CHAPTER 27
Allystaire had outpaced everyone but Norbert as they ran that morning. That in itself was not unusual, but Allystaire felt keenly that morning just how easy it was for the taller, younger man to keep pace with him.
Allystaire stole a glance sideways at the boy. Man, he corrected himself. The rock that had once sat awkwardly, as if it were crushing one side of him, now seemed an afterthought, tucked comfortably into one arm. His legs weren’t churning like Allystaire’s own were; rather, they glided over the road. Norbert no longer answered to the description of gangly; the work over the winter had put muscle on the young man’s neck and shoulders and arms and the rest of him had slowly begun to fill out.
He felt his own lungs starting to burn, and Allystaire glanced back over his shoulder and saw Gideon and Harrys both laboring, so he raised a hand to call a halt.
All of them gratefully dumped their stones from their arms, except for Allystaire, who carefully bent his legs and let it fall gently from his hands.
“I have seen a man shatter his foot that way, lads,” Allystaire said, trying to keep the struggle for breath out of his words. “Best be more careful.”
“Why’re we out this far anyway?” Harrys made no pretense of ease, bent over with his hands upon his knees. “Longest run we’ve yet made or I’ve no eye for this country.”
“It is,” Gideon agreed with him. For all that the boy had lagged a bit behind, he didn’t breath as heavily as the old men. Allystaire supposed he might just be limited by the length of his strides. “I am not sure why we’ve come this way, but I will need to get back soon.” As Gideon spoke, he flexed and bent his fingers, then looked away easy, wincing very faintly.
“To be honest, I do not know why we are out here,” Allystaire replied. “Mol simply told me we needed to be, and so we are.”
“We take orders from her?” Harrys straightened up, moving a hand to rub at his lower back.
“Yes.” The answer came in a three-part echo, Allystaire, Gideon and Norbert all replying at the same time, in the same definitive tone.
“Fair enough,” Harrys muttered.
Allystaire turned his eyes back to the western road, squinting, looking for any sign. He wished, for a moment, that he’d thought to ask Torvul for the loan of his glass.
“Let us move forward at a walk,” Allystaire said. “Leave the stones.”
He had thought to tell them all to come armed. For Allystaire, that meant his hammer belted around his waist. Norbert had his short bow cased on his back, arrows thick on his hip. Harrys wore his axe and falchion, and Gideon a simple dagger. So when his own hand fell to his hammer, as it tended to do, Norbert pulled free and quickly strung his bow, Harrys gripped his own hilts, and Gideon simply frowned and continued to flex his fingers.
“Expectin’ trouble?” Harrys carefully slid his axe free and let it dangle from his left hand, his fingers loosely gripping the bottom few inches of the haft.
“Always, but not particularly,” Allystaire said. “Mol would have told me if it were dangerous.” He paused. “I think.” He looked back over his shoulder to Gideon once again, said, “Could you take a look ahead, lad?”
Gideon curled his hands into fists and squeezed them for a moment, then nodded. “Aye.”
Allystaire frowned at the way the boy kept moving his fingers, but said nothing. Gideon put one knee to the ground and lowered his head, closed his eyes.
Without saying a word, without really thinking on it, the three men moved into a triangle around the boy. Allystaire and Harrys stood in front of him to either side while Norbert stood directly behind him, bow in hand.
* * *
It was the work of a moment for Gideon to take most of his Will into the sky. He left just enough behind to keep his body upright, to sense danger if it approached.
He flew straight upwards, giving himself no perceivable form. The dragon form he’d styled was an affectation, and unworthy of the Mother, he’d decided.
He didn’t have to reach a particularly great height before he saw what it was Allystaire was there to find.
A small cart being drawn by a single horse. Two people sat on its board, with a third lying along the back. Three more walked alongside it.
Walked, Gideon realized, as he raced back to his body, was a poor description of it. They didn’t walk, exactly, or not like most folk.
They limped.
* * *
Gideon suddenly sat up, taking a quick, sharp breath. His return was so sudden that it startled Harrys and Norbert, who both took a sudden half-step back.
“Forward,” Gideon said, “quickly now. It is not a danger. It is people who need help.”
The boy took off at a run that left even Norbert falling behind him for the first few span. They hadn’t far to run, though, when the cart that trundled towards them came up a slight rise, spattering mud to either side as it went.
Allystaire halted. “Do not want them to think we are bandits out to take them,” he said, stowing his hammer and holding his hands up and away from his body, the palms outward. Harrys slid his axe back to its loop, reluctantly, and Norbert unstrung his bow. All four walked steadily forward, showing their hands, Norbert holding his bowstave, the rest empty.
Walking ahead of others, Allystaire strained to recognize the knot of men that walked towards him. Not a peddler, he told himself. Refugees?
Squinting hard, he saw that the one walking in front was half-dragging one leg behind him, turning at the hip with every step.
Something fell into place in Allystaire’s mind and he rushed forward faster, still keeping his hands out.
As he neared them, Allystaire suddenly pulled to a stop. He knew why they’d come. He knew what they wanted.
But there were forms to observe.
“Travelers.” His voice cut through the air like a stone loosed by a siege engine, a powerful and commanding sound. A few paces behind him, Norbert started slightly. “Why do you come to Thornhurst?”
“Then are we near it?” The lead man limped a couple of steps further. “We’ve come seekin’ the paladin. Seekin’ his healing.”
“Then you have found him,” Allystaire called back. He lowered his hands. “I am Allystaire Stillbright, the Arm of the Mother, and what aid I can grant you, I will.”
* * *
Tibult cried out and tried to run forward as soon as the paladin identified himself, but he tripped and fell to the mud. He pushed himself on his elbows and tried to drag himself back to his feet, only to look up and find the paladin looming over him.
Gods, Tibult thought, he is an ugly man. Anyone who looked would see how often his nose had been broken, the scars about his eyes and forehead, the uneven flecking of grey that was starting to come into his hair.
But as strong hands seized his arms and lifted him upwards, Tibult could already feel the warmth flowing into his limbs from where Allystaire’s left hand gripped his right forearm.
The days of walking, for Tibult had refused to ride, had brought fresh hell to the hip the paladin had tried to heal. It still wasn’t as bad as it had been, but it was growing worse each day.
And now the pain was draining out of him, sluiced away like grime under a bucket of water. There was pain, too, in the healing, sharp and fresh, as the bones realigned themselves, as his leg grew straight once more.
There was more than pain, though. There was compassion. The paladin knew his pain.
There was love. The Goddess that Tibult had begun praying to saw him, and loved him, and eased his burden. But there was a request in that love, if not a demand.
By the time Tibult had found his feet, and stood with almost no pain for the first time in years—there was a trace of still, a flare, that remained, but it was so light as to be almost a memory of joy—he faced the paladin, and then dropped to a knee.
“I am your man, Allystaire Stillbright. For whate’er you can make of a broken soldier such as me. We all of us will be, I think.”
The paladin eyed him carefully, narrowing those dark blue eyes beneath their scar-chipped brows.
“I know,” he said, in a voice that was as deep and strong as mountains. “I have been waiting for you. Welcome to Thornhurst; welcome to the Order of the Arm.”
* * *
Allystaire pulled Tibult to his feet and looked hard into the man’s brown eyes. The former soldier was of a height with him, though not as big in the shoulders and through the arms. He could see the wear that years of pain, and of drink and poor food had done to him.
There was some strength in the man yet, though. Allystaire had felt it when he’d healed him. A determination not to let go, a never dead hope of something better.
I have been waiting for them, he told himself, uncertain how he knew. Mol did, he reminded himself, and that’s enough for now.
“What is the Order of the Arm?” Tibult’s voice was halting, his legs shaking as he let them bear his weight evenly.
“Knights who will serve the Mother,” Allystaire said, “and Her people. Who will stand at the farthest edges of the hearthfire’s light, and face the darkness beyond it. Who will bear any burden for the people behind them.”
“How? I’m no knight,” Tibult said.
“Neither are we,” Harrys grunted, as he and Norbert walked forward. “At least, we weren’t. ‘Cordin’ t’him we are, though.”
“You are squires until I say otherwise,” Allystaire said with a faint grin. Then he turned back to Tibult and said, “Mayhap you were no knight. But I see before me a man who walked from Londray to Thornhurst—in the winter, no less—because he had one taste of the Mother’s Gift. And if you had done that by yourself, Tibult, I would consider you a strong and hardy fellow indeed. But you dragged others with you, with old wounds as bad as your own, or worse. I cannot imagine how you kept them alive, much less moving forward, and yet here they are, and at great cost to you. I see a man that I want standing beside me in the darkness.”
Allystaire clapped Tibult on the shoulder, and said, “And now, I should see to the rest of you, aye?”
Too dazed to speak, Tibult only stared.
Allystaire headed to the wagon. Tibult shook himself free of his brief confusion and followed quickly after.
* * *
Audreyn accepted the tray of folded papers from a liveried servant and placed them carefully on her desk. Pens, ink, bowls of sand, wax, and stacks of parchment were marshaled into neat, precise ranks upon it, and the new arrivals were quickly shuffled into their proper unit and billeted accordingly.
Time to begin concocting my lies, she thought. A tiny cold ball of fear blossomed in her stomach, but she pushed it down. In truth, the Lady of Coldbourne Moor and Highgate didn’t truly believe she was going to need to lie much. The Baronial demands on the treasure and the people of Highgate and Coldbourne was two or three campaigning seasons away from breaking them anyway, she’d decided, after a preliminary look at the weight on hand, and the first hints of what Gilrayan Oyrwyn expected them to provide now that spring was here.
Audreyn reached for one of the sheets she’d already read enough times to have creased it with her fingers.
Forty barrels of arrows
Mounts for 50 lances
Two hundreds of fresh spearmen, able-bodied
Arms, livery, leather jacks for same
She tore her eyes away from the list and set it back down, delicately reached for a pen, when she suddenly had the impression of being watched.
Audreyn looked up, saw the liveried maid who’d brought the tray of fresh letters standing at the door. She’d heard the footsteps and the door close, but never looked up.
She stood in an instant. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Beggin’ pardon, m’lady,” the woman said. “But I been doin’ this for your own good.”
“Doing what?” Audreyn found herself thinking of the dagger in one of the slim drawers beneath the desk’s writing surface.
“Seein’ how long you’d take t’notice me.”
Audreyn threw open the drawer and pulled the bare blade free, bringing it up in one hand, but not coming around the side of her desk. She scrutinized the woman carefully. She was young, a bit pretty in a rough way, with large dark eyes and ash-blonde hair. Thin, and ill-fitted by the livery she wore, she did not fit with the surroundings of Highgate.
“I do not know you,” Audreyn said through clenched teeth. Fear rose in her stomach again, but she forced it down and stood.
“Nor should ya, m’lady,” the girl said, her accent and bearing suddenly all wrong. “I’m here on behalf of a mutual friend.”
“What does that mean?” Audreyn came around the desk, the knife held low, blade leading the way.
“It means, m’lady, that, much like you, I agreed t’walk in the shadow, in hopes of one day walkin’ in the Mother’s light.” She held her hands up, palms out. “And I mean you no harm. Far from it. There’s nowhere I could run from her, e’en if I’d a mind t’hurt you. And I truly don’t.”
The girl in the maid’s uniform sketched a terrible curtsey. There was grace in her movements but it wasn’t trained; it was perfectly raw.
“My name is Shary. And Idgen Marte sent me north with ya. I’m here t’help.”
Audreyn lowered her dagger hand, but not all the way. “Help me in what way? Why would I need it?”
“Beggin’ your pardon m’lady,” the girl repeated, but the smirk on her face didn’t seem particularly apologetic, “but ya didn’t look twice at me, even though my dress barely fits and ya’d never set eyes on me before. Had I meant ya harm, I could’ve killed ya three times by now.”
“I think you underestimate how hard it is to kill a Coldbourne,” Audreyn said, feeling her back stiffening. Despite her standard assumptions of power over a woman in livery, Audreyn suddenly found herself struggling to meet and hold this girl’s deep, dark eyes. They held a haunted knowledge that Audreyn didn’t want to share.
“If you’re at all like your brother, I don’t,” Shary said. “I saw just how hard it is t’kill him.” The girl’s eyes got a little softer, a little awed, when she spoke of Allystaire.
“Does everyone go dewey-eyed over my brother these days?” Audreyn’s exasperation vented itself in a question she already knew the answer to.
“I stopped gettin’ dewy-eyed a long time ago, m’lady, but you didn’t see yer brother durin’ the battle.” The girl shook her head slowly from side to side. “Took a dozen o’those Wights to drag him to the ground, and them piercin’ him all o’er with their blades. No other man could’a lived through that.”
“Enough of that. Explain yourself, or I may yet use this.” Audreyn scolded herself. She’d let the conversation run out of her control. It shouldn’t be a conversation, she thought.
“I’d hate fer it t’come t’that,” Shary said. “As to what help ya need, well, learnin’ ya where t’look for threats’d be a start. Beyond that, I can be an extra set o’eyes and ears, I can carry messages and bring ya news, and if it comes to it,” the girl shrugged, “I’ve got a knife, too.”
Audreyn blanched for a moment. “Are you suggesting your Goddess would condone assassination?”
The girl shrugged very gently. “I’m not sure about the Mother, but I’m sure about Idgen Marte, and she’ll be bringin’ me t’account ‘fore the Mother does. Like I said,” Shary went on with quietly stunning calm, “I’m in hopes o’walkin’ in Her light. Ain’t there yet.”
Audreyn sighed and smoothed her dress reflexively, and turned back to her desk, waving for Shary to follow. She deposited her dagger back in the otherwise empty drawer and sat. “It’ll look more natural if we speak here, if anyone should happen to come to the door.”
Shary followed her and stood a few feet away, shuffling her feet and letting the silver letter tray dangle from one hand. Audreyn frowned meaningfully at it, and Shary followed her eyes down and then back up, but didn’t seem to understand what the look meant.
Audreyn hmphed quietly and pressed on. “How did you get here?”
“Fell in wi’ yer train,” Shary said. “Nobody takes a head count o’the followers, only the soldiers. Once we were in the town, t’were easy t’sneak into the Hall, steal a maid’s dress.”
“Cold, woman. What were you Idgen Marte found you, a spy, a master thief?”
“A whore,” Shary answered with the same unashamed calm she’d already displayed. “And then a wife and a priestess, of a kind, and then a widow in short order.” The girl smiled faintly. “D’ya think Idgen Marte spent all the winter talkin’ t’you and drinkin’ with yer brother? She taught me. It isn’t e’en that hard, in truth.” Her smile vanished. “Nobody looks at women like me, m’lady. If my eyes are down n’I look busy, I can go everywhere and hear everythin’.” As if to prove the point, the girl lifted her tray correctly, lowered her eyes to the ground, and seemed to shrink into herself.
Audreyn had to admit that the girl’s actions were effective. She suddenly looked like any maid serving here in Coldbourne Hall, like dozens, scores that Audreyn had seen in her life.
Audreyn was suddenly keenly aware of the fact that of those many women, she could name, at best, a little over half a dozen, and she was ashamed. Suddenly something the girl had said grabbed her.
“I’m sorry, Shary that you’ve been widowed already,” Audreyn quietly offered.
“Thanks, m’lady.” The girl frowned faintly, worrying at her thin bottom lip with the sharp points of teeth that were whiter than Audreyn would’ve expected. “Just so it’s clear, I’m not the only widow wearin’ a maid’s dress in this hall. And, in truth, Gend weren’t much of a husband.”
“Die he die in the war, then?”
“Not so. Killed by greenhats, or Delondeur swords-at-hire at the start o’winter, when they declared the anathemata. Found us havin’ a meetin’ up in Ashmill Bridge, chased us out o’town. Were it not for Idgen Marte we’d all’ve burned for heretics. Couple o’men got close anyway, and Gend stayed behind for ‘em.”
The entire time she told the story, Shary remained as calm, as cool as ever, hands at her sides, posture relaxed.
“You are remarkably calm for a woman who lost her husband.”
“He weren’t for long and he weren’t much for the time we had,” Shary said, “and pinin’ o’er his bones isn’t like to help me help you, m’lady. And that’s what I’m here for, after all.”
Audreyn knew she’d been told to get on with it, so she pursed her lips. “Do you speak with the other servants?”
Shary thought a moment. “I could, but I best not do it often. Word’ll get back to who’er hires that there’s a new lass and he’ll wonder where she came from.”
Audreyn smiled. “She will wonder.” She gestured at the parchments and implements before her with a sweep of her hand. “All I need do is write the appropriate documents, and we have hired a new maid.”
“If I’m spendin’ m’day haulin’ wood and sweepin’ ashes and cleanin’ pots I can’t do what Idgen Marte sent me here t’do, m’lady. I’ve already got two women t’answer two. A third’d get no answers at all.”
“I can also see to it that you are assigned to me, for whatever duties I see fit. I’ll think of a reason later. For now, get yourself hidden. I can have all in readiness by the morning.”
“As y’wish, m’lady.” Shary made another abominable curtsey and walked towards the door. As she reached and opened it, her entire demeanor underwent a swift change. Her shoulders drooped, her head lowered. She took up less space and seemed to lose all of her confidence, all that forthright calm. And then she was gone.
Audreyn frowned as she watched Shary disappear into the hallway. Turning back to the papers piled on her desk, she felt an unsettling thought rise to the top of her suddenly churning mind.
Likely enough, the girl was here to help, just as she’d said. But, Audreyn admitted, though not aloud, she is also here to watch me, and make sure I do as I said I would. She selected a piece of fresh parchment and the pen she’d meant to take up when the girl had finally revealed herself, had a deep and steadying breath.
“Sorry, Gilrayan,” she muttered, as she dipped the silver end of the pen in the ink bottle. “Coldbourne is about to admit its deficiencies as horse country and the poor work of its smiths is going to get poorer given the high cost of iron.”
* * *
Cerisia had been given a room among the Vineyards’ many-towered splendor that allowed her a good view of the rookery. On an early morning several days into her visit, she found herself at the window, staring hard at the platform outside a slender tower where messenger pigeons would leave or enter the rookery.
Real work had to be done by riders bearing messages, she knew, but a pigeon flapping and cooing outside with a tiny hollow tube on its legs, perhaps a scrap of cloth in Baronial colors affixed to it, would be the first indication of any movement.
The breeze that the open window brought was colder than she liked, or colder than she’d thought she liked. An entire winter spent more or less in the outdoors of winter had, perhaps, adjusted her preferences when it came to such things. She was at least more willing to admit to the beauty of the landscape, the quilt of green and brown she could just see unrolling from the castle walls.
Cerisia was turned from the window by a rustling among the linens on the massive four-poster that had been placed in her chamber. Its posts were carved—with vines and leaves and grapes, of course—and two sets of curtains, light and heavy, were available to draw across the bed at need.
Currently, no curtains were drawn, giving her a view of the smoothly-muscled torso of Arontis Innadan as he stirred in her bed.
She smiled, pushing aside thoughts of the scandal that might arise if a chambermaid were to walk in upon the Castellan and Baronial Heir in the bed of a Priestess of Fortune. Not that Cerisia herself needed fear any such scandal; servants of Fortune were all but expected to seek liaisons with the rich and powerful. Still, for Arontis it could affect marriage prospects.
Only if his future wife’s family is full of Urdarite prudes, Cerisia thought, glancing at the door to see that it was locked.
She glided away from the window and sat carefully upon the bed. She stretched one hand out to Arontis’s chest, smiled at the hard planes of muscle that lay just beneath the skin.
She studied his face as his eyes flickered open. He had the body of a man—of that she had no more doubt—but in repose his face was still quite young. The boyishness melted away as he awoke and sat, capturing her hand with one of his.
“Do you still look for messages? It’ll likely be another day at least,” he murmured, his voice a whispered croak.
“I do,” she admitted, shrugging rather more broadly than was strictly necessary, and watching how his eyes were drawn to the clinging silk of her nightdress. “It is important work being done, Arontis. It must move forward quickly if there is to be any chance of success.”
He let go of her hand and she let it drop to her lap, then placed his arms behind him and stretched. “And what chance of success do you really think it has?”
“With Allystaire Stillbright and Hamadrian Innadan working at the same purpose, I see a great chance of success. I see woe and ruin for those who would oppose them.”
“You think quite highly of Stillbright, and of my father.”
“As to your father, should I not?”
“I love my father, and honor him as is my place,” Arontis said, sitting up and leaning against the headboard. The linens—colored golden in honor of Fortune, Cerisia guessed—were pulled down and pooled around his hips and folded legs. She briefly let her eyes follow the ripple of lean muscle down to the line of golden-yellow linen drawn over his hips. “Yet I think in his age, his hope is starting to overcome his reach.”
“There is every reason to hope,” Cerisia said. “There is always reason to hope.”
“Is it the paladin, then? Is he the reason to hope?”
“Yes,” Cerisia said. “And not only him. There are his companions. There is the fact that people will remember who he once was, and respect him for that.”
“Tell me about him.”
Cerisia fought the urge to frown or scold. Better to find some way to gently demonstrate the annoyance of interruption, she told herself, and took a deep breath. “What do you wish to know?”
“Is he as fair as legends would have it? The songs never cease to speak of the beauty of men like Reddyn the Redoubtable or Parthalian.”
Cerisia shook her head. “Not at all. His face is large, and years of battering have made it uneven, with a nose broken so often I could hazard no guesses as to what it originally looked like or where it might once have pointed. In other words, Arontis,” she said, leaning forward to hover her mouth near his, and sliding her hand from her own lap to his, “he is not half as fair as you.”
Cerisia felt strong arms slide around her and pull her against that smoothly-muscled chest, and put Allystaire, the open window, and the slim tower in its view out of her mind.
And while the room grew temporarily warmer than the air gusting into it, neither of its occupants were watching a small grey and white pigeon with a tiny hollow tube tied to its leg. Even if they had been looking, neither could’ve seen the device carefully painted onto its feathered breast: a light blue field with the paw of a white bear upon it.
* * *
“The White Bear will come!” Hamadrian Innadan was practically shouting as he held the tiny note aloft in one thin, liver-spotted hand. He, Arontis, and Cerisia were gathered once again in the study where she had met him upon her arrival. “Unseldt Harlach says that further arrangements will arrive by riders with drawn banners within the fortnight. He thinks the use of Standing Guard Pass an excellent one. Or so he tells me,” he added, gesturing over his shoulder at the scribe who’d had that morning’s charge of the rookery. The young man with a scholar’s wispy beard and a red skullcap was still carrying the bird itself in a cage made of thin wires.
“And I want the bird knighted,” Baron Innadan said in a rush of heated excitement. “With full honors.”
“Yes, m’lord,” the scribe answered, bowing. The man seemed entirely out of sorts, bewildered at his inclusion in the company.
“It is a Harlach bird, father,” Arontis pointed out, failing to hide his smile. “How will Unseldt take it, you knighting one of his own in your name?”
“I’d say I don’t care what that old bearded goat would think,” the Baron admitted. “Yet I’m afraid that I care a great deal. Unseldt Harlach agreeing to a peace congress headed by Allystaire Coldbourne, the man who carved away nearly a third of his lands over the years, who never failed to at least bloody his nose every time they scrapped, is a wonder I never imagined I’d see.”
“Have you considered, father,” Arontis began, “that Unseldt Harlach might show up with his knives out, or an army hidden in the mountains, ready to fall upon all of us?”
“In the first place, Standing Guard Pass makes hiding an army almost impossible,” the old man grunted. “In the second, I’m not sure how much army Harlach’s got left. They stayed in their mountains the past couple of years. Might be because Oyrwyn had driven them right up against it.”
“If all the Barons proceed with suspicions,” Cerisia offered, “then this process will go nowhere.” Privately, she wondered what sorts of things Gideon could do to an army foolish enough to try and hide itself from him in the mountains.
She tried not to let the chill that crept up her back turn into a shiver.
Her composure was unruffled, or at least neither man had noticed it.
“She’s right,” the Baron rasped. “But then I have rarely known a beautiful woman who wasn’t, usually. And consider again the man, lad. Unseldt Harlach’s got an old, prickly kind of honor. If he didn’t want to attend a peace congress, he’d have Freezing well said so. All the same, we’ll have to be careful not to insult him.”
“As you say, m’lord,” Arontis replied, sketching a light bow.
Hamadrian looked again at the scrap of paper in his fist, and turned to the scribe, scowling. “Why are you still here?”
The scribed bowed low, using his free hand to keep his skullcap from sliding. “You hadn’t given me leave, m’lord Baron.”
“Then you have it. And you’ll have two gold links and a bottle of my reserve brandy for having brought this directly to me, despite the early turn and the warnings of older men with more station and less sense than you have got. Begone then.”
Sketching more thankful bows, the scribe made a hasty exit, the bird in its cage fluffing the feathers of its chest, picking at the blue and white design that had been crudely painted upon it. They watched the exit in silence that Arontis finally broke.
“Very generous of you, father.”
“If a man can’t afford t’be generous at the end of his life, when can he be?”
“Come now, Hamadrian,” Cerisia said, crossing to him and taking his hand in her own. To her surprise the tremor in it was tangible even at rest, and the skin was soft and loose. “Surely it is not quite so bad as that.”
“It is, Cerisia. There is no point in hiding it or talking around it. Nothing for it but to do what I can in the time that’s left.”
“Father,” Arontis said, “please—”
“Please nothing. You want to play knight for a while longer and avoid the responsibilities of taking up the Seat, eh? Well you’ve got no brothers left and your nephews are unblooded boys.”
“Hamadrian,” Cerisia said, “I do not want to give you any false hope, but there is something that might be done for your health.”
“Eh? Can your goddess change my chances, then?”
Cerisia’s eyes widened and the Baron laughed. “It hadn’t occurred to me, but I suppose I could try. No, what I meant is that the paladin, Allystaire—he can close wounds with a touch, heal ills.”
“I thought you said he could rip men apart and uproot trees to swing as a club.”
“He can,” Cerisia answered, matter-of-factly, “though I have never seen him uproot a tree and swing it, I do not doubt that he could. Yet he has also closed the wounds of battle or mishap with a touch. Villagers, both in Thornhurst and in places he’s visited, speak of fevers broken, of rot and pox disappearing. An entire village will tell you, with the light of honest belief behind their eyes, that he took into his hands an infant who could not breathe, and that when he handed him back to his mother, the lad cried louder and longer than any baby they’d ever seen.”
She watched the Baron swallow, could see his throat visibly working, the bobbing apple beneath the thin and blue-veined skin. “I am not a boy to be easily entranced by tales, and to think they hold the solution to all my ills.”
“I do not know if he could heal you, Hamadrian. I know that he can heal.”
“Well,” the Baron said, drawing his slightly drooping shoulders up. “All the more reason to make it to the congress then, eh?” He took a deep breath, moved to one of the chairs in the room, and steadied himself against it. “We all have work to do, I am sure. Archioness, if you would excuse me and my son so that we could speak on matters that would surely bore you.”
Cerisia held her tongue and let the implied insult in the words—that the details of statecraft would bore her—roll off of her. Hamadrian knew better; he wanted to speak to Arontis alone.
She leaned forward and kiss the old man’s whiskery cheek, then turned and left the room. She cut one eye up at Arontis as she passed him, and let her hips have an extra swing in them as she walked, the white silk of her dress flicking lightly behind her.
* * *
Father and son both watched Cerisia leave, and both realized that the other was watching at about the same time. They shared a quiet laugh, then looked away from one another for a moment of awkward silence.
“Son,” Hamadrian began finally, lifting his head to look his heir in the eye, “be discreet.”
Arontis colored easily, his father noted, smiling inwardly at the prickliness of youth. “I am not sure what you mean, m’lord.”
“You only m’lord me when you think you’re saying what I want to hear.” The Baron cut him off and walked around the chair he was leaning on, sank into it slowly. “I know exactly what is going on with you and the Archioness.”
“I’m sorry, m’lord—”
He cut his son’s words off by slicing a hand through the air. “If you think I disapprove, you aren’t paying enough attention. If I were ten years younger—Cold, maybe five—I’d be competing with you. I’d lose, but I’d make it a race, damn it all. She’s a fine woman, smart and well educated. You don’t find many people who are all three in this part of the world, which makes her all the more rare, the more to be valued. She is probably teaching you a great deal, and not just what to do with the sword the gods gave you when you were made.”
Arontis colored even more deeply, lowered his eyes to the floor.
“Let go of your shame, son,” Hamadrian said with a gentle sigh. “I don’t mean to scold you. I just want you to be careful. For all that Cerisia is a companion any man should treasure, in or out of bed, she will also serve her own agenda. It is not our task to help her do that.”
“I tell her nothing, father,” Arontis replied quietly. “It is a dalliance for the both of us.”
Hamadrian laughed, a dry sound that rattled in his old, thin chest. “So you think. Likely you have already told her more than you realize. But it’s to be expected. Cold, an affair with one from Fortune’s Temple is practically expected of a Baron’s child. Just be mindful of your future as Baron. You don’t want Fortune’s Temple able to interfere too much.”
Arontis was silent a moment. “Father, what of this Mother’s Temple? The Goddess who has lifted up this paladin.”
“What about it? Not much of a Temple yet, as far as I understand.”
“What if we invited them to make a chapel here?”
“Why would we do that?”
“To hear Cerisia tell it, Braech is likely to be an enemy of any peace congress. Fortune will work for it, if not wholeheartedly. The Mother, though?”
“Is worshipped by a few score farmers and tradesmen, and one exiled nobleman.”
“And his companions. She will not say much of them, but she seems to think there are those more powerful than the paladin himself. And then there are his knights.”
“Oh, he has knights now, does he?” Baron Innadan shook his head, muttering. “Making knights out of peasants. The White Bear will be thrilled to hear that.”
“And yet he defeated Baron Lionel Delondeur,” Arontis said. “Something we could never do, not even when working with Gerard Oyrwyn.”
Hamadrian thought on that a moment. Lionel had indeed been a fierce figure, performer of daring deeds in his youth, the captain who beat the Islandmen back even after they’d conquered Vyndamere and cut Varshyne off. “No small feat, I admit,” the Baron finally said. “Still, it doesn’t recommend itself as a reason to endorse a new faith. Kill a Baron, earn a chapel in the Vineyards? Sets a bad precedent, my boy. Very grim.”
Arontis sighed and folded himself into one of the other chairs, set his hands on his knees. Hamadrian peeked a look at his son. More of his mother in him than me, he thought, looking at the large brown eyes under their long lashes, the finely-cut cheekbones. And better luck to him for it. He could see, could sense the boy struggling with something. It fell into place in his mind.
“Arontis, no,” the Baron said.
“Father, I haven’t even said anything.”
“Listen to me, boy. You want to run off and join this paladin’s knights. I can read it in your face plain as the sunrise. It isn’t possible. Out of the question.”
Arontis lifted his head. “It might be a chance to do something truly great.”
“You’ll have that chance as Baron. More of it.” Age and illness had chipped away at Hamadrian Innadan’s presence and his voice, but if he’d once known how to make it crack like a whip, he knew now how to draw the words out so as to discourage dissent.
His son was silent a moment. “You have grandchildren.”
“Enough!” The Baron’s voice rattled in his chest as he raised it, sitting as straight in his chair as he could manage. “I have but one son remaining to me. As luck would have it for me, for your people and home, you are the best of them. Ethrin was a good hand with a sword, but an idiot, and he died for it at Aldacren. Dessen, gods love him, wasn’t born with the strength to live enough winters to know much of what he could’ve been.”
Hamadrian Innadan’s voice flagged a bit. He paused to swallow, to press the back of a hand to his mouth. “No man should be able to name two dead sons,” he muttered. “And too many can.”
The Baron blinked a few times, and turned his eyes, one clear, one milky, towards his remaining son. “It is true that I have grandchildren. But none of them, Arontis Innadan, are you.” He took another deep breath. “I will not stop you from playing a man’s part in what’s to come. But neither will I allow you to throw aside all the good you could do in my seat for a moment’s boyish impulse. I will hear no more of it. That is my command as your father and your Baron. Am I understood?”
“Yes, m’lord,” Arontis said. Hamadrian could hear how half-hearted the reply was, how unconvinced his son remained.
“The lives of thousands could depend on an Innadan occupying the Vineyards, Arontis. Thousands. You can do more with a circlet and a proclamation than you’ll ever do with a sword.”
Arontis nodded and stood to go, leaving his eyes lowered, asking permission to leave. The Baron waved a hand in assent. His son paused just before the door.
“It was neither circlet nor proclamation that ended Lionel Delondeur,” he murmured quietly, then slipped out the door.
Hamadrian let him go, sank into his chair, folded his hands together in his lap to keep them from trembling. They shook anyway.