The Oathbound Read Online Free PDF Page A

happened then that I had no knowledge of. The first was that Kavin himself became fed up with life on the edge, and looked around for something to make him a lot of money quickly. The second was that on one of his dips in the stews with his friends, he accidentally encountered the richest banker in Mornedealth and found out exactly what his secret vice was. Kavin may have been lazy, but he wasn’t stupid. He was fully able to put facts together. He also knew that Wethes Goldmarchant, like all the other New Money moguls, wanted the one thing that all his money couldn’t buy him—he wanted inside the Fifty Families. He wanted those Court invitations we declined; wanted them so badly it made him ache. And he’d never get them—not unless he somehow saved the realm single-handedly, which wasn’t bloody likely.”
    Kethry’s hands were clenched tightly in her lap, she stared at them as if they were the most fascinating things in the universe. “I knew nothing of all this, of course, mewed up in the house all day and daydreaming about finding a hidden cache of gold and gems and being able to pour them in Kavin’s lap and make him smile at me. Then one day he did smile at me; he told me he had a surprise for me. I went with him, trusting as a lamb. Next thing I knew, he was handing me over to Wethes; the marriage ceremony had already taken place by proxy. You see, Wethes’ secret vice was little girls—and with me, he got both his ambition and his lust satisfied. It was a bargain too good for either of them to resist—”
    Kethry’s voice broke in something like a sob; Tarma leaned forward and put one hard, long hand on the pair clenched white-knuckled in her partner’s lap.
    “So your brother sold you, hmm? Well, give him a little credit, she‘enedra; he might have thought he was doing you a favor. The merchant would give you every luxury, after all; you’d be a valued and precious possession.”
    “I’d like to believe that, but I can’t. Kavin saw some of those little girls Wethes was in the habit of despoiling. He knew what he was selling me into, and he didn’t care, he plainly did not care. The only difference between them and me was that the chains and manacles he used on me were solid gold, and I was raped on silk sheets instead of linen. And it was rape, nothing else! I wanted to die; I prayed I would die. I didn’t understand anything of what had happened to me. I only knew that the brother I worshiped had betrayed me.” Her voice wavered a moment, and faded against the howl of the storm-winds outside their shelter. Tarma had to strain to hear her.
    Then she seemed to recover, and her voice strengthened again. “But although I had been betrayed, I hadn’t been forgotten. My old nurse managed to sneak her way into the house on the strength of the fact that she was my nurse; nobody thought to deny her entry. When Wethes was finished with me, she waited until he had left and went inquiring for me. When she found me, she freed me and smuggled me out.”
    Kethry finally brought her eyes up to meet her partner’s; there was pain there, but also a hint of ironic humor. “You’d probably like her; she also stole every bit of gold and jewelry she found with me and carried them off, too.”
    “A practical woman; you’re right, I think I would like her. I take it she had somewhere to hide you?”
    “Her brother’s farm—it’s east of here. Well, I wasn’t exactly in my right mind for a while, but she managed to help with that for a bit. But then—then I started having nightmares, and when I did, every movable thing in my room would go flying about. Mind you, I never broke anything—”
    “Since I gather this was a ‘flying about’ without benefit of hands, I would think it would be rather unnerving.”
    “Tildy knew she hadn’t any way of coping with me then, so she took me to the nearest mage-school she knew, which was White Winds. It only took one nightmare to convince them that I needed