Micum sighed. “I don’t imagine she likes to be reminded. And there’s been no one since?”
“No one to speak of.”
Micum had a good idea what that meant. Sometimes the body’s needs overrode the heart’s pain. Sometimes it was a way to heal.
The road finally grew drier as it wended up into the foothills. By early afternoon of the third day, Beka could see out over the tops of the trees behind them to the lowlands they’d traversed the day before. Somewhere beyond the southern horizon lay the Osiat coastline and the long isthmus that connected the peninsular country of Skala to her mainland territories. The rest of Urgazhi Turma were probably cooling their heels at Ardinlee by now.
“You’re sure we’ll reach them today?” she asked her father, riding beside her.
“The way you’ve driven us, we should get there before suppertime.” He pointed out a notch in the hills a few miles ahead. “There’s a village up there. Their cabin lies up a track just beyond.”
“I hope they don’t mind a crowd.”
The sun was a few hours from the western horizon when they reached the little hamlet nestled in the cup of a valley. Sheep and cattle grazed the hillsides, and she could hear dogs barking in the distance.
“This is the place,” said Micum, leading the way into town.
Villagers gawked at them as they rode into the muddy square. There were no temples or inns here, just a little shrine to the Four, festooned with faded offerings.
Just beyond the last cottage an enormous dead oak spread leafless branches against the sky. A trail wound up into the woods behind it. Following it for half a mile or so, they came out in a high meadow. A stream ran through it, and on the far side stood a small log house. A wolfskin was stretched to dry on one wall, and a spiky row of antlers of varying shapes and sizes decorated the roofline. In the kitchen garden near the door, a few speckled hens scratched among the dead leaves. A little way off, a byre sagged next to a corral. Half a dozen horses grazed there, and Beka recognized Alec’s favorite mare, Patch, and two Aurënen horses. The chestnut stallion, Windrunner, had been her parents’ gift to Alec during his first stay at Watermead. The black mare, Cynril, Seregil had raised from a colt.
“This is it?” she asked, surprised. It was peaceful. Rustic. Not at all the sort of place she associated with Seregil.
Micum grinned. “This is it.”
The sound of an ax came from somewhere beyond the byre. Rising in the stirrups, she called out, “Hello at the house!”
The ax fell abruptly silent. An instant later Alec loped out from behind the byre, his fair, unkempt hair flying around his shoulders.
Rough living had left him as shaggy and gaunt as he’d been the first time they’d met. Gone was the citified finery he’d adopted in Rhíminee; his tunic was as patched and stained as any stable boy’s. He’d be nineteen in a few months’ time, she realized with surprise. Half ’faie and beardless, he looked younger to those who didn’t know him, and would for years. Seregil, who must be sixty now, had looked like a man of twenty for as long as she remembered.
“I believe he’s glad to see us,” her father noted.
“He better be!” Dismounting, Beka met Alec in a rough hug. He felt as thin as he looked, but there was hard muscle under the homespun.
“Yslanti bëk kir!” he exclaimed happily. “Kratis nolieus í ’mrai?”
“You speak better Aurënfaie now than I do, Almost-Brother,” she laughed. “I didn’t understand a word of that after the greeting.”
Alec stepped back, grinning at her. “Sorry. We’ve spoken almost nothing else all winter.”
The beaten look he’d had back in Plenimar was gone; looking into those dark blue eyes, she read the signs of something her father had hinted at in his letter. She’d asked Alec once if he was in love with Seregil, and he’d been shocked by such a notion. It seemed the boy had finally figured things out. Somewhere in the back of her mind a tiny twinge of regret stirred, and she squelched it mercilessly.
Releasing her, Alec clasped hands with Micum, then cast a questioning look at the uniformed riders. “What’s all this?”
“I have a message for Seregil,” she told him.
“Must be quite a message!”
It is, she thought. One he’s been waiting for since before I was born. “That’s going to take some explaining. Where is he?”
“Hunting up on the ridge. He should be back by sunset.”
“We’d better go find him. Time’s running short.”
Alec gave her a thoughtful look but didn’t press. “I’ll get my horse.”
Mounted bareback on Patch, he led them up to the high ground above the meadow.
Beka found herself studying him again as they rode. “Even with your ’faie blood, I thought you’d be more changed,” she said at last. “Do I look much different to you?”
“Yes,” he replied with a hint of the same sadness she’d sensed in her father when they’d met at Two Gulls.
“What have you two been doing since I saw you last?”
Alec shrugged. “Wandered for a while. I thought we’d head for the war, offer our services to the queen, but for a long time he just wanted to get as far from Skala as possible. We found work along the way, singing, spying—” He tipped her a rakish wink. “Thieving a bit when things got thin. We ran into some trouble last summer and ended up back here.”
“Will you ever go back to Rhíminee?” she asked, then wished she hadn’t.
“I’d go,” he said, and she caught a glimpse of that haunted look as he looked away. “But Seregil won’t even talk about it. He still has nightmares about the Cockerel. So do I, but his are worse.”
Beka hadn’t witnessed the slaughter of the old innkeeper and her family, but she’d heard enough to turn her stomach. Beka had known Thryis since she was a child herself, playing barefoot in the garden with the granddaughter, Cilla. Cilla’s father had taught her how to carve whistles from spring hazel branches.
These innocents had been among the first victims the night Duke Mardus and his men attacked the Orëska House. The attack at the Cockerel had been unnecessary, a vindictive blow struck by Mardus’s necromancer, Vargûl Ashnazai. He’d killed the family, captured Alec, and left the cruelly mutilated bodies for Seregil to find. In his grief, Seregil had set the place ablaze as a funeral pyre.
At the top of the ridge Alec reined in and whistled shrilly through his teeth. An answering call came from off to their left, and they followed it to a pond.
“It reminds me of the one below Watermead,” she said.
“It does, doesn’t it?” said Alec, smiling again. “We even have otters.”
None of them saw Seregil until he stood up and waved. He’d been sitting on a log near the water’s edge and his drab tunic and trousers blended with the colors around him.
“Micum? And Beka!” Feathers fluttered in all directions as he strode over to them, still clutching the wild goose he’d been plucking.
He was thin and weathered, too, but every bit as handsome as Beka remembered—perhaps more so, now that she saw him through a woman’s eyes instead of a girl’s. Though slender and not overly tall, he carried himself with a swordsman’s grace that lent unconscious stature. His fine-featured Aurënfaie face was sun-browned, his large grey eyes warm with the humor she’d known from childhood. For the first time, however, it struck her how old those eyes looked in such a young face.
“Hello, Uncle!” she said, plucking a bit of down from his long brown hair.
He brushed more feathers from his clothes. “You picked a good time to come visiting. There’ve been geese on the pond and I finally managed to hit one.”
“With an arrow or a rock?” Micum demanded with a laugh. Master swordsman that he was, Seregil had never been much of a hand with a bow.
Seregil gave him a crooked smirk. “An arrow, thank you very much. Alec’s been paying me back for all the training I’ve put him through. I’m almost as good with a bow as he is with a l
ock pick.”
“I hope I’m better than that, even out of practice,” Alec muttered, giving Beka a playful nudge in the ribs. “Now will you tell us what brings you and a decuria of riders clear up here?”
“Soldiers?” Seregil raised an eyebrow, as if noticing for the first time that she was in uniform. “And you’ve been promoted, I see.”
“I’m here on the Queen’s business,” she told him. “My riders know nothing of what I’m about to tell you, and I need to keep it that way for now.” She pulled a sealed parchment from her tunic and handed it to him. “Commander Klia needs your help, Seregil. She’s leading a delegation to Aurënen.”
“Aurënen?” He stared down at the unopened document. “She knows that’s impossible.”
“Not anymore.” Dismounting with practiced ease, Micum pulled his stick from the bedroll behind his saddle and limped over to his friend’s side. “Idrilain squared things for you. Klia’s in charge of the whole thing.”
“There’s no time to lose, either,” Beka urged. “The war’s going badly—Mycena could fall any day now.”
“We get rumors, even here,” Alec told her.
“Ah, but there’s worse news than that,” Beka went on. “The queen’s been wounded and the Plenimarans are pushing their way west every day. Last we knew, they were halfway to Wyvern Dug. Idrilain’s still in the field, but she’s convinced that an alliance with Aurënen is our only hope.”
“What does she need with me?” asked Seregil, handing the unread summons to Alec. “Torsin’s dealt with the Iia’sidra for years without my help.”
“Not like this,” Beka replied. “Klia needs you as an additional adviser. Being Aurënfaie, you understand the nuances of both languages better than anyone, and you certainly know the Skalans.”
“Given all that, I could end up with neither side trusting me. Besides which, my presence would be an affront to half the clans of Aurënen.” He shook his head. “Idrilain actually got the Iia’sidra to let me return?”
“Temporarily,” Beka amended. “The queen pointed out that since you’re kin to her through Lord Corruth, it would be an affront to Skala to exclude you. Apparently it was also made clear that it was you who solved the mystery of Corruth’s disappearance”
“Alec and I,” he corrected absently, clearly overwhelmed by this news. “She told them about that?”
Before Nysander’s death he, Alec, and Micum had been part of the wizard’s network of spies and informers, the Watchers. Even the queen had not known of their role in that until he and Alec had helped uncover a plot against her life. In the process, they’d discovered the mummified body of Corruth í Glamien, who’d been murdered by Lerans dissenters two centuries earlier.
“I don’t suppose it hurt that your sister is a member of the Iia’sidra now,” said Micum. “Word is that the faction favoring open trade is stronger than ever.”
“So you see, there’s no problem with all that,” Beka broke in impatiently. If she had her way, they’d be riding back down the mountain before sunset.
Her heart sank when Seregil merely stared down at his muddy boots and mumbled, “I’ll have to give it some thought.”
She was about to press him when Alec laid a hand on Seregil’s shoulder and gave her a warning look. Clearly, some wounds hadn’t healed.
“You say Idrilain is still in the field?” he asked. “How badly was she hurt?”
“I haven’t seen her. Hardly anyone has, but my guess is it’s worse than anyone is letting on. Phoria is War Commander now.”
“Is she?” Seregil’s tone was neutral, but she caught the odd look that passed between him and her father. The “Watcher look,” her mother called it, resenting the secrets that lay between the two men.
“The Plenimarans have necromancers,” Beka added. “I haven’t met up with any yet, but those who have claim they’re the strongest they’ve been since the Great War.”
“Necromancers?” Alec’s mouth tightened. “I suppose it was too much to hope that stopping Mardus would put an end to all that. You and your people are welcome to make camp in the meadow tonight.”
“Thanks,” said Micum. “Come on, Beka. Let’s get your people settled.”
It took her a moment to realize that Alec wanted time alone with Seregil.
“I expected him to be happy about going home, even if it is only for a little while,” she mused, following her father down the trail. “He looked as if he’d received a sentence.”
Micum sighed. “He did, a long time ago, and I guess it hasn’t really been changed. I’ve always wanted to know the story behind what happened to him, but he never said a thing about it. Not even to Nysander, as far as I know.”
A pair of otters was frisking on the far bank, but Alec doubted Seregil saw them, or that it was news of the war that had left him so pensive. Joining him at the water’s edge, Alec waited.
When they’d finally become lovers, it had done much more than deepen their friendship. The Aurënfaie word for the bond between them was talímenios. Even Seregil couldn’t fully interpret it, but by then there’d been no need for words.
For Alec, it was a unity of souls forged in spirit and flesh. Seregil had been able to read him like a tavern slate since the day they’d met; now his own intuition was such that at times he almost knew his friend’s thoughts. As they stood here now, he could feel anger, fear, and longing radiating from Seregil in palpable waves.
“I told you a little about it once, didn’t I?” Seregil asked at last.
“Only that you were tricked into committing some crime, and that you were exiled for it.”
“And for once you didn’t ask a hundred questions. I’ve always appreciated that. But now—”
“You want to go back,” Alec said softly.
“There’s more to it than that.” Seregil folded his arms tightly across his chest.
Alec knew from long experience how difficult it was for Seregil to speak of his past. Even talímenios hadn’t changed that, and he’d long since learned not to pry.
“I better finish plucking this goose,” Seregil said at last. “Tonight, after the others are settled, I promise we’ll talk. I just need time to take this all in.”
Alec clasped Seregil’s shoulder, then left him to his thoughts.
• • •
Alone at last, Seregil stared blindly across the water, feeling unwelcome memories rising like a storm tide.
the solid finality of the knife’s bloody handle clenched in his fist—choking, suffocating in the darkness—angry faces, jeering—
Bowing his head, he pressed his hands over his face like an eyeless mask and sobbed.
3
OLD GHOSTS STIRRING
An early half-moon was already rising in the evening sky when Seregil returned. Beka’s riders had set up camp and had cook fires going. He looked for familiar faces, wondering which decuria she’d brought, and was surprised at how few people he recognized.
“Nikides, isn’t it?” he asked, approaching a small group gathered around the nearest fire.
“Lord Seregil! It’s good to see you again,” the young man exclaimed, clasping hands with him.
“Are you still with Sergeant Rhylin?”
“I’m here, my lord,” Rhylin called, coming out of one of the little tents.
“Any idea what all this is about?” asked Seregil.
Rhylin shrugged. “We go where we’re told, my lord. All I know is that we head back down toward Cirna from here, to meet up with the rest of the turma. The captain’s waiting for you over at the cabin. Just so you know, she’s in one hell of a hurry to move on.”
“So I gathered, Sergeant. Rest well while you can.”
Beka was sitting with Alec and Micum by the front door. Ignoring her expectant look, Seregil tossed Alec the goose and went to wash his hands in a basin by the rain barrel.
“Supper smells good,” he noted, giving Micum a wink as he sniffed the pleasant aromas wafting from the open doorway. “Lucky fo
r you Alec’s the cook tonight, and not me.”
“I thought you looked thin,” Micum said with a chuckle as they went in.
“Not quite your Wheel Street villa, is it?” Beka remarked, gesturing around the cabin’s single room.
Alec grinned. “Call it an exercise in austerity. The snow got so deep this past winter we had to cut a hole in the roof to get out. Still, it’s better than a lot of places we’ve been.”
The place was certainly a far cry from the comfortably cluttered rooms he and Seregil had shared at the Cockerel, or Seregil’s fine Wheel Street villa. A low-slung bed took up nearly a quarter of the floor. A rickety table stood near it, with crates and stools serving as chairs. Shelves, hooks, and a few battered chests held their modest belongings. Squares of oiled parchment were nailed over the two tiny windows to keep out the drafts. In the stone fireplace a kettle bubbled on an iron hook over the flames.
“I looked in at Wheel Street last month,” Micum remarked as they crowded around the table. “Old Runcer’s been ailing, but he still manages to keep the place just as you left it. A grandson of his helps out around the place now.”
Seregil shifted uncomfortably, guessing that his friend had meant the statement as more than a casual remark. The house was his last remaining tie in Rhíminee. Like Thryis, old Runcer had kept his master’s secrets and covered his tracks, enabling Seregil to come and go as he pleased without arousing suspicion.
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