“I’ve heard,” said Ned wearily. “The gossip has been relentless.” His mother and sister had made certain he knew that the handsome and wealthy Lord Amaristoth was wooing Rianna even at that moment. They had meant for it to spur Ned to action—as though some action of his could change her heart.
“I don’t think Rianna is one to be won over by a man’s wealth or family,” said Ned at last. “If Rayen Amaristoth can win her heart, it will mean that he—that he deserves her.”
His father made an impatient noise. “In any case, Master Gelvan wants to speak with you,” he said. “Perhaps bring you to your senses—I don’t know. I told him, of course, that you would see him.”
Ned had always liked Master Gelvan, had in fact considered him the best possible potential father-in-law. And it had always been clear that the merchant liked Ned in turn and even seemed to see past his clumsiness. In some ways, Ned felt more at ease with Master Gelvan than he did with his own father.
Ned was unprepared for how haggard Master Gelvan looked on the day he received Ned in his study, but the merchant waved away his concerns. He said, “You, on the other hand, look to be at the peak of health, which pleases me greatly. Like everyone else, I was worried you would not return.”
“In truth, I am thinking of going back,” Ned said. He had not realized it, not fully, until he spoke now.
Master Gelvan looked pained. “I know you are aware of the dangers, more so even than I,” he said. “I suppose nothing I can say will convince you otherwise. Except this: I have always seen you as a man of extraordinary promise. It would grieve me to see that promise lost to an eastern disease or gutted on the deck of some ship.” The man’s eyes were piercing. “Don’t let my daughter’s feelings dictate your sense of yourself.”
“There was a reason you wanted to see me?”
Master Gelvan sighed. “Yes, of course,” he said. “You have changed, you know. I suppose that’s to be expected. I hope you’ll forgive what will sound like a presumption on my part.”
Ned smiled slightly. “No more presumptuous, I’m sure, than was my intent to wed the most beautiful girl in Tamryllin,” he said. “Go on.”
Master Gelvan hesitated. He said, “It is about her, actually. I need your assurance that if something happens to me, you will protect her. I had hoped it would be as a husband, but if not—I hope you will recall the friendship the two of you once shared, and honor that.”
“Master Gelvan, are you ill?”
The merchant shook his head. “No, it’s nothing like that,” he said. “Can you promise me that you will protect her?”
“There is no need to extract such a promise from me,” said Ned. “I would never let harm come to your daughter. If I go overseas again, I will make my father aware of your concerns. He sees her almost as his own daughter.”
“I know,” said Master Gelvan. “Truly, I thank you.” His hand trembled slightly as he reached for his wine.
Ned said, “Can you tell me what is going on?”
Master Gelvan smiled. “I’m afraid not, young lord,” he said. “Suffice to say that very old ghosts might be coming to claim me, rather sooner than I had expected or planned.” He shook his head. “Well. I suppose you have heard that Rayen Amaristoth has been calling on us. I am sure the rumors have been—colorful.”
Ned shrugged and took a sip of his own wine. Struggling to keep his tone casual, he said, “Do you have news for me, Master Gelvan?”
The merchant leaned back in his chair. “He set his sights on her, I think,” he said. “But she’s rebuffed his advances.”
“How do you know that?” asked Ned, relieved in spite of himself.
“He told me,” said Master Gelvan. “And then he said a strange thing. He said that to have a chance at winning Rianna’s hand, he’d first need to learn to play the harp.”
“What do you think he meant by that?”
“Well,” said Master Gelvan, looking embarrassed, “by then we’d both been drinking a bit. I actually have no idea what he meant.” He rose, reaching out a hand. “Ned. You will come see me again?”
“Of course,” Ned replied, gripping the older man’s hand firmly. As he left the house, he was grateful that Rianna was nowhere to be seen, nor was Rayen Amaristoth. In his mind he was bidding farewell to the merchant’s house, which he had once nearly thought of as a home. He thought again of unfamiliar shores, of twisted streets in distant cities. Where none of his memories lived.
* * *
SMOKE was drifting around his head as he sat back in his chair, in one of the more popular taverns of Tamryllin. He had gotten into the habit of smoking during the voyage—having been mocked by the men, at first, for not knowing which end of the pipe was which—and now Ned found he needed a smoke when his thoughts threatened to overwhelm him. He had bought his first pipe at a bazaar in Ankora, a bustling, colorful city where he had felt pale and foreign, and weakened by the wound in his leg.
His hood shadowing his face, Ned covertly watched the people around him. He never used to patronize taverns—his mother would have disapproved. But she would also disapprove of his smoking. And in truth, the neat gardens and bright rooms of his parents’ home had begun to infuriate him. The tidy murmurings of his mother and sister had about the same weight in the world as gnats. He was exhausted by them. The disappointment in his father’s eyes when he looked at Ned these days … it was best to be away.
And just now, since meeting with Master Gelvan, there was much to think about.
He would first need to learn to play the harp, Master Gelvan had said. A joke of Rayen Amaristoth’s that did not make any sense, actually.
But another voice was deeply engraved in Ned’s mind: Rianna is Darien’s wench.
For months, Ned had discounted Marlen Humbreleigh’s remark, found ways to ignore it. Rianna had seemed so confused, Marlen clearly drunk. But now the name Darien Aldemoor was famed in Tamryllin; everyone spoke of the renegade poet.
Rayen’s joke made sense if Rianna was, indeed, Darien’s wench. And if Rayen somehow knew about it.
Without finishing his drink, Ned abruptly left the tavern. There was only one way to find out what he needed to know. The first step was easy: after some inquiries, he found himself in one of the wealthier districts. The façade of the building he came to was imposing, and Ned felt a chill. He became more aware of the sword at his hip, though he knew that he was, as yet, unskilled.
The woman who opened the door at his knock looked familiar. Coils of dark hair hung loose to her shoulders, and she wore a gown of red satin that looked as if it was meant for the boudoir. Ned wondered if she was a whore, and his pulse quickened slightly.
“My name is Lord Alterra,” said Ned. “I am here to see Lord Humbreleigh.”
“Come in,” she said in tones that were clipped, well bred. She did not wear face paint, and her dignified tread as he followed her did not bring to mind a whore.
Ned’s companions in the voyage had been well versed in the brothels of the east—particularly the costly ones, where the women were rumored to know all the secrets of a man’s body. Ned had avoided the brothels, had never in his life found release with any woman, a fact he was careful not to divulge to his companions. But in the company of sailors, he had seen many of their whores, costly and cheap. It gave him a strange twinge, that there were women willing to be used in that way. Seeing them had stirred an excitement in him that made him feel ugly, as ugly as he had felt when he was with Rianna and found himself overpowered with thoughts that he knew would have disgusted her. Ned had lain awake at nights wrestling with those thoughts, willing himself to be different.
Sometimes he thought the ugliness inside him was what had kept him from being handsome, that the poison could not help but seep to the surface.
And so he had been willing to vanish into the far east if that was what it took to escape his feelings, the terrible knowledge of what he was. He had abandoned his father’s crew after learning enough skills to get himsel
f hired onto another ship on his own merits, rather than in his father’s name. And the ship he chose was that of an adventurer captain, a man as reckless with his life and the lives of his crew as Ned was with his own. He was, in his way, quite mad. They took to each other right away.
In the end, Ned had been one of the few survivors of that voyage. His desire to vanish into the east had nearly been fulfilled.
Yet now Ned was beginning to realize that even when he had expected to die on eastern waters, he had still had hope, though so deeply concealed that he had not known it was there. A hope that perhaps, just perhaps, Rianna might feel differently when he returned with tales to tell. When she saw that he had been willing to risk losing her, if it meant proving himself to her first. It was the reason he had held back from the temptations of the eastern cities; he had been saving himself for his love—in case.
He had been an idiot. It only remained to discover just how much of one.
Meanwhile, the woman had stopped in her tracks, turned to face him. She had brought him to a room with high ceilings and tall windows hung with sumptuous dark velvet. One end of the room was dominated by a massive desk, and it pained Ned’s sense of order to see the papers and books piled haphazardly in mounds atop it, utterly obscuring its surface.
“I am Marilla,” she said. “I believe we have met.”
“Have we?”
Now she smiled, a cruel smile that showed all her teeth, and he recognized her immediately. “You seem different,” she purred. “There is no longer that cowed look in your eyes.”
“You are no different,” he said. He felt a surge of disgust for this woman who had, he recalled, expressed a desire to see his blood spilled on the ground. “You are as ill-mannered and odd as ever. Is Marlen Humbreleigh here?”
“He’s not,” she said. “But I think I can help you with your problem.”
“My problem,” Ned repeated. He was beginning to regret that he had come here, into the lair of a disturbed man and his bizarre consort. Marlen, it was said, was dangerous and prone to fits of rage, especially in recent months. Ned had even heard, in whispers amid the tavern smoke, that he had beaten a fellow poet nearly to death, without provocation.
“You want to know if what Marlen said on the night of the masque was true,” she said. Her eyes were intent on his, and he realized she was moving closer. He could smell the rich exposing scent she wore. Involuntarily, Ned’s thoughts turned to smooth skin, to secret places where he could sink, irrevocably. Sink and lose himself.
He backed away a step. “I am beginning to think I will never know,” he said, and detested the bitterness in his own voice. “Why should I trust either of you?”
“You’re right—Marlen would lie to you,” she said. “He would tell you that he was simply drunk, and that Darien never touched your Rianna Gelvan. In the depths of his heart, he desperately wants to see himself as someone who would not betray a friend—in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
Ned thought he was prepared, yet a rush of nausea welled up from the pit of his stomach. “You are saying—that he did touch her.”
“I think you will find that if you think back, you will know the answer for yourself,” Marilla said. “The little girl, Lord Alterra, never saw what you are. But I do.”
“And what am I?”
Marilla touched her nails to his cheek, as she had done once before. They were long, and painted a deep crimson that was almost black. “She never saw the violence in you,” she said. “The rage that is—isn’t it?—aching to burst free.”
Ned broke away. “You’re mad.”
She laughed. “Go then—Marlen will be returning soon, and would not be pleased to find you here,” she said. “But you are welcome anytime to visit me.” She told him an address.
“I suppose I could visit you,” said Ned. “But I’d sooner be hanged.”
He turned and left the room, heading for the front door, but not before he heard her laugh. It was a sound that had rung in his ears on the night of the masque after his cowardice was exposed, had seemed to pursue him all the rest of that night. Now it filled him with revulsion and sadness and yet also, unexpectedly, recognition.
* * *
THAT evening, as Ned sat and smoked—this time in a different tavern—he mulled the events of the day. Marilla had been right—thinking back on his memories of the summer, he realized that, all along, there had been something strange in Rianna’s behavior. She had never been enthusiastic about the idea of their marrying, but it was only in the summer that she had seemed to become acutely unhappy when he was near, almost tearful. Her heart heavy with guilt, he supposed. No doubt she had thought poor Ned many times in the course of those weeks.
But Ned had carried on in ignorance, knowing himself to be inadequate but still hoping—hoping. Until the night of the masque, when he had finally realized that all the ways he had attempted to be what Rianna wanted were exactly wrong. He had striven to show her how much she meant, how willing he was to do the slightest thing. That night he had realized that none of that behavior could conceal what he was.
But now that he knew she had loved Darien at that time, he could also see how unappealing his clumsy attempts must have seemed in comparison to a graceful, charming adventurer. And more than that—to a mind that continually crested the heights of music and art, leaped and teased and induced ecstasies so close, so very close to the ecstasies of shared love.
How much she meant.
He could never have put it into words. He had no songs for her.
The violence in you. What had the woman meant by that? Ned didn’t think he was violent. He didn’t think he could even have summoned the impulse to harm Darien Aldemoor, his rival, if given the chance. It didn’t make sense to him, as no act of violence on his part would have caused Rianna to love Darien any less, or Ned any more.
He could not fault her for her feelings. For years, he had refused to look honestly at himself and had presumed where he’d had no right.
Around him, the tavern was a bustle of people laughing, drinking, and smoking. And unavoidably, there were poets playing a song about love and erotic passion. Their favorite subject. Tavern patrons thumped the table in time with a ballad about a clever tinker who charms his way into the bed of a princess. It was a bawdy, tasteless song that, Ned thought, had nothing at all to do with real love.
It was too late at night to do anything but go home, but he could not bear the thought. He wandered the streets aimlessly, in the direction of the Court Plaza.
Or not aimlessly, not really.
When Ned came to the door, he knocked. When there was no answer, he noted the light inside and tried the door. It opened immediately. Stepping inside the house, Ned closed and bolted the door behind him. In case.
He had a thought then that perhaps Marilla was even more devious than he’d supposed; that this was some sadistic scheme to pit him against Marlen, get Ned spitted on that heirloom sword for good. And it would work. He was more experienced now, but still no match for Marlen Humbreleigh.
Ned smiled grimly. If that had been her plan, then the girl was perceptive: she knew a dead man when she saw one.
The first floor of the apartments were quiet. Ned took to the stairs, making no effort to silence his steps. Whatever happened now—if it all ended here—then so much the better. He was tired.
But he found her alone, which in a way he feared even more. She was sitting on her bed with her back to him. It was bare, covered only by a fall of long black hair.
She turned her head to look him in the eye. “I thought you would come,” she said. Rising so he could see that indeed, she wore nothing, she turned to face him, stretched out her arms in an oddly ceremonial gesture. Or even vulnerable, which Ned had not expected. Her breasts were round and firm, her legs very long. She said, “Shall we begin our lesson?”
Here was one way, he thought then, to finally disappear.
“I’m leaving Tamryllin,” he told her, hoarsel
y. It seemed important that she know.
Her lips curled. “Oh, good,” she said. “Then neither of us shall sorrow.”
* * *
A WEEK passed, and then another. Ned thought Marilla was not even a woman, that she was some sort of demon, but still he could not leave. She had been right about the violence in him—too, too right, and many times since that first night she had driven him to prove it. Ned knew that if he waited too long, winter would freeze the mountain passes, and he would be barred from traveling to Kahishi and the eastern ports. It was time to leave. And yet every day he found his way back to that house, to the bed that contained a universe.
Sometimes he imagined, when she turned away from him and slept, that the hair that brushed against his chest was golden instead of black. That her cries had been in a different voice, one that he had known all his life. And then, even though he knew that such thoughts were shameful, all he could feel was black loss hollowing out his heart.
But he also felt, losing himself in her, that he had been saved.
Once, after a particularly brutal night, she kissed him full on the lips almost as if with love. She said, “There is no one like you.”
How, then, could he leave?
* * *
TWO weeks later news reached the Alterra household: that earlier that same month, Master Gelvan had been arrested by Ladybirds, taken into custody by the Court Poet himself, who had ordered the affair kept quiet. But the arrest of such an important figure could not stay secret for long.
Worse, infinitely worse, was that Rianna had vanished.
“What does that mean?” Ned had demanded of his father. “How does a girl just disappear?”
“She was being kept under house arrest,” said Lord Alterra, looking shaken. “That is all I know. The guards confined her to the house for the night—and the next day, she was gone. They have scoured the house for her—and apparently discovered an altar to the Unnamed God and books of forbidden texts. On top of what Master Gelvan is already charged with—and that is secret—they will doubtless add heresy to the list of crimes.”
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