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planning
and his psychotic changes of mood, maintained control of this band.
If most of the men might have been content to rob and to rape, if
the women would have thought themselves fortunate to have a new
shift or a pair of boots, they were impressed that Reynaldo had
instead settled for nothing less than the unimagined wealth that
Aranyi ransom would bring. None of them was capable of thinking up
a coherent plan of this kind, much less carrying it out. I doubted
Reynaldo had thought his plan all the way through. But he had got
this far, and I must trust in Dominic to find a way to rescue us,
while husbanding my own dwindling energy to keep us safe until
then.

CHAPTER 3
     
    W e were at last herded into
a doorway, down some narrow steps, and pushed into a dark stuffy
room. A bar clanged into place on the outside of the door, a key
turned in a lock. There were no windows. A small grate near the low
ceiling looked out onto what was floor level in the great hall. We
were in a storeroom, the kind of place that, in Aranyi, is used for
dry goods, wood or weapons, things that need no air or light.
    Wearily, hopelessly, I made the inner flame,
snapping the fingers of my left hand and willing into life the
little jet of fire that crypta can create from a spark of
the body’s own static electricity. I was proud of this ability to
make the light without using a prism, a skill I had learned before
my marriage, during six months of training in the uses and control
of my gift. I had practiced it ever since, when I realized I would
be spending the rest of my life in a world that depends on candles
and torches, the occasional lamp filled with rendered animal fat,
for all artificial illumination.
    The blue flame burned low and fitful with my
waning strength, barely showing through the cupped fingers of my
right hand that I used as a screen. Before I let the flame die I
saw a candle stub in a niche and lit it. Our shadows grew, tall and
tapering, the slightest breeze from our movements making the
unprotected flame flicker wildly, but I was grateful for the
comfort.
    There was a pile of sodden straw in one
corner. I unpinned my cloak, spread it out, and Val and I sank down
in exhaustion. We were up again at once as a horde of bugs crawled
out, delighted at the feast that had landed from above.
Ravenous—they must not have eaten for weeks—in seconds they had
burrowed under our clothes and into our flesh. Val cried and shook
himself, stamping his feet in frustration, as I helped him as best
I could, squashing the little bodies between clothes and skin,
brushing off the visible ones and combing his hair with my
fingers.
    “I want to go home!” he screamed. “I hate it
here!” He looked into my eyes as he unleashed the ultimate weapon,
making sure it hit the target. “I want Isobel. Isobel is nice.
Isobel won’t give me bugs.” He had never expressed a preference for
his nursemaid before, secure in the knowledge that I might humor
him, where Isobel would more likely enforce the rules.
    To Val’s surprise I hugged him close, weeping
real tears of my own. “I want Isobel too,” I said. “I hate it here
too.”
    Val put a grubby finger in his mouth, shocked
into silence. He had never seen his mother helpless. Lightheaded
from hunger, shaking from the long ride and the lingering effects
of Reynaldo’s torture, I could feel every control in me slipping
away. It had become so natural to rely on Dominic, his strength and
decisiveness. Now I had to be the strong one, for my children, but
I was running on fumes.
    I took in deep breaths and let them out with
a whoosh, telling myself there was a reserve of energy in me
somewhere still untapped. After a few minutes, against all
expectations, I discovered there was. I wiped sweat and tears from
my face with my sleeve, stood with Val in the center of the pallet,
then held up the stub of candle at eye level. Without a prism I had
no way to separate the light, but its spectrum was limited,