Chapter Twenty-Four

 

 

Rion sat in his quarters in the castle, the leather roll which contained his knives splayed out on the bed in front of him. He felt as if it was the first time he’d sat in weeks, busy as he had been working with Alesh and the others to root out the traitors in the city and, after that, coordinating with Sigan—or whatever name the Torchbearer turned crime boss was going by these days—to try to prepare for the coming siege.

He was exhausted, weary beyond belief, yet he knew there was little chance of getting any sleep with his mind as troubled as it was. If he tried, he would spend the next few hours only tossing and turning, and when he rose from his bed, finally giving up on the whole thing, he would do so only to find he was even more exhausted than when he’d lain down.

So he sat, and he stared at his knives. And he worried. Particularly about that empty spot among them, the one which should not be empty. Staring at it as if, if he looked hard enough for long enough, the knife might magically appear, relieving the niggling sense of fear he’d had since finding it missing. No knife magically appeared, however, the gods seemingly out of miracles just now, and so he sat. And he stared. And he worried.

The last few weeks had been some of the busiest, most stressful of his life. But now that the traitors, or at least as many of them as could be found, had been dealt with—dealt with, in fact, with no small degree of finality, and he still had a hard time believing that Alesh had ordered the archers to cut them down as he had—he had nothing to do. What could be done to prepare for the siege, at least what contribution he could make, had been done already, and now there was nothing left but to sit and wait.

The most frustrating part of it was that he couldn’t even talk to anyone about his fears. Partly because he could not put a face to them, could not have described them any more specifically than something felt terribly wrong. Mostly, though, it was because the others whom he would have confided in—Alesh, Katherine, and Darl—were too busy to listen to his vague concerns. Katherine, last he’d heard, was still seeing to the city’s supplies—a job which might have been fairly easy considering that, by and large, there were none, but that instead proved all the more difficult as she tried to scrape together enough food so that the people of the city wouldn’t be starving the second day of the siege.

Alesh was sequestered in his rooms, refusing to see or speak to anyone since the incident with the prisoners, adding yet another worry to Rion’s growing list, for if anyone would be needed in the coming days, he thought it surely would be Alesh, Amedan’s Chosen, and inarguably the most powerful of all of them. As for Darl, the Ferinan had spent the last several days sitting in the middle of the hallway outside Alesh’s rooms, meditating or some such thing, though what good he could hope to accomplish, Rion didn’t know.

So Rion was left to his own devices, and no matter how busy, how stressful and exhausting the last few weeks had been, Rion far preferred them to what he was doing now. After all, as long as a man had something to do, some action to take, he could fool himself into believing that he could change his own fate. But when there was nothing left, nothing of any consequence that he might contribute, he was forced to confront his own powerlessness. Some might have found it funny that a Chosen of the gods—the God of Chance, no less—would feel powerless, but if it was a joke, it was one that had long since lost its humor, if, that was, it had ever had it in the first place.

He was still sitting and staring at the leather satchel when there was a knock on his door. “Eriondrian?” a voice came from outside in the hall. “Are you here?”

His father’s voice. Rion had always thought his father a strong man, strong physically when he’d been young, and even after his body—and mind—had begun to betray him, he had still always seemed confident, solid. The type of man who always knew what to do, always knew the right thing. But his voice didn’t sound like that man now. Instead, it sounded worried. Afraid, even, and Rion was up and at his door in a moment, throwing it open.

“Father, what is i—” But he cut off as he saw that it wasn’t just his father waiting in the hallway. His mother was there as well, and any hope he’d entertained that the worry he’d heard in his father’s voice might have only been a reflection of his own troubled state of mind vanished as he looked at their pale, nervous faces.

His father gave him a sickly smile. “Hello, son.”

“What is it?” Rion asked, glancing between the two of them. “What’s happened?”

“Oh, it’s nothing for you to worry about,” his mother tried, in a voice that said, whatever it was, it was certainly something to worry about. “We just, well, we were wondering if you’ve seen Marta or Fermin recently?”

Rion wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but this hadn’t been it, and he shook his head slowly. “Um…no, but I’m sure they’re around here somewhere. It’s a big castle, after all. Still,” he said, “I’ll ask around and—”

“Forgive me, son,” his father interrupted, “but we already have. Asked around, I mean. None of the guards or anyone else in the castle have seen them, not for a few days, at least.”

Rion blinked at that. He could believe Marta might be gone for such a long time. After all, it was obvious the girl chafed at the relative lack of freedom being a ward of his mother and father entailed. But the idea that Fermin would disappear as well was far more difficult to imagine.

In all the years he’d known the man—who’d served his parents faithfully and without fail since Rion could remember—he’d never once known Fermin to shirk his duties.

“We’re sorry to bring this to you,” his father said. “We know how busy you’ve been. Likely,” he went on, trying for a light-hearted tone and failing miserably, “they’re just out gallivanting.”

Fermin, in Rion’s opinion, was just about the least likely person to “gallivant” in the world, but he wasn’t really thinking of that. Instead, he was thinking on his leather satchel, on the empty loop where one of his blades had been. It was possible, of course, that something bad had happened to Marta and the manservant. True, they had thought they’d gotten all the city’s traitors rounded up, but it wasn’t exactly as if a man could just walk down the street ringing a bell and all the servants of Darkness would offer themselves up. But even if such people were still lurking in the city, what possible reason would they have to target the young girl and, even more so, his parents’ manservant?

Suddenly, a thought struck him, one so powerful that his breath caught in his throat. The missing knife, the missing flint and steel. Marta and Fermin being gone. “Shit.”

“Eriondrian,” his mother said in what he supposed was meant to be a scolding tone, but was a half-hearted attempt at best, “language.”

“What is it, son?” his father asked in little more than a whisper. “You don’t…you don’t think something’s happened to them, do you?”

Rion liked to believe he was the type of son who wouldn’t lie to his parents, had always liked to believe it. The problem, of course, was that he had lied to them for years about his outings into the poor district, explaining nights spent gambling by saying he was busy working on their family’s shipping business. A business which had largely gone out of business, though he hadn’t bothered to divulge that information either, so two lies wrapped into one. He knew if he shared his own concerns with them, they would only worry more, a worry they could do nothing about, so he decided that maybe one more lie wouldn’t hurt. He shook his head. “I’m sure they’re both fine,” he said. “Marta’s a survivor, better at it than anyone I’ve ever met, and Fermin is…very resourceful. If anything did happen, and I don’t believe it did, then I wouldn’t bet against them.”

“Gambling is wrong,” his mother said, distracted—needing, it seemed, just to be saying something.

Not a liar, huh? he asked himself, but he gave her a smile, the best he could manage under the circumstances. “Look, I’m sure they’ll turn up. But if it’ll help you relax, I’ll look for them myself, alright?”

His father nodded thoughtfully. “Should we speak to Chosen Alesh about it, do you think? Perhaps, he—”

“No,” Rion blurted, with far more abruptness than he’d intended. “No, father,” he said slowly, “I don’t think that’ll be necessary. Alesh has got plenty on his plate already. Besides, as I said, I’m sure it’s nothing. Listen,” he went on, taking their hands, “Marta and Fermin are fine, alright? They’re okay. Trust me.”