The Traitor's Daughter by Paula Brandon

Please.” Jianna found her voice; a high, thin voice, but adequately steady. “Don’t hurt her, she was only trying to protect me. She’s a servant of House Belandor, and my father will—”
    “I know all about your shit-licking kneeser father,” the slush-eyed man returned, shocking her into silence. “You want to see what I think of your father and all his precious little servants? Pay attention, I’ll show you.” Drawing a dagger from his belt, he deftly slit Reeni’s throat wide open.
    A red torrent gushed from the wound. Reeni dropped to the ground. A few spasms convulsed her small frame, but very soon she lay still.
    Jianna’s mind attempted to reject the reality of the scene, tried to dismiss it as a hideous hallucination, and failed. She stood staring for a numb eternity at the dead girl stretched out on the dead leaves. At last, her eyes rose. Reeni’s murderer was watching her, and his face told her nothing at all. She discovered in that instant that she hated him more than she had ever hated another human being.
    “Come here,” he said.
    He still clasped the bloodied dagger, and she wondered if he meant to use it next on her. She stood motionless and let the hatred show on her face.
    “Disobedience. Disrespect. Two big mistakes,” he told her. “But you’ll learn.”
    Three long strides brought him to her. She did not allow herself to flinch. Before she recognized his intention, he jabbed a short punch to the midsection that doubled her neatly. A second blow took the point of her chin. The world exploded around her, then ceased to exist.
* * *
     
    She emerged from nothingness to find herself blind, sick, and disoriented. Her head throbbed cruelly. Various body parts ached. Her position—face down, head dangling—was momentarily incomprehensible. She could see next to nothing, but an animal odor filled her nostrils and she could hear men’s voices close at hand. She was moving, carried queasily along on something. Her wrists were bound behind her back, her ankles were likewise tied, and a blindfold wrapped her eyes.
    They had trussed her up and dumped her like a sack of flour across the back of a horse or a mule, she realized. She had no idea where they were taking her or what they meant to do with her. Her confused mind struggled to resume normal functioning. If they intended rape and murder, she reasoned laboriously, there was no particular reason to remove her from the site of the attack. Probably they planned to hold her for ransom. They would let the Magnifico Aureste Belandor know the price of his daughter’s life and honor, they would tell him how and where to pay it, and they would set a deadline of some sort. Then they would settle back to wait. And while they waited, the Magnifico Aureste would contrive to track them down, and then he would see to it that they were hanged as they deserved for what they had done to Flonoria, Reeni, the driver, and the bodyguards.
    So she bravely assured herself, but the thought of her murdered companions brought dreadful images. She saw again Aunt Flonoria’s staring dead eyes, and the fountain of blood spurting from Reeni’s severed throat. Nausea seized her then, and her flesh went clammy. She retched, but it had been hours since her last meal and there was nothing left in her stomach to lose. Only a very little while ago, she had been plotting to force Aunt Flonoria to dine this evening in the common room of the Glass Eye. It had seemed so tremendously important at the time.
    She could see a sliver through a hairline gap at the bottom of the blindfold. She glimpsed dead leaves, churned mud, and nothing more, no matter how she shifted and strained. The movement only intensified her nausea, and she retched drily again. Untie me, let me sit up . The words quivered on her lips, but she did not let them fly. Into her mind thrust the vision of a square, impassive face with dead grey eyes, and she would not let herself ask anything of that face. A moan