by T. A. Miles
“I should never have known it,” Grisch continued in Korsten’s state of shock. “But my mother couldn’t help herself. As she lay dying, when I was barely ten, she revealed everything to me … and you have no idea what it’s like to learn that the man you’d believed was your father from the day you were born was nothing more than your mother’s husband. That the person who actually sired you was a man-loving—”
“Who?” Korsten interrupted, somehow not hearing Grisch’s offensive tone. He was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to know. “Who was your mother?”
Glaring, the captain said, “Ellenise Camirey, previously the wife of….”
“Edmore,” Korsten supplied, quietly, still feeling overwhelmed by this discovery. He thought that he needed to sit down, but as none of the chairs were drawn out, he settled for leaning against the table. Ren, gods … were you adulterating with your own brother’s wife? Ellenise? I could explain your actions with Calla to myself and soothe my jealousy somewhat, but … Ren, there would be no reason to act with Ellenise … it’s not as if anyone could have known. It’s not as if that would have turned suspicion from us.
“My mother escaped that night Renmyr went mad, as she called it,” Grisch continued, sounding a little calmer, now that he’d let out what was bothering him. “She ran from Haddowyn and didn’t stop until she’d come to Temstead, where she was taken in and cared for by a man who married her out of sympathy more than love. He’d known her before her arranged marriage into the Camirey family. I wasn’t far enough along for anyone to dispute their claim that I belonged to him when I finally came into this world. My adoptive father was an exceptionally caring man. He still is, and I’ll not soon forget the stress he endured while my mother slowly lost her grip on sanity. During her last days, she told me of you, Korsten Brierly. She told me … a ten-year-old child, of the licentious affairs going on between you and her brother-in-law. She told me the many other faults Renmyr had, such as his bedding nearly every able woman in that city and siring enough children to have repopulated it twice over! I was one of those bastard children, conceived of insane treachery between my mother and Renmyr. She wanted a child; she was desperate for one and the man who should have been my father was too ill to give her one. She learned of you and Renmyr and promised to tell your secret, unless he provided her with something worth her silence. Something she could use to keep her place in Ithan’s household if her husband should die. A child … a son, as it turned out, but no one in Haddowyn would ever know it. Renmyr knew they never would, because he planned to kill every last member of his household.”
“Lies,” Korsten said because he had to. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Not the part where Renmyr orchestrated the slaying of his own family.
“Lies?” Grisch echoed, glaring. “Embellishment perhaps, owed to my mother’s disturbed state of mind, but some truth, surely. You fail to deny that you had indecent relations with—”
“I love him!” Korsten blurted. “There is nothing indecent about loving someone, and I have had enough of people trying to tell me that in my case there is. If not because Renmyr is a man, then because he’s a demon. The only indecency was the manner in which we had to keep our affairs a secret and since then the manner in which we’ve been torn apart. You say that Ellenise was your mother and Renmyr your father; I believe you. I can see Ellenise in you now that it’s been brought to my attention, and I know Renmyr was anything but faithful to me. You have his temper, if it pleases you to know, and his way at turning words into blades that cut both idly and deep.”
Grisch was just staring at him, perhaps shocked by Korsten’s open admission of his relationship with another man, so Korsten continued.
“It was wise of your mother to flee Haddowyn altogether. I could not have helped her, nor could Hedren, who was constable at the time. We were both still in the midst of trying to accept what a mage had explained to us; that there were demons yet in the world. Thirty years ago, the legends were still legends to most people in Edrinor and nothing beyond that. Edmore, the man who should have been your father, was desperately ill and none of us knew why. It was a demon, but not Renmyr. Renmyr was nothing more than a man at that time, and everything to me. Feelings of helplessness and desperation, perhaps of anger and frustration as well, allowed one of the Vadryn to take him. What happened was not his plot, though it may still be his blame. I fear that it is my blame as well, because I did nothing to support or uplift him during his personal struggle with his family, some of which concerned the matter of our hidden relationship.”
Korsten drew a brief pause, willing himself not to cry in front of Grisch. Meeting the younger man’s insistent glare, he said soberly, “Your anger is justified, but at the same time it is misplaced. You would have come into this world, whether the Camirey’s died that night or not. You say that the man who acted as your father was caring. I regret to say that Renmyr would not have been. Had Ellenise’s plan as you’ve told it to me succeeded, you would have been claimed as Edmore’s son. Renmyr would have been held to silence by our secret and he would have resented the fact that his own son would have surpassed him as Ithan’s heir. He would have resented you. Your mother saved your life with her decision to leave Haddowyn, and for all the unhappiness and confusion she may have given you upon her deathbed, she still gave you a safe and caring home with your adoptive father.”
Grisch said nothing for the longest time. He glowered until apparently it became too much effort to do so, and then he lowered into his chair, drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. Holding his jaw as if it ached after his longtime of frowning, he eyed Korsten for several more moments, then finally said, “So, what are you doing here, alive? You’re not still in Haddowyn and you serve the Seminary, which tells me you were not in collusion with the demon. Why didn’t he kill you? Worse yet … you admit to having shared a bed with him … why didn’t he claim you?”
There was no withholding the moisture crowding in Korsten’s eyes at just that moment, as he was reminded of the single most terrifying moment of his life. “He tried.”
“And?” Grisch prompted mercilessly.
“And I was called upon to serve as a mage.” Korsten gave his wet gaze to the table his hands were clutching the edge of. “In that very moment when the beast inside of Renmyr attempted to overtake me with the poison of its will, the magic inside me emerged out of its dormant state. I thought it killed me at first, and then I thought it killed Renmyr. I was unaware then of what had actually taken place. It was Merran who brought me to the Seminary, and that began my healing. It has been … a lengthy process.”
Another long silence followed, during which Korsten finally found the ambition to pull out a chair and seat himself. He leaned back, pushed his hair back, then rested his cheek on the loose fist he’d made of his hand as he braced his elbow on the table. He and Captain Grisch stared across the table at one another, wordlessly, expressionlessly.
At some length, the captain said, “If you’d have just admitted to me that you had intimate relations with Aevo Grisch … my father, I’d have gone across the room and broken your neck. I would have viewed your murder at my hands as a penalty for lying and slandering my father’s good name, along with insulting his decency. On the other hand, you could right now go into graphic detail about your relations with the man who sired me and my only trouble would be what it is now; what to make of you.”
Korsten forced the merest smile through forming tears, though there was nothing humorous about any of this. “Haven’t you already decided? It seemed very clear to me not so very long ago.”
Grisch nodded. “It seemed so for me as well, but now, having heard you … witnessed you, rather, I’m not so eager to despise you. Don’t mistake me; I cannot approve of the lifestyle you’ve admitted to participating in, even if I wanted to. It disgusts me, frankly, though to look at one such as yourself some sense can be made of it. Perhaps the gods could have be
en kinder in creating you female.”
Blinking back tears that were decided on coming now, Korsten said, “My parents already had three daughters.” It didn’t take long after those words were formed for him to begin crying, openly. He wept into his hand, saddened by his memories, embarrassed by his present company, and frustrated by his complete inability to control his emotions whenever it came to Renmyr. Everything always came to Renmyr, because he was Korsten’s reason for living and simultaneously the cause of his dying. Inside, he felt like he was already dead. He was alive because Merran and Ashwin wouldn’t let him die; one with physical effort and the other with doses of hope that bordered on cruel. Markam couldn’t even be saved, and he’d only been possessed a short period of time, by a weaker demon than that which had been inhabiting Renmyr for years by now, leeching off his soul, stealing away his humanity a little at a time.
“I pity you,” Grisch said quietly, as if deciding after some debate. “I believe that you suffer an unfortunate illness and that Renmyr Camirey, influenced by the Vadryn lurking in Haddowyn, took advantage of your condition against his own judgment and will. Give yourself time to consider it. I think you’d come to realize that what you had wasn’t love, but the effects of emotional suffering.”
And that was when Korsten stopped crying. Though tears were still tumbling down his cheeks, he began to laugh. The irony of the circumstances was too much. That Renmyr’s child should tell him the precise same thing Sethaniel Brierly did, almost word for word, bordered on hysterical. Eventually, Korsten lifted his face and, wiping at his eyes, he stood. “Yes, I am ill. Of course love only exists and is perfectly rational between a man and a woman.”
Smiling a little madly, choosing his words and connotation very deliberately, Korsten added, “The idea of a romantic encounter between two bodies of the same sex is absurd. After all, what could they possibly make of the circumstances? Certainly not children. Not love, obviously. So then it must simply be senseless touching. Meaningless caresses upon flesh they only imagine to be warm and responsive as they lie together, in each other’s arms, exchanging shallow endearments. What a ludicrous situation. Utterly comical.” Korsten frowned rather abruptly, soberly, when he asked the other man, whose face was cast brightly red, “Why aren’t you laughing, captain?”
Grisch had no response, and Korsten saw himself out of the study.
A day and a half brought news of soldiers in the woods northwest of the keep. Morennish soldiers. Korsten stood upon the battlement from which he and Lars had first seen the signal given to them by unwitting wildlife and smiled a little when Merran arrived beside him. He couldn’t help himself, knowing that Grisch, who knew nothing of Merran and trusted him implicitly, would have mentioned their little conversation … man to androgynous other, as Grisch undoubtedly saw it.
“Satisfied with yourself?” Merran asked without tone or expression, observing the same space of horizon Korsten had been studying for the past hour since learning of the army gathering in the woods.
“A part of me wants to say yes,” Korsten replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so bitterly open with anyone in my life. That same part of me thinks that Grisch needed to be told off in the worst way and that the embarrassment I provided to him with my acidly candid speech served him just exactly right.” Slowly, Korsten’s minor smile left him. At length, he said, “The rest of me regrets that exchange between myself and the captain. I only spoke that way because I … well, it probably didn’t help that you and I exchanged unpleasant words ourselves the night before.”
“Condemning me to Hell seemed rather minor in comparison to some of the things you’ve said to me in the past. Forgive me for saying this, Korsten, but I try not to take you personally most days.”
Korsten glanced at his fellow mage. He couldn’t smile and neither was Merran, in spite of his witty remark. “Do you know who Grisch actually is?”
Merran looked at him, seeming genuinely not to know.
Unhappily, Korsten surrendered the information he’d recently been given. “The son of my lover, that’s who.”
“One of them, you mean.”
“The only one I’ve met and been made aware of who I was meeting.”
“So it is personal, then,” Merran said. “I was mistaken when I said that it wasn’t. I apologize.”
Ignoring the second half of Merran’s statement, Korsten said, “Unhealed wounds were made twice as deep yesterday, with that discussion. It makes me wonder about myself.”
“How exactly do you mean?”
Giving his gaze back to the horizon, Korsten answered, “No matter what I learn about Renmyr, no matter what he does … no matter how cruel or terrible or contradictory to everything he’s ever said to me before that last day in Haddowyn … I still love him.”
Silence filled the air around them, heavy enough to seemingly blot out all other sounds in a world that was indifferent to their conversation. Korsten glanced at Merran only long enough to see that his intensely blue gaze was fixed, not on the horizon, but on the space of wall directly in front of him, as if he were studying the minute crevices in the close-fit stones.
And then Korsten drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. He whispered, “Gods help me, I can’t despise him.”
Afterward, the silence resumed, and lasted.
“It’s a small force, in comparison to what it could be,” Grisch said to the eight other men seated in his study, including Korsten, Merran, Lars, and five officers ranking beneath the Captain. Korsten had been introduced to two of them, one a little older than Lars, the other looking to be late into his third decade. They each wore grim expressions now, matching those on their colleagues’ faces. “Still,” Grisch continued. “It’s sooner than we expected and it means that Morenne has breached defenses at the border. Possibly they have infiltrated and hope to take this outpost out from beneath the forces further out, trapping them without reinforcement. None that could get to them soon enough to be of any serious aid, at any rate.
“We have five hundred thirty-three men capable of fighting at our disposal, two of them armed with magic. Our scout counted roughly thirteen hundred with the Morennish forces currently making a slow path in our direction.”
“Thirteen hundred?” an elder officer echoed, sounding understandably bleak. “That’s more than twice what we’ve got.”
“But we have the advantage of position,” Lars pointed out. “They can only come at us from one side.”
“Yes,” Korsten said. “The side where the town also lies. We should evacuate.”
Before Korsten had finished, as if he knew exactly what Korsten would say, Grisch said, “Absolutely not. That will take too much away from our efforts here.”
“It will take but half a day,” Korsten argued, calmly but still insistently. “I’ll do it myself.”
“Your duty is here,” Grisch reminded. “You’ll do no such thing.”
“So we let them die?” Korsten continued stubbornly, thinking to himself that he wouldn’t. I’m not letting another town of unsuspecting people be murdered.
“Hell’s depths, is it impossible for you to shut your mouth for more than a moment’s span?” Grisch shouted, red-faced in his frustration. He was worried more than angry, confused by the suddenness of the circumstances that would demand all of his skill at leading, whatever there was of it. Perhaps he hadn’t expected Morenne to come this far in his lifetime as an officer under Edrinor’s unoccupied throne.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised Korsten that Merran came to the man’s rescue. “The town can be a concern for later,” the other mage said, eyeing admonishment at his fellow from across the table. “The Morennish are moving slowly. Maybe they’re waiting for their spy to communicate with them.”
Everyone looked at Merran now, with deliberate interest. Korsten as well, suspecting Merran had discovered the individual’s identity and possibly the
demon’s as well.
“The enemy is here, then,” one officer said. “You know this for certain?”
Merran nodded once. “It relieves me to know that none of you gentlemen here are part of the conspiracy, else you have disguised yourselves and your intentions beyond magic’s ability to detect.”
“Who?” a man by the name Bheld demanded. He was blonder than his captain, lithe in form and tall. His eyes were sharp and intelligent, his voice quietly firm.
Glancing at the officer who’d spoken, Merran waited a moment, then said, “It’s a young woman from the town below.”
This information inspired an understandably long span of silence. Even Korsten found himself only able to stare at his friend, though his expression was more questioning than shocked. That’s not all of it, Merran. What else do you know?
“A young woman?” Lars asked, as if to be sure he had heard correctly.
“She is not herself,” Merran began to explain, continuing for the benefit of the others in the room. Korsten knew at once what he meant by that statement. At least, he thought he did. But then Merran said, “She is beside herself with grief, convinced that the outpost is not here to protect Lilende, but rather attended by unholy men who collect innocents and feed them to demons.”
“What in the name of the gods’ realm are you telling us?” Grisch finally said. “That a half mad girl is exchanging information with Morennish spies because….”
“Because her brother was called to serve here and she believes he has not been the same since. In fact, she claims he behaves much of the time as if he doesn’t even know her, or anyone else in their family. She had contact with a Morennish man several months ago and promised to give him information if his people got rid of the demons and brought her brother back to her.”
“This is absurd,” an elder declared, blustering a bit. “Who is this girl, and how would she be able to obtain any information on this keep that Morenne would be interested in having?”