by T. A. Miles
And which taunted and humiliated child of one of my father’s peers might you have been?
“Masters Sethaniel Brierly,” the man said, though his eyes scarcely left Korsten, “and….”
“Mage-Adept Korsten.” While Korsten supplied the title, he paid attention in his peripheral vision to the way his father regarded him similarly, out of the corner of his eye. Perhaps he wanted to observe Korsten’s response to the way the man before them, who was undoubtedly the governor of Cenily, almost smiled and continued to focus rather directly on the unaged redhead before him.
“Ah, a mage,” the man said. His voice was confident, though light in its delivery. “Somehow, that’s very fitting. I’m not at all surprised.”
Sethaniel raised an eyebrow and Korsten refrained from being distracted by the gesture. He did not get a chance to respond to the comments made when one of the individuals with the man spoke first.
“Governor Jahcery, I’ll see to the letter now.”
The governor nodded, glancing briefly to his subordinate. Another nod dismissed the white-haired elder and he departed.
The name Jahcery deposited onto Korsten’s mind without immediate recognition, though he suspected it was in the annals of his memory somewhere. He didn’t realize he was observing the delegate’s departure with interest until the voice of the governor drew his attention back.
“A letter to the Steward,” Jahcery said in explanation, having correctly deduced the nature of Korsten’s interest. His hazel eyes lingered with Korsten long enough to watch inquiry and hope rise to his expression, and in the fashion of a hawk, Jahcery then dove in and seized it for the midmorning meal. “To inform them at the Old Capital that we have no further reserve, and that what was sent last summer in men, rations, and equipment is all we can spare. There will be no more.”
Korsten held gazes with the man as each swath of hope was being cut away with the efficiency of a scythe in the fields during harvest. Whether or not there was any satisfaction in that for Cenily’s leader, Korsten evidently surprised him with his reply. “That’s for the best. You’ll need them here.”
Jahcery’s gaze sharpened mildly, and his mouth tensed. “What do you mean by that?”
“The line is breaking to the north,” Korsten answered. “Indhovan will soon be under siege, if it isn’t already.”
The governor looked at Sethaniel, perhaps in seeking confirmation or perhaps in reaching for the elder’s past leadership for the first time in what may have been many years. Sethaniel only offered a grim frown and Jahcery looked from the both of them, toward the other end of the courtyard—to the north, if Korsten’s bearings were accurate—as if their not so distant neighbor were visible through the garden wall.
Korsten allowed the governor a moment to envision troops spilling over the golden green horizon of Cenily’s peaceful inland fields, then summoned the man’s attention back to him with further words. “You had best to prepare this city for its own defense, and I suggest a coordination effort with whatever emissaries are made available to you.”
Jahcery looked at Korsten again. “Emissaries from the Seminary?”
“Yes,” Korsten said, glad that the option existed openly in the man’s mind. “And from Indhovan as well as anyplace else near enough to here who may require or be able to provide support. We’re standing on our last leg now, Governor. We cannot risk a fall. We must pool all the strength we have left. All of it.”
“You make it seem as if invasion is imminent,” Governor Jahcery said while pouring small portions of golden wine into three crystal goblets.
“We have to act as if it is,” Korsten replied, observing the man’s overly relaxed manner. Within the hour he had neatly folded any alarm or concern he may have initially felt behind a mask of sturdiness and calm. Much of that appearance was held at the surface with effort that others might not have noticed, not having the insight of a mage of Korsten’s nature. Jahcery was tense beneath his calm exterior, however, straining like the bole of a younger tree against a windstorm. Korsten didn’t believe it was a particularly volatile state. If anything it credited his self-control. He imagined the man would endure, as trees often did, and through each season of strife he would and perhaps had gained extra layers of strength and protection. In the moment Korsten felt as if he were analyzing one much younger or fresher to his station. He wondered if Jahcery would be affronted by that assessment, given that the man was not so young.
“I see,” the governor said, providing no indication of whether or not he was percipient to Korsten’s thoughts. He slowly stopped the decanter, placed the wine onto the table, which was draped with a golden-brown cloth and otherwise decorated with articles of pottery and various crystal pieces for entertaining guests. Behind the long, slender console was a wide open window, adorned with vine-festooned columns on either side, an expanse of vineyard stretching toward a gated wall and beyond it more of Cenily’s gentle landscape.
“Korsten and I will be traveling north,” Sethaniel put in, drawing the light hazel gaze of Cenily’s foremost official.
“I see,” he said again, and Korsten was beginning to wonder just what it was that he saw.
Sethaniel seemed to believe that Jahcery saw crippling old age, for he bristled almost visibly before speaking in a firm tone of reminder. “My son,” he began, drawing Korsten’s gaze quicker than Korsten was prepared for. He was in the midst of deciphering the emotions that followed over being so staunchly referenced when they fled him altogether, swept away on his father’s next words. “My son is in Indhovan, and with the city hovering on the brink of invasion, I feel compelled to make the journey.”
“Yes,” Jahcery said, carrying over two crystal goblets, half filled. He handed one first to Sethaniel. “I recall.”
A cup was offered to Korsten next. He saw it in the periphery of his vision, glaring amber in the daylight, while he stared in a myriad of confused thoughts and feelings at his father … who had another son. He had another son, in the very city Korsten had lately come from. He’d had another child, and not with Korsten’s mother. A son….
“Korsten,” Jahcery prompted.
Sethaniel looked in his direction in the very moment Korsten was recovering himself and accepting the glass. The governor passed his gaze over both of them, as if an accidental witness to a private conversation Sethaniel and Korsten had just had, then returned to the console for his own glass.
Several more thoughts and questions rushed almost violently to the front of Korsten’s mind, but he halted them immediately. The backwash was heavy and fitful as a strong river coming to a dam wall, but Korsten would not allow this subject now; it was far too sudden and for that reason, far too dangerous. Korsten had proven his deftness at leaping into waters that could just as quickly drown him. In the emotional sense, he was a much worse swimmer than he ought to be.
He gave his immediate focus to the wine. It was nothing that he needed or that could affect him, but he went through the motions of drinking it anyway. It bore the taste of home; lightly sweet and somehow bitter simultaneously. Beneath that initial greeting lay a warmth and a body reminiscent of the suns’ morning glow over the vines that would produce the fruits of the drink itself. It was as soft and as innocuously prickly as the stems of a young rose bush. A harmless pleasure with a small bite … something else Korsten might have made a larger affair of when younger. He would not be doing that now, not in regards to wine or to a blood brother he never knew existed.
The thought stuck its toe firmly in the threshold of his mental doorway. Much as he might try to welcome it with equanimity, it stumbled over his disbelief and he couldn’t be certain that his pride wasn’t deliberately tripping the idea as well. He honestly didn’t know either if it was in defense of himself, or of his mother that his pride made itself a factor. Before the latter carried too far, however, he reminded himself that no one had the right to hold anyone to th
eir grief indefinitely. Sethaniel had lost his wife prematurely. If he had recovered and found love or companionship with another, well then he had every right. The fact that a child had resulted was no more difficult to comprehend. Korsten would be certain not to speak of the topic until he had done so in a fair and reasonable manner.
“What would you recommend Cenily do?” the governor asked, and by the tone may have done so more than once during Korsten’s internal considerations.
Korsten lifted his gaze to him, then to the view behind Jahcery and back again before saying, “Rally the city’s men at arms.” There was some mental reflex to the way the reply was formed and delivered. “Consider what defensive resources you have, implement whatever preliminary siege strategies are available to you, and be prepared for word.”
“Word of war?” Jahcery said, though it was unlikely that he truly needed clarifying.
Korsten nodded anyway, and said only, “Yes.”
Jahcery committed the next few moments to studying his drink. When at length he returned his attention to Korsten, his mouth tensed somewhat ahead of his response. “I will take all of your words under due advisement.”
At the moment, that was all that Korsten could ask for. To push harder would likely only meet resistance. He accepted the governor’s answer with another nod and his thanks, and placed hope on what sincerity he was able to detect from the man himself, if not from the words.
A carriage was not immediately summoned from the governor’s estate. Since time had offered them some convenience in the immediacy of their meeting with Jahcery, over having to seek him out and await his availability, Korsten and Sethaniel walked beneath the shade of the rows of trees leading back to the gatehouse. Sethaniel carried himself at a moderate pace for one of his years. Whether pride enabled it better than his health or stamina, Korsten elected not to inquire or comment for the time present. The gods knew that both of them had done their share of shirking whatever healthy amounts of sunlight a person was entitled to over the course of a natural life. It was in the less natural course of things that Korsten may have been better treating his body, and he wondered how much that may have been apparent to his father. Did Sethaniel notice that the stick-thin child he’d sent away had returned still slender, yes, but far better toned than he might otherwise have been, after a lifetime spent sulking in reading chairs and bent over library tables? Perhaps such a thing was less noticeable to his father than the excess beauty Korsten had returned with, something Sethaniel had more than likely expected his only … his previously only male child to have grown out of on the way to acquiring a sterner, more studious aspect.
And perhaps my hair should have lost its absurd color, my eyes gone smaller as the weight of age began to close around them, and my skin loosened from tired bones.
Korsten would not deceive himself with any thoughts on regretting his lack of aging, beyond whatever disservice it did to his father. But beyond that guilt, he could not honestly say that he would have preferred to age normally in the time that had passed since Haddowyn. He was grateful to have aged emotionally and intellectually—he would not have wanted to remain a young fool for the duration of his life—but he had no desire to see himself literally an old man. He hadn’t considered it in great detail before this moment, but in this moment, faced with a possible future represented in Sethaniel, he realized that such a fate was not at all what he wanted, and not strictly for the vain reasons he might have considered in his twenties. The Seminary had indeed opened up new doors for Korsten, new pathways to duties and obligations which extended beyond being the wise and irritable elder of a community with only a word to offer on the eve of battle. A wise word, yes—Korsten had no doubts about the value of Sethaniel’s or any experienced elder’s advice at such a time—but his place was in the physical struggle as much as the intellectual. He’d made that decision for the first time in Lilende, when he’d faced Bael and later gone out with an ambush unit of soldiers, and again in Indhovan when he’d gone to deal with Serawe alone and directly. Those were two milestones over the course of a journey made hunting alongside Merran, leading to whatever lay beyond these shores, beyond a final point of reflection in Cenily. And it had all come at an age well past typical prime. Korsten had a greater understanding of just why it was that a mage needed more time in this world. Half an ordinary lifetime was required just to gain a basis of understanding and poise, let alone the wisdom and grace of one such as Ashwin.
And what a long way off I am from that, my dear mentor.
Sethaniel made a conspicuous clearing of the throat noise and Korsten glanced over at him. He observed the elder frowning, looking at the path ahead of them. He began to consider the individual who was half his brother again, considering mostly how near he had come to him simply by being in Indhovan at all. True the population was much higher than in other cities and the fact of the matter may have been that he had never really come close to even brushing shoulders with someone who had walked by his brother as a stranger, but still … it was interesting to think about.
“You should know that you might have spoken to him directly,” Sethaniel said, clairvoyant in that moment, except that the topic had probably been firmly on the elder’s mind since its mentioning in the governor’s office.
Korsten considered the amount of individuals he’d legitimately encountered in Indhovan and began to shake his head with doubt. He’d really only been in contact with Irslan Trier and his peculiar house servant, the aged chief constable, a handful of younger constables … there was no one who came immediately to mind who had struck him familiar in any way. And he could only assume that a Brierly would be familiar to him, perhaps now more than before, considering the nature of his talents. There would be something about a family member’s blood that would strike him in some way. He was certain of it. But regardless of whether or not that were true, he really had not had contact with a broad assortment of individuals in Indhovan.
“No,” Korsten began, “I really don’t believe so.”
“I do,” Sethaniel said, very nearly interrupting. He indicated the house behind them with a glance back in its direction. Korsten looked back as well, contemplating his father’s chain of reasoning while the elder continued. “You would have gone to the governor’s home, would you not have? Just as you did here … to collect information, or to advise….”
“Oh,” Korsten said while the elder’s voice tapered off. Sethaniel had a valid point, and while that certainly had been the intention when he and Merran arrived in Indhovan, events precluded meeting with Governor Tahrsel. “Actually, I wasn’t able to acquire an audience with the governor there. Merran and I tried, but circumstances would not have it. He must hold office, then?”
How like a Brierly, to become involved in politics.
While Korsten’s mind was poised to veer in that direction, Sethaniel’s expression seemed to contradict. It did so tentatively, though, as if there were something about the pending explanation that he found either awkward or distasteful. That only piqued Korsten’s interest further, but it also instilled a new sense of sympathy for his father, one he might not have felt since he was very young … having witnessed Sethaniel’s grief over the loss of his wife. Korsten had rejected the sensation then, and started a dark seed germinating in his heart. Now, he was not so inclined, but he couldn’t imagine what made the current topic so difficult for Sethaniel. Clearly, his second son was still alive. It would seem unnaturally cruel of the gods to have taken another love from the man, but perhaps it was that. Or perhaps it was fear over the proximity this other child was to danger currently. It didn’t feel like fear, or even grief, though. It felt more like … regret.
“Why is he in Indhovan?” Korsten hazarded to ask.
Sethaniel found the route provided by Korsten’s question easier than forging his own, and promptly replied, “He’s there with his mother … and her husband.”
And that made sense
of it. Naturally, there were more details to be had, but now was not the time to press for them—if ever there would be such a time. Still, Korsten wondered briefly if he should ask what happened, but Sethaniel’s pride might make that more arduous than it needed to be, or it was possible that his remorse for whatever might have gone wrong in that would only induce stress. He decided for now that it was best to let Sethaniel divulge information on the topic at the pace and in the amount that he was prepared for. It was likely that he had spent much of the time they’d taken walking from the governor’s house to prepare himself for having said anything at all.
There was only one thing more that Korsten desired to know. “What is his name?” He realized as the words formed that he should clarify and in clarifying that he was not curious about the adopting father, he rather easily accepted that he was referring to his own family. “My brother’s, I mean.”
“Deitir,” Sethaniel answered readily and maybe with some small measure of relief. “His name is Deitir Tahrsel.”
Korsten slowed nearly to a stop, his gaze fixing firmly on his father as it struck him why Sethaniel presumed that a visit to the governor’s home would have led to a meeting, or even to a conversation with his brother. His brother was the governor’s adopted son.
That meant that Cayri had met him, that the young man she’d spoken of having been in attendance at an activists’ meeting with Lady Tahrsel, the son whose adoption may have been unhidden knowledge, was Sethaniel’s child. Lady Tahrsel, who to Korsten’s knowledge at least sympathized with the role of mages and the Seminary in Edrinor’s current and longtime crisis, had at one time been his father’s lover. Korsten had come very close to meeting both or either of them, yes. It was … well, now it was astounding to consider. He almost wished that he had met them before knowing, just so that he could compare his feelings—ignorant to aware—but now that he was aware, he deeply wanted to look at and witness these two who had affected Sethaniel at a time when Korsten had had himself busily believing that his father was beyond being affected.