Welcome.
He paused and stared down at the brush. A few of the sheriff’s hairs wound through the boar bristles, purest silver against the gold, and it felt uncomfortably warm in his hand. He remembered the sheriff’s grip on his forearm in the warrior’s greeting, the power of the man’s gaze.
Surely Aidan had told Lord Daerwin what Chul was, and yet he’d greeted him as an equal and welcomed him into his home. He’d put the boy to bed in a chamber nearly the equal of his own, sent his own valet to serve him. And Lady Renda…
Father and I are agreed. We should be pleased to keep you as our guest tonight at Brannagh.
Guest. No prayer guarded the sheriff’s chambers, and no knights prowled the halls behind the boy to watch him. Yet Chul could no more steal from this place than he could fly, and his sudden certainty of it made him dizzy. He could steal from his own tribe, from Aidan, even from Chief Bakti, but he could not take this Invader’s hairbrush.
The boy’s no good.
The gold brush clattered to the floor, and Chul staggered back against the wardrobe. His face felt flushed, feverish, and his hands trembled. He had to get some air.
“Just where do you suppose you’d be selling those?”
He froze. The voice came ghostlike from the shadows between the open door and the wardrobe. He was caught! Without thinking, he grabbed up the brush and the mirror and dove for the door, for the hallway, but too late. By the time he reached it, the door was already slammed shut.
“Well, speak up, then.” A striking young Bremondine woman stepped between him and the closed door and crossed her arms over her chest. She was dressed in a riding tunic, and she wore her long brown hair loose like a man, but he doubted anyone would mistake her for one. He saw at once that he stood nearly a head taller than she and half again as broad. And he relaxed.
She snatched the brush and mirror from his hands. He grabbed to take them back, but he could not get his hands on them. Instead, he tried to grab her, tried to grapple with her and throw her against the door, but she was fast, so very fast, and in the close space, his size worked against him. He hurled his whole weight at her. And found himself falling through empty space to the floor. Then her boot was on his throat. It was not until he was on his back that he noticed the dirk sheathed in her leggings beneath her tunic. The two daggers at her hips. The battered sword. The dart belt. He felt a bit dizzy.
“Look here,” she said calmly as if nothing had happened. She flipped the mirror around to show him the back. “Do you think this idle decoration?” She laughed. “Look about you, boy; it’s the sheriff’s own bedchamber you rob, and this, the sheriff’s own mark, the Brannagh coat of arms, on the back. And look at this! You’d take his brush with the very silver of his hairs still in it?” She took her foot away and dropped the mirror and hairbrush on the sheriff’s dressing table in disgust. “Try to sell these anywhere in Syon, you’d be clapped in a cell afore the night fell, and no mistake.”
Sell them? He blinked up at her. Why would he want to sell them?
She offered him a hand and helped him up, not noticing the wide eyed stare he gave to the long nail on her little finger. Then she opened the door to lead him back to the hallway. “You’d make a better market on the candelabrum in the hall. Gold, they are, not a one marked, not a one to be missed, so long as you’ve an eye to hide the space you make.” She winked at him. “Think on it.”
“You’re like me,” the boy breathed in shaky Bremondine. “You’re—” He pursed his lips, searching for the word. “You...take things.”
“Aye, once upon a time,” she grinned, still speaking Syonese. “Like you and worse, I’d wager.” Then she looked up and offered her hand to him. “They call me Gikka of Graymonde. Gikka to you, lad.”
Chul stared at her a moment before he took her hand.
Steal? From Gikka? I think not.
At last he understood Aidan’s quiet laughter, and he laughed himself.
Gikka smiled a bit uncertainly. “Strikes you funny, does it?” She shook her head and looked him over with a wry grin. “I take you to be the Dhanani lad, aye?”
He bowed. “Chul Ka-Dree.”
She bowed her head. “Aidan’s asked me to take you on at Graymonde Hall.” She smiled. “Teach you what I know, so please you. But we’ve a ride ahead, and I’m of a mind to take you round the back way. It’s a bit longer, but no sense giving the miners any call for wickedness.” She clapped her hand around his shoulder and led him up the hallway.
He glanced at the candelabrum as they passed.
Her hand tightened around him. “I said they’d not be missed.” When she saw understanding in his eyes, she loosened her grip. “I said nothing about me letting you take one. Steal from your friends,” she added softly, “and soon you got no friends. It’s a matter of honor; Renda taught me that.”
“I have no friends,” Chul brooded, crossing his arms over his chest. “And I have no honor; my father taught me that.”
Gikka grasped his chin roughly and shoved him back against the wall, and he steeled himself for a good cuff. “Your father,” she sneered, scrutinizing the purpled swellings on his face. “The very same as left you this lovely bunch of plums, here, that father? Oh, a sure man of honor, that.”
“I deserved it,” he answered, eyes growing wide with fear—but not fear of her. It was fear of something within himself. “My father was a great hunter. A great warrior.” Chul shut his eyes then and sank against the wall, feeling the welling blackness in his spirit again. It was too dark, too terrible. He could not face it. Instead, he fought it the only way he could, the way he had fought it for fifteen years. He turned it against himself. “I was bad. He deserved a better son than me.”
“Told you so himself, did he?”
She did not understand. How could she? Chul beat his fist against the floor. “He deserved—”
“Bah, he deserved a pox, is what he deserved, and no mistake.” She scowled. “Bloody villain.”
Chul looked up at her in shock. “No!” he shouted. “He was a warrior, a Dhanani warrior.”
“He were a villain!” she spat. “Challenge the chief to see his own son dead, a villain sure!”
“But I stole! I deserved to die!” Chul sobbed, desperate to wall away his horror of his own heart. The feelings were too terrifying, too evil to let spill out. He could not hate his father. He shook his head and put his hands over his ears. “No!”
“You’re a child. You deserve none of it.” Gikka stopped mid-breath and crouched beside him. She gently took his hands from his ears and held them. “Hear me, for I say it but once,” she spoke gently. “Men there are in the world, not just your father but other men, too, and all cried out great and noble even, but what has no honor in their souls. Men what says of one thing but knows right well they mean another. Men what ache to see their brothers fall in harm’s way and set the path for them. Men what steals from them as gives them freely, aye?” He nodded hesitantly, feeling the pain and darkness fade, and she went on. “Villains, these are,” she said, “and I’ll not be training you to villainy. You’ve too good a soul for that.” Then she stood and offered him her hand. “Of me, lad, you’ll have your honor or you’ll have your death, and no mistake.”
Honor or death. His lip curled in a sneer. He stared at Gikka’s tiny hand, at the little finger’s long nail pointing at his eyes, and his palm moved lightly over the hilt of his knife. Gikka’s meaning was clear, and she would act on his decision now, in the space of a breath. He steeled himself, ready to cross his arms in defiance. He was already dead to the tribe, an outcast. Just this morning, he’d been ready to do it himself, to throw himself off the ledge, so what difference did it make to him? Besides, what sort of honor could she teach him, Invader honor?
Renda of Brannagh is fully as valiant a warrior as our own chief.
Suddenly, his sneer was gone. Lady Renda was an Invader. But no one, not Aidan, not Chief Bakti, not even his own father would question the honor o
f such a one, Invader or not. Outcast or not. Gikka would teach him that kind of honor, something that, as Vaccar’s idiot son, he would never have gotten from the tribe. He would have as many chances for death as he made for himself, but a chance at true honor was a rare thing.
Slowly, his hand rose to clasp hers.
* * *
“I see no simple solution, my love,” sighed Glynnis when Daerwin told her of Wirthing’s letter. It was well after Gikka’s departure with her new apprentice, hours since dinner, and the knights and servants had retired to their apartments. The sheriff and his wife sat alone beside the fire in her chambers, she wrapped in her shawl and curled up against his shoulder, he staring thoughtfully into the fire.
Below in his audience chambers, the same parchments sat blank upon his desk, the same pens lay clean beside capped vials of ink as when he had left them. He had stared at them the whole day and the better part of the evening besides, and still he could find no answer. None that would not threaten the Wirthing alliance.
“You cannot simply say nothing,” she observed at last, “since he is bound to hear of the whole business eventually, and from sources less reputable than yourself.” She shrugged. “In any event, to give no answer when he pleads so would be less than honorable.” She was right. She had a way of seeing to the heart of things when his decades of training in strategy and diplomacy often obscured them with complication.
“Neither can you write the essential truth, that they departed without taking their proper leave of you.” She shifted against him. “For the same reason.”
He kissed her coppery hair thoughtfully and frowned. “Something in his tone makes me wonder what he might already know of it.”
“In which case he may think to catch you in some unintentional deceit.”
“Were we at war,” he said darkly, “I might agree, but we are allies...” His words were meant to defeat her argument, but his tone was uncertain.
“Ever the distrustful warrior battles the patient diplomat, seeing only the motives of war in a time of peace. Ah, my love,” she smiled wistfully. “Remember when a sword and a firm hand answered all? How is it that now we fret away the whole day and lose the night’s sleep over the lay of a few words on a page?” She nestled her head against his shoulder again and sighed. “Your first instincts are true, Daerwin. The whole and proper truth is your best reply to him.” When he made no answer, she nudged him with her elbow. “And right well you know it.”
Suddenly, as if startled out of deepest thought by her presence, he lifted his arm from round her shoulders and stood. “Aye, but how, is the question.” With his hands clasped behind his back, he paced the floor. “I can think how to tell him his knights are dead, and even how they fell at Renda’s hand, but ever I come to what brought Renda and Gikka against them, ever I think to pen the words, ‘your knights sold my granddaughter to her death,’” here his voice caught in his throat, and he turned to his wife with pain in his eyes, “and the whole thing rings of anger and accusation.”
“And why not?” Glynnis stood, drawing her shawl up about her shoulders, and her eyes glistened in the firelight. “Why not? Our son’s child is murdered, Daerwin! Murdered! Wirthing’s men did kidnap her, and Renda did take revenge on them.”
“The Houses of Brannagh and Wirthing are allies, and I would keep it so. But as to Lord Corin himself...” He shook his head dubiously.
She brushed away her tears and raised her chin. “Corin would be a fool to expect anything less than rage from your pen, given the circumstances. He should count himself lucky that you do not declare war upon him. Would you hide your sorrow and your anger from one whom you’ve called ally these many years?”
He shook his head. “It is not so simple, Glynnis.”
“Is it not?” She touched his arm and stared into his eyes. “Daerwin, Brannagh was wronged, not Wirthing, and you should not be the one apologizing to him for what his knights have done!” She crossed her arms. “An he would take offense enough at the truth to break your alliance, then it stands broken already.”
“I would not apologize,” he answered harshly, “but I would spare his honor, if I might.”
“That it harms his honor is none of your affair. You would but speak what you know.” She sniffed. “Besides, he should have seen the resentment in his knights. He should have known they would—”
“He did not know his knights’ feelings.” His voice was almost wheedling, and he turned away. “How could he?”
“You would have.” Her eyes narrowed.
“Aye, I suppose. And perhaps he did. But Wirthing did not do this thing.” Daerwin rubbed his brow in frustration to find himself defending the earl against her, especially when she spoke so true. He closed his eyes and regained his patience before he turned back to face her stubborn stare. “I would convey to him that I do not hold him responsible, but without,” he gestured impatiently, “without apologizing, as you say.” When she nodded somewhat grudgingly, he continued. “Yet upon the very insinuation—one that cannot be helped, mark—I risk destroying a thousand year alliance.” He slapped his hand against the mantle. “There is my difficulty.”
Glynnis sighed. “Well I remember Wirthing. Word it how you will, he will color it in the reading, regardless.” She turned back to face the fire with a shiver and straightened her shawl. “Speak clear and true, Daerwin; grant him but few words to twist.”
He came up behind her and touched her shoulders gently. “Aye, as few words as I can.” Wrapping his arms about her waist then, he pulled her back against him and sighed. “I should go to him.”
“To Wirthing Castle?” she gasped and turned her head to look at him. “It’s a full tenday’s ride there and another back! You should be gone a full month or more!”
“Aye, but perhaps my best answer is to speak to him man to man, and on his own ground.” He shrugged. “And thus be assured of no misunderstanding.”
“This whilst we await a cardinal’s visit, and him to come at your request?” She frowned and looked back into the fire. “You owe Wirthing naught. To take such pains for his sake were to call yourself the guilty one. And your daughter, as well, so do not think to send her, either.”
He breathed deeply. “Perhaps so,” he said at last.
Glynnis lay her head back against his chest. “You could have Duke Trocu write him on your behalf.”
Daerwin drew breath to argue with her, more for form's sake than anything since she anticipated exactly what he would say.
She turned to face him. “Hear me, Daerwin. He knows the circumstance of Pegrine’s death; he would do this for you.”
“Aye, he would,” breathed the sheriff. He let his arms fall to his sides and turned away from her. “But he has no place in this.”
“No place!” She glared at his back. “Vilmar is her great—”
“Trocu,” he said heavily, turning to meet her gaze with his own, “is but her cousin, and removed by one generation, at that.”
In truth, the duke mourned Pegrine deeply, and for reasons even Daerwin was not certain he understood completely. Trocu had always been fond of the little girl, and she of him; he had always asked after her in his letters to Daerwin and sent her trinkets and gewgaws to brighten her days. Several times since she had learned to read, he had written her directly, much to her glee, sending her official messages sealed and addressed most formally to Lady Pegrine of Brannagh.
Yet in spite of his grief, he had not come to her funeral, nor had he in any official way acknowledged her death. More ominous still, since she had died, his letters had become more and more vague and preoccupied, as if he were troubled by far more than the murder of his dear little cousin. Yet he would speak not a word of his concerns, not even to Daerwin.
His wife blew her exasperation out in a breath and crossed her arms. “All right, then, but Trocu is your nephew. If not for Pegrine’s sake, then for yours—”
Daerwin shook his head firmly. “He dares show no excess of favor to Br
annagh, not now.” His lips thinned. “The other houses grew jealous enough after Renda ended the war, aye? It’s too awkward a position for him to involve himself, much as he might be willing.” He shook his head. “I cannot ask it of him, not now.”
“But is it excess of favor for him to broach this issue with Wirthing?” She wrung her hands. “The House of Brannagh is in mourning; you cannot be expected to...”
“Were Trocu to write the earl on my behalf, his message worded however it please you,” he said with a shake of his head, “the main of the offense, the accusation itself, would remain, made the worse because I were too much the coward to speak it myself. Not to mention that now the accusation would be in the duke’s ear as well as at his pen, a thing not lost on Wirthing.”
“Were it up to me,” she mused, “I should send Gikka.”
“Gikka, indeed. The very picture of diplomacy, she.”
“Diplomacy be damned, within twice a tenday, you would find yourself installed as the new Earl of Wirthing, and I doubt a soul on all Syon would blame you a jot.”
“But Glynnis…”
“Oh, I know, I know. He is an ally, with all the baggage that brings along with it. So barring that, we’ve come full circle,” she said with a sympathetic smile and put her arms round his waist. “And it remains but for you to pen your answer,” she said decisively.
“Aye, and pray he takes as little offense as I offer.” He sighed. “How is it that the correct thing is ever the most difficult?” he chuckled sadly.
Her smile brightened and she kissed his shoulder. “The bad choices must have something to recommend them.”
He made as if to answer, but she lay her finger over his lips. “Hush, my lord Husband. Any more talk of Wirthing, and I shall be heartburned the whole night.”
“But I would—”
“Enough.” She kissed his lips lightly, gently, “Enough,” then again until he pulled her close.
“What are you about, missus?” he grumbled rakishly, letting himself be led along toward her bed.
Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) Page 14