Reave the Just and Other Tales Read online

  At present, however, thoughts of shame and distress were too trivial to be considered. In any case, Kelven had long since bereft him of any instinct for self-concealment he may have possessed. To Reave’s inquiry, he replied as well as his sense of doom allowed, “I wanted the widow.”

  “For her wealth?” Reave asked.

  Jillet shook his head. “Wealth seems pleasant, but I do not understand it.” Certainly, wealth did not appear to have given either the widow or Kelven any particular satisfaction. “I wanted her.”

  “Why?”

  This question was harder. Jillet might have mentioned her beauty, her youth, her foreignness; he might have mentioned her tragedy. But Reave’s clear gaze made those answers inadequate. Finally, Jillet replied, “It would mean something. To be loved by her.”

  Reave nodded. “You wanted to be loved by a woman whose love was valuable.” Then he asked, “Why did you think her love could be gained by alchemy? Love worth having does not deserve to be tricked. And she would never truly love you if you obtained her love falsely.”

  Jillet considered this question easy. Many candles ago—almost from the beginning—the pain in his arms had given him the feeling that his chest had been torn open, exposing everything. He said, “She would not love me. She would not notice me. I do not know the trick of getting women to give me their love.”

  “The ‘trick,’” Reave mused. “That is inadequate, Jillet. You must be honest with me.”

  Honey or desperation gave Jillet a moment of strength. “I have been honest since he put me in this place. I think it must be Hell, and I am already dead. How else is it possible for you to be here? You are no kinsman of mine, Reave the Just. Some men are like the widow. Their love is worth having. I do not understand it, but I can see that women notice such men. They give themselves to such men.

  “I am not among them. I have nothing to offer that any woman would want. I must gain love by alchemy. If magick does not win it for me, I will never know love at all.”

  Reave raised fresh water to Jillet’s lips. He set new morsels of honeycomb in Jillet’s mouth.

  Then he turned away.

  From the door of the chamber, he said, “In one thing, you are wrong, Jillet of Forebridge. You and I are kinsmen. All men are of common blood, and I am bound to any man who claims me willingly.” As he left, he added, “You are imprisoned here by your own folly. You must rescue yourself.”

  Behind him, the door closed, and he was gone.

  The door was stout, and the chamber had been dug deep: no one heard Jillet’s wail of abandonment.

  Certainly the widow did not hear it. In truth, she was not inclined to listen for such things. They gave her nightmares—and her life was already nightmare enough. When Reave found her, she was in her bedchamber, huddled upon the bed, sobbing uselessly. About her shoulders she wore the tatters of her nightdress, and her lips and breasts were red with the pressure of Kelven’s admiration.

  “Madam,” said Reave courteously. He appeared to regard her nakedness in the same way he had regarded Jillet’s torment. “You are the widow Huchette?”

  She stared at him, too numb with horror to speak. In strict honesty, however, her horror had nothing to do with him. It was a natural consequence of the Divestulata’s lovemaking. Now that he was done with her, he had perhaps sent one of his grooms or servingmen or business associates to enjoy her similarly.

  “You have nothing to fear from me,” her visitor informed her in a kindly tone. “I am Reave. Men call me ‘Reave the Just.’”

  The widow was young, foreign, and ignorant of the world; but none of those hindrances had sufficed to block her from hearing the stories which surrounded him. He was the chief legend of the North Counties: he had been discussed in her presence ever since Rudolph had brought her to Forebridge. On that basis, she had understood the danger of Jillet’s claim when she had first met him; and on that same basis she now uttered a small gasp of surprise. Then she became instantly wild with hope. Before he could speak again, she began to sob, “Oh, sir, bless Heaven that you have come! You must help me, you must! My life is anguish, and I can bear no more! He rapes me and rapes me, he forces me to do the most vile things at his whim, we are not wed, do not believe him if he says that we are wed, my husband is dead, and I desire no other, oh, sir! you must help me!”

  “I will consider that, madam,” Reave responded as though he were unmoved. “You must consider, however, that there are many kinds of help. Why have you not helped yourself?”

  Opening her mouth to pour out a torrent of protest, the widow stopped suddenly, and a deathly pallor blanched her face. “Help myself?” she whispered. “Help myself?”

  Reave fixed his clear gaze upon her and waited.

  “Are you mad?” she asked, still whispering.

  “Perhaps.” He shrugged. “But I have not been raped by Kelven Divestulata. I do not beg succor. Why have you not helped yourself?”

  “Because I am a woman!” she protested, not in scorn, but piteously. “I am helpless. I have no strength of arm, no skill with weapons, no knowledge of the world, no friends. He has made himself master of everything which might once have aided me. It would be a simpler matter for me to tear apart these walls than to defend myself against him.”

  Again, Reave shrugged. “Still he is a rapist—and likely a murderer. And I see that you are not bruised. Madam, why do you not resist him? Why do you not cut his throat while he sleeps? Why do you not cut your own, if his touch is so loathsome to you?”

  The look of horror which she now turned on him was unquestionably personal, caused by his questions, but he was not deterred by it. Instead, he took a step closer to her.

  “I offend you, madam. But I am Reave the Just, and I do not regard who is offended. I will search you further.” His eyes replied to her horror with a flame which she had not seen in them before, a burning of clear rage. “Why have you done nothing to help Jillet? He came to you in innocence and ignorance as great as your own. His torment is as terrible as yours. Yet you crouch there on your soft bed and beg for rescue from an oppressor you do not oppose, and you care nothing what becomes of him.”

  The widow may have feared that he would step closer to her still and strike her, but he did not. Instead, he turned away.

  At the door, he paused to remark, “As I have said, there are many kinds of help. Which do you merit, madam?”

  He departed her bedchamber as silently as he had entered it, leaving her alone.

  The time now was near the end of the day, and still neither Kelven himself nor his dogs nor his servingmen knew that Reave the Just moved freely though the manor house. They had no reason to know, for he approached no one, addressed no one, was seen by no one. Instead, he waited until night came and grew deep over Forebridge, until grooms and breeders, cooks and scullions, servingmen and secretaries had retired to their quarters, until only the hungry mastiffs were awake within the walls because the guards who should have tended them had lost interest in their duties. He waited until Kelven, alone in his study, had finished readying his plans to ruin an ally who had aided him loyally during a recent trading war, and had poured himself a glass of fine brandy so that he would have something to drink while he amused himself with Jillet. Only then did Reave approach the Divestulata’s desk in order to study him through the dim light of the lamps.

  Kelven was not easily taken aback, but Reave’s unexpected appearance came as a shock. “Satan’s balls!” he growled shamelessly. “Who in hell are you?”

  His visitor replied with a smile which was not at all kindly. “I am grieved,” he admitted, “that you did not believe I would come. I am not as well known as I had thought—or men such as you do not sufficiently credit my reputation. I am Reave the Just.”

  If Reave anticipated shock, distress, or alarm in response to this announcement, he was disappointed. Kelven took a moment to consider t
he situation, as though to assure himself that he had heard rightly. Then he leaned back in his chair and laughed like one of his mastiffs.

  “So he spoke the truth. What an amazing thing. But you are slow, Reave the Just. That purported kinsman of yours has been dead for days. I doubt that you will ever find his grave.”

  “In point of fact,” Reave replied in an undisturbed voice, “we are not kinsmen. I came to Forebridge to discover why a man of no relation would claim me as he did. Is he truly dead? Then I will not learn the truth from him. That”—in the lamplight, Reave’s eyes glittered like chips of mica—“will displease me greatly, Kelven Divestulata.”

  Before Kelven could respond, Reave asked, “How did he die?”

  “How?” Kelven mulled the question. “As most men do. He came to the end of himself.” The muscles of his jaw bunched. “You will encounter the same fate yourself—eventually. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine why you have not done so already. Your precious reputation”—he pursed his lips—“is old enough for death.”

  Reave ignored this remark. “You are disingenuous, Kelven. My question was less philosophical. How did Jillet die? Did you kill him?”

  “I? Never!” Kelven’s protest was sincere. “I believe he brought it upon himself. He is a fool, and he died of a broken heart.”

  “Pining, no doubt,” Reave offered by way of explanation, “for the widow Huchette—”

  A flicker of uncertainty crossed Kelven’s gaze. “No doubt.”

  “—whom you pretend to have married, but who is in fact your prisoner and your victim in her own house.”

  “She is my wife!” Kelven snapped before he could stop himself. “I have claimed her. I do not need public approval, or the petty sanctions of the law, for my desires. I have claimed her, and she is mine.”

  The lines of Reave’s mouth, and the tightening about his eyes, suggested a variety of retorts, which he did not utter. Instead, he replied mildly, “I observe that you find no fault with my assertion that this house is hers.”

  Kelven spat. “Paugh! Do they call you ‘Reave the Just’ because you are honest, or because you are ‘just a fool’? This house was awarded to me publicly, by a magistrate, in compensation for harm done to my interests by that dead thief, Rudolph Huchette.”

  The Divestulata’s intentions against Reave, which he had announced to Jillet, grew clearer with every passing moment. For some years now, upon occasions during the darkest hours of the night, and in the deepest privacy of his heart, he had considered himself to be the natural antagonist of men like Reave—self-righteous meddlers whose notions of virtue cost themselves nothing and their foes everything. In part, this perception of himself arose from his own native and organic malice; in part, it sprang from his awareness that most of his victories over lesser men—men such as Jillet—were too easy, that for his own well-being he required greater challenges.

  Nevertheless, this conversation with his natural antagonist was not what he would have wished it to be. His plans did not include any defense of himself: he meant to attack. Seeking to capture the initiative, he countered, “However, my ownership of this house—like my ownership of Rudolph’s relict—is not your concern. If you have any legitimate concern here, it involves Jillet, not me. By what honest right do you sneak into my house and my study at this hour of the night in order to insult me with questions and innuendos?”

  Reave permitted himself a rather ominous smile. As though he were ignoring what Kelven had just asked, he replied, “My epithet, ‘the Just,’ derives from coinage. It concerns both the measure and the refinement of gold. When a coin contains the exact weight and purity of gold which it should contain, it is said to be ‘just.’ You may not be aware, Kelven Divestulata, that the honesty of any man is revealed by the coin with which he pays his debts.”

  “Debts?” Involuntarily, Kelven sprang to his feet. He could not contain his anger sitting. “Are you here to annoy me with debts?”

  “Did you not kill Jillet?” Reave countered.

  “I did not! I have done many things to many men, but I did not kill that insufferable clod! You,” he shouted so that Reave would not stop him, “have insulted me enough. Now you will tell me why you are here—how you justify your actions—or I will hurl you to the ground outside my window and let my dogs feed on you, and no one will dare criticize me for doing so to an intruder in my study in the dead of night!”

  “You do not need to attack me with threats.” Reave’s self-assurance was maddening. “Honest men have nothing to fear from me, and you are threat enough just as you stand. I will tell you why I am here.

  “I am Reave the Just. I have come as I have always come, for blood—the blood of kinship and retribution. Blood is the coin in which I pay my debts, and it is the coin in which I exact restitution.

  “I have come for your blood, Kelven Divestulata.”

  The certainty of Reave’s manner inspired in Kelven an emotion he did not recognize—and because he did not recognize it, it made him wild. “For what?” he raged at his visitor. “What have I done? Why do you want my blood? I tell you, I did not kill your damnable Jillet!”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “Yes!”

  “How?”

  Shaken by the fear he did not recognize, Kelven shouted, “He is still alive!”

  Reave’s eyes no longer reflected the lamplight. They were dark now, as deep as wells. Quietly, he asked, “What have you done to him?”

  Kelven was confused. One part of him felt that he had gained a victory. Another knew that he was being defeated. “He amuses me,” the Divestulata answered harshly. “I have made him a toy. As long as he continues to amuse me, I will continue to play with him.”

  When he heard those words, Reave stepped back from the desk. In a voice as implacable as a sentence of death, he said, “You have confessed to the unlawful imprisonment and torture of an innocent man. I will go now and summon a magistrate. You will repeat your confession to him. Perhaps that act of honesty will inspire you to confess as well the crimes you have committed upon the person of the widow Huchette.

  “Do not attempt to escape, Kelven Divestulata. I will hunt you from the vault of Heaven to the pit of Hell, if I must. You have spent blood, and you will pay for it with blood.”

  For a moment longer, Reave the Just searched Kelven with his bottomless gaze. Then he turned and strode toward the door.

  An inarticulate howl rose in Kelven’s throat. He snatched up the first heavy object he could find, a brass paperweight thick enough to crush a man’s skull, and hurled it at Reave.

  It struck Reave at the base of his neck so hard that he stumbled to his knees.

  At once, Kelven flung himself past his desk and attacked his visitor. Catching one fist in Reave’s hair, he jerked Reave upright: with the other, he gave Reave a blow which might have killed any lesser man.

  Blood burst from Reave’s mouth. He staggered away on legs that appeared spongy, too weak to hold him. His arms dangled at his sides as though he had no muscle or sinew with which to defend himself.

  Transported by triumph and rage and stark terror, the Divestulata pursued his attack.

  Blow after blow he rained upon Reave’s head: blow after blow he drove into Reave’s body. Pinned against one of the great bookcases which Rudolph Huchette had lovingly provided for the study, Reave flopped and lurched whenever he was struck, but he could not escape. He did not fight back; he made no effort to ward Kelven away. In moments, his face became a bleeding mass; his ribs cracked; his heart must surely have faltered.

  But he did not fall.

  The utter darkness in his eyes never wavered. It held Kelven and compromised nothing.

  In the end, Reave’s undamaged and undaunted gaze seemed to drive Kelven past rage into madness. Immersed in ecstasy or delirium, he did not hear the door of the study slam open.

  His
victims were beyond stealth. In truth, neither the widow Huchette nor Jillet could have opened the door quietly. They lacked the strength. Every measure of will and force she possessed, she used to support him, to bear him forward when he clearly could not move or stand on his own. And every bit of resolve and desire that remained to him, he used to hold aloft the decorative halberd which was the only weapon he and the widow had been able to find in the halls of the manor house.

  As weak as cripples, nearly dying from the strain of their exertions, they crossed the study behind Kelven’s back.

  They were slow, desperate, and unsteady in their approach. Nevertheless, Reave stood patiently and let his antagonist hammer him until Jillet brought the halberd down upon Kelven Divestulata’s skull and killed him.

  Then through the blood which drenched his face from a dozen wounds, Reave the Just smiled.

  Unceremoniously, both Jillet and the widow collapsed.

  Reave stooped and pulled a handkerchief from Kelven’s sleeve. Dabbing at his face, he went to the desk, where he found Kelven’s glass and the decanter of brandy. When he had discovered another glass, he filled it as well; then he carried the glasses to the man and woman who had rescued him. First one and then the other, he raised their heads and helped them to drink until they were able to sit and clutch the glasses and swallow without his support.

  After that, he located a bellpull and rang for the Divestulata’s steward.

  When the man arrived—flustered by the late summons, and astonished by the scene in the study—Reave announced, “I am Reave the Just. Before his death, Kelven Divestulata confessed his crimes to me, in particular that he obtained possession of this house by false means, that he exercised his lusts in violent and unlawful fashion upon the person of the widow Huchette, and that he imprisoned and tortured my kinsman, Jillet of Forebridge, without cause. I will state before the magistrates that I heard the Divestulata’s confession, and that he was slain in my aid, while he was attempting to kill me. From this moment, the widow is once again mistress of her house, with all its possessions and retainers. If you and all those under you do not serve her honorably, you will answer both to the magistrates and to me.