A Prelude to Penemue Read Free Page A

to tell you. If I see him dead, then dead he will be. While I still hope, he still lives.”
     
    The servant patted her hand. “I know.” He pointed to a swaddled body lying away from the others. “I lost my wife. Now please, that we may get on with identifying the others.” He drew back the damask drape and Hester forced herself to look.
     
    Marius looked peaceful, his hazel eyes closed, his mouth relaxed, almost as if in sleep. Nevermind the terrible gash that opened his head from ear to hairline.
     
    “Oh, my love,” she murmured, sinking to her knees. Glancing back at the servant, she steeled herself for her next question. “And what of my daughter?”
     
    “Daughter?”
     
    “ Charlotte !” Hester staggered to her feet and ran as best she could into the ruins of the house. The nursery had been down the corridor from the main hall, she remembered. Climbing over timbers and fallen masonry, she limped past several broken doorframes until she found one that still stood intact. The brass plaque on the door announcing that this was the nursery still gleamed. “Help me! Help me with this door!” She beat against it with fatigued arms. Emile and Cadmus were behind her in an instant.
     
    “Stand aside, Hester,” Cadmus told her and barreled into the finely painted door with his shoulder. It was well jammed into the frame, but no mere wood could withstand the force of a determined Gyony warrior.
     
    As the door gave way, Hester ran inside. It was still dark in this room, and the children’s playthings were tumbled about, creating strange shadows. The roof had halfway fallen in, and a fine layer of ash lay over everything. The air was stale and more than once Hester lost her balance as she searched, her head growing light and her arms and legs even more unsteady.
     
    “Hester, it is not safe in here.”
     
    “I have to find her, Cadmus.”
     
    “Let me help you.” He hooked his thickly muscled arm around her waist and held her up. Together they pushed aside pillows and plush creatures until they came to the farthest corner of the room.
     
    Emile was waiting there, having gone around in the other direction. Hester searched his face, but he would not meet her gaze.
     
    “Is she…?”
     
    “I believe so. They are all here.”
     
    She pushed him aside with what little strength she had remaining and stepped away from Cadmus. Mary, the nanny, and four other girls were huddled in the corner. Blankets and nappies and petticoats were over their mouths and those of the children. There were only six youngsters, Charlotte being the youngest. They, too, might have been sleeping, but that their faces were flushed violently pink.
     
    The floor seemed to tilt abruptly, and Cadmus caught her once more. “The air’s to blame. Everyone out before it drops us, too!”
     
    Hester could not catch her breath until they returned her to her litter beneath the tree. “Gone. Everything. Both of them. Gone.”
     
    Emile took her hand, rubbing it softly. Cadmus dropped to one knee. “I am so sorry, Hester.”
     
    “What is this? Oh, princess, did you lose your favorite fur in the rubble? Perhaps one of your earbobs has gone missing? What else could account for these crocodile tears?”
     
    “Speak no more, Moll Aldias , you have no notion of what you are saying,” Cadmus rumbled.
     
    “I lost three of my sisters,” the black-haired woman hissed. “Tell me how that compares to anything she may be missing! Her sister is whole, I saw her myself. What else of value can the brat be bawling over?”
     
    “My husband and my child are dead.”
     
    “Oh, you are the one with the mortal husband, are you not? What pain can that be? And children can always be gotten again. I might even be able to find the soul of the babe for your next getting…for a price.”
     
    “Get away from me, witch!”
     
    “Suit yourself.” The Aldias gathered her dignity and walked away, hiding a limp.
     
    A long bright note from a