Vero was back in the Marquis tent, admiring his heraldry. She was pleased to find that she was already naked, her dress was lying in a heap beside the bed.

  She was being pushed forward until she fell face first onto the soft mattress. Her legs were pinned against the foot of the bed by someone else standing directly behind her. It was certainly a man. He thrust himself forwards gently, but firmly.

  Vero pushed back into him with equal force in time with his movements. As she did so, it became clear that her sense of gravity was not oriented correctly. In a moment she was sitting on top of him, facing his legs.

  She spun around as soon as she was able. It was Jean under her, as she had expected to find, but the expectation gave her no less delight in seeing him. He looked just as beautiful to her as he always did, but there was something different in his eyes. They were not smiling, they were hungry. Smoldering.

  Vero bent forwards to kiss him, but the moment she closed her eyes, her sense of location changed once again. Now he was holding her up, or perhaps she was simply floating. She interrupted his attempt to nuzzle her neck by kissing him, but he did not respond to her at all. His lips were so cold, and when she tried to probe his mouth with her tongue, he broke away from her with a hard expression on his face. The rhythmic pace of his motion between her legs continued without interruption.

  She hoped she had done nothing to cause offense. The moment she registered surprise at his reaction, she found herself being held upside down facing away from him, towards the entrance to the tent.

  Jean continued to press down into her and his tempo increased. Vero felt a spasm of animal pleasure run up from her crotch, along her spine, to her mind. He paid no attention to her convulsion and only continued like mechanical clockwork.

  He started kissing her thighs and Vero felt weak. Her heart was beating like mad. She heard a sound like a hinged door being opened, and a moment later, the flap of the tent was drawn aside. A woman entered, but her features were indistinct. Vero saw flashes of many women, Dora, Elizaveta, Adeana, Jean’s wife, poor dead Antoinette, even her elder sister, but they never coalesced into a complete woman.

  Vero supposed she ought to feel ashamed, being exposed to a stranger as she was, but she did not. She convulsed again and her mind began to feel very hazy. Jean was no longer inside of her, but she did not believe that she had felt him climax. However, he continued to hold her, kissing along her inner leg.

  The woman sat in front of Vero and kissed her wrists.

  Vero’s thoughts were now coming very slowly. She thought that something was wrong, but she did not know what, and her sense of anxiety continued to grow. Dimly, she realized that her heart beat was slowing. She felt exhausted.

  Like liquid dripping through cotton, thoughts came to her and formed a pattern. Leg, wrist, neck. What did these things have in common? Leg, wrist, neck.

  There was something she had to do. Something very important. Words and signs drifted through her head.

  She could feel that the knowledge was close. So close, she almost held it.

  Almost.

  Quiet. Dark. Eternity. Mama? Antoinette, Virgil?

  No! Not that way! Vero tried to turn back.

  There was light behind her, above her. She tried to swim towards it. Soft hands caressed her and eased her pain. They drew her down, deeper into a sea of soft silk. They offered her comfort, rest at last.

  Vero kicked them away, but they refused to relent. She bit her tongue and tore bloody gashes into her own skin with her broken fingernails. She screamed to break the deadly spell of silence. The light came nearer.

  Pain. Misery. Fear. Dora, Conner. Jean!

  Her limbs felt so heavy. The light was so close, but she had fallen too far. There would be no last moment escapes this time. Every man, every woman has a limit, but it’s never clear where that limit lies until it’s passed. Every person knows this instinctively, but human vanity never allows one to accept it until it’s too late.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  And what lies beyond it?

  “What’s wrong? What’s come over you?”

  “My love, wake! Master please!”

  “It’s you that’s done this, you witch! You’ll pay for this!”

  Vero opened her eyes.

  The stone was hard and cold against her skin, she wore no clothes. Her face was wet.

  She pulled herself into a sitting position, and waited for the spinning in her head to cease. Her body was lead, and her head was a feather.

  She was in a plain stone room. There was no furniture and the floor was covered in old dark stains, but the light was insufficient to identify them. There were no windows, and only a single solid wooden door. She lay in a pile of ashes.

  A mental examination of her own body told Vero there would be no point in attempting to stand unsupported. She crawled towards the only exit on her hands and knees. At the portal, she used the door to pull herself to her feet.

  Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and she saw two discarded sets of clothing nearby. The first was her own, and she did her best to stumble into them to find some relief from the cold. The second set was a richly appointed set of men’s clothes, tailored for someone shorter than she. Vero ignored those clothes, but there was an ornate dagger on the belt which she took. Her own lockpicks were still hidden in her dress.

  Vero tried the door, but it was locked. She worked at it with her picks, but her hands felt sluggish. Eventually the door opened, and she looked out into the hall. Plain stone, no windows, heavy oak doors to the right and to the left.

  Vero took a step and collapsed; pain sang across her body. She started to crawl.

  If someone found her, she would be as helpless as a kitten, but she neither saw nor heard anyone. She listened at each door before she tried to open it.

  Silence. She opened it. Inside was a small cabinet with impressive statuary. Her heart fluttered and black spots played in front of her eyes. The men and women in the cabinet were marble, and regarded her with distain. They might have been valuable, but Vero doubted she could lift the smallest of them. She moved on to the next door and repeated the process.

  Silence. Inside, a garderobe, cold and empty.

  Silence. A lady’s boudoir. She was in the Landgravine’s private room.

  Without much care Vero opened the wardrobe and pulled out all the contents onto the floor. She hoped there would be something there she could use, but she found only a few pieces of clothing and cosmetic paints Sidonie obviously could not have been bothered to take with her. Vero saw herself, deathly pale white in the looking glass.

  Suddenly seized with terror, she felt her chest to assure herself that her heart still beat of its own volition. It was still there. She moved on.

  Silence. Locked. Vero steadily worked at it with her pick, drifting in and out of her dreams as she did so. At last, the lock relented and opened itself.

  Beyond was another hall like the one she was in. It was familiar to her, and slowly the map of the castle she had constructed in her head unfurled itself before her mind’s eye. She was back out into the main part of the donjon tower.

  Vero pulled herself up the door, and this time she kept herself carefully propped up by the wall. She returned on the path she knew down to the main hall. Her head felt clearer as she went and she began to move faster. There were still no signs of guards or other opposition, though she could occasionally hear cries at an indeterminant distance.

  She arrived at Elizaveta’s chambers, but there was no trace of Elizaveta or her maids. The whole castle seemed abandoned. Vero stumbled her way towards the gatehouse. Once she was outside onto the battlements the shouting became clearer, and there was a glow of fires on the horizon.

  She must have been dreaming, but Vero believed she saw an army as deathly silent as a tomb camped below their gate.

  The ground was covered in ice, and Vero returned to her hands and knees until she was outside the gatehouse. There were voices from inside. Two men, exchanging worried rumors about events and the fate of their lord. She hoped there wasn’t a third, or more, waiting silently in the corner.

  Vero readied her knife, and tapped at the door before taking a position behind it.

  “Hullo? Who's that?”

  “Go see what it is.”

  Vero listened to a single set of footsteps approach and praised her luck. An emaciated guard passed by the doorway. Vero pulled the door closed behind him and lunged forwards with a movement that was more like a fall. She plunged her knife down into the man’s neck, aiming as well as she could at his jugular.

  He fell with her. Blood spilled from his neck where the knife split his flesh. There was a stifled scream, and the man looked at her in stark terror.

  The other guard in the gatehouse must have heard her. He must be coming up to the door even at that moment. The first man was too frightened to fight; he only tried to pitifully crawl away from her.

  She brought down the knife on him again and again, targeting first his lungs, then his stomach, and finally his femoral. She attacked remorselessly such a frenzy until she lost consciousness.

  When she came to, Vero expected the second man to be on her already, but she was alone. The first man had crawled several feet away, then collapsed in a congealing pool of his own blood. He was not moving, but his heart continued to pump its crimson fluids out onto the ice in regular spurts.

  She searched for, and retrieved, her weapon. Then she returned to the gatehouse.

  The second guard had fled out through the other door. Perhaps he had gone to fetch reinforcements. If so, she certainly could not stop him in time.

  She moved to the chain which held the gate in place and tried to force it free, but it was stuck fast. She tried again and her vision blurred. She almost believed she could see another woman there with her. Then, at last, the chain came free and Vero was knocked back to the ground.

  She tried to rise again, but could not.

  There was a fire in the gatehouse and it was warm, except when a draft of wind blew in through one of the open doors. There were sounds of shouting nearby, but she could not understand anything they were saying.

  She knew she had reached her limit. There was nothing left for her to do but sleep.

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