thing to send in a message to her.

“What did you say about that? What did you call them?”

Oh, it was a test, for her to prove her identity, and the preceding story had proved that the message came directly from Onivia. Wasn’t her sister clever? Magdalia would never be so clever. “I called them burnty birdies,” she said. She had been rather young at the time.

“Yes,” said the messenger. “It is you, then. Her message is as follows. ‘Do not give in to despair, little Magda. I love you.’”

Magdalia waited, but the voice didn’t say anything else. “That’s all?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“She is in the encampment of a fae cohort led by a princep named Akiel,” said the voice. “Do you have a message in return?”

So, Onivia was being held captive, but she’d somehow contrived to send this message. It was vague because she could not come out say what she meant, but Magdalia thought her sister was trying to tell her that she was coming for her.

Of course Onivia would try. She would never leave her alone here.

Magdalia was hit with a wall of shame. Here she was, prisoner, true, but enjoying Duranth’s favor and housed in a lavish bedchamber, fed the choicest of meals. She could be using her influence on the Croith to free her sister.

Why hadn’t she done so?

But then she thought of asking for anything from Duranth—admitting that he was in charge and that she needed him—and her stomach curdled. “Tell her that I love her too, and that I bid her to think first of herself, that I am unharmed here.”

“Very good,” said the voice. “I bid you farewell then, dominissa.”

Then there was nothing, not even the sound of footsteps.

The messenger had gone.

ONIVIA HAD BEENfifteen when she arrived at the capital with Magdalia in tow. She was feeling grown up, because she and Magdalia had traveled alone on the last leg of the journey. Her father had dispatched one of their elder half brothers with them on the ship across to the mainland, but their brother had not boarded the train with them to the capital.

Instead, he’d carted them aboard and left them to fend for themselves with no other companions than their maids, fae slaves who were as awed by this foray into the outside world as the girls themselves.

The train was exciting. Though they had all seen the train that criss-crossed Quinta Island, taking supplies from various villae to the coast to be taken to the mainland, none of them had ever boarded one.

As the youngest, Magdalia deferred to Onivia, and Onivia also had become rather adept at schooling her sister’s moods. Magdalia was one for complaining about everything.

Why, she’d wanted to bring that fae brat of a companion she had at home, the one who used to sit in on their lessons and raise his hand and ask questions of their magister, questions that would excite the magister and draw him down tangents that bored Onivia, even as they excited that slave.

Why there was a slave in their classroom, she didn’t know.

She was happy enough to leave him behind, even if Magdalia had thrown a crying, screaming tantrum that had lasted for hours.

Magdalia would do that if Onivia didn’t frame things in a certain way. She would say things like, “Some people might turn up their nose at food in the dining car on the train, but not us, because we are adventurous and because we welcome new experiences.”

By anticipating the things that Magdalia would dislike and framing the endurance of them as something laudable, she easily schooled her sister’s temper, and she was quite proud of herself for this feat, for Magdalia was not easily tamed.

So, when Onivia disembarked from the train and was met by her aunt, she thought rather highly of herself. She did not notice that her clothes looked quite different from everyone else’s in the train station, or that her accent marked her as backward and country-bred. She was disdainful and haughty, and it was she who nearly threw a tantrum when her aunt laughed at her.

Her aunt was her father’s sister, Aunt Toria, who had gone to live at the capital for her schooling and then never left. She was a widow, and she had inherited her husband’s stake in a newspaper in the city. Her husband hadn’t had anything to do with the editorial duties of the paper—that had been the purview of her husband’s father, but the son had shown neither inclination nor talent that way.

So, Aunt Toria was similarly uninvolved in the newspaper itself, but she was given a share of the profits, as her marriage had ended without any heirs, and she was all that was left to inherit her husband’s estate.

Aunt Toria wore a slim skirt, unlike Onivia’s and Magdalia’s, which were packed full of crinkly, expansive petticoats to make them wide and full.

The first thing Aunt Toria did was to go through their trunks and insist that every single one of their dresses be altered.

“But we had this wardrobe especially made before leaving home,” said Onivia importantly. “The slaves toiled to sew such creations, and they are all brand new.”

“No one has worn such voluminous skirts in five years in the capital, my dear,” said her aunt. “Your wardrobe is hopelessly out of date. My nieces will not be the laughingstock of the aristocracy.”

And then Onivia had looked. She had gazed out windows and observed women on the street or getting in and out of chariots, and she had realized that her aunt was right, that all of them wore slimmer skirts, without petticoats beneath, skirts that were much easier to move in and sit in, that showed off tantalizing hints of the shapes of their legs beneath, that did not make a woman’s form look like a bell.

She was hotly embarrassed.

At the first dinner they all attended with her aunt, there was gentle discussion of her accent and of Magdalia’s, of the provincial way she pronounced her vowels.

Soon enough, she trained herself to adopt the clipped, slightly harsher pronunciation favored by speakers in the capital. Magdalia’s accent faded as well, in time, but seemingly without any intention upon Magdalia’s part, because her sister was paying no attention to fashion or blending in, so consumed was she with the study of magic.

Magdalia had never had anything to occupy her before, and she’d never been good at anything, but she took to the idea of being special and Favored rather easily, not that Onivia should have been surprised. Her sister was occupied with her magister all day long, and she was soon gallivanting about the house, making plants bloom in pots and healing the scrapes and cuts of everyone in the household, even the servants.

Her sister’s temperament was better when she was occupied. She was less likely to rant and complain about various slights and discomforts.

But Onivia felt a bit lost, for she had been sent here because of Magdalia, and her sister didn’t need her.

Her aunt seemed to notice this, and she spoke to Onivia about attending her own tutoring. Onivia went to a woman’s house with other girls her age and learned about the etiquette required in pouring tea for guests and about how to converse cordially on polite subjects. She learned the way to flick her fan in front of her face if she wanted to appear alluring and mysterious to strangers. She learned various new dances that they did not do in the country, scandalous dances that required men and women to stand very close and for men to place their hands on women’s waists or backs as they whirled them about the room.

And when this was done, she was permitted to indulge herself in various womanly pursuits. Her aunt suggested she take up drawing or painting or music or embroidery. But Onivia preferred to learn languages, and so her aunt sent her first to a tutor to learn the ancient language of Gressan and then—when Onivia begged for something a bit more practical—to learn Emmessian.

“It’s not fashionable to speak Emmessian, not since we are at war with them,” said her aunt. “But we are always and forever at war with Emmessia, and that war is sometimes peppered with decades of peace if the csaer and the Emmessian emperor get it in their heads to get along and cooperate. In which case, knowing Emmessian will be quite fashionable again.”

After this, Onivia began to seek out information herself. She would go to the library in the midst of the capital, where they had books in all sorts of languages, written by people conquered by the Vostrian Empire, and she would attempt to teach herself other languages. She even found a book in the lost language of the fae, something that had been stamped out years ago because of the fear the cunning, evil fae would use it against their humans who guarded against their villainy.

The fae language was strange, unlike any of the human languages she’d read. It had other characters in it, letters she’d never seen before, and that she could not pronounce. And she could not determine its grammar. It puzzled her, but she found it intriguing and beautiful nonetheless.

Even though Onivia was supposed to use her knowledge of languages to translate ancient poetry, she found herself reading other sorts of things instead, like preserved political tracts arguing against imperial expansion or accounts of imperial legatem as they conquered various aspects of the empire.

Long ago, it seemed, this land was all fractured, many different kingdoms, all with their own languages and folklore and even religions. There were many who seemed to have worshiped gods, and they had odd origin stories of the gods creating humans out of water or grass.

But the empire was strong, and it had prevailed. It had brought roads and civilization to the land. Emmessia had done so as well, because the two nations had always been competing in their expansion, fighting one another for various bits of land here and there.

She had lost herself to language and learning, and she’d been content.

And then, of course, there had been Albus.

She’d met him at one of the dances that she’d begun attending when she was seventeen, and she’d officially debuted into society, a woman of marriageable age. Then she’d had time to practice all that etiquette she’d learned, all those dances she’d learned.

But it was only Albus who’d ever seemed interested in any of the other things she’d learned, or who could converse fluently with her in other languages. He knew more languages than her, even. He said that he always took the time to learn a language before he was sent to invade. It was better to conduct negotiations in the native language of the people. Not that there were a lot of negotiations, because the empire tended to swoop in and crush any opposition, but just after a crushing defeat was a time that people needed soothing, and knowing their language tended to accomplish that.

Naxus Albus.

Younger brother to a senator. Dashing, with his brown hair and brown eyes and dimpled chin. Mouth full of straight, white teeth, which were on display when he smiled, and he was often smiling. Older than her. He had been twenty-three, and she had been seventeen.

It wasn’t an insurmountable age difference. Men often took wives quite a bit younger than themselves. It was nothing compared to the age difference between her and the man she’d actually married.

Their first meeting hadn’t been very memorable, she didn’t think, at least it couldn’t have been for him, because she had been overtaken by girlish infatuation at the sight of him, and when he’d asked for her to dance, she’d barely managed to make her mouth work to get out an affirmative.

During the dance itself, he made polite conversation about the weather and the wine punch, and she had mostly nodded and agreed and tried to make herself think of witty things to say. She’d been too dazzled by him to manage it, however.

No, it was later that she thought she first made an impression on him, when he came upon her in the library. She was squinting, turning her head sideways to attempt to read the spine of a book on a shelf, because it was very old and faded and also written in another language besides.

“Dominissa Cyria?” came a voice, interrupting her. If she’d been in the company of her sister, she’d have been Prima Dominissa Cyria. Magdalia would be Secunda Dominissa Cyria. Such were the formal ways of address, and he was, of course, the pinnacle of propriety.

She looked up. “Legatus Naxus.”

“Oh, you remember me?” He flashed her that white-toothed smile of his. “You danced with everyone in the room that night. I assumed that I would have faded into obscurity in your mind.”

“Oh, no, of course not.” Then she flushed, for that pronunciation had laid affections bare to him, surely, and she was mortified.

“I must admit that I would not expect to see a girl of your age in the library in the middle of the afternoon.”

“Oh, I do have a chaperone…” She looked about. “Somewhere.” Her maid could not truly be termed a chaperone, perhaps, and since she’d left the girl to sit on the steps of the library and talk to the flower seller that set up there, who had become her maid’s friend since she was always accompanying Onivia to the library, the maid wasn’t doing a lot of chaperoning at the moment.

But it was the library. It was a public place, and there was little danger here.

The unrest in the city was growing, of course, and it wasn’t likely safe at that point on the streets, but the incident with Magdalia and Cassus and the revolutionaries was nearly a year off at that point.

His smile widened. “Oh, don’t worry. I am not here to catch you out. I am instead looking for books on language.”

“Truly?” She beamed. “It is one of my favorite subjects. I can speak and write Gressan and Emmessian. I have a bit of ability to translate a few other languages, but I’m not yet proficient enough to converse in them.”

“What an accomplished young lady you are,” he said, but he said it in Emmessian.

She laughed, delighted. “You are too kind, sirra,” she replied in Emmessian, using the proper form of address for an Emmessian gentleman.

“And you are quite well-versed in the social strata of the culture in Emmessia, I see.” He had switched to ancient Gressan.

“I don’t know about well-versed,” she responded in Gressan, a bit haltingly, because it was no longer spoken aloud anywhere, and so it was difficult to know the pronunciations precisely. “But I have made a bit of study. My aunt says we could be at peace with Emmessia at the drop of a pin, and I am prepared for such a thing.”

“Ah, peace with those dogs?” He shook his head, and he was speaking Vostrian again. “I have been killing them my whole life, dominissa, and they have been trying to kill me. I don’t know if I could bear it.”

“Your whole life? Surely not. Were you given the post of legatus when you were still crawling?”

He chuckled. “Nearly that, truly. I was young. I am still considered young for the post, but my record stands for itself.” He stepped closer, pulling the book she had been considering out of the shelf. “Is it this book you were scrutinizing?”

She nodded. “Yes, that.”

He turned it over, examining the spine, opening it, and then he handed it over to her. “I will not take up any more of your time, dominissa, but I do wonder if you will be in attendance at the dance and dinner this weekend held at the Domus Cadmus?”

“I do think my aunt has planned for us to attend.”

“Excellent. If no one has spoken for your first dance?”

She flushed again, this time in pleasure. “Of course not.”

“Then, if I may?”

“Yes,” she whispered, and she gazed at him in adoration. He was perfect.

What would have happened if that information about his brother hadn’t come to light? What would have happened if her aunt hadn’t interfered? What would have happened if she had married him?

Then, the fae could not have attacked her wedding and they could not have taken Magdalia.

But they would have taken Magdalia anyway. Onivia would have been far off, on the Villa Naxa on Prima Island, because no one was left in the capital, and Albus was off fighting. By now, she might have one of his children, or at least be with child, Albus’s seed growing within her, making her belly swell.

No, she would be useless to Magdalia if that had all come to pass. The fae would have swooped in and stolen her sister away and killed her father and brothers, and Onivia would not have even been there. By the time she had discovered it even happened, Magdalia would have been in the hands of the Croith.

Onivia would have no chance of getting to her if she owed her allegiance to her own child. Or worst of all, she could have died in childbirth, like her mother, like she had always feared. Even if she had not been with child, her reputation as Domina Naxa would mean that she could not go running off after her sister. She would have had to maintain propriety.

But there was no semblance of propriety about her now.

No, all of that, all of the glittering promise of the capital, years ago, when she had thought herself so grown up and when she had been so knowledgeable about her silly pursuits, all of it was gone.

The capital was not safe. Fortune save them, the capital was overrun.

And she herself, well, she was a cracked and weakened vessel, about to give herself over entirely to the pleasure of some fae centurion.

What would Albus think of her now?