by Ari Marmell
She glared up at him, he down at her. "You're right," she said, shoulders slumping and head bowing, a marionette with its strings gone slack. "We do… for now.
"But make absolutely no mistake," she added, stiffening once more. "We're allied in this because I want what's best for my city and my people. But that's all we are: temporary allies. Nothing more, not now, not ever."
"Irrial…"
"That's Lady Irrial," she corrected, turning away with her head held high.
And Corvis Rebaine, the Terror of the East, could only stand and watch as she stalked from the room, leaving him to make his own preparations for the long journey ahead.
Chapter Nine
"It's… just an ordinary house."
Kaleb looked askance at the fellow beside him. "You were expecting a palace? A mansion? Maybe a warren of some sort?"
"I'm not sure," Jassion admitted, fingers fiddling with the links of his mail sleeve. "I guess I just expected… I don't know. More."
The sorcerer's spell had guided them across dozens of leagues, from the terrible forest at Imphallion's outskirts to the city of Abtheum, crouching like a hunting cat beside a major highway. They'd had little difficulty entering, for this far from the borders (and lacking the paranoia of certain other rulers), the Earl of Abtheum hadn't done much in the way of increasing security. Jassion had packed away his tabard, since the last thing they needed was the attention of an official welcome and state visit, and they'd instead passed themselves off as traveling tradesmen. The guards at the gate gave them a glance that would have had to linger even to qualify as cursory, and permitted them passage.
A somewhat more modern city than Mecepheum or Denathere, Abtheum was built as much of wood as stone. Its streets-some cobbled, others hard-packed dirt-were mostly aligned to a prearranged plan, rather than twisting every which way in a more natural growth. Roofs sloped sharply to high peaks, their overhanging eaves casting narrower streets in perpetual dusk, and the air was surprisingly pleasant. Abtheum, apparently, had benefited from the relatively new innovation of underground sewers.
Through sundry neighborhoods they'd walked, Jassion growing ever more pensive, following a trail only Kaleb could sense. And finally that trail had led them here, to a neighborhood of vendors and artisans, neither affluent nor impoverished. Just… comfortable.
Ordinary.
The house, clearly of recent construction, wouldn't have looked out of place in a village a fraction of Abtheum's size. Its walls and surrounding fence were whitewashed, and most of the grounds were occupied by vegetable gardens, each plant clearly marked and arranged in orderly rows.
Jassion stood immobile in the street, gawping as though it were the maw of hell.
"If you don't move eventually," Kaleb finally said, "you're going to get run over by a cart. Either that or they'll put a plaque at your feet and dedicate you to somebody."
"I can't, Kaleb." The sorcerer actually had to lean in, so quiet was that voice. "I can't go in there."
"All right, then," he said with a shrug. "I'll talk to them by myself."
It was, as he'd obviously intended, precisely the right thing to say to spur Jassion into motion.
Dirt and pebbles crunched underfoot, Jassion starting with each sound until they'd finally reached the door. The hand he raised to knock was visibly shaking.
The door drifted open, accompanied by a slightly nasal "Yes?" Staring up at them was a sandy-haired boy with startling green eyes and a poor complexion, probably just entering his teens.
"I…" Jassion's tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, smothering whatever words might have emerged.
"We need to speak with your mother," Kaleb interjected, though not before perceptibly rolling his eyes at Jassion's unease. "Is she here?"
"Mom!" Even Kaleb started back a step as the boy turned and unleashed a shout that implied his father might, in fact, have been some sort of trumpet. "Someone's here to see you!" Then, far more softly and with a careless shrug, "She'll be here in a minute, I'm sure."
Indeed it was rather less than a minute before they heard an inner door-or perhaps the back door into the garden-slamming shut, the pitter-pat of soft footsteps approaching. "Lilander," a feminine voice admonished from an unseen hall, "what have I told you about shouting…"
Jassion couldn't hear the rest of it. The blood pounding in his ears was as the hammering of Verelian, or the charge of Kassek War-Bringer. Had the street behind him been consumed in a volcano, he'd probably never have noticed.
She appeared before him, clad in a sea-green tunic, wiping the garden dirt from her hands. Her chestnut hair-darker than he remembered, and shorter-was tied in a haphazard tail, and her face showed the lines and cares of decades. But hovering about her like a haunting ghost, Jassion saw the teenage girl he'd known, the sister who'd given herself to evil's own avatar to keep her baby brother safe.
"I'm so sorry," she said with a gentle smile. "I've asked him to mind his manners around guests, but-"
"Tyannon?"
She blinked once. "I'm sorry, have we-"
And then she looked, really looked, at this stranger on her porch. "Oh, my gods…" It was her hand, now, that shook as she slowly reached for him, the other held tight to her lips. "Jass?"
The Baron of Braetlyn crumpled to his knees, arms wrapping of their own volition about his sister's waist, and wept. THE KITCHEN WAS JUST AS PLAIN as the rest of the house, and smelled faintly of wood smoke. A hearth with a cauldron, and a relatively new wood-burning stove, occupied one wall, leaving the bulk of the room for an oak table and thinly upholstered chairs.
Jassion sat hunched over the table, as small as he could make himself, his hands wrapped tight around his second flagon of mead. Tyannon, across from him, kept reaching out and pulling back. Lilander hovered beside her, puzzled, worried gaze flitting between his mother and this strange, frightening man who, so he'd just been told, was an uncle he'd never met. Clearly, he was trying to decide whether he believed a word of it, and wondering what the hell to do about it once he'd made up his mind either way.
But Kaleb, who'd pulled two chairs back from the table before slouching into one and propping his feet on the other, paid them little mind. No, his attention appeared fixed on the most recent member of the gathering who stood, arms sullenly crossed, beside the kitchen door.
Hair darker than either her mother's or brother's was cut just below her chin in a "just be done with it" sort of style. Her eyes, too, were dark, the green of the deep seas off Braetlyn's shore. Her features were sharp and angular-clearly she favored her father more than she did Tyannon-making her, although not at all beautiful in the most classical sense, certainly striking, even exotic.
Or maybe that was just the irritated scowl that had staked a claim on her face. Regardless, throughout the conversation, Kaleb's attentions would flicker between Jassion and the baron's niece, and once or twice he gave a shallow nod, as though in sudden understanding.
Finally, after an uncomfortable interval for everyone involved-save possibly Kaleb-Jassion looked up from his drink. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice steady though his cheeks flushed with shame. "I didn't mean to… Well, that wasn't the first impression I'd have chosen to make."
"It's all right, Jass," Tyannon told him. "I understand. We all do." Her eyes had not, in truth, remained entirely free of tears, either.
He nodded and stood, then bowed toward the young woman at the door. She returned a stiff curtsy.
"I'm delighted," he said, and behind the formal tone he might even have meant it, "to meet you both." He extended a hand to Lilander, and his lips even twitched in a brief smile at the boy's deeply sincere expression as he took it.
"It's nice to meet you, Uncle Jassion," his niece told him, though her attention was fixed mostly on her mother. Her voice carried a surprising weight, given her slight frame. "Even if it should have happened much sooner."
"Mellorin!" Tyannon snapped at her.
"It's all right," Jassion said. "P
erhaps I should have looked for you before-"
"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?"