Read Online Retribution by Ann Herendeen - Free Book Online Page A

with wonder, like an old man witnessing, at the end of his
life, the long-prayed-for miracle he has lost hope of receiving.
“Jana’s scared!” he shouted, the bearer of glad tidings to a
despairing world. “Jana’s afraid!”
    The fraternal taunting was successful where
my motherly coaxing had failed. Jana’s face contorted in fury. She
took one hand off her doll and balled it into a fist. “I am not!”
she screamed at Val, as if he were a mile away, and deaf. “I’m not
afraid, you– you– shithead!” She hurled herself at her brother and
pulled him from me, holding him fast in her right hand while she
used the poor old doll as a weapon, swinging it like a sword in her
left hand, banging it down on Val’s head. The force was too much
for the tired fabric; the doll came apart at the seams, sending a
spray of musty straw stuffing into the air. Jana continued the
attack with fists.
    Isobel, her sense of responsibility as
nursemaid overriding her own fears, ran in to save the children
from my Aranyi madness. At first she saw my attempts to separate
the combatants as the source of the violence, and she fended me off
with admirable lack of concern for her own survival. “No, my lady,”
she said in her husky voice, blocking my grasping hands, “not the
children.”
    “Oh, shit,” I said in Terran. “Get real.”
Isobel shot me a hopeful look. My tone of voice was familiar, even
if the words were not. I sat back so she could see the onslaught
continuing without my mad Aranyi influence. “It’s Jana, as usual,”
I said in Eclipsian. “If you want to help, stop her from killing
Val.”
    Isobel stood irresolute for a moment or two
until her good sense prevailed. She lunged at Jana while I tried to
get a firm grip on some part of the ball of writhing young humanity
rolling around on the bed. Jana managed one last sucker punch
before Isobel and I pulled the children apart. In the melee the
positions had reversed: Jana ended up in my arms, Val with Isobel.
Val, red-faced and howling, his nose streaming, clung to his
rescuer but reached back to me with one pathetic hand, a prisoner
being carted away to execution, as I nodded at Isobel to take him
out.
    I hardened my heart, welcoming the turn of
events that had left Jana in my embrace. To her surprise I rewarded
her murderous attempt on her brother’s life with a barrage of
kisses. There would be plenty of other opportunities to impart the
lesson that assaulting someone merely for stating the truth is less
than honorable behavior. “Is that scary?” I said as I planted wet,
motherly kisses on her face and neck, where she was ticklish. “Ooh,
that’s so scary.”
    Jana lolled in my arms, beginning to trust
again. She could recognize me now, saw I was her own mother as she
remembered, not the deranged woman who had fought her own husband
with tricks of crypta . Relieved at my resurrection, Jana
laughed at the tickling and returned my kisses eagerly, her inner
eyelids slowly retracting.
    A speck of moldy straw went up my nose and I
sneezed. “You’re not really afraid of me, are you?” I asked.
    “No,” Jana said with less than complete
honesty. “But everyone else is. Even Isobel and Magali.”
    “Naomi’s not,” I said.
    “Naomi has crypta ,” Jana said. “Papa
said she could figure out what to do when—”
    She didn’t want to admit that even Dominic
had been scared, hadn’t known quite how to cope with me. I could
alleviate that fear, at least. “Papa was in to see me already,” I
said. “You know how early he wakes up. He brought me breakfast and
helped me have a bath.”
    All the lingering tension dissipated from her
coiled, muscular body. “You’re not angry at Papa anymore,” she
said.
    “I was never angry with him.” I sneezed
again, wiped my nose on my sleeve.
    Jana stared at the blatant falsehood,
determined to be brave, as she used to be, and speak her mind. “Yes
you were. You were angry at him because of Lady Melanie. Because