Reule couldn’t say he was surprised when a sharp knock sounded on the door a short time later. With a long sigh, he relaxed back in the wide, sunken tub and spread his arms along the ceramic-tiled edges before bidding his visitor come in.
Darcio entered, shutting the door quickly to keep the warmth in. Reule watched warily as his companion turned to face him. His hair was wet from his own bath and his clothing neat and fresh. Reule’s Shadow was even freshly shaved, which was more than he could say for himself. Then again, Darcio hadn’t been tending to…
Reule shoved the thought aside. He’d probably been emanating far too much emotion as it was already. Darcio’s presence was proof of that. He didn’t need to rehash his conflicts while his friend was staring at him so intently.
“What is it?” Reule asked, unable to keep the irritable bite from his voice.
“Now, that’s strange,” Darcio mused. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Darcio ignored the steam and the wetness coating everything in the room and moved to sit back casually on a bench as he regarded his Prime. The smaller private baths like this one were plumbed and tiled, rather than naturally replenishing like the Prime’s Bath. In comparison, the oval tub was rather small…if a tub big enough to hold four people could be called small. Still, it gave Reule little room to escape Darcio’s scrutiny.
“Now, I know I’m not as easygoing as Rye, nor as powerful, for that matter, but I imagine I’m as good to talk to as anyone else,” Darcio speculated.
“Of course you are,” Reule snapped, hating it when Darcio denigrated himself like that. It was as if Darcio, whom Reule couldn’t imagine living without, didn’t feel himself worthy of his role as advisor and protector. Reule believed it was his inhibition about his low-level telepathy that made him so, but Darcio had skill and ability that made him powerful in other ways. Reule just wished he’d acknowledge that to himself from time to time. “I just don’t want to talk,” Reule mumbled irritably.
“Well, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why?” Reule barked, his darkened hazel eyes flashing furiously.
Darcio shrugged, a slight lifting of a single shoulder that belied the intense focus of his carefully assessing gray eyes. “Because I know how fastidious you are, and how determined to shield others from your emotional emanations. You rarely lose control. However, every upper-level ’path in the castle has been getting a slideshow of their Prime’s moods ever since you crossed beneath the portcullis. My suggestion to you is to vent this emotional pollution you’re swimming in and gain your privacy back.”
Reule had little to say in argument, so he didn’t bother. He turned his head aside for several minutes as he struggled to draw his tattered thoughts together.
“I have to ask you something first,” he said carefully, knowing Darcio’s reaction could be potentially volatile. “It’s a favor to me, but one you won’t like.”
“I rarely like doing favors for anyone but you, Reule,” he said, dropping all formality in light of the request. “Ask your favor.”
“I need to know if she was raped,” Reule said quickly, meeting his friend’s eyes in time to see them widen.
“Shit,” Darcio hissed, leaning forward to place elbows against knees and running thick fingers through dark blond hair. Reule wasn’t fooled. He saw the shudder that his Shadow tried to hide with the gesture. “Can’t the apothecary tell you that?”
“She won’t let him near her, I promise you that. She regards even Para with nothing but suspicion and fear. Pariedes, who everyone makes fast friends with.”
“You should wait for her to tell you in her own time.”
“I would, but she can’t even remember her name, never mind how she got mapped with bruises and half the skin on her back scoured off. Friction burned off,” Reule added, menace creeping thickly into his tone.
“Shit.” Darcio’s voice shook as he uttered the curse.
“I wouldn’t ask you—”
“I know,” Darcio cut him off hastily. “Why do you need to know so badly, Reule? If she can’t remember, shouldn’t you leave it at that? What will you say if you know the truth and she doesn’t? Don’t put yourself in that position.”
“You don’t need to know my reasons,” Reule said carefully. “The task won’t be any less difficult for you if you do. Let me worry about my motivations and the results. But if it helps you, I’ll at least be able to tell the apothecary, and he’ll be able to act accordingly without putting her through the trauma of an examination.”
Reule could tell by the weight of his sigh that Darcio would agree. He didn’t need to be a telepath, only a longtime friend, to know it. The method was simple, even if it was unique and potentially traumatic for Darcio. The Prime Shadow had been born with a gift as exclusive and powerful as Reule’s ability to emanate. But like that gift, it was hard to control and not always a pleasant thing to have at one’s disposal. Reule’s mother and his granddame had both had the gift of emanation, so it had come with a name and a measure of training. Darcio was the first of his kind to exhibit his particular power and so he’d named it himself, calling it “the Curse.”
Darcio had the ability to sort through the physical trauma of the living and the deceased, the conscious and the comatose, in order to find out what had happened to them. Since it was a mapping of the body and not of the psyche, the victim could be brain-dead or just plain dead and Darcio could still gather history. It wasn’t a pleasant gift, and Reule didn’t blame his Shadow for his reluctance to use it. Especially when Darcio had once explained it to him as “traumatic empathy.” He didn’t merely read the memory, he was overcome by it, reliving the disturbance in his mind as if he were in the actual moment, suffering the abuse, or the death. It took him days, sometimes months to shake the experiences. There were even those that never let go. Perhaps if he’d practiced the power more, he’d learn how to release them. Understandably, he refused to use it unless necessary. To his mind, practice was utterly out of the question.
Reule had only asked this favor twice before. Once to discover who’d murdered his parents. Darcio was seven years his senior, and at the time he had never once told a soul about his ability, which he considered horrifying. Upon learning of the terrible deaths of the Prime and Prima of their Sánge tribe, Shadow had had a knee-jerk thought impulse and the already powerful Reule had caught it like a brass ring. That time, he’d forced Darcio’s compliance, and it had taken three years for him to earn his forgiveness. The second time was the day they’d come upon a wagon train torn asunder by Jakals, where men had been tortured, women and children raped for the pleasure of their emotions. Reule had hardly needed to ask. Darcio had been black with fury, whipping his power out with a ready vengeance.
Shadow didn’t do that now as he sat up straight and closed his eyes. He would tread more carefully, protecting himself and as much of the privacy of his target as could be preserved under the circumstances. Reule quietly watched him. It was a testament to how Darcio’s power had grown that he didn’t have to be in the same room as his subject in order to read her. Last Reule had known, Shadow needed physical contact with his target.
Darcio sought for basics first, body memories of the most recent hours, which would orient him and then allow him to backtrack in a steady, chronological fashion, keeping him from getting confused once he lost familiar reference points. He would know enough of her past hours to catch the rhythm of her body cycle.
The first memory was always forcefully intense. It flashed into Darcio’s consciousness like a percussive explosion, abruptly striking up a discordant symphony. Lights flashed, noise blared, sensations were magnified…and this time was no