“Where is he, then?” Kelu asked.
“You might know,” I said. “He’s the Fount.”
They gaped at me. Almond spoke first. “Our s-sire is the king?”
“Insofar as his magic and his blood are stolen to make you possible,” I said, “then yes. You are the get of royal bloodshed.” I sighed. “Which brings me to my one overwhelming problem in orchestrating our flight. He’s near dead from how they drain him. I don’t suppose either of you know how I might feed him, the way I fed Kemses? I have tried but I can’t push it out of my own skin. It seems the taker has to initiate.”
“You are daft sometimes, aren’t you.”
“Kelu!” Almond whispered, ears sagging.
“No,” I said. “Please, continue.”
“You give it to him the same way you give it to us,” Kelu said. She tapped my now healed wrist. “Smear it on him. Drip it on him. Bite your tongue and kiss him. Whatever works. But it’s in your blood, and sharing it works for elves just as much as it does with genets. It’s just messier than most elves prefer.”
“Ahhhh,” I said, drawing in a long breath. “Of course. Thank you.” I hugged them gently. “We’ll need supplies... I want to try to steal a horse. Unless the two of you can find one?”
“We can get you a horse if we know when you’re coming,” Kelu said.
“And a schedule is the one thing I don’t have yet.” I stared at the distant horizon. “And I don’t want to make these meetings too frequent; the more often we meet, the more likely it is we’ll be discovered.”
“Maybe one more time before you escape, Master,” Almond said, stroking my collarbone near Suleris’s mark. “Tell us what you need us to do and we will prepare, then when we next meet you tell us the night you will escape and we will meet that last time.”
“Yes,” I said. “It will have to be so.”
“Then tell us what we can do?” Almond asked.
I smiled. “In a little. Just... rest with me a while, please?”
Even Kelu was glad to do that. Holding them I realized that I had missed them.
I returned before the rain and after supper, ambling into the kitchen to see if Sheval had left anything out for the tardy.
What I found was chaos.
“What passes?” I asked the nearest of his assistants.
“The master of the blood-flag is here!” the man said, visibly trembling.
“Thameis?” I asked, startled. “I thought he never came here?”
“He has now,” the man said, “Rumor has it—”
“Morgan!” Sheval said. “Sondrea was looking for you. Best find her promptly in her office.”
“Thank you,” I said, and headed off at best speed. When I shadowed her door she looked up, her habitual scowl faded to something more fretful.
“Well,” she said, “he’s come himself to evaluate the Fount, and it’s all your doing.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t expect him to take a personal interest.”
“Neither did I or I would never have asked him about it,” she groused. “Last thing we need is the blood-flag’s sovereign poking around in all our corners. And you—I want you to stay in your bunk until he leaves. If you’re bait the last thing I need is you nigh while Lord Thameis is on the premise. He has absolutely no self-control.”
I hesitated, so assailed by foreboding I could barely construct a sentence, much less commit to the actions I knew I would have to take. “Where is he now?”
“With the Fount, I imagine,” she said. “We were ordered to prepare a late dinner for him so I imagine he’ll be with him for a while.”
That was all the catalyst I needed. “Very well,” I said. “I’ll be sure to take every opportunity to minimize the chances of accidental contact.”
She eyed me with suspicion. “That’s a very fancy way of saying you’re going to avoid him.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Believe me when I say I want to stay out of his way. My last encounter with him was unpleasant in the extreme.”
Her scowl deepened. “He knows of you personally?”
“Insofar as any elf knows a human personally,” I said. “I doubt he’d remember my face anywhere near as well as I remember his.”
She sighed. “Fine. I don’t need to tell you to be careful. Go.”
“Aye, ma’am,” I said, and excused myself.
And then I ran, as best my body allowed, to the building, letting myself into the narrow hall and feeling my way down it in the dark as stealthily and as swiftly as possible. The door was open; a wan glow emanated from the room, and I heard Thameis’s voice.
“...are looking a little worse for the wear, I suppose. When the servants notice, it is a bit egregious, isn’t it?”
I heard the rustle of silk and the creak of sandal leather. “No words for your gracious host?”
No answer. Thameis laughed.
“I think I’ll tell them to let you be for a while. It wouldn’t do for you to die. I know the lessons of history. But I think you could use just a touch... more... attention, just to remind you that matters could always be worse.”
I flattened myself against the wall and did my best to ignore the sound of silk and skin and pleasure. As it went on and on I found myself biting my knuckles, remembering the feel of Thameis’s hands on my own body and the revulsion that had driven me almost to vomiting. I wondered if I’d been as silent beneath him as the king was now and couldn’t remember anything from the encounter except the wall of noise in my ears that had barred the world from entering. I built it again against the sounds from in the room, so high and so thick that Thameis’s exit surprised me. He left a wake of magic so powerful it splashed against my back. I flinched from it, hoping he wouldn’t notice, but he was long, long gone, so satiated on the stolen energies of his victim that he hadn’t even noticed me in the dark.
I slipped into the room and waited for my eyes to acclimate; even then I had trouble locating the king.
There is... a field... that surrounds a living thing, that makes it obvious that it is not inanimate. That field does not solely consist of evidence such as breathing and movement, nor of shape and form, but also of some intangible quality that defies description.
The king looked like part of the room. He had been so drained I could not find him without searching, and even when my eyes caught on an angle that I finally identified as his shoulder blade, I almost couldn’t believe it belonged to a person. He had become sculpture: lifeless and inert. As I settled onto one knee over him, I found no evidence of life. No color in his skin, no twitch of his eyelids... nothing. Perhaps elves could not be slain by what Thameis and his followers had done to him, but I had no doubt they could fail... that the flame of their souls could gutter and die, consigning them to centuries of silence and dreamless sleep like the fairy-touched mortals in folklore. I knew now what had inspired those stories. I ran my hand along his arm and felt despair. He was no longer even warm to the touch.
I cast around the room until I found a discarded wine glass. The bottle that had been delivered with it was still half-full, so I poured a third of a cup, dizzied by the fragrance. One hard slash against the side of my wrist with the pendant’s corner and I bled myself into the wine. I had little hope that I could get him to drink; pulling him into my lap was like manipulating a giant doll, slack and sprawled. I examined the problem at length and finally dipped my finger into the mixture. Lightly, very lightly, I touched it to his mouth and painted his dry lips. And again, this time breaking the seal between them and brushing my nail against his teeth.
“Drink,” I whispered. “Live. Please, help me.”
Again and again I dabbed his mouth with it, dripping it onto his tongue. My eyes grew dry and my back stiff and my legs went numb beneath him but I continued until my finger scraped the bottom of the glass and I realized the whole of it had gone into him and his mouth... his mouth was open.
I stared at my arm, at the angry ragged cut there, and thoug
ht about the immortality of elves. Then I bared my teeth and rent myself from palm to elbow, up the long smooth plane of my arm. As the blood flooded the cup and spilled its edges I pressed the lip of it to his mouth. Red streams still hot from their source flowed over his throat and chest.
“Drink,” I whispered as the spots swarmed before my eyes. I swayed. “Drink.”
The world flexed and throbbed and then rushed away from my sight. My fingers lost their strength; the glass tumbled to the ground, rolled across the rich carpet. I folded over him and made my offering, and the blood streaked my glasses as my cheek came to rest against his face.
I woke cradled in the arms of an autumn sunset, an immanent radiance that warmed my body in every crease and hidden fold. Stunned, I lifted my eyes and found a harvest god bent over me, steadying my face with slim, small fingers and smiling, golden eyes half-shadowed by heavy auburn lashes. His gaze was solicitous and tender and I found myself transfixed.
“It was not necessary,” he said in a bass layered with love and humor, “to give me quite so much. But I thank you for it all the same.”
“You’re awake,” I said, my voice rough.
“So it would seem,” he said. His eyes lingered on my face far longer than would have been polite in anyone else but I could hardly condemn him for a sin I myself was committing. I could not look away from him. There had been no animating force in him in all the days I’d tended his body; nothing, nothing had hinted at this benevolence. At this... this staggering tranquility of spirit. “So you are kin,” he said, voice growing low with longing and wonder.
“How...?”
He lifted his free hand; by the glow off his skin I glimpsed the blood-stained edge of the pendant.
“Ah,” I said. And then wry, “Still legible despite the gore.”
“Not the name,” he said gently. He shifted his hand so the pendant slipped into his palm, chafed a thumb against its edge until it streaked red. As I watched the blood seeped into his skin. “There are truer pedigrees.”
I glanced at him, wide-eyed.
“I would know you even if you came to me nameless and near death,” he said, fingertips lighting on my cheek. “You are my brother.”
“And you are my king,” I whispered.
He smiled and gathered me against his chest, and I was too weak to object... had I even wanted to, which I was not altogether certain I was. But every fiber in me sparked cold and white and raw when I tried to move, and from that I knew I had had convulsions. “You have given too much,” he said against my hair... and then he flooded me with the warmth of harvest sunlight, rushing through my limbs and washing them to supple life. I gasped and twitched, but he poured it over me until he judged I had had enough and only then did he stop.
“There,” he said and kissed the crown of my head. “Better?”
“I... I can move,” I whispered, shocked. I flexed my fingers against his chest.
His smile was in his voice, but there was regret also. “I am afraid I cannot undo what was done to you. But I can give you enough to lighten the burden.”
“It is more than I expected,” I said, ignoring the pang of conscience—this was the man I expected to trade to the sorcerer for my freedom? “And I thank you.”
He nodded, just the slightest inclination of his head, and withdrew so that he could look at me again. “Tell me your name,” he said with a smile.
“Morgan,” I said. “Morgan Locke of Ev—well. Raised in Evertrue. I suppose I am not of any human enclave after all.”
“Morgan Locke,” he said. “Evertrue on the mainland? You are far, far from home.”
“Ah, yes. I followed some genets here,” I said with half a smile. “You? I don’t know your name either.”
“Amhric,” he said.
“No blood-flag?” I asked.
He shook his head. His voice grew grave. “The king has no blood-flag... no, nor the prince either. We renounce those ties when the royal gifts rise in us, lest we be tempted to give too much influence to a single family.”
“You’re really awake,” I said, still mazed and now more than a little drunk on the liquid warmth of my own body.
“Yes,” he said. “Which presents us with a small conundrum.”
I struggled to think past the fog in my head. “Because they will wonder why you’re so healthy when they have done nothing but abuse you.”
“Yes,” he said. “It will rouse suspicion.”
“That would vastly complicate my plans to abduct you.”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Why else?” I asked.
He hesitated, and while he collected his thoughts I drew myself apart and managed to sit across from him. My body allowed it; more than that, I felt a poise I’d rarely had in all my life. It was such a surprise that I spent perhaps more time than was usual for any normal man, simply settling there... feeling the fold of a knee, the cushion of the rug against my ankle, the pressure of the floor up through a spine gone pliant and forgiving. When I lifted my face I found him studying me with a compassion so naked my skin heated.
“It is hard for you, always,” he said.
“It’s not worth discussing,” I replied, not because I feared revealing weakness, but because I couldn’t bear for him to know. “You were saying?”
“It is no burden,” he said. “You needn’t hide it from me.”
“Did you drink my thoughts with my blood?” I asked, dismayed.
“No,” he said, and laughed. He reached out and pushed my blood-drenched hair from alongside my face. “It is plain to read.”
“I thought I was a little better at obfuscation,” I said. “I shall have to work at it if I am, indeed, a prince. It wouldn’t do to be so obvious to our enemies, would it?”
“No,” he said. “But I will never be your enemy.”
And I believed him. My fine education and well-honed skepticism fell before his demeanor like straw before a strong wind. I found it preposterous that I could trust him so immediately, so completely. Cross, I said, “Do you affect everyone this way?”
He said, “Well, you find me here due to the machinations of my betrothed, so...”
“You have a fiancée?” I asked, astonished. “And she put you here?”
“Ah,” he said. “Yes. It was not uncommon for the children of powerful blood-flags to be betrothed in the cradle... but when the king-gifts rose in me, I told my affianced what I was. That not only could I not wed her, but that I had chosen the path of the King-Reclusive, and so I would rarely be involved, if ever, in the court and social functions she enjoyed. She seemed sympathetic, but I should have distrusted her. She loved power too much.” He looked up at me. “She came to an accord with Suleris and when next she entertained me her house was full of my enemies, and here I am.”
“And what did she receive in return for this perfidy?” I asked, horrified.
“She declined to inform me,” he said. “Which is peculiar of her... looking back now I see that she had a tendency to linger on the fate of her rivals. Perhaps she could not bear to do so with me out of some distant remorse. It may be that she harbored some gentle feeling for me at the last—who can know? I only hope she will forgive herself one day for the ills she has visited on others.”
“Forgive herself!” I exclaimed. “Is that all? She gave you over to the constant abuse of your enemies—and you don’t have to tell me what it feels like, what they do to you, I know how vile it is!—and your only hope is that she will eventually forgive herself for a remorse she probably isn’t even feeling?”
“I was never very good with justice,” he said with a hint of rue. “That is why I chose the King-Reclusive path. To withdraw from society and see to the magical needs of the race in solitude is a role I am far more suited to.”
“Who runs the government if the king is playing hermit?” I asked.
“The prince. Of course.” He smiled at me, brows lifted. “That would be you, O my brother.”
Ch
ester, I thought, would be delighted. I sighed and slipped my spectacles off my nose, reaching for the edge of my thin shift to clean them and discovering the fabric just as bloody as my hair. “What a mess.”
“Yes,” he said, and rose. He was not a tall man for a human, and for one of the elves his height was positively underwhelming... but oh, how he shone, with the constancy of a gas lamp dancing, a visible mandorla in copper and crimson that bled into the air in graceful wisps. He held out his hands to me, and in numb acceptance I took them and let him help me to my feet.
“I want you to stay,” he said. “We have so much to discuss... and too, there is a thing long missing in my life that you were due to fulfill, long overdue. But there is too much danger here yet. You must go back to wherever you have been hiding.”
“Wait,” I said. Here at last was the caveat I’d been anticipating, the onerous or immoral duty he’d extract as price for being his heir. “What thing is this that I owe you?”
“There are nuances I would have more leisure to explain,” he said.
“A précis,” I insisted.
He smiled, looking up at me, and grasped my upper arm in his small hand. “This,” he said, squeezing. “To touch. To see you. And through you to remain aware of and connected to the world.”
“That’s... all?” I asked.
“That is everything,” he said. “What is spirit without matter? Thought without act? Generosity without context? Love... without people?”
As I stared down at him, wide-eyed, he lifted himself on his toes and kissed my blood-streaked brow. “Go, brother mine. Before we are discovered.”
“I—ah. Yes,” I said and went to the door.
“Morgan—”
I turned.
“Do not be alarmed if you find me next much as you found me before,” he said. “What you have given me will not be lost... I will lend it to the earth to hold for when we need it next.”
“The esoterics of magical philosophy are somewhat beyond my small understanding and my smaller vocabulary,” I said. “I will trust you to handle it.”
An Heir to Thorns and Steel Page 28