by Lee Ramsay
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Ah. I think I understand now.” Geren sucked his pipe, stoking the ember’s glow. “You think she’ll prefer someone who has made their mark in the world rather than someone who inherits what they have.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Tristan asked, a bitter curl on his lip. “They had a goal in their life and did what was necessary to earn it. What have I done, besides getting lucky enough to get picked up by some old man who has the favor of a king?”
Geren gave his head a curt shake and grunted. “Don’t be a simple fuck, boy. All those books Anthoun has made you read, the stories that Dougan has told you about fighting the war—"
“They haven’t told me anything, really,” Tristan said through gritted teeth. “Dougan was a sergeant in Duke Riand’s army. Anthoun is apparently not just some simple scholar, but has the title Sage of the Realm. People respect them.”
“And they kick the shit out of you for peeping into bathhouses, though they’re guilty of doing the same, and give you the side-eye because of your appearance and lack of family.” Geren pushed himself to his feet with a groan and a click of his knee joints. “If you think learning how to die in a glorious and proficient military manner is what will earn you the respect you want, then Anthoun and Dougan have been wasting their breath on you.”
“At least those knights know what they are made of.”
“They’re whelps who would shit themselves at a legitimate threat to their lives. A training yard is one thing, a battle quite another.” He spat on the grown as he turned toward his cottage door. “Your bedding is on the floor in front of the hearth. Put out the candles and close the doors before you sleep.”
Tristan chewed his cheek as the older man disappeared into the cottage. The door between the two rooms closed with a thump a moment later. The soft light in the leaded glass window faded as candles snuffed. He glared at the darkened window and muttered, “What in all hells would you know about it?”
SLEEP DID NOT COME easy. The floor was hard and uncomfortable despite the thick woven rug he used as a cushion. Though the hearth-fire had long burned down to charcoal and a few dull embers, the air was still and stifling. Tristan dozed in nothing but his smallclothes, sweat, and a sheet.
Startling awake more than once, he grasped for his dreams' intangible ends, but they faded too quickly. He had little doubt that they were of Jayna; he dreamed of her often these days. Much to his embarrassment, he frequently woke with a sticky belly as a result of those dreams. Rather than his usual pleasant fantasies, these dreams were disturbing and left him with impressions of her laughing at him.
Night’s grip was firm on the cottage when he woke for perhaps the dozenth time. His shoulders knotted and his temples aching from yet another dream, he gave up on sleep. He dressed and slipped quietly into the night.
Perhaps a walk will settle whatever is troubling me.
He found little relief doing so, however. Unpleasantly warm and humid, the air remained unmoving beneath thick clouds that hid the stars and moon from sight. The night birds had gone quiet, and the insects’ incessant summer drone sounded drowsy and muted. He wrestled with his mood as he wandered through the maple groves and followed the wall south, but the oppressive heat merely added to his restlessness.
Several hours removed from his irritation's primary source, Tristan admitted that Geren had made a solid observation about what troubled him. He envied the knights’ and squires’ sharp livery and easy, confident carriage. A part of him wished that he, too, had a sword girded around his waist with little attention paid to the weight dragging at his hip.
He smirked at his foolishness. Part of his discontent stemmed from reading the adventure stories Dougan loved and Anthoun loathed. It was a childhood fantasy to be one of those brave, accomplished warriors. He was still young enough to be plagued by romantic visions, though his fantasies had taken on more adult qualities.
Dorishad’s young women had looked on the knights with something approaching lust, or so it seemed, casting furtive glances at the men around a bonfire burning in the center of the commons. Even Jayna, who had been in the manor’s kitchen serving the knights and seen their rudeness first hand, was happy to dance and laugh with them as the hamlet’s residents played reels on their small drums, flutes, and mandolins.
Wending his way through the groves of oak trees growing near the southern wall, Tristan turned westward. His mood continued to sour as he dwelled on how the girl’s cheeks reddened as the knights flirted with her; dimples appeared only when her smile was genuine. Her flaring skirts revealed her ankles as she danced, sweat gleaming on her throat as her pulse raced in the hollow behind her jaw. Strands of her long brown hair had come loose to frame her face, her linen shift clinging to the damp slopes of her breasts as they strained against her bodice. After so long trying to be subtle with his gaze for fear of making her uncomfortable, he resented her seeming to welcome – and even invite – the blatant stares from the strangers.
Tristan followed the wall westward as he reached the hamlet’s southern border. The oak groves whispered to themselves as he passed.
More than how she looked, he recalled how the knights held her close, their hands low on her spine and near the curve of her bum. She had danced with them, as had all the unmarried and unspoken-for women – and spared not a glance for Tristan. Pride already bruised from the sorry treatment he had received, Jayna’s disregard cut like a knife and doused the bleeding wound with salted water.
Coming to the western wall, he leaned on the stones and glared at the road as he wrestled with his battered emotions. Unsuccessful at soothing his irritability, he made north along the wall before following the lane inward toward the commons.
The bonfire had long since burned out, leaving the whitewashed houses to reflect the approaching dawn. No lights burned in the houses’ windows, either because they had been put out or were hidden behind drapes. He flicked his eyes over the manor’s frontage, noting that the parlor windows were dark – as were the three sets of windows on the second story belonging to Anthoun’s library. As he approached, though, he found the kitchen door open and candles burning within.
Tristan frowned and scuffed his boots on the stone step before he ducked under the lintel. The hearth fire burned low, glittering on pans, pots, jars, and bags cluttering the table and every counter. Karilen snored in a chair in front of the fire, her head pillowed against the seat’s high back. The matronly woman was disheveled, her gray hair unbound around her shoulders and an apron askew over her clothing.
He bent down beside her and laid his hand on her shoulder, and her reaction to his touch shocked him. Her jaw snapped shut around a snore as her bloodshot eyes went wild; there was no recognition of who he was as she surged to her feet. A fist plowed into his jaw with enough force to make his vision explode in a flash of color and pain. Several vertebrae cracked as his chin met his shoulder, and his vision grayed as he dropped to his knees.
“Tristan!” Karilen’s voice sounded distant through his ringing ears. Her hand slipped under his arm to steady him as he tried to regain his feet, and he blinked to clear his doubled vision. The matronly woman winced and cupped the reddened spot on his jaw with a tender hand. “What possessed you to scare people while they’re sleeping?”
He worked his jaw against the stabbing ache in the hinge. “Dawn’s not far off. When I saw you sitting in a chair rather than asleep in your own bed, I got worried.”
“That is sweet of you, dear,” Karilen said with a yawn. She shuffled over to the table and peered into several of the mugs. When she found one with ale still in it, she swallowed it down. “Truth be told, I wasn’t expecting to be rousted from bed to prepare food for more than twenty people.”
“Why would you need to do something like that?”
“Well, what would you have me do? Send them on an eight-day ride with nothing for their stomachs?” Karilen asked with a sour smile. “Cleaned out the larder, too. Good thing Dou
gan had that cow slaughtered and dressed a few weeks ago, or we’d be picking out another for the slaughterhouse. We’ll do, though, until he returns.”
Tristan stopped searching the mugs left on the table for something to drink. His green eyes rose to meet hers. “What do you mean, when he returns?”
“Exactly what I said – him and Anthoun both. No telling how long they’ll be gone.” She collected several empty tankards and shuffled toward the washtub, which was already full of dirty dishes. She stacked them on the nearby counter with an annoyed sigh and flicked her eyes to the marked hour candle burning nearby. “Dougan pounded on my door about two hours ago, saying I needed to prepare enough food for twenty-two people for a week’s hard riding. He didn’t say where, but there’s one place I can think that many people would be heading that fast – Caer Rochiel.”
She shrugged as she stacked plates. “I figured something annoyed the duke, and he was taking himself off in a huff. He’s pricklier than his father ever was, so it was a good bet. So, I roused Sasha and Jayna to help. Then Anthoun comes through and right out the door, dressed for the road and without a word. People start running about, helping the duke’s men ready their horses and the carriage. Anthoun woke nearly the whole hamlet.”
Tristan gritted his teeth. “Nobody woke me.”
“Why would they? You were out at Geren’s place. By the time someone got out there, got you dressed, and got you back, all would have been done,” Karilen said around a yawn. She gave a disgusted wave of the hands as she set the stacked plates to one side of the table and shuffled toward the door. “This will keep until morning. Leave it be; the girls and I will come and clean it up. You may as well go back to your room now that it’s empty. Geren’s likely already up, so you won’t sleep if you go back.”
Tristan stared after her as she went out the kitchen door and followed her as far as the threshold. Jaw clenched, he closed the door and dropped the latch in place.
Anger boiling within him, he surveyed the wreckage of the kitchen for a moment. He stalked through the door leading deeper into the house and threw open his room’s door, which was right beside the kitchen. The narrow bed was unmade, with the blankets shoved to the floor and the impression of a head on his pillow. A scent not his own lingered, a mixture of powder and some sort of oily cologne. The books Anthoun had him reading had been pushed from the low table by the bedside. They lay face down on the floor, their covers open and pages bent.
He slammed the door and strode down the long hallway, pausing in the doorways of the other rooms. It had always struck him as strange for the manor house to be so large, with so many rooms going unused. Peering into the rooms and finding each in a disrupted state equal to his own, he at last understood. Anthoun was a Sage of the Realm; perhaps these rooms were used more often before Tristan came along.
Slamming each door on the disarray left by Duke Riand’s party, he wondered if Dorishad would ever see guests in such number again. Part of him hoped not. If they were anything like these, they would want nothing to do with him. He had little doubt he would be shoved out of his home once more to accommodate them.
The anger building in his chest blossomed into outrage as he strode to the parlor at the far end of the house. Another seldom-used room, it was appointed with heavy, polished furniture and well-stuffed, comfortable chairs. Books rested on the small tables around the room, some taken from the bookcases framing the massive hearth, while others had undoubtedly come from Anthoun’s library. Here, too, plates of half-eaten food provided evidence of a long discussion followed by a hasty departure.
A portion of his brain recognized his rage as infantile. The less rational part of his mind argued his fury was justified. He was Anthoun’s ward son and meant to inherit Dorishad, and though he stood on manhood’s threshold, he had been dismissed as a child. Momentous things had been discussed here, he was sure; why else would Duke Riand and the Earl of Ressent have come? Whatever the topic was, they had decided it was not for his ears – and that he did not need to know they were leaving. Karilen had said they were bound for Caer Rochiel, which made sense; the matter must be urgent for both Duke Riand and the Earl of Ressent to come to Dorishad, and for everyone to leave in the middle of the night.
Perched on the River Ossifor’s edge, Caer Rochiel was the capital of the Kingdom of Shreth. Though he had planned to travel south first to see the ocean when he escaped Dorishad’s confines, he had informed Dougan he would instead travel to Caer Rochiel first before catching a riverboat to the sea.
My majority is weeks away. They left without asking if I wished to go with them. The youth growled and clenched his jaw as certainty struck him; his ward parents had no intention of allowing him to leave, or they would have taken him with them – the duke’s attitude toward orphans be damned.
A thought struck, so random that it jolted him from his anger. For the first time in his life, he was alone in the manor. All of Dorishad slept around him.
Before he realized it, his decision was made. He sprinted up the staircase and crossed the hall to Dougan’s room. A candle guttered on the bedside table, drowning in melted wax. The bed was neatly made; Dougan had been in the parlor all evening. Even had he not been, he and Anthoun had abandoned the charade of sleeping in separate rooms years ago.
Tristan glanced at the shirts and even a few doublets scattered across the bed, each made from velvet, silk, and leather, and realized that the old soldier possessed a wardrobe fit for a courtier. He scowled and swept his eyes around the room, uncertain what he sought until he saw a trunk in a corner. A piece of leather wedged the lid open, and the latch stood undone.
He crossed the room in three steps and threw the lid back, revealing a fleece-lined brown wool cloak folded atop the chest’s contents. Beneath the cloak lay a battered rucksack, a distressed leather coat, thick belts, and stout boots. Predawn light glinted off the dented, scratched pommel of a long-bladed dagger in a worn sheath; lying beside it was a hand axe with a sweat-stained grip, the bit protected by a leather cap. Tristan recognized it as a weapon of war; the bit had an elongated toe and heel.
Sweat sprung to his brow, and he shoved aside his momentary reluctance with a grunt. He spread the cloak to the floor and laid out items taken from the chest on the wool. He found several pairs of buckskin britches and soft linen shirts, a pair of well-worn leather gloves with cuffs that rose to the middle of his forearm, and a coin purse. He spent a few moments examining the different coins; more than two dozen Coarsers with different noble crests on their copper faces mixed with silver Atrices and golden Archs. It was more money than he had ever seen, much less held. The various royal crests and profiles of kings and queens he did not recognize suggested Dougan had traveled quite a bit more than he let on.
Tristan slipped the coins into the coin purse, then stripped off his wool britches to don the buckskins. The leather felt odd, but he ignored their stiffness as he did up the laces and shoved his shirt into the waist. He wrapped the belt around his middle and wondered at the purpose of an odd loop at his right hip.
A glance at the axe sparked understanding, and he slid the leather-wrapped shaft through the loop before adjusting the belt to a comfortable position. He undid the sturdy buckle to slide the sheathed dagger and coin purse onto the leather strap, and experimented with the arrangement until the weight distribution was satisfactory.
The hobnailed boots at the bottom of the trunk were too small, forcing him to slip his stockinged feet back into his own.
Tristan dumped the rucksack’s contents on the bed and found flint and steel for starting fires, as well as a battered tin plate, cup, and two-pronged fork. He wondered why Dougan would keep such items in a chest, seemingly ready to go at a moment’s notice, but shrugged it off as he stuffed clothing into the bag. The man had been a soldier; he assumed it was habit.
Though cut for another man, the leather coat fit snugly through the shoulders and fell below his hips. It was fortunate he was about the same size as Dougan, o
r it would be unwearable. He knew if he grew much more, it would no longer fit; the sleeves broke at the wrists and pulled in the armpits, and the hem reached to the middle of his thighs.
Cloak draped over his arm, he slung the rucksack over his shoulder and left the room. His eyes rested on the library door, but he could think of nothing he would need from Anthoun’s collection of books. They had not done him any good thus far.
He turned to the sage’s closed bedchamber door and laid his hand on the brass handle, and hesitated. It was bad enough that he was stealing – borrowing – things that belonged to Dougan. The thought of taking anything from his ward father made him feel nauseated despite his lingering anger. He shook his head as his hand slipped from the handle. “I have what I need.”
He froze as his eyes alighted on the one door he had never seen open. The oak door stood at the far end of the hall, half-hidden in shadow and framed by candle sconces that were never lit. Though not forbidden from entering the room, he had never considered doing so – and never thought to wonder why. On the verge of leaving and with no intention of returning for only the gods alone knew how long, curiosity got the better of him, despite a growing sense of urgency to be away before dawn stirred the other residents of Dorishad and made his escape more difficult.
His hand closed on the brass handle and turned it, but the stout door did not move. He examined the handle in confusion. There was no keyhole to suggest a lock, and he found no sign that the door had been painted shut. He set his shoulder to the door and shoved, thinking it had settled over the years since it was last opened.
He gave the heavy door a perplexed frown as it remained shut and tried to recall how the house looked from outside – something he rarely thought about after seeing the place every day of his life. He counted in memory the windows along the back of the house – thinking that, perhaps, the door led to a closet – but realized that there were two windows for both Dougan’s and Anthoun’s rooms. Whatever lay behind the door took up the entire end of the house over the parlor.