by Anna Thayer
Alessia tugged gently on his arm. “Mr Goodman,” she said, “would you accompany me home?”
Eamon smiled, delighted by her radiance and thrilled by the kiss that lay still upon his cheek. “It would be my pleasure, lady!” he replied gallantly.
Together they walked the red-lit streets towards the North Quarter and turned from there into the gates of the Turnholt estate. Alessia flooded him with compliments; her eyes and hands upon his inflamed him utterly.
They reached her doors. She turned and smiled at him.
“Won’t you come in, Mr Goodman?” she asked. “I have something for you; a gift of congratulation, if you will.”
Part of his heart cautioned him to stay his step, to consider the import of crossing the threshold on that night in answer to those words. But it was only a very small part of his heart. His veins sang with the Master’s acclaim, drowning out the warnings.
He stepped over the threshold and followed her.
She led him up the staircase and along the upper passageway. Dozens of rich paintings gazed down at him and every wall bore an eagle that clasped a crown-bearing shield. The eyes of that noble predator, great bird and mark of a great family that served the Master, watched him as he followed her who was heir to that same crest.
They met no servant and all about was quiet. They came at last to a doorway at the far side of the house. Even the sounds of the majesty’s revels seemed far away. Smiling still, Alessia opened the door and stepped inside. Past her slim figure Eamon could see a bedchamber.
His heart stopped.
Seeing him pause, she came back to him. She took his hand. “Come, Mr Goodman.”
He followed her. The room held a great bed over which hung the eagle and the shield. Tall windows that overlooked the garden lined one side, curtains draped about them. From those windows the reflected light of the majesty, of a thousand candles burning in the night, filled the room with a low glow.
Eamon trembled. Fear and passion clashed in his heart like mighty armies.
Alessia gently closed the door. She stepped back to him, caressing his fingers in hers. He knew what gift it was that she intended. He longed to receive it, and yet…
He pressed her hands. “My lady,” he whispered, “you honour me – how you honour me! – but I cannot –”
Alessia laughed. With a fairy grace she pulled his face down to hers. She kissed him and Eamon felt his whole being driven to answer it. How could he not? He pressed himself against her, drinking in her loveliness, feeling her face and hair with his hands.
She stepped back from him, lingering her lips on his, and as she smiled at him she seemed surprised. He burnt – how he burnt! – with greater ardour than the mark on his palm had ever burned.
In the ruddy half-light he saw that one sleeve of her crimson dress had slipped from one white shoulder. Abashed, he reached to set it back; she stopped him. There was sudden seriousness in her face. Eamon saw something deep in her – far deeper than the seductive smile that had drawn him to her chamber.
“Three nights ago, you asked me to dance with you,” she breathed. “How we danced!” She looked at him anew, her eyes now soft and shy. Her fingers trembled as she guided his hand to her bare shoulder.
“Eamon,” she whispered. How sweet his name sounded, pronounced by her sweet lips! “Eamon, will you dance with me?”
And he did.
CHAPTER XIX
He woke in the grey light, when the world waited for dawn to rise in bridal splendour. He, too, joined the waiting, thinking nothing but that the dawn had to come and that, when it did, it would be beautiful.
Slowly, he gathered his senses. The long, red drape over the casement stirred in the breeze. A mirror gazed at him from the far wall. In it was the reflection of the bed in which he lay. He saw himself, roused from a dream to find that it had not been a dream.
He heard breathing beside him, the slow, deep breathing of sleep untroubled by any shade or shadow. A hand with warm, slender fingers was curled in his. Dark hair lay all about him, showing streaks of forgotten gold. The gentle scent of perfume was by him, and it was this that made him turn his head at last to see what he, in his bliss, had almost forgotten: Alessia. Her resting face, still and wondrous, lay near his.
Long he looked at her, tracing every contour of her dear face with his eyes and memorizing its every shape. He reached out and passed an awed touch across her forehead. She was so very beautiful. How was it, he wondered, that such a beauty had seen fit to bestow herself on him? That she had chosen to do so made him love her all the more.
The thought startled his waking mind – was what he felt for her love? And yet, having given all of himself to her, what else could he call it?
The first streaks of the dawn appeared at the window, casting ruddy light over his discarded uniform. Eamon looked to it and remembered his duties.
He eased his hand from Alessia’s and slipped out from between the bedcovers. The floor was cold beneath his feet and he moved to stand on the crimson rug. As he dressed, his eyes strayed often to the lady as she lay in her bed.
At last he set his jacket over his shoulders and buckled his sword to his belt. Alessia had not stirred. Her hand was curved still in a phantom of his as she lay sleeping. He leaned over and kissed her forehead, feeling its warmth beneath his lips. He wished that he might stay with her.
He went at last to the door. He slipped through it and pulled it closed behind him.
A cool air lay in the house. Far away he heard the sounds of servants in the kitchens, stoking the fires. It was late September. The smell of baking bread rose to his nostrils and he heard a voice singing. As he went silently down the stairs, fastening his jacket, the voice came closer. He looked up.
Lillabeth stood on the steps, a jug of steaming water in her hands. Hearing movement she had looked up and now she saw him.
The jug nearly slipped from her hands. Officer and maid froze upon the stairs, each transfixed by the astonished gaze of the other. Eamon gave no explanation for his presence: his bearing told his story intimately, without the utterance of a single word.
He fixed the last fastening on his jacket and offered Lillabeth a nervous smile.
“Good morning, Miss Hollenwell.”
She neither smiled nor answered him.
Eamon hurried down the stairs and disappeared into the grey morning.
He worked his way swiftly from the house onto the Coll. He was to be at parade in the college for the second hour and his absence would be unacceptable. If he was to become a Hand, he would have to earn it. He remembered Alessia’s voice in his ear, praising him and exhorting him to fulfil himself in his service to the Master. Like so many others, she had seen that Eamon Goodman would be great. As a man and as a Hand, he could have no equal before the throne.
Eamon struggled to focus his thoughts on something, anything – the early calls of the Gauntlet as the watches changed, the frosty cobbles crunching beneath him. But all he could see was Alessia’s face tilted towards his own, and all he could feel was his heart, burning, as he held her.
“Good morning, first lieutenant.”
Startled, Eamon looked up. Lord Cathair came down the Coll, a piece of night that the sun could not drive away. The Lord of the West Quarter wore his accustomed smile as deftly as his black robes.
“My lord.”
“Up a little late this morning, aren’t we, Mr Goodman?” Cathair inquired pleasantly. Eamon flushed.
“Yes, my lord.”
“I do adore the morning, Mr Goodman,” Cathair continued. “It speaks to a deep and most poetical part of my soul.” The Hand spread his arms, as though to encompass the whole morning in his dark embrace.
The sun was just appearing on the horizon and the Hand smiled at it. “Ah, Mr Goodman!” he called. “‘Dawn steals from secret bowers and rises, inflamed by her passions, to light the day. Does she know what colours her fellow wears until he comes to her again? She does not. But she rises and is con
tent.’”
Lord Cathair’s poetic mood alarmed him. Cathair seemed not to notice. “Perhaps this work is also unknown to you?”
“I regret that it is, my lord.”
“Again, you disappoint me. Perhaps you should ask Cadet Overbrook.”
“Thank you, my lord; I will.”
The Hand gestured once to dismiss him. Bowing low, Eamon turned and began to hurry on down the road. As he was leaving, Cathair called after him:
“You will find the fruits of your labours of yesterday in the Brand, Mr Goodman. Be sure to inspect them.”
A chill coursed through his veins. His pace quickened. Smoke… charred flesh.
He ran. The Brand was before him. Eamon stopped.
Three stakes stood at the centre of the square, exhausted kindling stacked all about them. Blackened, disfigured remains were caught in writhing about the poles. One was smaller than the others. Dark smoke still emanated from them.
People milled around the square, darting in and out of shuttered buildings. All avoided the gruesome centrepiece bar a lame, welted dog and carrion birds that had not yet dared alight upon the faggots.
Eamon’s eyes stung. He went slowly towards the poles like the crows. Wretchedly, he halted at the edge of the kindling by a wooden board. A notice had been fixed to it, telling of the crimes committed against the Master by the grisly remains. The notice bore Lord Cathair’s seal. It stoked the hatred in his heart.
Those who break the law deserve death, spoke the voice within him. Be proud of what was done here, Eben’s son, and for your part in it; you glorified me.
Eamon steadied himself against the board.
The burning had been done that night. While three wayfarers had writhed and screamed and met their brutal deaths in the Brand, he himself had been… How could he? But she had been beautiful and he had been her joy!
A deserved joy, son of Eben. Just as they earned suffering through their treachery so you earned pleasure by your service. All that you reaped, you merited.
The memory of the night returned to him with force. With the voice driving him, Eamon glutted upon it, his heart lusting after the time when night would come again and he might return to her. A tremor of passion seized his limbs and he turned his back upon the gutted, blackened ligaments. What were they to him?
A loud crack reached his ears.
Lifting his heel, Eamon saw a small wooden soldier, its red coat marked with a golden crown. It was snapped at the heart.
For a long time Eamon stared, held captive by the broken form. The thought of himself and Alessia caught up together was cast aside by that of a little boy, running from his house, calling for his father with joy.
“There you are!”
Eamon dashed back his tears. Soot and smoke, bile and passion clung to him.
Mathaiah approached. His ward had drawn in a lung-full of smoke when he called and was coughing.
“Mr Grahaven,” Eamon tremored.
The cadet came to a halt before him. He was pale. “I have been looking for you half the night. It’s about the book, sir.”
“The book?” Eamon repeated the word dumbly.
“The… Nightholt.” The word came haltingly from Mathaiah’s lips. He swallowed hard. “I was dreaming, sir… I saw it. I can…”
“What?”
“I can understand it, or most of it. I can read it. They were terrible dreams, sir,” he whispered. “That’s why I was… why I needed… where were you?”
“I…”
Alessia, flushed and radiant. He shuddered, unable to drive her from his thought. How could the First Knight recount that he had spent the night in the arms of Alessia Turnholt while King’s men burnt to death?
“I’ll not tell you,” he said suddenly.
The answer jarred Mathaiah. As their eyes met, Eamon saw concern replaced by injury; he squirmed as the young man’s face coloured in the following silence. His ward had guessed, and guessed rightly, where he had been that night.
He judges you, son of Eben! He judges and reviles you. See how it is written on his face!
Eamon glared. “My business is my own, Mr Grahaven,” he spat.
Stunned, Mathaiah stared. “Sir –”
“I’ll not have you judge my doings, cadet,” Eamon growled. “They are my affairs, and mine alone.”
“With respect, sir,” Mathaiah answered quietly, “that isn’t true. You are not your own.”
Will you have him disdain you, son of Eben, and call you liar?
“You would have me answer to you, whimpering child of a Backwater lordling? A boy who weeps because he has bad dreams?”
Mathaiah seemed taken aback. Eamon didn’t care. “I would have you answer to another,” Mathaiah replied.
You answer to me alone, son of Eben.
“I have no answer to give you,” Eamon retorted.
Mathaiah stared at him. “Did she teach you to speak like this?”
He envies you your joy, Eben’s son.
“She taught me things you do not know, cadet,” Eamon answered snidely.
“Then she has served her purpose well.”
“Purpose! What do you know about her purpose?”
“Are you so blind, sir?” he cried. “Look at yourself! Listen to yourself! See what she has done to you! She has waylaid you, just as they meant her to, and is trapping you so that you will betray your promise. That is her purpose. She is a honeyed jar.”
“Then why not speak before, cadet? I will tell you why: you have a jealous tongue.”
“You… you cannot think that of me,” Mathaiah breathed.
It was his own fault; the boy was bringing it on himself. “You have taught me what to think of you, Mr Grahaven.”
See how things stand, son of Eben? You cannot trust him. What can he understand of so rich a man as you? My glory and her touch are all that can enfold you. They are all that you need. Cast this child aside: scorn him utterly.
Eamon’s rage was hot and there were traces of fire on his palm.
“I was a fool to entrust friendship to a mere boy. Be sure that I will not do so again.”
Mathaiah recoiled; a look of unutterable hurt passed over his face. In the silence that followed, the young man gaped, appalled.
Eamon looked down at him. He felt no remorse. The boy deserved it. He was nothing but jealousy and judgment. What did he know? “It’s time for parade, cadet.”
That night Eamon returned to Alessia. He had spent the whole day thinking of her until his heart could bear it no more. With her and in her embrace, he told himself, his thoughts would be his own.
She was in the hallway when he arrived and stood as though she had been expecting him. Perhaps she had. Eamon cared nothing for the servants, who saw him as he came in, or for Lillabeth, who watched him as she served them an evening meal. His lady spoke sweetly to him and fuelled Eamon’s passion.
When they had eaten she led him upstairs once more, as he had hoped she would, to her chamber. No sooner had she closed the door but he fell on her, lavishing her face and neck with kisses. She laughed, and caressed his cheeks.
“Eamon, Eamon,” she said softly, “has it been so long since we last met?”
“It has been an eternity to me.”
But he did not tell her that the power behind his passion was born in Mathaiah’s words against her, nor, as she returned it, that his exultation came from his certainty that her kisses disproved all that his ward had said.
With October a harsh winter settled on the city. The icy wind drove in from the north and the harbour was besieged by waves so tall that they struck through into the harbour mouth, damaging wintering ships. The breakwaters had to be reinforced, a task in which many men lost their lives to the dun waters.
Eamon went to Alessia on many of those long, autumn evenings. With every night that they passed together he became more and more convinced of her love for him and of his for her, and so he grew in his belief that he had to rely on her alone. During those c
old nights a fire always burnt at the grate in her chamber and Eamon loved to watch her undressing in its glow, and to allow her delicate hands to undress him also.
One dark evening she laid her hands on the heart of the King at his breast and asked him what it was.
“An old trinket,” he answered carelessly. “A relic of days long past.”
So she took the heart of the King from his breast, as she had done so many times before. But when he came to dress the following morning he did not place it back around his neck.
As the months turned on, through November and December into January, supplies of food began to dwindle, though in the palace fires roared and those dearest to the Master feasted upon meat and wines from Ravensill.
The pyres outside the city burned constantly. Fever was rife, especially in the South Quarter, and tales spread of physicians murdered for refusing service to those who could not pay. As the winter drove on, the tally of the fever’s victims increased. At the end of December traffic moving in and out of the city ceased entirely. On clear days the mountains to the north-east could be seen under a perpetual cap of snow. The roads beyond Dunthruik’s sphere turned treacherously muddy, and ice fretted parts of the River. Driven by hunger and a desire for warmth, dozens of young men applied to join the Gauntlet, where a daily ration of food was provided. These men replaced those who were lost to the fever or in the increasing number of skirmishes with wayfarers. Some of the men who survived such encounters returned with rumours of an amassing Serpent army to the north and east, and of grim battles in the frozen fortress towns in the provinces of Singsward, Orlestone, and Haselune.
Eamon grew greatly in reputation during those months: his cadets were among the best in the college and, together with Draybant Farleigh, Eamon helped to run the college efficiently. He interviewed young men wishing to enlist and saw in their eager faces the enthusiasm that he had once thought lost, but now found renewed with every morning. He helped Captain Waite with his paperwork and oversaw several wardings. Each time he witnessed them Mathaiah came to his mind, and each time he resolutely drove the thoughts away.
Eamon accorded well with Dunthruik. His reputation, his position, and his lover all went before him; each was a source of joy to him. When he encountered Lillabeth on the stairs of Alessia’s home he did not falter, but walked past her proudly. What concern was it of hers what he did? And what did he care if she spoke of him to Mathaiah, as he was sure she did?