From where he lay on the floor of the chamber, Ryan could hear the noises of the ville as life went on. He guessed that the news of his return would already have raced through the big building until the meanest scullery boy would know that Ryan Cawdor was back at Front Royal.
“Oiled and ready to tear some ass,” Ryan said out loud, managing a wry grin. He was resigned to that fact
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of his imminent death. It was simply a question of how and when. J.B., Jak and Krysty would also perish. That was also destined. There was a slim chance that Doc and the girl might get away. Ryan hoped so. He liked Lori, but he was coming to love the eccentric old man.
The only hope left now to Ryan was that they might get careless at the end and give him a chance to at least settle the old debt by killing his brother. He could do it easily enough with his bare hands, given just a couple of sec-onds and a scant yard of space.
Somewhere he could catch the distant sound of a piano playing, and he wondered who was at the keyboard. An aunt of his had come to the ville when Ryan had been eight years old, an immensely tall, skinny woman whose name escaped him. It was some sort of flower, he thought. She’d loved dancing and had teased the solemn young boy by snatching him as they’d passed in one of the long cor-ridors. Pressing him to her flat, bony chest, she’d called out, “Heel and toe, heel and toe, one-two-three, one-two-three. Lovely, Ryan, lovely.”
As the wasting sickness that had killed her had begun to set its teeth in her body, she’d grown more melan-choly. -Once she’d been playing an old tape of music, a dance tune called a tango. She’d looked up at him from the thin birdlike face, with eyes bright and fevered, the bones scraping at the inside of her skin.
“They say the tango is a merry rhythm, Ryan. It is not. It is infinitely mournful.”
She’d died a week later and been buried in the family plot with the rest of the line of Cawdors, back to the long winter.
Ryan didn’t recognize the tune the piano was playing. After a while it ceased, and he slipped into an uneasy sleep.
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The rattle of the spyhole woke him, and he peered across the room. The lamp was burning low, near to gut-tering out, and the chamber smelled of oil. There was a momentary flash of brighter light as the door opened a narrow crack and then closed again. Someone slipped through the gap, and for a split second Ryan allowed himself a glimmer of hope, knowing the foolishness of such a thought.
He heard a voice, speaking with a frighteningly cold intensity. “On your life, trooper. I’ll spill your heart blood myself. Not until I knock to be let out. Understand?”
One of the sec men murmured his assent as the door closed.
There was plenty of light for Ryan to immediately rec-ognize Lady Rache! Cawdor, wearing the same dark clothes and carrying the same worn leather purse. With-out a word she knelt at his side, drawing a slim-bladed stiletto from her belt. The point rested for a moment on the material of his pants, just above his groin. She began to push, the steel slicing through the material, touching cold on the flesh of his stomach.
“Now,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
the knife was very old. Ryan had never seen it before, but he knew that the ville had once housed a remarkable collection of early weapons of all sorts. The hilt was sil-ver, heavily embossed with floral decoration, and the blade was steel.
He tried to relax against the sharp pricking of the knife as she moved it lower and lower. Despite himself, Ryan winced and tried to ease himself down, avoiding the steel as it brushed the top of his penis.
Lady Rachel Cawdor laughed delightedly, a soft, gentle sound in the stillness of the room.
“So brave, brother-in-law, yet so like all men. Filled with stupid pride until your pathetic little pricks are threatened.”