73: RETURNING TO THE RED SWORD

(Kihrin’s story)

Commander Jarith stepped through the door to the Milligreests’ estate courtyard, an angry look on his face. The courtyard looked the same as the last time I’d been there at age fifteen, down to the damn mural of Emperor Kandor dying in the Manol, but Jarith looked older. The man would never wield the sheer physical mass of his father, but he was looking like someone comfortable giving orders and having those orders followed.

“Darzin, I am a busy man and I do not have time for your—” He stopped as he realized who was waiting for him. “Kihrin?”

I stood up. “Did you miss me?”

The Citadel Commander crossed the space between us and clasped me around the chest, thumping my back. “Kihrin! You devil! Look at you . . . Where have you been? Do you have any idea how many people have searched for you?”

“I saw the changes in the harbor.”

Jarith sighed as he let go of me. “Yes. We turned everything upside down. My apologies for the greeting. The guards said a D’Mon was here to see me. I thought it was your father trying to cause trouble.” He motioned for me to follow him. “How did you know I was here? I’m usually at the Citadel but I’m preparing to leave for Khorvesh . . .”

“Ah, well aren’t I the lucky one then? Good timing.”

“Indeed! I was just finishing up some paperwork. Mind coming inside my office? Do you want anything? I only have maridon black but I can go to the kitchen for something stronger if you prefer.”

“No, no, that’s not necessary,” I said. “Tea would be fine.” Jarith showed me through hallways that were familiar even though I’d only been inside the house once. His office was a clutter of orders and scrolls, notations marked on maps pinned to walls. A chair serving as a filing cabinet for a stack of reports was cleared away, so I might have a place to sit. Evidently, he was a man who liked to bring his work home with him.

He cast his eyes around the room. “Damn. I thought I had some tea—wait here. I’ll be right back.” Jarith walked out of the office, leaving me alone.

“Where would I go?” I said to the empty air. I fought the urge to run, the paranoid, itchy feeling that Jarith had invented himself a flimsy excuse so he could go fetch the soldiers with halberds and spears. Focus, I told myself. Jarith was not in league with Darzin, and Jarith’s father was in Khorvesh. Jarith was happy to see me.

To distract myself from my anxiety, I examined the walls. The map focused predominately on the dominion of Jorat, on the other side of the Dragonspire Mountains. Small pins marked various towns, although I couldn’t tell what the pattern behind them might be. More pins held up pieces of vellum and paper, all sketches of the same subject.

It was a dragon.

Not the Old Man, I saw with no small relief, but a dragon all the same. I realized the towns had to be rampage sites and felt a shiver run through me. Those poor people.

There was one last piece of paper nestled in the middle of all the dragon sketches: a wanted poster written in curiously precise, neat lettering. The Duke of Yor, Azhen Kaen, was offering a truly obscene amount of metal for the death of someone from Jorat called “the Black Knight,” who evidently needed no further qualifier. The sketch of the knight in question looked like something out of nightmares, although I knew a group of assassins who would’ve approved of his fashion sensibilities.

What this Black Knight had to do with the dragon eluded me, but I knew one thing: anyone who Relos Var’s puppet Kaen wanted dead that badly instantly marched to the top of my interesting-people list.

I pulled the wanted poster off the wall and tucked it into my coat.

“Sorry about that,” Jarith said as he returned with a pot of tea and two cups on a tray. He poured the tea, which, true to his word, looked like some variation of maridon.

“Well it’s not like I gave you any warning,” I said as I took my cup and returned to the chair. “This is more hospitality than I deserve.”

For himself, Jarith nudged aside a mound of paperwork and leaned a hip on the edge of his desk. “By Khored. What happened to you?”

“Oh, the usual. Kidnapped, sold into slavery, kept prisoner by a dragon. Same old stuff.”

Jarith laughed, shaking his head in wonder (and assuming I was joking). “You have no idea how good it is to have you back. We’ve almost started wars because of our insistence on searching ships for gold-haired prisoners. I’ve had my agents following up on every lead, no matter how preposterous.”

“You have agents now? You really have moved up in rank.”

“Ah well, Stonegate Pass is a shit assignment, but it’s a fantastic career builder.” He picked up his tea and gulped down some as he studied me. “Does your family know you’re back?”

“Not yet,” I admitted. “Talking to you was the higher priority.”

Jarith frowned and set down his teacup. “Than your own family? What’s going on?”

I cleared my throat and pulled a set of letters out of my coat. “I thought you would want to be involved in this. It concerns Thurvishar D’Lorus.”

The frown didn’t leave his face, but only deepened some. “He’s not my favorite person, but we’ve stayed out of each other’s way. I don’t hold a grudge.”

“I do,” I admitted. “He was involved with my kidnapping.” Which was technically true, even if I was certain Thurvishar hadn’t actually been responsible for it. Before Jarith had a chance to respond, I tossed one of the folded pieces of vellum in front of him. “That is a letter from Raverí D’Lorus testifying that she never bore any children. Not to Gadrith D’Lorus, not to anyone. Thurvishar D’Lorus is not her son.”

He picked up the letter and opened it. The frown had graduated to a scowl. “I’m sure that was true at one point, but I can’t imagine that House D’Lorus let her write letters during her sentence of Continuance . . .”

“Except Continuance never happened.”

He blinked at me. “What?”

“She’s not dead.” I leaned forward. “Between escaping slavers and navigating my way back here, I tracked her down, Jarith. High Lord Cedric D’Lorus lied about having her in custody, and he lied about Continuance, and he lied about executing her after Continuance was finished. Raverí had an inside man over at the Council, and he gave her enough warning to skip town ahead of the witchhunters.”

Jarith looked incredulous. “What idiot would have been foolish enough to jeopardize their entire career by helping a convicted traitor escape justice?”

I coughed. “That would be your father. Why do you think I came here first?”

It was rather remarkable, watching all the color drain from his face. Of course, I’d just suggested that Qoran Milligreest was guilty of the sort of crime that got one sentenced to lifetime enslavement at best. “Why would my father have—”

“Because your father is a good man and he knew perfectly well she didn’t deserve what the Council and House D’Lorus were going to do to her.” I gestured toward the back side of the letter. “Also, they were lovers. It’s all in there.”

He stared at me. What Jarith didn’t do was tell me that was impossible or that his father would never do that. He probably knew better. The affair part wasn’t even necessarily a great scandal, given how Khorveshans often played fast and loose with polygamy, much to the reproachful delight of the rest of the Empire. Helping a witch escape the witchhunters, though . . .

Jarith sat down. Then he reached over and finished the rest of his tea while he read the entire letter, start to finish. “Okay.” He paused. “Okay,” he said again.

I snatched the letter out of his hands and magically set the whole thing on fire.

“Wait, what—” He stood up again.

“I’m not trying to blackmail you, Jarith. I figure there’s two ways that you can react to this. The royal way would be to kill me, try to figure out where I’ve hidden Raverí, and do whatever you can to cover this up. But I’m betting you’re going to go for option number two.”

Jarith paused and cocked his head. “What’s option number two?”

“If I’m right, there’s a much bigger problem brewing, and once we uncover that? Nobody is going to have any time to waste thinking about who helped a girl leave town without anyone noticing twenty years ago.”

“Okay, I’m listening.” Jarith didn’t sound panicked, which was good. I needed him rational.

“So, High Lord Cedric lying to the Council about Raverí’s fate is a problem for him just as much as it would be for your father, but let’s be realistic, it happened twenty years ago. I rather suspect the Council would just as soon let that be water down the river. But Thurvishar isn’t Ogenra. He isn’t god-touched. The eyes are faked, and the test results were too. If you were to test Thurvishar right now, he wouldn’t have the tiniest trace of royal blood in him. He would, however, test as half-vordreth with a hell of an aptitude for magic.”

“Why—” Jarith blinked. “Where would High Lord Cedric have even found a half-vordreth? The only vordreth I’ve ever even heard of is—” He stopped looking concerned and began to look horrified. I’m guessing he was mentally going over the stories his father had probably told him about Emperor Sandus and his wife, Dyana—his vordreth wife.

“That brings me to my second letter,” I said as I laid it, still sealed, on the desk in front of him. “Which, to save you time, I’ll simply explain is from the High Priestess of Thaena herself, verifying that she cannot confirm that either Emperor Sandus’s wife nor son are actually dead because neither soul crossed beyond the Second Veil. You know who else never made it fully past the Second Veil? Gadrith D’Lorus. A fact which I can confirm, because I’ve seen him with my own eyes.”

“What?”

“Gadrith D’Lorus faked his death. A lot of High Lord Cedric’s crazy, inexplicable behavior starts to make a lot more sense once you realize that he’s still taking his marching orders from his son Gadrith. But Gadrith isn’t perfect, and he’s screwed up this time.”

“There’s no way Gadrith is still—”

I held up a hand. “Hear me out. Thurvishar isn’t Gadrith’s son. Thurvishar is Emperor Sandus’s son. Why did Gadrith lie? I honestly don’t know. It might be because of the prophecies that he and Relos Var seem to be so obsessed with, or it might just be that Gadrith thought Thurvishar was too young to eat at the time.^* Fortunately, the truth is easy to confirm: because if I’m right, Thurvishar is both gaeshed and half-vordreth. That is eminently testable.”

Jarith narrowed his eyes and studied me. Then he walked over to a cabinet and proved he’d lied earlier by pulling down a bottle of brandy. “And how do you know what Gadrith looks like?”

“Raverí showed me.”

He poured himself a shot and didn’t offer me any. “And how do you know she’s really Raverí D’Lorus?” He wrinkled his nose. “Not that I can imagine anyone volunteering to be hunted as a witch and a traitor.”

I grinned and held up a third letter. “This one’s from your uncle Nikali.” I tossed it over so it slid to a stop next to the second letter on the desk. “He said you’d know it was really from him.”

He gulped down the rest of his drink and walked back to the desk. “I’m not going to lie, Kihrin, you’re starting to scare me. What the hell have you been up to while you were away?”

“Oh, we so don’t have time for that.” I gestured toward the paper. “Do you believe me? At least enough to pull Thurvishar in and run those tests? Keep in mind he won’t come willingly if he realizes what you’re doing. I’m sure he’s been ordered to keep Gadrith’s secrets hidden by any means necessary.”

Jarith didn’t answer right away. He broke the wax seal on the letter and read it. I had no idea what wording Doc had used, but it must have been persuasive. He set it down and nodded. “I’ll see it done.”