by Sarra Cannon
“Then we tell my son we want to start him out slowly,” Moiria said.
“Will he believe it?” Elder Maizton asked doubtfully.
“It’s the truth, isn’t it?” Daerwyn asked. Cianne could practically hear him shrug.
“But—” Elder Florius began, before Elder Vorfarth cut her off.
“Ellium, my dear, we cannot mince words any longer. Forgive me, Moiria, but it’s no secret that Lachlon has been in a terrible state since his father’s death. The best thing we can do for him is get him aboard his ship once more. If he remains here he may not recover.”
“What do you think of this, Moiria?” Elder Florius asked.
Her voice steely with resolve, Moiria said, “I think Corlinda is right, Lach should be given the Leonovia run. Were anything better available, I would suggest we opt for it instead, but it’s the best we can do on short notice. I can’t bear seeing him like this any longer.”
“Moiria,” Daerwyn began, but she cut him off.
“No, we’ve discussed it and discussed it. It’s time to do something. Cianne has done her best to help him, but even she hasn’t been able to get through to him.”
In spite of herself, Cianne’s cheeks flushed. She’d had no illusions. She had long known that other House members, and especially the Elders, had often discussed her relationship with Lach, but it made her feel filthy to hear them discussing the intimate details of what should have been her private life.
“Perhaps she has begun to lose her influence with him,” Elder Maizton said.
Everyone went quiet for a second, even Cianne.
“She’s made far more progress with him than anyone else has managed,” her father responded in clipped tones.
Two contradictory emotions flooded Cianne. On the one hand, she was utterly humiliated to hear the Elders speaking about her in this manner, particularly in front of her father and Moiria. It filled her with a sense of rage at the indignity of it all. Here Lach was trying to deal with his father’s death, and the Elders were bickering over whether or not Cianne had a hold over him. She hated it. She hated that they took her relationship with Lach and turned it into yet another piece on their chessboard.
On the other hand, she felt a pathetic sense of gratitude that her father had stood up for her.
Of course he did, whispered a voice in the back of her mind. You think he wants you to lose whatever power he believes you have over Lach? Imagine how bitter it would be for him to have to see his dreams of a triumphant union between his daughter and the beloved Captain Stowley dashed to pieces. Do you think he sees you as any less of a pawn than the Elders do?
“Daerwyn’s right,” Moiria said.
It seemed Cianne wasn’t the only one surprised by Moiria’s allying herself with Daerwyn. “What happened to your fears about the dilution of your line, dear?” Elder Florius asked her.
“Enough,” Elder Vorfarth said. “We are all of us under a great deal of strain, but we will not allow that to cause fighting between us. Who are we, House Rolland? This backbiting suits none of us.”
“Ellium has a point,” Elder Maizton said. “Will there or won’t there be a union between your daughter and Lachlon, Daerwyn?”
“Cianne is to give me an answer within the month.”
“And Lachlon?”
“He will wait. He’s always been nothing if not willing to wait for her,” said Moiria, a note of disgust in her voice.
So much for being allied with my father, Cianne thought.
“Haven’t we learned over these many years that patience is our greatest asset?” Daerwyn asked. “This is but another bump in the road, and we shall survive it and endure as we have every other bump in the road.”
What in Cearus’s name does that mean?
“I think this conversation has become rather too candid,” said Elder Maizton.
“Agreed,” said Elder Vorfarth. “Daerwyn, you are prepared? You have received word?”
“Yes.”
“Then I suggest we all go about our business and meet at the usual time afterward.”
“Allow me to speak with my son first,” Moiria said.
“And I’ll speak with Cianne,” Daerwyn said. “I’ll ask her to reason with Lach, to help him understand that a voyage is to his benefit. She will be able to persuade him to go.”
“Are you certain of that?” Elder Maizton asked.
“Of course I am,” Daerwyn said icily.
Collapsing her listening device, Cianne pocketed it again as the Elders took their leave. Her mind was racing. She was about to make her way back to her room when she realized she had heard only the Elders’ voices fading away, not Moiria’s. Pulling her device out again, Cianne could hear her father mumbling, and she was frustrated with herself for missing his words.
“What does it matter? They’re beginning to doubt us,” Moiria responded, her voice pitched so low Cianne had trouble hearing her even with the aid of the listening device.
“You will cease to give them reasons to doubt us. We cannot afford to let that happen, not after all we’ve sacrificed,” Daerwyn said, his voice hard. “I won’t tolerate it, Moiria.”
Chapter 22
“I found one,” Cianne said, slapping a note down on Kila’s desk. Her color was high, her face pinched in anger, and he was astonished at the show of emotion. Her posture was rigid, as if she were having trouble preventing herself from lashing out.
In the two days since they had performed the deshya together, he had spent every free moment thinking of her and the things they had discovered. Combing through Toran Stowley’s ledger, Kila had tried to glean some new information, but to no avail.
Ledgers didn’t seem to be much of a friend to him as of late. He and Burl were still working on tracking down the shopkeeper’s murderer, Kila not having made much progress with the shopkeeper’s ledger either. Burl’s face had been openly suspicious when he had reported back to her, and she had taken the ledger home with her the previous night. Her tone had been grudging this morning when she had admitted she hadn’t found much either, but he had felt a glimmer of relief. Her skills were impressive, but the evidence that they didn’t overshadow his was mounting. He didn’t care about his pride taking a blow, rather he was concerned that Burl might be too much for him, that she might catch on to the fact that her new partner was doing some investigating on the side. Chief Flim had assured him Burl had no idea what he was up to, but he wasn’t willing to get comfortable.
“Where did you find it?” he asked, smoothing the crumpled, singed sheet. He was quite certain Cianne hadn’t been the one to crumple it, which indicated that if it were a love letter as the captain suspected, his mother appeared to have been jilted.
“Moiria’s study.”
“So perhaps she hasn’t been storing anything at the Council Hall, judging by the state of this letter,” he said. “She may be in the habit of burning anything incriminating.”
“It’s possible. At any rate, my hope is that this may provide us with a lead. I was able to get into her study seconds after she stepped out, and I managed to snatch this from the fire before it could catch. Whatever it is, she didn’t want anyone to see it.”
A single column ran the length of the page. Each line was a jumble of letters and numbers.
“Looks like what was in Toran’s ledger,” Cianne said.
“No,” Kila said, seeing immediately that Moiria’s letter bore no resemblance to what Toran Stowley had written. “See here? It’s designed to look like it might be counting book figures, but I’d be willing to wager that it isn’t. The numbers and letters repeat in distinct patterns, and the combinations are different from what Toran Stowley used.”
“Do you think you can crack it?”
“I can try, but I can’t guarantee anything. Chances are that if Moiria and anyone else in House Staerleigh are in the habit of exchanging coded messages they’re changing the cipher on a regular basis.”
“Could you do what you can?” Han
ds on hips, she paced restlessly, like a caged animal.
“Of course. Has something happened?”
She recounted for him the conversation she had overheard in her father’s study, and he understood her ire at once.
“Not the most pleasant of things to overhear,” he said mildly when she was finished.
Patches of color stained her cheeks, and she shook her head. “I don’t care what they said about me,” she said, but she was lying. “I’m far more concerned with the whole nature of the conversation. I suspected my father was up to something, but now I am certain, and it gives me no pleasure.
“I am concerned about what they said about Lach. Something about the conversation gave me the impression they weren’t comfortable with his presence in Cearova.”
“Considering he is their best captain, doesn’t it make sense that they want him back at sea? House Staerleigh presumably stands to lose considerable amounts gold if the captain remains at home. Couldn’t their concern be financial?”
“I’ve no doubt that’s a factor, but I don’t think that’s all of it. He seems to be making them nervous.”
“Due to his behavior toward his mother?”
“That could be it. Or it could be that he wreaked havoc with their timeline. Had he not returned home early, he wouldn’t have been in Cearova when his father died.”
“And he’s been expressing his disbelief that his father would have committed suicide,” Kila said. “Has he spoken with anyone else about it?”
“Not as far as I’m aware, but we both know the walls have ears. Any number of servants—not to mention the Apothecist who sedated him the night of his father’s death—heard at least some part of what he’s been saying.”
“Sending him out of the city would get him out of their way.”
Cianne nodded. “They wouldn’t want to harm him. He’s far too valuable to them. He brings in a great deal of gold.”
“As did Toran Stowley.”
She bit her lip but said nothing in response to that.
“Cianne, what if you’re in danger?” Kila asked.
She met his eyes, something flickering in hers at the sight of the concern he hadn’t hidden from her. “I may very well be, but I can’t leave this alone, not now. I have to know the truth. I have to know what’s going on in my House.”
“If anything happens, anything at all, I want you to come to me and I will find a way to get you out of the city safely.”
“I can’t ask that of you,” she said, turning away.
“You’re not. I’m offering.”
“I won’t put your life at risk,” she insisted.
“Cianne, we’re in this together.”
Turning back to him, she offered a tremulous smile. “I thought being alone was difficult, but somehow this is much more difficult.”
“Trusting your life to another is no easy thing,” he said.
“That’s not it. I do trust you with my life. What isn’t easy is the knowledge that I might be the cause of any harm that comes to you.”
“I would have poked my nose into this with or without your interference,” he said, making a gentle joke of it. The truth was, he probably would have. He hadn’t forgotten the jarring sense he’d had that everything seemed somehow too neat at the Stowley manor. His gift was such that if something nagged at him, some loose thread he hadn’t unraveled, he wasn’t able to rest.
“Should we perform the deshya again?”
“Yes. I think it would do us both good to spend some time clearing our minds.”
A fine mist fell from the sky, but the night was still warm, and the distraction was good. As students advanced in their studies, their parents often staged distractions to try to shake their focus. Becoming a deshya master was more than a feat of physicality, it was a feat of mentality as well.
He couldn’t fool himself, though. The rain was nothing compared to how distracted he was beginning to feel by her presence. He hated to see her hurting, and he longed to say something to her about it, but it wasn’t his place. He couldn’t allow his own unspoken desires to prompt him to do something that might cause her additional pain.
How can Moiria Stowley fail to see her worth? he wondered as he and Cianne began to move in unison. How can she be so blind?
It shouldn’t have struck him as odd. There was nothing uncommon about Adepts looking down on those without abilities. Even at home, Kila had been one of the few children he knew who had one Adept and one non-Adept parent. Though there were, of course, exceptions to the rule, many highly gifted Adepts tended to see themselves as something more than human. After all, if being a non-Adept was the natural human condition, then being an Adept must be something closer to divinity.
Time was lost to him as they moved, and he realized with sudden clarity that continuing on this way with her put them both at increasing risk. Being with her had begun to feel like time out of time, as if they were stealing from the gods themselves, and there would be a price to pay for it. But how could he deny himself this? What was the harm in it, as long as he strove to maintain his distance?
His life hadn’t been devoid of happiness, but the years since his parents’ deaths had been years of near-constant struggle, struggle to adapt to Astoran culture, struggle to deal with his bitterness at having been cast out of Cearova, struggle to come to terms with his presence in Astoran in the first place. When he was with Cianne he struggled as well, but even so he had no desire to be anywhere else.
The rain had let up by the time they were finished, and they sat next to one another again. The ground was wet, but it hardly mattered as he was soaked to the skin, his clothing plastered to him. Cianne was every bit as wet as he was, but considering how tight her clothing was to begin with, it didn’t make much difference.
He felt a vague whiff of disappointment at the thought.
Once again she unpinned her hair, letting the damp strands hang loose. The moisture intensified the curls, making her hair more voluminous than usual, and he found himself smiling at the sight.
“I look a fright, don’t I?” she said ruefully. “Cearus must have a sense of humor to have given me hair like this, considering how close I live to the sea.”
“You look anything but a fright,” he said. “You’ve a leaf caught in your hair.”
“Where?” She patted her head, trying to find it.
“A little lower. No, to the left.”
“Oh, bugger it,” she said. “I’ll be at this all night. Would you be so kind as to pull it out for me?”
Swallowing, he nodded, and she turned her back to him, allowing him better access. The air felt heavy, and she was so still. He was glad she couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see how his hand trembled as he reached for her hair. A light breeze kicked up, tangling the strands, and he separated them with gentle fingers.
“And here’s the offender,” he said, holding the leaf over her shoulder so she could see it. He didn’t want to admit that he did so because he was worried that she might think he had invented a feeble excuse to touch her hair.
She took it from his fingers, her skin brushing his. “Invader! How dare you!” She released it, and they both watched it drift away on another breeze.
“You told me I might share my pain with you, if I ever felt so inclined,” he said, the words tumbling from his mouth of their own accord. He wanted her to have a reason to stay because she would otherwise feel obliged to leave, now that they were finished with the deshya.
He knew he should let her go. The last time she had been here they had made the mistake of lingering too long, and he had sat in his sitting room watching the sun rise, fretting that she might be caught sneaking back into her manor. Yet he was unwilling to let her go.
Wordlessly, she turned back to him, her gaze trailing over his face. “And I meant it,” she said at last.
“I lost my parents when I was young,” he said, studying the ground. “My mother was an Enforcer too, and she was attacked one night while on duty
. At first it seemed she might survive, but then an infection set in that the Healers weren’t able to control. My father was married to an Adept; he understood there were limits to their abilities, but he was crazed with grief. He accused them of having failed her, said they hadn’t tried hard enough.”
“How old were you?” Cianne asked, her voice hushed.
“I was fourteen.”
Her gasp made him look up, and she squeezed her eyes closed. Lines of grief bracketed them, and he could see that she felt his pain as if it were her own. In some ways, it was her own.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice choked.
“Thank you,” he said.
The next words would be the most difficult of all. Just thinking of them made him feel as though they were alternately trying to squeeze their way out of his throat and then shove themselves back down. He had never before spoken to anyone about what had happened.
“From there, he got worse. He drank to try to dull the pain, but even that didn’t work. He would empty a bottle, pass out, and wake up to the reminder that she was gone, which started the cycle anew.”
She looked horrified. “Were you alone with him?”
He shook his head. “No, my uncle helped, took me to his house when my father was in a truly bad state. This went on for the next two years. By then I had begun my apprenticeship, and I spent most of my time at my uncle’s house. My father was a recluse, the house falling down around his ears.
“The day after my sixteenth birthday, he took his own life.”
“Oh, gods, Kila,” she said, covering her mouth with her hand. “That’s why you said what you did about strength and pain and weakness. You think he was weak.”
“Don’t you?” he asked, the words harsh.
Shaking her head, she gazed up at him sadly. “I think he was broken.”
Anger lit a flame within him. “Don’t make excuses for him.”
“That’s not what I’m doing, Kila. I understand why you’re angry with him. You’d already lost your mother, and then he left you alone. But he must have been in such enormous pain. I can’t help but feel compassion for him.”