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Page 3

 

  Jema wouldn't have missed much. Keeping her blood sugar under control required a strict diet, and their cook prepared her meals separately from those she served to Meryl Shaw and her guests. It didn't really matter what she ate or if she ate anything at all; her mother simply expected her to be at the table. In Meryl's view punctuality was a courtesy, tardiness a deliberate offense.

  I know you don't intend to he deliberately ill-mannered, Jema, her mother had said the last time she had come home this late, but you should consider my feelings. When you don't arrive on lime. I worry that something has happened to you.

  "I got caught up in work—No, don't mention work; she hates that," she muttered under her breath before she resumed the rehearsal. "It was inconsiderate. I was inconsiderate. Of you. I'm sorry I was so inconsiderate of you, Mother. " She scowled. "I sound like I'm twelve. I'm acting like I'm twelve. "

  Jema didn't know why she felt compelled to rehearse her apologies before she delivered them. Whatever seemed sincere and acceptable in the car always came out sounding completely inadequate in front of Meryl Shaw's impassive face. Still, each time she did something thoughtless, Jema tried to express remorse that at least sounded genuine. She knew she was an enormous disappointment to her mother; she didn't need to add insult to injury.

  "Maybe if you meant it," Jema told the dashboard as she drove up to the black wrought-iron gates that kept out the curious and the misdirected, "she'd believe you. "

  She looked toward the house and caught a partial reflection of her face in the rearview mirror. An oval-shaped slice of eyes and forehead. Gaunt, pale, pathetic, but at least it was there. She turned away before she saw any more. She hated mirrors.

  Acute diabetes had been sucking the life out of her since the day she was born, but now it seemed it was gulping.

  "I'm not sorry. " Jema fell hot and dizzy, and leaned forward, resting her forehead against the cool leather encasing the steering wheel. "It's my life. Let me live it. "

  Saying that to Meryl, who had kept Jema alive for the last twenty-nine years, would be the same as kicking her in the abdomen.

  Self-pity was not an option, so Jema straightened, pressed the remote clipped to her visor, and drove through the wide iron gates when they opened. She parked to one side of the garage where her mother's stately Rolls-Royce was kept, and went into the house through the kitchen entrance. The cook had already tidied up and left, but Jema could hear two voices coming from the direction of the sitting room, and followed them.

  "I am not interested in your opinions, Daniel. I employ you as our physician," Meryl Shaw said, her voice matter-of-fact. "Not the family therapist. "

  Jema stopped outside in the hall and listened.

  "Would you like me to tell you how mental stress affects the physiology?" Dr. Daniel Bradford sounded equally calm and controlled, but affection made his tone warmer than Meryl's. "You can't imprison Jema. She needs her work and a certain amount of freedom. "

  "I decide what Jema needs," Meryl stated flatly. "Not you, not anyone. " She coughed several times. "I'm having chest pains. "

  Here come the chest pains. Jema leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.

  There was a stretch of silence, and then Dr. Bradford spoke, far more gently this time. "You know it's your ulcer, not your heart. This anger only aggravates it. No," he said as Meryl muttered something, "you're not. Drink this to settle your stomach, and then I'll take you upstairs. "

  The pager set on silent that Jema carried began to vibrate—an angry bee trapped in her pocket. She checked the display, but she already knew what it said. The other, secret part of her life beckoned.

  She glanced at the door, pocketed the pager, and walked away from the sitting room.

  As Jema drove away from the estate, she didn't look back.

  She never saw the hunched shape of the man who stepped out of the darkness as the gates of Shaw House slid closed.

  The man lifted the radio in his hand and spoke into it. Light from the gate lamps made the polished black cameo ring he wore sparkle. "Miss Shaw has left the premises. "

  The reply was immediate and terse. "Follow her. "

  Chapter 2

  Valentin Jaus swung his langenschwert up and over his head, placing the blade behind his back. His opponent and seneschal, Falco Erhart, circled left rather than taking advantage of the opening. In the long mirrored wall beyond them, their reflections moved, a tall, dark Goliath battling a short, fair-haired David.

  Although Jaus was the master of Falco, Derabend Hall, and everyone who watched them, he was not the Goliath of the match.

  "Zornhau," the dry voice of Jaus's tresora, Gregor Sacher, said from the sidelines. The training area, known as the lists, was so large that any voice echoed—whenever clashing steel didn't drown it out. To the teenage boy standing beside him, he murmured, "Note how the master engages the Spaniards' arrebatar technique, which permits a feichmeister to cut with the whole arm. "

  "Falco does not move in to attack the opening, Opah. " Wilhelm Sacher watched both men with wide eyes. As a tresora in training, he was permitted to observe most aspects of Jaus's life within the walls of Derabend Hall. "He goes to the side. "

  "An experienced swordsman cannot be baited," Sacher advised the boy. "Falco uses the ueberlauffen to move out of reach of an attack and exploit whatever weakness the attack opens. "

  Jaus would have completed the movement and used the flat of his sword on Falco's shoulder, had his seneschal been careless enough to fall for the ruse. Indulging clumsiness defeated the purpose of practice matches. Falco, however, rarely made mistakes, and knew Jaus better than any man among the jardin. He also had the physical advantage of superior size and reach, and used it.

  Despite this, Falco had never beaten his master. Jaus dominated in their matches not because he was stronger, but wiser. His experience was ten times that of his seneschal's.

  Losing battles was also not something Valentin Jaus permitted himself to do anymore.

  As the second son of a prosperous and influential baron, Valentin had been sent all over Europe to train with Spanish, English, and French masters. Over time his fighting style had absorbed much of their techniques. His original training in Austria had begun with the classic drey wunder, the three principal attacks of the German masters, but he had never limited himself to them. There was much to be learned outside the European schools of swordsmanship as well; in his time Jaus had traveled to places like Russia to train with Cossacks, and Japan to learn from the samurai.

  It helped that Jaus was not human. Nor was any man present in the lists except Sacher and Wilhelm, who wore the black cameo rings of tresori, the humans who served the Darkyn.

  "Why do they fight with copper-tipped swords, Opah?" Wilhelm asked. "You said that it is the only metal that can pierce the skin of the vrykolakas and poison their blood. Would it not be safer to use plain steel?"

  "Our master uses the same weapons our enemies do," Sacher said. "To train with anything less would be to face them ill-prepared. There are ways in which plain steel and other metals can be used to injure the Darkyn, but we will discuss those later. "

  Falco paid no attention to the exchange between the tresora and his grandson. His focus remained on Jaus, and attacking from the left—which he did with lightning speed—which should have created a second, indefensible opening. Anticipating the counterattack, Jaus used the parrier-dolch to trap Falco's sword with the quillions of the dagger in his left hand.

  "Spada e pugnale," Sacher called out before he murmured to Wilhelm, "Now the master will use his kriege. "

  Before the old man finished speaking, Jaus had used his parrying dagger to disarm his seneschal. As Falco's sword skidded across the polished oak floor, Jaus pressed the very tip of his blade against the seneschal's bare chest, denting the pale skin but not drawing blood.

  "Nachreissen; am schwert" Sacher spoke loudly again. "P
oint, oberhau, and match. "

  The men on the sidelines who had remained silent and motionless during the match now relaxed. Some, knowing they would eventually take Falco's place and serve as Jaus's opponent, exchanged dispirited looks. The seneschal was a bold and efficient swordsman, but the suzerain of their jardin fought as if his veins ran with ice.

  Jaus maintained his stance but drew the sword away from the other man's heart. "Your tempo was off tonight. "

  "I did not hunt earlier. " Falco took a sudden step forward, impaling himself with an inch of copper-clad steel. As Jaus jerked his wrist to remove it, the seneschal rubbed his hand in his own blood and displayed it for the observers to see. "Was sehrt, das lehrt. "

  Suffering tutors us.

  "So does practice. " Jaus watched until the wound on Falco's chest closed before as he handed his langenschwert to Sacher and accepted a dark blue linen robe in exchange. He noted Wilhelm's pupils, which had dilated, and his mouth, which hung open slightly. "Wilhelm?"

  "Camellias," the boy murmured, staring at Jaus. "So many. "

  Jaus shrugged into the robe, which masked some of l'attrait, the flowery, hypnotizing odor his body produced. "Hans, take our young friend outside for some fresh air. "

  One of the men came and guided the unresisting teenager through a nearby exit.

  "Excuse the boy, master," Sacher said as he used a white handkerchief to wipe the blood from Jaus's blade. "He has not yet acquired a tolerance. "

  "Perhaps we should invest in some nose plugs. " To the men of the jardin watching the match, Jaus said, "Use hart und weich—weakness against strength, strength against weakness—and you find the balance that gives control. "

  Sacher pressed a hand to the side of his head, covering the small earpiece he wore, and then murmured to Jaus, "A call from Cyprien in the main house. "

  Jaus had not spoken to his old friend and adversary Michael Cyprien since Richard Tremayne, high lord of the Darkyn, had named Michael seigneur over all of the American jardins. He had given Michael his oath of loyalty before the instatement, and would keep it no matter what the cost.