by Ari Marmell
“It’s not you, Jass,” his sister told him. “Don’t worry about it. Just an—old family squabble.”
Mellorin rolled her eyes, and Kaleb coughed into a fist—probably to keep from snickering at the lot of them.
But Jassion’s stare had gone flinty as he began to understand Mellorin’s meaning. “She may have a point there, too, Tyannon.”
“Jass—”
“You never came back.”
“Jass, please—”
“You never came back!” Mead sloshed over the edge of the mug. Jassion glanced down, as though it had moved on its own, then once more at Tyannon. “Twenty-three years! How could you? How could you stay with that creature? How—”
Tyannon shot to her feet, chair toppling out from beneath her. “You didn’t know him, Jassion. There was so much more to him, I really believed …” She sighed, brushing her hair from her face. “I loved him, Jassion.”
“No!” He, too, was standing now, leaning over the table as though preparing to scramble over it.
“Mom?” Lilander whispered. His eyes were wide, but he stepped forward, putting his spindly, twelve-year-old frame between Tyannon and his uncle.
And in those eyes, Jassion saw reflected a figure in black armor snatching his sister away. He swallowed once, hard, and sat down, intertwining his fingers to keep his hands from shaking.
“Don’t say that to me,” he demanded, though far more softly. “Not ever. Not about—”
“Cerris,” Tyannon interrupted, with perhaps the slightest emphasis on the name, “was not the man you think he was.”
Jassion frowned, puzzled, failing for a moment to understand the fear, the pleading, in his sister’s voice.
But only for a moment.
The children didn’t know.
And Jassion would not be the one to tear their innocence from them. “Perhaps,” he conceded, “we ought to speak alone.”
“Lilander, go play outside.” Her tone hadn’t changed, but her shoulders slumped in obvious relief.
“I don’t—”
“Please don’t argue with me, Lilander. Not now. Mellorin, go keep an eye on him.”
“Mother, come on! I’m not stupid, I—”
“Mom, I don’t need—”
“I said don’t argue with me! Please,” she added softly, putting a hand on Lilander’s face, turning her own face toward her daughter. “Please.”
With that sigh of aggravation known to teens all over creation, Mellorin stomped from the room. Lilander trailed after, watching over his shoulder until the door shut behind them.
“Well,” Kaleb said brightly, “that ought to keep the neighbors in gossip for a few more days.”
The glares cast his way pretty well cemented the family resemblance.
“Thank you,” Tyannon said, sitting across from her brother once more.
“I wasn’t about to do that to them. Everyone deserves a childhood.” The accusation was unmistakable.
“I did it to save you!”
“I know why you went with him, Tyannon. But you stayed with him. You weren’t a prisoner, not after a while, anyway. He told me. You could have left anytime you wanted.”
“Oh, he told you, did he? Would that have been when you had him chained up and beaten like a dog? Is that who I saved, Jassion? A monster who tortures helpless victims?”
“He was a dog, and I did what I had to do.” The baron’s face was flushed, his teeth grinding. “I should have killed him!”
“He saved us, Jass. He beat Audriss, and he saved us all.”
“It doesn’t excuse what else he did. And you, you …” He literally sputtered, unable to put words to her betrayal.
“I loved him,” she said simply. And again, even as he flinched away, “I loved him. I saw more in him than you ever did. I saw the man he could be, and I helped him get there.”
“You left me alone to do it,” Jassion whispered. “And for what? Where’s your ‘new Corvis’ now, Tyannon?”
This time, it was she who looked away.
“He’s not here,” Jassion said. “From the looks of things, he hasn’t been for a while.”
“He’s never been in this house,” she admitted, voice catching. “We left him a long time ago.”
“Because you knew he hadn’t changed after all, didn’t you? You saw it when he came back from the Serpent’s War.”
“Oh, Jassion, I thought … I really thought he …”
He sat, staring at his hands while his sister cried, and wished he dared comfort her.
“I hate to interrupt this little family moment,” Kaleb said in a tone that fooled nobody at all, “but the reason we’re here …?”
Jassion nodded, took a deep breath. “Tyannon, it’s not over.”
She nodded, dashing away her tears with the back of her hand. “I’ve heard rumors. I think everyone has. Duke Halmon?”
“Among many others. He has to be stopped. For good.”
“I don’t understand.” She was mumbling, face turned toward the table. “Even at his worst … He always believed he was doing what was best for Imphallion. Why would he do this?”
Jassion’s body tensed at her words, but he only shook his head. “I don’t know. And it doesn’t really matter, does it? If we don’t deal with him—and fast, before Cephira advances any farther—there may not be much of an Imphallion left.”
“I think …” Tyannon shuddered as the implications of her words overcame her, but she forged ahead. “I think I’d help you, if I could.”
The air vanished from Jassion’s lungs. “If you …?”
“We used to live in Chelenshire, but I don’t think he’s there anymore.” She sighed, reached out a hand to take his. “I’m sorry, Jassion. I know you’ve come all this way, and finding us couldn’t have been easy. But I can’t help you. I truly don’t know where he is.”
Kaleb muttered an ugly curse while Jassion stared down at the fingers that overlay his own, saying nothing at all.
THEY REMAINED FOR SOME HOURS, Jassion and Tyannon telling each other—haltingly, and without much detail—of the years they’d spent apart, while Kaleb sat across the room and fidgeted. But all too soon, or perhaps not soon enough, neither had anything left to say.
“We have to go,” Jassion told her finally, rising from his chair. “Even if you can’t help, we have to find him.”
“I understand. Jass?”
“Hmm?”
“I know how you feel about him, and maybe you’re right. But … Take him alive, if you can? For me?”
The baron’s lips pressed tight, but he nodded. “If I can, Tyannon.” Then, haltingly, “And perhaps, when this is over … Maybe you and the children might come to Braetlyn? I know you’ve no interest in being baroness, and I wouldn’t foist it on you, but … It’d be nice not to be alone.”
“I don’t know, Jass. I’ll think on it.”
And that—along with a timid, tentative hug and the soft thud of a closing door—was that. Jassion stood on the walkway outside, staring out over the vegetable garden, and for once Kaleb was wise enough to hold his comments.
It was Jassion himself who finally broke the silence. “What now? We didn’t really have a backup plan.”
“Now? We wait. It’ll be dark in a few hours. They’ll all be asleep by then.”
Jassion stiffened. “So?”
“So Lilander’s too young to put up a fight. We can take him without much of a fuss, and with his blood—”
“Have you lost your godsdamn mind?”
“No, but if you keep shouting like that, I may lose my godsdamn hearing.” He actually stuck a finger in his ear, wiggled it about a bit. “What’s your problem?”
In a slightly lower voice, “Do you truly believe, for one single instant, that I’m going to let you abduct my nephew?”
“I won’t hurt him, old boy. We just need—”
“No. Absolutely not. I told you, I don’t care what sort of magic you have—”
“
Yes, yes, you’ll find some way to kill me. I’ve heard it before.”
“You may not be around to hear it again. Besides, you said you couldn’t find Rebaine even with familial blood, that he had spells to block you.”
“From a distance, yes. But his magics aren’t that powerful. If I can get near enough, I can break through his defenses. If I have a relative’s blood. It’s not much, but it’s far better than nothing. You know, nothing? Like what we have now?”
They faced off in the middle of the yard, two men each as unyielding as oaks.
“Don’t you have other means?” Jassion asked eventually. “Other magics we might use?”
“Oh, plenty. There are a dozen spells I could use to try to locate Rebaine.”
“Then why—?”
“Because none of them would work. Even his magics are potent enough to completely block most lesser divinations. Neither of us has seen him personally in the past few months, and we don’t have any of his hair or skin, so that rules out the more powerful options.”
“Tyannon might have something.”
“Oh, sure. She abandoned him with kids in tow because he’d betrayed everything she thought he was, but she kept a tuft of his beard as a keepsake.”
Jassion grumbled something under his breath.
“Look, it’s the only way—”
“No.” The baron glared at Kaleb once more, but he wasn’t seeing the sorcerer. Again he saw the black armor dragging his sister from him, again he saw the guards approaching, felt the warm blood and the flopping limbs as the corpses piled up around him. He saw, in his mind’s eye, the pimply face of his nephew twisted in sudden fear.
And in that moment, he swore to himself: I will do almost anything to stop Rebaine—but I will not become him to do it.
Perhaps Kaleb saw some of that in Jassion’s expression, because he simply nodded and turned to go, wandering back down the walk toward the posts at which they’d tied their mounts. Startled by his abrupt acquiescence, but unwilling to broach the subject further, Jassion scurried after.
For more than an hour they rode in silence, passing once more through Abtheum’s gate and back onto the open highway. The clop-clop of the hooves seemed to tick away not merely distance but time itself.
“So what,” Jassion asked again when it grew too heavy to bear, “do we do now?”
“We wait.”
“It seems to me that we’ve had this conversation before. What, exactly, are we waiting for this time?”
“For our other option.” Kaleb grinned smugly, steadfastly refusing to elaborate.
That option caught up with them in the early evening, moments after they’d made their nightly camp. Jassion stood by a tree off in the shadows, checking the tethers on the horses, while Kaleb crouched by a crackling fire he’d lit without benefit of flint or tinder, preparing a haunch of heavily salted beef they’d acquired in Abtheum’s market. Both looked up as one, heads cocked at the soft whinny and faint jingling of an approaching mount.
“Right on schedule,” Kaleb muttered, dusting his hands off and rising to his feet. Jassion’s hand strayed toward Talon’s hilt as he moved to join his companion, but the sorcerer shook his head. “That won’t be necessary, O master swordsman.”
A small palfrey rounded the bend, clearly a beast of burden rather than war. The slender figure atop the saddle wore undyed tunic and leggings. Face and chest were concealed by a hooded cloak that might have been described as “pearl” if it were of higher quality but, as it was, could only be called “off-white.”
Horse and rider drew to a halt, faces turned to study the men by the fire. Small hands lifted the hood, dropped it back, revealing slim features and dark hair.
“Good evening, Mellorin,” Kaleb said.
Jassion just cursed. A lot.
The daughter of Corvis Rebaine slid from her saddle, landing softly on her feet and striding toward them as though she had every right and expectation of being there. As she approached, Jassion whispered to Kaleb, “How did you know?”
“I saw a rather familiar look on her face during our conversation.”
“Familiar?”
“Just like one of yours, actually. The one you get when you’re about to be idiotically pigheaded about something. I’ve seen it a lot, actually.”
“Gentlemen,” she greeted them, halting some feet away. Her voice was steady, confident, but the flickering of her eyes in the firelight betrayed an underlying unease.
“What are you doing here, Mellorin?” Jassion asked. “Is something wrong?” A sudden twitch of fear touched his face. “Did something happen back home?”
Kaleb sighed and rolled his eyes in a gesture that was becoming as familiar as breath. “Nothing happened, you jackass. She wants to come with us. Don’t you, Mellorin?”
She nodded. “I know you’re looking for my father. I need—I want to find him, myself.”
“Absolutely not!” The baron advanced, hand outstretched to clutch her shoulder. “There’s no way I’m letting you—”
Boots etching a crescent in the dust, Mellorin spun. Her right shoulder connected with Jassion’s chest, throwing him off his stride, while her left hand closed about his wrist. She continued, feet crossing, and Jassion, already off-balance, found himself yanked forward. He slammed to the earth, landing hard on his back and kicking up a cloud of dirt around him.
One more cross-step and Mellorin ended her spin nose-to-nose with Kaleb. A truly ugly knife, short but broad of blade and serrated down one side, protruded from her fist in an underhanded grip and pressed—gently but unmistakably—against the sorcerer’s throat.
“I don’t like being touched,” she told them softly. “And I can take care of myself. I’m not asking to just ‘tag along.’ I can help you.”
“Feisty, aren’t you?” Kaleb asked with a grin.
Mellorin’s expression grew frosty. “I was—attacked once, when I was just a child. My dear father saved me, but just because the danger was gone didn’t make me any less terrified, and he couldn’t be bothered to wait around afterward and make sure I was all right.”
“So you learned to take care of yourself.” It was not a question.
“Anywhere I could.”
“I admire the spirit, Mellorin, but there’s a big difference between street fighting and what we do out here. Look behind you.”
Scowling in distrust, she glanced down. Jassion, without rising from the dust, had twisted around and drawn Talon, leveling the tip, steady and unwavering, mere inches from the small of her back. Only after a long moment, once he was content that she understood, did he withdraw the blade and rise to his feet.
“And your uncle will tell you,” Kaleb continued, “that the instant you decided to talk to me rather than just slit my throat and be done with it, you gave me all the time I needed to kill you, if that’s what I’d wanted.”
The blade disappeared up Mellorin’s sleeve and she stepped away, flushing brightly in the firelight. “You don’t understand,” she protested, sounding now more like a child than the young woman she’d so recently become. “I have to go with you. I have to know. Please …”
“Know what?” Jassion asked carefully, twisting awkwardly to brush his back clean.
“How my father could do what he did. How he could … How he could choose his damn crusade over his family.”
Kaleb and Jassion glanced at each other, then at Mellorin, both sharing a comical expression of uncertainty.
“I know,” she told them softly, sitting on a small log that Jassion had earlier dragged to the camp for use as a chair. “Mother never told us, and Lilander’s too young to question, but … I know when he left, and everyone knows about the Serpent’s War. It wasn’t hard to figure it out. Just because Mother thinks I’m an idiot,” she spat bitterly, “doesn’t make me one.”
“Don’t you dare—” Jassion began hotly, but Kaleb was already kneeling at Mellorin’s side.
“Your mother thinks no such thing,” he told her
gently, almost putting a hand on hers, recoiling at the last moment as he recalled her earlier words. “She was trying to protect you. And I think you know that, Mellorin.”
She sniffed once, cleared her throat, offered the sorcerer a shallow shrug. “It doesn’t matter. I have to know who he was. I have to ask him why.”
“All right,” he said, standing, smiling softly. “You can join us.”
Even as Mellorin’s face broke into an astonished smile, Kaleb could actually hear Jassion stiffening up behind him.
“Kaleb?” The baron’s mouth barely moved, so tightly was his jaw clenched. “Can I speak with you over by the horses for a moment?”
The sorcerer frowned thoughtfully. “No, I don’t think so. Mellorin’s not a child, Jassion, no matter how much you treat her like one. The least you can do is respect her enough to say whatever you have to say to her face.”
Mellorin actually beamed.
Jassion reached out, snagging the clasp of Kaleb’s cloak—looking very much like he’d prefer it had been the man’s throat beneath his fingers—and dragged him across the campsite. His niece glared after them but remained where she was, apparently deciding not to press the issue.
“Do that again,” Kaleb said, knocking the baron’s hand aside, “and we’re going to have a disagreement.”
“Did we not just discuss this?” Jassion demanded, so near that Kaleb felt the spittle on which those words rode. “Did you not understand me this afternoon?”
“We’re not kidnapping anyone. She wants to join us, old boy. And she can take care of herself. You saw that.”
“Pfft. She’s a brawler, Kaleb, nothing more. You said as much.”
“But she’s good. We can teach her. Besides, I don’t think even Rebaine would hurt his own daughter.”
“I’m not so sure. Besides, there are other dangers—”
“And anything we can’t teach her to handle, we can protect her from. I have several wards I can cast over her, just for an added bit of protection. Would you permit that, Mellorin?” he called so that she could hear. “Let me cast some defensive spells over you as we travel, to mollify your uncle?”
She blinked, then shrugged. “If that’s what it takes.”