Sean Dalton - Time trap

“I won’t-”

“Listen! Noel has probably escaped the castle by now. He will seek your help tomorrow or the next day. He will want you to help Theodore recover Mistra.”

“The Milengi do not serve Byzantine puppets!”

“But your alliance with Sir Magnin has been broken. Isn’t it better to change horses before the one you have falls beneath you?”

She remained silent, but he knew she was listening. This girl was shrewd. He liked her.

“Well, Elena?”

“My brothers will never support Lord Theodore. They want Greeks to rule the Peloponnese. Sir Magnin is half Greek, and that is better than nothing.”

“Better perhaps to have Byzantine rule than Turkish,” said Leon with a low laugh.

“The Turks will not dare come this far-”

“I think they will. Perhaps there is a way to make Sir Magnin happy with you again.”

“How?”

“Help us catch Noel.”

He loosened his arm, and at once she sprang away from him. He caught her wrist, however, and swung her around. Moonlight glimmered upon the blade of his dagger. He sheathed it, but he did not release her wrist.

“If you should find him,” said Leon, feeling his desire burn like fire within his veins. He put his hand upon the girl’s face, driving in with his mind and his will until he felt her facial muscles go slack against his palm. “If you should find him, steal the bracelet from his wrist and bring it to me. That is all you have to do.”

He took his hand away and Elena’s face remained slack. Her dark eyes were glazed, shimmering reflections of the distant moonlight. Her mouth trembled. Leon touched those voluptuous lips with a tender finger.

“Do it for me,” he whispered.

In silence Elena nodded. She looked drugged. Slowly she lifted her gaze to Leon’s, and her eyes were docile, submissive eyes. Satisfied, Leon kissed her, but there was nothing in rubbing his mouth against hers that affected him. Nothing at all. If he wanted to feel the heat of passion, he had only to think of his hatred for his twin.

Angrily he shoved the girl away. “Go,” he said and watched her run from the shed with her long hair streaming out behind her.

He paced there, shivering in the cold, rubbing his hands together, and felt hollow as though he were only a shell pretending to be a man. Was he doomed forever to be only half alive? Would eliminating Noel really make him whole?

No answers came to him, no assurance, no peace. He shivered in the night, and felt afraid.

Noel’s hand closed over Sophia’s face. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered.

She awakened with a muffled gasp and thrashed against him until he pressed her hard into her pillows.

“Hush,” he said. “It’s Noel. Don’t be afraid.”

She went stiff and silent for a moment, then struggled harder, trying to throw herself off the bed, trying to kick him, trying to wrench her mouth free to scream.

Exasperated, Noel wrestled with her despite the fact that he was hampered by his desire not to hurt her. She drove her fist hard into his stomach, and while he doubled, choking, she reached beneath her pillow and drew forth a tiny dagger that she slashed across his arm.

The pain was swift, like a razor cut, and the blood came welling up hot and vital upon his skin.

“Damn you,” he said in a choked voice.

She struggled free of his grasp and opened her mouth.

“If you scream,” he said desperately, ripping the knife from her hand, “I swear I’ll kill you.”

Kneeling upon the bed, she faced him with her hair streaming like silver in the moonlight. “Get away from me, villain,” she said in a low voice choked with loathing and fear.

“We made a bargain, my lady. I gave you my word I would not betray you. And you promised to show me how to escape the castle.”

She made a sound of denial, and he yanked her close against him. “I am not Leon,” he said. “You know that.”

“You look alike,” she retorted, her breath warm upon his face. “I think it likely you act alike. How dare you come into my chamber-”

“Shut up, and consider,” he said sharply. “I can help you and Theodore. But only if you help me. I have to get away. Will you keep your end of our bargain?”

The pain in his arm intensified as he flexed the limb and more air rushed into the wound, but it was a minor cut. Already it had stopped bleeding.

He tossed the dagger on the bed between them. Sophia watched him, saying nothing, doing nothing. He couldn’t tell if she was thinking it over or awaiting her chance to yell.

“My lady?” came a soft, sleepy voice from the outer chamber. “Is all well?”

Noel’s heart leapt into his throat. For a moment he thought he would choke. He froze, his gaze on the flimsy door between him and discovery.

“Yes, Cleope,” said Sophia. “A bad dream, that’s all.”

“Do you want some heated malmsey?”

“No, thank you. Go back to sleep.”

“Yes, my lady.”

Noel shut his eyes a moment. The relief was almost too much. He was so tired he could barely think. He knew he was bound to make a fatal mistake soon, if he didn’t find refuge.

“Please,” he whispered. “ Please.”

“If Theodore is still a prisoner in the mountains,” she whispered, “will you help free him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you swear?”

He wanted to shake her. “Yes, yes. Hurry. Get dressed in something simple. They’re going to know soon that I’ve escaped.”

“How did you-”

“Just hurry.”

She nodded and swung aside a tapestry to reveal a narrow servant’s door. “Go through,” she whispered. “Wait. I shan’t be long.”

He hesitated, wondering if he dared trust her. But he had little choice at this point. He went through the door, which she closed after him, and found himself in a musty space too tiny for comfort with shreds of old cobwebs that floated against his face like gossamer. The seconds ground by, each one an eternity. He leaned against the wall, feeling the coldness of it through his tunic.

The door snicked open and Sophia joined him in a faint rustling of cloth. Her hand groped across his sleeve to his wrist.

“There can be no light. We must stick close to the wall and not turn loose of each other. Come,” she said. “Make no sound, for some of the walls are thin.”

The darkness was total most of the way. Now and then their passageway had small open chinks in the wall mortar that let torchlight from some other area of the palace shine through. Sometimes Noel’s feet crunched over what sounded like small, brittle bones. They snapped like twigs.

He did not like the darkness, the dank, tomblike smell, the dusty cobwebs that touched his face and hands like insects, the tiny rat skeletons on the floor. Yet at the same time he kept telling himself that it could not be this easy. The secret way to the concealed treasury, the secret way of escape from the palace could not simply lead from this girl’s bedchamber.

The floor angled down after a while. He remembered the dungeons, and had to fight his reluctance to go near them.

Finally, after his legs were dragging with weariness and he felt they had gone at least a mile, Sophia stopped. “The end,” she said softly.

She pushed his hand out through the air, and his knuckles rapped against the wooden rungs of a ladder.

“We must climb,” she said. “Take care how you lift the trapdoor.”

He struggled up the ladder until his head bumped the trapdoor. It was lightweight, requiring little effort to shift. Easing it open cautiously, he heard a rhythmic crunching sound, heard rustles, stamps, and snorts, inhaled the aroma of horse droppings and straw.

They were in the stables. Specifically they were in one stall, and its occupant, looming large in the dapple of moonlight shining in through the windows, stood near the manger as though quite used to strange people appearing in his stall in the dead of night.