The Scholar's Heart (Chronicles of Tournai Book 3)

by Antonia Aquilante

  “I can,” Etan said without moving.

  Surprise flashed across Cathal’s face. “I understood you. That was very clear.”

  Talking when they used their Talents wasn’t something he, his brothers, and his cousin often did when they practiced as children—he called it practice, but it was as much play as anything. They would change into cats and romp around, running and tumbling and climbing on each other and anything else they found. There were no formal lessons in using their Talents; no one could teach them even if they wanted formal lessons. They had to learn everything on their own or from family stories. Neither Etan’s father nor Philip’s had inherited the family’s Talent. Their grandfather had had it, but he died before Etan was born. Etan had vague memories of Uncle Jeton explaining their Talent to him when he was little and first trying to cope with it, but his uncle had no firsthand experience, only hearsay from his own father. The lack of knowledge was part of the reason he was so interested in learning about their Talent and its history within the royal family.

  “I practiced,” he said. He’d practiced speaking while using his Talent for long hours over a long period of time, determined to learn to speak clearly despite the difficulty of doing so while a cat. After all the work he’d put in, his voice was deeper than his normal speaking voice and somewhat rumbly but understandable.

  “Huh.” Cathal didn’t look as if he knew exactly what to make of Etan’s words, as if the idea of practicing speaking had ever occurred to him. Of course they didn’t have anyone to speak to as cats except each other, and they rarely used their Talents together anymore; he didn’t think the others used their Talents much at all, but he did know that Philip and Cathal had told their husbands, something that hadn’t always happened in history. Or so tradition said.

  “How long have you been practicing? And how? Who were you talking to?” Cathal asked.

  “Myself. A lot.”

  Cathal laughed, as Etan intended. But he hadn’t said anything other than the truth. He had spent a lot of time talking to himself to practice. He’d pressed Meriall into service to help him sometimes, mostly to listen and tell him if she understood what he said. He’d helped her as well. She was the only one of his sisters who had inherited the Talent.

  “I would have liked to see that.”

  Etan huffed again, but again Cathal showed no reaction.

  “Are you going to come down from there?”

  “Why? I’m comfortable up here.” A nice long nap sounded perfect.

  “Because it would be much easier for us to have a conversation if you were down here, and man-shaped too.”

  “Can we talk later?” he asked in one last effort to stay as he was, but he knew that wouldn’t happen. Cathal was his older brother and stubborn; if he wanted to talk with Etan, they would talk.

  “But we’re here now.”

  Another huff, just to let Cathal know Etan was doing this under protest—perhaps a bit immature but he needed to do something to keep his older brother from getting full of his own importance, duke or not. “Fine.”

  He easily made it to the ground under Cathal’s watchful gaze, as if he thought Etan really would get stuck and need help. Etan wasn’t sure what Cathal would do if he did—he was a bit too large now for anyone to carry out of the tree. He shook himself and then closed his eyes, reaching for his Talent. A moment later he opened his eyes and stood before Cathal as a man.

  Chapter 9

  “GOOD MORNING.”

  “Good morning, Cathal. Taking a stroll?”

  “Looking for you.”

  Etan nodded. He’d assumed so. While Cathal knew of and saw the woods as well as any member of the royal family, he didn’t come here often, or at least not to Etan’s knowledge. “Is something wrong?”

  If there had been some crisis, even if there had been more solid information about the spy rumors Marcus was investigating, he doubted Cathal would have stood beneath a tree having a ridiculous conversation about Etan’s speech skills, but even without a crisis, something could still be wrong.

  “You tell me.”

  Puzzled, Etan looked at Cathal. “Tell you what?”

  Cathal glanced away, then met Etan’s gaze and held it. “I happened to see Tristan leaving your suite late last night. He looked a bit disheveled.”

  Etan blinked, shock stealing his voice for a moment. “Are you spying on me now?”

  “No, of course not. Flavian and I were walking back from—were walking back to our suite and we saw him. I don’t think he saw us.”

  He was slightly mollified by Cathal’s answer, though he wondered again at the wisdom of living just down the corridor from his older brother. But he’d caught the abrupt change in Cathal’s words. “Where were you and Flavian coming back from?”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’re talking about you.”

  He hadn’t thought his deflection tactic would work, but he had to try. And he really would have liked to know what made Cathal look so uncomfortable. “We don’t have to talk about me.”

  “I think we do. I’m worried about you.”

  He sighed. “Cathal.”

  “I know how you felt about Tristan. I know what it did to you when he married.” Cathal watched him with gold eyes filled with concern, and Etan wished Cathal hadn’t seen him at his worst after he’d just found out about Tristan’s impending marriage. Cathal had walked in when Etan was still too upset to conceal how hurt he was, and had been there for him, had listened—had also made him realize how much he loved Tristan, which he might have been able to do without since Tristan was out of his reach. But aside from that, Cathal had been good to him, had been everything he could have hoped for from an older brother and nothing he’d expected. Of course Cathal had also been worried and watching him carefully for quite a while after.

  “You don’t need to worry.” Etan sighed and dropped down onto the bench, feeling every bit of the fatigue from his mostly sleepless night. “Or maybe you do. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “What happened?” Cathal sat next to him and put a hand on Etan’s arm, the weight of it comforting, supportive.

  Etan sighed again and slumped down in his seat. After a moment of thought, he began speaking. He told Cathal about his first time with Tristan and then about what happened the night before after the party, all in general terms.

  Cathal was quiet for a moment after Etan finished talking. “So are you and Tristan making a go of it, then? Because that’s good, right?”

  He shook his head. “We’re not. I’m not entirely sure what we are doing, but not that. It doesn’t mean anything to Tristan.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I still don’t understand why he’d bother limiting himself to just me, but that doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I agreed. I can’t do this without getting myself hurt.”

  “Would you want to try for something more with Tristan?” Cathal asked after a few breaths of silence. “If he wanted to.”

  Etan shook his head immediately. He couldn’t do that, couldn’t open himself up and hope for more again. “I can’t.”

  Cathal nodded, accepting Etan’s words without comment for which Etan was grateful. “What will you do, then?”

  He shrugged, his helplessness plain to see he was sure. For all the time he’d been awake and thinking last night, he still couldn’t answer that question. “I should end this, whatever this is, with Tristan now, before it goes any further.”

  “But you don’t want to.” Cathal’s voice was even, holding no emotion or judgment.

  “I know what I need to do, but I don’t know what I want.”

  Cathal slung an arm around Etan’s shoulders, letting Etan lean into his side for a moment, to borrow a little strength. “I’m sorry.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments before Cathal spoke again. “You could just try to enjoy yourself with him for a while. I know it isn’t what you usually do, but maybe….”

  “I don’t
know if that’s the best idea. Part of me wants to.” And he didn’t think he had to explain which part that was. “But I know logically it’s a bad idea. That it will only get me hurt again.”

  “All right. I’m here if you need to talk. You know that, right?”

  “Thank you.”

  Cathal pulled him closer into a hug, which was nice, and not something Etan was used to from him. Cathal hadn’t been particularly demonstrative with his affection for his siblings since they’d all grown up. Etan assumed it was Cathal’s attempt to be the serious ducal heir he’d thought he needed to be. Since he married Flavian, Cathal had changed, shedding the weight of expectation of who he should be and how he should act. Etan liked the changes—not just for the way Cathal treated him, but for how Cathal was. He seemed far less stiff and much happier.

  “I suppose I should go back and prepare for the day,” Etan said and rose.

  Cathal rose with him. “Do you come out here often and use your Talent? I didn’t realize you were practicing.”

  Etan nodded. “Fairly often. I like using my Talent, and I want to learn more about it. And not only mine, but our Talents in general. They really are fascinating if you think about it.”

  “I thought you were just studying the history of it,” Cathal said, looking surprised as they began to walk through the woods back toward the rest of the gardens and the palace.

  “I’m studying that too.” Their family’s unique Talent had a history just as unique. It skipped generations entirely or skipped around within generations, which wasn’t altogether strange. Other magical Talents did the same, but their Talent was inconsistent in other ways. They weren’t even all able to turn into the same kind of cat—Vrai was about the size of a large barn cat and Elodie looked like a fluffy black kitten while Etan and Cathal stood as tall as a man’s waist. And from what he’d seen, the farther away from the core of the family and Jumelle—both in distance and generations—the less likely the Talent was to occur. His research had shown none of the children or later descendants of members of the family who married out of the country inherited the Talent. It was as if the Talent itself didn’t want the secret to become known or the Talent to spread beyond the core of the family. “I’m curious to know as much as I can, and there isn’t really anyone to ask who knows more. There are no experts on this type of magic, that I know of.”

  “Me either. No one seems to know much more than that the Talent runs in the family. And I’ve never heard of anyone having a Talent like it outside the family.”

  Etan nodded, passion for his subject finally burning away some of his fatigue. “That’s another reason I’m interested in the history and how it works. Why is it so different? How did it end up so localized? Because we don’t hear about anyone having Talents similar to it, here or anywhere else. Unless it’s kept as much of a secret as ours is, and I am looking into some possibilities pertaining to that.”

  “What possibilities?”

  “Well, dragons for instance.”

  Cathal laughed. “Dragons are just legends.”

  He shot Cathal a wry look. “Like the cats who protect Tournai? They’re—we’re—legends too.”

  “I suppose we are.” Cathal was quiet, considering. “But dragons? Flavian told me a few stories about them, legends he learned growing up. Apparently they’re common stories in the area of Ardunn where he lived.”

  “Many mountainous regions seem to have stories of dragons, though they all are in the manner of legends. Large swaths of northern and western Ardunn are covered in hills and mountains, foothills of the Nashira Mountains. I’m not surprised to hear the area has such stories.” Etan considered for a moment, turning ideas over in his mind. Dragons and their magic had been relegated to stories, but there were indications in those stories if they were read a certain way. Similarities to the legends of Tournai’s cats. It made him wonder if the dragons were, or had been, real and trying to keep their existence similarly secret. “I’ll have to ask him about them. I’ve been doing what research I can in books and asking around at the university. I haven’t gotten too far with dragons—nothing that points to their existence more than the legends anyway. And I have to be careful researching Tournai’s legends not to let on that there’s any truth to them.”

  “You’re really serious about this.” Surprise rippled through Cathal’s voice.

  Etan shrugged. He was, but he was also somewhat self-conscious about sharing his scholarly interests with Cathal and Vrai, who had spent a good portion of their youth ambushing him in the library and dragging him away from his books. “It isn’t the primary focus of my research, or at least it isn’t the focus of my lectures and work at the university.” Those were about Tournai’s history and the history of the royal family. “But I am interested in it. Our Talents are fascinating, and we know so little about them, which is not the case with other Talents. So much more is known about how Talents for making fire and light work, for instance.”

  He stopped abruptly when he realized his example was prompted by Tristan’s use of his own Talent the night before. But Cathal didn’t seem to notice his hesitation, and Etan quickly continued. “Or healing. I’ve sat in on some of the magical theory classes at the university. So much is known about how different Talents work. We have no idea about ours.”

  “I’ve never really thought about it. The magic is just there, and I use it when I want.”

  “Which isn’t often.”

  “No, it isn’t. Not since we were young and playing together. I found it rather useless actually as we grew up. But I can’t say that as much anymore, not after I used it to help Flavian.” Cathal’s face closed off. They’d thwarted a kidnapping attempt against Flavian last year; there hadn’t been another, but remembering the danger Flavian had been in, might still be in, couldn’t be easy for Cathal. Even with their efforts to keep Flavian’s origins quiet, they all wondered if the emperor of Ardunn would find out where Flavian was and send someone else after him someday. “I’ve never given the legends much weight, though.”

  That, Etan knew. Cathal, like all of them, knew the legends of man-sized cats protecting Tournai sprung from members of the royal family using their Talents in defense of their country centuries ago. Some of the legends were likely superstitious nonsense, but there were others that made him wonder, that made him search for grains of truth among the embellished stories. The cats themselves, the idea of magical protections around Tournai. “But some of them are intriguing, even you have to admit. There are elements so close to what we do know of our Talents in some of them. It makes me wonder what we might learn from the others.”

  Cathal stopped to look at him, something like respect and a hint of surprise in his eyes. “I’ll be interested to hear what you find.”

  Now Etan was surprised. He stared at his brother for a moment before nodding. “I’ll be happy to tell you if you really want to know.”

  “I would. You’ve made me curious. I’m sure Philip will want to hear whatever you find out as well.”

  He wouldn’t be surprised if Philip was interested in his work, even Amory had expressed an interest already. It was Cathal’s curiosity that surprised him, since Cathal didn’t lie when he admitted to being fairly dismissive of their Talents as having any use. He also hadn’t expressed much interest in Etan’s scholarly work over the years. Not that he’d belittled Etan’s interests; he just hadn’t paid much attention to them—nor had most of his siblings and cousins. He couldn’t blame them. A scholar who was a son to a man like Umber was a bit of an anomaly.

  “I’ll inform you both, of course.”

  “Thank you. That reminds me. Have you heard anything from Savarin recently?”

  Savarin had been good about keeping Etan informed of his location and progress while he was out of Jumelle, not that Savarin often had new information to report. “I received a letter yesterday, before the party actually.”

  “Anything new?”

  He shrugged. “Another weakened area of
the protections. Savarin still isn’t ready to commit to a cause behind them.”

  “But?” Cathal asked, a shrewd gleam in his eyes.

  “But,” he said, “just from the tone of his letters, I think his suspicions are strong that it may be deliberate.”

  “He’s too careful to admit that until he finishes investigating and is certain, though,” Cathal said, finishing Etan’s thought. They both knew how Savarin worked well enough after long experience. He’d report to them when he had more than speculation to go on.

  They walked quietly for a few moments, Etan listening to the sounds of the garden again. It was still quiet, but the quiet had a different quality to it. The palace was waking up, beginning the day. He caught glimpses of gardeners as they went about their early morning work among the flowers and trees. Etan might have wished for more sleep, but the day had irrevocably begun now. He wasn’t one for naps anyway, despite his ability to turn into a feline. Perhaps by tonight he would be tired enough that the memories of what he and Tristan had done in his bed wouldn’t keep him from sleep.

  “I’m going to meet up with Philip for fencing practice. Would you like to join us?” Cathal asked as they approached the palace.

  “I don’t know.” His half-formed plans involved spending some time in the library working on a lecture before his first appointment. The peace of the library appealed to him at the moment.

  “Come on. Amory’s joining us too. You’ll enjoy it, and the exercise will do you good. Help you clear your head before you get to work.”

  Cathal did have a point. “I suppose so.”