The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [68]
This time she slapped him hard enough to make his face sting.
“You and your rotten wizard!”
Then she burst into tears. Since he couldn’t think of anything else to do, Rhodry picked her up and carried her, kicking and protesting, into her bedchamber. After he made love to her, she fell asleep in his arms, so soundly that he could slip away and go up to his own bed in the slaves’ quarters. Although Porto made a great show of snoring, Rhodry was sure that the old man had been waiting to see if he would come in. By then Rhodry was so exhausted from all his anxieties that he fell asleep straightaway himself.
He was awakened much later by Disna, shaking him and saying over and over again that the mistress wanted him. With a sound halfway between a yawn and a groan he sat up and rubbed his face.
“She wants you to come pour wine in the reception chamber. Rhodry, something’s wrong, Malina’s here.”
“Malina comes here practically every day.”
“Oh I know, but something’s really wrong. I’m worried, for your sake.”
All at once he was wide-awake, on his feet without even really thinking. Disna was looking at him with tears in her eyes.
“I just hope they don’t beat you.”
“I thought you couldn’t stand me.”
“Men! Island men, barbarian men—you’re all blind!”
Then she fled the room; he could hear her clattering down the stairs.
In a cold panic he followed her down and rushed to the kitchen to fetch the tray of cups and the wine. When he came into the reception chamber, he found Alaena and Malina sitting at the low table, facing each other, both of them a little pale. He set the tray down and started to back away, but Malina pointed at a cushion with an imperious hand.
“Sit down, boy. This concerns you.”
When Rhodry glanced at his mistress, she ignored him, and he took the cushion.
“Very well,” Malina went on, speaking to Alaena. “Do you see what I mean, dear? It’s all getting out of hand, if some traveling showman can hear everything there is to hear right down in the common marketplace.”
“How do you know he heard it? He could be lying.”
“And why would he lie?”
Alaena hesitated, slewing half-around to look at Rhodry, then back to face Malina, whose eyes snapped like a cadvridoc’s when he gives hard orders.
“You see it, too, don’t you? Well, are you going to do the decent thing and sell him back to his family or not? His brother’s certainly come a long way to look for him.”
“I don’t care! He’s mine, and no one can make me sell him.”
“I was talking about decency, not legality.”
Rhodry was frozen by surprise. His brother? At that point he dimly remembered that he’d had several brothers, back in that other life of his. Krysello must have been one of them, if the women said so; he couldn’t remember enough to argue either way. Malina turned to him.
“Well, boy, isn’t he your brother?”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Now listen, Alaena darling, you’ve simply got to sell. It’s the proper thing, and beyond that, if the gossip gets all over, well, what decent man is going to marry you?”
“I don’t care! I’ll never marry, then. I like my slave better than half the stupid men in the islands, anyway.”
“Enough to have a child by him? A lovely horrid thing that would be! The poor little creature would most likely have blue eyes, and that would be all the proof anyone would need. Do you want to see your poor boy flogged to death in the marketplace and his child sold away from you?”
“Then I’ll set him free. If he’s a freedman, nobody can do anything to us, and if rotten nasty spiteful people want to talk behind my back, let them!”
“That’s all very well, except you’re assuming he’ll want to stay.”
Alaena slewed round again to look him with the question clear in her eyes and her half-parted lips. Rhodry felt as if he’d been struck dumb; no matter what he said it would be wrong. His silence, however, announced everything. Alaena dropped her face into her hands and sobbed.
“I didn’t think so.” Malina’s voice was ice steady. “Are you pregnant already?”
“I doubt it.” She was sniffling rather than sobbing by then. “I’ll know for certain in two