“Not bad.” He smiled. “I couldn’t persuade them to promise they’d try to find out where Gillard’s hiding, but at least they have a new and clearer understanding of Abramm’s views on governance. And hopefully a new respect for the restraint and generosity he’s shown toward those not of like mind.”
Most of the other council members were already in the War Room when they arrived, and shortly thereafter Abramm joined them. He had taken to wearing black of late and was growing his beard again. Five days’ worth of unshaped honey-colored stubble covered his jaw—despite the fact that Briellen hated beards. But since with her own mouth she’d also very publicly expressed her horror for his “hideous scars,” perhaps it didn’t matter.
The meeting had barely gotten underway before Abramm was berating a servant for slamming the door and complaining that he didn’t have enough weights to hold his maps in place. But finally they got down to business, discussing plans for the expedition to the Gull Islands, the continuing preparations for defense at home, and an update on the search for Gillard, which was turning out to be harder than expected. Trap noted the concerns of his Heartlanders over losing their trained bands in the face of Rennalf’s rising bluster, which sparked a lengthy discussion of the potential for a militia army to be co-opted by the Mataio if they settled in the Heartland, as they were talking of doing.
They were wrapping things up, and Abramm was rattling off a series of new instructions to his ministers, when Arik Foxton had the bad sense to ask for a clarification:
“Did you say you wanted that five thousand sovereigns deposited to the Ministry account, sir?”
“I said the Military account, Foxton,” Abramm said.
“Of course.” Foxton shifted uncomfortably. “I was wondering why you would want them put in Ministry.”
Abramm skewered him with a disdainful glance. “Yes, I would wonder that, too, Arik.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “Why would I say such a thing? And why would you even think I would?”
“Obviously I was confused, sir.”
“Obviously.”
Foxton hid his annoyance and glanced at Trap, whom everyone seemed to regard as official keeper of Abramm’s mood and tongue. Actually, Abramm had said Ministry not Military, but noting that aloud would be in no one’s best interest. Abramm continued with his instructions, and shortly the men were filing from the room. All except Trap, who stayed behind, still seated at the table, watching Abramm as he turned his attention to the maps laid out before him.
When after a long moment Trap had still not spoken, the king looked up. “Why are you still here, Duke Eltrap?”
“You are aware, I presume, of just how insufferable you’ve been lately.”
“I’m king. I get to be insufferable if I feel like it.” He returned his attention to the topmost map, trailing his finger along the Kiriathan shoreline, then reaching for the straightedge and laying it onto the parchment. After a moment he left off with that and leaned back in the chair, rubbing his temples with thumb and forefinger. “All right. No I don’t. And I thank you for pointing it out.” He let his hand fall onto the chair’s armrest and, after a moment, when Trap still hadn’t left, “Was there something else?”
Trap sat with hands folded, rubbing a freckled knuckle with his thumb. Finally he said quietly, “Why are you going through with this, sir? When no one in the realm really wants it and you yourself are so obviously appalled by it? And when . . .” He hesitated to add the rest, then went ahead, as gently as he could, “. . . it’s obvious your heart and soul belong to another.”
Abramm returned to his maps, shuffling through them now in a display of impassive disinterest that didn’t fool Trap for a moment. “Maddie is no longer part of the situation,” he said curtly.
But the fact he’d not even bothered to pretend Trap’s claim was untrue spoke volumes. “Are you sure?”
Abramm slid a new map to the top and replaced the weights that held it flat. “I can learn to love Briellen,” he said. “We’re charged to love all those who wear the shield, after all, and she’s very pleasant to look at. There is that, at least. She hasn’t even been that badly behaved since . . .” But he was unable to finish that thought.
Trap regarded him wordlessly.
“I’ll grant she’s not what I would have preferred.” Abramm laid down the straightedge again. “But our duty doesn’t ask us to do only that which we like or prefer.”
“I would never argue that,” Trap said. “But your duty, first and foremost, is to carry out Eidon’s will for your life. As a man as well as a king. I’m not so sure that’s what’s been guiding you these last few days.”
Abramm scowled at him. “Are you presuming to tell me what my duty is, Duke Eltrap?”
“No, sir. But you appointed me First Minister because you wanted someone who would tell you what he thought. And I think I have never seen you more miserable. Worse, you’re making everyone around you miserable, too. And none of that is Eidon’s will—not for the man nor for the king.”
Abramm continued to frown at him, the grizzle bristling on his jaw as he clenched his teeth. “You have no right to judge me in this.”
“I’m only suggesting you look at the motives that are driving you. Because I can’t believe they’re born of the Light.”
His words died into a lengthy silence, during which Abramm shifted his gaze to the long row of windows where the trees stood bright in their new spring foliage. His index finger tapped an erratic rhythm atop the map beneath his hand. Finally he let out a long breath and said quietly, “I can’t—” His voice died. He tried again, the words coming out harshly with the effort of keeping them even. “I won’t let another woman die because of me.”
And the look in his eyes set Trap’s heart twisting with vicarious pain.Well did he remember that day on the ledge when, shuddering with sporesickness, he’d looked up to see Abramm kneeling in Shettai’s blood, as motionless as if he had died himself. Spectators on the bridge had warned of the second veren’s approach, and Trap had roused his friend just in time, but he’d never forget the dazed, lost look on Abramm’s face. Nor how he’d insisted on carrying Shettai’s body to the safety of the tunnel with the veren literally breathing down his neck.
Though he had masked his grief well, everything Abramm had done after that traced back to her—his trip to the SaHal, his efforts to awaken the Heart, his support of her brother, King Shemm. Perhaps even his return to Kiriath could be laid at her feet. Or at least the feet of the guilt Trap now knew Abramm still nursed over her loss.
“Shettai’s death was not your doing,” he said.
Abramm ran his finger along one of the contour lines on his map. “She wouldn’t have been on that ledge at all if it wasn’t for me. If I had not taken her that night.” He grimaced, swallowed once, and then said very deliberately, “If I had not made love to her that night, in direct violation of the Words’ commands . . .”
Trap stared at him, struggling to grasp his meaning, and when finally he did, aghast to think a man could know as much about Eidon as Abramm did, and speak such nonsense. “You believe Eidon took Shettai before her time just to punish you?” Trap pushed back from the table, struggling to contain his indignation. “That what Tersius did on that hill outside Xorofin wasn’t quite enough, then?”
Abramm looked round at him in protest. “No!”
“Well, it’s the same thing.” He shook his head. “I’m not condoning what you did that night. But what about the sins you committed today? Do you believe you have to help pay for them, as well? When you upbraided Foxton for no reason and made him look the fool before us all? When you snarled at Cranston for not closing the door quietly enough? When you stalk around the palace in this foul mood, brooding over your misfortune, heedless of the feelings and needs of those around you? Are those somehow less grievous in Eidon’s sight, somehow more respectable than coupling with a slave girl out of wedlock the night before you were supposed to die? And that before you even wore his shield?�
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Abramm stared at him as if he didn’t know what to say.
Trap leaned toward him. “They are all equally contemptible as far as he is concerned. Save perhaps for this disgusting hubris that seems to believe your particular sin is so great you have to help pay for it. That’s probably worse.”
Abramm’s brows drew down. “That’s not it at all.”
“No? If you think you have to punish yourself with this marriage, then by default you’re saying Tersius didn’t do all that was necessary. So which is it? Did he do it all or do you have to help?”
Abramm was not given time to answer, for at that moment a familiar female voice sounded in the hall outside, followed by a servant’s lower tones. Then the door swung open and Briellen swept into the room. To her credit, she was just about to speak when she noticed the charged atmosphere. Both men sat straight and rigid as they faced each other. Abramm’s face was white behind the crimson scars, his brows knit with indignation. Trap knew himself to look little calmer and felt a mingling of irritation and embarrassment as Briellen’s startled gaze passed over him.
Then Abramm drew a deep breath and deliberately relaxed. “What is it, my dear?” he asked very civilly, giving Trap the flick of his fingers that indicated he was dismissed.
Trap wasn’t even out of the room before she started in, very sweetly, about that poxed chapel of hers. How that, grateful as she was Abramm had provided it for her, the altar that had been delivered wasn’t quite what she had wanted. . . .
As the door closed behind him, Trap felt a pique of frustration. Then he reminded himself that the interruption had not been an accident. He’d said what he needed to say. Abramm would have to take it from here.
CHAPTER
26
With sweat dribbling down the sides of his face and chest, Gillard knelt in the Watch’s small chapel, a thick pad protecting his fragile knees from the hard stone floor. At least the pain that had earlier cramped his legs had by now given way to numbness, though what he would do when he had to stand again was anyone’s guess.
Though he wore only a loincloth, even that was almost too much in this crowded, overheated room. Amicus had assured him the Watch brothers would do whatever was needed to spare his depleted flesh the battle of trying to keep warm during the ceremony, and so they had. Not only did the Holy Flames dance on their brazier atop the altar at the head of the chamber, but candles flickered all round and braziers of glowing coals stood at the four corners of the platform. To this was added the body heat of every member of the highland Watch, all of them crowded in here together. Since many had come directly from working the fields and garden, the overheated air carried a fine, ripe reek that made it hard to breathe.
At least this was almost over.
Gillard kept his head dropped forward as the Mataian who would be his discipler bent over him, one hand pressing into the side of his head as the other slowly drew the razor up from the nape of his neck, shearing away the last few locks of his hair. A few more strokes and the former prince-regent of Kiriath would be completely bald.
He tried not to think of that, preferring to concentrate on the fact that this minor sacrifice would ensure his anonymity when Abramm’s men finally arrived. As one of the Watch’s thirteen first-year acolytes, Gillard should draw no more than a passing glance. And since all first-year acolytes were required to have their heads shaved monthly during their first year of service— and had, in fact, completed that ritual this very morning—he didn’t even have to worry about differences in length of stubble. They’d all be equally bald.
Two more slow pulls of the razor around Gillard’s right ear, two more long, soap-sodden locks tossed into the shockingly large pile of white-blond hair in the pan at his knees, and it was done. His discipler’s hand lifted off his head and returned with a damp towel to wipe away all traces of soap and stray hairs. Then the man straightened and backed out of Gillard’s range of sight. Suddenly even the heated air seemed cool against his naked scalp, and a swirl of nausea danced through his belly.
It will be worth it, he told himself again. And no one who matters is going to see me anyway. Besides, it will grow back.
But he felt violated all the same. Where do these religious freaks come up with such absurd rituals?
The shearing complete, Master Amicus now rose from his chair beside the altar and launched into a long prayer of gratitude sprinkled with pledges of humility and sincerity to which Gillard added wry and inappropriate mental asides. He found it particularly amusing the way the old Guardian lost nearly all of his northerner brogue when mouthing formal prayers and ceremonial words. Did they train them to do that, he wondered, or did Amicus just get carried away with his own pomposity?
Finally it was Gillard’s turn to speak, promising, as he’d been instructed, to work hard, serve humbly, learn well the laws of the Words and Mataian Tradition and observe them with the greatest care.
“So ye have sworn,” Amicus declared when he had finished. “Hold true to these vows, and ye shall yourself be pure enough to enter the Holy Keep and touch the FatherFlame. Pass its testing and ye shall be permitted to take your final vows of service.”
Which I can assure you, Gillard thought at him, will never happen.
Amicus lifted a hand. “Stand before them now.”
Awkwardly Gillard slid his splinted right hand under the garments folded up beneath the pan of hair and, balancing both on his right hand as he steadied them with his left, got slowly to his feet. His discipler stood by to catch his elbow and support him, a precaution he definitely needed, for his legs felt as if they had been cut off as surely as his hair.
Amicus began another droning litany, but this time Gillard was completely distracted by the sensations rushing up from his legs. Numbness turned to a jellylike tingling that progressed into outright pain and something very like cramping. By the time it faded, Amicus had finished his recitation and Gillard was standing on his own two feet again, the discipler’s hand no longer needed. Perhaps Amicus inserted the long litany for just that purpose. After what he’d said yesterday about serving whether one believed or not, Gillard wouldn’t be surprised.
The Guardian Master fell silent, and after a moment the assembled citizens of the Watch broke into a song of praise. Then, at last, Amicus looked directly into Gillard’s eyes and launched into the official vow-taking, which Gillard repeated line by line after him:
“I, Galbrath of Two Cities”—they had chosen the most common of Gillard’s four names to use here to grant the proceedings credibility—“do swear to serve the Flames with all my heart and soul and strength, to observe the dictates of the brotherhood, and keep myself pure in Eidon’s sight.
“I will touch no weapon of warfare.” At least not today. “His light will be my protection.
“I will abstain from corrupt foods, shunning wine, strong drink, and the meat of animals.” How in torments does anyone get through this without strong drink? “His Words will be my food, his Light will be my drink.
“I will keep my flesh pure and undefiled from the corruption of women.” This one will definitely be the first to go. . . . “His Flames will be my only love. . . .”
Barely did Gillard manage to utter those words without laughing. Already he’d been plagued by an intense craving for feminine companionship. If he did not assuage it soon, he’d surely go mad. He’d asked Honarille to see about arranging something last night, but the man had looked at him as if he were out of his mind, seeming appalled Gillard would even consider it. And that had been before he’d made these silly vows.
Could they possibly be vows, he wondered, if you mouthed them with no intent whatever to fulfill them?
“These things I do swear before these witnesses and the Holy SonFlames of Eidon,” said Amicus. “May they strike me with their fury should I violate this troth.”
Gillard repeated dutifully, his words fading to silence in the hot, stuffy room.
For a moment Amicus stood with head bowed,
eyes closed, muttering to himself. Then he lifted his face and looked at Gillard again. “Thus ye have sworn before these witnesses who have seen and heard and understood.”
The gathered Watch congregation lifted their voices in somber unison. “We have seen and heard and understood.”
“The time has come, Galbrath. Put off your old self and take on the new.”
As he had been instructed earlier, Gillard walked across the slate floor to the edge of the brazier. Gripping the pan of hair with his left hand, he tipped his splinted right and dropped into the Flames the folded breeches, blouses, and underclothing that had been brought with him when he’d been rescued from the Chancellor’s Tower—pretty much all he could be said to actually own these days. As the red tongues of fire curled up around them, he dumped his shorn hair after them, awkwardly wiping the pan with the thumb of his splinted hand to be sure every last hair was offered. Then he set the pan beside the brazier and retreated to his spot before the altar.
Amicus was smiling now, the amulet at his throat flickering with a creepy red light. A sudden chill crawled up the back of Gillard’s neck, spreading across his barren scalp. For the first time he felt a twinge of uneasiness, a sense that more was going on here than he knew . . . that perhaps things weren’t as much in hand as he believed.
“All has now become new,” Amicus intoned with that satisfied smile. “What was before is no longer. Ye stand before us newly born, a holy servant of Eidon. Your old name is lost, and your new name . . .” He hesitated, eyes half closing.
Gillard waited, surprised at the level of curiosity he felt about what they had decided to call him. Allegedly no one knew in advance. If the Flames were pleased with the supplicant they would themselves tell his new name to the Master at this time. Gillard scoffed at the idea. Amicus had probably been up all night trying to decide.
The old man’s eyes flew open ablaze with a red light matched by that surging in the amulet at his throat and exploding upward from the large brazier behind him. As Gillard flinched back in startlement, Amicus shuddered, his voice sounding lower, laced with an unmistakable amusement. “Makepeace! Your new name is Makepeace.”
Shadow Over Kiriath Page 36