His voice woke memory in her. Her expression shifted and altered.
“She’s pregnant,” he said. “Tallia is pregnant.”
But it was a lie.
Her shriek cut through the pain. Darkness swallowed the brief stab of vision. He drowned.
“Conrad! Take him away! Make them take him away!”
“I pray you, Your Highness, we meant no offense,” gabbled Foucher. “An amusement only, meant for your—”
“Lord have mercy!” swore the duke as the woman shrieked on and on and on, a grating wail that dissolved into hiccoughs and a whining sob. “Take the creature away, Foucher. I know you meant no harm. It’s a miracle, indeed, and he looks more like a goblin than a man with so much filth caked on him, although I wonder if you wouldn’t get higher yields if your criminals lived under better conditions.”
“But my lord duke—”
“If I starved my soldiers and let them sleep out in the rain, they’d be too weak to fight. Why do you mistreat these poor souls?”
“The miners are hardworking free men, my lord duke. As for these others, they are only criminals. Half of them had a death sentence imposed on them for their sins but were shown mercy by being sent here instead.”
“A strange sort of mercy. It wasn’t so bad last year, as I recall it. I never saw so many sickly creatures in my life. Look at the sores on that man!”
“He’s no more than a mute beast, my lord duke. It’s a miracle that he turns the wheel as well as he does. Think of it as his penance for the crime he committed.”
“Maybe so. No matter. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I have need of different miracles today such as more iron for my army and silver for minting coin. To add grief to all else we have word that the Eika have come back and are harrying the Salian coast! Take him away. Away! As for you, Foucher, my clerics will look over your records of the summer’s yields.”
“Throw him into the pit! He should be dead! He’s dead!”
“For God’s sake, Tallia! Control yourself!”
A choked silence followed the crack of his words, and after it a sniveling whine that blended with the whisper of the breeze through distant leaves and the faraway noise of the workings and the sting of smoke from the charcoal fires set through the forest for leagues around.
“Should we throw him in the pit, my lord duke?” asked Foucher, voice trembling. “He’s a valuable, worker. We’ve none so strong for the wheels as this one.”
“God Above! I hate wasting good labor. Nay, put him back to his task, as he was before. He’s serving his sentence, just as we all are. Nay! Enough, Tallia! We’ll speak no more on it!”
The switch stung his thigh. “Get on! Get on!” said the Captain. “This is all your fault!”
He stumbled, blind again, and tripped, and fell, but a hand grasped his arm, pinching his skin, and dragged him upright and hauled him away as he wept because she had betrayed him and he had betrayed Lavastine only he could not remember how. The past was closed to him. The blindness swallowed him up.
They came back to the workings, yet at the lip of the shaft a man’s silky voice drew the Captain aside, saying, “Here’s two gold nomias for you, friend, if you’ll cast that creature into the pit I hear tell you have beneath the levels, out of which no man ever emerges. You’ll gain as well the favor of Her Highness Lady Tallia who, I should tell you just between you and me, will be Queen of Varre soon enough. Duke Conrad’s war along the border against the Salians is going well. There’s no word from Henry in Aosta. Varre will break free of the Wendish yoke soon. There’s no one to stop Duke Conrad for he’s born out of the same royal lineage as Henry, just as his lady wife is, and she with the right of primogeniture on her mother’s side as well. Do what Lady Tallia wishes and you’ll be glad of her favor in the days to come. Trust me.”
“Two gold nomias,” murmured the Captain, greed melting his voice until it wasn’t a man’s voice at all but that of the Enemy. “I’ll throw him in myself. Here, let me have them.”
“One now, one later when the deed is done. I’ll go down with you and see you’re given a second when you and I have come safely to the surface.”
“Fair enough! Fair enough!”
When they had pushed him and prodded him down the ladders past the turning wheels and their rumbling tumbling roar, they drove him to the edge of the Abyss where a cold wind blasted up from the depths and a smell of decay and sulfur swirled around his body. He did not fight them. He was too stunned because it had been a lie that she was pregnant; she had renounced the married state for all time and chosen to wed herself to God’s service, hadn’t she? God did not make bellies swell with pregnancy. Only men did that. What she withheld from him she had given to another man, and she had betrayed him to his death twice over, though he had loved her honestly and well.
