The Wind Dancer/Storm Winds

  “In the dungeon.” Damari strolled a few yards from the table and thrust the torch into an iron bracket on the wall. “As is proper for a thief.”

  She became chillingly aware of the darkness surrounding her, the odor of the damp earth, the smell of pitch and decay.

  “I’m very angry with you, you know.” Damari returned to stand beside her. “I lost not only Andreas but the Wind Dancer. I sent my men riding after him in all directions but he appears to have vanished. All I have is a slave who will be of absolutely no use in getting either back. Lion obviously cares nothing about whether you live or die or he wouldn’t have sent you to divert me from his escape.” He frowned. “And my lovely hedge is quite ruined. It will take years to replace it with new growth.”

  He seemed more upset by the damage to his shrubbery than by the escape of Lion and Marco, she thought dazedly. “You lie. They wouldn’t have left me.”

  “Still loyal? They most certainly did leave you. But what did you expect? You’re property—far less valuable property than the Wind Dancer. You notice he didn’t leave the statue behind. Surely you don’t think he’ll return for you?”

  Lion had promised nothing would happen to her. He had vowed she wouldn’t be hurt. She had to believe he’d come back for her or she would be overwhelmed by the terror and despair closing in all around her.

  Damari carefully smoothed the hair at her temple. “Poor little slave girl. You’re frightened, aren’t you?”

  He wanted her fear; she could see it in his expression. She didn’t answer.

  “And you should be.” His fingertips drifted lightly over her cheek, leaving pain in their wake. Her bruised flesh was exquisitely sensitive. “I’ll get the Wind Dancer back and I’ll punish Andreas. It’s only a question of time.” His fingers had reached her hairline and he reversed the direction, retracing the painful caress. “But I must have some satisfaction to keep me patient.”

  Her gaze was fixed in helpless terror on his face. Lion had promised her she wouldn’t be hurt. Lion had promised her.…

  “I’ve always believed punishment should fit the crime. I kept one of Giulia Marzo’s whores here at the palazzo for a number of months. She quite enjoyed the pain at first, but alas, it didn’t last. She was a pretty little strumpet, though incapable of tolerating more than minor pricks of chastisement. You can understand how this annoyed me when I had paid such a handsome sum for her.” His index finger followed the outline of her lower lip. “So I decided I had a right to compensation. Do you know what I did?”

  Sanchia couldn’t speak, her throat was locked with terror as she gazed up into his pale eyes.

  “I stripped her naked and sent her into the maze. Then I sent twelve of my men in to find her. Naturally, they expected reward when they ran her down. A whore’s reward.” He shrugged. “She died.”

  He was a monster. Sanchia could imagine the horror of that poor, frightened woman running frantically while she was chased by a pack of taunting, savage animals seeking only to rape.

  “A fitting death for a whore, don’t you think? But you’re not a whore, you’re a thief.” He lifted her left hand, playing with her fingers. “Tell me, what is the punishment for thieving, Sanchia?”

  “Santa Maria …” She didn’t realize she had spoken until she saw him smile again.

  “We cut off their hands, don’t we?” he asked softly. “I think we’ll start with your fingers. One by one.” He dropped her hand. “And I have a very skilled companion who will know just how to do it. I met Fra Luis when I was campaigning in Spain and persuaded him to come back to Italy with me. He was much favored by Queen Isabella as a torturer, but he realized there would be more opportunity for advancement in my employ.”

  Her hands gone. Her worst nightmare— No! This was real. Horribly, hideously real.

  She heard the creak of a door beyond her line of vision, and Damari’s gaze lifted. “Oh, there you are, Fra Luis, she’s awake. We can begin.”

  Sanchia instinctively began to struggle against the bonds holding her to the table as Fra Luis came to stand beside Damari. He was dressed in a mud-colored monk’s robe that only enhanced the unhealthy sallowness of his complexion. His face was full, his lips pouty, and his green eyes coolly objective.

  “Greetings, my child.” Fra Luis’s deep voice resonated hollowly in the chamber. “My Lord Damari tells me you have sinned and must be chastised.”

  Sanchia shuddered and closed her eyes.

  It was going to happen. She was alone and helpless to stop them from torturing her … and cutting off her hands.

  Lion had abandoned her.

  Nine

  Her left hand throbbed, waking her. Was it bleeding again? She supposed she should do something to stop it. She rolled over, then slowly, sluggishly, inched herself until she was in an upright position.

  Panting, she collapsed back against the damp, slimy wall of the cell. What did it matter? They would be coming for her again soon and then it would start again. What did anything matter?

  But it did matter.

  It wasn’t fair that she should be made to suffer like this. Fury burned away the despair numbing her emotions. What had she done? She had obeyed, as a slave must obey. She had been used, as a slave would be used.

  She had been used.

  A cockroach scampered over her throat and into her hair. She listlessly shook her head to rid herself of it.

  Filth and pain and vermin … and betrayal.

  Promises to slaves need not be kept. They were nothing, less than nothing.

  She tensed, every muscle becoming rigid. She could hear the slap of Fra Luis’s sandals on the flagstones of the corridor. He would take her to that room and strap her down on the table, place her hand on the block. He would look down at her with those cool, unfeeling eyes and the agony would begin again.

  And Damari would stand there drinking in her pain watching her face, stroking her hair and whispering of pain to come. There was no justice in any of it, she thought fiercely. She did not deserve to be tortured. It was not right that she should submit herself to the will of others when it brought this agony.

  The door swung open and Fra Luis’s fleshy silhouette was outlined against the flickering amber glow of the torch lighting the corridor.

  Sanchia braced herself for the command to rise and follow him. She should be frightened, but the fear had been seared out of her by the anger now possessing every portion of her heart and mind.

  “Are you ready, child?”

  She rose clumsily to her feet, using only her right hand to push herself from the wall, wanting to hurl herself at him and pound his white, pasty face with her fist. She had done that last night when they had come for her and they had made sure she had paid for it.

  But someday she would find a way to escape them. Someday she would escape all the people who had brought her to this.

  Until then she could only endure.

  Fra Luis held out his hand. “Come, Lord Damari is waiting. He suggests we do the thumb this morning.”

  “My God!”

  It was Lion’s voice and yet not Lion’s—hoarse, oddly broken …

  But how could it be his voice when Lion had gone away and left her to Damari? Sanchia tried to fight her way out of the darkness she had purposely drawn about her to shut both madmen away, but the barrier was too solid, too strong. She mustn’t lift her lids or move her body or the pain would start again. Pain was hiding everywhere, living in the darkness with the cockroaches and the rats. But she didn’t have to open her eyes; she was only dreaming.

  “Jesú,” Lorenzo said. “Don’t just kneel there staring at her. Move, Lion. We’ve got to get her out of here before Damari comes back with reinforcements.”

  “Look at her,” Lion whispered.

  “She’s not dead, and you’ve seen worse,” Lorenzo said impatiently. “Let’s get her away from this hellish filth and we’ll see what they’ve done to her.”

  Terrible things, she wanted to tell them.
Cruel and senseless things that had somehow burned away what she had been and left someone else in her place. But it was no use talking to a dream.…

  She was being gently lifted. Strange. None of her other dreams had seemed so real. Scent too. Leather and soap and that distinctive male fragrance she remembered as belonging to Lion. Perhaps it wasn’t a dream after all.

  She stirred and tried to lift her head.

  “Don’t move. You’re safe now.” Lion’s voice was thick, his words muffled. “We’re taking you away from here.”

  She would will the darkness away and see if it was really Lion. Lately she had discovered that her will could triumph when her body failed. She had only to concentrate all her energy and channel it into effort. Slowly her lids lifted and her eyes focused on the face above her.

  Dark eyes glittering with a moist brilliance gazed down at her. Lion’s eyes. “You … you broke your promise.”

  A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I know.” Lion’s arm tightened around her. “But I’m here now and I’ll take care of you, Sanchia. I’ll always take care of you.”

  She shook her head. “It’s too late.”

  She heard him draw a harsh, strangled breath before her lids fluttered closed again.

  The cell was moving, shuddering, falling.

  Another nightmare. Sanchia moaned softly, and tried to crowd closer to the wall to keep from falling with the crazily shifting cell.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Lorenzo said. “It’s only a small squall, nothing to fear.”

  A squall was a storm, wasn’t it? How could there be a storm in a cell?

  Sanchia opened her eyes to see Lorenzo lounging in a chair across the room, one leg thrown over the arm, his booted foot swinging.

  “Oh, you’re awake. Excellent. I have a craving for conversation. You’ve been very dull of late, but Lion was most insistent I stay with you until you regained your senses. How do you feel?”

  It wasn’t a cell, and it wasn’t a dream either. The room was dipping crazily! She tried to sit up. “What’s happ—”

  “Lie still.” Lorenzo’s tone was testy. “I have no desire to have to jump up and run over there to keep you from falling out of bed. When the sea is rough I make a practice of staying in one spot and not moving even if I grow barnacles. It saves a measureless amount of indignity and humiliation.”

  “Sea?” Sanchia’s eyes widened.

  “We’re on Lion’s ship Dancer enroute to Genoa.”

  “Genoa,” she echoed. Perhaps she had been wrong about this being a dream. “But how—” She dazedly shook her head. She was immediately sorry as the room swung in sickening circles and she collapsed back against the pillows. “I was in the dungeon.”

  Lorenzo nodded. “For three days.” He grimaced. “All of which time Lion was roaring like his namesake.”

  She had to have been in that dungeon for more than three days. Cockroaches, slime, the block … “No, it was longer than that.”

  “Stop shaking.” Lorenzo frowned. “It’s over. Lion managed to get you away from Damari.”

  It wasn’t over. It could never be over now. “How?” she whispered.

  “He rode to Pisa and hired a troop of men from Count Brelono and then rode back and attacked the palazzo. Damari realized he was outnumbered and fled with Fra Luis.” He sighed. “Which was a pity. When Lion saw what he had done to you I’m sure he would have insisted on a spectacular death worthy of Damari’s villainy, if the bastard had remained at hand. I was quite looking forward to it.”

  Sanchia closed her eyes, trying to understand what he was telling her through the throbbing ache at her temples. “You must have taken him by surprise. He didn’t expect you to come back for me. He told me I’d be in the dungeon forever and I was helpless to do anything about it.”

  “What a sweet-natured bastard he is. Did you tell him he was a liar?”

  “No.” She opened her eyes. “Because he told the truth. I was there forever.”

  Lorenzo was silent, studying her face. “It must have seemed so, but truly it was only three days.”

  She lowered her gaze to the blanket. “Why are we on this ship?”

  “Damari’s condotti were quartered only twenty miles from the palazzo and Lion reasoned he would ride directly there and return with a sizeable force, far larger than the one we were able to hire so quickly from Brelono. Consequently, we couldn’t linger at Solinari but rode to Pisa to get you to a physician. The physician said you were too frail to travel by land so Lion sent Marco home with the Wind Dancer to guard Mandara on the chance that Damari decided to march against it. Then we set sail for Genoa. He intends to settle you comfortably there, safely out of Damari’s reach before returning to Mandara.”

  “Does he think Mandara is in danger?”

  Lorenzo shrugged. “Not really. Damari is too crafty to attack a city as strong as Mandara with the condotti he commands. He would need reinforcements from Borgia, and Borgia has too many irons in the fire to release any men right now. Damari will probably wait until he has a good chance of victory before he attacks Mandara.”

  Condotti, attacks, Borgia. She was too hurt and weary to think about all this strife. She needed to go back to sleep and withdraw until she was healed and could contend with that world. She closed her eyes again.

  “Aren’t you going to ask how Lion is?”

  “No.”

  “Or about your hand?”

  Her eyes opened and she gazed at her bandaged left hand. During those last hours of torture she had tried to pretend it didn’t belong to her, that both the pain and the hand itself were not her own. She found that a certain sense of being remote still lingered. “It doesn’t hurt any longer.”

  “It will hurt if you try to move it. The physician splinted the fingers that were broken and snapped the others back into the sockets.” He paused. “Would you like to tell me what Damari did to you?”

  “You saw what he did to me.”

  “The thumb and three of the fingers will heal. The little finger was shattered in three pieces, the bones piercing the flesh, and the physician said it was doubtful you’d ever be able to bend or use it.”

  “The hammer,” she said dully. “It bled …” She firmly closed her eyes. “I’m going to sleep now.”

  “Then I’d better try to make my way to the bridge and tell Lion you’ve awakened to a bright, new world. After your nap I’ll help you bathe and dress. Lion purchased a few gowns and shawls from the wife of his shipwright at the yard before we left Pisa, but they’re not as elegant as the ones Giulia supplied.”

  She heard the scrape of his chair as he rose to his feet and then his footsteps as he lurched with evident difficulty toward the door. “It is a bright, new world, you know,” he said quietly. “Remember that, and be grateful, Sanchia.”

  She didn’t answer and a moment later she heard the door close behind him.

  “She’s awake.”

  Lion turned quickly to see Lorenzo clinging desperately to the rail as he struggled toward the forecastle over the rain-slick deck.

  “And I hope you appreciate the extreme discomfort I’m suffering to inform you of the fact.”

  Lion’s hands tightened on the tiller. “She is … well?”

  “If you mean, did Damari succeed in driving her mad while he tortured her, he did not.” Lorenzo drew his short cape about him to protect his nape from the cold, driving rain. “I didn’t think he’d be able to break her.”

  Lion’s face was a savage mask. “Cristo, he tried hard enough. Did she talk about it?”

  “No.” Then, as Lion continued to look at him, he shrugged. “She said something about a hammer.”

  Lion felt as though he had been struck in the stomach with the same mallet. “Take the tiller,” he said to the seaman standing behind him. He moved to the rail beside Lorenzo, gazing blindly out at the tempest swept sea. “I should have gotten there sooner.”

  “Three days to ride to Pisa, persuade Brelono to release his troop, and l
aunch an attack on the palazzo smacks of miracles.”

  Lion reached out to grip the rail with white-knuckled force. “I shouldn’t have waited. I should have thought of another way.”

  “You’re becoming boringly repetitive. There was no other way.”

  Lion hadn’t thought so at the time, but that didn’t help him to forget the moment when he had found Sanchia curled up unconscious on the floor of the cell. She had looked … broken.

  And then he had seen her hand.

  “I’m going to kill Damari.”

  “I presumed as much. I suppose you wouldn’t let me do it for you?”

  “No.” Lion released his grip on the rail and turned. “I’m going to the cabin to see Sanchia.”

  “She’s probably asleep again.”

  “Then I’ll wait until she wakes up.” He had a hunger to see her, to know she was no longer the pale, shattered child he had carried aboard the Dancer two days before.

  “Lion.”

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  “She’s not mad.” Lorenzo hesitated before finally finishing, “But she’s different.”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m not certain.”

  “By all the saints, what do you mean?”

  “I think she’s …” Lorenzo paused again, thinking about it. “I think she’s more than she was. There’s a strength …” He shrugged. “I could be wrong. Judge for yourself.”

  “You leave me with no other choice.” Lion strode down the steps of the bridge and across the deck toward the cabin.

  A moment later he stood beside the bed looking down at Sanchia’s pale, drawn face. Strength? It must be Lorenzo who had gone mad. Sanchia looked as delicate as the most fragile of blossoms. Rage seared through him as his gaze fell on her bandaged hand. Damari. Dear God, he wanted that son of a bitch.