She gave me a cold look. Her eyes were black even in daylight. In dusk, in the gloom of the thicket, they were pools of eternal night.
“What?” she snarled back. “Has the precious Ozarine suddenly discovered that ‘oppression’ is not an abstraction? Not something to be captured in oils?” She gestured angrily at the distant castle. “You think anything which is going to happen there tonight hasn’t happened ten thousand times? Isn’t happening this very night, for that matter, in other castles? That—and worse?”
She shrugged her big shoulders, like a tigress shrugging off a fly. “It happens,” she continued, her voice filled less with anger now than simple contempt. “There’s nothing we can do about it. And even if there were—so what? Save two children out of how many? You can’t solve these things one at a time, Benvenuti. And meanwhile, your damn Ozar is coming with the Rap Sheet. I have got to get the word out.”
She muscled her way past me and crawled out of the thicket. Once in the open, she stood up and glared back down at me. “Move,” she commanded. “We can make good time tonight.”
I obeyed. But somehow, somewhere, in the short time it took for me to gather up my stuff and make my way out of the thicket, my own decision crystallized. “Decision” is hardly the word. Some things do not have to be weighed in judgement.
“You go,” I said, turning on my heels and heading off toward the castle.
“What are you doing, you idiot?”
I turned and grinned at her. I suspected the expression was murderous. I certainly hoped so.
“Providing you with a distraction.”
She stared at me. I sighed heavily. “Go, Gwendolyn. We part ways, here. You’re the most magnificent woman I ever met—I’m at least half in love with you, and that’s easily the most foolish damn thing I’ve ever done in my life, not that I regret it—but we part ways here. Our loyalties are too different, just as you say. Oppression as such I can ignore, where you cannot. But—”
I made a vague gesture. “I could never paint a girl again. And I’m fond of portraying girls.”
I turned away again. Then, a thought came to me, and I twisted my head back to look at her. “How many was it, that your brother strangled alongside the Comte de l’Abbatoir? Twelve knights, as I recall?”
She nodded mutely. I’m quite sure my responding grin was murderous. I certainly hope so.
“Well, I can’t hope to match such a feat, of course. But I’ll do my best.”
A moment later I was striding off, the distant castle serving as my beacon. By now, with the sunset at an end, the castle was nothing more than a jagged shape of darkness against a starry night sky. But ’twas enough, ’twas enough.
* * *
Approaching the castle unobserved was child’s play, since the Baron had left no one on watch. And a good thing that was, too, as much noise as I was making trying to clamber “silently” over a stony hill in almost complete darkness. Restraining my curses was even more difficult. By the time I reached the “ramparts,” my legs were bruised and I was bleeding from several small cuts. My once-fine Ozarine trousers, never designed for such travel at all, were now not much more than tatters.
Long before I reached the ramparts, however, I was assured by the noise coming from the “castle” that silence was a moot point. As much of a racket as the Baron and his retainers were making, they couldn’t have heard a bull hammering down a barn door.
I was relieved, as I drew near, that I was not hearing any girlish screams mixed in with the lot. The noise was that of buffoons at their buffoonery, not atrocities in mid-event. I had little doubt, of course, that such noises would soon be occurring. But I had made good enough time that I was almost certain the “festivities” were still just getting under way. There was this much to be said for the wretched terrain of the Baronies—a man on foot could travel almost as fast as a mounted one.