Son of Avonar

CHAPTER 25

If only the deciphering of the journal’s secret could be as simple as its retrieval, I thought as I hurried toward the service gate. Surely D’Natheil or Baglos would have some insight into the puzzle of the map.

The day was warm and bright. The palace courtyards swarmed with servants and soldiers, carters and gardeners, bustling about to satisfy the needs and whims of the favored populace that resided within the walls. A few more steps and I would be out of the palace confines and on my way back to the small, hot room in the Street of Cloth Merchants, where the Prince and the Dulcé awaited me.

“Excuse me, madam.”

I tried to ignore the well-dressed man who matched his steps to my gait. The journal tucked into my pocket felt heavy and obvious. My cheeks burned.

“A word, please, if you will.”

A quick glance confirmed that he was addressing me. The gentleman who matched his pace to mine, trying to bow as he walked, appeared to be about my own age, the very model of a lesser courtier seeking to advance himself. His elegant attire was expensive, but in no way ostentatious, and his grooming was impeccable, though his light hair was precariously scant and the body squeezed into the dark blue breeches, ruffled shirt, and silk waistcoat precariously soft.

Cursing my ill luck, I dipped my knee and cast my eyes to the gravel path. “Is it me you want, my lord?”

“Indeed, my lady. Lady Seriana of Comigor, is it not?” A practiced eye assessed everything from my short ragged hair to my heavy, shapeless boots, even as he ducked his head.

“Do I look to be one with such a lofty title, sir?”

“You were recognized when you entered the gates, my lady, and I was sent to await your return here. Your brother would have a word with you.”

“I make no claim to any brother.”

“Please, please, madam”—he fluttered his eyelids and raised a deprecating hand—“I am acquainted with your reputation for verbal agility, and I will cheerfully concede you victory from the beginning. I dislike games of all kinds, almost as much as I dislike coercion. I would much rather you come freely. The duke would very much like to see you and will not permit me to accept a refusal.” His eager courtesy set my teeth grinding.

I started toward the gates again. No point in further pretense. “To what method of coercion will you so regrettably resort when I say I have no intention of calling on the murderous son of my parents? Rope? Chains? Your oh-so-tastefully modest sword? Or perhaps you will just call for guards?”

The man kept pace with me, entirely unruffled, his hands clasped behind his back. We might have been conversing about an upcoming dinner party. “I make no claim to understand the depth of estrangement between you and the duke, madam. I am new to his service. But it is my impression that His Grace’s request, though insistent, does not stem from animosity. He says that once you hear him out, you may be on your way. Will you not take a moment to alleviate your own curiosity, if not to satisfy His Grace’s wish?”

An insightful gentleman indeed. Not at all like Tomas’s usual associates. No sardonic glint in his eye as there would have been in Darzid’s. Where was that snake?

My companion nicked a finger, and three guards in bright red livery appeared, hovering about us like bright hummingbirds around a particularly succulent flower. They kept a discreet distance, but they blocked every direction save the one in which my companion gestured. “This way, madam.”

“So you choose the last of my scenarios. The cowardly one.”

“Pragmatic. Better for all. My name, by the way, is Garlos.”

When I stepped through the palace door, the years and the walls closed in on me. I wished fervently to close my eyes and transport myself to the hard, splintered bench in front of Jonah’s cottage. How much better to breathe the sweet air of the valley, rather than the stifling, three-hundred-year-old deadness of this place.

Garlos led me through the echoing warren of bare walls, steep stairs, and creaking floorboards that were the servants’ passages. A quarter of an hour later, we stepped through a discreetly placed door into long, wide gallery. The paneled walls were hung with weaponry: a shield of burnished bronze as tall as a man, blazoned with the rising sun of Annadis, a saber with a ruby-studded hilt, halberds, pikes, and a wicked-looking pick-like ax with a long head set square to the haft, curved and blunt on its top edge, pointed on its outer edge and sharp as a dagger on its lower. The lamplit alcoves sheltered heroic statuary and gem-studded armor. A turning led us into a portrait gallery in which twenty generations of princes and queens, kings and generals simpered, frowned, or stared from the walls, enough gold in each man-high frame to ransom a city. Thick red carpet muted the sound of our passing.

We stopped before an elaborately carved door, and while I cooled my heels beside the statue of a naked warrior, Garlos tapped quietly and slipped in. I pretended to study the statue. The stares of passing courtiers and servants were more intimately humiliating than my yearly appearance in the Great Hall. The interval until Garlos opened the door and summoned me inside seemed far longer than it was.

It was the custom for the king to present his champion with an expensive gift each time the swordsman took a challenge for him and returned victorious. From the look of it, Evard had not lacked for challenges, nor Tom as for victories.

Upon a hectare of priceless Isker carpet stood a wide desk of the rarest gaonwood, the sheen of its finish displaying the intricate perfection of its twisting grain. A mantelpiece of rosy Syllean marble was a fitting centerpiece to an impeccably selected collection of ancient swords. Fine leather chairs were grouped about the hearth. Another wall housed a library worthy of the University itself, the diamond-paned doors of the bookcases displaying what must have been a thousand volumes bound in perfectly matched red leather, tooled with gold. Not one of the books looked as if it had ever been opened.

To complete the decor was the Duke of Comigor himself, a masterpiece of skin-tight, dark blue breeches and full-sleeved blue satin doublet, trimmed liberally in gold lace and belted with a jewel-studded green sash. He stood with his back to me, gazing out of the glass-paned doors that led onto his private balcony. So favored an apartment would surely overlook the royal family’s private gardens.

The door closed behind my escorts, leaving the two of us alone, but Tomas did not acknowledge my presence. Well, two could play. I stood unspeaking just where Garlos had left me, my hands folded primly.

But when Tomas turned around at last, the face I saw was not the one I expected. Pride was there, but no hatred.

His eyes were not scornful, but cloudy and troubled. “What are you doing here?” he said.

Perhaps I was mistaken. “None of your business.”

“Don’t start this again, Seri.”

“Pardon me, Your Grace. I am here because the Duke of Comigor, the Champion of Leire, has summoned me. I was given no choice in the matter.”

He clenched his fists. “Hand of Annadis, why can we not hold a reasonable conversation? You pride yourself so on rational behavior.”

“Tell me, Your Grace, how does one hold a rational conversation with a murderer? It’s a behavior I was never taught. Must I curtsy or is complete obeisance proper?”

Tomas reddened. “I saved your life—” Before the words left his tongue, he tried to recall them. “Oh, confound it all. We can’t get bogged down in the past. Let’s start again and try to be civil.” He took a breath. “Will you sit down? Can I send for wine? Something to eat?”

“I’ll stand, if you please. And I’ll take nothing from you.”

“Fine.” He fingered a pen that had been carelessly dropped onto the desk, disturbing its sterile order. “When I heard you were on the grounds, I decided it was time I spoke with you about this. It’s been on my mind for a long time, but there’s been no opportunity.”

“You know where I live, Tomas, and you well know where I can be found on the first day of autumn in each and every year.”

My brother clenched his jaw and snapped the pen, throwing it on the floor. I told myself to resist further goading for I was, indeed, immensely curious, and the J’Ettanni journal weighed heavy in my pocket. My brother stepped close, so stiff I wondered he could walk. I folded my arms. Feeble enough protection. But nothing would have prepared me for his words.

“Seri, I want you to come home.” He rushed ahead, giving me no time to recover from my astonishment. “I’ve gotten you a full pardon from Evard. Your parole will be satisfied. You’ll never have to do that… thing… again, if you’ll come back to Comigor.”

“You’re mad.” It was the only explanation.

“It’s not right, your living the way you do.”

“How dare you pass judgment on me! You know nothing of my life. You’ve never understood the least thing about me. Do you see my circumstances as yet another untidy blot upon your honor?”

“No! It’s not that. Look at yourself, Seri. How long has it been since last you looked?” Before I could protest, he grabbed my shoulders and propelled me to an ornately framed glass that hung among his displays.

It had been a very long time. I had to blink and sort out the image at first, for I had never realized how much Tomas and I resembled each other. But there was a world of difference, too. I could still see traces of the girl I had been, but my red-brown hair was dull, my complexion roughened by years in sun and wind, and my eyes had lines at the corners and knowledge in their depths that had never been reflected in my mirror at Comigor. And I was very shabby. My white shift was frayed at the neck and wrists, my tunic threadbare, my brown skirt faded, wrinkled, and not terribly clean. I looked altogether straggly and tired, like a garden gone wild.

“Does it offend you more that I’m poor, Tomas, or that I’m thirty-five?”

He didn’t answer, and I looked again at my brother’s reflection, seeing in his brown eyes something I’d not seen in them for years. Sarcasm and anger lost their purpose, leaving only the dregs of years and bitterness and too much sorrow. “Why ever would you believe that I would care what you think of me, or how I live, or what I do? Is it shameful that I eat only what I can grow or barter for or that I wear the same skirt every day of the year? And do you think those things should bother me enough that I would share a roof with my son’s murderer?”

He turned and walked away from me, rubbing the back of his neck with his long, powerful hand. “No. Those things have nothing to do with anything. So stupid to think I could do this without going back…” In a voice so soft I had to work to hear it, he said, “I dream, Seri. Bloody nightmares that have not left me since that day. Desolation and ruin. Fire. And sorcery. I see you with that knife in your back… and the child… oh, holy Annadis, the child… The dreams eat away at me until I feel I’m living in that horror, and my waking life is the dream.” He spun about and held up his hand, his eyes closed. “Don’t say anything yet.”

He took a breath and continued. “You may never believe me, Seri, but I was convinced—absolutely—that what I did was right. That all of it was for the best… for the family… for you. I’ve thought that the dreams haunted me because I was weak, not because I did anything wrong. But in the last few days, my dreams have gone away, vanished as if they’d never been. A mercy it seemed. But instead… It’s as if I’ve had no clear thought in fifteen years, and only now can I even begin to see what happened to us. To you. And now, if the dreams should return, I don’t know what I’ll do, for only the conviction that I was right kept them at bay. Then, on top of it all, I hear you’re at the gates today, and it’s like a madness in me that I can’t let you leave.”

I started to speak, but he interrupted again. “No. Not yet. Hear me out, for I don’t know what’s opened my eyes or loosened my tongue. I leave the city in three days. There’s been a challenge, a serious one, from some rebel chieftain in the west. I’m to take care of it, of course. It’s a strange and nasty situation, but I thought nothing of it until this other business came up. But now…”

His tongue would not form the words, but he was my brother… as close as a twin. I could read in him the thing he could not say. “You’re afraid, Tomas. Why?”

“I have a son, ten years old. I’m often away from Comigor for months at a time, and I’ve never thought twice about it. It is my duty. But this time…” He paced the length of the room before he could go on. “Maybe this is what happens when a soldier’s luck runs out—some say they know beforetime. The only thing that comes into my mind is to get you to Comigor to be with him, and then I could be easy.” He ended his pacing by the balcony doors and slammed his fist into the lintel so hard that it rattled the glass. “Damnation! I’m a lunatic.”

Magpies screeched in the invisible garden. A fountain splattered and gurgled. Fingering the telltale bulge in my pocket, I considered my brother’s incredible confession. I did not believe that he was mad.

“Tomas, where is Darzid?”

My brother turned, gaping at me as if I had asked him the price of fish in the market. “Why?”

“Just answer me.”

“He’s gone off to Valleor on urgent business—family business—with some old friend, or cousin, or something.”

“And did the change in your dreams happen before he left?”

“No. What are you getting at?”

“After he left, then.”

“No—well, not exactly. It was only when I came back here from Comigor. Darzid had been down near Fensbridge shopping for a new horse when he got called away. He has nothing to do with any of this. He’d tell me I was a fool to speak with you.”

Shopping for a new horse. Not hunting a missing groom. One by one I placed Tomas’s words into the puzzle written in my head, but I could not yet read the answer. “Did he know you were coming to Montevial?”

“No. My business here came up suddenly. Seri—”

“Don’t interrupt. Has he ever left you for so long before?”

“Perhaps once or twice. He is the most faithful and loyal of lieutenants.”

“But would it be correct to say that, since Darzid was appointed as your aide, you have never, until this week, been in a place he didn’t know you to be?”

“That’s stupid.”

“Am I right?”

“Most likely that’s true, but—”

“Now answer me this. Who made the ‘discovery” that Martin had sheltered a sorcerer? Who unearthed those incredibly ridiculous witnesses? It was Darzid, was it not?“

Tomas looked as if someone was twisting a knife in his belly. “It’s the kind of thing I pay him to do. To gather information.”

“And who first told you about Karon?”

“Darzid, of course, but he—”

“Who convinced you that only you, of all the bastards in Evard’s multitudes, had to murder my son?”

“Seri—”

“Answer me!”

“Darzid said that—”

“Of course,” I murmured. Darzid who had come to me with an improbable tale of old hatreds, who believed he was not living his own life, who felt that something had changed in the world when Karon died and had demanded… no, begged me to tell him of sorcery… “Turn over any slime-covered stone in this kingdom, and it is Darzid that slithers away.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something a very wise man told me years ago. Perhaps it was truer than even he knew.” Somehow I knew that Darzid was not just hunting sorcerers. “Tell me, Tomas, did you meet Darzid’s friend, the one who accompanied him to Valleor?”

Tomas threw up his hands. “Clearly there’s nothing more to discuss. You wanted to leave. I’ll call Garlos, and you can take yourself to perdition as you will.” He had closed himself off again.

“You may have your scribes record this momentous event, brother. For once in our lives we are in agreement. We have nothing more to discuss. And I’ll not go to Comigor except as your prisoner.”

“So be it.” Tomas pulled the bell and turned his back.

I was not about to tell my brother of my own business, but as I watched his stiff back, I recalled what I had seen in the mirror. We were flesh and blood. I moved close behind him and said, quietly, “I understand what it took for you to speak to me in the way you have, Tomas. Unfortunately you’ve credited me with a more generous nature than I possess. But in return, I’ll tell you this. I fear Darzid. I fear him more than I fear you and more than I fear Evard. If I were you, I would look into the eyes of Darzid’s friend, and if they’re as empty as I believe you’ll find them, I would hide my wife and my son and tell no one in the world where they can be found.”

He didn’t answer. I didn’t know if he had even heard.

Garlos led me back through the palace, looking pleased with himself. “You see? It was just as I predicted,” he said. “You are free to be on your way.”

“As you predicted,” I said. “Tell me about yourself, Garlos. Is our friend Captain Darzid so tired of playing nursemaid to a spoiled brat that he leaves you in charge of my brother now?”

The man’s face lost its smiling aspect. “I am not privileged to be one of Captain Darzid’s staff. His Grace decided to come to Montevial very suddenly. I’m a member of the administrative staff of the Guard, and was asked by His Grace to perform the duties of his aide while he is in residence here.”

“I’m sure you understand that discretion is, above all, a virtue that my brother prizes.”

The man was very eager. “I believe I have few rivals in that department.”

“For example, this whole business with me… family business…”

“I’ve not been given leave to discuss it with anyone.”

“And that would be anyone, no matter how close to the duke.”

“Of course.”

“Excellent. You’ll go far.”

As I disappeared into the crowds outside the service gates, I imagined Garlos staring after me, wondering at himself listening to political advice from one who looked as if she should be scrubbing the palace floors.