“You seem to have heard things that were not said. As for supporting him, I’ve done no such thing. All I sought to do was bring you to your senses.” He glanced about reflexively, assuring himself they were alone, then closed the distance between them. “What you suggested this afternoon is a dire thing,” he murmured. “A dangerous thing.”
“It’s not dangerous at all. Believe me, Uncle, if I wanted him dead, he’d be dead.”
“As I said before, don’t underestimate him. Even talking like this could get you arrested. Especially you. And with Shale Channon at the helm, it’s not just Abramm you’d be facing. You know Channon will bring good men into the guard.”
He could not see how his nephew was taking this, for Gillard’s face, like the paintings, lay hidden in shadow beneath the gilding of his pale hair.
“And there’s more to it than that—suppose you do succeed? The Mataio would surely censure you and, with grounds to stir up the populace against you, could force you to grant them concessions. . . . And it would start. Everything we’re trying to avoid with Abramm would happen anyway.”
His words died into a silence filled with the rushing of the trees, the faint scritching of the branches against the glass, the thumps and creaks of the palace at night.
“You’re still committed to getting him off the throne, then?” Gillard asked finally, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
“I’m committed to the survival of this realm. That above all else.” Whether or not that required Abramm’s removal remained to be seen, but he wasn’t about to say that now.
“Which means me on the throne and him gone.”
“But not by means of assassination.” It was unnerving not to see Gillard’s face, especially when he did not immediately reply. “You know I’ll always stand by you, son,” Simon added quietly. He meant that sincerely, no matter what came of Abramm.
Yet still Gillard stood there as the branches squeaked and the wind blew against the windowpanes.
“I never meant them to hurt him,” he blurted sulkily. “Only to scare him. I’d thought you’d realize that.”
Simon blew out a long breath of relief, staring at the floor now. “But the men who did it know you hired them—”
“No. It sprang from another, one in the ranks who will quickly emerge as the source and be dealt with. He’s accused me before, wrongly, so he won’t be believed. Especially since I’ve recently called in a debt he owes me.”
“Nevertheless, the gossips will blame you. And Abramm will suspect.”
Gillard shrugged. “So what if he does? There are other suspects. The Terstans want him dead as much as anyone. And I wouldn’t put it past some of the border lords, either, much as they hate Mataians. They certainly have experience—” He broke off, glancing toward the shadow-swathed doorway to the Gallery’s rectangular west wing. A moment he stood listening, though Simon discerned nothing more than the sounds of wind and branches. At length, Gillard returned his attention to Simon. “I thought if I put enough pressure on him, he’d go back to Esurh. Or renounce everything, like he did before, and return to his Mataian devotions.”
“Bonafil would never—” Gillard whirled toward the shadowed doorway, his blade flashing from its scabbard. “Who’s there?”
Silence and the wind answered him. And maybe the faintest whisper of someone breathing. Simon’s hackles rippled.
“I know you’re there,” Gillard said. “Show yourself now.”
Again, his words were swallowed by the quiet. Then the shadows moved, and a hooded figure glided out of the darkness of the doorway. It stopped before them, and a gnarled hand threw back the voluminous cowl to reveal a ruined face beneath a half-barren scalp. As Simon recoiled, Gillard voiced the recognition for both: “Rhiad!”
The holy man bowed his head. At his throat, the amulet of the Flames gleamed like an evil red eye.
“You’re too late,” Gillard said, almost flippantly. “The king has retired for the night.”
“It is not the king I seek, my lord, but you.”
“Me?”
“I sense we share a common interest, Highness.”
“I can hardly imagine what, sir, since I am not Mataian, and do not wish to become one.”
“I speak of our common enemy.”
Gillard stared at him. “Go on.”
“I know how it feels, Highness.” Rhiad stepped closer. “Seeing him standing there before them all, applauded and admired, so straight and strong and handsome. He took it all from me, too, just as he is taking it from you. And it galls, doesn’t it? Oh yes, it galls.”
“Abramm did this to you?”
“Yes!” Rhiad bared his teeth in an expression more grimace than smile. “And I will see him pay!”
“But . . .” Gillard’s eyes roved over the ruined face and barren scalp. “How could he do such a thing?”
The Mataian ignored him. “I know what he is. I know it as surely as I know your hatred. He is one of them.”
Gillard went rigid again, his attention redirected to this new consideration. “Terstan, you mean? You’ve seen his shieldmark?”
“I was in the cistern, and it’s the only way he could’ve gotten out. And that cow of a sister. They did it together. Her hands, his power. I’ll get her, too.”
The man was raving nonsense now, and Simon saw skepticism replace the hope on Gillard’s face. “So you didn’t see the mark.”
Rhiad rushed on heedlessly. “It was my monster. I was supposed to kill it. And he stole it, just as he stole everything else. Just as he’s stealing your crown from you.” His head jerked up, eyes ablaze with their own fire as they fixed on Gillard. “Oh yes. I feel your hatred, my prince. Your jealousy. Your outrage.”
Simon laid a hand on Gillard’s arm. “Lad—
” The mad, fiery gaze switched to Simon. “And you—you only pretend he disgusts you. In your heart you admire him.”
“Admire him?!”
But Rhiad had already dismissed him, returning his attention to Gillard. “Don’t worry, my prince. I will take care of him for you.”
Gillard was transfixed. “What do you mean, ‘take care of him’?”
Rhiad smiled. “I know of your secret plans, the men you have hired, the orders you’ve given them. But their attempts will fail, just as the first attempt has failed. No mere man will get past his guard. Besides, assassination is too good for him.”
“Gillard, this is treason,” Simon said, tugging at Gillard’s arm. “You cannot talk to this man.”
“A moment, Uncle.”
Rhiad paid Simon no mind. “I need only a few small things,” he hissed, his face drawing near to Gillard’s. “A lock of hair, a drop of blood . . . a few sovereigns.”
The words whispered into silence. Rhiad smiled.
Gillard blinked, shook his head slightly, then frowned. “You’re mad.”
Simon stepped between them. “Away with you, sir,” he said to the Mataian. “We want no part of this treasonous talk.”
“BE SILENT!” Rhiad snarled, the amulet blazing at his throat. “AND MOVE ASIDE.” His voice was still hushed, but it carried the power of a battle cry, and Simon felt his mouth close. In the same moment, he stepped back to Gillard’s side without any conscious intent to do so, and though alarm spun ever more wildly through him, he could not make himself move nor speak to act on it.
Rhiad’s voice reverted to its insinuating croon. “What I have planned for your brother, my prince, is much more fitting than simple assassination. We will ruin him—crush that fine young body, strip the flesh from that handsome face, cripple that famous sword arm. And should he survive, so much the better, for life will only be a torment to him. People will shrink away from him, women will shudder at his touch. He will lose everything, my prince! His beauty, his strength, his position. Everything!”
It was a living nightmare. Simon could hardly breathe, but he could watch and listen and feel in a way he had never felt before. Horrified and furious at what thi
s madman threatened to do against one of the royal family on the one hand, cringing inwardly at what he’d already done to Gillard on the other. The boy’s pale eyes had glazed and his mouth hung open, breathless, the tip of his tongue just touching his upper lip.
“I’ll even let you watch,” Rhiad said, stepping closer than ever. Something metallic gleamed in his hand, down in the shadow between them. “I’ll even let you participate. . . . All I need is a lock of hair. . . .” In slow deliberate movements, his eyes never leaving Gillard’s, he lifted the knife he had produced and cut a pale blond curl from alongside Gillard’s face, eliciting not the slightest response from his victim. He stuffed the curl into his robe and went on.
“And a bit of blood . . .”Nowhe lifted Gillard’s left hand in his own, palm up. The knife flashed up, pulling Simon’s eyes to it like filings to a lodestone. Then it froze as the Mataian’s head jerked up and he peered intently over Gillard’s shoulder.
Simon heard steps approaching in the corridor behind them.
Rhiad dropped the prince’s hand. “You will remember nothing!” he hissed, pulling the cowl back over his head. “Nothing!” His amulet flared, and he whirled away as Laramor’s rough voice intruded into the tableau. “Here! What’s going on? Who are you?”
But the madman had already vanished into the shadows. Laramor stopped beside the two Kalladornes, looking at them in concern. “That sounded like Master Rhiad.”
Gillard did not answer him, looking dazed and lost. And Simon could not help him much, struggling to understand how he knew that Ethan was right—it had been Master Rhiad—when he hadn’t even seen the man’s face.
“Simon?”
“He just approached us out of the shadows,” Simon said. “Waiting for us, I guess. Whatever he wanted, he never got that far.”
Laramor frowned at him, then glanced again at Gillard. “What happened to your hair, my lord?” He gestured at the short lock dangling on the young man’s brow.
Gillard fingered it with an expression of bewilderment. “I guess it must’ve been cut in my contest with Tedron this afternoon.”
“Really? I don’t recall seeing it at dinner.” Ethan’s eyes darted once more to the shadows where Rhiad had disappeared.
“Well,” said Simon, “he’s gone now. And I’m off to Briarcreek at dawn. If I don’t get at least a little sleep before then, I’ll be falling off my horse all day. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen?”
__________
Across the palace, in the semi-darkened bedchamber of the royal apartments, Abramm’s stomach growled and he rolled onto his back, opening his eyes in frustration. He could not sleep. It seemed as if everything he had learned and seen and experienced today had been dumped into the pot that was his mind, where it boiled around in an endless, random tumble of images and feelings and fears. Already he’d lain here over an hour, and now he was hungry, as well. Perhaps you should give up and try to go through those Table Records you asked for.
He groaned. The last thing he wanted was more information! Well, then read the Words or review your notes. It’s better than lying here thrashing.
He closed his eyes again, hoping maybe now the drowsiness would come. Only to reopen them a few moments later in the acknowledgment it was a lost cause. Sighing, he sat up, tossed back the covers, and swung out of the bed. As he pulled on the breeches left draped on the bedside chair, movement across the room drew his eye to the full-length mirror beside his wardrobe. As he straightened so did the man in the mirror, staring back at him with a stern, suspicious glare.
With his hair so short and that trim, old-style beard edging his mouth and jaw, his own reflection still gave him a jolt of surprise every time he saw it. At least now his clothes were merely commonplace, not the tailored silks and brocades a king must wear. But even in the linen undershirt, his shieldmark glinting between the untied open neck slit, he looked like a stranger.
He had changed in Esurh, and he thought he understood that. It was one of the reasons he’d come back. Now he was changing again, no longer the White Pretender, no longer the mysterious monster-hunter promising adventure and riches, nor even the lost prince returning to claim his birthright. Now he was king.
King of Kiriath.
For a moment he could hardly breathe. Awe. Wonder. Disbelief. And sheer, unadulterated terror. They clamped around his chest and held him motionless. He was riding those winds of destiny again, carried even now to the place Eidon had prepared for him, yet it still felt wrong. As if it were something someone else should be doing and he but an imposter soon to be found out and exposed.
But you are not an imposter, he thought at the reflection. You are king, and this is your destiny. The Pretender was only a preparation.
Then why does it feel so uncomfortable?
He turned from the mirror, padding barefoot to one of several tall windows, drapes open to the night.
And why do I feel so inadequate?
A blanket of yellow lights spangled the valley below him, cut through by the great dark swath of the River Kalladorne. Nine bridges arched over its width, their night lanterns casting evenly spaced circles of warm illumination along their lengths, a few night-lit barges drifting beneath them.
Terstans, Chesedhans, Gadrielites, courtier politics, grand balls, flirty young ladies, trustworthy councilors, war, rebellion, border raids, a crippled economy . . . So many problems to solve, so many options, so many people . . . and so many, many places to fail. His choices could bring success or disaster—and for all the glut of information he’d received, he still did not have enough to guide him.
Dare he trust Blackwell? Should he cancel the parties and symphonies and plays? Arrest Gillard on suspicion of assassination? Risk telling Simon his most precious and dangerous secret?
That, above all, haunted him. He remembered too well the look of horror on Carissa’s face when she’d first seen his shieldmark, and he lived even now with the knowledge that it had driven her from his life. And she had started out loving him—sacrificing two years of her life to rescue him from slavery— whereas Simon had never loved him at all.
The perpetual hint of revulsion had been missing from his expression tonight, though, a realization Abramm made only now as he sorted through the memory. A realization that filled him with almost as warm a glow as Blackwell’s incredible assertion: “I think he favors you.” Was it possible? And if it was, did he wish to jeopardize it by unveiling truths he knew the man could not appreciate? Wouldn’t it be better to prove himself first, as Trap had done with Abramm himself? That would take time, though. Time he might not have, with Rhiad shrilling accusations and Gillard already prying at the edges of his secret. Was this pressure actually Eidon’s hand, pushing him in a direction in which he was reluctant to move? Or was it merely another worldly distraction that appealed to his own desire to have it over with?
He sighed his frustration, fogging the window in front of him. My Lord Eidon, it’s obvious you’ve put me here. But now what? For all I know you may not even want Simon to be my ally.
But once more all he received was an inner silence that was growing increasingly familiar. I need to get to a Terstmeet, he thought. By now he’d read his notes a hundred times, and they’d become so familiar he could quote them all verbatim. Reading them again would generate no answers, not like hearing the words straight from the mouth of the kohal as he spoke to the gathered Terst. When those words spoke precisely to whatever private dilemma Abramm wrestled with, or when they came shaped as a conversational answer to a question he’d asked earlier in prayer, that was when Eidon’s voice was most clear to him. When the answers just drifted up in his own mind, he was never sure they weren’t the result of some part of himself providing what he wanted to hear—or at least thought he should hear.
His stomach growled again, the hunger pangs increasingly insistent. After the ambush, and the fuss surrounding it, he’d been late getting back, then too nervous about the reception to eat a proper dinner. The decision was
catching up with him now.
Opening the bedchamber door, he nearly tripped over young Jared, sprawled asleep in a chair against the study’s wall, legs outstretched, an open red-bound book facedown in his lap. He looked up groggily.
“Jared!” Abramm exclaimed, embarrassed not only for nearly having fallen on the boy, but for the wild aggression that had surged through him in his surprise. “What the plague are you doing here? Have you no bed?”
The boy scrambled to his feet, white-faced, fumbling to keep hold of the book while bowing at the same time. “Y-yes, sir. But I thought you might have need of me.” His gaze darted to Abramm’s chest and away again, a reminder that the neck slit of Abramm’s blouse remained untied, the shieldmark fully visible between its open edges.
A wave of horror doused the fire of Abramm’s irritation, followed by chagrined relief. Had he not stumbled over the boy, he’d have walked straight into the sitting chamber and one more person would suddenly have become privy to his secret. And surely adding Blackwell to the list was enough for one day.
Regaining his poise, he addressed the boy more civilly. “As it happens, I do have need of you. Fetch me some bread and cheese from the kitchen. And a pot of cider, too.”
The boy bowed again, stammering his acquiescence, his gaze darting to Abramm’s shieldmark and away again, as if he could not keep from looking and at the same time couldn’t stand to look. Abramm wondered if he might not be the first Terstan Jared had ever known. At least openly. So far he had only given thought to the dangers of the boy revealing the secret, not what he might think of it all himself.
But already Jared was rushing off to do as he’d been bidden. When he returned, Abramm had retired to the desk in his study, reading through the scroll of Amicus in the copy of the First Word he’d found in his personal library. Jared set the tray of food on the desk, then asked if there would be anything else, his gaze darting skittishly to the shieldmark still visible behind the untied neck slit. Abramm said there was not, but as the boy turned away he reached to snatch the book now tucked into the back of his breeches. “You were reading this earlier, weren’t you? Ah, Alain’s Aerie. A good tale.”
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