by Anna Thayer
Supported by Ma Mendel he stepped back into the chamber where he had woken. Aeryn awaited him. As he came forward, gowned in blue, Aeryn’s face fill with wonder.
“That’s your colour,” she said quietly.
Eamon smiled fondly at her. “Good of you to tell me so.”
With Ma Mendel to help him, he followed Aeryn from the room, marvelling anew at the long halls of the palace. He did not know where he was in comparison to the quarters of the Right Hand, but he knew that he was in a part of the palace that was distant from the gates. He wondered if he was in the area of the East Wing reserved for guests. Through some of the windows – many of them shattered – he caught glimpses of the sea and the roofs of the West Quarter. Somehow those images seemed clearer to him than before, yet as he saw them his heart grew heavy.
Dunthruik was changing. What place could it hold for him, now?
They went near to the heart of the palace, the sound of men working and singing in the morning light echoing down the corridors. Eamon supposed that they repaired the damage caused by the explosion.
“What day is it?” he asked, turning suddenly to Aeryn.
“The eighteenth of May,” Aeryn answered.
Eamon stared at her for a moment.
“It was the sixteenth when we rode to war,” he said. “Edelred was killed on the sixteenth…”
“It has been nearly two days since you fell,” Aeryn told him quietly.
Eamon stared at her. Two days? His head swam. “A lot may happen in that time,” he breathed.
Aeryn smiled softly. “It is time enough for a grand city to fall and be taken,” she said, “but the aftermath of fallings and takings, it seems, happens much more slowly.” She lightly touched his arm. “You have missed very little; Hughan will explain everything to you.”
While the throne room was being repaired, the King and his counsellors had taken to meeting in a large hall in the East Wing. Eamon did not think that he had ever been in it, and realized that there was much of the palace he had never seen.
The doors to the great room were closed. As they approached, Eamon heard voices within, and made out that of Feltumadas among them. He was then not surprised to see that the two men guarding the doors were Easters, bearing the colours of Anastasius’s house.
The guards came sharply to attention, then bowed. “My lady,” one said. Eamon remembered that the woman before him would one day be Hughan’s queen. He realized also that that day would come soon – for it could not be long before Hughan was crowned and made Aeryn his wife. The notion caused Eamon to look across at her with renewed awe.
Aeryn would be the mother of kings. The idea was as richly strange as it was breathtaking.
She cocked her head at him curiously. “Are you all right?”
He nodded dumbly.
“Please tell them that the First Knight is here,” Aeryn said to the guards. One of the Easters stepped inside.
A moment later the doors opened wide into a circular room, rounded by tall windows that overlooked the palace gardens. Though now showing banners of blue and orange, the room still bore decorations in red. The colour did not terrify Eamon as it had once done. Glorious sunlight flooded the room, dazzling him for a moment as he entered.
His eyes adjusted swiftly to it. Many men were seated at the room’s long table, which was spread with maps and papers. Some men he recognized, others he did not, but he saw many of the Easter lords – Anastasius, Feltumadas, Ithel, and Ylonous among them – as well as Easter banner commanders, Leon, several of the wayfarer generals, and of course the King. It was to Hughan that his gaze was drawn, for he was dressed all in blue and a small silver coronet rested on his brow.
Hughan met his gaze and smiled. “Welcome, First Knight.”
“Thank you,” Eamon answered, bowing low.
As he rose from his bow – steadied by the stalwart Ma Mendel – Feltumadas clapped, beating his palms so heartily that they might break. A second later Leon followed him, as did Anastasius and Ithel and all the others, until the whole room filled with mighty applause. His whole world was awash with it.
Blown away in astonishment, Eamon gazed at them.
“I do not deserve such welcome,” he said, having to shout to make himself heard above the noise. His words were met with warm laughter, and contrary to his intent, an increase in jubilation.
As Eamon stared at them with an open mouth and a full heart, Hughan came down the room towards him. Suddenly Eamon remembered the sword-wielding figure that had cut through the dark hall to lay bright hands upon his breast.
Those same hands were laid then on Eamon’s shoulders as the King looked at him.
“Sire,” Eamon breathed. There were no words great enough to give the man before him. “Thank you.”
“No, Eamon!” Hughan laughed gently. Eamon looked at him in amazement. “Thank you.”
Smiling broadly, Hughan embraced him. The King’s arms circled him and joy soared in his breast. He had never dared to dream that he would reach that moment. The fact that he had done so filled him with wonder and tears.
Applause rang in his ears as Hughan stepped back. The King’s men and Easters came forward and clasped his hands, each with their words of congratulation and warm smiles. Eamon received them all in a daze.
“You wear good colours today,” Anastasius told him.
“You are not the first to say so.”
“The Star’s faith in you proved good, and may yet prove more valuable than many swords. I am glad to have seen it – and this very fine cloak,” Anastasius added with a smile.
Eamon bowed before the Easter lord. “I am glad also.”
“This is a man who needs no colour to introduce him!” Feltumadas cried. “His fame will do that in all the years that follow us.”
Eamon smiled at him, feeling his cheeks reddening with embarrassment. “If tales are told of me, Lord Feltumadas, the best I can hope is that they will be told truly.”
“Indeed?” Ithel asked as he stepped up to take Eamon’s hand. “And how would you mark the truthful telling of your tale, First Knight?”
“I would mark it true,” Eamon answered quietly, “if the telling told that everything I sought to do was for the King – for only he brings sense and reason to what I have done. To speak my name without his, be it in song or story, is to tell a tale weighted with rage and sorrow. My name and doings should be as a banner, showing his.”
Ithel smiled. “First Knight indeed, who keeps the Star first in his heart.”
Eamon’s cheeks flushed crimson; he clutched Ma Mendel’s arm. She beamed at him.
The Easters stepped aside and when Eamon next looked up it was to find Leon standing before him. The man bowed.
“Well done, First Knight.”
“I am sorry,” Eamon replied. Leon looked surprised. “I have not forgotten how I used you, Leon,” Eamon explained. “I could not offer a full apology to you then, but I would do so now. I ask for your pardon. You are brave and noble. I am glad that your fierceness did not quite spur you on to catch me that day when I took the head of an Easter lord. I am sorry that, for my purpose, I had to use you, insult you, and bind you, humiliating you before your enemies and your allies alike.”
“I understand why you did,” Leon answered quietly. He was silent for a moment but then drew a deep breath. “It was long before I was reconciled, and maybe I am still wary of you. But I know why you did as you did; and I forgive you for it.”
Relief washed through Eamon. “There is no gift that I would rather have from you than that,” he said, and clasped Leon’s hand.
As the men around him fell back, Eamon surveyed them. In his time in Dunthruik he had been in many meetings and stood in the presence of the mighty, the terrible, and the powerful. But rarely had he stood surrounded by men as noble as those gathered round him. It astounded and thrilled him.
He looked back to the King. “Aeryn told me that I have been asleep for nearly two days,” he said and the
n paused awkwardly, unsure of how to continue. As he met the King’s gaze, his words failed him. There was so much that he had to ask…
Hughan looked at his gathered allies. “I would have a few moments with the First Knight.”
The room resounded to sounds of agreement and the Easters and King’s men left the room, each one smiling at Eamon as they departed. Aeryn took Hughan’s hand for a moment and kissed his cheek before she too left. Ma Mendel brought Eamon to a chair before bowing and withdrawing.
Eamon sat before the King in the empty room. Hughan’s joyful gaze grew more serious as it held him.
“How do you feel?” the King asked.
“I don’t know,” Eamon answered. “Strange.” He touched once at his back, near where the blade had driven into him. “But I think everything is healed.”
“Not everything,” Hughan replied gently.
Eamon felt his gaze falling to the ground as he took the King’s meaning. Somehow he could not answer.
Hughan’s eyes searched his face. “Eamon, can you tell me what happened?”
There was a long silence. Then memories returned to him, groaning as they came.
“Arlaith took the Nightholt,” Eamon answered at last. “I followed him. I asked him to surrender and put himself at your mercy. We knew Edelred was dead; we felt it, it must have been the moment that you…” He relived the fierce duel between King and throned. He could only imagine what the final blows had been like.
“It’s all right,” Hughan told him. “You can speak freely.”
“I know that.” Eamon’s heart started to beat fast. “Just after you killed Edelred, Arlaith told me that he…” He faltered. “That he was Ladomer.”
Hughan pressed his shoulder. Drawing a deep breath, Eamon met his gaze and spoke again. “We fought. He ran. He left the Nightholt and I followed…” Suddenly he realized what he had done and looked up in alarm.
The King saw the abject horror on his face. “Be at peace,” Hughan told him. “It was recovered.”
Eamon sighed with relief. “Thank goodness.”
At Hughan’s gesture, he took up his story again, telling it with the same heaviness with which he had wielded his sword against the Right Hand.
“We fought. He used the red light and he cast it at me, but the blue… The grace saved me. Then he said something to me, and… I lost my… no, I…” He drew a deep breath. “I ran…” he whispered. “But I recovered myself, and saw… inside his mind.” He remembered Ladomer’s shrieks, and shivered. “He did not want me to, but somehow I saw. I… I drew blood from him. He struck me. That was when you came.” He looked earnestly into Hughan’s deep gaze. “I would have died if you hadn’t.”
“You lay at the border of death when I found you,” Hughan answered softly.
Eamon’s heart filled with the shining river where he had walked, and the friend whom he had seen there. He remained silent for a long time.
At last, he looked up. “What has been done in Dunthruik while I was gone?”
“Much, and yet so very little,” Hughan answered. “For the most part, we have grouped together and negotiated with those who surrendered or were captured. I’ve already set groups of men to work on repairing the South and Blind Gates, and the palace. Food and water are being distributed to the people, and news of Edelred’s fall is going out to the regions. There’s a lot of talk about how we’re to restabilize the city, what messages we should give to Etraia and Edelred’s other merchant allies – and our own. Above all, we have to decide how to handle the Gauntlet.” Hughan looked keenly at Eamon. “Most external units have laid down their arms as, of course, have those still in the city. Now that we have a thorough tally of who has surrendered we must decide what to do with them. There was thought to meet on the matter this afternoon.”
“May I attend?” Eamon asked at once.
“Will you promise to rest before then?” Hughan asked seriously.
“I will rest,” Eamon answered with a small smile, “if you promise that I can come.”
Hughan laughed. “Of course you can come! In part, the meeting has not yet been held because I wanted you to be present. Nobody understands the Gauntlet, and this city, better than you do, and nobody deserves to be present at a meeting which deals with both more than you.”
Eamon stared at him incredulously. “You truly mean that?”
“Eamon,” Hughan said, and as Eamon met his gaze he knew that the King would never speak words to him that he did not mean.
“I have detailed many men to burying the dead,” Hughan said, his voice heavy. “I commanded separate graves on the field. Many lost their lives. I had no wish to devalue them, nor the colours under which they fought with all honour, by laying them together.”
Eamon blinked back the sudden tears in his eyes. “You did wisely, sire,” he whispered, “and well.”
“Thank you,” Hughan answered.
“How many surrendered?” Eamon asked at last.
“More than sixteen hundred infantry – including thresholders – five hundred and sixty-seven Gauntlet, and nearly fourteen hundred knights in the city, at the last count,” Hughan replied. “A good portion were injured, and most of the city’s Gauntlet facilities have been converted into hospitals. Overall, far more surrendered than we had hoped might do so. Giles tells me that surrendered men speak of a quarter captain who seems to have instructed his men that they would do better to surrender than fight to the death. His encouragement saved many men, if it is true.”
Eamon knew at once that it was true, and knew also who had done it.
“Anderas.” He spoke the name with sorrow. “He was my captain when I held the East Quarter,” he said, answering Hughan’s inquiring look. “When I asked him to, he willingly and joyfully took your colours over those he wore.”
“It was brave of you to ask him,” Hughan told him quietly.
“It was braver of him to accept. He was a true man of yours; truer at times than I.” Eamon shook his head. “I wish that he could have lived to meet you, Hughan.”
There was a long pause. In it, Hughan reached across to the table and took up one of the sheets of paper there, brow furrowed.
Eamon pressed his eyes shut. Anderas had been a dear friend.
It was Hughan’s voice that stirred him. “Perhaps you shall have your wish,” he said, looking up from the paper with a smile.
Eamon blinked hard. “What?”
“The overall surrender, treatment, and billeting of Gauntlet divisions is, if these notes are correct, being negotiated on the Gauntlet’s behalf by one Captain Andreas Anderas,” Hughan answered. A smile passed over his face. “A name like his is hard to forget. Feltumadas has been liaising with him and has noted that the man, though badly wounded, seems to ‘both honour the Star and be stubborn enough to live to do so at length’.” Hughan chuckled. “He adds that the captain is widely respected and that he has asked more than once for news of the Right Hand.”
Eamon’s jaw dropped. “I don’t believe it.”
“Is there more than one Captain Andreas Anderas?” Hughan asked.
“No…”
“Then I think that your captain lives, First Knight.”
“But he was killed!”
“Who told you so?”
Eamon faltered. “Ladomer.”
Hughan regarded him seriously. “Do not exchange the lies of one voice for another, Eamon,” he cautioned. He put the paper down. “Feltumadas notes that the captain, like the majority of the Gauntlet wounded recovered from the field, is being treated in the West Quarter.”
“Can I see him?”
“You’re sure you do not need to rest?” Hughan asked. “I have no desire to completely exhaust you!”
“I will rest when we come back,” Eamon promised.
Hughan smiled. “Then let us go and find him.”
CHAPTER XXIII
Eamon and the King went together from the meeting room, Eamon in a daze. Arlaith’s – Ladomer’s –
words had been undone before his eyes: Anderas lived. As he and Hughan left the meeting room, the two Easter guards dropped into step behind them.
Eamon and Hughan walked easily side by side through the palace. Eamon delighted in this: for months he had trod equal to no man, and he understood at last how that had weighed on him.
They came swiftly to one of the palace’s side doors. Hughan advised him that the main hallway was still too badly damaged, though the masons and carpenters were optimistic that repair wouldn’t be too difficult. Reserves of stone and timber were being used in the work both there and at the gates.
As they emerged into the Royal Plaza from the passages in the east wall, Eamon saw that the workers had not been idle – great scaffolds had been put up about the palace front. The men there worked hard. Only as they stepped outside did Eamon fully realize that it was mid-morning. He looked back at the palace and saw something unexpected.
Atop the West Wing, where Edelred had fought his final battle, flew a new banner. It was bright in the May light, showing forth blue and silver as it danced on the running wind.
Eamon stopped and gazed upwards in awe at the King’s banner. He drank deeply of the sight.
“I never truly imagined that I would live to see that fly there,” he said at last. “I was too afraid to dare as much. Your banner here – and my life spared to see it – always seemed like things far beyond the horizon of my hope.”
Hughan laughed quietly beside him. “You were not alone in that.”
“There were days when you doubted it too?”
“Long days, Eamon; dark days.” Hughan looked up at the banner, his face shaded by remembrances. “They were days when my judgments faltered, when all that I did seemed to fail and my hopes were weakened almost to their death. They were bloody days, filled with flames and cries and tears. After them came days of cowardice, folly, and blindness – for myself and for those who had pinned their hopes on me.” Suddenly Hughan looked at him. “I did not always seek it – indeed, sometimes I sought to shun it – but grace always found me. On those days, Eamon – days where the whole wreck of the dark yoked me to despair – that grace pierced through all I thought I saw and called me by name, to courage and to account.”